The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court Read online

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  The Duke of Anjou’s courtship of Elizabeth began in earnest the following year with a series of passionate letters promising undying love. In January 1579 his best friend and trusted household servant, Jean de Simier, Baron de Saint-Marc, arrived to woo her with gifts and jewels and to negotiate a marriage treaty.14 Elizabeth quickly became enamoured with Simier and for the next two months they met for long, intimate meetings, sometimes up to three times a day. She flirted amorously with him in public, calling him her ‘ape’ – a Latin pun on his name – and entertained him at countless feasts, jousts, masques and dances. She gave him gloves, handkerchiefs and a miniature portrait of herself as love tokens for the duke.15 When Elizabeth’s councillors learned that Simier had, with the Queen’s permission, entered her Bedchamber to purloin a handkerchief and nightcap as ‘trophies’ for his master, they were shocked and condemned Simier’s behaviour as ‘an unmanlike, unprincelike, French kind of wooing’. Elizabeth had apparently also visited Simier’s bedchamber one morning as he was dressing and insisted that he talk with her ‘with only his jerkin on’.16 Mary Queen of Scots would later repeat gossip that Elizabeth had enjoyed sexual relations with Simier.

  The French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau, Sieur de Mauvissière, wrote that the wooing made Elizabeth seem younger. ‘This discourse rejuvenates the Queen; she has become more beautiful and bonny than she was fifteen years ago. Not a woman or a physician who knows her does not hold that there is no lady in the realm more fit for bearing children than she is.’17 Simier was cautiously optimistic about the prospects for the match with Anjou, writing, ‘will wait to say more till the curtain is drawn, the candle out and Monsieur in bed’.18 To Elizabeth, Catherine de Medici expressed similar sentiments: she would not be content until she saw her son and Elizabeth in bed together.19

  On the first Sunday of Lent, Elizabeth was delivered a sermon which prophesied that the marriage would bring about the destruction of the kingdom. The preacher said ‘that marriages with foreigners would only result in ruin to the country’ and then invoked the memory of how Queen Mary had ‘married a foreigner, and caused the martyrdom of so many persons, who were burnt all over the country’. Before the sermon ended, Elizabeth stormed out.20 So many sermons were ‘speaking so violently against the marriage’, that according to George Talbot, son of the Earl of Shrewsbury, Elizabeth prohibited ministers from preaching on any text that might be seen as related to the issue.21

  In the spring of 1579 the debate raged in the Privy Council. There were now mounting suspicions that Philip of Spain was planning to assert his claim to the Portuguese throne. Its recently crowned King, an elderly Catholic cardinal, was likely to die soon without issue. This raised the threatening prospect of Philip inheriting the Atlantic state and the overseas empire of Portugal, which would give him the resources he needed to reconquer the Netherlands and launch an invasion of England.22 Cecil believed the marriage to Anjou was the only realistic way to see off the foreign threats mounting against the realm. Without it, he claimed, ‘her Majesty shall stand alone, without aid of any mighty prince … and weakened at home’. The danger as he saw it came from the ‘joining of the Kings of Spain & France together with the Pope, the Emperor & others’. Together they made up a formidable Catholic threat which, he argued, was conspiring to stir up rebellion in England and Ireland, aid the Marian faction in Scotland, and attempt a ‘common war by their own joint forces’ against England. By marrying Anjou, Elizabeth would forge an alliance with France that would cause a split in the Catholic coalition, strengthen the Huguenots and ‘compel the King of Spain to agree with his subjects [in the Low Countries] upon reasonable conditions’.23

  Yet Walsingham believed that the danger from France had been exaggerated, that Anjou’s abortive campaign in the Low Countries had demonstrated he was hardly a dangerous enemy and the power of the King and the Guises in France was being held in check by the Huguenots who were gaining strength under Henri of Navarre. Similarly the peril from Philip II could be contained as long as the forces of the States-General in the Low Countries continued to pin down Spanish forces. Indeed, Walsingham argued the international Catholic threat was less serious than it had been before. He said that Elizabeth should lend the Huguenots money and give military assistance to the Duch rebels. The marriage he believed would only make matters worse and would alienate James VI of Scotland by threatening to end his hopes of inheriting the English crown.24

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  On 17 July, as the Queen, accompanied by Simier, was travelling along the Thames by barge from Greenwich to Deptford, a passing boatman named Thomas Appletree shot at them. One of the shots passed within six feet of the Queen, hitting her bargeman and forcing him ‘to cry and screech out piteously, supposing himself to be slain’. Ever since the Ridolfi plot many had feared such an event. Appletree was caught, condemned to death and four days later brought to the gallows; but, choosing to believe it was an accident and not a failed assassination attempt, ‘when the hangman had put the rope about his neck, he was, by the Queen’s most gracious pardon, delivered from execution’.25 Even so, Elizabeth took the precaution of declaring, by public proclamation, that the French envoys and their servants were now under her royal protection, and forbade any persons from molesting them, on peril of severe punishment.

  Dudley tried to undermine Jean de Simier’s efforts to woo the Queen by spreading rumours at court that the Frenchman had used ‘amorous potions and unlawful arts’ and had ‘crept into the Queen’s mind and insisted her to the love of [Monsieur]’.26 It was also rumoured that Dudley was behind attempts to murder the envoy, that he tried to have Simier poisoned and, when that plan failed, employed a man called Robin Tider to lie in wait and shoot him as he came out of a garden gate at Greenwich. However, Tider baulked when he saw how well guarded Simier was.27 Thereafter Simier took the precaution of wearing a privy doublet beneath the shirt.28

  Realising that Dudley was a key obstacle to the match, as soon as Simier learnt of Dudley’s secret marriage to Lettice Knollys he told the Queen. Elizabeth was furious and deeply shaken. Dudley had been by her side throughout her reign. She had come to depend on his devotion, but now after twenty years their relationship was ruptured. For nearly a year, since the autumn of 1578, Dudley had been deceiving her and whilst concealing the fact of his own marriage, had done all he could to hinder Elizabeth from taking a consort. At first she threatened to send him to the Tower, but she was persuaded to modify her punishment. He was confined at Greenwich and then banished to his own house at Wanstead. Lettice was exiled from court. The Queen would take her hostility towards her to her grave.29

  Elizabeth now agreed to grant the Duke of Anjou safe conduct to visit England.30 She added an important caveat: the duke’s visit was to be kept secret and he was to travel into England in disguise and with only a small retinue.

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  Froggie Went A-Courtin’

  François, Duke of Anjou, arrived at Greenwich early in the morning of 17 August 1579. He was shown to the house in the grounds of the palace, where Simier was staying. He immediately woke his envoy and demanded to be taken to Elizabeth. Simier cautioned his master to bide his time, telling him the Queen did not like rising early and that it would be better not to take her by surprise.

  Though Elizabeth sought to keep the duke’s visit a secret, even before his arrival the news had leaked, forcing her to ban all such discussion among her courtiers and to take drastic measures to ensure Anjou’s safety. On 26 July a proclamation was issued ‘against the common use of Dagges, Handguns, Harquebuses, Callivers and Coats of defence’: no one was to carry a firearm in the vicinity of the court.1 There had already been two attempts on Simier’s life and at least one was believed to have been instigated by a murderously possessive Robert Dudley.2

  Anjou spent the next ten days being lavishly entertained with balls, parties and banquets and enjoying hours of flirtatious conversation with the Queen. She had always longed to be wooed in pe
rson by one of her illustrious suitors and for once seemed to be genuine in her affections and interest in the marriage. The Queen appeared won over by Anjou’s charm and to have put aside her fears about his ugliness and the scarring of his pox-marked skin. At dusk most evenings Elizabeth would slip out of the palace with one of her ladies, most probably the wise and discreet Dorothy Stafford, to dine at the pavilion where the duke and Simier were staying. Perhaps because of his complexion, or his deep gravelly voice or bandy legs, Elizabeth gave him the nickname ‘Frog’.3 At court, frog jewellery became popular gifts for the Queen.4 The ballad ‘Froggie Went A-Courtin’, which survives as a traditional folksong, was originally circulated in 1580 as a mocking account of Elizabeth’s courtship with François of Anjou.

  Pamphlets and popular ballads bitterly opposing the marriage began to pour forth from printing presses throughout England. In August, a long and subversive tract written by John Stubbs, a Lincoln’s Inn lawyer, was secretly printed in London and widely distributed. ‘The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf whereinto England is like to be swallowed by an other French marriage, if the Lord forbid not the banes, by lettering her Majestie to see the sin and punishment thereof’ was inspired by a combination of religious fervour and patriotic zeal.5 Stubbs wrote as one who was, ‘her Majesty’s loving true servant’, but who dreaded the prospect of Elizabeth being ‘led blindfold as a poor lamb to the slaughter’ in a shameful marriage with a French Catholic prince. Using vivid allusions to penetration and invasion, Stubbs described how ‘the old serpent in shape of a man’ would ‘seduce our Eve’ so that she may ‘lose this English paradise’.6 Syphilis (the ‘French disease’) might contaminate the Queen’s body and childbirth could destroy it. He argued that Elizabeth was putting the satisfaction of her personal desires before her duty to protect ‘the welfare of her body politic or commonweal body, which is her body of majesty’.7 He also believed that Anjou could never possibly be in love with a woman twenty years his senior. ‘Not one in a thousand of those younger men that seek their elder matches but doth it in side respects,’ he announced, ‘it is quite contrary to his young appetites, which will otherwise have their desire.’ 8

  Elizabeth was appalled by Stubbs’s tract and on 27 September issued a proclamation banning the ‘lewd desitious book’ and ordering the Lord Mayor of London to collect and burn all copies. Preachers were instructed to speak out against the ‘seditious libeller’.9 Stubbs was swiftly arrested and condemned to the barbarous punishment of losing his right hand.10 It did little to silence opposition to her marriage; according to the Spanish ambassador, the proclamation which Elizabeth issued, ‘instead of mitigating the public indignation against the French, has irritated it and fanned the flame’. A letter from England to the Venetian ambassador in France on 29 November claimed that defamatory libels against Anjou were still appearing every day and that Dudley’s chaplain had presented the Queen with a petition against the marriage.11 Philip Sidney, the son of Mary Sidney, who had recently retired, also wrote against the marriage. ‘A Letter to Queen Elizabeth’, which was circulated widely at court, sought, through a combination of flattery and counsel, to describe the dangers to the realm if the marriage went ahead, and petitioned Elizabeth, ‘there can almost happen no worldly thing of more evident danger to your state royal’.12

  On 28 August, the Duke of Anjou left for France. Simier subsequently gave the Queen an account of the duke’s last evening in England. Unable to sleep, Anjou had spent the night sighing, lamenting, waking Simier again and again to speak of the Queen’s ‘divine beauties and his extreme regret at being separated from your Majesty [Elizabeth], the gaoler of his heart and mistress of his liberty’.13

  Elizabeth was unsure as to what course to follow. At the beginning of October she ordered her council to discuss the question of the Anjou match and give their opinion of it. Meeting after meeting was held, but all ‘without proceeding to any full resolution’. Their final decision was that the Queen should ‘do what best shall please her’. Elizabeth had not wanted her councillors to leave the decision to her; she had wanted them to override her doubts and persuade her that it would be right to marry Anjou. Now she ‘uttered many speeches and not that without shedding of many tears’, as Cecil recorded, in her disappointment that her councillors should have shown ‘any disposition to make it doubtful whether there could be any more surety for her and her realm than to have her marry and have a child of her own body to inherit, and so continue the line of Henry VIII’. The Spanish ambassador reported that she ‘remained extremely sad’, and ‘was so cross and melancholy that it was noticed by everyone who approached her’. She told Walsingham, the arch opponent of the match, to get out of her sight, vowing that ‘the only thing he was good for was a protector of heretics’.14

  Finally, despite the chorus of protest, on 20 November, Elizabeth instructed a small group of privy councillors to draw up a draft marriage treaty and within weeks Simier left England to take it to France.15 There was still one major obstacle, however. Elizabeth had promised to sign the treaty on condition that she secured her people’s consent over the next two months.16 If not, as Simier was forced to agree, the marriage articles would be null and void.

  After the envoy’s departure, the heady romance of the Anjou courtship began to fade. Sensing the Queen’s growing uncertainty, Simier wrote in January that he could tell her change of heart had been brought about by those wishing to prevent the marriage. In a deliberate reference to Dudley, whose coat of arms contained the bear and ragged staff, he begged Elizabeth to ‘protect her monkey [Simier] from the paw of the bear’. He tried to play on her pride and mused, ‘who would have thought that a queen of the heavens and the earth, a princess of all virtue in the world, could be mistaken in her knowledge of certain people who feel neither love than affection otherwise than ambition for power impels them’. Yet without the attentive presence of either Simier or Anjou, the Queen was drawn back to Dudley for affection and companionship.17

  At the end of January, Elizabeth regrettably informed Anjou that, although there was no prince in the world to whom she would rather give herself than him, her subjects’ objections to the match had not been overcome and they would not tolerate a king-consort who openly celebrated his Catholic faith. Whilst refusing to make any such concession over religion, Anjou remained committed to the match and urged Elizabeth to think again.18 For the rest of the year, Elizabeth’s position in respect of the negotiations with the duke remained in a deliberately managed state of limbo as she sought to maintain an alliance with France.

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  With each passing month the international Catholic threat appeared to become ever more serious. In January 1580, the new Pope, Gregory XIII, reissued his predecessor’s bull of excommunication against Elizabeth and was known to be plotting a new enterprise against her in Ireland. The Spanish were also consolidating their position. The assertion of Spanish control in the Netherlands continued unrelentingly and following the death of the King of Portugal, Philip II began to prepare a military offensive to assert his claim to the throne. In August, Spanish troops crossed the Portuguese border and captured Lisbon, and in September, Spanish troops landed in the west of Ireland and occupied Smerwick. Despite her incarceration, Mary Stuart had embarked upon a fresh round of plots against Elizabeth, in league with the Spanish ambassador Mendoza. At the same time the young King James VI of Scotland was falling under the influence of the ‘very Catholic’ Esmé Stuart d’Aubigny, whom James had created Earl of Lennox and had also become involved with his mother’s Guise relations, raising fears that he might ‘be conveyed into France and so governed and directed by the Guisians’.19

  Sir Christopher Hatton wrote to Walsingham in April 1580, telling him that England was entirely isolated and living in fear of a Catholic invasion, ‘beset on all sides with so great and apparent dangers’.20 To offset the threat, Elizabeth had entered into an alliance with the French, but France was now a much weakened power. The latest outbreak of wars of reli
gion had left the country riven with internal dissent and no effective ally against the might of Spain. Dudley and Walsingham led calls for Elizabeth to send direct military intervention to the Netherlands, but the Queen was reluctant to make such an explicit commitment of troops and instead looked to give Anjou hope for a future alliance and cultivate good relations with the French King, Henri III. When, in late June, the States-General seemed set to offer Anjou sovereignty of the Netherlands, Elizabeth hastily sent Sir Edward Stafford to France to express her renewed commitment to the French match. Anjou immediately agreed to the dispatch of French commissioners to England to conclude the marriage treaty.21

  In April 1581, a huge French embassy of some five hundred people arrived in England to agree terms. So fearful was the Queen of disturbances in London that before the French commissioners arrived, she issued a proclamation commanding that due honour be shown to the ambassadors on pain of death.22 During their six-week stay, the commissioners were magnificently entertained with feasts and tournaments. A vast banqueting hall decorated with greenery and a ceiling painted with stars and sunbeams had been specially built on the south-west side of Whitehall Palace. It was a spectacular stage on which to host the large number of French nobility who had come to the English court for a marriage – as would become clear – a marriage that would never take place.

  On the 15 May, the play The Four Foster Children of Desire was enacted for the visitors in the adjoining tiltyard. In a chivalrous spectacle, ‘Desire’ and his ‘foster children’ endeavoured to storm the ‘Fortress of Perfect Beauty’, using ‘pretty scaling ladders’ and ‘flowers and such fancies’. They addressed the Queen, pleading with her to render up her beauty to the forces of desire, but were driven back by Virtue, leaving the maiden fortress intact. The challengers were rebuked by an angel who proclaimed, ‘If in besieging the Sun you understand what you had undertaken, you would destroy a common blessing for a private profit.’23