The Men Who Would Be King (19 page)

Leicester showed as plainly as he could that he had no wish to be sent away to marry Mary. The prize he sought, and believed he was close to winning, was Elizabeth, and he was not prepared to give up the pursuit and be satisfied with a lesser quarry, not even for the sake of England. Still hoping for eventual success, he preferred to remain a suitor to the Queen of England than become the husband of the Queen of Scots, and in characteristic Dudley fashion he quietly maneuvered to achieve his ends. He sought out Melville, and invited him to go down the river with him in his barge; gliding down the Thames on that late autumn afternoon Robert tried to inveigle the envoy into telling him what Mary thought of him and the marriage proposition. Melville “answered very coldly,” as he had been instructed, and Leicester began to explain volubly that he was not responsible for the proposal, declaring dramatically that he was not even worthy to wipe the Queen of Scotland's shoes, and asking Melville “to excuse him at Her Majesty's hands, and to beg, in his name, that she would not impute that matter to him.” Later Melville wrote, “My Lord of Leicester, beside what he had spoke to me, did write to my Lord of Murray to excuse him at the Queen's hands.” In his determination not to be debarred from the pursuit of Elizabeth, Leicester went still further. According to Mary herself, he sent word to her that the proposal was merely a “fetch,” a deceit, conceived to hinder her from concluding a marriage alliance with any foreign prince—though if that had really been the case Leicester would have had nothing to fear from willingly participating in the scheme. Elizabeth afterwards told de Silva that it was because Leicester “had not consented” that the proposal had come to nothing. It may have been chiefly through his influence that early in February 1565, Elizabeth suddenly made the fatal decision that young Lord Darnley should after all be granted permission to go north to join his father in Scotland.

Within weeks of his arrival Mary was utterly infatuated with the tall girlish youth, “the properest and best-proportioned long man that ever she had seen.” Elizabeth's permission for Darnley to travel to Scotland had been unexpectedly, unaccountably, perhaps unwillingly, given, and was now bitterly regretted. But all her furious endeavors to oblige him to return to England were useless. For Robert Dudley, however, the affair had come to a fortunate conclusion. Resplendent in his new rank of Earl of Leicester, acknowledged as worthy to match with a reigning queen, he was free to pursue his courtship of Elizabeth with renewed hopes.

If Mary had obeyed Elizabeth's wishes and married Leicester, the English succession would surely have eventually been settled upon their issue. As it was, the Scottish queen's impending marriage to another man, a descendant of the Houses of Tudor and Stuart and one who was by no means certain to have English interests at heart, left Elizabeth's situation as weak as ever. Spain, France, and the pope displayed their goodwill towards Mary, while at home the succession question remained dangerously unresolved. Thus it was that when the imperial envoy Adam von Zwetkovich arrived in London in May 1565, he found to his satisfaction that the Queen of England was graciously disposed to entertain a renewal of “the matrimonial negotiations with His Princely Highness the Archduke Charles.”

The new emperor Maximilian II had cautioned Zwetkovich that the archduke Charles “would not, as on the last occasion, suffer himself to be led by the nose.” But earnest, gullible Zwetkovich was unable to prevent it. It was Elizabeth, not he, who set the pace, sweetly encouraging the wooing one minute, coldly pointing out obstacles the next, and he did not know her well enough to see through her duplicity and recognize the core of reality beneath the layers of pretense. If Robert Dudley, who had known the queen so long and so intimately, still believed, despite her frequent protestations to the contrary, that she might eventually yield and marry one or other of her suitors, then Zwetkovich, a novice in the art of courting Elizabeth, could not know that while she was delighted to entertain the archduke Charles as a suitor, she had no intention of accepting him or anyone else as a husband—that he was simply being used for her own political ends.

In the presence of the sovereign of England and Ireland, this thin woman of thirty-two whose face was as white and smooth as an egg, adorned with great pearls like drops of water that quivered above the heavy riches of her dress, the envoy was deeply impressed. He had been given orders to make the most diligent inquiries into Elizabeth's moral character before proceeding with the negotiations; if there appeared to be any doubts as to the queen's chastity, the emperor had pronounced, he was not to say one single word about the archduke wishing to marry her, but to pretend that he had no instructions on any such subject. Zwetkovich's investigations led him to conclude enthusiastically “that she has truly and verily been praised and extolled for her virginal and royal honour” and that “all the aspersions against her are but the spawn of envy and malice and hatred.” As for the Earl of Leicester, he was found to be a man of the highest moral principles, whom the queen esteemed as a faithful servant and regarded as a brother, and the idea that she might desire to marry him was confidently dismissed as “quite out of the question.” Everything looked propitious for the archduke. Elizabeth explained modestly that her own preference was for the virgin life, but at the behest of her people she had decided to set aside her private wishes. Dramatically, she “called God to witness that she was willing to marry only for the sake of her realm. She would prefer to die a maid and end her days in a convent, for she verily never had any desire to marry.” Her dedication to the weal of her kingdom was Elizabeth's principal theme in this wooing.

Yet even in so avowedly political a courtship, the deeply personal nature of the intended alliance could not be disregarded. Ponderous touches of romance were introduced; Zwetkovich ventured to suggest that the archduke should write a friendly loving letter to the queen, and chide her for not writing to him more often, as though they were fond acquaintances on the verge of falling in love. Such a letter, he went on, would show Elizabeth “how greatly the Archduke loves her and yearns for her,” despite the fact that he had not so far met her. Elizabeth managed to create a major obstacle by insisting that she must see this prospective husband in person before she could give him a definite answer. It would not be becoming for the archduke to travel to England on such conditions, she was told, since the dignity of himself and his august house would be seriously affronted if he were then to be rejected, but Elizabeth was insistent, saying over and over again that she could not accept a man whom she had not seen. “One great obstacle is that the Queen's Majesty will needs see before she marry,” Cecil noted worriedly. The emperor seemed shocked by the suggestion. “Among Kings and Queens this is entirely novel and unprecedented,” he wrote to Zwetkovich, “and we cannot approve of it.” When the envoy reported optimistically that “the Queen becomes fonder of His Princely Highness and her impatience to see him grows daily. Her marriage is, I take it, certain and resolved upon,” the emperor commented that the affair seemed to him “to be still very dubious and questionable,” if Elizabeth insisted on this condition which could not be fulfilled. Throughout the negotiation the emperor was inclined to be suspicious of his prospective sister-in-law; he assessed the progress of his brother's wooing according to “the logic of facts,” in a way that his envoy in London, under the compelling influence of Elizabeth's glib, impressive charm, could not.

To all appearances the archduke's suit seemed to be progressing well during the summer of 1565. Elizabeth was on bad terms with Leicester at this time; perhaps she had still not forgiven him for thwarting her over the Mary, Queen of Scots marriage. “The Queen's Majesty is fallen into some misliking of my Lord of Leicester, and he therewith much dismayed,” Cecil wrote with satisfaction in August. He went on to say that Elizabeth was making it plain that she regretted having wasted so much of her precious time on Leicester. “She is sorry of her loss of time, and so is every good subject,” he wrote, silently expressing his hearty agreement. He recorded in his diary for the same month, “The Queen's Majesty seemed to be much offended with the Earl of Leicester, and so she wrote an obscure sentence in a book at Windsor.” Lovers often have private words and allusions that are understandable only to themselves. Whatever the meaning of the “obscure sentence,” whatever the real cause of the rift between Elizabeth and her constant favorite, there was a moment when, after six years of energetic wooing, Leicester “lost hope of his business,” and Cecil was able to express the fervent hope that “we shall see some success” with the archduke's suit.

Cecil, perhaps the most selflessly devoted of all Elizabeth's servants, was convinced of the necessity for her to marry for the sake of the realm and the succession, and he believed that the archduke would be the wisest choice. His opinion of Leicester as a prospective husband for the Queen of England was very low. When, as always happened, Elizabeth's anger with her beloved Robert passed, and he was reinstated in his former favored position, Cecil gloomily drew up comparisons between the English suitor and the Austrian. If, as Elizabeth so often declared, she was willing to set aside her private inclinations and marry as a queen for the sake of her kingdom, the arguments in favor of a speedy marriage with the archduke were very strong; Cecil's memoranda effectively disposed of Leicester as a worthy alternative. The queen's situation was very weak, he pointed out, for no ruler “ever had less alliance than the Queen of England hath, nor any prince ever had more cause to have friendship and power to assist her estate.” Of Leicester he wrote grimly, “Nothing is increased by marriage of him, either in riches, estimation, power. It will be thought that the slanderous speeches of the Queen with the Earl have been true.” He went on to observe that Leicester would raise all his own friends and adherents to high offices, if, in spite of the grim facts that “he is infamed by the death of his wife,” and “he is far in debt,” he were to become king-consort. Scrupulously he drew up his lists comparing the eligibility of the two. Charles was brother of the emperor; Leicester, “Born son of a knight, his grandfather but a squire.” Charles was “an archduke born,” Leicester merely “an earl made.” In age and beauty Leicester was admitted to be “meet,” but in wealth sadly lacking: “All of the Queen, and in debt.” In friendship the archduke could offer “the Emperor, the King of Spain, the Dukes of Saxony, Bavaria, Cleves, Florence, Ferrara and Mantua,” a mighty list beside which Robert's entry, “none but such as shall have of the Queen,” looked the more sickly. He was the Austrian prince's equal in nothing. Reviewing the likelihood of each suitor to beget heirs, Cecil noted that the archduke's family showed a tendency to be “blessed with multitudes of children,” whereas no brother of Robert's had had any, and his own marriage to Amy Robsart had been childless. Of that marriage Cecil had more to say. He did not believe that Leicester would prove a kind or loving husband once he had achieved his goal, and in the category, “In likelihood to love his wife,” he wrote in Latin, “Carnal marriages begin in pleasure and end in strife.” In reputation, Cecil wrote, Charles was “honoured of all men,” but of Leicester he recorded the cryptic words “Hated of many. His wife's death.” It was a clear, businesslike assessment, and of course the conclusion was overwhelmingly against Leicester as a fitting husband for Elizabeth. But there was one fact that Cecil, his mind on politics, not passion, had left out—the human element. Elizabeth loved the adventurer Robert Dudley; loved, needed, and relied upon him. That was the consideration that gave weight to his suit, and kept the scales of her courtships quiveringly poised.

Encouraging reports of the archduke's physical appearance were sent to Elizabeth in the summer of 1566, to increase her interest in his wooing. Thomas Dannett, the English agent in Vienna, wrote that the Austrian prince was courteous, affable, just, liberal, and wise, and greatly enjoyed sports; mindful of Elizabeth's liking for handsome, athletic men, he described him as “for a man, beautiful and well faced, well shaped, small in the waist, and well and broad breasted; he seemed in his clothes well thighed and well legged.” Though he appeared slightly round shouldered, Dannett reported, in the saddle he sat as straight as anyone. It was an attractive enough verbal portrait, but still Elizabeth was determined to see her suitor before she would give him a definite answer. There was little or no doubt in her secret mind as to how the negotiations would end, but as long as they were proving useful—as well as gratifying—she was very willing that they should be prolonged, in spite of her protestations that such matters were not at all to her liking. “She always repeats her dislike to marriage and even to talking of it,” wrote de Silva, who was not taken in.

It was obvious to him that Elizabeth derived great pleasure from her suitors. Her vanity was not that of satisfied self-assurance, but that of restless uncertainty, ever clutching at compliments, avid for praise. Because she lacked the normal inward satisfactions of sexual love, the external signs and rituals assumed an unnatural importance in her life, developing, over the years, into an ever more elaborate code of pretense. For her maternal instincts she found a just and absorbing outlet in care for her subjects. “Though after my death you may have many stepdames, yet shall you never have a more natural mother than I mean to be unto you all,” she had proclaimed to the Parliament of 1563, and she was to keep that pledge. But for romance she required the glittering sham of her courtships. With Leicester she found an approximation of real loving intimacy, but whatever rank she bestowed on him he would always remain her subject, dependent on her for his very life. As Queen of England she reveled in the purportedly amorous homage of her foreign equals in blood and power. The notion of the Habsburg archduke coming to England to woo her in person held a particular fascination for her—and indeed the one royal suitor who did come over the sea to court her, more than a decade later, was almost to succeed in winning her. Once when she spoke to de Silva of the archduke's possible visit, the Spanish ambassador teased her by asking meaningfully whether she had noticed an unfamiliar face among the imperial envoy's retinue, “as perhaps she was entertaining more than she thought, only she must be told so in a way not to disconcert her.” Her reaction was one of real shock. “She turned white, and was so agitated that I could not help laughing to see her,” de Silva recounted. But she recovered her dignity and said, “That is not a bad way for the Archduke to come,” adding untruthfully, “I promise you plenty of princes have come to see me that way.” She seemed to take particular pleasure in listing the great princes who had wooed her and been rejected; she proudly enumerated them on more than one occasion when entertaining envoys. Even though she was perfectly conscious of the political nature of royal courtships, and indeed openly referred to the personal incompatibility that had been so evident in her own sister's political marriage to Philip of Spain, she nevertheless found real pleasure in such wooings. De Silva reported that she even tried to revive Eric of Sweden's much-mocked suit early in 1566, saying that “she wished to treat of marriage with him again, so that the Archduke was not the only one.” He went on to say perceptively, “The Queen would like everyone to be in love with her, but I doubt whether she will ever be in love with anyone, enough to marry him.”