by Derek Wilson
The planned court coup was stillborn but unfortunately Howard’s party had awaked the sleeping giants of the north, traditional Catholicism and the feudal power of the great noble clans. The earls of Westmorland and Northumberland remained in close contact with Howard and looked to him for leadership. But he was in a state of complete confusion. At first he encouraged them to be ready with arms and men. Then he decided to call the whole thing off and throw himself on Elizabeth’s mercy.
Elizabeth, however, was feeling far from merciful. Men close to her had betrayed her trust, conspired together with foreign agents, the Scottish queen and dissident subjects. Well might she be angry and not a little fearful. She sent guards to arrest the duke and escort him to the Tower. Then she insisted that he be tried for treason. She had Mary Stuart moved farther south to the damp and draughty Tutbury Castle in the Dove valley, north of Burton on Trent. As for the northern earls, she sent instructions via Radcliffe that they were to repair to court immediately to give an account of themselves. When they refused to come she ordered Radcliffe to proceed against them with armed force, something he was inadequately equipped to do. Believing now that they had nothing to lose and bolstered by promises of foreign aid and gold and also by the crowds who daily flocked to join them, Westmorland and Northumberland rode to Durham and set their men to an orgy of Catholic iconoclasm. Bibles, communion tables and everything that smacked of Protestantism were destroyed before the rebels turned southwards. An attempt to free Mary was foiled when she was moved yet again, this time to Coventry. Elizabeth now turned to the men she knew she could trust. Ambrose Dudley and Edward Clinton were dispatched to confront the traitors.
In the event her generals were not called upon to show their mettle. By the end of November 1569 the great northern rebellion was petering out. Only able to face Elizabeth’s disciplined troops with what was no more than an ill-armed rabble, the dissident earls beat a retreat. In mid-December they disbanded their men and fled into Scotland. Elizabeth’s reprisals were savage in the extreme. She fixed arbitrarily upon the number of 700 rebels to be executed – enough to display dramatically in every town and village the price of treason. Then she dispatched Radcliffe across the border to destroy 300 villages and 50 castles. Elizabeth’s captains moderated the harshness of their instructions but, nevertheless, this Tudor monarch proved to be more draconian in her pursuit of vengeance than any other. Beside her punishment of the northern rebels Henry VIII’s retribution after the Pilgrimage of Grace and Mary’s harrying of Protestants pale into insignificance.
As is often the case, it was the rank and file who paid the price of the crime into which their betters led them. Although Northumberland was sold by his Scottish friends and executed in August 1572, Westmorland made good his escape to the Netherlands and Howard was pardoned. He remained in the Tower through the winter and spring and it was partly due to Dudley’s supplications that he was released from the plague-infested prison in August 1570. (Robert had also helped to get Arundel freed from house arrest in March.) However, the duke’s bitter experience had taught him nothing: he was soon involved in the machinations of Roberto Ridolfi, an Italian banker who drew Howard, Mary Stuart, de Spes and Catholics at home and abroad into a plot to change, by force, the government and religion of England. Howard went back to the Tower on 5 September and it was Dudley who wrote to break the news to Arundel. The old earl professed profound shock at the news and prayed Dudley to use his good offices once more. But Howard was now beyond the help of even the queen’s favourite. Dudley was among the peers before whom the Duke of Norfolk was tried and indicted for high treason in January 1572. However, it was five months before the queen could bring herself to sign his death warrant. He perished beneath the axe on 2 June.
These disturbing events seemed to prove what Dudley and Cecil had always insisted: England and England’s queen were encircled by the forces of Antichrist and must frame their policies accordingly. The following years would see Elizabeth shouldering, if unwillingly, the burden of Protestant champion that her closest advisers pressed upon her.
16
Love’s Labours Lost
It was a prophetic tableau.
For three consecutive nights in late March 1572 Queen Elizabeth lay, sleepless and pain-racked, in her bedchamber. Her ladies attended to her needs. Her physicians fussed to and fro with their nostrums and bleeding bowls. Only two other men were allowed in the sickroom and they maintained a constant watch over the recumbent figure. These three people – Elizabeth, William Cecil, recently raised to the peerage as Baron of Burghley, and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester – had emerged from the reign’s first thirteen years as the triumvirate which would rule England for the next sixteen. Other royal advisers and trusted confidants had come and gone. New men would join the political establishment. But Cecil and Dudley were the only ones who provided continuity.
Arundel had not been able to clear himself satisfactorily of involvement in the Ridolfi Plot and was obliged to spend his remaining years in retirement. The Earl of Pembroke had died in 1570 and Sir Nicholas Throckmorton on 12 February 1571. The new figures of weight who now emerged from the shadows included Christopher Hatton, who fulfilled the need Elizabeth had for being attended by beautiful and intelligent young men. Like Dudley his skills were those of the courtier. He excelled in the tiltyard and court entertainments.
From Dudley’s point of view a more significant newcomer was Francis Walsingham. Dudley found in the sombrely dressed, sad-eyed administrator an ally who shared his own political and religious views and whose talents were even more formidable than Throckmorton’s. Francis Walsingham was the specialist in espionage and intelligence who had uncovered Ridolfi’s activities. Between 1570 and 1573 he was employed as a diplomat in France, and in December 1573 he became Secretary of State in succession to Cecil, when the latter was appointed Lord Treasurer.
By 1572 Cecil and Dudley had come to the realization, doubtless not expressed in as many words, that they needed each other. If either had succeeded in expelling the other from government the delicate balance on which the regime depended would have been upset. We rely for knowledge of their rivalry and feuds on the statements of others, primarily foreign ambassadors. Were we to have only the letters of Cecil and Dudley themselves on which to base an assessment of their relationship we should have to conclude that they were much more kindly disposed to each other. In November 1568 the Secretary could inform Sir Henry Sidney: ‘At the writing hereof my Lord of Leicester is in my house at dice and merry, where he hath taken pains to be evil lodged these two nights. And tomorrow we return both to the court.’ 1 In February 1573 Leicester was using his influence on Cecil’s behalf when the latter had incurred Elizabeth’s temporary disfavour.
God be thanked, her blasts be not the storms of other princes, though they be very sharp sometimes to those she loves best. Every man must render to her their due and the most bounden the most of all. You and I come in that rank, and I am witness hitherto [to] your honest zeal to perform as much as man can.2
When, in later years, their relationship went through periods of strain, Dudley was wont to remind Cecil of their ‘thirty years friendship’, to insist that his colleague had ‘not found a more ready friend for you and yours than I have ever been’, and to remind him that his obligation to the house of Dudley went back to the days when John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland first employed a young, ambitious lawyer.3
Love and war were the two dominant themes in Dudley’s life during these years. He was a sexually active man who found relief from the frustration of his relationship with Elizabeth in other liaisons. However, he had always avoided serious entanglements. The first firm linking of his name with any woman appears in a letter written by the twenty-year-old Gilbert Talbot to his father, the Earl of Shrewsbury, in May 1573.
My Lord Leicester is very much with her majesty and she shows the same great good affection to him that she was wont. Of late he has endeavoured to please her more than heretofore. Th
ere are two sisters now in the court that are very far in love with him, as they have been long; my Lady Sheffield and Frances Howard. They (of like striving who shall love him better) are at great wars together and the Queen thinketh not well of them, and not the better of him. By this means there are spies over him.4
If these amours had only just come to light the participants had been exceedingly discreet, for Robert and Lady Sheffield had been carrying on an affair for months, if not years.
Indeed, in that very same month – May 1573 – they were married. Lady Douglas Howard, by repute a great beauty, was the daughter of William, first Baron Effingham, councillor and great-uncle of the queen. She was married young to Lord John Sheffield and widowed in 1568, when she was twenty. She was distantly related to Robert by marriage, for her sister, Mary, was the third wife of Edward, Baron Dudley. She was not far into her widowhood when, thanks to various court contacts, she won a place as a lady of the bedchamber. She soon fell under Dudley’s spell. As their relationship deepened Douglas began to press her lover for the security and respectability of marriage. Gossip insisted that at one point she became pregnant and secluded herself at Dudley Castle until after the birth of a daughter (who died within a short time).
Robert, of course, resisted her importunings, explaining, doubtless on more than one occasion, why his unique position ruled out matrimony. Just as the queen had entered on a spiritual marriage with her people, so she expected her Sweet Robin to keep himself pure and faithful for her alone. But Douglas persisted and, eventually, Robert was indiscreet enough to explain himself in writing. It was not a very gallant letter. He set down the reasons why it was impossible for him to offer her marriage. He assured her of his continuing affection. He told her that he realized how unsatisfactory her situation was and he offered her two alternatives, either of which would have his blessing: she could continue their relationship on the present basis or she could seek a suitable husband. This was the decision he had reached, he said, after having ‘thoroughly weighed and considered both your own and mine estate’ and with Douglas’ best interests in mind: ‘. . . albeit I have been and yet am a man frail, yet am I not void of conscience toward God, nor honest meaning toward my friend, and, having made special choice of you to be one of the dearest to me, so much the more care must I have to discharge the office due unto you.’5
It is unlikely in the extreme that Elizabeth knew nothing of her favourite’s latest liaison. However, she elected to turn a blind eye to it and matters could have gone on much as before if Douglas had been prepared to bow to the inevitable. She was not. Probably egged on by her relatives she urged her lover to do the honourable thing. She employed emotional blackmail, at the least. He valued his reputation as champion of the Puritan cause and had already had to defend himself against accusations of licentiousness from his own devotees. Douglas had it in her power to embarrass Dudley with his own coterie, as well as providing his enemies with ammunition.
Robert lacked the ruthlessness to break with Douglas, or even to stand by the firm decision he had made in his letter. So he compromised. What he offered Douglas was a secret marriage. On a May evening in 1573, at a house in Esher, Robert Dudley was married for the second time. It was a clandestine ceremony attended only by close friends and servants of the couple. Honour was apparently satisfied. Douglas experienced the kind of existence that Amy had once experienced, unable openly to enjoy her husband’s affection, although, unlike the first Lady Dudley, she was not confined to the country. The queen was tolerant of Dudley’s ‘affair’, even after a son was born to the couple on 7 August 1574. Dudley acknowledged the baby Robert and referred to him as ‘my base son’ and ‘the badge of my sin’. Elizabeth seems to have forgiven her favourite’s ‘lapse’ (a far from unusual one in Tudor high society); the Countess of Leicester seemed content to enjoy her new station in the seclusion of Esher and Leicester House; and everything went on much as before. Or so it seemed. In fact, this clandestine episode was to have momentous repercussions for the Dudley dynasty. Robert now had the son and heir he had longed for but by insisting that young Robert was a bastard he was actually disinheriting him. If his son should ever try to make good his claim to Leicester’s titles and social position (as he did), he would find it very difficult.
The blame for this complication of Dudley’s life might reasonably have been shared by Elizabeth. If she had not kept him on the tight leash of her jealousy he would not have been driven to a subterfuge which eventually put an end to his hereditary line. But the further difficulties he ran into were entirely the result of his own libidinousness.
In the summer of 1575 he made a final bid to clarify Elizabeth’s intentions towards him. It took the form of a stupendous, eighteen-day entertainment at Kenilworth at which, under the guise of masque, pageant and drama his protégés made an heroic presentation of the subject of marriage in all its aspects. Elizabeth’s visit to Kenilworth Castle in July 1575 was the social event not only of the year, but of the decade; perhaps even of the reign. She had been there twice before, in 1565 and 1572, but Dudley made her last visit so memorable by the incredible extravagance of the entertainment he provided that it became a talking point for years afterwards.
On 9 July Robert Dudley rode out from his fine castle, having satisfied himself that all the last-minute preparations for the queen’s coming were in hand. He met the royal party at Long Itchington and dined them sumptuously in an enormous pavilion. By the time he had brought Elizabeth and her court back to Kenilworth it was eight o’clock in the evening, and the castle, twinkling with the light from thousands of candles and torches, looked like a fairy palace rising from the lake. To heighten the illusion, as the visitors approached the outer gate, ‘appeared a floating island on the large pool there, bright blazing with torches, on which were clad in silks the Lady of the Lake and two nymphs waiting on her, who made a speech to the Queen in metre of the antiquity and owners of that castle . . .’6
Throughout the following days Dudley, the great impresario, presented a series of entertainments as varied as they were lavish, making the most of Kenilworth’s spectacular buildings, lake and park. When Elizabeth went hunting, a savage man and satyrs appeared to recite flattering verses. Returning on another day to the castle, she was ‘surprised’ by Triton who emerged from the lake, dripping weeds and water, to make another oration. Even at her departing she found Sylvanus running at her stirrup and urging her to stay for ever. There were masques and pageants in plenty, banqueting and bear-baiting. There were games arranged for the townsfolk in the tiltyard so that the queen could see her ordinary subjects and be seen by them. There were mummers and a troupe of actors from Coventry who came to present traditional plays. There were tumblers and jugglers, and firework displays. There were picnics and minstrelsy on the lake. And everywhere ‘magic’ surprises – bushes that burst into song, pillars that grew fruit and gushed wine, trees decked with costly gifts. To achieve this effect Dudley and an army of servants bustled behind the scenes, ready to change the programme at a moment’s notice in accordance with the whim of the queen or the weather.
Elizabeth and her court were only too well aware of the serious purposes behind all the play-acting and buffoonery. Marriage was the constant theme. An actual rustic wedding was staged in the grounds with all its attendant, homely celebratory rituals. A local couple had been chosen and they came with a host of family, friends and neighbours to perform their nuptials before the ‘quality’. Rather like the ‘rude mechanicals’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, they took their roles very seriously while their superiors looked on with patronizing amusement. The ceremonial entry of the bride drew many superior laughs:
God wot, and ill-smelling was she: thirty years old, of colour brown-bay, not very beautiful indeed, but ugly, foul, and ill-favoured; yet marvellous fond of the office, because she heard say she should dance before the Queen, in which feat she thought she would foot it as finely as the best: Well, after this bride there came, by two and two, a do
zen damsels for bride-maids, that for favour, attire, for fashion and cleanliness, were as meet for such a bride as a tureen ladle for a porridge-pot.7
In an outdoor pageant the Lady of the Lake was presented as a maiden imprisoned by Sir Bruce sans Pitié who tried to force her to marry and who had the support of the gods, a transparent reference to the attempts to propel Elizabeth into a foreign marriage against her personal inclinations. In a masque Diana’s nymph Zabeta was shown stubbornly maintaining her virgin state and transforming her suitors into fish, fowls, rocks and mountains. Frequent references were made throughout the queen’s stay to the noble descent and manly virtues of her host. Most interesting of all the Kenilworth entertainments was the one which was not performed. George Gascoigne’s diversion about the contest of Diana (goddess of chastity) and Juno (goddess of marriage) for the allegiance of a nymph was probably set aside because the allegory was too threadbare. In it one of the characters advised Elizabeth:
. . . give consent, O Queen,
to Juno’s just desire,
Who for your wealth would have you wed . . .
Whom should she wed? The answer was more than hinted at:
. . . where you now in princely port
have past one pleasant day:
A world of wealth at will
you henceforth shall enjoy
In wedded state . . .
O Queen, O worthy Queen,
Yet never wight felt perfect bliss,
but such as wedded been.
The multi-layered allegories made varied statements and allusions but Dudley’s playwrights were basically saying two things: the queen should marry or release her suitors from their bondage. And not only her suitors; the suggestion was being made that the country and the queen herself were being held in thrall by her vow of perpetual maidenhood. Elizabeth’s apparent inability to abandon the courtship game, whether with her courtiers or foreign princes was a source of almost unendurable personal and political frustration for all her advisers but most of all for Robert Dudley.