In those tense weeks Elizabeth followed her usual policy of seeming tame. She was docile, cautious, charming. But her nimble mind must have followed the direction of Philip’s thoughts; with the possibility of Mary’s death in the offing, it was to her advantage as well as his to establish amiable diplomatic relations with each other, and it seemed that there was a taste of piquant, illicit pleasure for both in their task. “At the time of the Queen’s pregnancy,” the Venetian ambassador afterwards recalled, Elizabeth “contrived so to ingratiate herself with all the Spaniards, and especially with the King, that ever since no one has favoured her more than he does.” With discreet emphasis the ambassador observed that there appeared to have been “some particular design on the part of the King towards her.” In later years Elizabeth insisted that the hostile relationship between Philip of Spain and herself had begun with love, and it may have been true. Philip was prudent and discriminating and deeply religious, but he was amorous by nature, and he was weary of his clinging, elderly wife. Elizabeth had the youth, elegance, and wit that her sister so markedly lacked; while the elder woman nursed her pathetic delusions of pregnancy, the younger was discreetly displaying her “spirit full of enchantment” to win the favor of the emperor’s son. By the summer Mary had to acknowledge, with grief and humiliation, that she was not with child, but Elizabeth’s dealings with Philip bore fruit. He could not remain constantly with his wife in England, since he had the business of his ailing father’s empire to attend to in the vast territories of his inheritance, and on August 29, to Mary’s bitter sorrow, he entered his barge at Greenwich and was borne away down the river while she wept uncontrollably at a window. His parting instructions concerning Elizabeth were clear: she was to be treated gently and honorably.
Stiff courtesy and religious conformity tided her over the summer months, and in October she was permitted to retreat to Hatfield, where her life began to follow its old pattern once more. Kat Ashley and Thomas Parry were with her again, and Roger Ascham visited her at intervals. It was not a lively mode of existence for a quick, bright young woman who had just passed her twenty-second birthday, but it offered a refreshing semblance of independence after her long imprisonment and the difficult, unpredictable months at Mary’s court, and she was vehemently determined not to relinquish it for any marriage, however glorious. There had been talk of betrothing her to Philip’s son, the boy Don Carlos, but as the Venetian ambassador reported in the spring of 1556, Elizabeth was steadfast in her resolution that she would not marry, “even were they to give her the King’s son, or any other prince.”
That autumn the strutting, sulky youth Courtenay died suddenly, in Padua, at the age of twenty-nine, and thus the English “utterly lost the hope of ever having a king of the blood royal, unless in a very remote degree.” Both Mary and Elizabeth must have been relieved that now there could be no more rebellions to hoist Courtenay and Elizabeth onto the throne as husband and wife; but within weeks the name of Elizabeth’s other unwanted suitor, Emmanuel Philibert, was causing fresh contention between the Tudor sisters.
Philip had written to Mary and the council with urgent instructions to bring about the match between Emmanuel Philibert and Elizabeth. The French had broken the short-lived peace created by the Treaty of Vaucelles, and Philip was in need of English support, both immediately and for the future. By marrying Mary’s heir to his own cousin and satellite, the Duke of Savoy, he would tie England to the empire with lifelong bonds, and, despite Mary’s reluctance, he insisted that the knots should be fastened as soon as possible. Obedient to her husband’s will, though the marriage was against her own wishes, Mary confronted her half sister with the proposal. The vehemence and urgency with which the match was announced to Elizabeth were such that for once her subtle weapons of dissembling and equivocation were useless. Instead she burst into frantic tears.
By the end of the interview Mary was crying too, with unbearable anger, frustration, and disappointment. She had no desire at all to see Anne Boleyn’s sly, hypocritical bastard make a fine marriage, and be confirmed as heir to the English throne, and she could hardly bear the thought of Elizabeth living with Emmanuel Philibert in Flanders at close quarters with the beloved Philip; but what Philip demanded she would not refuse, and Elizabeth’s desperate obstinacy in the face of his express commands enraged her. Elizabeth sobbed, almost hysterically, that she did not want a husband; Mary, whose chief distress was the absence of hers, dismissed the distraught girl back to Hatfield, under guard.
The French war brought Philip back to his wife’s side, after more than eighteen months, in March 1557. By the middle of June, England had joined the war against France. By July, Philip had gone again.
He had seen his sickly middle-aged wife for the last time; he may have realized that she would not live much longer, and he had to plan for a future in which Elizabeth would be Queen of England by gaining control over her while it was still possible. Since Elizabeth and Parliament were so resolved against the Emmanuel Philibert match, Philip tried to bring it about by the unofficial means of appealing to Mary’s conscience, sending his confessor to her to paint a frightening picture of the political and religious chaos that would ensue if Elizabeth were to make a different choice of husband. But Mary herself now proved difficult to sway, for she was utterly averse to countenancing the match and thereby giving Elizabeth hope of the succession. Her resolution in the matter may have been strengthened by the fact that she was again nurturing secret, deluded hopes of pregnancy.
During the years of Elizabeth’s youth almost no one seemed to take seriously her protestations that she had no wish to marry. Because her refusal to entertain thoughts of any of the suitors who presented themselves was politic, few people realized that it was also sincere. Thus Mary was surprised and pleased by Elizabeth’s rejection of the heir to the Swedish throne, Prince Eric, in the spring of 1558. King Gustavus’s ambassadors made a grave tactical error at the outset, for they did not address their suit through Queen Mary, as diplomatic and social etiquette demanded, but presented themselves straight to Elizabeth—thereby enabling her to suit both propriety and her own wishes by summarily dismissing them. Mary, perhaps surprised that Elizabeth should not have seized this opportunity to enter into a secret league with a rich and Protestant monarch, was gratified; she instructed Sir Thomas Pope, who was in charge of Elizabeth at Hatfield, to inform her half sister “how well the Queen’s Majesty liked of her prudent and honourable answer,” and to inquire further into her future intentions. Sir Thomas returned an illuminating report of Elizabeth’s response. When he respectfully suggested to his young charge that “few or none would believe but that her Grace could be right well contented to marry, so that there were some honourable marriage offered her,” Elizabeth assured him, “Upon my truth and fidelity, and as God be merciful unto me, I am not at this time minded otherwise than I have declared unto you; no, though I were offered the greatest prince in all Europe.” But even so, Sir Thomas remained mildly unconvinced, and he remarked knowingly that perhaps this decision was the result of maidenly modesty rather than “any such certain determination.” To his questions about the Swedish proposal she answered with acid wit: “I so well liked both the message and the messenger as I shall most humbly pray God upon my knees that from henceforth I never hear of one nor the other.” But that wry prayer was in vain. She was to hear a great deal more of Eric of Sweden’s courtship.
During that year of 1558 the long somber night of Mary’s reign was drawing to a close, and daybreak for Elizabeth was at last approaching. Emotionally and politically, the marriage that Mary had insisted on making, in the face of so much opposition, had proved quite as disastrous as had been predicted. No heir had been born to compensate for the loss of the queen’s independent status, but even worse than sterility was the shaming farce of two false pregnancies. Disappointed in her hopes of a child, Mary had been deprived of her adored husband too for much of her married life, alone and yet not independent; neither maiden, wife, n
or widow, in effect; and without her consort by her side to support her through the surging discontent and rebellion that her marriage had encouraged. The English had become embroiled in the empire’s war, and lost Calais, their last possession in France, for their pains, while at home the human bonfires of Protestants, men and women, priests and peasants, sent the stench of the Inquisition drifting across the damp English air.
When these with violence were burned to death,
We wished for our Elizabeth,
proclaimed a fervent contemporary ballad. All comparison with Mary seemed to make Elizabeth shine the brighter. The smudge of possible illegitimacy faded beside the glorious truth that she was “of no mingled blood of Spaniard or stranger, but born mere English here among us, and therefore most natural unto us,” and the Protestant religion that she represented had acquired a new aura of desirable nationalism through the experience of Mary’s brand of Catholicism. As Philip’s ambassador wrote to him with ruthless frankness, “They say it is through Your Majesty that the country is in such want, and Calais lost, and also that through your not coming to see the Queen she died of grief.”
Mary died just before dawn on November 17, 1558, and her half sister stepped from the shadows to become Queen of England, once again the most desirable bride in Europe. Elizabeth was now twenty-five; her youth had given way to womanhood. But her time of dalliance was about to begin.
4
“A Great Resort of Wooers”
From the moment of Elizabeth’s succession to the throne of England, the hunt was up in earnest. On the afternoon of Mary’s death the church bells were pealing for Elizabeth, and by the evening Londoners were flocking into the streets to eat and drink and make merry in their traditional fashion, while blazing bonfires glowered like beacons near the trestle tables, keeping the chill November night at bay. Some echoes of their cheer, glimmers from those fires, may have drifted through the city to Durham Place, where the new Spanish ambassador, the haughty, aristocratic Count de Feria, was in no mood for rejoicing. If England was not to slip from the empire’s grasp, after all Philip’s sacrifices and compromises, infinite diplomatic pains and skill would be required, and there was no time to lose. “It is very early yet to talk about marriage,” Feria wrote distractedly, “but the confusion and instability of these people in all their affairs make it necessary for us to be the more alert.” No one, however, was quite as acutely alert as the royal prey they sought. Elizabeth had inherited a kingdom beset by difficulties, strained by religious controversy and the threat of foreign aggression, and the caution, the sense of wariness, and the ability to dissemble that she had developed to a fine art during the past ten years were still her most effective defense. “The more I think over this business, the more certain I am that everything depends upon the husband that this woman may take,” Feria commented to Philip. For the time being, Elizabeth’s throne depended upon her ability to stave off that choice, and avoid commitment to one so that she might keep all expectant.
The one great commitment that the new queen embraced wholeheartedly was to her own people. When Feria tried to claim that she owed her crown to Philip, she at once contradicted him; she owed it to her people, she said. All through her youth Elizabeth had known that popularity with the fickle, impetuous crowds was a crop worth cultivating. As a frightened fifteen-year-old she had striven to avoid gaining “the ill-will of the people”; on her way to imprisonment in Mary’s reign she had opened her litter and shown herself to them in her hour of disgrace, white faced and proud; two years afterwards, when she left court abruptly after refusing to marry Emmanuel Philibert, the crowds who saw her pass were so fervent in their greetings that she had to send some of her retinue to restrain them, lest she should be accused of inciting them to rebellion. But now that she was queen she was free to play up to her subjects with a shameless enjoyment of the whole performance. As she made her grand procession from the state apartments in the Tower through the streets of London on January 14, 1559, the day before her coronation, she “was received by the people with prayers, welcomings, cries, and tender words, and all signs which argue an earnest love of subjects towards their sovereign; and the Queen, by holding up her hands and glad countenance to such as stood afar off, and most tender language to those that stood nigh to Her Grace, showed herself no less thankful to receive the people’s goodwill than they to offer it.” The enthusiastic crowds who jostled excitedly to gain a glimpse of Elizabeth as she passed were “wonderfully transported with the loving answers and gestures of the Queen.” Richly regal though she was, she had inherited her father’s talent for the common touch—calling out a witty reply to one; graciously accepting some humble gift, such as the branch of rosemary that a poor woman gave her in Fleet Street, from another—and though intuitive, the effect was brilliantly contrived to win her subjects’ delighted devotion. Her reply to the Recorder of London, who presented her with an ornamented purse crammed with gold, rang out into the crisp snowy air with the shining promise, “And persuade yourselves, that for the safety and quietness of you all, I will not spare if need be to spend my blood.” Feria did not exaggerate when he wrote disapprovingly to Philip: “She is very much wedded to the people, and thinks as they do.”
It was his unenviable task to persuade her to think as Philip did. At first, despite his deep pessimism at the way English affairs were tending, he felt that “with great negotiation and money” this giddy, willful young woman might conceivably be cajoled or forced into favoring the empire, and taking whatever husband Philip might think best for her. “If she decides to marry out of the country, she will at once fix her eyes on Your Majesty,” he told Philip confidently. By the curious destiny that so often decreed that Elizabeth’s weaknesses should serve her as well as her strengths, in the vulnerable first weeks of her reign Philip was obliged by circumstances to act as Elizabeth’s protector, to ensure that her hold upon her shifting, expectant nation should not be weakened, for if she were to be dislodged from her throne he would be faced with the disastrous prospect of an absolute French takeover of England. When the news of Mary’s death had reached France, Henry II had promptly made his intentions aggressively plain, by proclaiming his heir’s young wife Mary, Queen of Scots, Queen of England and Ireland. The pretty Scottish dauphine had a strong claim, as senior great-granddaughter of Henry VII; if Elizabeth were dispossessed, France would almost inevitably make good that claim by absorbing England and Ireland into the great territories that already included Scotland; and Philip was prepared to go to considerable lengths to prevent so valuable a prize from passing to his rival—a fact of which Elizabeth was quite well aware.
With Mary’s death, and her own succession, a new characteristic became evident in Elizabeth. Alongside the familiar caution and dissembling that had brought her through the crises of her austere youth, there appeared a new element of zest, a half-suppressed merriment, as though the laughter and teasing that had been abruptly hushed in her early adolescence were now belatedly breaking out. Circumspect and adroit though she was in her marriage dealings, conscious as she was from the first that the question of whom she would marry was crucial to England’s future, there were nevertheless times when she plainly reveled in the role she was so skillfully playing, and more than one ambassador, come with due reverence to treat of royal matrimony, began to feel, disconcertingly, that laughter was lurking somewhere behind the Queen of England’s elegant pale countenance.
Feria became increasingly exasperated with her behavior. When gratified by presents of jewels, or alerted by news of a truce between France and Spain, Elizabeth was charming to the point of coquetry in her behavior to him, but he found it bafflingly difficult to make any real progress with her. “The most discreet people fear she will marry for caprice,” he complained. When he broached the subject of religion, anxious to discover straightaway what her religion was to be, she answered him gravely that she would certainly not forget God, who had been so good to her—“Which,” Feria remarked with some perp
lexity, “appeared to me rather an equivocal reply.” She made a point of informing him, in the sweetest tones, that her sympathies were not with France, and yet he was only too conscious that the current of feeling at court was flowing strongly against himself and Spain. “They are very glad to be free of Your Majesty, as though you had done them harm instead of good,” he told Philip frankly, and went on, “I am so isolated from them that I am much embarrassed and puzzled to get the means of discovering what is going on, for truly they run away from me as if I were the devil.” In Mary’s time he had had a suite of rooms inside the palace of Whitehall, but now he found himself deprived of this valuable access to the center of affairs, and when he pressed for the apartments to be restored to him Elizabeth bashfully sent him the explanation that it would not be proper for him to sleep under the same roof as herself, as she was unmarried. “In return for all my efforts to please I believe they would like to see me thrown into the river,” he wrote bitterly. The English were uncivilized, their ruler was a mere “young lass, who, though sharp, is without prudence,” the kingdom was “entirely in the hands of young folks, heretics and traitors,” and by the end of January 1559, when Elizabeth had been on her insecure throne for less than three months, the Spaniard vented his frustrations in the goaded comment, “In Scotland I believe they are ill-treating the English. I am sure they are not doing it so much as I could wish.”
While Feria was trying by every means in his power to convince Elizabeth and her Privy Council that it was essential for her to marry a foreigner, the English, equally anxious that her husband should be an Englishman, were tossing the names of possible suitors into the air like scraps of paper, “so that nearly every day there is a new cry raised about a husband.” Now that Courtenay was dead it was not easy to judge whom the most eligible suitor to the new queen might be. The Tudor tendency to produce daughters, coupled with the depletion of the ancient nobility, had helped to bring about a noticeable lack of young peers of old lineage and “high blood or degree.” The only remaining duke was twenty-two-year-old Norfolk, who had now succeeded his grandfather, and when Elizabeth came to the throne he was just about to marry for the second time. Since there was no candidate who obviously represented the ideal combination of situation, rank, and age, the rumors fluttered freely about, while Elizabeth herself gave no definite indication of whom, if anyone, she favored. The truth was that nothing could have served her interests better than the uncertainty and the fluctuating reports. After her joyless youth she was finding the attention novel and flattering, and it suited her policy admirably that Spanish apprehensions that she might “marry for caprice” and succumb to one of her own subjects should be heightened. The more suitors who joined the chase, the longer she might justifiably shy away from giving a firm answer to anyone, and to Philip in particular.
The Men Who Would Be King Page 7