Elizabeth
Page 44
• • •
After Essex’s uprising, James had hurriedly sent the Earl of Mar and the lawyer Edward Bruce south, ostensibly to congratulate Elizabeth on her narrow escape. In reality, he wished to be cleared of all charges of collusion either with Thomas or Essex.24 Specifically, Mar and Bruce were to remind Elizabeth of what James chose optimistically to call ‘her old promise that nothing shall be done in her time, in prejudice of my future right’. Over and above that, besides generally ingratiating themselves and countering his detractors, they were to threaten Cecil and his allies with the dire retribution they could expect to receive once James became king, should they dare to attempt to block him.25
‘When the chance shall turn,’ James snarled, ‘I shall cast a deaf ear to their requests; and whereas now I would have been content to have given them by your means a pre-assurance of my favour . . . so now, they contemning it, may be assured never hereafter to be heard, but all the queen’s hard usage of me to be hereafter craved at their hands.’26
Elizabeth was not easily fooled. Mentally as sharp as ever, she saw straight through Mar and Bruce’s sycophancy and rejected all their demands.27 Braving the pain from a fresh attack of arthritis, this time in her right thumb, and writing to James in her own hand, she upbraided the Scottish king for his presumption in assuming that he or his advisers could bend her to his will:
Let not shades deceive you which may take away best substance from you, when they can turn but to dust or smoke. An upright demeanour bears ever more poise than all disguised shows of good can do. Remember that a bird of the air, if no other instrument, to an honest king shall stand instead of many feigned practices.28
She was particularly annoyed by James’s request to be granted some English estates, so that he could bypass the legal objections to his succession on grounds of his Scots nationality.29 ‘We hope to hear no more of any of these matters,’ she remonstrated, ‘which are so unworthy of our dispute who have and do resolve to nourish and perform all princely correspondency.’30
In these dark, doubtful, dangerous days, the border between loyalty and treachery was becoming blurred. Elizabeth would have been incandescent had she known that, by the time Mar and Bruce arrived in London, Essex’s former intelligencer, the slippery Lord Henry Howard, had begun clandestinely corresponding with James and his agents on his own account.31 Deftly realigning himself on Cecil’s side, Howard in these letters leaked a heady mixture of news and Court gossip, and in a vitriolic piece of character assassination warned James to beware of the ‘accursed duality’ of Ralegh and the young Lord Cobham.32 Ralegh and Cobham hatched ‘cockatrice eggs . . . daily and nightly’ at Durham House, he now wrote melodramatically, ‘where Ralegh lies in consultation’.33 Neither Ralegh nor Cobham had secured advancement to the Privy Council after Essex’s execution. Envious of the ease with which Cecil had taken command after Burghley’s death, they were hungry for change. Howard feared their possible influence on James.34
Such self-interested mischief-making fuelled James’s suspicions that Ralegh and Cobham were plotting to exclude him from the throne. To turn Cecil irrevocably against Ralegh and Cobham – both his former allies when Essex was alive – Howard deluged him with slander, insidiously persuading him that Ralegh and Cobham could not be trusted and were organizing a ‘mutiny’ against him.35 Abandoning scruples and honour, he even advised him to ‘snare the ambition’ of Ralegh and Cobham into some ‘rash direction’, tempting them into treason so they could be destroyed like Essex. It was a truly Machiavellian insinuation.36
Not daring to return to Scotland to face their sovereign’s wrath after Elizabeth had refused all James’s demands, Mar and Bruce took a monumental gamble. Cheered on by Howard, they made overtures directly to Cecil. Their gamble paid off. In May 1601, they arranged a rendezvous at the Duchy of Lancaster offices on the Strand, at which Cecil satisfied them that Essex’s allegations that he was out to exclude James from the succession and had sold his soul to the Infanta were wholly false. As proof of his goodwill, Cecil inveigled Elizabeth into restoring James’s annual pension to its original level of £5,000, agreed at the ratifying of their league in July 1586, to be paid in regular, twice-yearly instalments.37
After weighing up the risks and opportunities for a fortnight or more, Cecil next agreed to correspond with James in return for the king’s future favour.38 In their secret communications, conducted in English and Scots and partially ciphered, James was ‘30’, Cecil ‘10’, Howard ‘3’ and Elizabeth ‘24’.39 Letters were carried to and fro by Cecil’s chief intelligencer and spy in Scotland, George Nicolson, who was duped into acting as a postman and referred to in the letters as ‘the pigeon’.40 To evade scrutiny by the customs men at the English border post at Berwick-upon-Tweed, letters from Edinburgh travelled south in the diplomatic bag, sealed and labelled as addressed to French Huguenot noblemen. Replies from London came along the same route.
Although James and Cecil did occasionally pen their letters personally, most of their correspondence was handled through intermediaries, chiefly Howard and Bruce. This was to lessen the risk of detection.41 As Cecil mused sanctimoniously:
If her Majesty had known all I did . . . her age and orbity, joined to the jealousy of her sex, might have moved her to think ill of that which helped to preserve her. For what could more quiet the expectation of a successor, so many ways invited to jealousy, than when he saw her ministry, that were most inward with her, wholly bent to accommodate the present actions of the state for his future safety, when God should see his time?42
He was only too well aware of the danger of discovery by the queen. When one of his secretaries began taking too close an interest in his correspondence, the man was dismissed.43
Mostly, Cecil’s advice to James was purely tactical. He took great care to avoid any unambiguous suggestion of treason should any one of his letters be lost or intercepted. In particular, he declined to voice an opinion as to the rightful successor, merely doing what he could to assist James. ‘The subject’, he remarked, ‘is so perilous to touch amongst us, as it setteth a mark upon his head for ever that hatcheth such a bird.’44
For all their author’s reserve, however, James would find Cecil’s letters invaluable. What they offered him was an intimate knowledge of how best to handle the queen. James, Cecil advised, should bear in mind that, for princes in possession, ‘[j]ealousy stirreth passion, even between the father and the son.’45 He might well have mentioned another of Elizabeth’s celebrated mantras: ‘Princes cannot like their own children.’46 To best nurture his claim, James should avoid ‘needless expostulations’ in his dealings with the queen or ‘over much curiosity’ about her real intentions. To win the good opinion of a woman ‘to whose sex and quality nothing is so improper’, he should avoid appearing ‘too busy’ on his own behalf. Especially, he should shun the ‘general acclamation of many’, which she famously abhorred. Anyone, concluded Cecil, who sought to win over the hearts and minds of ‘the vulgar’ sort of people, ‘little understands the state of this question’.47
In return, James offered Cecil the prospect of a golden future. ‘[I shall] rule all my actions for advancing of my lawful future hopes by your advice,’ he warmly declared, ‘even as [if] ye were one of my own councillors already, being justly moved to this confidence in you’.48 But his promise of patronage came at a price: there could be no question of peace with Spain, the policy pursued however fitfully and ineffectually by the queen at Boulogne. Such a peace made before he was king, James believed, would be ‘most perilous’ to his ‘just claim’, since it would allow more open debate in England of a ‘Spanish title’ and greatly assist Philip III and Archduke Albert in advancing the Infanta’s claim.49
Cecil immediately took the hint. Within months, he would be boasting to James that ‘[the] scandal which followed the late Earl of Essex for his greediness of war . . . is most[ly] transferred to me.’ From now on, Cobham would champion th
e cause of peace, not Cecil.50
Philip III, meanwhile, was planning his final throw of the dice. Assiduously lobbied by the English Catholic exiles, he was seriously considering putting the Infanta Isabella, his half-sister, on Elizabeth’s throne. He was utterly opposed to James, whom he suspected, not without reason, of plotting with Henry IV and Pope Clement to engineer an anti-Spanish alliance.51 Confirmation from Rome that Anne of Denmark had taken her vows as a Catholic and was secretly receiving Mass added to his anxiety.52 Equally disturbing was a flurry of reports that Henry and James were planning a Franco-British alliance to drive the Spanish Netherlands into submission to the Dutch Protestants. This threat was made all the more real by rumours that James had recently received firm offers of support from the Dutch, Denmark and several Italian states, including Florence and Venice.53 An otherwise trivial incident fuelled Philip’s fears. One day when James was about to go out hunting, he had taken a reliquary set in a necklace from his wife’s neck and put it around his own to ward off accidents. It was doubtless an innocent, playful gesture, but to Philip its significance was deep and worrying.54
Eager to exclude James and any other candidate who was likely to have French sympathies from the English throne, Philip had several times consulted the Council of State. For a while, the councillors were unable to agree but, after lengthy deliberations, their choice fell unanimously on the Infanta.55
Philip had ratified the nomination in February 1601.56 The fly in the ointment was that Isabella’s husband, Albert, as everyone would come to realize too late, was impotent. Isabella was then thirty-five and still capable of bearing children, but rumours were soon rife in Brussels that Albert, who was forty-two, suffered from erectile dysfunction and had not been able to consummate the marriage. His confessor was reported as saying that, in all his life, Albert had never yet succeeded in bedding a woman.57 All the signs, therefore, were that the couple would never have children, a fatal drawback, since any settlement of the English succession in the Spanish interest would need to be cemented by the promise of an heir. Philip knew all too well the problems created by his father’s unproductive union with Mary Tudor.
To Philip’s frustration, Albert himself expressed fatal misgivings when told that Spain would back his wife’s claim.58 Already overburdened by the pressure of keeping Count Maurice’s armies at bay, neither Albert nor Isabella wished to take on this new battle. They would rather capitalize on their current status as independent sovereigns, whereas the Spanish Council of State had recommended that, if Isabella became Queen of England, the Netherlands must return to the direct overlordship of Spain. Albert far preferred the simpler option of a rapprochement with James, which would turn the screw on the Dutch and guarantee his own survival in Brussels.59
In Valladolid, where Philip was gradually moving his Court, opinion in the Council of State slowly began to fragment. Some voices continued to champion Isabella; others argued that it would be better to win over James with bribes. In no respect would he be an ideal choice, but it might be worth ordering the Archduke to send a special envoy to Edinburgh to open up talks, a move that was bound to infuriate Elizabeth.60 If all went well, the envoy could be replaced by an ambassador and full diplomatic relations restored. At least one councillor suggested that James might be inveigled into sending his heir Prince Henry to be educated at Valladolid in exchange for Spanish support. Unpalatable as the union of the crowns of England and Scotland might be, it could just be acceptable if guided by a monarch who was mortgaged to Spain.61
But with a Spanish victory in Ireland a distant prospect after the failure of Águila’s expedition, Philip felt morally obliged not to put another heretic on Elizabeth’s throne. He was stridently supported by Count Olivares, his father’s former ambassador to the crockery-throwing Pope Sixtus V, who had recently returned to Spain from a posting as Viceroy of Naples. Taking his seat in the Council in October 1602, Olivares argued that England and Scotland must be prevented from uniting under a staunchly Protestant king such as James must inevitably become. To believe he could be bound to Spain by bribes was wishful thinking. The best way forward, to his mind, was to reach a compromise with the French and the pope over a mutually agreed Catholic candidate, who could be imposed by force. This should be managed so that Spain did not appear to lose face by withdrawing its support for the Infanta. A move of this kind was all the more urgent, as Henry IV was threatening to annex Franche-Comté and thus to block one of the principal arteries of the so-called Spanish Road, the route over the Alps and through the old Burgundian dominions along which Spanish troops had marched to defend the southern Netherlands against the Dutch.62
• • •
When news of Tyrone’s rout in Ireland and the failure of the fifth Armada finally arrived in Valladolid, Philip was genuinely shocked. Seeing no hope of swift reinforcements, Águila had been forced to surrender. Elizabeth was so overcome with relief, she at once scribbled a personal message to Mountjoy above her signature at the head of a more formal letter she had just dictated thanking him for his good service.* ‘We can but acknowledge your diligence and dangerous adventure’, she purred, ‘and cherish and judge of you as your careful sovereign.’63 This was code for saying she had chosen to erase permanently from her memory all suspicions of his clandestine dealings with Essex.
So anxious was Mountjoy to be rid of the invading Spaniards, he allowed them to march out of Kinsale with all the honours of war.64 Adverse winds interrupted their departure: several weeks would elapse before the last of them set sail. Tyrone, meanwhile, rode as fast as he could towards Ulster, holding out in the woods for just over another year. By the summer of 1602, though, many of his relatives and officers were desperate and offering terms. Coaxed by Mountjoy, Elizabeth accepted a form of submission in which, one by one, the rebel captains swore on oath that she was ‘the only true, absolute and sovereign lady of this realm of Ireland, and of every part and of all the people thereof’. They were then granted back their lands.65
Tyrone, an expert at guerrilla warfare, held out until the very end. Elizabeth had always insisted that she would never grant a pardon to a rebel who had cost her so many lives and almost £2 million so far to defeat. At the end of 1602, Tyrone offered to parley, but she angrily refused, demanding his unconditional surrender. Her decision caught Mountjoy in a vice. By now desperately short of men and munitions, he was bound to fall back on diplomacy. In an awkward balancing act, he informed Tyrone that he would continue to petition the queen on his behalf, but ‘I will cut your throat in the meantime if I can.’66
In Cecil’s eyes, the stalemate in Ireland was a worrying loose end. Munster and Leinster had been quickly pacified and Connacht largely so. But until Ulster was under the Lord Deputy’s full control, it was always possible that Tyrone might make a comeback and the dying embers of the revolt flare up yet again.67
• • •
Throughout the spring and summer of 1602, Elizabeth set herself a punishing schedule, determined to prove to the world that she was still very much alive. She began with a visit to the May Day festivities in Richmond, continuing with a summer progress that included stays at the homes of more than twenty of her courtiers, within a thirty-mile radius of London. Sometimes she simply went for dinner; at other times she stopped overnight. She dined twice at Lambeth with Archbishop Whitgift. At Eltham in Kent, she stayed for a day or so with Sir John Stanhope, a protégé of Cecil and a notably accomplished flatterer. She was then regally entertained for three days by Egerton at Harefield, his estate on the Middlesex and Buckinghamshire border.68
The progress ended at Oatlands, where she lavishly welcomed some visiting ambassadors. Among those offered sumptuous hospitality were Christophe de Harlay, Comte de Beaumont, the new French envoy, and his wife, Anne Rabot, a wealthy heiress.69 ‘Blessed be God,’ Cecil exclaimed in a letter to Carew, ‘I saw not Her Majesty so well these dozen years!’70 And the Earl of Worcester valiantly kept up the pretence of h
er well-being. ‘We are [at] frolic here in Court,’ he said, with ‘much dancing in the Privy Chamber of country dances before the Queen’s Majesty, who is exceedingly pleased therewith’. ‘Irish tunes are at this time most pleasing,’ he added, ‘but in winter, “Lullaby”, an old song of Mr Byrd’s [William Byrd], will be more in request, as I think.’71
But, shortly after Christmas, rumours began to circulate that the woman who had ruled England for forty-four years was reduced to sitting on cushions on the floor. Now in her seventieth year, she was clearly very ill. For some months, the diplomatic grapevine had been buzzing with tales of her poor health. One claimed she was very sick because of ‘a sore in her breast’ and ‘cannot live long’; another that she was ‘in very bad health’; a third that she had already been pronounced dead; a fourth that she had been ‘very ill’ but had made a full recovery.72
For a while, she was able to dissemble. When the Venetian ambassador to London, Giovanni Scaramelli, left an audience with her at Richmond on Sunday, 6 February 1603, he believed her to be in the finest of health. She pulled off this trick partly by speaking to him throughout in fluent Italian, partly by her dress. Scaramelli waxed lyrically to the Doge and the Senate about her silver-and-white taffeta gown trimmed with gold, her elaborate headdress with pearls the size of small pears, her wig with its red fluorescent colour ‘never made by nature’, her large diamonds and even larger rubies, her elaborate pearl bracelets.73