Queen of This Realm

by Jean Plaidy

  He was more full of faults than any man I knew.

  But I wept for him now.

  The little one was buried in the Beauchamp Chapel at Warwick.

  I sent for Robert and when he came to me I dismissed all the others.

  “I think you might want to share your grief with me alone,” I said, at which he sat on a stool at my feet and leaning his head against my knees wept silently. I caressed his curling hair and wept with him.

  I said: “Talk if you wish, Robin, but if you would rather remain silent, do so.”

  But he wanted to talk. He told me of the mental perfections of his son; physically he had always been frail. It surprised me that Robert with his magnificent physique could produce a fragile child—but nature is like that. He told me of the anxiety he had suffered because the little fellow had been subject to fits and when they were over he had been very weak indeed.

  “Robert, we must bear our trials,” I said. “You have much to be thankful for. This is a cruel tragedy but it will grow less as time passes.”

  He thanked me for my sympathy, which he said was the best thing in the world to him, and I replied that he should know by now that I would always stand by him when life used him ill.

  He nodded and kissed my hand and there was great accord between us. We knew again that our love for each other was a very precious thing and that it would last until one of us died and left the other desolate.

  “His mother is prostrate with grief,” he said.

  “It is natural that a mother should be,” I answered.

  “She is so unhappy at your anger with her. If you could allow her to come to Court, it would help to cheer her.”

  My softness dropped from me.

  “No,” I said coldly and firmly. “There is no place for that woman at my Court.”

  He was silent and so was I. The intimacy was over. He had ruined it by introducing a snake into our Eden.

  BURGHLEY BROUGHT ME the pamphlet which he thought I ought to see.

  I had had a pleasant evening, although it had been arranged to mourn and honor our lost friends, the Duc d'Anjou and William of Orange. I had dressed with the utmost care in black velvet decorated with silver thread and pearls. Over this I wore a shawl of silver mesh; it was as fine as a spider's web and had meant many hours of work by my good needlewomen to bring it to its perfection. My ruff was twinkling with gold and silver stars. I knew that I was looking my best.

  I was still pondering as to what my action should be regarding the Netherlands problem. There were so many varying opinions in the Council and Burghley's view was that the Dutch, having failed to get Henri Trois to accept their crown in return for his aid, might offer it to me.

  I was thinking of the magnitude of this when Burghley came to me and asked if I had seen the scurrilous pamphlet which was being circulated throughout the Court.

  I said I had not and to what did it refer?

  He said that it was entitled The Copye of a Letter wryten by a Master of Arts at Cambridge and was concerned with the misdeeds of a certain nobleman.

  “Leicester?” I asked.

  Burghley nodded.

  “There are always those who will malign Leicester,” I said. “He has aroused so much envy. Who is making mischief now?”

  “The author of the pamphlet is a little elusive, but it is said to be written by a Jesuit priest named Robert Parson.”

  “I have heard his name. He is one of those who burn to restore the Catholic faith in England, I believe, and is ready to do so by any means however foul… like most of his brethren. England would be a happier place without his kind. Well, where is this pamphlet?”

  “If Your Majesty wishes to see it I will fetch it, but I warn you it does not make pleasant reading.”

  “By which I infer I am mentioned in it.”

  He was silent.

  “Bring it to me at once,” I said.

  And so it came into my hands, the most wicked and scurrilous document I ever beheld. It was so absurd that I felt it must be worthless. On the other hand there were parts of it which might have had their roots in truth. Jesuit Parson had not been clever enough; if he had been content with recording the more plausible incidents he might have succeeded in his purpose, which was to destroy not only Leicester's reputation but mine as well. But as is often the case with such fanatical fury, he had gone too far.

  Venom leaped out from those pages. Heaven knew, Robert's record was not so pure that it needed such ferocious blackening. I was faintly amused in spite of my anger—and yes, alarmed—to see how Parson had betrayed his passionate envy. Not very clever for a man who claimed to have dedicated himself to God.

  He referred to Robert as The Bear and as soon as I read the opening sentences I was prepared for what followed.

  “You know the Bear's love, which is for his paunch …” It was ridiculous. Robert might indulge somewhat excessively in what is called good living, but he had many greater loves—for power, for glory, for possessions; and he had loved his dead son and Lettice—and I was sure myself.

  “He is noble in only two descents and both of them stained with the block…”

  That was so, but was it Robert's fault that his grandfather had died to placate the people who had blamed him for the taxes imposed by my grandfather? His father had come to the block through ambition, but was Robert to blame for that? My own mother had died on the block and so had many innocent people. The Jesuit was a fool.

  “He was fleshed in conspiracy against the royal blood of King Henry's children in his tender years,” he continued.

  It was true that he was at Court when a child, but he had stood for me as long as I had known him and had sold his lands in case I should need money to hold my throne.

  I was reluctant to read on because I knew that this man Parson would be no respecter of royalty. I was right. After an account of how Leicester had advanced his own family, he turned to his relationship with me. All the gossip, all the slander had been revived. The children who had been killed at birth or smuggled into secrecy…it was all there. I felt myself growing more and more enraged as I read.

  He was a murderer, wrote Parson, not only of his wife, who stood in his way, but of others. He began with the death of Amy Robsart whom, he insisted, Leicester had ordered his servants to dispose of that he might be free to marry the Queen.

  Previously he had said that Leicester exerted an evil spell over me which forced me to submit to his lusts. Surely all reasonable people would ask why, since he had murdered Amy in order to marry me, he did not use that sorcery to bring about the marriage.

  The death of Lord Sheffield was described in detail. He had been murdered at Leicester's command because he had threatened to divorce his wife naming Leicester as her lover. So an artificial catarrh had stopped his breath. Lord Essex had been killed through a clever Italian recipe after he had learned that Lettice was with child by Leicester. The child was afterward destroyed. Lady Sheffield was being poisoned, and the evidence was that her nails were dropping off and her hair falling out, when her life was saved by her marriage to Sir Edward Stafford. And all knew that there had been an inquiry about that as there had been about the death of Amy Robsart. But Leicester's minions were afraid of him and they saw to it that the truth was not brought out into the open.

  What a fool the Jesuit was! These crimes he had laid at Robert's door, while they could not be substantiated had their roots in fact—distorted fact maybe, but there was some reason for plausibility. But he was not content with that. Endowing me with children was absurd, as my movements were followed all the time and it would not have been possible for me to become pregnant without many being aware of it. So that made a nonsense of that particular scandal.

  He had to invent absurd crimes and one of the most foolish concerned the death of the Cardinal de Chatillon. It was well known that Catherine de' Medici had wanted him out of the way and that she was a skillful poisoner. Why lay his death at Robert's door? There was no reasoning behin
d it. Parson's feeble answer was that the Cardinal had threatened to reveal how Leicester had obstructed my marriage with the Duc d'Anjou so the earl's spy poisoners had been sent to dispatch him.

  I was horrified and fascinated. Not only was this a libel against Robert but many others as well. Myself for one. If that Jesuit was caught, this was going to cost him dear. John Dee, the astrologer, was implicated, so was Dr Julio, Robert's favorite physician, who, it was said, had brought the art of poisoning with him from Italy. He was named as one of those who had assisted Robert in bringing about the deaths of his victims.

  According to Father Parson, Robert was well versed in the black arts, was lustful, greedy, a power-seeking murderer. The devil himself could not have been more evil.

  As I read I was inclined to laugh at the absurdities. On the other hand I could see how dangerous this could be in the hands of my enemies. Robert and I were too close for me not to be linked with his villainies.

  Old scandals would be revived. People would remember how Amy Robsart died. If I had married Robert, that would have been the end of my reign for the people would have turned against me in the same way that they had turned against Mary Stuart when she married Bothwell, Darnley's murderer. Oh, what a fool she had been! I wondered if she thought as often of me as I did of her. It was inevitable, I supposed, for constantly she was trying to escape from the prisons into which I put her.

  Did she ever think how similar our lives had been at that point when I had been so attracted by Robert, and the wife who stood in our way had died? I had seen that as the end of all possibilities for marriage with Robert—only by not marrying him could I completely exonerate myself. For if I refused to marry him when he was free, how could I have connived at the removal of his wife? How different Mary had been. She had married Bothwell almost before Darnley was cold. Foolish, headstrong Mary. And wise Elizabeth.

  Now I needed all my wisdom to decide what was to be done about this libelous pamphlet. Ridicule was always a good weapon—perhaps the best if it could be effectively used.

  All the same I could not have that pamphlet circulating freely through the country.

  I made an Order of Council to forbid the circulation of what had come to be known as Father Parson's Green Coat or Leicester's Commonwealth, and I gave my assurances that to my knowledge the contents of this scurrilous document were false.

  Young Philip Sidney—he was now Sir Philip for I had bestowed a knighthood on him—composed a defense of his uncle very beautifully and movingly written in which he said that he was on his father's side of ancient, well-esteemed and well-matched gentry, but his chief honor was to be a Dudley. Dear Philip Sidney! I was always fond of him, partly because of his devotion to his uncle. He was such a good and clever young man, and surely he could not have been so devoted to one who was unworthy. It did me good to see the affection between him and Robert.

  However, nobody wanted to read Philip Sidney's defense of his uncle. It was not lurid like the Commonwealth and people are much more interested in evil than in righteousness.

  Even my order was not fully carried out. There would always be those who were ready to earn money by smuggling forbidden literature into the country. This was done and I imagined there was hardly a man or woman in the kingdom who did not know of Father Parson's Green Coat.

  It was disconcerting too that it should be published abroad. Immediately there was a French edition—La Vie Abominable, Ruses, Meurtres etc de my Lord de Leicester. And how unfortunate it was that my English Ambassador should happen to be Sir Edward Stafford who had married Douglass Sheffield.

  He was in a dilemma. He wrote to Walsingham and Burghley, calling attention to the translation, asking whether he could allow such a document, which was an insult to his Queen and one of her leading ministers, to go unnoticed; on the other hand to call attention to it was distressing to his wife who was mentioned in it. She had been prostrate with melancholy when the first edition had appeared, and now this one was sending her “out of her head” and he feared she was in danger of death.

  When these letters were brought to me I could sympathize with poor Douglass Sheffield. I myself was slandered in the document and like Douglass could be said to be accused of complicity in murder. I was strong though, and she, poor soul, was a weakling. How she must regret the day she set eyes on Robert Dudley and allowed her feelings for him to get the better of virtue.

  But what were we to do? That was the question.

  Burghley said he thought that Stafford in his letter had provided the answer: The matter, he said, should be left alone, as a thing we make no account of rather than to speak against it, to make think “that a galled horse when he is touched will wince”.

  I nodded.

  “Yes,” I said, “Stafford is right. If we ignore this it seems we treat it with the indifference it deserves. To raise our voices in protest and anger would appear that we have taken this seriously and it might seem that we have something to hide.”

  “Let us treat it as the ramblings of a fanatic.”

  So it was.

  But that was not the end of Father Parson's Green Coat. It was to be subversively printed and reprinted and it appeared throughout the kingdom for years to come. But Robert was strong enough to live down his reputation; and perhaps he was even more feared than ever, and people were more inclined to think seriously before offending him.

  Robert snapped his fingers at the scandal and went on pursuing his brilliant career.

  THE SITUATION IN the Netherlands was coming toward a climax. Burghley had hinted that we should have to make a painful decision soon.

  As had been predicted, the sovereignty of the Netherlands had been offered to me and the Dutch delegates came to England imploring my help. They thought the offer of the crown would decide me; they did not understand that I was committed to peace and that my whole being cried out against war. Had it not been for the eternal menace of Spain I would not for a moment have considered interfering. But I knew my ministers were right when they said we could not allow Spain to have complete control over a country so near to our shores.

  So it was decided that we would assist the Dutch with money and yes… with men; and we must be paid for this to the last farthing when the war was over. Until that happy event we must have solid pledges in the shape of a town in each province.

  We agreed to send four hundred horse, four thousand foot and seven hundred garrison troops. Later we added to that number for it was clear that more would be needed; and I promised a further six hundred cavalry and a thousand foot.

  Because I wanted to please Robert and Burghley I made Philip Sidney governor of Flushing and Burghley's eldest son, Thomas Cecil, that of Brill.

  They were always seeking honors for those whom they were trying to bring to my notice. Even Burghley, who was not a power-seeker, was guilty of this, and I fancied he kept back those brilliant Bacon boys for fear they should outstrip his own son—not Thomas, the elder, but his little hunchbacked Robert who had already been brought to my notice and whom I recognized as a clever little fellow—probably doubly so because his disability had made him want to shine through his brains since he could not through his personal appearance.

  The great decision was, who should command the expedition? I knew Robert wanted to, but I hesitated to give it to him only because I hated to have him leave Court, and the possibility of his being in danger terrified me.

  But the general opinion was that the command should go to him.

  Father Parson's Green Coat was still very much in people's minds and it would be well for him to absent himself for a while.

  Both Burghley and Walsingham remarked that he was a great figure in England and the fact that we sent him would make people understand how important the matter was to us; moreover, Robert, who wanted the glory of the expedition, had the means to use a great deal of his own money in promoting himself; and although he was not a general himself, he would have able commanders with him.

  So it was d
ecided that Robert should go to the Netherlands.

  I SUMMONED HIM to Court and kept him with me before he left. There was so much business to discuss, I said. Even the night before he set out I made sure that he did not return to Leicester House where no doubt Lettice was waiting to say a fond farewell.

  So I was with Robert till the time he set off for Harwich where a fleet of fifty sail was waiting to take him on the first stage of his journey.

  I heard of the wonderful reception he was given on his arrival at Rotterdam, where the banks were lined with men holding cressets high in the air, and the cheers, ran the report, were deafening.

  Poor people, they must have been very frightened; and who could wonder with those fanatical Spaniards noted for their cruelty ready to subdue them. And how Robert must have loved such a welcome! In his heart he had always wanted to be a king.

  I felt quite ill after he had gone. I should not have allowed it. What if he should be killed in battle? Of course, he had looked so splendid, sitting at the head of his cavalcade, and when I had voiced my fears, he had said, with characteristic charm, that he wished he had a thousand lives that he might place them at my service.

  But I worried and that brought on my headaches and I wished fervently that we had never become involved in the Netherlands controversy. I would never have done so but for my fear of the Spaniards who were growing more and more powerful every day. I thanked God for our fine seamen like Sir Francis Drake who robbed and pillaged their ships whenever possible. I wished there were more like him and we could drive the Spaniards off the seas. Why could not they live in peace in their country and leave me to mine? Why did they have to have this fanatical desire to impose their power and their religion on those who did not want it?

  But so it was, and because of this, fine men like Robert Dudley had to go to war.

  My feelings took a sharp turn when the news was brought to me that almost immediately after his arrival Robert, regarded as the savior of the Netherlands, was offered the Governor-Generalship of the United Provinces—the honor of sovereignty which first Henri Trois had refused and then I had. And Robert had dared accept without consulting me! My fury drove away my anxiety. Why had I worried about Robert? He had not gone there to fight but to make himself a king!