All the Queen's Men (10 page)

After the early years of her reign, the Queen rarely attended the Council while it was in session except during times of crisis, preferring to consult its key members on an individual basis, a classic case of divide and rule. In turn, the Council cleverly adapted its strategy in response to the Queen's actions and declared intentions. Having long experienced Elizabeth's reluctance to pay little more than lip service to marriage, and despairing of ever hearing the welcome chime of royal wedding bells, they began to appreciate the advantages of an unmarried monarch without a consort to interfere in the affairs of state or confuse the Queen with conflicting advice. A husband drawn from another country could lead to political alliances, which might seem a good idea at the time but could later become inexpedient amid the shifting political climate of sixteenth-century Europe. Thus the Queen became hoist with her own petard when she famously declared that she was already bound unto a husband named the kingdom of England. When, almost into middle age, Elizabeth finally appeared serious about marriage with a French prince, the Council poured cold water on the idea, causing her to leave the Council Chamber in floods of tears. It was not long before some Tudor spin doctor coined the phrase ‘The Virgin Queen'.

To a certain extent, Elizabeth's behaviour was a reflection of the environment in which she found herself, a situation in part of her own making. Her decision not to marry had left her curiously isolated in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Court, never alone, yet nevertheless rather lonely, with no husband or sympathetic non-partisan shoulder to lean on in times of need. There was no Denis Thatcher, no Prince Albert, not even a Mr Brown with whom to unwind, to offload stately cares and woes, to discuss quietly the problems of the day or plan the agenda for tomorrow. True, there were confidantes like Anne, Countess of Warwick and the likes of the Earl of Oxford, Sir Walter Ralegh, the Earl of Essex and other Tudor sycophants for an ageing Queen to relax with and temporarily cast off the pressing cares of state while making song and dance, but this was not the consistant, sympathetic support needed by a head of state under constant pressure. In short, the Queen lacked a man about the house to give moral support in her dealings with an all-male Council.

Many of Elizabeth's Council were highly ambitious men seeking power and authority and material gain, yet for some of her royal subjects merely to serve was sufficient honour in itself. The Earl of Sussex was such a man, one whom posterity conceivably underrates as an Elizabethan Councillor. He was brought onto the Council by the Queen after many years of thankless service as her Deputy in Ireland, having later performed a decisive part in quelling the Northern Rebellion of 1569 while Lord President of the North. This revolt, led by the Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, was the only potentially serious large-scale internal threat to Elizabeth's rule, a forlorn attempt to turn back the clock and restore England to Catholicism. It failed dismally and Sussex was rewarded with a seat on the Council and the post of Lord Chamberlain, remaining a Councillor until his death fourteen years later. The failure of the Northern Rebellion finally saw the demise of the influence of two of the nation's oldest families, the Nevilles, Earls of Westmorland, and the Percys, the Earls of Northumberland. Since the Middle Ages the north had ‘known no other Prince than a Percy'. This noble state of affairs had finally drawn to a close.

It was occasionally possible to become a Privy Councillor by more unorthodox means. Christopher Hatton was said to have literally leapt to prominence when he caught the eye of the Queen while energetically performing the
Gaillard
, one of Elizabeth's favourite dances, at a masque at the Inner Temple in 1561, thereafter becoming a member of the Royal Court. He was subsequently made a Privy Councillor in 1577 and Lord Chancellor ten years later, inevitably to be christened, ‘The Dancing Chancellor'. Hatton was the archetypal Elizabethan courtier whose good looks and obvious adoration of the Queen quickly made him a royal favourite almost on a par with Robert Dudley, another expert at the
Gaillard
. Unlike Lord Robert, Hatton was never a serious suitor, for while he willingly took part in the elaborate game of playing court to the Queen, this was always conducted on an abstract plane, causing little harm and collecting no enemies. He studiously avoided involvement in the various cliques or causes that bred and multiplied in the frenetic atmosphere of the Court, a quality that served him well in a career progression that was less meteoric than Dudley's but just as enduring, due entirely to his own political acumen coupled with royal patronage, a combination not necessarily possessed by all royal favourites. Ironically Hatton, who never married, was possibly in love with the Queen, who was seven years older than himself. He was a vital link between the Queen and her Parliament, being a regular attender of a House of Commons which was steadily growing in stature. He made a number of important speeches including a particularly stirring oration following the defeat of the Armada.

Hatton had a kindly nature and was invariably the soothing voice of reason when discussions on matters of state were in danger of becoming overheated. At the same time, he possessed a welcome ability to dissuade the Queen from any unwise course of action, such as her sudden whim to appoint Dudley, by then the Earl of Leicester, to be Lieutenant General of the Realm at the time of the Armada, effectively making him her supreme military commander. This was a decision which could easily have proved disastrous in view of Dudley's lacklustre combat record. Hatton was yet another of the Queen's Privy Councillors who was to die while still in office, after nearly fifteen years' faithful and effective service.

Being a royal favourite did not necessarily guarantee promotion to the Privy Council. The Westcountryman Sir Walter Ralegh was indeed blessed with the same good looks and charm as Dudley and Hatton, becoming ‘the darling of the English Cleopatra'. Hatton in particular was wildly jealous of the attentions paid by the Queen to this Devonian newcomer. Ralegh rose rapidly in the Royal Court to become Captain of the Guard, yet progressed no further, the Queen finding his company delightful but his judgement highly questionable, a characteristic which was finally to prove fateful to him after Elizabeth's death. During his lifetime, the Queen noted Ralegh's actions rather than his attributes and never invited him to join her Privy Council. Ralegh was the great underachiever of the Elizabethan age: soldier, sailor, poet, courtier, explorer, he was Renaissance Man
par excellence
. Sadly, though promising much, he produced little, the epitome of the Jack-of-all-trades syndrome.

The celebrated tale of Ralegh gallantly casting his cloak in a muddy pool, ‘that plashy place', in order that the Queen could step safely across is manifestly absurd, yet of all his exploits it probably sums up Ralegh best – a man of more style than substance. There is no doubt that Ralegh was very clever, but he knew it well and could rarely resist the opportunity to demonstrate it. Even the closest of his friends could be frequently upset by a well-chosen, yet tactless, remark. Ralegh continually alienated his limited number of supporters while further antagonizing his growing number of enemies, including that other great royal favourite, the Earl of Essex and his powerful coterie of well-connected followers. Even the Queen, who used to affectionately call him ‘Wather' on account of his strong West Country accent, became deeply angered when she discovered that Ralegh was conducting a secret affair with Beth Throckmorton, one of her Maids of Honour. Ralegh was temporarily consigned to the Tower and Beth was never allowed to return to the Court even after becoming Ralegh's wife.

Little escaped the attention of a highly observant Queen – she was well aware of how Ralegh was perceived within her Court and thus ensured that he was omitted from many of the important missions and events of her reign. He was doomed to spend much of his life banished from Court or languishing in the Tower. While Ralegh was no politician, he even managed to antagonize Robert Cecil, William Cecil's second son, who was to become Elizabeth's most prominent statesman late in her reign. This time, Ralegh never came out of the Tower but perished on the executioner's block, like so many high profile courtiers before him.

Patronage was vital for any politician or would-be statesman. While the Queen chose and appointed Privy Councillors, a word or so of approval from someone she trusted and respected invariably proved more than helpful. Thus Francis Walsingham was indeed fortunate to be a protégé of William Cecil. Walsingham, like the Queen, was a gifted linguist, fluent in both French and Italian. He had been Elizabeth's ambassador in France at the time of the notorious St Bartholomew's Day Massacre in Paris on 24 August 1572, when several thousand Huguenots were slaughtered by Catholic extremists. Walsingham was also a religious fanatic, a die-hard Protestant who had been in exile on the continent during Mary's reign and who the contemporary historian William Camden described as ‘a most sharp maintainer of the purer religion'.
⁷
Walsingham took his religious zeal to the ideological edge and mistakenly perceived England's growing quarrel with Spain to be not so much a simple confrontation between nations but an all-out conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism. No wonder then, that when it was ultimately reported to King Philip of Spain that ‘Secretary Walsingham has just expired, at which there is much sorrow', the King wrote in the margin, ‘there, yes, but is good news here!'

A man of inflexible principle, Walsingham lacked William Cecil's patience and he was fearlessly outspoken, even to the Queen, who could be surprisingly inhibited by him at times – not without cause. ‘For the love of God Madam, let not the cure of your diseased state hang any longer in deliberation!'
⁸
he harangued her on one memorable occasion.

Dark and brooding, Walsingham invariably dressed in sombre black, in stark contrast to most of the more colourfully attired courtiers – the Queen nicknamed him ‘her Moor'. A fine portrait of Walsingham in the National Portrait Gallery attributed to John de Critz, who had come from the Netherlands as a child and attracted Walsingham's patronage, brilliantly projects the appearance of Elizabeth's formidable Secretary of State, who had been appointed to the Privy Council in 1573. The position of Secretary combined the modern-day ministerial post of Home Secretary with that of Foreign Affairs. During his time in office, Walsingham set up and financed a network of spies in order to provide intelligence for the Queen, maintaining out of his own pocket more than one hundred secret agents both at home and abroad, one of whom was Christopher Marlowe. It is even thought that William Shakespeare was employed by Walsingham in an undercover role in the Queen's Secret Service at one time.

Walsingham was highly intelligent, wily, authoritative and astute, all essential qualities for a successful Privy Councillor at the Court of Elizabeth. Initially as Cecil's protégé, he worked in close harness with this great patrician whom Elizabeth called ‘her spirit', and by that time had become Lord Treasurer and the senior statesman of the Elizabethan era. Yet as Walsingham established himself and gained confidence in his abilities, their contrasting beliefs and attitudes, particularly in the conduct of relationships with Spain, tended to make them draw further apart. Walsingham's confrontational stance made Elizabeth uneasy, while William Cecil found such belligerence towards Europe's most powerful nation most alarming. Nevertheless, they developed enormous respect for each other and were united in unswerving loyalty to the Queen and the well-being of her nation. Like Cecil, Walsingham suffered poor health throughout most of his life, just as Hatton was to develop a serious kidney complaint. Considering the long and excellent service he was to give the Queen over so many years both as Privy Councillor and Principal Secretary, Walsingham was scantily rewarded. Eventually he was given a knighthood, but no further honour followed. Unlike some other less able, but more favoured courtiers, Walsingham was not granted any lucrative sinecures and thus far from becoming very wealthy like many of his colleagues, he was extremely poor when he died and had so many creditors that he was supposedly buried in secret.

Walsingham was one of Elizabeth's more devious Councillors, economical with the truth, as a modern diplomat was famously to declare. He could be both deceitful and obstructive in his dealings with the Queen, who became well aware that some of the policies which she wished to pursue were subtly but effectively turned aside by her long-time Principal Secretary. Naturally, such high-handed yet difficult-to-substantiate actions were resented and while Elizabeth did not want yes-men around her and actively encouraged independent thinking and advice, Walsingham's lack of material reward was to some extent of his own making.

To be one of Elizabeth's Councillors by no means guaranteed a peaceful and prosperous career. Elizabeth's criticism of them could be very public and brutally humiliating. ‘Her Majesty's unkind dealing towards him hath so wounded him as he could take no comfort to stay there',
⁹
wrote Walsingham to Cecil in 1586, explaining his own sudden departure from the Court. Grown men resorted to sometimes pathetic tactics when confronted by Elizabeth's fury: they would retire from the Court in a huff, sulking, feigning illness like Lord Robert Dudley or threatening to resign as William Cecil did on numerous occasions, ‘to serve her Majesty elsewhere, be it in kitchen or garden', as his most famous letter of resignation stated. Cecil had served three decades before becoming Lord Burghley.

Even the longest-serving royal favourite, Sir Robert Dudley, later Earl of Leicester, was upset by her wrath. ‘After having had so many months sustained by her indignation, beseeches her to behold with the eyes of her princely clemency his wretched and depressed estate and to restore him some degree of her Majesty's former grace and favour',
¹⁰
ran his plaintive letter to the Queen in January 1588.