House Of Treason: The Rise And Fall Of A Tudor Dynasty (32 page)

Norfolk gave her a rich diamond as a token of his love and she later described it as something ‘I have always held very dear, having been given to me . . . as a pledge, of his troth, and I have always worn it as such’.
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The duke became despondent about his chances of marriage and uneasy that the couple’s covert correspondence could be revealed. He wrote to the Earl of Moray on 1 July declaring that he could not ‘with honour proceed further till such time as you should remove all stumbling blocks to our more apparent proceedings’.

However, Moray was also having second thoughts about the match. Could Mary seek immediate restoration to the throne of Scotland? Would he therefore have to flee for his life and live in exile overseas? Would Norfolk use his wife’s claim to the English crown to destroy that fledgling Protestant state? Fatally, and treacherously, he sent Elizabeth a copy of the duke’s letter announcing his intention to marry Mary.

Three times during a royal progress that summer she had asked Norfolk to confirm his marriage plans with Mary Queen of Scots. Three times he could not summon up the courage to reveal his projected match to Elizabeth. Once, when they dined alone at her invitation, ‘she gave him a nip, saying, “that she would wish me to take a good head to my pillow”’. This ‘abashed’ him, but he ‘thought it not a fit time or place there to trouble her’.
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Leicester, pursuing his own political agenda, assured Norfolk that the queen would surely accept his proposals if she heard them from her special favourite, the earl himself. Like a gullible fool, Norfolk believed him.

Leicester was lying on his sick bed at Titchfield in Hampshire on 6 September when he told Elizabeth. The words had scarcely escaped his trembling lips when he was treated to a vintage Tudor tantrum. The queen furiously forbade any idea of such a marriage and, later that day in the gallery, solemnly charged Norfolk, on his allegiance to her, ‘to deal no further with the Scottish cause’. She commanded him ‘to free himself of it, for the sake [of the] fidelity and loyalty which he ought to bear unto his sovereign’.
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He hastily assured Elizabeth that he ‘had a very slight regard’ for Mary and that her rank and the fortunes of the Scottish crown meant nothing to him.

With the flawed, foolish pride that was part and parcel of the Howard genes, he went too far in his hurried reassurances. The duke boasted cheerfully that his revenues ‘were not much less than those of Scotland . . . and when he was in his tennis court at Norwich, he thought himself equal with some kings’. This was not a sentiment to calm the proud and always parsimonious queen and he soon found himself shunned, if not completely ostracised, at court.

Elizabeth, meanwhile, wrote to Mary’s jailers on 15 September warning them of a possible attempt to rescue her from captivity.

Norfolk decided that a spell in the country would allow time for things to quieten down at court, particularly after receiving a warning from Leicester that he was destined for the Tower.
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He wrote to Cecil and Leicester after hearing that the queen planned to go to Windsor, ‘whither her pleasure is he should repair. At my coming to Howard House, I found myself disposed to an ague, (malarial fever) [which] to avoid I took a purgative yesterday which continued working even this night in my bed . . . I am afraid to go into the air so soon. But within four days, I will not fail to come to court.’
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Then Norfolk suddenly panicked. He left London without permission and arrived at Kenninghall, still sick with fever. From there, he wrote a long letter to Elizabeth, seeking to excuse his impulsive departure.

He thought it ‘good to withdraw’ to win time to write ‘this humble declaration’ to his sovereign and protested ‘on my honour’ that he never dealt in the case of the Scottish queen ‘further than I declared’.
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Elizabeth was becoming impatient - and increasingly suspicious about what the duke was up to. Was his disappearance sinister? Would he become a figurehead in a rebellion by her disaffected Catholic subjects in the northern counties? Her fears of revolt had led her to seek the protection of the high walls of Windsor Castle.

From there, she issued categorical instructions to Norfolk on 25 September to come immediately to court:

The queen commanded him ‘without delay, upon sight of this letter’ to ‘repair to us here at this our castle of Windsor, or wherever we shall be’ upon ‘your allegiance’.
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As ill luck for the house of Howard would have it, the duke never received this royal charge - or so he claimed.

Suspicions over Norfolk’s loyalty and intentions multiplied at court. There were fears that his popularity might spark disorder if he was arrested and trigger the very insurrection the queen most feared. On 26 September, the Council sent a circular letter to lord lieutenants explaining the position:

The circular’s honeyed words hastened to stress that ‘we know not of any manner of intent in him but that which belongs to an honourable person and a just and true servant to the queen’s majesty’. Indeed, Elizabeth was anxious to avoid ‘such a nobleman [being] abused with unkind reports’ and so has sent for Norfolk ‘to repair to here, as is most likely he will’.

On 28 September, there still was no sign of Norfolk at Windsor and he used his sickness to explain his tardiness. Elizabeth was more than exasperated and wrote again to the duke:

Elizabeth’s anger then boiled over. As she dictated her letter, she did not mince her words.

The same day, Cecil, who was playing his own canny game of politics, wrote to Norfolk in a more persuasive tone. The minister was ‘grieved at your sickness, so I was glad to see your resolve . . . to come to her majesty according to her commandment which was very earnest and strait, according to her majesty’s special direction’. Norfolk, he said soothingly, should not be troubled by the reports of any offence being taken by Elizabeth, and he trusted that nothing more would come of the affair but mere words - or at worst a temporary banishment from her presence. Cecil could not resist adding a pointed postscript:

On 30 September, Norfolk acknowledged the receipt of the latest angry missive from Elizabeth, but still reported in sick, ‘whereby I am not able to attend on her majesty according to my bounden duty. My desire is that you give her majesty to understand thereof and to make my humble excuse. [As] soon as I may, without peril of further sickness, I shall wait upon her, before Monday or Tuesday at the furthest.’
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Amazingly - or perhaps his fever really was bad - Norfolk did not set off for Windsor until 1 October, with a deliberately small retinue of thirty riders, sleeping overnight at Newmarket, and taking the journey by easy stages.
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On arrival at Windsor, he was arrested on suspicion of treason and taken by Sir Francis Knollys to the Tower of London. There, he was confined in the very same rooms occupied by his grandfather during his imprisonment between 1546 and 1553.

While he mused at this unfortunate coincidence, or indeed his family’s all too frequent stays in the Tower, a virulent propaganda pamphlet was published in London attacking any marriage between Norfolk and Mary Queen of Scots.

Its author was almost certainly the Calvinistic Francis Walsingham, later to become Elizabeth’s frighteningly proficient Secretary of State and the adept organiser of a pervasive intelligence network at home and overseas.
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The polemic
Discourse Touching the Pretended Match Between the Duke of Norfolk and the Queen of Scots
was aimed at the enthusiastic and receptive audience of England’s Protestants. Mary, it declared, was in league

Norfolk’s religious beliefs were unctuously left to ‘God and his own conscience’. But, said the book, poison oozing from every page, he was inconsistent and inconstant in his Protestant beliefs, as shown by five reasons:

Was it likely, asked Walsingham, raising the phantom of the murdered Darnley, that any man who professed religious belief or respected honour, ‘or regards his own safety, would match with one detected of so horrible crimes in respect of love?’ The Scottish queen could solemnly swear on oath that she posed no threat to Elizabeth or ‘confirm anything that may tend to the queen’s safety’ but, the pamphlet added ferociously, ‘If she [falsifies] her faith, no pleading will serve. The sword must be the remedy.’
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