by Derek Wilson
Parliament had been summoned and the Council hoped that their entreaties would galvanize the queen into action but she lingered at Richmond, refusing to come to Westminster, ‘being loath to hear so many foul and grievous matters revealed and ripped up’. By 12 November Lords and Commons had ratified the death sentence which had, ultimately, been passed upon the Queen of Scots. On the 24th a parliamentary deputation urged Elizabeth to issue a proclamation concerning the execution of Mary. She returned them an ‘answer-answerless’ and with that they had to be content. Then Dudley arrived. What passed between the two old friends as they supped alone that evening we do not know. But we do know that Elizabeth’s doubts were overborne. She scrawled a note to the Lord Chancellor ordering him to make the proclamation. Her resolve, however, did not survive the withdrawal of Robert and the ensuing sleepless night. Before dawn another message was on its way to Westminster rescinding her order and adjourning parliament for a week. During that week, Dudley, firmly reinstalled in his favoured place, used all his powers to bring Elizabeth to the point of no return, while Cecil and other councillors passed back and forth between Richmond and the capital with messages and draft proclamations. On 4 December the queen’s determination to execute her cousin was made known to her subjects.
Now all that was needed was the signed warrant for Mary’s death, and Elizabeth’s advisers expected that it would follow rapidly upon the proclamation. They should have known better. The queen resisted every attempt to urge her to immediate action. For Elizabeth’s advisers day followed frustrating day and not one passed without Dudley discussing the crisis with his colleagues or with the queen directly. No one was more assiduous in urging the queen to positive action than William Davison and, on 1 February, she handed him the signed warrant, only to summon him back to her presence to receive fresh instructions. The Bond of Association had pledge her supporters to take any action to ensure her safety. Very well, let someone, without the queen’s knowledge, go to Fotheringay and assassinate Mary. Davison was appalled and so was Mary’s guardian, Sir Amyas Paulet. Elizabeth was brought face to face with the unpalatable truth that she could not evade personal responsibility for dealing with her rival. She wriggled to the very end. Poor Davison did not know what to make of the quicksilver changes of her tortured mind and sought the advice of Hatton and Cecil. A Council meeting was called and it was that body which took the decision to proceed without further delay. On 8 February Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded. When Elizabeth received the news she exploded in a tirade of Tudor wrath. She persuaded herself that she had been betrayed and lashed out at the culprits. Hatton and Cecil were banished from the court. Davison was once again the fall guy. He was sent to the Tower, fined 10,000 marks and even threatened with summary execution for disobedience. Although he was released after eighteen months and his fine remitted, he was never taken back into favour and was, in effect, ruined. For months a paralysis gripped the government. ‘The present discord between her Majesty and her Council hindereth the necessary consultation that were desired for the prevention of the manifold perils that hang over the realm,’ Walsingham complained.21
The one person Elizabeth wanted beside her at this time was her Sweet Robin. Forgiven and forgotten was his disgrace of the previous year. The situation at court was like a rerun of the first months of the reign, when Cecil and his colleagues had bitterly resented their exclusion and Dudley’s monopoly of the queen. They resented them again now. The new men were particularly annoyed. During Dudley’s absence Hatton, Whitgift and others had enjoyed a greater degree of access to Elizabeth. It had seemed to them that the favourite’s political power was at an end. Now he had stepped back into his old position and they were once more reduced to courting his favours and asking him to intercede with Elizabeth on their behalf. It is small wonder that his colleagues were eager for his return to the Netherlands.
The situation there had deteriorated rapidly since his departure. In January the military gains of the previous season were wiped out at a stroke. Sir William Stanley, whom Leicester had left in command of Deventer, was a Catholic and a man with a grievance (he believed that his long service in Ireland had not been adequately recompensed). He conspired with Sir Rowland York, captain of the Zutphen fort, to yield their positions to the enemy. Parma accurately assessed the impact of this defection in a letter to his master: ‘The Zutphen fort . . . and Deventer which was the real objective of last summer’s campaign and is the key to Groningen and all these provinces are thus Your Majesty’s at a trifling cost. But what is better; the effect of this treason must be to sow great suspicion between the English and the rebels, so that hereafter no one will know whom to trust.’22 Parma could have capitalized on his good fortune with a vigorous northward thrust but he now received different orders from Spain. Philip II, incensed by the sentencing of Mary Stuart to death, encouraged by a treaty with the pope and defections from Dudley’s army (William Stanley had arrived at the Spanish court offering his assistance for an invasion of Ireland) decided that the time was right to launch his long-contemplated ‘Enterprise of England’. He instructed Parma to concentrate his efforts on securing ports and coastal garrisons so that he could embark his army on the Armada which would shortly arrive. The Spanish commander, therefore, settled down to besiege Sluys on the Scheldt estuary.
Dudley was eager to return to his command but not on the same conditions that had led to the previous difficulties. He demanded more troops, the making good of all pay arrears and a war chest of £10,000. (He had been obliged to dig deep into his own pocket to meet the expenses of the earlier campaign.) For her part, Elizabeth was loath to throw good money after bad and could not make up her mind to be deprived of Robert a second time. Midsummer had come and gone before Dudley was able to head back across the North Sea.
He discovered to his chagrin that nothing had changed in the allied camp. The old arguments and misunderstandings repeated themselves. In order to thwart Parma’s coastal preparations Dudley was reliant on the Dutch navy but their admiral simply refused to acknowledge his authority or fall in with his tactics. This lack of co-operation showed itself to lamentable effect when Dudley launched a waterborne attempt to relieve Sluys. The plan was for a fireship to go ahead and destroy the floating bridge Parma had thrown across the channel. The Dutch warships would then bear through and Dudley would personally lead the attack. They would make an entry for the supplies and reinforcements, carried by flyboats and barges. It was an exacting manoeuvre, demanding fine timing and accurate manipulation of many vessels through the shallows of the estuary. There was very little room for error or mishap. On the evening tide the fireboat was steered towards its target. It was a fearsome sight. Against inexperienced troops and timorous commanders it would probably have been very effective. Parma simply gave the order for part of the bridge to be unfastened and swung out of the way, allowing the ‘hellburner’ to pass through and exhaust itself harmlessly in the inner basin. The attacking fleet was, necessarily, coming up at some distance from the fireship. Seeing the failure of his stratagem, Dudley went from ship to ship in his barge, ignoring small arms fire from the Spanish positions, ordering more sail and full speed so as to reach the bridge before the enemy had time to close the gap. The Dutch captains and pilots simply refused to cooperate. They, too, had observed Parma’s cunning, and were afraid of running their ships into a narrow, closed channel where they would have no room to manoeuvre. While his allies argued and Leicester fumed, Parma repaired his breach, the tide slackened, the wind changed direction and the opportunity was lost. Sluys capitulated soon afterwards and, though Dudley stayed at his post until November, determinedly trying to impose his will on his fractious and obstructive allies, he eventually admitted himself beaten.
Dudley’s governorship of the United Provinces has usually been represented as a failure but since there was no agreement about what he was trying to achieve, it is difficult to evaluate his contribution. In territorial terms he certainly had nothing to show for the expe
nditure of blood and treasure. Diplomatically the English intervention was a disaster. No common Protestant front had been established. The Dutch states were even more at loggerheads with each other than they had been in 1585 and Dudley left behind a general feeling that the rebels had been betrayed. Yet in the longer term the English intervention in the Netherlands proved crucial. In Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, Dudley faced one of the finest generals of the age, a strategist who had, by 1585, turned the tide of rebellion. He had captured Brussels and Antwerp and consolidated the southern states. He was poised to press on into the northern territory when the appearance of Dudley’s army made him pause. Crucially his advance was slowed in 1586 and, in the following year, he was ordered to divert his attention away from reducing the whole country to its allegiance and prepare for the Armada. The grind of siege warfare inflicted a heavy toll on his army (the capture of Sluys alone cost him 700 men) and matters grew worse when the Armada was delayed and his men faced disease and famine. Farnese never regained his momentum. When he turned his attention once more to the United Netherlands he found himself confronted by a more formidable foe, Maurice of Nassau. Easy victories eluded him and when, in 1592, he died in the field he had already been summoned back to Spain in disgrace. There was nothing glorious about Dudley’s governorship of the United Provinces but it was one episode in the long struggle for the survival of the Dutch Republic.
By the time he reached home Robert Dudley was yesterday’s man. The privileged places around the queen were being filled by the next generation of courtiers and councillors. Walsingham had already warned him of this state of affairs as early as August: ‘I find there is some dealing underhand against your lordship which proceedeth from the younger sort of our courtiers that take upon them to censure the greatest causes . . . a disease I do not look to be cured in my time.’23 The future was in the hands of these brash young men – Raleigh, Essex; John Harrington, who kept the queen amused with his sophisticated poetizing; Robert Carey, who trumpeted his accomplishments at tilt, tourney, barriers, masques and balls; and that other Robert Dudley, Leicester’s ‘base son’ who, before the age of twenty, would fit out his own voyage of exploration. With the arrogance of inexperienced youth some of them mocked ‘Old Leicester’s’ coming home with his tail between his legs. They did so with impunity knowing that the queen was displeased that, given a second chance, her general had failed to turn the tide of war. She did not summon him immediately to her side and he spent much of the winter at Wanstead.
In truth Dudley was in no hurry to return to court. He was tired, humiliated and unwell. One of his first acts was to resign the Mastership of the Horse to his stepson, Robert Devereux. He had deliberately introduced young Essex into the queen’s circle as a kind of personal proxy, a man who would remind Elizabeth of the Dudley she had once loved so passionately, who would maintain something of the family presence. The plan worked excellently. The queen was enchanted with her new beau. It was Essex who sat late into the night with her playing cards; it was he who rode with her in Windsor Great Park; it was he who delivered private, intimate messages from his stepfather and effectively negated the activities of Dudley’s opponents. And when Dudley was absent from the court Elizabeth insisted that Essex should occupy his stepfather’s chambers.
Dudley had certainly not been cast aside. There was still a place for him in the queen’s counsels and that place grew more important as it became obvious that England was facing the threat of imminent invasion. Philip’s delayed Armada would be setting sail this summer and effective defence had to be organized. That meant raising the largest army England had seen in half a century and appointing veterans of the Irish and Netherlands wars to knock raw recruits into shape. There never seems to have been any doubt about the general who was to be in overall command of land forces. Dudley might have failed in the Netherlands. There might be several young bloods competing for death or glory jobs but Elizabeth still had faith in her old friend. Dudley’s appointment as ‘Lieutenant and Captain General of the Queen’s armies and companies’ was not formally ratified until 24 July but before that date he had thrown himself energetically into the complex preparations for fending off invasion.
It was obvious that if Spanish troops landed in strength their first objective would be London. Dudley, therefore, gathered his main force at Tilbury on the Thames estuary, as the first line of defence. Concentrating men and supplies was no easy task. On 22 July he travelled downriver to examine the fortifications at Tilbury and Gravesend. He found them sadly lacking in powder, ordnance, implements and provisions and doubted whether either could be rendered impregnable. He supervized the construction of a boom across the Thames but (correctly, as it turned out) doubted its adequacy. Mustering sufficient troops was a major headache. All the men of substance preferred to pledge their contingent to serve under Hunsdon whose army was stationed on the outskirts of London. The men of Essex and the surrounding country, who might be presumed to be most interested in repelling the invader, were slow to come in. On 25 July, by which time the Spanish fleet was already off the Isle of Wight, Dudley had only 4,000 men in camp and still had inadequate officers to train his soldiers. The following day it was shortage of victuals that exercised his mind. He had personally had to order 100 tuns of beer and had instructed 1,000 reinforcements from London to stay where they were unless they were bringing their own provisions with them. He had had town criers out in all the surrounding boroughs appealing for food for the troops but found East Anglian farmers and victuallers reluctant to trust the royal quartermasters. He hurried back and forth between Tilbury, Gravesend, Chelmsford, Harwich and other towns in an effort to stir up patriotism or, failing that, self-interest and could, with some justification, claim that he was expected to ‘cook, cater and hunt’ for his army.24
Gradually order emerged from chaos. On 27 July Robert felt that he could urge the queen to pay a personal visit to Tilbury. Elizabeth had written to ask his advice. He responded by suggesting that the queen should keep about her a small force of picked men and that she should establish her headquarters at Havering, some ten miles distant from the main camp at Tilbury. From there, he hoped, Elizabeth would come to spend two or three days ‘in your poor lieutenant’s cabin’ to inspire her troops. Elizabeth did not accept his advice about Havering, preferring to entrust her person to the security of the capital and Hunsdon’s bodyguard but she did agree to review her troops at Tilbury on some appropriate day. On 5 August she sent to inform Robert that she would come the following Monday.
In the midst of all his purely military preparations Dudley now had to organize a gaudy demonstration of loyalty and defiant nationalism. By the morning of the 8th he had created what may have been little more than an illusion of military might and bold defiance. Within neat palisades and ditches the tents and pavilions stood in orderly rows, those of the officers gay with heraldic flags and bunting. The foot soldiers were drawn up in their squadrons, breastplates gleaming and a semblance of uniformity about their dress and weapons. The mounted troops made a more impressive display with their proud plumes and immaculately groomed chargers. It was Robert’s last and greatest piece of stage-management, the apotheosis of all the court tournaments he had organized over the years. Everything was ready for the appearance of the principal performer.
And Elizabeth knew exactly how to respond. Leaving all her bodyguard before Tilbury fort she went among her loyal subjects with an escort of six men. The Earl of Ormonde walked ahead with the Sword of State. He was followed by a page leading the queen’s charger and another bearing her silver helmet on a cushion. Then came Elizabeth herself, all in white with a silver cuirass, and mounted on a grey gelding. She was flanked by the two men who represented her past and her future: on her right Robert Dudley, portly and bare-headed but still an impressive figure on horseback, on her left the intensely handsome Earl of Essex. Sir John Norreys brought up the rear. It had all been arranged to perfection, just as the queen’s speech had been carefully prepa
red and rehearsed. The spectacle did not fail to achieve its effect. The cheering soldiers saw their sovereign come among them as ‘your general, judge and rewarder’ and believed that she would ‘lay down for my God and my kingdom and for my people, my honour and my blood’. Those who had eyes to see might also discern that the Dudley interest was still paramount in the circles closest to the queen. It was in his camp and not in her own capital that she delivered her rousing ‘heart and stomach of a king’ speech. And, in the concluding words (which are rarely quoted), she commended her soldiers to the leadership of her lieutenant-general, ‘than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject’.25
After the review the queen dined with Dudley and her officers and slept that night in the lodging Robert had requisitioned for her. The next day she was back at Tilbury again, enjoying the bustle of camp life and watching the troops at their drill. But news arrived that Parma was now ready to cross the Channel. Dudley, who had urged Elizabeth to come downriver, was now among those who begged a reluctant queen to remove herself from possible danger. On the evening of Friday 9 August Robert handed Elizabeth into her barge and watched as she was rowed towards London.
In fact, the danger was now passed, although this was far from clear from the confused reports reaching Tilbury from coastal watchers, returning captains and foreign envoys. While Robert was entertaining the queen, Philip’s admiral, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, was desperately trying to hold his fleet together and moving northwards up the Flemish coast. During the hours of darkness Admiral Howard’s fireships had forced him from his anchorage in Calais Roads. Like a pack of hounds the English fell upon the scattered fragments of the Armada, engaging several ships in running battles off Gravelines.