Elizabeth's Women

by Tracy Borman

  In fact, Bess had known nothing of her granddaughter’s transgressions. True, she had hoped that the girl might one day inherit the throne, but this was to be achieved by persuading Elizabeth to name her as heir, not by conspiring behind the Queen’s back. When Brouncker arrived at Hatfield and told Bess that he was commanded by the Queen to question Arbella, the countess was taken aback, having no idea what on earth her granddaughter could have done. The fact that Elizabeth had ordered her to be kept in ignorance made her panic that she herself was under suspicion, but Brouncker assured her of the Queen’s goodwill. “The old lady took such comfort at this message as I could hardly keep her from kneeling,” he reported. Bess herself wrote to thank the Queen shortly afterward: “When I considered your Majesty’s great wisdom in it, I did in my heart most humbly thank your Majesty for commanding that course to be taken,” she wrote. “These matters were unexpected of me, being altogether ignorant of her vain doings, as on my salvation and allegiance to your Majesty I protest.”67

  For once, Bess’s loyalty to the Queen won out over her dynastic ambition. She was so “wonderfully afflicted” when she heard of Arbella’s plot and “took it so ill” that it was all Brouncker could do to stop her beating the girl. Meanwhile, he informed Arbella that she was under suspicion of treason, and observed: “it seemed by the coming and going of her colour that she was somewhat troubled, yet (after a little pause) she said that the matter was very strange to her; she was much grieved that your Highness should conceive an ill opinion of her.” At first Arbella denied having written to the Earl of Hertford and was very “obstinate and wilful” in all of her answers. Eventually, though, she realized that it was futile to maintain the pretense and promised to tell Brouncker everything on condition that he would “promise to conceal it from her grandmother.” However, as she began to relate her version of events, her interrogator found that it was “done so confusedly with words so far from the purpose as I knew not what to make of it.” He therefore told Arbella to prepare a written confession instead. This was hardly more coherent. “When I read it, I perceived it to be confused obscure and in truth ridiculous. I told her it was not a letter fit for me to carry, nor for your Highness to read … She wrote again and little better than before, which made me believe that her wits were somewhat distracted either with fear of her grandmother or conceit of her own folly.”68

  Brouncker eventually concluded that there was no conspiracy and that the whole sorry episode had been sparked by the wild imaginings of a troubled mind. Bess’s reaction made it clear that she’d had neither knowledge nor involvement in it. Desperate to prove her loyalty, upon his departure she “fastened a purse full of gold on me in honour of your Majesty,” and it was only with great difficulty that he was able to persuade her to take it back. Nevertheless, the countess was still determined to make Elizabeth realize that she had played no part in the reckless scheme and therefore wrote to her again, declaring her intention to disown “this unadvised young woman.” “I am desirous and most humbly beseech your Majesty that she may be placed elsewhere, to learn to be more considerate,” she pleaded, “and after that it may please your Majesty either to accept of her service about your royal person or to bestow her in marriage, which in all humility and duty I do crave of your Majesty for I cannot now assure myself of her as I have done.” In another letter, she declared: “For my own part, I should have little care how meanly soever she were bestowed so as it were not offensive to your Highness.”69

  The fact that Bess was thus prepared to relinquish all her long-cherished ambitions for Arbella and hand her over to the Queen to do with her what she wished proves the strength of her loyalty. In case her royal mistress remained in any doubt, she added a heartfelt expression of her devotion: “I will not respect my trouble or charge to do your Majesty any service that shall lie in me during life.”70 Her words seemed to work the desired effect, for Elizabeth sent word that she “remains satisfied with your proceedings, nothing appearing in them but fullness of care to prevent inconveniences and desire to accomplish in all things her Majesty’s pleasure.” She later wrote to Bess in person: “I assure you, there is no Lady in this land that I better love and like.”71 So great was the Queen’s trust in her old servant that she gave her responsibility to insure that Arbella did not step out of line again. At her instruction, Bess was effectively required to spy on her own granddaughter and report back anything untoward.72

  For Bess, this was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, she was overjoyed that Elizabeth had shown such trust in her, but on the other she found the prospect of continuing to live with “this inconsiderate young woman” utterly distasteful. Nevertheless she declared: “What it shall please her Majesty to command me, to the uttermost of my power I will do my best service, though it be to the shortening of my days … Even to the last hour of my life I shall think myself happy to do any acceptable service to her Majesty.”73 She would be as good as her word. If the Queen had wished to test her loyalty, she soon had ample proof of it. Within weeks of accepting her commission, Bess was reporting her suspicions that Arbella “had some other like matter in hand.” In her paranoid state, the countess seized upon the slightest look or word from her granddaughter as a sign that she was plotting again. Before long, the strain was starting to take its toll. “The old lady groweth exceedingly weary of her charge, beginneth to be weak and sickly by breaking her sleep, and cannot long continue this vexation,” reported Brouncker.74

  Elizabeth continued to suspect that there had been more people involved, but her attitude to Arbella was surprisingly sympathetic. “In the observation of the root from whence this motive sprung in the lady [Arbella], she [the Queen] doth perceive that some base companions, thinking it pleasing to her youth and sex to be sought in marriage, were content to abuse her with a device that the Earl of Hertford had a purpose to match his grandchild with her.”75 Such leniency could hardly have been expected, given the severity of the Queen’s treatment of the other rivals to the throne, notably the Grey sisters, when their secret plots were uncovered. Perhaps it was thanks to Bess’s influence with Elizabeth that she chose to forgive her granddaughter so easily.

  In January 1603, when she heard that the Queen had decided to pardon her misdemeanors, Arbella wrote a letter of heartfelt thanks from “Your Majesties most humble and dutifull handmaid,” urging: “I humbly prostrate my selfe at your Majesties feete craving pardon for what is passed and out of your Princely clemency to signify your Majesties most gratious remission to me by your Highnesse letter to my Lady my Grandmother whose discomfort I shall be till then.”76 This was probably dictated by Bess, who was far more conscious than her wayward granddaughter just how narrowly she had escaped punishment.

  Arbella, meanwhile, seemed to be slipping ever further into insanity. Just a few days after writing her letter of humble submission to the Queen, she wrote another declaring that she was betrothed in secret to “some one near and in favour with Her Majesty,” but refused to reveal his identity.77 Elizabeth was taking no chances and sent Brouncker back to Hardwick to interrogate the young woman. Arbella eventually confessed that her secret lover was the already married James VI, whom she had never met. She then wrote a petulant letter to the court, declaring: “It was convenient her Majesty should see and believe what busy bodies, untrue rumours, unjust practices, colourable and cunning devices are in remote parts among those whom the world understands to be exiled from her Majesty’s presence, undeservedly.”78 In the meantime, she went on a virtual hunger strike in order to draw further attention to her claims. If she thereby hoped to persuade Elizabeth to invite her back to court, she was sadly mistaken. The Queen merely ordered that the security at Hardwick be increased in order to prevent any further attempts at escape.

  Tormented by her confinement and goaded by her grandmother’s constant reproofs, Arbella’s mental state was hardly strong enough to withstand the shocking event that took place in February, when her old chaplain and tutor, John Starkey, was discovered
with his throat cut. It was rumored that he had killed himself because he was plagued with guilt about the part he had played in his protégée’s intrigues. Driven mad with fear and grief, Arbella wrote at once to her interrogator, Sir Henry Brouncker. “If you thinck to make me weary of my life and so conclude it according to Mr Starkey’s tragicall example, you are deceived,” she railed. “I hope it is not hir Majesties meaning nor your delusive dealing, and sure I am it is neither for hir Majestie’s honour nor your creditt, I shall be thus dealt withal … I recommend my innocent cause and wrongfully wronged and wronging frende to your consideration and God’s holy protection … For all men are liers.”79

  The more Arbella ranted, the less of a threat she appeared to the court back in London. The chances of this reckless, half-mad woman ever succeeding to the throne seemed more remote than ever. “We are very sorry to find by the strange style of the Lady Arbella’s letters that she hath her thoughts no better quieted,” the lords of the council wrote to Brouncker on March 14, “especially considering her Majesty’s own ready inclination … to have taken no other course with her than was expressed by our first joint letter.” A few days later, their agent confirmed that Arbella “hath neither altered her speech nor behaviour. She is certain in nothing but in her uncertainty.” It was clear that he was growing increasingly exasperated with his charge, for he confided to Cecil that her “wilfulness … is much greater and more peremptory than before … I find her so vain and idle as I seldom trouble her … all her words and actions are so contrary to reason as no man can divine aright of her.”80

  Deranged though she now was, Arbella was lucid in one thought at least, and that was her urgent desire to escape from Hardwick. Brouncker noted that she “desireth liberty,” and told his masters: “I persuade her to patience and conformity, but nothing will satisfy her but her remove from her grandmother, so settled is her mislike of the old lady.” Shortly after Brouncker wrote this, Arbella made a desperate attempt to flee from her grandmother’s clutches. This caused some alarm at the court in London, where it was feared that a conspiracy was afoot. But there is little evidence to support this, and the ill-planned nature of Arbella’s attempt suggests that she was the only one involved. Although it was reported that Elizabeth intended to have Arbella imprisoned at Woodstock Palace, just as she herself had been during her half sister’s reign, the young woman remained under her grandmother’s care at Hardwick.

  Arbella was the last of the female claimants to Elizabeth’s throne, and like all her predecessors, she ultimately found her royal blood a curse. Not only did she fail to learn from their example, but she disregarded her own previous experience and entered time and again into such reckless courses that her downfall was more due to self-destruction than to any external forces. The irony is that if Arbella had not been so foolhardy as to conspire to marry Seymour and escape from Hardwick during Elizabeth’s last months, but had instead bided her time, she would probably have stood a much greater chance of advancement in the next reign. As it was, her highly strung nature combined fatally with her romantic delusions to ensure that she, too, would join the ranks of Elizabeth’s tragic rivals.

  CHAPTER 16

  “The Sun Now Ready to Set”

  Although in the later years of her reign Elizabeth had started to lose her grip on the affairs of the court, she enjoyed good health almost until the end. She still rode in the hunt, enjoyed her accustomed long walks “as if she had been only eighteen years old,” and danced energetically until well into her sixties. In January 1599, a Spanish visitor to the court observed with some astonishment that after a feast held there one evening, the Queen “was to be seen in her old age dancing three or four gaillards.” The following year, she insisted upon going on progress, ignoring the entreaties of her councillors. “Her Majesty byds the old stay behynd, and the young and able to goe along with her,” reported Rowland Whyte. Even as late as February 1603, Scaramelli observed with some astonishment that the Queen “is in excellent health, as I hear on all sides, and in perfect possession of all her senses.”1

  But even this formidable monarch could not defy time forever. Her courtiers continued to flatter her, but she no longer paid any heed to their compliments, realizing at last—as they had done some years before—that she was a “crooked old woman.” It was perhaps this that hastened the Queen’s decline. According to one account, she called for a looking glass for the first time in twenty years, and upon seeing her face “lean and full of wrinkles,” she “fell presently into exclayming against those which had so much commended her, and took it so offensively, that some which before had flattered her, dourst not come into her sight.” Thereafter, she was “extreame oppressed” with a deep melancholy.2

  In her grief, Elizabeth sought peace away from society, closeting herself in her privy chamber with just a few favored ladies. “She has suddenly withdrawn into herself, she who was wont to live so gaily, especially in these last years of her life,” observed Giovanni Scaramelli, the Venetian envoy to England. In late 1602, Sir John Harington paid a visit to court and remarked sadly that his godmother was “a lady shut up in a chamber from her subjects and most of her servants, and seldom seen but on holy days.” He realized that he was one of the few who felt any sorrow at the steady decline of “this state’s natural mother,” for he added: “I finde some lesse mindfulle of whate they are soone to lose, than of what they may perchance hereafter get.”3

  Elizabeth seemed to have lost all her former lust for life, and it was as if she had decided that it was time to give it up altogether. She would not be cheered by any of her courtiers. When Harington read her some verses that he had written in her honor, she told him: “When thou doste feele creepinge tyme at thye gate, these fooleries will please thee lesse; I am paste my relishe for such matters.” Even her favorite cousin, Sir Robert Carey, could do no better. As he later recounted, when he assured her that she looked to be in the best of health, she replied: “ ‘No, Robin, I am not well’ … and in her discourse she fetched not so few as forty or fifty great sighes … I used the best words I could to persuade her from this melancholy humour; but I found by her it was too deep rooted in her heart, and hardly to be removed.”4

  In January 1603, the Queen left the court in Whitehall and moved to Richmond Palace, her “warm box,” to which she could “best trust her sickly old age.”5 She was accompanied by a small entourage of her ladies. The gulf between Elizabeth and the wayward young maids of honor who entered her service had grown ever greater, as they fixed their sights upon the next regime. Women such as the Countess of Warwick, on the other hand, belonged to a generation that was quickly passing away. The countess had served Elizabeth for more than forty years and represented a treasured link with the ideals and traditions of Gloriana’s heyday. Perhaps it was for this reason that the Queen sought her company above all others during her final illness. The countess’s niece, Lady Anne Clifford, recalled that her aunt visited Elizabeth regularly when the latter took to her bed in March 1603. “My Lady used to goe often thither and caried me with hir in the coach,” she wrote. The young girl would wait in the outer chambers while Lady Warwick attended her royal mistress, often staying with her until “verie late.”6 Another of the Queen’s faithful servants was with her: Helena Gorges (née Snakenborg), whom Elizabeth had taken such a shine to when she had arrived from Sweden almost forty years before. Having been surrounded by her mother’s relatives throughout her reign, the Queen also made sure that one of them would be in attendance upon her now. The chosen lady was Philadelphia Scrope (née Carey), sister of Elizabeth’s former favorite, the Countess of Nottingham.

  The women who accompanied Elizabeth to Richmond hoped that the comforts of that palace would ease their mistress’s troubled state, but she continued to slip into a steady decline, and it soon became clear that it would be her final illness. Elizabeth, too, realized this and had apparently resolved to hasten her own end. “Shee refused to eate anie thing, to receive any phisicke, or admit any
rest in bedd,” reported one of those present. Her attendants began to despair as day after day she turned food and drink away, “holding her finger almost continually in her mouth, with her eyes open and fixed upon the ground, where she sat on cushions without rising or resting herself, and was greatly emaciated by her long watching and fasting.” Ever mistress of her own fate, she railed against her physicians when they tried to press their medicines upon her, and those around her began to suspect that she had simply decided to die. “The Queene grew worse, because she would be so, none about her being able to perswade her to go to bed,” recalled an exasperated Carey. John Manningham, another visitor to the palace, observed: “It seemes she might have lived yf she would have used meanes; but shee would not be persuaded, and princes must not be forced.”7

  In her increasing delirium, Elizabeth was haunted by strange apparitions. “She told a lady, one of the nearest about her person, that she had seen a bright flame about her, and asked her if she had not seen visions in the night,” reported the Countess of Warwick’s niece. Unnerved by this, and worn down by the strain of trying to care for their mistress, her ladies also began to imagine things of a supernatural nature. One of them was said to have left the Queen sleeping for a few moments in order to get some fresh air and had been surprised to encounter her mistress a few moments later. Fearing that she was about to receive a severe reprimand for leaving her alone, she hurried forward to present her excuses, and was aghast when the apparition “vanished away.” Upon returning to the royal bedchamber, she found the Queen still sleeping. At around the same time, two of her ladies discovered a queen of hearts playing card on the underside of a chair with a nail driven through the forehead, “which the Ladyes durst not then pull out, remembring that the like thing was reported to be used to others for witchcraft.”8