by Tracy Borman
But it seems that the English queen had no taste for detaining her cousin in the Tower this time, and by the end of 1574 Margaret was permitted to rejoin her son and daughter-in-law at Hackney. Her granddaughter, Arbella, was born shortly afterward. Margaret doted on the pretty red-headed child. She was one of the few comforts left to her. Heavily in debt, she was worried about her son, whose health had always been delicate and was now seriously declining. When he died in 1576 at the age of just twenty, his mother fell into a “languishing decay.”
Perhaps realizing that her own life was slipping away, Margaret was determined to do everything she could to safeguard the future of Arbella and her “sweet jewel,” James VI. She wrote to the latter, assuring him that he was her chief hope for the future. She also worked tirelessly to try to claim the earldom of Lennox for Arbella, but her efforts proved in vain. Pursuing her dynastic ambitions to the last, she died on March 9, 1578, aged sixty-two.
Elizabeth accorded her old adversary a funeral worthy of a countess of royal blood, and she was buried at Westminster Abbey in Henry VII’s chapel. Even in death, Margaret had wished her status to be recognized, for in her will she had left instructions for an elaborate tomb to be erected. However, having died in impoverishment, she had not been able to pay for it. The Queen agreed to meet the expense out of her own coffers, but it proved so great that the work was left half finished. Only when James VI ascended the English throne did he order its completion. Margaret would no doubt have been heartened by this act of reverence on the part of her grandson, the man who had, at last, brought her hard-fought dynastic ambitions to fruition.
It is unlikely that Elizabeth felt much regret at the death of the Countess of Lennox. Margaret had never ceased to scheme against the woman whose claim to the throne she always insisted was weaker than her own. All the various plots in which the countess had been involved over the years had given Elizabeth more than enough ammunition to have her executed for treason. And yet she had refrained from doing so; indeed, there is very little evidence to suggest that she had even contemplated it on any of the occasions when Margaret had been her prisoner. Perhaps, after all, she had a grudging respect for this formidable matriarch whose pride and ambition was so all-consuming that even three spells in the Tower could not dampen it.
The following month saw the death of another of the Queen’s troublesome cousins. Lady Mary Grey had finally been set “att free leberty” in 1572, following the death of her husband, Thomas Keyes, the previous year. With a modest income of £20 per year from her inheritance, together with a further £80 that the Queen had grudgingly agreed to give her, she had set herself up in a house of her own in Aldersgate, in the heart of the city of London.5 The Queen’s longest-serving attendant, Blanche Parry, had taken pity on the girl, and it was probably thanks to her intervention that Elizabeth had allowed Mary back at court in 1576. She visited there several times over the next two years and was invited to attend the Christmas celebrations at Hampton Court, when she presented her former royal mistress with “four dozen buttons of gold, each containing a seed pearl, and two pairs of sweet gloves”—a generous gift that must have stretched her meagre income. In return, the Queen gave her a silver cup.6
But Mary Grey was not destined to enjoy Elizabeth’s favor for long. She died on April 20, 1578, aged just thirty-four. She bequeathed various tokens to friends and kinswomen, including a “little gilt bowlle with a cover to it” for Blanche Parry, and “my juell of unicornes horne” to the Duchess of Suffolk.7 She left nothing to the Queen, and to the end of her days she signed herself “Mary Keyes.” It was a small act of defiance in a battle of wills that Elizabeth had easily won, but it showed that Mary had inherited at least some of the characteristic Tudor stubbornness.
The deaths of Mary Grey and Margaret Douglas afforded Elizabeth little respite from the plots and scandals that seemed to be forever erupting at her court. By far the greatest of these had already started to gain ground. It involved the countess’s goddaughter and the man whom the Queen regarded as her exclusive property: Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.
Lady Douglas Sheffield was the younger sister of Charles Howard, second Baron Howard of Effingham and first Earl of Nottingham. Her unusual first name may have been intended to honor Lady Margaret Douglas, although it is not clear why her last name instead of her first was used. Born around 1542, Douglas had been appointed a maid of honor to Elizabeth by the time of her coronation in January 1559. Her service in this capacity had been fleeting, however, for in 1560 she had left court to marry John Sheffield, second Baron Sheffield, who hailed from a distinguished noble family in Lincolnshire. Lady Douglas was by then sufficiently esteemed by her royal mistress for the latter to present her with a wedding gift. The couple had two surviving children, but their marriage was comparatively brief, for Lord Sheffield died in 1568, aged just thirty.
Douglas returned to court soon afterward and was appointed a gentlewoman extraordinary of the privy chamber. This was one of the less prestigious posts in Elizabeth’s household, for it was essentially a stand-in, to be called upon when the regular, salaried members were sick or otherwise absent. However, Douglas was present enough to draw the attention of Robert Dudley. At the time of her return to court, she was about twenty-six years of age and, by all accounts, strikingly attractive—“a lady of great beauties,” according to an account written by her seventeenth-century descendant Gervase Holles.8 Leicester was one of a number of admirers of the young widow, and with her family connections, she could have had the pick of them all. However, her fancy was very much taken by Sir Robert, and she encouraged his flirtation.
Holles alleged that their affair had started as early as 1566, when Dudley accompanied the Queen on progress to the Midlands. According to his account, among the places where they stayed was the Earl of Rutland’s Belvoir Castle, where Lord and Lady Sheffield came to pay their respects. He claimed that the “fayre young” Douglas “shone as a star in the Court, both in regard of hir beauty and the richness of her apparell,” and Sir Robert, “seeing hir and being much taken with hir perfections, he made his address of courtship to hir and used all the art that might be (in which he was maister enough) to debauch hir.”
Holles went on to claim that Douglas and Leicester fell so passionately in love that they resolved to do away with Lord Sheffield. Before they left Belvoir, Leicester “undertooke the charge of it,” and subsequently wrote to his new lover, “wherein after many amorous expressions he tolde hir he had not been unmindfull of removing that obstacle which hindered the full fruition of their contentments.” According to the account, Lord Sheffield subsequently discovered the affair when he intercepted one of Leicester’s “amorous” letters, and rode to London to confront his rival. When he died there a short while later, Holles was in no doubt that Leicester had poisoned him in an act of despicable “villainy.”9 But there was at this time a concerted campaign to blacken the earl’s character in order to prevent his marrying the Queen, and Sheffield’s death was one of several that were laid at Leicester’s door.10
In fact, apart from Holles’s account, there is little evidence that the affair between Leicester and Douglas had even begun by the time of Lord Sheffield’s death. It is more likely that they only became involved after Douglas had returned to court in 1568, and most accounts date the start of the affair to the early 1570s. In a letter he wrote to his lover, Leicester himself recalled the time “after your widowhood had began, upon the first occasion of my coming to you.”11 By 1573, the affair had become a source of gossip at court. In May, Gilbert Talbot wrote to his father, the Earl of Shrewsbury: “There are towe sisters nowe in ye Courte that are very farr in love with him, as they have bene longe; my Lady Sheffield and Frances Haworthe [Howard]; they (of like stryving who shall love him better) are at great warres together.”
Frances was Douglas’s younger sister, who would then have been around nineteen years old, whereas Douglas was in her midtwenties. Leicester was a notorious flirt and was
no doubt flattered by the attentions of two such beautiful young women, but at this time his attentions were very much focused upon securing the main prize at court: the Queen herself. In the same letter, Talbot reported that the earl “is very muche with her Majestie, and she sheweth the same great good affection to him that she was wonte; of late he hath indevored to please hir more than heretofore.” However, when the quarrel between Douglas and her sister grew so fierce that it attracted the Queen’s notice, she immediately demanded to know why they were so at odds. When told that it was because they were fighting over her own favorite, Elizabeth was gravely displeased. “The Quene thinketh not well of them, and not the better of him,” remarked Talbot, adding that “by this meanes there is spies over him.”12
The reference to Douglas having “bene longe” in love with Leicester suggests that their affair might have begun some time before her quarrel with her sister brought it to Elizabeth’s attention. The evidence suggests that Douglas had already become romantically involved with Leicester by at least 1570. In the early stages of the affair, she seemed content to be Leicester’s mistress, but for her, at least, attraction was mixed with love, and she no doubt hoped for more. Her lover felt rather differently. Gratified though he was by having one of the most beautiful ladies at court as his mistress, he was by no means prepared to sacrifice his favor with the Queen for her sake. When Douglas began to put pressure on him to marry, he wrote her a long letter reiterating what he had apparently told her at the start of their affair—that he could never take her as his wife. Although he assured her: “I have, as you well know, long both liked and loved you,” he explained that even by having an affair, he was risking “the ruin of my own house” if Elizabeth found out, and that if he took it any further, it would be “mine utter overthrow.” He continued: “If I should marry, I am sure never to have favour of them that I had rather yet never have wife than lose them.”13 He therefore offered her two choices: either to continue as his mistress, accepting that she could never be more, or to let him help her find a suitable husband from among her many admirers at court.
It seems that Douglas chose the former option, and they continued to meet “in a friendly sort and you resolved not to press me more with the matter,” as Leicester later recalled.14 However, she was far from satisfied with the arrangement, and her bitterness at Sir Robert’s refusal to marry her soon caused another row between them. Although she is often portrayed as a pushover, Douglas was a woman of some intelligence and spirit, prone to stormy outbursts and mood swings. It seems that she and Leicester separated for some months after this spat, Douglas having rejected her lover’s attempts to sweet-talk her into obeisance, crying out: “The good will I bare you had been clean changed and withdrawn.”15 They were reconciled some time after Douglas had quarrelled with her sister in May 1573. Perhaps the jealousy at her sister’s advances toward Leicester had made her realize that she was still in love with him herself.
It is also possible that Leicester had won Douglas back with a promise of marriage. Now aged forty, he was increasingly conscious of the need to produce an heir, and told his friend Lord North how much he wanted to have children with some “goodly gentlewoman.”16 Whether he had promised it or been persuaded by his lover, by the autumn of that year he had agreed to marry her. According to Douglas’s later testimony, the wedding took place some time between November 11 and December 25, 1573, at her family’s house at Esher, Surrey. There were at least three witnesses, although when it was later called into question, none of them would admit to having been present. Neither was there any documentary evidence, for Douglas would later claim that this had been stolen by her servants at Leicester’s behest.
Although it can never be proven beyond doubt unless further evidence comes to light, the testimony of Lady Sheffield, together with the events that followed, do suggest that the wedding was more than just a figment of her imagination. What is certain is that almost exactly nine months after it was alleged to have taken place, Douglas gave birth to a son, who was christened Robert, after his father. At the time, Leicester was away on progress with the Queen in Bristol, and when a messenger arrived with the news, he immediately wrote to congratulate Douglas on giving him a son who “might be the comfort and staff of their old age.” He signed the letter “Your loving husband,” which in itself would have been ample proof of their marriage, but this letter—like the other documentary evidence—was subsequently lost. Even though he denied the marriage, Leicester would acknowledge the boy as his, referring to him as “my base son.” The fact that he later left the bulk of his estates to him may have been a tacit admittance that he was not illegitimate after all.
Douglas had retired from court before her pregnancy became too obvious. For a time, she lived quietly at Esher and Leicester House, her husband’s London home, and was content to keep their marriage a secret. Her servants addressed her as “Countess,” although for discretion’s sake she refrained from using this title outside the privacy of her own home and continued to be referred to as “the Dowager Lady Sheffield.”17 Although there were rumors, Leicester had apparently succeeded in keeping the whole matter from his royal mistress and enjoyed even greater favor than he had before. Apparently choosing to forget the inconvenient fact that he already had a wife and son, he stepped up his attempts to marry Elizabeth. In 1575 he staged a spectacular series of entertainments for her when she visited his Warwickshire home, Kenilworth Castle, and besieged her with proposals. But while the Queen revelled in his attentions and at times seemed to be giving serious consideration to marrying him, she remained tantalizingly aloof and refused to commit.
In his frustration, Leicester turned his attentions to another lady at court who had caught his eye. Lettice Knollys was the wife of Walter Devereux, first Earl of Essex, and she and Leicester had enjoyed a prolonged flirtation. By now tiring of Douglas, and increasingly besotted with Lettice, Sir Robert decided to rid himself of the former. As Holles (who did not believe that they had married) rather brutally remarked: “According to the nature of all men who think basely of their prostitutes, after he had used hir body sometime and got a base sonne … of hir, [he] rejected hir.”18
The manner of her rejection was no less brutal. In 1578, some five years after their wedding had allegedly taken place, Leicester summoned Douglas to meet him in the gardens of Greenwich Palace. Having seen precious little of him since his affair with Lettice Knollys had begun, it was no doubt with some trepidation that she made her way to meet him. Upon arrival, she found that there were two other gentlemen in attendance, whom Leicester had commissioned to act as witnesses. Without preamble, he told her that their marriage was over and that she was released of all obligations to him. He then offered her £700 if she would deny all knowledge of the marriage and surrender custody of their young son. According to her own account, written a quarter century later, Douglas burst into tears and refused to countenance such a proposal. Leicester then lost his temper and shouted that the marriage had never been lawful anyway, spitefully adding that he “would never come at her again.” Devastated by his sudden rejection, and hardly able to come to terms with what he demanded, Douglas asked for more time to think about it. She eventually capitulated, no doubt realizing that if Leicester openly disavowed her, then her reputation would be in tatters and both her own and her son’s future ruined. It must have been a painful decision to relinquish custody of the boy, her sole source of comfort now that her husband had rejected her, but she appreciated that he would stand a much greater chance of advancement under Leicester’s patronage. According to her later account, however, she had given in more out of fear for her own safety than concern for her son. She claimed that her hair had recently begun to fall out, and she was therefore terrified that Leicester had plotted her death with “some ill potions.”19 There is little evidence to support her claim, and it is more likely to have been an attempt to damage the reputation of her former husband.
Despite the antipathy that now existed between
them, Leicester honored his promise to find Douglas another husband. The year after their separation, she married Edward Stafford, a diplomat, who was shortly afterward appointed Elizabeth’s envoy to France. He took his wife with him, which must have gratified Leicester, who seemed to have neatly avoided the Queen’s ever finding out about his relationship with Douglas. His optimism would soon prove spectacularly unfounded.
The lady who had so beguiled Leicester that he had cruelly spurned Douglas Sheffield was also a member of Elizabeth’s privy chamber. Lettice Knollys, the daughter of Elizabeth’s faithful servant and cousin, Katherine Knollys, was appointed a gentlewoman of the privy chamber in 1559, at the age of eighteen or nineteen. Her first period of service coincided almost exactly with that of her rival, Douglas Sheffield, for in December 1560 she married Walter Devereux, later Earl of Essex, and withdrew from court the following year. Over the next few years, she gave birth to five children in close succession. She still occasionally attended court and was certainly there in 1565, when heavily pregnant with her son, Robert, because the Spanish ambassador observed that Sir Robert Dudley was paying court to her.