The House of Tudor (47 page)

This was only the first of many similar exchanges between an increasingly anxious and importunate Parliament and an obstinately virgin Queen - only the first of many ‘answers answerless’. The reasons for Elizabeth’s determination to remain single have been exhaustively discussed over the centuries but, psychological speculation set aside, it seems that at twenty-five she had already faced and accepted the fact that, in the sixteenth-century world, marriage and a career could not be combined. Mary had always needed a man to lean on, but Elizabeth had learned to rely on herself by the time she was fifteen and was not now going to entrust her body or her soul to any man. This did not mean that she was not fully alive to all the advantages, both personal and political, of being the best match in her parish. She certainly exploited them for all they were worth with every appearance of keen enjoyment - giving her various swains just enough encouragement to keep them hopeful tor just as long as it happened to suit her.

One proposal she did reject out of hand - the one which came from, of all people, her former brother-in-law. Philip might be prepared to sacrifice himself a second time for the sake of the Catholic religion and the English alliance, but Elizabeth was quite definitely not going to repeat her sister’s mistakes. She was, though, very interested in Philip’s friendship and she allowed him to suggest his Austrian arch-ducal cousins, Ferdinand and Charles von Hapsburg, as possible alternatives. Ferdinand’s uncompromising Catholicism soon put him out of the running, for by Easter 1559 England had once more become a Protestant country with a national church. The more amenable and long-suffering Charles remained a useful stand-by, to be brought out and reconsidered whenever the marriage question was being pressed, and kept dangling for nearly ten years.

Much as she always delighted in the ritual dance of courtship, Elizabeth had very little leisure to spare for dalliance during the first six months of her reign. She had inherited enough problems to keep her fully occupied with more prosaic matters, and It was not until the late spring of 1559 that she was able to give some attention to her private life - by which time a religious settlement had been hammered out at home, a peace treaty negotiated with France and a loan raised in the money-market at Antwerp to replenish a virtually empty Treasury. It was then, significantly, that the first whispers linking her name with Lord Robert Dudley began to circulate and by the autumn everyone was asking the same question - was Elizabeth, whose marriage was of such vital importance for the country, wasting her time and ruining her chances by having an affair with a married man?

Robert Dudley, the younger of the Duke of Northumberland’s two surviving sons, was, like all his family, immensely ambitious and none too scrupulous about the methods he used to advance himself He was intensely unpopular - an unpopularity which cannot be entirely accounted for by jealousy- and his contemporaries, almost without exception, loathed and detested him. The most notable exception, of course, was the Queen herself and the relationship, often stormy and in some ways totally mysterious, which existed between Elizabeth Tudor and Robert Dudley, was to endure for very nearly thirty years. It was certainly the most important thing in his life - possibly the most important in hers.

No one at the time could begin to understand what the Queen, who could have taken her pick of the bachelors of Christendom, saw in Robert, the son and grandson of convicted traitors, a man who had only narrowly avoided the penalty of treason himself The historian William Camden, who knew them both, could only hazard a guess that perhaps he gave some shadowed tokens of virtue, visible to the Queen alone, or else that the hidden content of the stars at the hour of his birth had led to ‘a most straight conjunction of their minds’. What did the Queen see in Robert Dudley? He was very good-looking certainly- ‘comely of body and limbs’ - everybody agreed about that and looks were always important to Elizabeth. But Robert was more than just a pretty face. He was a fine athlete and a superb horseman (he held the position of Master of the Horse from the first week of the Queen’s reign until his death), and Elizabeth, like her father, loved a man who
was
a man and not, ns she scornfully remarked of one unfortunate suitor, one who would sit at home all day among the cinders. He was a good dancer - also very important. He was amusing company, witty, sophisticated, accustomed all his life to moving in the highest social and political circles. He had a fine, commanding presence and made a first rate ornament for the Court. But probably what mattered most was the fact that he was already one of the Queen’s oldest friends. They were almost exactly the same age and had known one another from childhood. They had grown up together and been prisoners in the Tower together. They talked the same language, shared the same jokes, the same background. With Robert Elizabeth could relax, unwind and be herself, and she who lived so much of her life at concert pitch needed someone she could relax with, someone to be the companion of her off-duty hours.

Were they lovers in the accepted sense? The answer is almost certainly no -although there was a strong element of sexual attraction in the relationship. Elizabeth always insisted vehemently that they were just good friends and, with the best will in the world, no one was ever able to produce a scrap of evidence to the contrary. Caspar von Breuner, an agent of the Hapsburg family in London to promote the marriage with Archduke Charles, made the most searching enquiries but came to the conclusion that, while the Queen showed her affection to Lord Robert more markedly than was consistent with her dignity, there was no reason to suppose she had ever been forgetful of her honour.

But lack of evidence did nothing to silence gossip, and rumours about the Queen’s intentions proliferated. As early as April 1559 Count de Feria had told King Philip that Lord Robert’s wife was suffering from ‘a malady in one of her breasts’ and Elizabeth was only waiting for her to die to marry the widower. The new Spanish ambassador, Bishop de Quadra, who arrived in London during the summer, soon heard from a reliable source that Lord Robert was planning to poison his wife. In March 1560 the bishop was reporting that Robert was assuming every day a more masterful part in affairs and added ‘they say that he thinks of divorcing his wife’.

Considering that she had become one of the central figures in an international scandal, remarkably little is known about Amy Dudley, born Amy Robsart, the daughter of a wealthy Norfolk landowner. She and Robert had been married nearly ten years and it seems probable that theirs was originally a love match. But country-bred Amy had not been able to keep pace with her brilliant, rapacious husband. Physical passion was soon spent and now she was simply an encumbrance to be kept out of sight and as far as possible out of mind. The Dudleys had no settled home and while Robert remained in constant attendance on the Queen. Amy spent her time moving about from one country house to another, taking her own servants and living as a kind of superior paying guest, usually with friends or connections of her husband’s. During the summer of 1560 she moved into Cumnor Hall near Abingdon and the Dudley affair began to build towards crisis point.

William Cecil, the Queen’s sober Secretary of State, had gone on a diplomatic mission to Scotland and while he was away people noticed that Elizabeth was not ‘coming abroad’ nearly as much as usual. It was said that Robert was keeping her shut up with him and old Annie Dow of Brentwood got into trouble with the magistrates for telling a neighbour that Lord Robert had given the Queen a child. In fact, the Queen and Lord Robert were spending most of their time out riding, and Robert wrote to the Earl of Sussex in Ireland for some hobbies tor the royal saddle – ‘especially for strong, good gallopers’. Elizabeth was enjoying herself, but when Cecil got back from the North at the end of July he was seriously worried by the situation which seemed to be developing. The Queen was in her most tiresome mood, refusing to attend to business or, perhaps more accurately, refusing to attend to William Cecil; and Robert was peacocking about the Court in a manner which irritated the Secretary of State profoundly. He told the Spanish ambassador in a burst of calculated indiscretion that he fully expected the ruin of the realm unless someone could bring Elizabeth to her senses. He was very much afraid, he added, that she meant to marry Lord Robert, who was thinking of killing his wife.

Cecil saw de Quadra during the weekend of 7-8 September. On Monday the Court was thrumming with the news that Amy Dudley had been found lying at the foot of a flight of stairs at Cumnor Hall with a broken neck. This was a stunning climax to eighteen months of scandalmongering and it looked as if William Cecil had been quite right in his gloomy forebodings. Certainly things looked black for Robert Dudley and the Queen sent him away to his house at Kew, with orders to stay there until the matter had been investigated. Most people, of course, had already made up their minds and, in the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that no one believed such a remarkably convenient death could possibly have been coincidence. The fact that a coroner’s jury, drawn from the leaders of the local community, could find no ‘presumption of evil’ and, albeit reluctantly, presently returned a verdict of death by misadventure in no way altered the general conviction of Robert’s guilt. Officially, though, he had been exonerated and the world at large held its breath to see what would happen next.

Bishop de Quadra did not know what to make of the situation. He was always disposed to think the worst of the heretical Queen of England and her subjects and told Philip: ‘The cry is that they do not want any more women rulers and this woman may find herself and her favourite in prison any day.’ The bishop very properly considered the whole business most shameful and scandalous but, at the same time, he was not sure whether Elizabeth meant to marry Robert or even whether she meant to marry at all, as he did not think she had her mind sufficiently fixed.

In France no one was in any doubt about what to think and Queen Elizabeth’s ambassador, that sturdy Protestant Nicholas Throckmorton, was being driven to distraction. ‘I wish I were either dead or hence’, he wrote from Paris on 10 October, that I might not hear the dishonourable and naughty reports that are made of the Queen...One laugheth at us, another threateneth, another revileth the Queen. Some let not to say: What religion is this that a subject shall kill his wife and the Prince not only bear withal but marry with him? If these slanderous bruits be not slaked, or if they prove true, our reputation is gone forever, war follows and utter subversion of the Queen and country.’

At home, one man was prepared to disregard gossip and slander and all those rude, low-minded foreigners. The Earl of Sussex could not stand Robert Dudley and could hardly bring himself to be civil to him in public, but, as he reminded William Cecil, the one thing that really mattered was for Elizabeth to have a child. Therefore, she should be left to ‘follow so much her own affection as by the looking upon him whom she should choose, her whole being may be moved to desire.’ For that, as Sussex pointed out, ‘shall be the readiest way, with the help of God, to bring us a blessed prince.’ If the Queen really loved and desired Robert Dudley, then let her marry him and Sussex, for his part, would be prepared to sink his personal prejudices, and love, honour and serve his enemy to the uttermost. But the Earl found few supporters in this humane and generous attitude. When young Mary Queen of Scots exclaimed merrily - ‘So, the Queen of England is to marry her horsekeeper who has killed his wife to make room for her’, she pretty well summed-up foreign and Catholic opinion; while Caspar von Breuner in London believed that if such a marriage took place, the Queen would incur so much enmity that ‘she may one evening lay herself down as Queen of England and rise the next morning plain Mistress Elizabeth.’ Not even for the sake of a blessed prince would the English stomach an upstart and wife-murderer as their king.

By the late autumn of 1560 the crisis had begun to go off the boil and by the end of the year William Cecil was able to assure Nicholas Throckmorton that whatever the reports and opinions might be, he knew for certain ‘that Lord Robert himself hath more fear than hope and so doth the Queen give him cause’. Lord Robert was back at Court and apparently restored to high favour, but when the Letters Patent for his creation as Earl of Leicester - an honour he greatly coveted - were drawn up, the Queen slashed the document through with her penknife instead of signing it. The Dudleys had been traitors three descents, she exclaimed unkindly, and she would not confer a title on the present generation. Robert sulked and Elizabeth seemed to relent. She patted his cheek and said, with a reference to the Dudley coat of arms, ‘No, no, the bear and ragged staff are not so soon overthrown.’ But when some of Robert’s friends tried to urge his suit, she would only ‘pup with her mouth’ and say she would never marry a subject. She would then be no better than the Duchess of Norfolk and people would come asking for my lord’s grace. Well then, argued Robert’s supporters, let her make him King. No, the Queen would not hear of such a thing.

She would not make him King and nor would she allow him to presume too far on his present somewhat ambiguous position. When, on one occasion, Robert attempted to take a high hand with one of the royal servants, he received a devastating royal snub. Rapping out ‘her wonted oath’, Elizabeth turned on him in a fury. ‘God’s death, my lord, I have wished you well, but my favour is not so locked up for you that others may not participate thereof...And if you think to rule here, I will take a course to see you forthcoming. For I will have here but one mistress and no master!’ This, of course, was the nub of the matter. Robert was a masterful man, that was one of the reasons Elizabeth loved him; but it was also one of the reasons why she would not marry him.

Robert was too intelligent not to take the warning, but he had by no means given up hope of winning the greatest matrimonial prize in Europe and continued to intrigue actively towards that end. Even Elizabeth had not yet entirely abandoned the idea, for in February 1561 she was putting out feelers to Bishop de Quadra as to what the King of Spain would say if she married one of her servitors. In March it was reported that ‘the great matters whereof the world was wont to talk were now asleep’, but in June they woke up again. De Quadra had been invited to a grand water-party and firework display on the Thames given by Lord Robert and he told Philip that ‘in the afternoon we went on board a vessel from which we were to see the rejoicings, and the Queen, Robert and I being alone in the gallery, they began joking, which she likes to do much better than talking about business. They went so far with their jokes that Lord Robert told her that, if she liked, I could be the minister to perform the act of marriage. She, nothing loath to hear it, said she was not sure whether I knew enough English.’ De Quadra let them have their fun and then tried to make them see sense. If Elizabeth would only reinstate the Catholic religion and put herself under King Philip’s protection, she could marry Robert when she pleased and de Quadra would be delighted to perform the ceremony.