Elizabeth (41 page)

Realizing he was on the verge of permanently alienating his greatest ally, Devereux left Ireland, against orders, to go back to London and make his case to the Queen in person. He arrived at Nonsuch Palace on 28 September. Fortunately he had been persuaded not to return with a large part of his army, which he had considered in order to intimidate his enemies. However, he did make the rash decision to go straight to Elizabeth’s bedchamber, even though she had only just got out of bed, where he found her in a loose robe, without make-up or wig. She sent him off to gain the time to prepare herself. When he returned and tried to explain his Irish campaign, Elizabeth refused to be placated. He was put under arrest and sent to the Lord Keeper at York House.

As if to rub salt in his wounds, Devereux’s previous rival (though now friend) and one of his junior officers, Charles Blount, was given the task of carrying out the campaign in Ireland. He proved astonishingly good at it, so that in December 1600, Elizabeth wrote him a jokey letter of appreciation. In a previous note, Blount had likened himself to a young servant girl trying to clean out a kitchen. Elizabeth carried on the theme, including a snide reference to Devereux: ‘Mistress Kitchenmaid … with your frying pan and other kitchen stuff have brought to this last home [imprisonment or death] more rebels, and passed greater breakneck places than those that promised more and did less.’
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She went on to say that he had pleased her by following her orders to the letter. He proved himself worthy of her trust. In March 1603, just after the Queen’s death, Blount, now 8th Baron
Mountjoy, finally defeated the Irish rebels and received the submission of O’Neill.

Meanwhile, Devereux, stuck in York House, belatedly realized that he had pushed the Queen too far and claimed he was ill. Elizabeth, as she had done with Robert Dudley when he had a diplomatic illness after they argued, sent doctors. A reconciliation seemed possible – Devereux wrote a grovelling letter of apology, which she accepted, but rather than being freed he was placed under house arrest at Essex House on the Strand. It was three months before he was allowed to move about freely, although he could still not come to Court.

Denied access to the Queen and stripped of his posts, Devereux faced financial ruin. He had lost his monopoly in sweet wines – Elizabeth decided to keep it for herself; if he deserved well of her, he might get it back. Devereux could not accept this. Her actions were, he said, ‘as crooked as her carcase’.
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His friends, chiefly his sister, Penelope Devereux, Lady Rich (who, despite being married, was having an affair with Charles Blount), Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, and Sir Christopher Blount, his stepfather, encouraged him to plan a coup d’etat whereby he would seize the Queen, declare James VI of Scotland the official heir, dismiss and imprison all those advisers he believed were his enemies, place his own men as Elizabeth’s Council, and rule as her chief minister and adviser – a sort of Lord Protector. As Devereux’s supporters were all in debt, a successful coup would assure them of much-needed patronage.

In a Shakespearian show of hubris, on 7 September 1600, Devereux’s supporters hired the Globe theatre and paid to have the Shakespeare play
Richard II
performed, with its message that a noble man might overthrow a weak and corrupt king. Elizabeth heard of this and on 8 February 1601 sent some of her Councillors
to Essex House to try to ascertain Devereux’s plans. In a moment of panic, he ordered that the delegation be locked in the library.

With Elizabeth at Whitehall, he then tried to start an uprising, riding through Temple Bar shouting that there was a plot against the Queen and him, and beseeching Londoners to rise and support him. Unfortunately for his plans, a royal herald rode after him, proclaiming him a traitor. No one rose in support of the usurper. He retreated to Essex House, where he was arrested that evening by Charles Howard (Lord Howard of Effingham).

On 19 February 1601, he was tried for treason in the Star Chamber, and despite Elizabeth’s fluctuating fondness for him, the outcome was a foregone conclusion and he was condemned. Elizabeth signed his death warrant, and on 25 February 1601, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, was executed at the Tower at the age of 35. Devereux’s death seemed to cause a change in the Queen. Although he had often been frustrating, foolhardy and pig-headed, Elizabeth never completely recovered from his loss. Now nearly at the end of her life, it was said she complained that she had no one she could trust. She lost interest in her clothes and began to lose weight, lose her temper over nothing and swear more frequently. A gentleman of the Court wrote, ‘Her delight is to sit in the dark and, sometimes with shedding of tears, to bewail Essex.’
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Elizabeth and Devereux had a turbulent relationship, but he clearly had a special place in her heart. Given the events of his life, it seems unlikely that he was Elizabeth’s child, but the timing of his birth does not exclude the idea. It is known that on 12 April 1566, seven months before Robert Devereux was born, Robert Dudley rode into London with 700 footmen wearing his livery and that of the Queen. He went to the house of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, opposite St Swithin’s churchyard, where he waited. At the
same time, Elizabeth left Greenwich by water in a small boat, attended by two of her ladies-in-waiting, and landed at the Three Cranes on the riverbank by St Paul’s Cathedral. There a coach was waiting to take the Queen to St Swithin’s.

Sadly, Robert Dudley and his entourage, having waited for her, had already gone. The Queen’s carriage set off for Greenwich and passed Robert and his men waiting at the roadside. It was reported, ‘… she came out of her coach in the highway and she embraced the Earl and she kissed him three times.’
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He got into the coach with her and they went to Greenwich together. One explanation for this odd outing to meet privately at a church could be that Elizabeth had found herself pregnant and they had agreed to enter into a form of marriage that would protect and legalize their child.

Whether or not Robert Devereux was the child of the Queen, it is quite plausible that his stepfather, Robert Dudley, was actually his father. His mother, Lettice Knollys, had an affair with Robert in 1566, which preceded their later affair in the 1570s. They later married after her first husband died. It may be notable that Walter Devereux called his eldest son Robert, which was not a family name, saving the name Walter for his second son. Robert Devereux’s secretary, Henry Wotton, indicated not only that relations between Walter and Robert Devereux were not particularly warm, but that the son had been warned against Robert Dudley:

The young Devereux would have heard the whispers that Robert Dudley favoured him for a reason that slandered his mother’s morals, but in time Lettice managed to win him round and he accepted Robert’s patronage.

For his part, Robert did his best to promote Devereux during his life (he died when Devereux was 22 years old). The year before his death, Robert Dudley asked Elizabeth if his post of Master of the Horse could be given to Devereux. The Queen refused, as she said she had no greater post for Robert to take in exchange. He cheerfully told her that he desired no such post, just that his protégé should take his place (with the attendant £1,500 per year salary). When Robert died, Elizabeth followed his wishes and gave his stepson, or son, the post of Master of the Horse, with all its associations that were so dear to her heart.

A
lthough in the later years of her rule and after her death Elizabeth’s virginity attained an almost mythical status, contributing to an image of a pure queen devoted to her people, evidence seems to support the fact that the Virgin Queen image was a myth. In reality, Elizabeth may have enjoyed sexual relations with at least one man out of wedlock. She may have flirted with her numerous suitors, including Thomas Seymour at an early age, but her extremely close relationship with Robert Dudley when they were both in their twenties seems to point to something deeper and more intimate between them.

Given the flurries of rumours, the fact that their rooms were adjoining wherever they stayed and that they were often together alone, it is hard to imagine that Robert and Elizabeth did not consummate their relationship. It is, of course, a matter of speculation as to what that exactly might have entailed – perhaps they stopped short of vaginal intercourse. However, as certain evidence also points to the existence of a secret child borne of their relationship, it is likely that Elizabeth was not only sexually active, but a mother as well.

In Hampton Court Palace hangs a portrait of a lady with long auburn hair worn loose on her shoulders. She is dressed in Persian
costume, with a tall hat, a gold scarf and a full gown embroidered with fruits, flowers and birds. She is pregnant. Around her neck is a fine chain, from which hangs a ring. She stands in front of a tree with one hand resting on the crowned head of a weeping stag. On the tree trunk are the words
Iniusti justa querla
(‘A just complaint to the unjust’) and
Mea sic mihi
(‘Mine thus to me’), and beside the head of the stag,
Dolor est medicina ad(ju)tori
(‘Grief is the medicine for help’). The artist was Marcus Gheeraerts, court painter to Elizabeth from 1568 to 1577, or possibly his successor and son who bore the same name. At the bottom is a painted panel with a verse:

There have been attempts to identify the lady as Elizabeth I on the grounds that the picture has been in the royal collection since certainly the time of Charles I and, more importantly, that it may have originally been titled ‘Queen Elizabeth in Fancy Dress’. That the lady in the picture resembles some of the portraits of Elizabeth
also seems to support this thesis. However, if that is the case, it seems to contradict Elizabeth’s normal behaviour in every way – to commission a portrait while pregnant is hardly the act of a lady, moreover a member of royalty, desiring to keep that pregnancy a secret.

The imagery of the painting is typical of the Tudor period, when various elements of the picture had symbolic importance: the chosen costume, plants, animals and colours all had significance. Here one of the main items of interest is the verse. The speaker is deeply disturbed by something that has gone wrong in their life; the silent tears of a crowned and weeping stag mirror their sighs. They have not been able to place ‘fruit’ in the family tree, and will continue to mourn that ‘… this be all the fruit my love tree bears’.

Yet the woman in the portrait does not look particularly sad – and she is clearly well advanced in pregnancy. Unless the sitter chose to have a portrait made showing her in the late stages of an imagined pregnancy or one of a number of pregnancies that ended in the death of the child, there has to be another explanation.

The imagery and verse could work together if the author of the poem was a man, one who had been married several times, but who has failed to have any children by his first wife or wives. The crowned stag represents his manhood, silently weeping despite his rank (symbolized by the crown), and lacking an heir. Still he rails against his unjust fate. In his grief, he marries again to the lady in the portrait – the ‘medicine’. In the tree, to the right of the woman’s face, at least two fruits hang. In this interpretation, the portrait is a celebration of the wife who was able to give her husband an heir after many years of childlessness.

The portrait, which is almost certainly not of Elizabeth, typifies much of the kind of ‘evidence’ put forward to support the idea that Elizabeth bore an illegitimate child. However, this type of evidence
neglects to bear in mind that Elizabeth would have strove hard to keep such a child’s existence secret rather than draw attention to it.