The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court Page 8
In the weeks that followed, and still without the Queen’s knowledge, Hertford came regularly to Katherine’s chamber at court. Before long Katherine was pregnant and for the next few months disguised her growing belly from Elizabeth as she continued to attend on the Queen in the privy lodgings. Meanwhile, in May, Hertford was sent to France on a minor diplomatic mission with the intention that he would go from there to Italy.
In mid-August 1561, while the court was on summer progress in East Anglia, the Queen discovered Katherine’s marriage and pregnancy. While attending a communion service with the Queen and the other Ladies of the Privy Chamber at Ipswich, Katherine saw ‘secret talk amongst men and women that her being with child was known and spied out’.19 That Sunday evening she went to Dudley’s lodgings, and ‘by his bedside’ confided the secret of her marriage and pregnancy and begged him ‘to be a means to the Queen’s highness for her’.20 When Dudley told Elizabeth the next morning, she was horrified. Edward Seymour was a descendent of Edward III, and any son of such a union would become Elizabeth’s de facto heir and a possible rival. Moreover, it was treason for a person of royal blood to marry without the Queen’s permission. Katherine Grey was ordered to the Tower under armed guard and messengers sent to France demanding Hertford’s immediate return.21 Elizabeth feared the marriage was part of a larger conspiracy involving some of the other women of her Bedchamber. Her anxiety is clear in the letter of instructions she sent on 17 August to Sir Edward Warner, Lieutenant of the Tower:
You shall … examine the Lady Katherine very straightly how many hath been privy to the love betwixt the Earl of Hertford and her from the beginning; and let her certainly understand that she shall have no manner of favour except she will show the truth, not only what ladies or gentlewomen of this court were thereto privy, but also what lords and gentlemen: for it doth now appear that sundry personages have dealt therein … It is certain that there hath been great practices and purposes.22
While the investigation revealed no wider plot, the stress of discovering Katherine’s pregnancy clearly took its toll on the Queen. She was ‘becoming dropsical’, reported the Spanish ambassador, and had ‘begun to swell extraordinarily’.23
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Following the death of her husband François II at the end of the previous year, Mary Stuart, then only eighteen, returned to Scotland in August 1561 after an absence of thirteen years to take up residence in Edinburgh.24 Weeks later the French, Scots, and English signed the Treaty of Edinburgh, in which it was agreed that all foreign soldiers, French and English alike, would withdraw from Scotland. In August, the Scottish parliament passed legislation making the country officially Protestant. Without her French family and away from the Catholicism of the French court, Mary was to find finally securing her position on the Scottish throne an intimidating prospect.
On her arrival in Scotland, Mary expressed her desire ‘to be a good friend and neighbour to the Queen of England’, and stressed the solidarity which she and Elizabeth shared as female rulers: ‘It is better for none to live in peace than for women: and for my part, I pray you think that I desire it with all my heart.’25 Many, however, still distrusted Mary’s true intentions. Thomas Randolph, the English ambassador to Scotland, articulated such fears:
Of this Queen’s [Mary’s] affection to the Queen’s Majesty, either it is so great that never was greater to any or it is the deepest dissembled, and the best covered that ever was. Whatsoever craft, falsehood or deceit there is in all the subtle brains of Scotland, is either fresh in their women’s memory, or can she fett [summon] it with a wet finger.26
In early September, while Elizabeth was considering what further action to take against Katherine Grey, William Maitland of Lethington, Mary Queen of Scots’s adviser, arrived at the royal castle of Hertford where the court was then staying. He found Elizabeth looking depressed and ill, and described how ‘to all appearances she is falling away, and is extremely thin and the colour of a corpse’.27 Having paid his respects, and offering her cousin’s messages of affection and goodwill, Maitland explained how Mary was determined that Elizabeth name her as her successor to the English crown.
This was not what Elizabeth had expected; she had hoped Maitland had come to report Mary’s acknowledgment of Elizabeth’s right to be Queen. Nevertheless her response to Maitland was cautious, though extraordinarily candid. ‘I have noted,’ Elizabeth told him,
that you have said to me … that your Queen is descended of the royal blood of England and that I am obliged to love her as being nearest to me in blood of any other, all which I must confess to be true and I here protest to you, in the presence of God, I for my part know no better [claim than the Queen of Scots] nor that I myself would prefer to her …28
Here Elizabeth made clear that Mary was her preferred successor and she acknowledged her claim to the throne. How Maitland must have rejoiced to hear her words and looked forward to reporting the success of his mission to Mary. But Elizabeth was not yet finished.
In her final audience with Maitland before his departure, Elizabeth made clear that she would, however, never name Mary Queen of Scots as her chosen heir for fear of the unrest it might cause.
The desire is without example to require me in my own life, to set my winding sheet before my eyes … Think you that I could love my own winding sheet? Princes cannot like their own children, that that should succeed them … How then shall I, think you, like my cousin, being once declared my heir apparent?… And what danger it were, she being a puissant princess and so near our neighbour, ye may judge; so that in assuring her of the succession we might put our present estate in doubt.29
Elizabeth was all too aware of the ‘inconstancy of the people of England, how they ever mislike the present government and have their eyes fixed upon that person that is next to succeed, and naturally men be so disposed: plures adorant solem orientem quam occidentem [more men worship the rising than the setting sun]’. As men had looked to her during the reign of her sister, so men might look to Mary now as a focus of their hopes.30
Maitland did not have the successful mission that he had hoped for. Elizabeth offered only the consolation that she would yield to the Scottish Queen’s request that they meet face to face.31 This too proved to be an empty gesture when shocking events in France weeks later forced Elizabeth to change her course. On 1 March 1562, hundreds of Huguenots were murdered in an armed action by troops of François, Duke of Guise, in Vassay in north-eastern France. All thoughts of a meeting between Elizabeth and Mary, the duke’s niece, were quickly dropped. Emnity and suspicion undermined their relationship once more.
With growing fears that the Guises had now embarked on a long-feared Catholic crusade which would be brought to Protestant England, Elizabeth received the news that she had dreaded. On the afternoon of 24 September, Katherine Grey had given birth in the Tower of London to a son, Edward Seymour, Viscount Beauchamp. By the terms of Henry VIII’s will and English law he now followed his mother in the line of succession.32 England simultaneously had a Protestant heir and the promise of a ‘masculine succession’. Elizabeth immediately announced her intention to have the young Edward Seymour ‘declared a bastard by Parliament’.33
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In late September, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton wrote to Elizabeth from Paris warning of another plot to assassinate her. An Italian, calling himself Jean Baptista Beltran of Lyon, had come to the ambassador’s lodgings to inform him that a Greek called Maniola de Corfeu had been instructed by a ‘great personage’ to ‘make a voyage into England to poison the Queen’. Beltran had recently been in England where he had revealed the plot to Dudley and Cecil, described the would-be assassin and told them that de Quadra, the Spanish ambassador, was also privy to the plot. On his return to France, Baptista told Throckmorton that Maniola had arrived in Paris ready to cross to England to commit the deed. If he could be assured of a ‘good recompense for the charges’ that had been incurred and the danger he had put himself in by ‘discovering the matt
er’, Baptista said he would accompany Maniola to England, ‘and there apprehend him and all his boxes with the sundry sorts of poison’. Throckmorton assured Baptista that he would be well rewarded if he foiled the plot and apprehended Maniola, although he could not assure him of any certain sum for his trouble.34
A fortnight later Throckmorton wrote again to the Queen, warning her that Maniola de Corfeu had departed secretly on 6 October and was going via Dieppe to England. Throckmorton described the assassin as being about the age of forty, having a black beard, a mean stature and corpulent, and with a cut on the left side of his nose.35 Cecil had the plot investigated but was satisfied it was a false alarm.36 Nevertheless, as de Quadra subsequently reported, Cecil had spent ‘many hours’ watching out for the two men described by Beltran and, ‘this would not have been done, at least by Cecil himself if they did not take the thing seriously’.37
9
Arcana Imperii
On the afternoon of 18 January 1562, Gorboduc or The Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex, a play written by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, two lawyers of the Inner Temple, was performed before the Queen at Whitehall. It took its name from the mythical British king who unwisely divided his kingdom between his sons. By presenting the Queen with a vision of a realm thrown into chaos by an unresolved succession, it sought to spur her to marry and produce an heir.1 Gorboduc counselled the Queen not simply that a royal marriage was necessary and desirable, but that it should be to Robert Dudley and not to Erik XIV, King of Sweden.2
An Anglo-Swedish marriage, which had been keenly promoted by Erik and his ambassadors from the earliest days of the reign, was increasingly favoured by those hostile to Dudley. After the sudden death of Amy Robsart and Dudley’s rather dubious efforts to obtain Spanish and papal support for his suit to the Queen, support for the Swedish match had been building. In July 1561, wedding souvenirs had begun to circulate in London and when Erik’s ambassador, the Swedish chancellor Nils Göransson Gyllenstierna, arrived in England to negotiate terms, he received a grand official welcome.3 Elizabeth had initially resisted the Swedish overtures but as rumours reached England that Erik XIV was making advances to Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth began to respond with greater enthusiasm.4
Upon his arrival in England, Gyllenstierna was first instructed to investigate the truth about Elizabeth’s morality and sexual conduct. ‘I saw no signs of an immodest life,’ he reported, ‘but I did see many signs of chastity, of virginity, of true modesty; so that I would stake my life that she is most chaste.’5 By September, after the assurances of the Swedish chancellor, the King himself was ‘hourly looked for’ and preparations made at court for his arrival.6 Erik began his journey from Sweden to England in November but soon had to turn back because of bad weather.7 He was not now expected until the following spring.
While in the intervening months the Swedish ambassador continued to press his master’s suit, Dudley and his supporters mounted a concerted campaign against it. The performance of Gorboduc had dramatically made their case.8 As one member of the audience explained, the play, and particularly the dumbshow which formed part of it – in which the King was offered an ordinary glass of wine which he refused and then a golden chalice of wine which he took – showed how ‘men refused the certain and took the uncertain’, meaning ‘it was better for the Queen to marry with the L[ord] R[obert] … than with the K[ing] of Sweden’.9
By March 1562, Erik had still not arrived and, believing any match was increasingly unlikely given that ‘the Queen maketh so much of the L[ord] Rob[ert]’, Gyllenstierna prepared to leave for home. While Elizabeth tried to detain him for fear that he would go straight to Mary Stuart, he finally left England in early April 1562.10
With the Swedish suit effectively over, Dudley and his supporters grew ever more hopeful that he might finally win the Queen’s hand.11 Elizabeth told de Quadra that she was free of any betrothal, ‘notwithstanding what the world might think or say’, but that ‘she thought she could find no person with better qualities than Lord Robert’ if she was obliged to marry in England. De Quadra joked with her ‘not to dilly-dally any longer, but to satisfy Lord Robert at once’.12
But then, on 28 April, Borghese Venturini, secretary to de Quadra, made a statement which changed everything. He revealed de Quadra’s secret communications with Dudley, his contact and relations with the English Catholics, and unflattering comments he had made as to Elizabeth’s indiscretions with her favourite.13 Cecil got what he had been after. For some time he had been bribing Venturini to spy on the ambassador, in the hope of learning something that would discredit de Quadra with the Queen and put an end to his dealings with Dudley over the marriage and restoration of Catholicism.14 According to Venturini, de Quadra had even alleged that ‘the Queen was secretly married to Lord Robert’ and had composed a sonnet ‘full of dishonour to the Queen and Lord Robert’.15
The Spanish ambassador was immediately confronted by Cecil and accused, among other things, of turning his residence Durham House into a hotbed of Catholic conspiracy against the crown. De Quadra wrote of the ‘disaster’ that had happened in his house and how Venturini had ‘been bribed by the Queen’s ministers’ and ‘has laid more on to me than he could truthfully do’.16 In response to the charge that he had written to Philip of Spain describing how the Queen had secretly married Lord Robert at the Earl of Pembroke’s house, de Quadra argued that Elizabeth herself had admitted that, ‘on her return that afternoon from the earl’s house, her own ladies-in-waiting when she entered her chamber with Lord Robert asked whether they were to kiss his hand as well as hers; to which she told them no and they were not to believe what people said’. Two or three days later, the ambassador claimed, Dudley had told him that the Queen had promised to marry him.
Elizabeth and Dudley had hitherto believed that de Quadra was sympathetic to their relationship, but now they learned that he had passed on gossip that dishonoured them both and had advised Philip II to withhold support for the match for fear of alienating the English Catholics. The ambassador denied any duplicity but neither party could trust him again.17
* * *
Desperate to save their mistress from a scandalous marriage to Dudley, two of the Queen’s ladies, Kat Ashley and Dorothy Bradbelt, now took matters into their own hands, in the hope of reviving the Swedish match and enticing Erik to come finally to England.18 While we know Dorothy Bradbelt was at the very heart of the Queen’s court and was even acknowledged in the diplomatic correspondence of the Venetian ambassador in the 1560s to be ‘oftentimes’ the Queen’s ‘bedfellow’, we know very little of her.19 She was not of noble origin and there is no evidence that she had served in the royal household during the years before Elizabeth’s accession. Yet, as her involvement with the Swedish match reveals, Dorothy was a determined woman who would do what she thought necessary to defend the honour of her Queen.
On 22 July, Dorothy together with Kat Ashley wrote to the Swedish King’s chancellor, Gyllenstierna, suggesting that the King’s suit might now be successful if he came to England.20 Two English adventurers seeking profit from contact with the wealthy Swedish King named John Kyle and James Goldborne (a former servant of Ashley’s) also wrote a number of letters to their friends in Sweden encouraging a marriage with Elizabeth.21 It was not the first time that Ashley had acted covertly in favour of the Swedish suit. Earlier in the year, John Dymock, a London jewel merchant, came to see her before travelling to the Swedish King’s court to sell some gems.
Now in July 1565, as he prepared to leave, Dymock met again with Kat in her chamber at Whitehall and asked whether the rumour that Elizabeth was to marry Robert Dudley was true. Kat ‘solemnly declared that she thought the Queen was free of any man living, and that she would not have the Lord Robert’. To add further weight to their cause, Kat and her husband John, Master of the Jewel House, concocted another scheme to convince the Swedish King of the Queen’s favour, this time involving Dymock. Elizabeth had taken an interest in a large ruby that the jewe
ller had shown her, but she claimed she could not afford it. At John Ashley’s instigation, Dymock suggested to the Queen that he show the same ruby to Erik and see if he would buy it for her, as a token of her affection. Elizabeth laughed off the idea saying, ‘If it should chance that they matched, it would be said that there was a liberal king and a niggardly princess matched…’
Dymock suggested that maybe the Queen might like to send a ring from her finger to the Swedish King, as a sign of her favour? Elizabeth would not give up a ring but did agree to send some other less personal gifts, including a pair of black velvet gloves, a ‘fair English mastiff’, and a French translation of Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier). Upon receiving the gifts, Erik reciprocated with two gems and a portrait of himself. The Bedchamber plotting looked to be working and negotiations for the Swedish match moved forward with the gestures of interest from both sides. In acknowledgement of her support, and testament to her perceived influence with the Queen, Erik sent Kat Ashley two sable skins, ‘lined with cloth of silver and perfumed’.22 Encouraged, Kat sent letters to the Swedish chancellor, saying the time was now right for his King to come to England.
On 4 August, Cecil intercepted the letters and ordered an immediate enquiry. Elizabeth reacted furiously at news of the secret correspondence and moved quickly to inform Gyllenstierna that his informants were ‘idle cheats’ whose tales should not be believed. Elizabeth commanded Kat Ashley ‘to keep to her chamber’ and committed Dorothy Bradbelt to Cecil’s custody.23 Elizabeth was highly sensitive to any interference in what she termed ‘arcana imperii’ – state secrets – especially by the women closest to her.