Life of Elizabeth I (22 page)

By December, she was urging that she and Mary should meet soon to discuss their differences, and she wrote again to Mary, suggesting this. Mary responded warmly, expressing her delight at the prospect of seeing her 'dearest sister' face to face, and taxing Thomas Randolph minutely as to Elizabeth's 'health, exercise, diet and many more questions'. Gazing at her cousin's portrait, she 'said she wished that one of them was a man, so that their kingdoms could be united by marital alliance'.

'I think the Queen shall be able to do much with her [Mary] in religion if they once enter in a good familiarity,' Maitland told Cecil hopefully. What he did not express was his suspicion that Mary would be no match intellectually for Elizabeth, a fear shared by several of Mary's advisers. But such meetings were not arranged overnight, and there followed several months of letters and diplomatic negotiations, during which time the two queens grew increasingly impatient, so enthusiastic were they at the prospect of a personal encounter.

Maitland wrote to Cecil: 'I see my sovereign so transported with affection that she respects nothing so she may meet with her cousin, and needs no persuasion, but is a great deal more earnestly bent on it than her counsellors dare advise her.' Both the Scots and the English lords were loudly protesting at the expense of funding a state visit by Mary to England, and Elizabeth's advisers were warning her that the climate of political opinion in France, which was then strongly anti-Guise, was against the visit. But Elizabeth would not listen: in her opinion, much good could come out of a meeting with Mary, and that hope outweighed the risk of offending the French.

There were also compelling personal reasons underpinning Elizabeth's desire to see her cousin. Being inordinately vain, she was curious to see if Mary was as beautiful as reported, and also eager to find that she was not. Elizabeth was jealous of her reputation as the most desirable catch in Europe, and could not bear competition. When a German diplomat told her that Mary was reputed to be very lovely, she retorted that that could not be so as 'she herself was superior to the Queen of Scotland'.

In England, Elizabeth's popularity had survived the Dudley scandal. On 8 September 1561, when she arrived to take up residence at St James's Palace in London, ten thousand people turned out to see her, 'such was their gladness and affection for her'.

That autumn, Erik of Sweden again offered himself as a future consort for the Queen, but although she appeared to encourage him for a time, she only did so, according to de Quadra, to prevent him from switching his attentions to Mary, Queen of Scots. But it was not long before even this hitherto dauntless suitor lost interest and gave up. Seven years later Erik was to be deposed by Duke John of Finland, who would have him murdered in 1577.

Dudley's star was still in the ascendant. In November 1561, Elizabeth was observed, wearing a disguise, leaving Whitehall by a back exit to watch him take part in a shooting match. On 26 December, the Queen restored to his brother Ambrose Dudley the earldom of Warwick, once held by his father and late brother, together with Warwick Castle and huge tracts of land in the Midlands, while on 22 December, Dudley was admitted to membership of the Inner Temple of the Inns of Court, whom he had supported in a land dispute. Five days later he presided over a magnificent gathering in the great hall of the Temple, while on the next day, plays were performed there, all with a common theme, that the Queen should marry Dudley.

Dudley himself was still occasionally hopeful that this might come to Pass, but the ambassador of the Duke of Saxony reported to his master that Elizabeth had told him 'that she had never thought of contracting a 
marriage with my Lord Robert, but she was more attached to him than to any of the others, because when she was deserted by everybody in the reign of her sister, not only did he never lessen in any degree his kindness and humble attention to her, but he even sold his possessions that he might assist her with money, and therefore she thought it was just that she should make some return for his good faith and constancy'.

Dudley wanted more than that. In January 1562, he again approached de Quadra with a plea that King Philip endorse his suit for Elizabeth's hand by a written recommendation. This time, he did not insult the Spaniards by pretending that his conversion to Catholicism would follow, but merely hinted that the French were offering him substantial bribes to use his influence with the Queen on their behalf. However, de Quadra was not to be fooled a second time. He smoothly replied that Her Majesty was already aware that King Philip was anxious to see her married and she knew too that he had high hopes of Dudley. Therefore a letter such as his lordship suggested would be quite unnecessary. As de Quadra saw it, the real stumbling block was the Queen's inability to reach a decision about her marriage; he himself would raise the matter with her again, if Dudley wished it.

Dudley did, and soon afterwards the Bishop was inquiring of the Queen whether she had made up her mind to marry.

'I am as free from any engagement as the day I was born,' she told him, adding that she had resolved never to accept any suitor she had not met, which meant, she realised, that she would have to marry an Englishman, 'in which case she thought she could find no person more fitting than Lord Robert'. What she wanted, she continued, were letters from friendly princes, including King Philip, recommending that she marry Dudley, so that her subjects could never accuse her of choosing him in order to satisfy her own desires. This, she said, was what Dudley himself wanted.

De Quadra was, unsurprisingly, suspicious of her motives, and 'in a joking way' he sidestepped her request and advised her not to hesitate any longer, but to satisfy Dudley without delay, because he knew that King Philip would be glad to hear of it. In reality, both de Quadra and King Philip knew that by marrying Dudley Elizabeth would be sacrificing both status and reputation, which would weaken her position and perhaps leave the way clear for a strong Catholic claimant - such as was now to be found just north of the border.

Around this time, Elizabeth restored to Dudley many of the lands once held by his father, giving him the means to maintain his position. Later in the year she granted him a lucrative licence to export woollen cloth free of duty. Once again, rumour had it that she meant to marry him, and by June it was common talk in London that they had secretly 
married at Baynard's Castle, the London residence of Dudley's friend, the Earl of Pembroke. The Queen found this all very amusing, and took pleasure in teasing de Quadra, telling him how her ladies had asked her if they were now to kiss Dudley's hand as well as hers. Dudley himself was going about openly saying that Elizabeth had indeed promised to marry him, 'but not this year'.

The Council accused de Quadra of spreading the story of the secret marriage, but he denied that he had done so, declaring that he was only sorry he could not inform anyone that the Queen was married.

By the spring of 1562, the Countess of Lennox and her son, Lord Darnley, had been released from house arrest in London and received back into favour by the Queen. But Lady Lennox was a woman of powerful ambitions, and it was not long before she resumed her intrigues to marry Darnley to Queen Mary, thereby uniting two claims to the English throne, a prospect that had already alarmed Elizabeth considerably. This time, however, the Countess went too far, for her plans hinted at the deposition of the Queen. Her plotting was soon uncovered, and for her suspected treasonable designs she was arrested and sent to the Tower.

In May, after months of frustrating negotiations, Mary sent Maitland back to England with instructions to procure an invitation for her to make the proposed state visit soon. Elizabeth told Maitland that there was now nothing to delay her meeting with his sovereign, whereupon a jubilant Mary wrote to the Duke of Guise, 'You can think how astonished others will be when they see us, the Queen of England and me, according so well!'

Unfortunately, a religious war between Catholics and Huguenots had just erupted in France, prompting Sir Nicholas Throckmorton and Robert Dudley to urge Elizabeth to offer full support for the oppressed Huguenots, who might in return be able to assist her towards the recovery of Calais, a fulfilment of one of her dearest dreams. Throckmorton warned her that a meeting with the Catholic Mary, a relation of the Guises, would be impolitic at this time.

Mary was dismayed when she heard that the project might be abandoned, but Elizabeth was reluctant to become embroiled in a foreign civil war and resolutely insisted on going ahead with the meeting, arguing that many benefits would result from it. Her Council, however, when ordered to finalise plans for the state visit, strongly advised her not to meet with Mary at present because to do so would only identify her with, and so strengthen, the Guise cause, bringing further suffering to the French Protestants who she should be succouring. But Elizabeth was obstinate. Unless Throckmorton
' 
her otherwise, she declared, 'go she would' to meet Mary, and that was an end to the matter.

Preparations for the visit were set in train, although unseasonably wet weather that rendered the roads impassable held things up. Not surprisingly, someone - Sir Henry Sidney - 'groaned and lamented' in an urgent letter to Throckmorton, pointing out that only he could dissuade the Queen from her disastrous purpose, and begging him to use his persuasive powers to good effect. But before Throckmorton could respond, the religious conflict in France ended in an uneasy peace on 25 June, and the way was left clear for the two queens to meet.

Two weeks later Elizabeth and Maitland discussed the final plans for Mary's visit, which would take place at York, or another northern city convenient to the Scots Queen, between 20 August and 20 September, and Maitland then hastened north to acquaint Mary with the details. In York, the civic authorities were already buying in vast stores of provisions to meet the needs of the two royal retinues, and plans were made for a series of tournaments, whilst courtiers on both sides of the border ordered new clothes, most of them grumbling at the expense.

Six days later, Throckmorton sent an urgent message to inform the English government that, despite Catherine de' Medici's efforts to preserve the peace, civil war had broken out again in France. This time Elizabeth knew she could not allow the Huguenot leaders, the Prince de Conde and Admiral de Coligny, to be thrown to the wolves without intervening to help them. She had been dismayed to hear that Mary was actively encouraging her Catholic relations to overthrow the Huguenots, and on 15 July, she reluctantly dispatched Sir Henry Sidney to Scotland to inform the Scots Queen that her visit must be postponed for a year. The effect on Mary, who had nurtured great hopes of the meeting, was to cause her to take to her bed and remain there weeping all day, only rallying when Sidney managed to convince her that Elizabeth was as disappointed as she was.

Unlike Elizabeth, Mary had definitely resolved to marry, preferably a powerful Catholic prince who would intimidate Elizabeth into revising the Treaty of Edinburgh in Mary's favour. Elizabeth was aware of her intentions, and they caused her the gravest concern, since the Queen of Scots' attraction lay not only in her present status, but also in her expected future inheritance. If Mary were to marry a prince of the royal houses of Spain, Austria or France, Elizabeth would have the Catholic threat brought right to her back doorstep, her chief fear being that Scotland might then be used as a springboard for an invasion of England.

Elizabeth had therefore decided to use her subtle powers of persuasion to influence Mary to take a less dangerous husband, one preferably of Elizabeth's own choosing. She had even suggested to Maitland that 
Mary might marry a member of the English aristocracy, but he had dismissed that idea, saying that his sovereign would never consider any match that might diminish her reputation.

In fact, Mary had set her sights on Don Carlos, Philip II's heir, whom she had heard described at the French court as a brave and gallant prince, but who was, in reality, a sadistic degenerate who suffered epileptic fits. She was not interested in Charles IX - he was too young - nor in the Archduke Charles of Austria - he was too poor.

Elizabeth, of course, had no desire to see Mary married to the heir to Catholic Spain, and warned Mary that, if she went ahead with it, she, Elizabeth, would ever afterwards be her enemy. 'Consider well your steps,' was her advice; if Mary chose a husband agreeable to the English, Elizabeth would be her good friend for life.

Two months later, Elizabeth signed a treaty pledging her assistance to the Huguenots, who in return placed their port of Newhaven (later renamed Le Havre) in English hands as surety for the future restoration of Calais, which they hoped to wrest from their enemies.

Elizabeth's patriotic sentiments had been fired by the prospect of recovering Calais, and in October 1562, she gave orders for the mustering of a force of six thousand men, whose commander was to be Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick; they were to sail to Newhaven and Dieppe and reinforce the Huguenot armies in the region.

However, before she could give the order for her soldiers to leave for France, the Queen fell so dangerously ill that her life was despaired of.

Chapter 8

'Without a Certain Heir'

Smallpox was exceptionally virulent during the early years of Elizabeth's reign, and in the early 1560s reached epidemic form, seeming to single out 'aged folks and ladies': the Countess of Bedford and hundreds of lesser folk had recently succumbed to it. Smallpox was a dreaded disease, not only because it was life-threatening, but also because those who did survive it were often left horribly disfigured. Thomas Randolph described the early symptoms as being 'a pain in their heads that have it, and a soreness in their stomachs with a great cough'.