Elizabeth's Women

by Tracy Borman

  Much worse was to come, at least for Katherine. The kindly Sir Edward Warner was peremptorily dismissed from his post, which put an abrupt end to the snatched meetings that Katherine and her husband had enjoyed.80 She wrote to Seymour lamenting “my great hard fate to miss the viewing of so good a one [husband].” She added: “I … long to be merry with you as you do with me. I say no more but be you merry as I was heavy when you the third time came to the door and it was locked.” Katherine went on to thank her husband for sending her a message, together with some money and a book, “which is no small jewel to me. I can very well read it, for as soon as I had it, I read it over even with my heart as well as with my eyes.”81

  Elizabeth was not satisfied that her cousin would not use her wiles to persuade another lieutenant to take pity on her, so she resolved to separate her from Seymour for good. In August 1563, the couple were removed from the Tower on the pretense of protecting them from the plague—an act of “compassion” on the part of the Queen, as her council’s instructions claimed. The earl was sent to the house of his mother, there to be kept under close surveillance. Katherine was placed in the custody of her uncle, Lord John Grey, at his house in Essex. He received detailed instructions for her imprisonment, “which hir Majesty meaneth she shuld understand of yowr Lordship and observe, as some Part of hir Punishment; and therin hir Majesty meaneth herin to trye hir Disposition how she will obey that which she shall have in Comandment.” Lord Grey was to insure that his niece would have no “conference” with anyone apart from his household staff and would “use hir self there in yowr Houss with no other Demeanor, than as though she were in the Towre.”82 Katherine wrote at once to Cecil, begging him to intercede with the Queen, whose forgiveness “with up-stretched hands and down bent knees from the bottom of my heart most humbly I crave.”83

  But as far as Elizabeth was concerned, it was a case of out of sight, out of mind. Far more important to her were the actions of her Scottish cousin. She was growing increasingly resentful of the many effusive reports she received about Mary’s beauty and allure. When one foreign diplomat remarked that she was reputed to be “very lovely,” the English Queen snapped that she herself was “superior to the Queen of Scotland.”84 The fact that Mary was nine years younger than her did not help, particularly as Elizabeth faced almost daily reminders of her advancing age as a potential bride. Whereas before, she had been the most desirable bride in Europe, now her younger, fairer cousin was attracting all the attention. One contemporary observer would later claim: “the Queen of England never liked her, but was always and for a long time jealous of her beauty, which far surpassed her own.”85

  The idea that Elizabeth’s view of Mary was colored by personal jealousy as well as political concerns is supported by the famous account of her meeting with her cousin’s ambassador, Sir James Melville, in 1564. Setting aside the political matters that Sir James had been sent to discuss, Elizabeth quizzed him upon every aspect of Mary’s personal appearance and accomplishments—from what color her hair was to how well she played the lute. Realizing that he would have to choose his answers extremely carefully in order to avoid incurring the English queen’s notorious jealousy of her cousin, Melville kept his answers as equivocal as possible. But Elizabeth would not be satisfied, and demanded that he provide an assessment of the two women’s comparative merits. “She desired to know of me, what colour of hair was reputed best; and which of the two was fairest. I answered, The fairness of them both was not their worst faults. But she was earnest with me to declare which of them I judged fairest. I said, She was the fairest Queen in England, and mine the fairest Queen in Scotland. Yet she appeared earnest. I answered, They were both the fairest ladies in their countries; that her Majesty was whiter, but my Queen was very lovely.” Still Elizabeth persisted, asking next who was the taller—the answer to which question she must have been confident of, given that she was renowned for her height. When the beleaguered Sir James admitted that the Scottish queen was taller, Elizabeth snapped, “Then … she is too high; for I myself am neither too high nor too low.”

  Determined to find something in which she surpassed her cousin, the English queen turned to Mary’s accomplishments, which she was sure would be inferior to her own. She learned that her cousin was fond of hunting, reading history, and occasionally playing the lute and virginals. Seizing upon the latter, Elizabeth asked Melville if his mistress played well, to which he replied: “reasonably for a Queen.” Later that day, Sir James was invited by Lord Hunsdon to accompany him to a quiet gallery, where, he said, he might listen to the Queen playing music without her knowledge. The ambassador duly did so and patiently listened “a pretty space” while Elizabeth, with her back to the door, played the virginals “exceedingly well.” Suddenly she stopped playing and swung around. Feigning surprise at his presence, she gave him a playful slap and chided him for so intruding upon her privacy, “alleging she used not to play before men.” The true motive behind this farcical episode was soon revealed, however, when the Queen asked—no doubt as casually as she could—whether Mary or she played best. “In that I found myself obliged to give her the praise,” recalled Melville. Before he was permitted to leave her court, Elizabeth made sure he had seen her dance, and inquired of him “whether she or my Queen danced best.” Again Sir James was forced to admit that Mary was her inferior in this respect.86

  Satisfied that she had gained the upper hand, Elizabeth was apparently inclined to feel more affectionate toward her cousin. She assured Melville that she had a great desire to meet his royal mistress, but as that could not soon be brought to pass, she would console herself with looking at Mary’s picture. Summoning him to her bedchamber, she opened a little cabinet in which were a number of miniatures wrapped in paper with the names of the sitter inscribed on each in the Queen’s handwriting. Taking out Mary’s picture, she made a show of kissing it very reverently. However, when Melville suggested that she should send her cousin the “fair ruby, as great as a tennis ball” that he had spotted among her jewels, Elizabeth quickly refused, and instead sent her a much smaller diamond. Determined to leave Sir James with a favorable impression, she expressed her earnest wish to meet her cousin. Taking her at her word, Melville offered to convey her to Scotland in secret, disguised as a page, while excusing her absence from court with the tale that she was keeping to her bed due to sickness. “She appeared to like that kind of language,” he recalled, “only answered it with a sigh, saying, ‘Alas! if I might do it thus.’ ”87

  The Scottish ambassador was not fooled by this display of regret, nor by the many protestations of “sisterly love” that Elizabeth had made toward Mary. Upon his return to Scotland, he at once sought an audience with his royal mistress and relayed everything that had been said. With greater shrewdness than she showed on other occasions, Mary asked him “whether I thought that Queen meant truly toward her inwardly in her heart, as she appeared to do outwardly in her speech.” Melville declared that in his opinion, “there was neither plain dealing, nor upright meaning; but great dissimulation, emulation and fear, lest her [Mary’s] princely qualities should over soon chase her from the Kingdom.”88

  Elizabeth had clearly failed to disguise her true feelings toward Mary by her excessive compliments and declarations of love. Although such overblown sentiments were typical of the courtly language of the day, the fact that they were not backed up by action revealed them to be false. Her behavior during Melville’s visit had been sparked as much by Elizabeth the woman as by Elizabeth the queen. The personal rivalry between the two women dangerously intensified their political rivalry. Ironic, then, that Mary should try to play on their sex as a means to unite them in some kind of sisterly bond: two female sovereigns trying to make their way in a world dominated by men. Far from uniting them, however, their sex proved a source of discord—at least on Elizabeth’s part. “It is certain that two women will not agree very long together,” observed a Spanish envoy.89 Subsequent events were to prove him right.

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bsp; One of the principal causes of discord between them was Mary’s search for a new husband. This dominated her relations with Elizabeth throughout the early to mid-1560s. In contrast to Elizabeth, the Queen of Scots viewed the position of unmarried female ruler as something undesirable and, therefore, temporary. The English ambassador in Scotland attributed Mary’s increasingly frequent bouts of melancholy to her unsatisfied longing for a husband.90 The sooner she could find a man to share the burden of monarchy with her, the better. The choice that she made was naturally of intense interest to her cousin south of the border. If she married a prince of Spain or France, then England would find herself in a potentially dangerous position, threatened with invasion by Catholic potentates just across her northern border, rather than over the seas as they were now. It was therefore vital that Elizabeth have some say over the husband her cousin should take. To secure this, she used Mary’s desire for the English succession as a bargaining tool. Even though in reality Elizabeth had little intention of naming the Scottish queen her heir, it was enough to convince Mary that she must consult her cousin on the question of her marriage.

  Various candidates were put forward, including the Archduke Charles of Austria, whom the English queen strongly disapproved of due to the fact that he was still in theory one of her own suitors. He was also “in the Emperor’s lineage,” and as such constituted a grave threat to Elizabeth if he were to marry her Scottish cousin. She found Philip II’s son Don Carlos equally unacceptable, and also the young French king, Charles IX. Randolph predicted that if Mary persisted in favoring such candidates, it “must needs bring a manifest danger to the private amity betwixt the Queens, an apparent occasion to dissolve the concord that is presently between the two nations, and an interruption of such a course as otherwise might be taken to further and advance such right or title as [Mary] might have to succeed [Elizabeth] in the crown of England.”91 Instead Elizabeth tried to steer her cousin toward an English husband, “with whom her Majesty would more readily and more easily declare, that she inclines that failing of children of her own body, you might succeed to her crown.”92 Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, was suggested, along with the Duke of Norfolk. Then, in March 1564, Elizabeth put forward a quite extraordinary candidate: Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester—her own great favorite.

  Quite what the English queen was thinking in suggesting such a match for Mary has bemused both contemporaries and historians. Surely there could be no man in the world whom she would less desire to see married to her beautiful Scottish cousin, the woman of whom she was already intensely jealous? And yet she had suggested that the three of them live together at the English court, in what one historian describes as “a virtual ménage à trois.”93 Although Elizabeth may have taken the pragmatic view that it would be better to have a man loyal to herself on the Scottish throne than a Catholic potentate, given her personal antipathy toward Mary, it seems more likely that her promotion of Robert Dudley as a suitable husband was an act of petty revenge. She knew that when news had reached Scotland of the death of Dudley’s wife under suspicious circumstances four years earlier, Mary had quipped that the Queen of England was about to marry her “horse-keeper,”94 who had killed his wife in order to make way for her. Elizabeth had indeed seemed seriously to contemplate marrying Dudley, but she had abandoned such thoughts by the time she suggested him as a husband for Mary. Dudley, she said, was the man “whom she would have herself married, had she ever minded to take a husband. But being determined to end her life in virginity, she wished that the Queen her sister might marry him.”95 To put forward one of her own castoff suitors was therefore little short of an insult, particularly as he was well down the pecking order in the nobility of England. It was a ploy that Elizabeth had every confidence would be thrown out by her cousin.

  To her horror, the plan seemed to have backfired. True, Mary had been suitably insulted by her cousin’s proposal initially and had sent a pointed response that Elizabeth should look to her own marriage first. “She [Mary] wonders at the occasion of my sovereign’s stay [from marriage], as much for her years, the wise counsel about her, sought of so many as she has been, and may be when she will, matched with the greatest for herself,” reported Randolph. Mary claimed that “for herself, the remembrance of her late husband is yet so fresh, she cannot think of any other,” and added a final sideswipe at her cousin by saying: “Her years are not so many but she may abyde.”96 This reminder of the difference in their ages would have touched a raw nerve with the English queen, who was increasingly sensitive about her advancing years.

  Mary had a further tactic up her sleeve, and after a while, she decided to play Elizabeth at her own game by making a show of seriously considering Dudley as a husband. Sir Robert himself was apparently delighted by the idea, and wrote a number of “discreet and wise letters” to further his suit. The Queen of Scots duly professed to have “so good liking of him” that she was prepared to accept him as a consort. When Elizabeth heard of this, she was thrown into a panic. She had borne many sacrifices in her endeavor to become a great queen, but this was too much. Her horror at the prospect that Dudley might actually marry her cousin proved that the whole scheme had been a sham.

  Elizabeth need not have worried. The suitor whom Mary favored was not Dudley but Darnley. The latter’s mother had been working ceaselessly to bring this about. Lady Margaret Douglas had been present during Melville’s visit to court in 1564, having been released with her husband early in the previous year. Elizabeth was gracious in her acceptance of their humble apology and showed the couple a great deal of courtesy. “My Lord and Lady Lennox are continual courtiers, and made much of,” reported one observer.97 The Queen invited them to accompany her on progress, and they were joined by their eldest son. Lord Darnley was apparently high in favor with the Queen, who affectionately referred to him as “yonder long lad.” He carried the sword before her on official occasions and entertained her with music and compliments. “My Lord Darnley … is also a daily waiter and playeth very often at the lute before the Queen, wherein it should seem she taketh pleasure, as indeed he plays very well,” an onlooker remarked.98

  But this show of favor was fooling nobody—least of all the countess. She was under no illusions about Elizabeth’s opinion of her, and, for her own part, she had far from given up the scheme to marry Darnley to the Scottish queen. Her confidence was boosted when, in the autumn of 1564, she learned that her husband had succeeded in reclaiming his estates in Scotland, which had been forfeited in 1545 when he had tried to advance Henry VIII’s cause there. With Lennox back in favor at the Scottish court, the way was now clear for Mary to take his son as her second husband.

  Lady Margaret was encouraged in her plans by Melville’s visit to court in 1564. Although masquerading as an official diplomatic mission, he had secret instructions to confer privately with the Countess of Lennox about the proposed match between her son and his royal mistress. He found Margaret all graciousness and charm. “She was a very wise and discreet matron,” he recalled in his memoirs, and went on to relate that she had sent “many good advices” to Mary, along with various tokens, including “a ring with a fair diamond,” for she was “still in good hope” that the marriage would come to pass.99

  Buoyed by her secret conference with Melville, Lady Margaret petitioned the Queen to allow Lord Darnley to go to Scotland, ostensibly to visit his father and take possession of his newly regained estates. Elizabeth knew full well what the real intention of such a visit would be and refrained from giving her cousin an answer while she considered it. It seems that she did briefly entertain the idea of Darnley marrying the Queen of Scots: At least he was a known quantity, and one whom Elizabeth could control through his mother. She also hoped “that he [Darnley] being a handsome lusty youth, should rather prevail, being present, than Leicester who was absent.”100 She duly gave him leave to go to Scotland in February 1565.

  No sooner had Darnley embarked, however, than the Queen seemed to have second thoughts. Infl
uenced by her councillors, who cautioned her about the danger of an alliance that would only serve to bolster Mary’s claim to the English throne, she may also have heard that her archenemy King Philip of Spain had pledged his support to the marriage. In early June, he had written to his envoy at Elizabeth’s court: “The bridegroom and his parents being good Catholics and our affectionate servitors; and considering the Queen’s good claims to the crown of England, to which Darnley also pretends, we have arrived at the conclusion that the marriage is one that is favourable to our interests and should be forwarded and supported to the full extent of our power.”

  In panic, Elizabeth sent word expressly forbidding Darnley from marrying the Scottish queen, claiming that it would be “unmeet, unprofitable, and perilous to the sincere amity between Queens and their realms.”101 She also ordered both him and his father to return to England at once. When this went unanswered, she had Lady Margaret placed under house arrest at Whitehall, “where she may be kept from giving or receiving intelligence.”102 Then, in late July, came the news that Mary and Darnley were married. Hearing that her son was now king of Scots was as joyful to Margaret as it was abhorrent to her cousin. Elizabeth had never seriously entertained the idea of their union, and now the implications of it filled her with horror. In her rage, she was determined to take revenge upon the woman she knew to be the architect of it all. The Countess of Lennox was thrown into the Tower once more, accused of having “deceitfully asked leave for her son to go to Scotland,” which had made the Queen “justly indignant.” Elizabeth then sent word to Margaret’s husband and son, reminding them of “the hard case of the Lady Margaret, now in the Tower, whose wellbeing must depend upon their behaviour there.”103