It was to be the most remarkable courtship of all, and Alençon was almost to succeed in winning the garish old virgin for whom he sighed out his torments of impatient desire; yet at the outset, in the early spring of 1572, Elizabeth showed a marked lack of interest in the youngest Valois prince, for he was known to be undersized and badly scarred by smallpox. It was ironic that the wooing that was to be distinguished by its erotic nature should have begun with Elizabeth disdaining her suitor for his personal appearance. She considered herself slighted by Anjou’s reluctance to become her husband, and Alençon seemed a poor substitute for the elegant elder brother. “To be plain with Your Lordship,” Walsingham wrote worriedly to Burghley, “the only thing I fear in this match is the delicacy of Her Majesty’s eye and the hard favour of the gentleman, besides his disfiguring with the smallpox, which, if she should see with her eye, I misdoubt much it would withdraw her liking to proceed.” Catherine kept giving assurances that Alençon would grow taller, and that his beard was beginning to show, and in conversation with the envoy Sir Thomas Smith she indulged in some optimistic speculation about the number of children her son and the Queen of England would have; when Smith expressed the humble hope that Elizabeth might bear an heir, Catherine answered confidently, “No, two boys, lest the one should die, and three or four daughters to make alliances with us again.” But her maternal zeal could not disguise the fact that the young prince now being offered as a suitor to the queen was a puny fellow with a big nose and pitted skin, who in no way resembled the hardy, handsome male type that was Elizabeth’s ideal.
The difficulties on which Elizabeth officially based her objections were Alençon’s age and religion. He had strong Huguenot connections, she was assured, and the English envoy wrote that he was “not so obstinate,” so “papistical,” or “restive like a mule as his brother,” adding innocently that for some reason people thought Alençon more likely to beget children than his brother, the perfumed dandy Anjou. Sir Thomas Smith urged the marriage, consoling Queen Catherine for her son’s low stature by reminding her that Pepin, father of mighty Charlemagne, had scarcely reached up to his wife’s waist, and imploring Burghley to ensure that Elizabeth did not dally and waste time in this courtship “as is commonly her wont.” But Elizabeth had no intention of hurrying into marriage with an unattractive French prince twenty years younger than herself. The signing of the defensive Treaty of Blois, in the spring of 1572, gave her the firm alliance with France that she needed, and while that held she could afford to vacillate over the marriage question, sending contradictory letters to Walsingham, one day declaring herself unable to marry so young a man, and the next announcing that she was very well disposed towards the match. To the French envoys who arrived in England in June for the ratification of the Treaty of Blois, she gave “neither yea or nay” on the subject of Alençon’s suit, and in July she informed Walsingham that although she had withheld her consent to the envoys’ proposal on the grounds of the disparity of age, a greater cause for dislike was the disfigurement of the prince’s face by smallpox, which she had heard was very extensive. She was angling for the return of Calais to be included in the bargain, as compensation for the prospective bridegroom’s extreme youth and reputed lack of personal attractions. She wrote to tell Walsingham that considering “the youngness of his years” she could not bring herself “to like of this offer, specially finding no other great commodity offered to us with him, whereby the great absurdity that in the general opinion of the world might grow, might be in some manner recompensed.” The inducement of Calais was not proffered, but soon Elizabeth began to find that there might be other compensations in a French courtship.
Alençon’s friend La Mole arrived in England at the end of July, and set himself to charm away the queen’s disdain, with considerable success. He was an attractive young man with engaging manners, and Elizabeth was “full of graciousness and caresses” for him. She talked excitedly of receiving a visit from Alençon himself, eager to see the master of such a servant; she publicly drank La Mole’s health at a banquet, and as usual she showed off shamelessly, playing the virginals to him with much display of her beautiful white hands. She was delighted with the handsome young envoy’s wooing; the flattering attentions of a man who represented a prince of the illustrious and powerful House of Valois held a special pleasure for her that all the customary compliments of her own courtiers could not provide. She found this foretaste of French gallantry very sweet, and it did nothing to diminish her appetite for such delights.
Dalliance was in the air, and Alençon’s suit seemed to be prospering, until the events of August 24, St. Bartholomew’s Eve, flung a blood-soaked pall over all dealings between England and France. On that day thousands of Huguenots were slaughtered in the streets of Paris, men, women, and children alike, in an indiscriminate massacre that began with the consent of Catherine and Charles IX and accelerated, beneath the blades and blows of the mob, into a frenzy of human butchery, until by nightfall the gutters ran red and the Seine was choked with bobbing naked corpses. In the palace of the Louvre the royal family waited for the roaring hubbub to die down, while in Walsingham’s lodgings in the Faubourg St. Germain the terrified English Protestants who had taken refuge with the ambassador huddled together in prayer. It was several days before Walsingham could send word to Elizabeth, and then he dared only write guardedly. But the boatloads of Huguenot refugees fleeing to the English shores carried all the vivid details of the horrors that had spread across France, and as the news of the “horrible universal massacre” became known, Englishmen cried out for vengeance. The old familiar prejudices against France blazed out again, refueled with revulsion and fear. The relatively new distrust of papists had received a baptism of blood. After St. Bartholomew’s there were few of Elizabeth’s loyal subjects who would have welcomed the coming of a Catholic consort for their queen, and least of all would they accept one who was the brother of the bloodstained King of France.
It was some days before Elizabeth would receive the French ambassador. When he was finally shown into her presence, on September 8, he found that she and her court were in mourning, and all were silent as he approached. With regal solemnity Elizabeth accepted the official explanation of the atrocities that he brought from Charles IX; and the diplomatic bonds between England and France held, visibly frayed though they were. Within a matter of weeks, Catherine de’ Medici—who was said to be looking quite ten years younger since the massacre—was again talking optimistically of the Alençon marriage, and towards the end of September the young suitor wrote a humbly affectionate letter to Elizabeth, concluding with a postscript in his own bad handwriting. Though Elizabeth expressed the gravest of doubts about the match, pointing out in tones of sad reproof that a brother of a monarch who was so clearly determined to “root out all the possessors” of the Protestant religion would scarcely be a fitting husband for her, she nevertheless could not afford to break off her dealings with France. The massacre that had so shocked and affronted Elizabeth and the Protestant English had placed Mary, Queen of Scots’s relations, the ultra-Catholic Guises, in the ascendant once more; it had won the hearty approval of the pope; and Philip of Spain was said to have laughed appreciatively when he first heard of it. The marriage negotiations with France were as necessary as ever, and through the middle years of the 1570s Elizabeth was to dance high and disposedly with the Duke of Alençon, with all the skill of an experienced performer, until at the end of that decade the tune changed and the steps quickened and she almost fell headlong into her partner’s arms.
The years of Elizabeth’s halting political courtship with Alençon, before the affair turned into the hectic personal relationship, saw great changes in the lives of the three brothers of France. As Catherine had so ardently hoped, a foreign throne was obtained for Anjou; in the spring of 1573 he was elected King of Poland. But in the following year Elizabeth’s other former suitor Charles IX died of consumption at the age of twenty-four, and Anjou returned from his Polish k
ingdom to become King Henry III of France. The ugly undersized Alençon was now next in line to the throne, and as well as his brother’s former title of Duke of Anjou he inherited his brother’s former role, that of dissident and royal troublemaker. Before the death of Charles IX, while Anjou was away in Poland, Catherine had thought it wise to keep her youngest son under virtual house arrest in the Louvre; as the hope of the Huguenots and potential claimant to the throne of France, he remained closely watched over by Catherine and Henry III, until at last, in September 1575, he succeeded in escaping from the confines of the court and fled to take command of the Huguenot rebel forces. It was ambition rather than religious zeal, however, that burned in Alençon’s breast and impelled him to endeavor great deeds, and by the following spring he had come to remunerative terms with Henry III and an appearance of amity had been established between the royal brothers, though jealousies and rivalries continued to erupt between them and their followers. Worldly gain was a greater incentive to Alençon than any hope of spiritual rewards, and while such discontented ambition smouldered within him it was clearly desirable that he, in turn, should be found occupation abroad.
Hopes of finding him occupation as king-consort of England faded away in 1576. Elizabeth was forty-three now, and though she had no lack of attractive Englishmen eager to praise her beauty and virtue in adoring speeches and languishing letters, her chances of marriage seemed to be dwindling rapidly. At the close of the Parliament that met in that year, the Speaker referred to the realm’s great need of an heir of Elizabeth’s line, and humbly “besought Her Majesty as shortly as might be to incline herself to marriage,” but Elizabeth’s response showed her to be as little inclined to marriage as ever. “If I were a milkmaid with a pail on my arm,” she told the assembly, “whereby my private person might be little set by, I would not forsake that poor and single state to match with the greatest monarch.” She went on to assure them lovingly that she was prepared to sacrifice her private inclinations for the sake of her subjects’ well-being, but Parliament had been receiving such assurances from her for nearly seventeen years, and many of those who heard her words on this occasion must privately have concluded that their queen would never marry.
But the days of her political wooings were not yet ended. When, three years later, the young Duke of Alençon again took up the pursuit of the elderly queen, England was to tremble with the passions aroused by the courtship of the youngest of the three brothers of France. In her forty-seventh year, on the brink of menopause, Elizabeth was to come within kissing distance of a marriage.
8
A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go
The pock holes are no great disfigurement,” Elizabeth’s ambassador had written from Paris, early in 1573, “because they are rather thick than deep or great. They upon the blunt end of his nose are great and deep, how much to be disliked may be as it pleaseth God to move the heart of the beholder.” There had been little in such descriptions to arouse Elizabeth’s interest in Alençon, and it was not out of love for the pockmarked prince that she began to smile anew on his suit towards the end of 1578. The courtship was to become an emotional affair, but it began as a matter of expediency. Alençon had found himself occupation out of France, aiding the rebel leaders in the turbulent Netherlands, in return for a title and lands there; though it was a lone venture of Alençon’s, rather than an official French undertaking, Elizabeth found it disturbing. She had no wish to see a prince of France, the heir presumptive to the French crown, gain control in the Netherlands to the exclusion of English interests there, and it accordingly seemed wise for the negotiations for her marriage with the young Valois to be revived once more. If Alençon was to fight in the Low Countries, it should be as her knight.
For Alençon himself the prospect of English aid and support was alluring, and he set about his renewed courtship of the queen with an enthusiasm such as none of her foreign suitors had ever shown before. She was his belle Majesté, he was her slave; he wrote that he was more devoted to her than anyone else on earth could be, and to speak—and act—on his behalf, he sent over his best-loved servant, Jean de Simier, at the end of December 1578. Simier was the ideal man for the task of making love to the queen as proxy for Alençon. He approached Elizabeth with a combination of servile passion and erotic dexterity, flattering and flirting as eagerly as if she had in reality been the “perfect beauty” that he called her, and the queen, predictably, was delighted. This was the lovemaking for which she had always longed, humble adoration spiced with sexual insinuations, proffered on behalf of one of the most illustrious young princes in the world. Simier naughtily stole her nightcap from her bedchamber to send to his master; evidently the prince set great store by such intimate trophies, for he already had one of her handkerchiefs, and a similar theft took place three years later, on the occasion of Sir Francis Drake’s knighthood, when Elizabeth’s ornate purple garter slipped down and was promptly claimed by the French ambassador. Far from taking exception to Simier’s amorous liberties, Elizabeth was full of praises for his behavior, describing him as “sage and discreet beyond his years in his conduct of the case.” Not everyone was so impressed with his sagacity and discretion, however. There were whispers of love philters and charms having played a part in his success, and ripples of scandal began to spread. Some of the salacious talk eventually reached the ears of the captive Queen of Scots, through her guardian’s wife, the hard-bitten Countess of Shrewsbury, who enjoyed passing on tidbits of malicious gossip about the vanity and immorality of Queen Elizabeth. Leicester had been the subject of such rumors for long enough to know truth from falsehood where Elizabeth was concerned, but he had no cause to smile on Simier’s artful wooing, which, if successful, would surely oust Leicester at last from his position as Elizabeth’s most favored and intimate companion. It was not long before the envoy had been given a nickname; in a pun on the associations of “Simier” he had become her “Monkey,” fondly referred to as nostre singe in her letters to his master, Alençon. The political courtship had acquired the atmosphere of a seduction, and according to the French ambassador the Queen of England had never looked more radiant.
Through the spring of 1579 the subject of the Alençon marriage was being debated, with Walsingham and Leicester opposing the match while Cecil and the Earl of Sussex supported it. As always, Burghley approached the question in a methodical and judicious manner, weighing “objections” against “benefits.” “Her Majesty’s own mislike to marriage” was noted down, as well as “the difficulty in choice of such a person as in all respects might content Her Majesty’s mind and satisfy her eye.” More serious still was the danger of childbirth at Elizabeth’s advanced age, but as the memorandum was for the queen to read, Burghley offered lavish reassurances on this point. Referring to the Duchess of Savoy, “a woman of sallow and melancholy complexion, and in all respects far inferior to her Majesty,” who had been older than Elizabeth, yet had borne a fine baby son, he concluded encouragingly that it was likely that Elizabeth, “a person of most pure complexion, of the largest and goodliest stature of well-shaped women, with all limbs set and proportioned in the best sort, and one whom in the sight of all men nature cannot amend her shape in any part to make her more likely to conceive and bear children,” would have no great difficulty in producing an heir to the Tudor throne. A graver problem lay in “the mislike of the people to be governed by a foreign prince and especially by the blood of France.” But Burghley argued that “no marriage offered by any stranger hath been liked,” and concluded that since Elizabeth had made it plain that she would never marry one of her own subjects, those who opposed her marrying a foreigner must intend that she should never marry at all. In Leicester’s case that was probably true. The Spanish ambassador reported that the King of France had “assured Leicester on his word of honour that his authority and position should not be injured in any way by the marriage, as he would be the guide and friend of his brother,” but the man who had been Elizabeth’s supreme favorite for near
ly twenty years could not fail to be disturbed by the threat to his position that her marriage must bring. And he had a special reason now to fear for his place in Elizabeth’s favor. He was hiding a guilty secret, one which, if disclosed to the queen, might well destroy forever the royal relationship that he had so long enjoyed. In this delicate situation the arrival of a consort for Elizabeth was the last thing Leicester wanted.
But despite his opposition, and that of Walsingham and many others on the Privy Council, the French prince’s suit continued to prosper. “Everybody here is full of the marriage and the coming of Alençon,” wrote the Spanish ambassador in April. “Many people who were wont to smile at it now see that appearances are all in favour of it taking place and believe it.” Appearances had ever been misleading where Elizabeth’s courtships were concerned, but there was no doubt that the queen’s interest in Alençon had been aroused, and for once diplomacy was deliciously mingled with romance. No foreign suitor had ever paid court to her with such passion before. In March the young Valois Prince had informed her that his only misfortune lay in the fact that he was at present unable to sacrifice his life to do her some slight service, but if he should ever be in a position to do so he would regard himself as the luckiest man on earth—a chivalrous vow that no stolid Habsburg suitor would have been prepared to make. Alençon was particularly anxious that Elizabeth should know that his love was disinterested; his feelings for her had “nothing to do with avarice or ambition,” but were inspired by her beauty, virtue, and goodness. Elizabeth might say deprecatingly to the Spanish ambassador that “it was a fine idea for an old woman like her to talk about marriage,” but she was intoxicated by her young suitor’s skillful lovemaking and she was undoubtedly allowing herself to indulge in fancies of taking a husband at last, even if at heart she knew she never would. It was obviously the last chance that she would have.
The Men Who Would Be King Page 18