by Jane Dunn
Simier seemed optimistic that his master’s suit would be successful, ‘but will wait to say more till the curtain is drawn, the candle out, and Monsieur in bed’. Whether he was sincere or merely diplomatic, he seemed almost as delighted with Elizabeth as she was with him. To Monsieur’s commissioner in the Low Countries he wrote: ‘I swear to you that [Elizabeth] is the most virtuous and honourable princess in the world; her wit is admirable, and there are so many other parts to remark in her that I should need much ink and paper to catalogue them. In conclusion I hold our master very fortunate if God will further this business.’11 Hopes were running high. The usually sedate French ambassador wrote to Catherine de Medici, Elizabeth’s prospective mother-in-law: ‘This discourse rejuvenates the Queen; she has become more beautiful and bonny than she was fifteen years ago’, adding optimistically, ‘not a woman or a physician who knows her does not hold that there is no lady in the realm more fit for bearing children than she is.’
It was juicy gossip like this that Mary Queen of Scots and the Countess of Shrewsbury shared over the embroidery. The women suggested a more commonplace reason for Elizabeth’s rejuvenation – sex. According to the letter Mary wrote, detailing the most scandalous aspects of these conversations, she and the countess had discussed Elizabeth’s lascivious nature and how she had enjoyed sexual relations both with Simier and his master. It was not only the average Englishman however, who was alarmed at Elizabeth’s evident relish for this suit. The Spanish were busy working on undermining, through rumour and bribery, any support there may have been at Elizabeth’s court.
Mary’s interest in Elizabeth’s potential marriage into the French royal family was not just for its entertainment value. She believed that such a match would substantially change her situation, hopefully for the better, and might even effect her release. She wrote to her long-time ally and ambassador, James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, asking him to make overtures on her behalf to her youngest brother-in-law. Alençon had been only six years old when she had last seen him as she embarked for Scotland from France. The rackety life he had led subsequently, much of it at odds with his mother Catherine de Medici and his brother, Henri III, meant Mary was uncertain of his religious or political allegiances, and concerned that he should be told of her own rights and complaints: ‘take care that no wrong be done to me, during his government, in the succession of this kingdom, demonstrating to him the right which I have to it’. She then added the unrealistic gloss, ‘in the maintenance of which [right] I hope that the greatest and best part of England will hazard their lives’.12
She was feeling hopeful again. To an optimist with an opportunistic nature, change was energizing and if Elizabeth was to marry at last that would prove the greatest catalyst for change. Mary felt things were going her way and she was impatient to help them along: ‘in the state in which the affairs of this country are at present, and, as I again understand, those of Scotland are, it will be very easy to form great intrigues and factions’, she wrote to the archbishop at this time, ‘and, in my opinion, I never have had so much opportunity and convenience for looking to the restoration of my affairs as now.’13 She followed the unpredictable romance of the English queen and the French prince, ‘my very dear frog’ as Elizabeth fondly called him, with intense interest.
The English courtiers were just as interested but distinctly hostile: always suspicious of foreign men and their Continental ways, they saw in Simier ‘a most choyce Courtier, exquisitely skilled in love toyes, pleasant conceipts, and court-dalliances’.14 He had so bewitched their usually rational queen, so their rumours ran, that only by the use of ‘amorous potions and unlawfull arts’ had he ‘crept into the Queenes mind and intised her to the love of [Monsieur]’.15
Elizabeth’s insecurity, her overweening vanity, her need for love, all were made more keen by the melancholy realization that she was growing old. Her spies in France had relayed the cruel gossip which was circulating there and which she repeated indignantly to the French ambassador: ‘that Monsieur would do well to marry the old creature, who had for the last year an ulcer in her leg, which was not yet healed,* and could never be cured; and, under that pretext, they could send me a potion from France of such a nature that he would find himself a widower in the course of five or six months, and after that he could please himself by marrying the Queen of Scotland and remain the undisputed sovereign of united realms’.16
It was particularly galling that this revealed Mary as her rival even here, popularly considered the more desirable match because she was a younger woman. Elizabeth’s letters during this time emphasized her awareness of the passing of the years. To Monsieur she wrote ‘grant pardon to the poor old woman who honours you as much (I dare say) as any young wench whom you ever will find’.17 And this from an autocratic and impervious queen? Elizabeth proved to be far from fireproof in the presence of Simier’s skilful coquetry. His delicious flattery made her feel that she could defy time, that she still possessed youth and beauty, and that love and marriage might still be hers. His bold innuendo, the hints of Monsieur’s persuasiveness between the sheets, reminded her of the longed-for consequences of desire.
The last time Elizabeth had allowed herself to imagine she could enjoy the pleasures of companionship, sexual fulfilment and marriage was in the fever of her love for Leicester. All the subsequent marriage negotiations had been business as usual for the queen, of barely passing interest to the woman. Now, during this late courtship, Elizabeth for a while forgot her hard-learned lessons of self-protection and control. For a while she believed she could be as other women, pursue her love, share sexual pleasure, even give birth to the heir which would secure her beloved father’s dynasty. She railed against her council members who increasingly opposed the match. Her cousin, Sir Francis Knollys, was emotionally reprimanded for blocking her last chance to fulfil her destiny as a woman: ‘It was a fine way’, she said, ‘to show his attachment to her, who might desire, like others, to have children.’18
The French were insisting on conditions that her council could not accept, that Alençon should be crowned immediately after marriage and have a large pension for life. They threatened to walk away from the marriage if these were not satisfied. Elizabeth’s feelings were already deeply engaged. She had declared to her women of the bedchamber that she had determined to marry. She became ‘so melancholy since’ her council’s verdict, and felt diminished by the thought that Alençon was only interested in her for what advantages could be wrung from her and the country. To the French she wrote the timeless feminine plaint that she wanted to be valued for herself alone: ‘The mark that is shot at is our fortune and not our person,’ she complained.
This was a surprisingly romantic view of marriage, particularly a dynastic marriage, but it was upheld by her people’s stated concern that her suitor was so much younger he might not love her for herself, instead using the marriage to advance his own interests. Elizabeth continued, with some defensiveness, that she could better understand the mercenary behaviour of the French if they were negotiating marriage with a princess who lacked beauty or intelligence, ‘But considering how otherwise, our fortune laid aside, it hath pleased God to bestow his gifts upon us in good measure, which we do ascribe to the giver, and not glory in as proceeding from ourselves (being no fit trumpet to set out our own praises) … we may in true course of modesty think ourself worthy of as great a prince as Monsieur.’19
By the time Monsieur finally arrived, early one August morning and incognito, everyone’s blood was up. Contrary to the usual deflation attendant on reality, Monsieur in person was even more delightful to the queen than she had hoped. Elizabeth’s fears about his ugliness and the scarring of his deeply poxed skin were erased by his exquisite gallantry, humour and the lively grace of his manner. To her cynical and disapproving courtiers, the queen, simpering, fawning and showing off outrageously, was very close to making a complete fool of herself over this ridiculous Frenchman. In fact, Elizabeth’s sensitivity about the ag
e difference was given cruel credence by a report from Catherine de Medici, admittedly a not impartial source, relayed in cipher by the Venetian ambassador in France to the signory just after this visit: ‘that Monsieur was somewhat embarrassed, when as a young man devoted to pleasure, he called to mind the advanced age and repulsive physical nature of the Queen [le brutta qualità del corpo della Regina], she being, in addition to her other ailments, half consumptive; … the lust to reign will contend with the lust of the flesh, and we shall see which of these two passions possesses the greater force’.20
In the grip of unloosed feeling, Elizabeth’s tautly strung self-control had unravelled in the skilful hands of the courtier-lover Simier. For a while she had forgotten her deep-rooted reservations, even her age, in the longing to be in love again. She wrote to Monsieur after his departure, exceeding the usual diplomatic utterance with rare abandon: ‘I confess there is no prince in the world to whom I would more willingly yield to be his, than to yourself, nor to whom I think myself more obliged, nor with whom I would pass the years of my life, both for your rare virtues and sweet nature.’21
It would not be long, however, before reality asserted itself and duty called. Elizabeth’s whole philosophy of monarchy was expressed by her in a letter to Simier: ‘how near it touches me that our people do not perceive in their Prince a negligence or a luke-warmedness for their well-being and safety; we were not born only for ourselves’.22 In fact the dour antagonism of her people for this match had worried her from the start. For a while her passions were so engaged that she managed to overlook this dark cloud threatening her hopes, but she was less able to ignore the disapproval and forebodings of her councillors. Her favourites were particularly put out. During the heat of the proxy courtship there were two attempts on Simier’s life, with suggestions that at least one of them had been instigated by a murderously jealous Leicester. Elizabeth was outraged and mortified. This turned to white rage when Simier, in retaliation, revealed to Elizabeth something kept secret only from her, that Leicester had remarried the previous year, the widowed Countess of Essex, Francis Knollys’s beautiful daughter, Lettice, a woman who had been her friend.
The resulting furore, the bitter accusations, the hang-dog Leicester, his rustication, Elizabeth’s tears, all proved immense entertainment to Mary and Bess of Hardwick, plying their needles in Sheffield Castle. It proved another poignant reminder, however, to Elizabeth that tempus fugit, and even the companion of her youth, the love of her life, could betray her in love. A poem she wrote in the 1580s expressed eloquently the passing of youth and her melancholy acceptance of responsibility for what she had made of her life:
When I was fair and young, and favour graced me,
Of many I was sought their mistress for to be.
But I did scorn them all, and answered them therefore,
‘Go, go, go seek some otherwhere,
Importune me no more.’
How many weeping eyes I made to pine with woe;
How many sighing hearts I have no skill to show.
Yet I the prouder grew, and answered them therefore,
‘Go, go, go seek some otherwhere,
Importune me no more.’
Then spake fair Venus’ son, that proud victorious boy,
And said: ‘Fine dame, since that you be so coy,
I will so pluck your plumes that you shall say no more
“Go, go, go seek some otherwhere,
Importune me no more”.’
When he had spake those words, such charge grew in my breast
That neither night nor day since that, I could take any rest.
Then lo, I did repent that I had said before,
‘Go, go, go seek some otherwhere,
Importune me no more’.23
Elizabeth’s frustrated love for Leicester may have been the inspiration for this poem. It may have been rather the regretful realization that she could not pursue late passion and marry Monsieur. Then again the poem may have been more generally symbolic of change and loss, and the painful gaining of wisdom. Leicester was her enduring love, and although she was quick to anger and easily hurt, Elizabeth was always open to reason in the end. He had been a widower for eighteen years and the queen was realistic. By then, both Leicester and she had accepted that their marriage could never be, not that this prevented Elizabeth from wanting him to be unconditionally hers, more devoted and loyal than any husband could ever be. Without much time in the wilderness, he was back in the centre of Elizabeth’s emotional landscape, particularly as the passion for her ‘dear frog’ faded to affectionate, if increasingly exasperated, friendship.
The unfortunate young man who apparently had discharged a firearm towards Simier, as he travelled with the queen by barge up the river at Greenwich, protested his innocence of any evil intent and was released. Elizabeth had exercised a characteristic parental mercy, according to Camden, for, ‘she was many times wont to say, That she could believe nothing of her people, which Parents would not believe of their children’.24 She had certainly proved that she had the strengths and insecurities of a lone parent in her unwillingness to do anything that her children might veto.
Loyal as she was to her people, however, Elizabeth was capable of acts of savage retribution when threatened, for instance, by the power of print to disseminate dissension and revolt. The writer and distributor of a tract published in September 1579 entitled, ‘The Discovery of a Gaping Gulph whereinto England is like to be swallowed by another French marriage …’ were sentenced immediately to have their right hands hacked off. The offending work expressed in intemperate language what most of her populace believed to be the case – that the Valois princes were sly papists and worthless reprobates, that Elizabeth was too old for Alençon and he could not love her, that she anyway was past childbearing. In short, he was a rat who should not have been allowed even to look on their Queen.
Patriotic it may have been, but Elizabeth was still trying valiantly to reconcile her personal desires with her duties as monarch, and could not allow this powerful popular view the added force of widespread publication. By her brutal and precipitate action against the perpetrators, she acknowledged the growing power of print which brought rapid and effective communication direct to the people, supplementing the official message of state or church. Elizabeth’s subjects attending the public mutilation of these good burghers greeted the sentence with sullen silence and shock.
The queen knew that her fantasy of love could not long survive. As she withdrew further from the courtship, she wrote to her French ambassador: ‘My mortal [foe can] no ways wish me a greater loss than England’s hate; neither should death be less welcome unto me than such mishap betide me … Shall it ever be found true that Queen Elizabeth hath solemnized the perpetual harm of England under the glorious title of marriage with Francis, heir of France? No, no, it shall never be.’25
Mary’s growing realization that Elizabeth’s French marriage, like all her previous proposals, would wither unripened on the bough, meant that she once more looked to Spain for her deliverance. Her thoughts were increasingly focused on her son, James VI, who in the summer of 1580 was fourteen and already exhibiting an independent intelligence and capacity to rule. Morton was still regent, although not for long, and Mary showed a continuing maternal solicitude for James as well as a political interest in what he might be able to do to effect her freedom, once he was free to rule himself. When she heard he was ill with some kind of digestive complaint her insistent letter to the Archbishop of Glasgow was eloquent of her ‘excessive sorrow and uneasiness’. Having suffered from a similar complaint when she was young she recalled that wearing ivory close to her stomach had helped and urged that, in a ritual to safeguard his health, his weight in virgin wax be sent to the church of ‘nostre Dame de Cléry’* and a novena to be said there. She asked also that a Mass be sung daily for a year at the same church, and thirteen trezains (a base metal coin) be distributed to the first thirteen poor people who arrived on each succe
ssive day.26
While Elizabeth made much of her relationship as mother to her people, Mary was a real mother with a real son. She had been separated from this boy from the time he was barely one, when her disastrous marriage to Bothwell ended with her subsequent flight from Scotland. She had attempted through letters and gifts to maintain some sort of motherly contact, to keep his memories and affection for her alive and to influence his religious ideas. She feared but did not know fully that he had been brought up with the belief that his mother was closer to a jezebel than a madonna, responsible for the murder of his father and obstinate in her adherence to popery, which to the extreme Calvinists who surrounded him was close to witchcraft in its reliance on symbols, ritual and mystery.
He cannot have been so thoroughly shielded, however, from the influence of his mother’s sympathizers. Certainly James seemed particularly proud of his glamorous Guise inheritance, writing to the Duc de Guise, when he was seventeen, to declare he was greatly encouraged ‘to imitate the virtues of our ancestors of the house of Lorraine, who have so borne themselves that their name shall be honoured to all eternity’. It is likely some of his adulatory information came as a result of the flatteries from such Francophile sophisticates as the first favourite of many in his reign, his cousin Esmé Stuart.* He and another attractive youth, the Master of Gray, had just made the young king’s acquaintance. James ended his paean of praise by noting that his worthiest attributes came from this ancestry, ‘from which I descend through my mother’.27