The Men Who Would Be King (9 page)

The emperor had given his nephew Emmanuel Philibert responsible military posts from an early age, but as commander of the imperial forces in 1554, the valiant twenty-six-year-old prince was fighting on his own behalf, as well as that of the emperor, since the French had occupied his lands and dispossessed him of his patrimony. A marriage with the sister and heir of the Queen of England offered him obvious material advantages in terms of status and possible financial and military support, and it was with considerable hope that he made the arrangements for his visit to London in January 1555. There were, however, certain obstacles lying half-submerged in the path of the stocky, athletic half-Habsburg prince's pursuit of Elizabeth. She was under grave suspicion of heretical convictions. She was a bastard—her illegitimacy reaffirmed by Mary's Act of Parliament that rescinded Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, making the marriage with Anne Boleyn incontestably illegal. And she was, above all, passionately determined not to marry.

I have always been told that she will not hear of it, unless forced. To strengthen her in this opinion I have bribed one of her mother's near relations, who has promised to make her understand what wrong she would do to her self by marrying a disinherited prince, whom the Emperor merely wishes to use as a tool by which to deprive her of her hopes of the crown. But she is being so badly treated that I am very much afraid she may submit, to regain her liberty thereby.

So de Noailles informed the King of France in June 1554. But his fears were unnecessary—nobody was more aware than Elizabeth herself of the damage that marriage with a dependent of the emperor would do to her future independence and hopes. Such a marriage would be no “liberty,” but rather a more permanent and subjugating form of capture. In that dark year of 1554, when Lady Jane Grey's forced political marriage had ended at the scaffold, and Queen Mary's willing political betrothal had already brought rebellion, division, and hostility at home and abroad, Elizabeth could not have contemplated the prospect of diplomatic marriage with anything but anxious distrust.

“I am going not to a marriage feast but to a fight,” Philip of Spain had said before embarking to take possession of Mary and England, in July 1554, and it was as a soldier for Catholicism and his glorious empire that he arrived to marry the earnest, plain little woman, eleven years older than he, whom he had previously respectfully regarded as an aunt. At twenty-seven Philip was already a widower with a ten-year-old son, Don Carlos, but the incompatibility between himself and his virgin bride must have been obvious, however much the admiral, Lord William Howard, tried to ease the situation by making the customary bawdy innuendos as the ill-matched pair sat together at their first meeting—Philip, fair haired and gray eyed, a slight but regal figure beside the thin, elderly queen. Obedient to his imperial father's instructions, he showed none of the notorious Spanish hauteur, but was all affability and conciliation; he drank beer, and smiled a great deal, and was charming to his wife, and kissed her ladies according to the English custom, to such an extent that his company of Spaniards were infuriated that their mighty prince should so stoop before the insignificant and uncivilized English. They were already discontented at the terms of the marriage treaty, which had been carefully drawn up so as to exclude the empire from gaining overt control of English affairs. Philip was to have no active power in England, and his connection with his wife's throne was to cease absolutely if she were to die childless. However, as King Henry II shrewdly pointed out, “A husband may do much with his wife, and it shall be very hard for any wife to refuse her husband anything that he shall earnestly require of her.” His forebodings were particularly justifiable in Mary's case, for she came to love her fine young husband with the pathetic dependent devotion of a dutiful woman who has been repressed and unloved for twenty years.

Elizabeth met Mary's husband for the first time in the spring of 1555, when she was summoned from her captivity at Woodstock to the redbrick river palace of Hampton Court. The visit of Philip's cousin Emmanuel Philibert at the New Year had passed without major difficulty for Elizabeth; though he was lodged at her London residence, Somerset Place, she was not brought from confinement to meet him, and after three weeks of “great cheer” in the court, during which he made himself very agreeable to Philip and Mary, he left for the wars again. But a still greater threat to Elizabeth's future was looming when she arrived in April—Mary believed herself to be pregnant, and the country was waiting for news that its three-quarters-Habsburg heir had been born. That event, if ever it took place, would finally debar Elizabeth from the throne; yet a trace of hope still remained, for there were curious undercurrents of uncertainty surrounding Mary's condition. De Noailles scoffed at the notion that the queen was with child, and the fact that Elizabeth should have been summoned to court at that moment might have been a sign that Philip himself was not entirely confident about his wife's state of health. If Mary, elderly and frail, were to die, and the pregnancy prove to be illusory, it would be of the utmost importance to Philip to be on good terms with the heir presumptive, the Lady Elizabeth.

In those tense weeks Elizabeth followed her usual policy of seeming tame. She was docile, cautious, charming. But her nimble mind must have followed the direction of Philip's thoughts; with the possibility of Mary's death in the offing, it was to her advantage as well as his to establish amiable diplomatic relations with each other, and it seemed that there was a taste of piquant, illicit pleasure for both in their task. “At the time of the Queen's pregnancy,” the Venetian ambassador afterwards recalled, Elizabeth “contrived so to ingratiate herself with all the Spaniards, and especially with the King, that ever since no one has favoured her more than he does.” With discreet emphasis the ambassador observed that there appeared to have been “some particular design on the part of the King towards her.” In later years Elizabeth insisted that the hostile relationship between Philip of Spain and herself had begun with love, and it may have been true. Philip was prudent and discriminating and deeply religious, but he was amorous by nature, and he was weary of his clinging, elderly wife. Elizabeth had the youth, elegance, and wit that her sister so markedly lacked; while the elder woman nursed her pathetic delusions of pregnancy, the younger was discreetly displaying her “spirit full of enchantment” to win the favor of the emperor's son. By the summer Mary had to acknowledge, with grief and humiliation, that she was not with child, but Elizabeth's dealings with Philip bore fruit. He could not remain constantly with his wife in England, since he had the business of his ailing father's empire to attend to in the vast territories of his inheritance, and on August 29, to Mary's bitter sorrow, he entered his barge at Greenwich and was borne away down the river while she wept uncontrollably at a window. His parting instructions concerning Elizabeth were clear: she was to be treated gently and honorably.

Stiff courtesy and religious conformity tided her over the summer months, and in October she was permitted to retreat to Hatfield, where her life began to follow its old pattern once more. Kat Ashley and Thomas Parry were with her again, and Roger Ascham visited her at intervals. It was not a lively mode of existence for a quick, bright young woman who had just passed her twenty-second birthday, but it offered a refreshing semblance of independence after her long imprisonment and the difficult, unpredictable months at Mary's court, and she was vehemently determined not to relinquish it for any marriage, however glorious. There had been talk of betrothing her to Philip's son, the boy Don Carlos, but as the Venetian ambassador reported in the spring of 1556, Elizabeth was steadfast in her resolution that she would not marry, “even were they to give her the King's son, or any other prince.”

That autumn the strutting, sulky youth Courtenay died suddenly, in Padua, at the age of twenty-nine, and thus the English “utterly lost the hope of ever having a king of the blood royal, unless in a very remote degree.” Both Mary and Elizabeth must have been relieved that now there could be no more rebellions to hoist Courtenay and Elizabeth onto the throne as husband and wife; but within weeks the name of Elizabeth's other unwanted suitor, Emmanuel Philibert, was causing fresh contention between the Tudor sisters.

Philip had written to Mary and the council with urgent instructions to bring about the match between Emmanuel Philibert and Elizabeth. The French had broken the short-lived peace created by the Treaty of Vaucelles, and Philip was in need of English support, both immediately and for the future. By marrying Mary's heir to his own cousin and satellite, the Duke of Savoy, he would tie England to the empire with lifelong bonds, and, despite Mary's reluctance, he insisted that the knots should be fastened as soon as possible. Obedient to her husband's will, though the marriage was against her own wishes, Mary confronted her half sister with the proposal. The vehemence and urgency with which the match was announced to Elizabeth were such that for once her subtle weapons of dissembling and equivocation were useless. Instead she burst into frantic tears.

By the end of the interview Mary was crying too, with unbearable anger, frustration, and disappointment. She had no desire at all to see Anne Boleyn's sly, hypocritical bastard make a fine marriage, and be confirmed as heir to the English throne, and she could hardly bear the thought of Elizabeth living with Emmanuel Philibert in Flanders at close quarters with the beloved Philip; but what Philip demanded she would not refuse, and Elizabeth's desperate obstinacy in the face of his express commands enraged her. Elizabeth sobbed, almost hysterically, that she did not want a husband; Mary, whose chief distress was the absence of hers, dismissed the distraught girl back to Hatfield, under guard.

The French war brought Philip back to his wife's side, after more than eighteen months, in March 1557. By the middle of June, England had joined the war against France. By July, Philip had gone again.

He had seen his sickly middle-aged wife for the last time; he may have realized that she would not live much longer, and he had to plan for a future in which Elizabeth would be Queen of England by gaining control over her while it was still possible. Since Elizabeth and Parliament were so resolved against the Emmanuel Philibert match, Philip tried to bring it about by the unofficial means of appealing to Mary's conscience, sending his confessor to her to paint a frightening picture of the political and religious chaos that would ensue if Elizabeth were to make a different choice of husband. But Mary herself now proved difficult to sway, for she was utterly averse to countenancing the match and thereby giving Elizabeth hope of the succession. Her resolution in the matter may have been strengthened by the fact that she was again nurturing secret, deluded hopes of pregnancy.

During the years of Elizabeth's youth almost no one seemed to take seriously her protestations that she had no wish to marry. Because her refusal to entertain thoughts of any of the suitors who presented themselves was politic, few people realized that it was also sincere. Thus Mary was surprised and pleased by Elizabeth's rejection of the heir to the Swedish throne, Prince Eric, in the spring of 1558. King Gustavus's ambassadors made a grave tactical error at the outset, for they did not address their suit through Queen Mary, as diplomatic and social etiquette demanded, but presented themselves straight to Elizabeth—thereby enabling her to suit both propriety and her own wishes by summarily dismissing them. Mary, perhaps surprised that Elizabeth should not have seized this opportunity to enter into a secret league with a rich and Protestant monarch, was gratified; she instructed Sir Thomas Pope, who was in charge of Elizabeth at Hatfield, to inform her half sister “how well the Queen's Majesty liked of her prudent and honourable answer,” and to inquire further into her future intentions. Sir Thomas returned an illuminating report of Elizabeth's response. When he respectfully suggested to his young charge that “few or none would believe but that her Grace could be right well contented to marry, so that there were some honourable marriage offered her,” Elizabeth assured him, “Upon my truth and fidelity, and as God be merciful unto me, I am not at this time minded otherwise than I have declared unto you; no, though I were offered the greatest prince in all Europe.” But even so, Sir Thomas remained mildly unconvinced, and he remarked knowingly that perhaps this decision was the result of maidenly modesty rather than “any such certain determination.” To his questions about the Swedish proposal she answered with acid wit: “I so well liked both the message and the messenger as I shall most humbly pray God upon my knees that from henceforth I never hear of one nor the other.” But that wry prayer was in vain. She was to hear a great deal more of Eric of Sweden's courtship.

During that year of 1558 the long somber night of Mary's reign was drawing to a close, and daybreak for Elizabeth was at last approaching. Emotionally and politically, the marriage that Mary had insisted on making, in the face of so much opposition, had proved quite as disastrous as had been predicted. No heir had been born to compensate for the loss of the queen's independent status, but even worse than sterility was the shaming farce of two false pregnancies. Disappointed in her hopes of a child, Mary had been deprived of her adored husband too for much of her married life, alone and yet not independent; neither maiden, wife, nor widow, in effect; and without her consort by her side to support her through the surging discontent and rebellion that her marriage had encouraged. The English had become embroiled in the empire's war, and lost Calais, their last possession in France, for their pains, while at home the human bonfires of Protestants, men and women, priests and peasants, sent the stench of the Inquisition drifting across the damp English air.