by Alison Weir
Leicester had made further improvements to Kenilworth since Elizabeth had last visited, and it was now one of the 'wonder houses' of the age, restored, not in Renaissance style like most Elizabethan houses, but in a medieval style in keeping with its twelfth-century structure. It had, wrote Laneham, 'every room so spacious, so well lighted and so high-roofed within, so glittering of glass a-nights by continual candle- fire and torchlight'. On the lake was a fountain with statues of naked nymphs that Laneham thought would 'inflame any mind after too long looking'. To the west was an extensive deer park and hunting chase. Leicester proudly wrote to Burghley, 'I assure you, I think Her Majesty never came to a place in her life she liked better or commended more, her own lodgings specially.'
It is said that, when the Queen pointed out to Leicester that she could not see the formal garden from her windows, he ordered a similar garden to be laid out below them overnight, engaging an army of workmen for the purpose. When Elizabeth looked out the next morning, there, to her astonishment and pleasure, was the new garden. Both gardens have gone now, as has most of the castle: only a ruin stands to bear mute witness to the former glories of Kenilworth.
On Sunday morning the Queen attended the parish church, and after dinner in John of Gaunt's magnificent great hall, was entertained by 'excellent music of sundry sweet instruments' and dancing. A second firework display took place that evening, continuing until midnight.
It was very hot the next day, and Elizabeth rested in her room, emerging late in the afternoon to go hunting. Four hours later, returning in a torchlit procession, she was surprised to encounter a 'wild man' who turned out to be George Gascoigne, who had been commissioned by Leicester to write the speeches and entertainments. On this occasion, Gascoigne was dressed in a costume of moss green with ivy leaves attached, and was accompanied by a player representing 'Echo'; the two of them engaged in a rhyming dialogue, and then the 'wild man' submitted to the Queen's authority by breaking a branch over his knee. Unfortunately, one half ricocheted and barely missed the head of the Queen's horse, causing it to rear in terror. But Elizabeth expertly calmed it.
'No hurt! No hurt!' she cried, as Gascoigne quaked with relief.
She was out hunting again on Tuesday, 12 July, and two days later attended a bear-baiting in the inner court of the castle, featuring thirteen bears against some small mastiffs. There were fireworks again that night, with some burning below the surface of the lake, and an Italian acrobat who was so agile that it seemed, according to Laneham, that his spine was made of lute-strings.
Bad weather put a stop to outdoor entertainment during the next two days, but on Sunday the 17th it was fine again, and after church the Queen was guest of honour at a country wedding feast or bride-ale in the castle courtyard. The rustic bridegroom, who had broken his leg playing football, arrived limping and wearing a tawny doublet of his father's, in the company of sixteen other men, all of whom had a try at tossing the quintain. This was followed by Morris dancing, after which spice cakes were served while the bride-cup, from which the newlyweds' health would be drunk, was borne by someone who appeared to be the local village idiot. Then came the bride, past her prime at thirty, ugly and foul-smelling, attended by a dozen bridesmaids. She was so puffed up at the prospect of dancing before the Queen that she gave herself airs and carried herself as if she were as pretty as her bridesmaids. After the dancing, the guests sat down to watch a pageant performed in the open air by a company of players from Coventry. The Queen, for whom such occasions as this were a novelty, watched the proceedings from her window, and requested that the pageant be performed again two days hence.
That evening, she graced an 'ambrosial banquet' with her presence, the table being laid with a thousand pieces of glass and silver and three hundred dishes being served by two hundred gentlemen. She only picked at her food, although she enjoyed the masque that was presented afterwards.
On Monday the 18th she knighted five gentlemen, including Burghley's son Thomas, and touched nine scrofulous persons for the King's Evil. It was very hot again, and she was obliged to keep to her chamber until five in the afternoon, when she went hunting. A water pageant was staged upon her return, for which had been built an eighteen-foot-long model of a mermaid and a twenty-four-foot-long dolphin, in which was concealed a consort of musicians and a singer representing the god Arion. The Lady of the Lake made another appearance, in company with the sea-god Triton and a villainous knight, Sir Bruce sans Pitee.
The Coventry pageant was repeated on the Tuesday, and on Wednesday, 20 July was to come the climax of the festivities, a richly- costumed mythological masque which Leicester had commissioned from George Gascoigne at 'incredible cost'. The story told how two goddesses, the virgin huntress, Diana, and the goddess of marriage, Juno, each tried to persuade a nymph, Zabeta - a near-anagram of the Queen's name - to follow their example. It ended with Juno warning Zabeta that she should not heed Diana, but should find more reason to marry like Juno. The underlying message was that Elizabeth should do likewise, and it was intended that in due course the company were to be left in no doubt as to whom she should marry. No one, of course, knew about Douglas Sheffield, who was not present during the royal visit, and it seems that, by this time, Leicester had tired of her and regarded himself as not legally bound in marriage.
Unfortunately for Leicester, it rained on that Wednesday, and, as the masque in which his message was to be delivered was to have been staged in a pavilion three miles away, it had to be abandoned, for the Queen remained indoors. The Earl was deeply disappointed: Elizabeth was due to leave on the following day, and he asked Gascoigne to write some farewell verses with a similar message.
On Thursday the 19th Elizabeth left Kenilworth, her courtiers declaring that they had never known anything to equal their experiences there. As she rode away, Gascoigne, in the guise of Sylvanus, sprang from a holly bush and walked and then ran beside her, declaiming his hastily composed doggerel, in which he described the heavy rain as the tears of the gods, weeping at her departure, and begged her to stay. When Elizabeth pulled up her palfrey, he cried breathlessly that she did not need to slow her pace, as he would run with her for twenty miles if need be to complete his tale. So the Queen rode away; Gascoigne, of course, could not keep up with her, and consequently, she never heard his verses.
Leicester and his household had worked very hard to ensure that the programme ran smoothly, and there was no doubt that the visit had been a great success and would never be forgotten by the courtiers or local people. Nor would Leicester's coffers ever recover from the huge expenditure. However, the purpose of it all, which was to convince the Queen that she should marry him, had been defeated by, of all things, the weather, and he knew that such a chance would never come again. It is no coincidence that, after Kenilworth, he began to seek comfort elsewhere.
From Kenilworth, the Queen, accompanied by Leicester and his talented young nephew, Philip Sidney, moved to the Earl of Essex's house at Chartley; the Earl was away in Ireland, but Elizabeth was made welcome by the Countess, who was her cousin, Lettice Knollys. Lettice had been a guest at Kenilworth, and although several courtiers guessed that she and Leicester were harbouring a secret passion for each other, the Queen remained oblivious to it.
After the progress, Philip Sidney came to court, and was soon afterwards appointed Standard Bearer to the Queen. Although he was the godson of Philip of Spain, he had been brought up in the Protestant faith and educated at Oxford, after which he had travelled in Europe, where he met and impressed many statesmen and scholars with his erudition, sense of chivalry and obvious ability. The Massacre of St Bartholemew had prompted him to call for the forming of a Protestant league of princes to counteract Catholic aggression, and in this, he was supported by his uncle, Leicester. Although Elizabeth was wary of Sidney's militant views, she began in 1575 to send him on routine diplomatic errands.
On T3 August, Elizabeth arrived in Worcester, her visit being intended to boost the declining woollen-cloth indu
stry. Frantic preparations had been made on the orders of the city fathers: the gates were painted grey, with the arms of England mounted on them, and all the houses on the royal route had been lime-washed.
Ignoring the rain, Elizabeth came riding into the city and graciously accepted the mandatory silver-gilt cup. Soaking wet, she expressed delight at the laudatory verses of welcome and only when they were finished did she call for a cloak and hat. She then toured the cathedral, where her uncle, Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales, lay entombed, and where she was entertained by a consort of cornets, sackbuts and voices. Afterwards, she went to her lodging in the bishop's palace. On Sunday, as the crowds roared themselves hoarse, she rode in an open coach to morning service in the cathedral, repeatedly calling, 'I thank you! I thank you all!' When she left the city two days later to dine with her cofferer nearby, she was escorted by local dignitaries to its boundaries. When the time came to say farewell, they made to dismount and kneel in the mud, but Elizabeth raised her hand, saying, 'I pray you, keep your horses and do not alight.' On her return to Worcester that evening, it was pouring again, but she remained on horseback, greeting the people with 'cheerful, princely countenance' and conversing with them.
After leaving Worcester, the Queen stayed for a few days with Sir Henry Lee at Woodstock, where she saw a play depicting the triumph of patriotism over love, before returning home.
By the end of 575, Leicester had tired of Douglas Howard and was in hot pursuit of the Queen's cousin, Lettice Knollys, daughter of his friend and fellow councillor, Sir Francis Knollys, by Katherine Carey, and wife of Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex. Leicester and Lettice had enjoyed a brief flirtation in 1565, and if they thought that this time their relationship was a secret, they were much mistaken, for a Spanish agent reported in December: 'As the thing is publicly talked of in the streets, there is no objection to my writing openly about the great enmity that exists between the Earl of Leicester and the Earl of Essex in consequence, it is said, of the fact that, while Essex was in Ireland, his wife had two children by Leicester. Great discord is expected.'
Lettice was thirty-five and her portrait at Longleat, painted in 1585, bears witness to her sloe-eyed, seductive beauty. She had been married at twenty to Walter Devereux, then Earl of Hereford, and had lived thereafter mainly at Chartley, but although the couple had five children, it seems they were incompatible.
Essex headed a military expedition to Ireland in 1573, where he earned great renown for his courage and ruthlessness. He returned to England in November 1575, and it could not have been long before he heard the rumours about his wife and Leicester. Although many of them - including that reported by the Spaniard, which is the only source for the allegation that Lettice had borne Leicester two children - were probably wildly inaccurate, there can be little doubt that some were based on truth. For a knight to seduce the wife of another knight was a gross breach of the code of chivalry, and it was probably this that influenced Essex's decision to alter his will to the effect that, if he died while they were still young, his children were to be brought up under the guardianship of the Earl of Huntingdon, his most influential relation, whose wife was Leicester's sister. According to Sir Henry Sidney, who could not 'brook' the man, Essex was set to become the violent enemy of Leicester.
In July 1576, the Earl of Essex returned to duty in Ireland. His marriage was foundering and he had quarrelled with Leicester over Lettice. Two months later, when he and several other people fell ill with dysentery in Dublin Castle, he concluded that he had been poisoned with 'some evil' in his drink. Neither he nor anyone else at the time suggested that Leicester was responsible. After Essex died on 22 September, Sir Henry Sidney, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, ordered an immediate post-mortem, but, as he reported in detail to the Council, there was no evidence of foul play, nor did the doctors who had attended Essex believe that he had died of anything other than natural causes.
Essex was succeeded in his title by his nine-year-old son, Robert Devereux. The dying Earl had sent a message to the Queen hoping 'it will please Your Majesty to be as a mother to my children', especially his son, who would now be dependent on her. Elizabeth cancelled the debts the boy had inherited and gave his wardship to Lord Burghley, who had brought Robert up in his own household since the age of six. The young Essex was presented to the Queen that year at Cecil House in London. His mother, Lettice, had retired to her father's house near Oxford, her other children having, according to her husband's last wishes, been sent to live with the Earl and Countess of Huntingdon at Ashby-de-la-Zouche in Leicestershire.
Another boy who was much in Elizabeth's thoughts at this time was her fifteen-year-old godson, John Harington. His parents had served her well: Sir John Harington had been one of her father's courtiers and had later acted as an intermediary between Elizabeth and Admiral Thomas Seymour. In 1554, after Wyatt's rebellion, when Elizabeth was sent to the Tower, he and his wife, Isabella Markham, were both imprisoned on suspicion of being in league with her. Their loyalty was rewarded when Elizabeth came to the throne: Isabella was appointed a lady in waiting, and in 1561 the Queen stood godmother to the Haringtons' eldest son.
Young John was a bright, intelligent and creative boy, with a dry sense of humour that came to appeal to Elizabeth. Her first surviving letter to him dates from 1576, when he was still a schoolboy at Eton College. Obviously she thought it was time he started taking an interest in public affairs, for she enclosed a copy of her closing speech to Parliament, in which she had expressed her preference for the single life. She wrote:
Boy Jack, I have made a clerk write fair my poor words for thine use, as it cannot be such striplings have entrance into Parliament assembly as yet. Ponder them in thy hours of leisure, and play with them till they enter thy understanding; so shall thou hereafter, perchance, find some good fruits hereof when thy godmother is out of remembrance. And I do this because thy father was ready to serve and love us 111 trouble and thrall.
Later on, Harington came to court, and his letters and published writings would become some of the richest sources of information about the Queen's later years.
During the past months, Elizabeth's relations with Archbishop Grindal had rapidly deteriorated. In the autumn of 1576, she summoned him before her and commanded him to ensure that all Puritan forms of worship were suppressed. Grindal, a Puritan himself, could not in his conscience obey her, and in the weeks that followed prepared a written defence of his objections.
In December he gave it to Leicester to submit to the Queen, but Elizabeth was most displeased by it. She barred the Archbishop from court, and all communication between them was conducted through Leicester. When the Earl, who was sympathetic towards the Archbishop's viewpoint, tried to suggest a compromise, neither Elizabeth nor Grindal would give way. Thus a deadlock was reached, which lasted until the following spring.
In May 1577, the Queen asked Archbishop Grindal one final time if he would prohibit Puritan practices within the Church. He refused, and begged to remind Her Majesty that she too was mortal and would have to answer for her actions at God's judgement seat. He declared that he would rather 'offend an earthly majesty than the heavenly majesty of God'. Mortified at his continuing defiance, Elizabeth placed the Archbishop under house arrest at Lambeth Palace, thus effectively preventing him from exercising his authority as Primate of England. She also ordered Burghley to command her bishops, in her name, to suppress all forms of Puritan worship.
In taking such a stand, the Queen was demonstrating that it was she, the Supreme Governor, and not the Archbishop, who was the ultimate authority in the Anglican Church. Even so, her councillors thought she was unfair to Grindal, and spoke up in his defence, urging her to treat him with greater moderation. If the Archbishop persisted in his stubborn attitude, she raged, he must be deprived of his See. In the event, thanks to the intercession of Leicester and others, he remained in office, but the Queen never again permitted him to carry out any of his archiepiscopal duties. For the next five years, therefor
e, the Church of England was effectively without a spiritual leader, and Elizabeth gave orders directly to her bishops. Her actions rebounded against her in the long run, however, for they only served to weaken the Church and give impetus to the Puritan movement.
Although Sir Christopher Hatton's enemies were of the opinion that his chief talents lay in dancing and jousting, Elizabeth recognised that he had real abilities that could be put to good use. He also shared her contempt for Puritanism and, anticipating that he would back her in her stand against Grindal's supporters, she knighted him, made him Vice- Chamberlain of her household, and appointed him to her Council on 11 November 1577.
In February 1576, Philip II had sent an envoy, the Sieur de Champigny, to Elizabeth to ask her, quite candidly, if she intended to give aid to his Protestant rebels in future. After keeping the envoy waiting for two weeks, she evaded giving him an answer, and complained instead that Philip had not written to her, which she found most hurtful. She added that Spain's attempt to establish absolute dominion in the Low Countries was intolerable to her; her beloved father would not have tolerated it, and she, though a woman, 'would know how to look to it'. However - and here she had smiled mischievously - she had a great personal liking for King Philip. Poor de Champigny withdrew in a state of bewildered perplexity.