The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court (14 page)

Meanwhile Katherine remained in custody, trying to care for her newborn child as well as an eighteen-month-old son. In August, with the plague in London, Katherine was relocated to the home of her uncle, Lord John Grey, at Pyrgo in Essex, where she was kept under strict house arrest. Over the next few years she was moved to a number of other residences, and would remain in close custody for the rest of her life, never seeing her husband again. As there was no evidence that a marriage had taken place, her children were pronounced illegitimate, yet as long as debate raged on the succession, Katherine Grey and her two sons would remain significant challengers to Elizabeth’s throne.
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Mary Stuart, Elizabeth’s Catholic heir, also became the subject of court gossip, when a young and infatuated French courtier and poet Pierre de Bocosel, Seigneur de Chastelard, was found hiding under her bed armed with a sword and dagger.
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When he was discovered by the grooms of the chamber he protested that he had nowhere else to sleep. He was kept in the custody of the Captain of the Guard overnight and Mary, unaware of events in her own Bedchamber, was informed the next morning. When Chastelard was examined before the council he claimed he had been sent by ‘persons of distinguished position’ in France, presumably Huguenots, to try and make himself ‘so familiar’ with Mary and her ladies that he could ‘seize an opportunity or obtain some appearance of proof sufficient to sully the honour of the Queen’.
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Mary ordered him from court, but the Frenchman followed her when she moved to Dunfermline days later, and was again found hidden in her Bedchamber, protesting that he was there to profess his innocence. The news soon reached the English court, provoking the lewd gossip that the young Chastelard did ‘privily convey himself behind the hangings of the Queen’s chamber, and in the night would have lain with her’, had Mary not discovered him.
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The Frenchman was arrested and then beheaded in St Andrew’s marketplace. The episode left Mary terrified and provided a timely warning to Elizabeth as to the importance of scrupulous security surrounding the Bedchamber.

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At three o’clock on the afternoon of Saturday 10 April 1563, Elizabeth travelled by royal barge from Whitehall to Westminster for the final session of Parliament, and there took her place in the Parliament Chamber. The Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, read on her behalf the speech that she had written. In it, the Queen thanked the Lords and Commons for their efforts throughout the session and gave her assent to the bills brought before her. She then responded directly to the marriage petitions presented by both houses. It had, she said, saddened her that they had pressed her to name a successor when there was still a good chance that she would marry and produce an heir of her body. Though she had little personal inclination to take a husband, she realised that her duty as Queen might compel her to do so and assured them, ‘And if I can bend my liking to your need, I will not resist such a mind.’
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Amongst their urgent petitions for the Queen to marry, Parliament had voted the funds Elizabeth needed to support the English expedition in France. Writing to Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, in command of the English army, she assured him that she would now send reinforcements and do all she could to ensure the troops were well supplied. However her efforts proved futile. The Huguenots had become increasingly suspicious of Elizabeth’s intentions and when the warring French factions made peace, they united to drive the English forces out of Le Havre. Then, as the English struggled to mount a defence, plague spread through the town killing countless soldiers. On 28 July the English were forced to surrender and the remnants of the army returned to England.
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Within weeks London was in the grip of a serious epidemic as the returning soldiers brought the plague with them. Orders were issued for every London householder to lay a fire in his street at seven in the evening to ‘consume the corrupt airs’.
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By August, deaths from the plague in London were reaching a thousand a week. Among the victims was the Spanish ambassador, Don Alvaro de Quadra, who had done so much to undermine relations between England and Spain.
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Fears for the Queen’s health forced her to leave London in September and move to Windsor, where she remained for the rest of the year. The castle was cold and draughty and Elizabeth, Cecil and other members of the court soon fell ill with an affliction known as ‘pooss’. Cecil suffered so badly that he could hardly see and Elizabeth complained of a pain in her nose and eyes. Many people died of similar complaints that winter. Gallows were set up on the edge of the town and anyone suspected of bringing the plague from the capital was hanged. Even passing up and down the Thames through Windsor could be punished by hanging without trial.
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Ménage à Trois

‘I thank God with all my heart, especially since I knew the danger you were in, and how you have escaped so well, that your beautiful face will lose none of its perfections.’ In her letter, written to Elizabeth after her recovery from smallpox, Mary Queen of Scots referred to her own experience of the disease as a child and gave thanks that Elizabeth was now restored to health. Thomas Randolph, the English ambassador in Scotland, had asked Mary on Elizabeth’s behalf for the recipe of a potion that would prevent the disease recurring, which Mary had been given years earlier. Unfortunately, the Scottish Queen explained, Fernel, the French King’s chief physician who administered it, was now dead and he ‘would never tell me the recipe of the lotion that he applied to my face having punctured the pustules with a lancet’.
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Mary’s warm words of comfort and concern did little to mask the reality of the continued threat to Elizabeth’s crown. In January news reached Scotland of a plan to exclude Mary from the succession to the English throne, and it was reported that Mary was ‘in great choler’ because of it.
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English intervention in support of the Huguenots against the Guise had further antagonised the Scottish Queen. With little chance of Elizabeth naming her cousin as heir, Mary resolved to seize the initiative and choose a husband for herself, thereby enabling her to secure her dynastic rights in England.

Mary considered the prospect of a Spanish union through a marriage with Don Carlos, Philip of Spain’s eldest son. Whilst this would be a hugely significant political match with the heir to the Spanish throne and primary Catholic power in Europe, personally Don Carlos had little to recommend him; he was a sickly youth, hunchbacked and pigeon-breasted, prone to fits of violent insanity, and rumoured to be impotent. Nevertheless Don Carlos remained Mary’s most prized suitor and Elizabeth made it clear that she would see such a marriage as a hostile act which would ruin Mary’s chances of inheriting the English throne.
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Elizabeth needed to keep Scotland Protestant and urged Mary to take ‘a person mete whose natural disposition will be to continue and increase the love and concord between both people and countries’, and urged her to marry a nobleman of ‘this isle’.
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In the end, the Spanish match came to nothing. Mary’s position was further weakened in February 1563 by the assassination of her uncle, the Duke of Guise. As long as he lived there was always the possibility that he could mobilise French military might to assert his niece’s ambitions to the English throne. Now Mary’s keenest champion was dead.

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In March, William Maitland of Lethington, the Scottish secretary, again came to England in the hope of persuading Elizabeth to officially recognise Mary as her heir.
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When the subject of Mary’s marriage came up, Elizabeth responded with an extraordinary proposal. If Mary wanted to marry ‘safely and happily’, she would do well to take Lord Robert Dudley as her husband. Maitland was thrown entirely off guard, and replied judiciously that although this was ‘great proof of the love she bore to his Queen, as she was willing to give her a thing so deeply prized by herself’, he felt ‘certain that Mary would not wish to deprive her cousin of ‘all the joy and solace she received from his company’. When Elizabeth persisted, Maitland replied,

The Queen his mistress was very young yet, and what this Queen [Elizabeth] might do for her was to marry Lord Robert herself first and have children by him, which was so important for the welfare of the country, and then when it should please God to call her to himself she could leave the Queen of Scots heiress both to her kingdom and her husband.
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The following spring, Thomas Randolph made the formal proposal of Dudley to Mary Queen of Scots, with the assurance that if she agreed to ‘content us and this our nation in her marriage’, Elizabeth would proceed to the ‘inquisition of her right and title to be our next cousin and heir and to further that which shall appear advantageous to her’.
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Mary’s response was swift and to the point. ‘Is that to conform to her promise to use me as her sister?’ she demanded sharply. ‘And do you think it may stand with my honour to marry my sister’s subject?’ Horribly compromised, Randolph could only mumble that ‘there was not a worthier man to be found’ than Robert Dudley.
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The Scots, Randolph informed London, were in disbelief. Knowing the Queen’s deep affection for Dudley and judging Elizabeth and her Master of the Horse to be inseparable, they could only suppose that her offer was merely to give the appearance of goodwill rather than being genuine.
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Meanwhile, Catherine de Medici and her uncle the Cardinal of Guise were quick to remind Mary that it was not safe to trust Elizabeth’s ‘counsel in her marriage who meaneth therein only to [deceive] her’.
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Whilst pretending to entertain the idea of Dudley as a possible match, Mary secretly hoped to marry another Englishman: the strikingly handsome, six-foot-two, seventeen-year-old Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley.
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Like Mary Queen of Scots, Darnley was a grandchild of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII’s eldest sister. His mother Margaret, Countess of Lennox, was a staunch Catholic, granddaughter of Henry VII and cousin to Elizabeth, and had been advocating Darnley as a match for Mary since the death of François II. The countess had repeatedly denounced Elizabeth as an illegitimate usurper and claimed she and her heirs were the rightful sovereigns of England. When Mary had returned to Scotland following the death of her husband, the Earl and Countess of Lennox were placed under surveillance at their Yorkshire estates. Shortly afterwards they were arrested and imprisoned for allegedly plotting a marriage between Mary and Darnley. Examination of their servants revealed that the earl and countess had heard Catholic mass and had their jester mock Queen Elizabeth, including in a sketch depicting her love affair with Robert Dudley, who had been portrayed as a pox-ridden traitor.
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Lennox was imprisoned in the Tower and Darnley left for France. By the summer of 1563, Darnley and his parents were apparently back in favour.
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On 19 July it was reported that the Earl and Countess of Lennox were at court at Greenwich and ‘my Lord Darnley, their son and heir, is also a daily waiter and playeth very often at the lute before the Queen, wherein it should seem she taketh pleasure as indeed he plays very well’.
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Whilst Elizabeth had no intention of nominating a successor, she was angered by Parliament’s support for Katherine Grey, particularly after the birth of Katherine’s second son. She now resolved to promote an alternative candidate. ‘Many people think that if the Queen of Scots does marry a person unacceptable to this Queen, the latter will declare her successor the son of Lady Margaret, whom she now keeps in the palace and shows such favour to as to make this appear probable.’
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In June, Elizabeth petitioned Mary to restore the Lennox family’s hereditary lands, which had been confiscated by Henry VIII. It was undoubtedly a disingenuous move that sought to stir up troubles for Mary at a time when she was courting marriage prospects. At the end of April 1564, Mary granted the passport for the Earl of Lennox and allowed him to return to his ancestral home.

By autumn, relations between Mary and Elizabeth had soured because of the ‘jealousies and suspicions’ that lay between them. Mary sent to the English court Sir James Melville, an urbane young Scotsman and one of her most trusted agents and diplomats in an attempt to smooth relations between the two queens and defend Mary’s dynastic claim to the English throne if Parliament should reassemble. Melville was also instructed to secretly deliver a message to Darnley’s mother, the Countess of Lennox, ‘to procure liberty for [Darnley] to go to Scotland’.
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Visitor to the Bedchamber

At eight o’clock on a bright September morning, the twenty-nine-year-old Sir James Melville arrived on horseback at Whitehall Palace. He was shown into the privy garden where the Queen was expecting him. A delicious bouquet of scents emanated from the garden’s aromatic herbs and flowers, planted in raised beds, enclosed by low rails painted in the Tudor colours. Sculptures of men, women, children, monsters and other strange figures, rose up from the grassy avenues in high and low relief, and thirty-four tall columns, decorated with carvings and gilded animals and flags bearing the Queen’s arms. At the centre of the garden, a sundial blade ‘showed the hours in thirty different ways’ and a fountain sprayed water up through concealed pipes, soaking anyone who stood nearby.

The palace itself was renowned for its splendid furnishings, tapestries and pictures, and the number and length of galleries. The Hans Holbein mural of Henry VIII dominated the Privy Chamber. ‘The King as he stood there,’ wrote one visitor, ‘majestic in his splendour, was so lifelike that the spectator felt abashed, annihilated in his presence.’
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Melville spent nine days at court and charmed Elizabeth with his wit and sophisticated manners. The Queen, for her part, was keen to show off her many talents to the Scottish envoy; she knew he would report them in minute detail to Mary. Melville was treated to the most remarkable access to Elizabeth during these days and enjoyed daily audiences, often ‘before noon, after noon and after supper’, in her privy lodgings and in her Bedchamber.
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