by John Guy
Leicester’s death would not automatically guarantee the rise to power of his stepson Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. Proud, with a supreme confidence in his own abilities and a sense of the honour due to him as his birthright, the young Earl had the temperament of a racehorse and was said to be ‘full of humours’, acting by fits and starts. A mass of contradictions, he projected himself to his followers as a man of action, yet he could be curiously effete. Narcissistic and notoriously prone to melodrama if crossed, he would vanish for days to brood or sulk in his study or bedchamber, where he nursed psychosomatic illnesses most likely brought on by stress.
As depicted in 1590 by William Segar in a fine portrait now in the National Gallery of Ireland, Essex had the beginnings of a pointed moustache, a style then in vogue with French aristocrats, but not yet the beard that he would grow some years later to perfect his image as a military man. Although raised and educated as a royal ward in Burghley’s relatively sober household after his father’s death, he was spoilt and something of a dandy. Even as a first-year student at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was allowed to spend £12 (£12,000 today) on a tawny velvet outfit with two pairs of matching shoes. His insistence on fine blue livery coats for all his servants testified to his incurable flamboyance and taste for expensive finery.1
With Leicester now gone, Sir Christopher Hatton, who at forty-seven had been made Lord Chancellor on the death of Sir Thomas Bromley, joined Burghley and Walsingham as one of the queen’s three pre-eminent elder statesmen. To telegraph to the world a new, more serious conception of himself, Hatton chose to abandon his trademark jewel-encrusted hat topped with a feather in favour of a plain, flat, black velvet cap just like Burghley’s.2 This left Essex to battle it out with Ralegh for primacy among the younger, brasher generation of courtiers. Their struggle was bitterly fought.
In the week before Christmas 1588, Essex had challenged Ralegh to a duel, a move that the Privy Council sought to ‘repress’ and have ‘buried in silence that it may not be known to Her Majesty’, as both Burghley and Hatton so disliked Ralegh for his maverick ways they preferred to back Essex by default and cover up for him.3 Others, chief among them the queen’s cousin Lord Hunsdon, whose youngest son, Robert, had come to blows with Ralegh during a tennis match, willingly connived with them in such deceptions.4 But the eventual outcome was uncertain, for Ralegh did not intend to give up on his bid to succeed Leicester in Elizabeth’s esteem.
And he had grounds for hope. For in spite of Essex’s endless boasts of her favour and the talk of his followers about her late-night card sessions with him, it was obvious that he lacked an intimacy with her of the sort previously enjoyed by his stepfather. The clearest signal of this was that she was unwilling to give him a pet name. In affectionate moments she addressed him as ‘Robin’, but she would never call him ‘Rob’ or her ‘Sweet Robin’. No one, it seemed, would be able to replace her beloved ‘Eyes’.5
She did, however, set him on the road to some measure of financial security. By early 1588, she had given him a long lease of York House, another of the great city mansions on the Strand, conveniently close to Leicester House. Traditionally, this was the Lord Chancellor’s courtesy residence, but Hatton had no need of it, for he already had his own grand town house at Ely Place in Holborn. Then, on 12 January 1589, Elizabeth went considerably further, granting Essex his stepfather’s highly lucrative lease of the farm of the customs on sweet wines.6 But this was never enough: he had already accumulated staggering debts and his creditors were demanding repayment. He therefore naïvely set out to win acclaim as a Protestant hero in the war with King Philip. He felt sure he could clear his debts through plundering the Spanish king’s territories and treasure at the same time as he led his men to glorious victories. Like Ralegh, he began studying maps and plans and reading books on Greek and Roman military strategy.7
Since the defeat of the Armada, Sir Francis Drake had been busy canvassing support for a speedy counter-attack on Spain that would land English troops on the Spanish mainland. Burghley had a more modest proposal. He merely wanted to send ships to strike at the weather-beaten remnants of the Armada as they struggled home between Ireland and Spain. For a while, it was Elizabeth’s plan that seemed most likely to prevail. Her aim was to send Drake to intercept and attack King Philip’s treasure ships somewhere in the mid-Atlantic: the value of the treasure could amount to as much as £3 million (£3 billion today). Even if just one or two ships could be detached from the convoy and captured with their vast chests of bullion, that would be enough. On no account did she want to commit herself to a risky military expedition on the Spanish mainland.8
But as Elizabeth’s grief for Leicester distracted her attention, Drake came up with an ambitious, if awkward, conflation of these competing ideas. By this stage, he had teamed up with his old friend Sir John Norris, a veteran of the Netherlands campaign. Rather than risk a major naval battle with the warships that Philip always sent to the Azores to escort his treasure convoys on the final stages of their journey, Drake and Norris planned to sail initially to the ports of Santander and San Sebastian on the north coast of Spain, where the warships that had survived the disastrous Armada campaign were refitting, then loot and burn them in a surprise attack. That accomplished, Drake and Norris aimed at nothing less than a full-blown invasion of Portugal, with the object of deposing Philip as king and putting a rival on the throne. If time and resources permitted, they would then seek out the Spanish treasure convoy in the mid-Atlantic after making a commando raid on one of the islands of the Azores, which they could turn into a temporary base just for the duration of the campaign.9
Dom António, Prior of Crato and the illegitimate grandson of King Manuel I of Portugal, had been thirsting for revenge ever since Philip had won the contest for the disputed succession and been crowned king in 1581. Fleeing to Paris with the Portuguese Crown Jewels, Dom António had sought asylum in England. He now lived in Stepney, a few miles east of London. Elizabeth had blown hot and cold towards him, sheltering and indulging him only so long as he had money to spend and it suited her.
On balance, Elizabeth believed that trying to restore the Portuguese claimant was a waste of time and money. But Walsingham strongly disagreed, and Burghley was soon converted to the plan, maintaining it to be England’s one and only opportunity to detach Portugal with its large fleet and vastly lucrative trade with the East Indies, West Africa and Brazil from Philip’s clutches and inflict a knockout blow on the Spanish king before he could rearm.
By late December, Burghley had won the queen round to his viewpoint.10 At last, she consented to the expedition, but only with the firm proviso that it was to have just two strategic goals: ‘the one to distress the King of Spain’s warships, the other to get the possession of some of the Islands of Azores, thereby to intercept the convoys of the treasure that doth yearly pass that way’. Only after those aims had been achieved were Drake and Norris even to contemplate invading Portugal. What the queen did not know was that Dom António had secretly offered Drake and Norris massive trade concessions in West Africa and Asia if they would restore him to the Portuguese throne.11 The expedition was to be privately equipped and financed, with the queen providing £20,000 and six royal navy ships. The profits would be split between the investors in proportion to the size of their stakes. Essex strongly backed the idea and was eager to join the venture. He knew that Elizabeth was unwilling to allow any of her noblemen to put their lives at unnecessary risk, but he did not intend to let that stop him. Headstrong and impulsive, he decided that if he could not inveigle her into granting her consent, he would defy her and leave without it.12
• • •
On Friday, 4 April 1589, Drake and Norris sailed from Plymouth with 120 ships carrying some 19,000 men, along with Dom António and his supporters. Although expressly forbidden by Elizabeth from joining them, Essex defied her, galloping off from London between five and six on the evening of the 3rd. His brazen defia
nce was a calculated risk. If he could make a name for himself as a soldier, win treasure and fame and confound King Philip in the process, he was confident he would conquer the queen. After covering 220 miles in a bare thirty-six hours, changing horses regularly along the way, he put to sea on the queen’s galleon Swiftsure, whose captain, Sir Roger Williams, knighted by Leicester in the Netherlands, had been waiting for him.13
In a fury when she learned of his deception, Elizabeth sent her kinsman Sir Francis Knollys post-haste to Plymouth to recall him, but he arrived too late: Essex had already sailed. Her next move was to write Essex a blistering letter, echoing in its idioms the earlier broadside she had sent his stepfather when he had defied her and accepted the position of Governor-General of the Netherlands:
Your sudden and undutiful departure from our presence and your place of attendance, you may easily conceive how offensive it is, and ought to be, unto us. Our great favours bestowed on you without deserts hath drawn you thus to neglect and forget your duty, for other constructions we cannot make of these your strange actions. Not meaning, therefore, to tolerate this your disordered part, we gave directions to some of our Privy Council to let you know our express pleasure for your immediate repair hither which you have not performed as your duty doth bind you, increasing greatly thereby your former offence and undutiful behaviour in departing in such sort without our privity, having so special office of attendance and charge near our person. We do therefore charge and command you forthwith upon receipt of these our letters, all excuses and delays set apart, to make your present and immediate repair unto us, to understand our farther pleasure. Whereof see you fail not, as you will be loath to incur our indignation and will answer for the contrary at your uttermost peril.14
She could hardly have been plainer. No less cutting was a second letter she dictated to Walsingham then corrected in her own handwriting, to be forwarded to Drake and Norris at the earliest opportunity. The captain of the Swiftsure was to be severely punished by martial law, preferably hanged from the yardarm, for conniving in a crime close to mutiny: ‘And if Essex be now come into the company of the fleet, we straightly charge you that, all dilatory excuse set apart, you do forthwith cause him to be sent back hither in safe manner.’
Which, if you do not, you shall look to answer for the same to your smart [at your peril], for these be no childish actions, nor matters wherein you are to deal by cunning of devices, to seek evasions, as the customs of lawyers is. Neither will we be so satisfied at your hands.
In her dictation, we hear Elizabeth’s authentic voice. ‘For as we have authority to rule’, she thundered:
so we look to be obeyed, and to have obedience directly and surely continued unto us, and so look to be answered herein at your hands. Otherwise we will think you unworthy of the authority ye have, and that ye know not how to use it.15
As Walsingham sardonically quipped to the clerk called upon to make a neat copy of the document for the queen’s signature, ‘The draft of the letter is in as mild terms as may be, considering how Her Majesty standeth affected.’16
• • •
Elizabeth, for all her insistence on absolute obedience, was about to discover just how difficult it was for a woman ruler to assert control over the execution of policy in wartime. Drake and Norris headed for Coruña, where they believed some two hundred or so of Philip’s more valuable supply ships lay at anchor.17 When they arrived, however, they found only five Spanish vessels to loot.18 Instead of retracing their steps and attacking the Armada warships refitting in the Biscay ports, they sailed directly for Lisbon, where they linked up with Essex, who had gone straight there, suggesting that there had been collusion between them from the outset. Their aim now was to loot and burn the merchant ships in the harbour of the Portuguese capital, then put Dom António on the throne: exactly what Elizabeth had said they should not even consider before fulfilling the expedition’s strategic aims.
Essex was the first to land. He waded up to his shoulders in the foaming surf under the guns of the castle of Peniche, some sixty miles from Lisbon, where it was considered safest to disembark. Once the castle had been captured and claimed for Dom António, Norris mustered his army and led it on a slow and arduous march south across the rocky coastland to Lisbon, while Drake sailed around to meet him with the heavy artillery as quickly as the wind would allow. After marching for almost a week in the scorching heat, the soldiers, sick and weary, reached the westerly suburbs of Lisbon, but they found the city’s main defences impregnable. Supplies were fast running low, as Dom António had persuaded Norris that, to protect his reputation, nothing should be taken from the Portuguese, only from the Spanish. But soon things were desperate. With the English troops no longer in a condition to begin a long siege, Norris gave Dom António an ultimatum: either he could raise reinforcements and supplies from the local population within a week or the army would withdraw.
Drake, meanwhile, went off at a tangent when he saw how securely the narrow, winding stretches of the Tagus estuary leading to the port of Lisbon were defended. Unwilling to risk transporting the heavy cannon and ammunition the army so badly needed past the well-equipped forts and batteries, he preferred to attack ships at anchor at the mouth of the estuary instead. He quickly captured sixty German hulks laden to the brim with wheat, copper, wax, masts and ships’ cables.
With characteristic bravado, Essex fought off a Spanish ambush on the English camp, but Dom António’s efforts to raise reinforcements were greeted with a sullen silence. When, in the intense heat, dysentery began to rampage through the army, Norris had no alternative but to order a retreat. On 8 June, one short week after Drake and Norris had summoned a Council of War to debate with their captains what should be done, all but twenty of their best ships set a course back to Plymouth, taking with them as many of the prize ships captured during Drake’s raids as were still seaworthy.
Before leaving Lisbon, Essex rode up to the city gates and drove a lance into them in a symbolic, if pointless, act of defiance, challenging the Spanish governor to a duel. Unsurprisingly, his invitation was declined. He then reportedly threw his own belongings out of a carriage so that he could carry wounded soldiers back to the fleet. But not even such acts of chivalry could disguise the utter failure of the expedition.
Drake planned a desperate dash for the Azores with the rump of the fleet before returning home, but his flagship sprang a leak. When a fierce gale scattered the rest of his ships, he, too, hastened for Plymouth. Out of those who sailed on the expedition, more than six thousand died of disease or were killed.19
• • •
Elizabeth could scarcely conceal her exasperation. ‘They went to places more for profit than for service,’ she tartly declared on receiving Drake and Norris’s letters, brought by a merchant vessel from off the coast of northern Spain.20 Essex arrived home well in advance of the rest of the fleet, on 24 or 25 June, when Elizabeth was with the Privy Council at Nonsuch Palace, about to set out on her summer progress. He anxiously sent on ahead his younger brother Walter, with whom he was especially close, to test the waters. On 9 July, by which time Drake and Norris had also returned, he himself rode to Nonsuch to face the music.21 He knew he was in serious trouble. A victualling ship from England had tracked him down while he was anchored off the mouth of the Tagus and had delivered Elizabeth’s scathing letter of rebuke, now two months old.22
Essex’s followers were ‘in desperate suspense’ as to what would become of him. They feared his hopes of greatness had been strangled at birth by his folly in defying the queen.23 Some believed that all he had to do, like Leicester after his inglorious recall from the Netherlands, was to wait until her mood had changed. Others knew better. Quite apart from the strategic debacle, all those who had invested in the venture, especially the queen, had lost large sums of money – this not least when the German merchant ships captured at Lisbon had to be returned with their cargoes to their owners after angry diplomatic p
rotests.24
Essex found Elizabeth at Nonsuch, but she froze him out. Whereas she awarded gold chains of honour to several participants in the expedition for their good services, she pointedly ignored him. She could not bring herself to banish him from Court, as she had first planned to do; on cool reflection, she was gradually coming round to believing him more foolhardy than treacherous, his defiance, as she later said, ‘but a sally of youth’.25 And yet she realized that by allowing him to escape a harsher punishment she was exposing her own vulnerability. He needed to be taught a sharp lesson. Doubly so, because he had provoked pain in her; for that, he must be made to suffer in return.
Her retribution was finely calculated. By the simple step of presenting a gold chain to Ralegh, who had contributed men and ships to the expedition but had not actually sailed with them, and by passing over Essex, she stung the proud Earl in a manner he found quite intolerable.26 While his stepfather would have known that this was one of her classic methods of control and taken his medicine quietly, Essex’s nature was such that he preferred to pick over the sore until it festered.27
By the time the Court moved on to Oatlands on 17 August, Essex’s spin doctors were falling over themselves to pluck victory from the jaws of defeat. One spun the lie that the Earl ‘hath chased Mr Ralegh from the Court and hath confined him into Ireland’.28 This might have been more convincing if not for the fact that Ralegh was away in London at the time, attending to his affairs at Durham House.29 When he did later visit his Irish estates, Ralegh made it plain that he did so in full confidence of his position at Court, boasting, ‘I am in place to be believed not inferior to any man.’30 The tension between the two rivals was approaching breaking point. ‘There was never’, chanted the Court gossips, ‘such emulation, such envy, such backbiting, as is now at this time.’31
Jubilant over the subtle way she had taught Essex that she was his sovereign and expected his obedience, Elizabeth was in an upbeat mood over Christmas. So cold was the weather that the Thames froze over, and she spent the festive season at Richmond, which, unlike Greenwich, was easily accessible by coach when her barge could not cut a passage through the thick ice.32 Whether Essex had yet stopped sulking when he resumed his place beside her chair on New Year’s Day and leading courtiers presented her with their seasonal gifts is not recorded, but Sir John Stanhope, a gentleman of the Privy Chamber and the author of a series of chatty newsletters, observed Elizabeth to be in high spirits, dancing and singing and performing the galliard with its high leaps and jumps six or seven times every morning.33