Elizabeth

by John Guy

  ‘Deserved I such recompense, as many a complot, both for my life and my kingdom?’ she asked. ‘Ought not I to defend [myself] and bereave him of such weapons?’ The whole root of the quarrel, she declared, lay in the fact that proud Philip had cast aside the covenants his father, Charles V, had made with the Dutch, subjecting them to the cruel, direct rule of Spaniards. ‘I would not [have] dealt with others’ territory, but they hold those by such covenants.’ By breaching them, Philip had brought war on himself. Had they not existed, she would never have defended rebels in a ‘wicked quarrel’ with their lawful prince.41

  The succession had presented her with a second, more practical dilemma. To assure the continuation of the dynasty, she would need an heir, and that meant marriage, with all the vexing problems of finding a suitable husband and risking having to submit herself, and her country, to his authority, as her half-sister had done. Opting to remain single, on the other hand, could lead to chaos or even to civil war. When still of childbearing age, she had been lobbied repeatedly to marry or name an heir. Scandalously, Burghley had covertly mobilized his allies in Parliament against her and even toyed with the idea of establishing a statutory mechanism by which the throne might pass only to a Protestant if she were suddenly to die. The menopause had liberated her, as there was no point in urging marriage upon a barren woman, but it also highlighted the succession issue all the more acutely. Unlike her privy councillors, Elizabeth believed she would end up weaker, not stronger, if she named an heir rather than leaving the question in limbo. While at one level her attitude was deeply irresponsible, it was firmly rooted in her searing experiences in her half-brother’s and half-sister’s reigns. Things might have been different as she approached her late sixties had she actually liked James but, judging by her tetchy letters to him, she found his waywardness and presumption exasperating. She preferred to promise nothing and leave all to time.

  Time worked in her favour in the end, though it took its toll on a personal level. As the post-menopausal queen began to age, she left it to her courtiers to promote the ‘cult’ of Gloriana by commissioning ever more flattering and iconographically abstruse portraits as small armies of labourers toiled for a month or more at a time to create outdoor Arcadian fantasies during her summer progresses. Unlike her father, she was never mesmerized by her own legend, but she did come to believe after 1588 that God was a Protestant and on her side. When she berated Henry IV after his conversion to Catholicism for making a choice that she felt flew in the face of God and told him that he and perhaps she (for continuing to support him) might find herself paying the price, she made it clear that her religious convictions were central to her ways of thinking. She felt that God had called on her to be an instrument for good for the salvation of northern Europe.

  While being wooed by handsome younger men like Ralegh or Essex appealed to her vanity, she increasingly came to appear ridiculous to her younger courtiers. So intense did the ‘cult’ of Gloriana become, it introduced a toxic element into Court culture. Courtiers really had to believe the queen was a second Madonna: Essex shattered the taboo when he muttered in her hearing that ‘her conditions were as crooked as her carcass.’

  For the vast majority of her subjects, whom Elizabeth always referred to in the abstract as her ‘people’ and whose love and support she had claimed to hold since she came to the throne, the Court was another world. She told members of Parliament poetically in 1601, ‘I have . . . been content to be a taper of true virgin wax to waste myself and spend my life that I might give light and comfort to those that live under me’ – but in this she was deluding herself.42 To most of her people, as they struggled against often impossible odds to live their lives, she was a distant image or just a name. The social and economic effects of the long war hit them hard, and yet she expected the civic and county magistrates to take the measures necessary to restore equilibrium rather than taking them herself. All this was made far worse when thousands of severely wounded or sick mariners and soldiers, destitute and unpaid, began returning from the war zones. Her reward to those who had fought in the 1588 Armada campaign was to leave them to die in the gutters. For those who fought on land with Essex and Sir John Norris in northern France, she showed pity for the blue-blooded officers but not the ordinary foot soldiers, whom she left to starve or find their own way home. She was always a terrible snob.

  In her final years, she was often ill, but until Kate Carey’s death she was mentally as agile as ever. Only Cecil managed to hoodwink her, for the best part of two years. Claims by several biographers that she somehow found proof of the secret correspondence going up and down between London and Edinburgh before she died are not supported by the evidence.43 How far she guessed that Cecil deliberately set up Essex to fail in Ireland is impossible to judge.

  If asked to pronounce a verdict on herself, Elizabeth would have regarded her ultimate test not as the 1588 Armada or its successors but the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. Her chief aim had been to preserve the ideal of God-appointed monarchy. She had always maintained that if she were to sign her Scottish cousin’s death warrant, the monarchic ideal would be attenuated. England would descend into the wild, untamed, primordial world of King Lear on the heath. It was her misfortune to rule at a time when the vagaries of dynastic succession competed with the ideal of an exclusively Protestant commonwealth. When Elizabeth spoke in her own voice, hereditary rights took priority over religion; when Burghley did the talking, it was always the other way round. The Wars of Religion in France and the heroic struggle of the Calvinists in the Netherlands were mainly to blame. On both sides of the religious divide, many could be found who were happy to justify assassination plots, elective monarchy or worse.

  By 1601, Elizabeth had found Parliament dangerously fractious, as her subjects demanded change. Her ultimate nightmare was the thought of that ‘multitude of people . . . who said they were Commonwealth’s men’ crowding the lobby outside the House of Commons and staging a public demonstration to force Parliament to ‘take compassion of their griefs’. This was ‘popularity’ with a vengeance, conjuring up Essex and the ‘tragedy’ he had brought down upon her that ‘was forty times played in open streets and houses’. Such demands implied that the monarchy should become accountable to Parliament, and Parliament to the people – both anathema to Elizabeth.

  Ralegh, a master-wordsmith, shall have the last word. Justifying himself to his accusers at his trial at Winchester, he brilliantly captured Elizabeth’s situation in the final weeks and months of her long reign. She had, he said, become ‘a lady whom time hath surprised’.44 It was not just grief for Kate Carey that killed her, if indeed the reports are true that mourning for Kate had brought about her final decline. Elizabeth was also mourning for the death of England – or the version of England and its ideals that she and her father had always imagined. She might not have changed, but the world had.

  This is her tragedy.

  1. The ‘Siena Portrait’ of Elizabeth holding a sieve, an emblem of virginity, by Quentin Metsys the Younger, c.1583

  2. An unknown woman, one of Elizabeth’s Bedchamber or Privy Chamber staff, possibly the young Kate Carey, daughter of Lord Hunsdon and Elizabeth’s cousin once removed, English School

  3. The likelihood is strong that this woman is Katherine Carey, Elizabeth’s first cousin, wife of Sir Francis Knollys, but if so and the painting was done in 1562, the age given may be incorrect. Such mistakes are quite common in Tudor portraiture as ages or dates were often repainted, moved or added by later owners or art restorers. By Steven van der Meulen

  4. Mary Queen of Scots, by Nicholas Hilliard, c.1580

  5. Anne of Denmark, studio of Nicholas Hilliard, after 1603

  6. Lettice Knollys, English School, after 1603

  7. Elizabeth corrects the second version of her reply to Parliament’s petition in 1586 urging her to execute Mary Queen of Scots, showing interlineations and scorings-out

 
8. A copy of the warrant for the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, prepared by Robert Beale for the personal use of the Earl of Kent, one of the officiating commissioners present at Fotheringhay Castle

  9. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in his mid-thirties, by Steven van der Meulen

  10. Sir Francis Walsingham, by John de Critz, c.1585

  11. ‘The Family of Henry VIII’, a copy of a painting Elizabeth gave to Walsingham in c.1572, while he was serving as ambassador to France, after Lucas de Heere

  12. William Cecil, Lord Burghley, wearing the robes of a Knight of the Garter and carrying the Lord Treasurer’s staff of office, English School, after 1572

  13. Philip II, with the Order of the Golden Fleece on his chest and holding a rosary in his left hand, by Sofonisba Anguissola, c.1573

  14. One of the new documents showing Elizabeth suing abjectly for peace as late as 20 June 1588, a month after the Armada had set sail

  15. The cipher used by Elizabeth’s peace commissioners at Bourbourg in 1588 to report their negotiations with the Duke of Parma’s representatives

  16. Portrait of a man often said to be Sir Francis Drake, by Isaac Oliver, c.1590

  17. Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, depicted as ‘The Young Man among the Roses’, by Nicholas Hilliard, c.1588

  18. Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, depicted with the spade-shaped beard he grew in 1596 at Cádiz, in a sketch by Isaac Oliver that would become a pattern for engravers

  19. Sir Walter Ralegh, showing the battle for Cádiz in the background, attributed to William Segar. Ralegh carries a cane, a sign of a ‘grievous blow’ he suffered to his leg during the fight, c.1598

  20. The ‘Armada Portrait’ of Elizabeth, the Woburn Abbey version, circle of George Gower, c.1588

  21. Elizabeth aged fifty-nine, by Isaac Oliver. This image was intended to provide a face pattern for engravers, hence its seemingly unfinished state, 1592

  22. Elizabeth’s letter of instructions, with her famous official signature at its head, to Lord Willoughby, the Earl of Leicester’s successor in the Netherlands, concerning the towns of Dordrecht and Geertruidenberg, 30 March 1588

  23. Robert Vaughan’s posthumous portrait of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 1588, with background scenes of the defeat of the Armada and of the Battle of Zutphen

  24. Thomas Cockson’s engraving of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, 1600, with background scenes alluding to events at Cádiz and in the Azores, Rouen and Ireland. Essex is controversially acclaimed as ‘Virtue’s honour, Wisdom’s nature, Grace’s servant, Mercy’s love, God’s elected’

  25. A draft, heavily corrected by Burghley, of one of Elizabeth’s letters to the Earl of Essex, recalling him from Rouen. The letter goes on to instruct Essex to write to Henry IV to tell him ‘how sorry you are to have so great a part to your own disgrace’. The queen then snipes that Essex should understand the reasons for her dissatisfaction ‘if you be not senseless’, 23 September 1591

  26. Sir Walter Ralegh captures Don António de Berrío, the governor of the Spanish colony of Trinidad, during a night-time commando raid, 1595

  27. The meeting on the south bank of the Orinoco between Sir Walter Ralegh and King Topiawari, 1595

  28. Robert Cecil, by John de Critz, c.1606. His motto, Sero, Sed Serio, means ‘Late, but in earnest’

  29. James VI of Scotland and I of England, by Nicholas Hilliard, c.1610

  30. Henry IV of France before the walls of Paris, 1594, French School

  31. Elizabeth aged sixty-two or sixty-three, studio of Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, c.1596

  32. Archduke Albert of the Netherlands and Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain and Archduchess, c.1600

  33. The most widely circulated image of the ageing Elizabeth. Based on Isaac Oliver’s face pattern of 1592, it was engraved by Crispijn de Passe, 1596

  34. This closely observed image by Jan Rutlinger, a German-born engraver at the Tower Mint, offers the truest likeness of the shape of the queen’s face and nose and of her long, slender fingers, c.1585

  35. The ‘Rainbow Portrait’ of Elizabeth with the face pattern known as the ‘Mask of Youth’ in which the queen’s features were airbrushed back to become those of a young woman in her late twenties or early thirties, by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, 1602

  36. Elizabeth’s monumental tomb in the north aisle of Henry VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, commissioned by James I and completed in 1606, engraved by Magdalena or Willem de Passe, c.1620

  Abbreviations

  AGR

  Archives Générales du Royaume, Brussels

  AGS

  Archivo General de Simancas

  APC

  Acts of the Privy Council of England, New Series, ed. J. R. Dasent, 46 vols. (London, 1890–1964)

  Bath MSS

  Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable The Marquess of Bath, 5 vols. (London, 1904–80)

  BIHR

  Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research

  Birch, Memoirs

  Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth from 1581 till Her Death, ed. T. Birch, 2 vols. (London, 1754)

  Birch, Hist. View

  An Historical View of the Negotiations between the Courts of England, France, and Brussels, from the Year 1592 to 1617, ed. T. Birch (London, 1749)

  Bodleian

  Bodleian Library, Oxford

  BL

  British Library, London

  BNF

  Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris

  Bond

  The Complete Works of John Lyly, ed. R. W. Bond, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1902)

  Camden

  W. Camden, The History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth, Late Queen of England, 3rd edn (London, 1675)

  CCM

  Calendar of Carew Manuscripts Preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth, ed. J. S. Brewer and W. Bullen, 6 vols. (London, 1867–73)

  Chamberlain

  Letters Written by John Chamberlain during the Reign of Elizabeth I, ed. S. Williams, Camden Society, Old Series, 79 (1861)

  Chambers

  E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1923)

  CKJVI

  Correspondence of King James VI of Scotland with Sir Robert Cecil and Others in England during the Reign of Elizabeth I, ed. J. Bruce, Camden Society, Old Series, 78 (1861)

  Collins

  Letters and Memorials of State: Collections Made by Sir Henry Sydney, Knight of the Garter, Lord President of the Marches of Wales, etc., ed. R. Collins, 2 vols. (London, 1746)

  CP

  Cecil Papers, Hatfield House (available on microfilm at the BL and Folger Shakespeare Library)

  CSPC

  Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, ed. W. N. Sainsbury, 45 vols. (London, 1860–1970)

  CSPD

  Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth I and James I, ed. R. Lemon and E. Green, 12 vols. (London, 1856–72)

  CSPD Mary