The Men Who Would Be King

by Josephine Ross

  As she had gaily promised, during Melville’s visit Lord Robert was at last given an earldom. It was ironic that this honor that Dudley had long desired, as constituting a notable step forward in his courtship of Elizabeth, should at last have been given to him to fit him for an unwanted marriage with another queen, so that Mary “might have the higher esteem of him.” Earl of Leicester and Baron Denbigh were his new titles; the ceremony was performed at Westminster, “with great solemnity,” and Elizabeth helped to put on his ceremonial garb as he knelt before her “with a great gravity.” But there was nothing solemn or grave in the way she suddenly slipped her fingers inside his ruff and teasingly tickled his neck, smiling, in full view of the French ambassador and Melville. It was an erotic little gesture, implying a singular degree of familiarity between her and the man whom she was proposing as the husband of another reigning queen; it was nothing short of offensive to Mary. Yet, though she could not resist that possessive caress, she abruptly abandoned her frivolity a moment later. Turning from the resplendent new Earl of Leicester, she asked Melville what he thought of him. The Scot, unsuspecting, replied with some conventional compliments, and then Elizabeth, as though she could read his thoughts, delivered the startling pronouncement: “Yet you like better of yonder long lad.” She was pointing to the tall, slender figure of young Lord Darnley.

  It was a bad moment for Melville. As he afterwards recounted, “I had no will that she should think I liked him, or had any eye or dealing that way—albeit I had a secret charge to deal with my Lady Lennox, to endeavor to procure liberty for him to go to Scotland.” Eighteen-year-old Darnley was the son of Lady Lennox and thus the great-grandson of Henry VII; though it had been officially established that his mother was born out of wedlock, he had enough royal blood in his veins to entertain great hopes, and it was Lady Lennox’s dearest wish that he should be married to his half cousin Mary, Queen of Scots. Undoubtedly Melville was disconcerted by Elizabeth’s perception, but he returned a clever evasive reply, flavored to suit her taste in men; glancing from Robert Dudley’s virile appearance to the delicate pointed features of young Darnley, he answered “that no woman of spirit would make choice of such a man, who more resembled a woman than a man. For he was handsome, beardless and lady-faced.” There was talk of the pretty youth Darnley becoming Mary’s husband, as Elizabeth well knew; as a Catholic and a descendant both of the Tudor and Stuart lines, he was not, from her point of view, a very safe man to see set up as king-consort in unneighborly Scotland, though he would at least be preferable to “the children of France, Spain and Austria.” No one, however, would be so satisfactory for English interests as her own ardent suitor, the new-made Earl of Leicester. As she told Melville, her chief cause for displeasure with Mary was that she seemed “to disdain the marriage of my Lord of Leicester.”

  During his visit Melville had some remarkably illuminating conversations with the Queen of England. He proved himself skillful in dealing with her, and she seemed to respond to him with unusual condescension and warmth. Fencing carefully with her over the subject of the succession, he remarked: “You are certainly convinced you will never have any children, seeing Your Majesty declares yourself resolved to die a virgin.” With dignity Elizabeth replied, “I am resolved never to marry, if I be not thereto necessitated by the Queen my sister’s harsh behavior towards me.” Disregarding that thrust, Melville commented, with singular perception, “I know the truth of that, Madam, you need not tell it me. Your Majesty thinks, if you were married, you would be but Queen of England, and now you are both King and Queen. I know your spirit cannot endure a commander.” The woman of such rare spirit, who was resolved to keep her mastery and never to marry, and who was prepared to give up even her “loving and trusty” Leicester for the sake of the weal of her kingdom, had nevertheless no wish to be thought unfeminine, especially in comparison with the celebrated beauty Mary Stuart. And so she determinedly subjected Melville to displays of her charms and accomplishments throughout his visit. She changed the style of her dress every day, appearing in the fashions of one country after another, and asking him gaily which became her best. He cleverly told her that the Italian clothes did, which implied a compliment to her abundance of curling reddish-golden hair. There was something childlike, and even faintly pathetic, in the persistent questions that she put to Melville about her looks as compared to those of Mary, as though she was uncertain of her own attractions and personal lovableness. The contrast between her mental and emotional powers was very great.

  “She desired to know of me,” Melville afterwards recalled, “what colour of hair was reputed best; and whether my Queen’s hair or hers was best; and which of them two was fairest.” Perhaps a little embarrassed, Melville attempted a joke, saying: “The fairness of them both was not their worst faults,” and then, when she pressed him: “She was the fairest Queen in England, and mine the fairest Queen in Scotland,” but still Elizabeth was not satisfied. She inquired which of them was the taller, to which the Scot replied without hesitation: “My Queen.” “Then,” said Elizabeth firmly, “she is too high, for I myself am neither too high nor too low.” In similar decided tones she was later to tell the imperial envoy, who had praised Mary Stuart, “that she was superior to the Queen of Scotland.” She continued to ask question after question about Mary, about her interests, her sports. She learned that “when her more serious affairs permitted, she was taken up with reading of histories.” When she heard that Mary played the virginals “reasonably well, for a queen,” Elizabeth promptly arranged a pretty scene whereby she might show off her own considerable talent for music, feigning to be unaware that Melville was in the room while she played. She pretended to slap him for his presumption in listening to her performance, but was plainly gratified when, in answer to her predictable question as to which of them played better, she was assured that she herself did. She showed off her languages too, and made Melville prolong his stay so that he might have the pleasure and privilege of seeing her dance. “Which being over,” he later recounted, “she enquired of me, whether she or my Queen danced best. I answered, The Queen of Scotland danced not so high or disposedly as she did.” It was unfortunate for Elizabeth’s plans that her compulsive personal interest in Mary, Queen of Scots, was not shared by Leicester.

  Leicester showed as plainly as he could that he had no wish to be sent away to marry Mary. The prize he sought, and believed he was close to winning, was Elizabeth, and he was not prepared to give up the pursuit and be satisfied with a lesser quarry, not even for the sake of England. Still hoping for eventual success, he preferred to remain a suitor to the Queen of England than become the husband of the Queen of Scots, and in characteristic Dudley fashion he quietly maneuvered to achieve his ends. He sought out Melville, and invited him to go down the river with him in his barge; gliding down the Thames on that late autumn afternoon Robert tried to inveigle the envoy into telling him what Mary thought of him and the marriage proposition. Melville “answered very coldly,” as he had been instructed, and Leicester began to explain volubly that he was not responsible for the proposal, declaring dramatically that he was not even worthy to wipe the Queen of Scotland’s shoes, and asking Melville “to excuse him at Her Majesty’s hands, and to beg, in his name, that she would not impute that matter to him.” Later Melville wrote, “My Lord of Leicester, beside what he had spoke to me, did write to my Lord of Murray to excuse him at the Queen’s hands.” In his determination not to be debarred from the pursuit of Elizabeth, Leicester went still further. According to Mary herself, he sent word to her that the proposal was merely a “fetch,” a deceit, conceived to hinder her from concluding a marriage alliance with any foreign prince—though if that had really been the case Leicester would have had nothing to fear from willingly participating in the scheme. Elizabeth afterwards told de Silva that it was because Leicester “had not consented” that the proposal had come to nothing. It may have been chiefly through his influence that early in February 1565, Elizabeth suddenly m
ade the fatal decision that young Lord Darnley should after all be granted permission to go north to join his father in Scotland.

  Within weeks of his arrival Mary was utterly infatuated with the tall girlish youth, “the properest and best-proportioned long man that ever she had seen.” Elizabeth’s permission for Darnley to travel to Scotland had been unexpectedly, unaccountably, perhaps unwillingly, given, and was now bitterly regretted. But all her furious endeavors to oblige him to return to England were useless. For Robert Dudley, however, the affair had come to a fortunate conclusion. Resplendent in his new rank of Earl of Leicester, acknowledged as worthy to match with a reigning queen, he was free to pursue his courtship of Elizabeth with renewed hopes.

  If Mary had obeyed Elizabeth’s wishes and married Leicester, the English succession would surely have eventually been settled upon their issue. As it was, the Scottish queen’s impending marriage to another man, a descendant of the Houses of Tudor and Stuart and one who was by no means certain to have English interests at heart, left Elizabeth’s situation as weak as ever. Spain, France, and the pope displayed their goodwill towards Mary, while at home the succession question remained dangerously unresolved. Thus it was that when the imperial envoy Adam von Zwetkovich arrived in London in May 1565, he found to his satisfaction that the Queen of England was graciously disposed to entertain a renewal of “the matrimonial negotiations with His Princely Highness the Archduke Charles.”

  The new emperor Maximilian II had cautioned Zwetkovich that the archduke Charles “would not, as on the last occasion, suffer himself to be led by the nose.” But earnest, gullible Zwetkovich was unable to prevent it. It was Elizabeth, not he, who set the pace, sweetly encouraging the wooing one minute, coldly pointing out obstacles the next, and he did not know her well enough to see through her duplicity and recognize the core of reality beneath the layers of pretense. If Robert Dudley, who had known the queen so long and so intimately, still believed, despite her frequent protestations to the contrary, that she might eventually yield and marry one or other of her suitors, then Zwetkovich, a novice in the art of courting Elizabeth, could not know that while she was delighted to entertain the archduke Charles as a suitor, she had no intention of accepting him or anyone else as a husband—that he was simply being used for her own political ends.

  In the presence of the sovereign of England and Ireland, this thin woman of thirty-two whose face was as white and smooth as an egg, adorned with great pearls like drops of water that quivered above the heavy riches of her dress, the envoy was deeply impressed. He had been given orders to make the most diligent inquiries into Elizabeth’s moral character before proceeding with the negotiations; if there appeared to be any doubts as to the queen’s chastity, the emperor had pronounced, he was not to say one single word about the archduke wishing to marry her, but to pretend that he had no instructions on any such subject. Zwetkovich’s investigations led him to conclude enthusiastically “that she has truly and verily been praised and extolled for her virginal and royal honour” and that “all the aspersions against her are but the spawn of envy and malice and hatred.” As for the Earl of Leicester, he was found to be a man of the highest moral principles, whom the queen esteemed as a faithful servant and regarded as a brother, and the idea that she might desire to marry him was confidently dismissed as “quite out of the question.” Everything looked propitious for the archduke. Elizabeth explained modestly that her own preference was for the virgin life, but at the behest of her people she had decided to set aside her private wishes. Dramatically, she “called God to witness that she was willing to marry only for the sake of her realm. She would prefer to die a maid and end her days in a convent, for she verily never had any desire to marry.” Her dedication to the weal of her kingdom was Elizabeth’s principal theme in this wooing.

  Yet even in so avowedly political a courtship, the deeply personal nature of the intended alliance could not be disregarded. Ponderous touches of romance were introduced; Zwetkovich ventured to suggest that the archduke should write a friendly loving letter to the queen, and chide her for not writing to him more often, as though they were fond acquaintances on the verge of falling in love. Such a letter, he went on, would show Elizabeth “how greatly the Archduke loves her and yearns for her,” despite the fact that he had not so far met her. Elizabeth managed to create a major obstacle by insisting that she must see this prospective husband in person before she could give him a definite answer. It would not be becoming for the archduke to travel to England on such conditions, she was told, since the dignity of himself and his august house would be seriously affronted if he were then to be rejected, but Elizabeth was insistent, saying over and over again that she could not accept a man whom she had not seen. “One great obstacle is that the Queen’s Majesty will needs see before she marry,” Cecil noted worriedly. The emperor seemed shocked by the suggestion. “Among Kings and Queens this is entirely novel and unprecedented,” he wrote to Zwetkovich, “and we cannot approve of it.” When the envoy reported optimistically that “the Queen becomes fonder of His Princely Highness and her impatience to see him grows daily. Her marriage is, I take it, certain and resolved upon,” the emperor commented that the affair seemed to him “to be still very dubious and questionable,” if Elizabeth insisted on this condition which could not be fulfilled. Throughout the negotiation the emperor was inclined to be suspicious of his prospective sister-in-law; he assessed the progress of his brother’s wooing according to “the logic of facts,” in a way that his envoy in London, under the compelling influence of Elizabeth’s glib, impressive charm, could not.

  To all appearances the archduke’s suit seemed to be progressing well during the summer of 1565. Elizabeth was on bad terms with Leicester at this time; perhaps she had still not forgiven him for thwarting her over the Mary, Queen of Scots marriage. “The Queen’s Majesty is fallen into some misliking of my Lord of Leicester, and he therewith much dismayed,” Cecil wrote with satisfaction in August. He went on to say that Elizabeth was making it plain that she regretted having wasted so much of her precious time on Leicester. “She is sorry of her loss of time, and so is every good subject,” he wrote, silently expressing his hearty agreement. He recorded in his diary for the same month, “The Queen’s Majesty seemed to be much offended with the Earl of Leicester, and so she wrote an obscure sentence in a book at Windsor.” Lovers often have private words and allusions that are understandable only to themselves. Whatever the meaning of the “obscure sentence,” whatever the real cause of the rift between Elizabeth and her constant favorite, there was a moment when, after six years of energetic wooing, Leicester “lost hope of his business,” and Cecil was able to express the fervent hope that “we shall see some success” with the archduke’s suit.

  Cecil, perhaps the most selflessly devoted of all Elizabeth’s servants, was convinced of the necessity for her to marry for the sake of the realm and the succession, and he believed that the archduke would be the wisest choice. His opinion of Leicester as a prospective husband for the Queen of England was very low. When, as always happened, Elizabeth’s anger with her beloved Robert passed, and he was reinstated in his former favored position, Cecil gloomily drew up comparisons between the English suitor and the Austrian. If, as Elizabeth so often declared, she was willing to set aside her private inclinations and marry as a queen for the sake of her kingdom, the arguments in favor of a speedy marriage with the archduke were very strong; Cecil’s memoranda effectively disposed of Leicester as a worthy alternative. The queen’s situation was very weak, he pointed out, for no ruler “ever had less alliance than the Queen of England hath, nor any prince ever had more cause to have friendship and power to assist her estate.” Of Leicester he wrote grimly, “Nothing is increased by marriage of him, either in riches, estimation, power. It will be thought that the slanderous speeches of the Queen with the Earl have been true.” He went on to observe that Leicester would raise all his own friends and adherents to high offices, if, in spite of the grim fac
ts that “he is infamed by the death of his wife,” and “he is far in debt,” he were to become king-consort. Scrupulously he drew up his lists comparing the eligibility of the two. Charles was brother of the emperor; Leicester, “Born son of a knight, his grandfather but a squire.” Charles was “an archduke born,” Leicester merely “an earl made.” In age and beauty Leicester was admitted to be “meet,” but in wealth sadly lacking: “All of the Queen, and in debt.” In friendship the archduke could offer “the Emperor, the King of Spain, the Dukes of Saxony, Bavaria, Cleves, Florence, Ferrara and Mantua,” a mighty list beside which Robert’s entry, “none but such as shall have of the Queen,” looked the more sickly. He was the Austrian prince’s equal in nothing. Reviewing the likelihood of each suitor to beget heirs, Cecil noted that the archduke’s family showed a tendency to be “blessed with multitudes of children,” whereas no brother of Robert’s had had any, and his own marriage to Amy Robsart had been childless. Of that marriage Cecil had more to say. He did not believe that Leicester would prove a kind or loving husband once he had achieved his goal, and in the category, “In likelihood to love his wife,” he wrote in Latin, “Carnal marriages begin in pleasure and end in strife.” In reputation, Cecil wrote, Charles was “honoured of all men,” but of Leicester he recorded the cryptic words “Hated of many. His wife’s death.” It was a clear, businesslike assessment, and of course the conclusion was overwhelmingly against Leicester as a fitting husband for Elizabeth. But there was one fact that Cecil, his mind on politics, not passion, had left out—the human element. Elizabeth loved the adventurer Robert Dudley; loved, needed, and relied upon him. That was the consideration that gave weight to his suit, and kept the scales of her courtships quiveringly poised.