The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court (25 page)

It was a gruesome picture that the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre in France had made very real. As Archbishop Parker made clear, a realm and Church with an immoral sovereign at its head in such a threatening climate was a realm and Church in peril. This was the archbishop’s most ‘fearful opinion’ about the impact of Elizabeth’s worsening reputation in the eyes of Christendom. He had heard, he warned Cecil, that the Dover slanderer had not been imprisoned, but had been turned loose to make mischief again. ‘Sir, if this be true,’ Parker ended his letter, ‘God defend her Majesty and all her trusty friends.’
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Sir Christopher Hatton, an unmarried courtier some seven years younger than the Queen, had first captured her attention by his graceful dancing at a court masque. He was dark and good looking, ‘of comely tallness of body and countenance’. Hatton, like Dudley, had risen to power because of Elizabeth’s affection for him. He became a Gentlemen Pensioner in 1562 or 1564 and thereafter ascended rapidly in royal favour. Five years later he became a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and by May 1572 had advanced to the trusted position of Captain of the Guard, thereby giving him very close access to the Queen and responsibility for ensuring her safety
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Whilst Elizabeth referred to Robert Dudley as her ‘eyes’, Hatton was her ‘lids’.

A letter written to Hatton on 9 October 1572 by his friend, the poet Edward Dyer, warned of the rumours about his intimacy with the Queen, ‘for though in the beginning, when her Majesty sought you (after her good manner) she did bear with rugged dealings of yours, until she had what she fancied; yet now, after satiety and fullness, it will rather hurt than help you’. Dyer advised Hatton that, however familiar he was with Elizabeth, he should not forget who she was. ‘Consider with whom you have to deal, and what we be towards her who, though she do descend very much in her sex as a woman, yet we may not forget her place and the nature of it as our sovereign.’
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In May 1573, when Hatton lay seriously ill with kidney pain, the Queen visited him almost every day.
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Weeks later, when Hatton was absent from Elizabeth for two days because of his continued ill health, he wrote passionately to her, expressing his devotion and distress at being away from her side:

No death, no, not hell, not fear of death shall ever win of me my consent so far to wrong myself again as to be absent from you [for] one day … Would God I were with you but for one hour. My wits are overwrought with thoughts. I find myself amazed. Bear with me, my most dear sweet Lady. Passion overcometh me. I can write no more. Love me; for I love you … Shall I utter this familiar term (farewell)? Yea, ten thousand thousand farewells …
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Hatton’s supposed influence over Elizabeth led to an assassination attempt in October 1573 by a fanatical Puritan named Peter Burchet. He declared that Hatton was a ‘wilful papist’ who ‘hindereth the glory of God so much as in him lieth’. Yet Burchet mistook his man and seriously wounded another, Sir John Hawkins, near Temple Bar. The would-be assassin was committed to the Tower and subsequently executed. Elizabeth’s fury at the attack together with her concern for Hatton’s safety, certainly fuelled the gossip.
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Hatton denied all such accusations. The Queen’s godson, Sir John Harington, later stated, the Captain of the Guard ‘did swear voluntarily, deeply and with vehement assertion, that he never had any carnal knowledge of her body’.
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In May 1573, Gilbert Talbot, the young son of the Earl of Shrewsbury, having recently arrived at court, wrote to his father about what he had observed. Dudley ‘is very much with her Majesty, and she shows the same great affection to him that she was wont; of late she has endeavoured to please her more than heretofore’. However, the young Talbot had already noticed Dudley’s favour with the women of the court and Elizabeth’s resentment of it. His letter continued, ‘there are two sisters now in the court that are very far in love with him [Dudley] … they (of like striving who shall love him better) are at great wars together, and the Queen thinketh not well of them, and not the better of him; by this means there are spies over him’.
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The two sisters were Lady Douglas and Lady Frances, the daughters of Baron William Howard of Effingham, whom Elizabeth had appointed Lord Chamberlain on her accession. Both had become maids of honour at the beginning of the reign, but Douglas Howard – probably named after her godmother Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox – had soon left court to marry John Lord Sheffield, a Lincolnshire nobleman, in October 1560. The couple had two surviving children before Lord Sheffield’s death on 10 December 1568. Lady Douglas then returned to court as an honorary Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber.
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Within a few years of rejoining the Queen’s service, Douglas began an affair with Dudley which continued in secret for many years.
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It is likely that Dudley initiated the relationship, given his jealousy and resentment at Hatton’s growing influence and favour with the Queen. However, as Lady Douglas began to pressurise him to marry, Dudley made clear he wanted nothing more. Having ‘thoroughly weighed and considered both your own and mine estate’, he said, he did not believe he could ‘proceed to some further degree than is possible for me, without mine utter overthrow’.
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Dudley knew that Elizabeth would never let him marry without bringing about his ruin. His greatest fear was, he once told the Duke of Norfolk, that the Queen’s affection might one day turn ‘into anger and enmity against him, which cause her, womanlike, to undo him’.

Lady Douglas’s urgency to wed was explained by the birth of a son on 7 August 1574. Having little choice, Dudley admitted the child was his and placed him in the custody of his cousin John Dudley, in Stoke Newington. Years later when their son Robert sought a share of his father’s inheritance, Lady Douglas claimed that she and Dudley had in fact married in a secret ceremony in 1573.
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But with little evidence to prove that the marriage had taken place, the case collapsed.

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Blows and Evil Words

On a cold January day in 1574 Mary Shelton, Elizabeth’s twenty-four-year-old second cousin, secretly married John Scudamore, heir to one of the principal families in Herefordshire and now one of the Queen’s Gentleman Pensioners.
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Mary had become a Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber on 18 November 1568 at the age of eighteen and was promoted to a Chamberer of the Queen’s Bedchamber on 1 January 1571.
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Both of Mary’s parents had significant connections to Elizabeth. Her paternal grandfather Sir John Shelton married Anne Boleyn’s aunt and was governor of Hatfield when Elizabeth was there as an infant; her uncle, Henry Parker, was later Elizabeth’s Chamberlain.
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The Queen was acutely conscious of the family links and enjoyed giving her relatives positions in the royal household. Following the deaths of Kat Ashley and Katherine Knollys, Mary Shelton’s appointment at court was doubtless a great comfort to Elizabeth.

There is no extant record of where the marriage of Mary Shelton and John Scudamore was celebrated, but it may well have taken place away from court, as they knew the Queen would disapprove. When Elizabeth found out Mary Shelton faced the full force of her wrath. Eleanor Brydges, a maid of honour at court wrote how, ‘the Queen hath used Mary Shelton very ill for her marriage: she hath dealt liberal both with blows and evil words, and hath not yet granted her consent’, and added, ‘no one ever bought her husband more dearly’.
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Some years later, when the story was told to Mary Queen of Scots by ‘Bess of Hardwick’ (the Countess of Shrewsbury) whose daughter Lady Mary Talbot was a close friend of Mary Shelton’s, Elizabeth was said to have broken Mary’s finger by hitting her with a hairbrush and then tried to blame the injury on a falling candlestick. Mary Shelton, now Scudamore, was sent away from court though was soon reinstated and by October 1574 had been promoted to a Lady of the Privy Chamber.
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Following her marriage, Mary Scudamore moved out of the cramped and uncomfortable quarters at court used by unmarried staff and, when both her and her husband were in attendance on the Queen, was given use of conjugal lodgings. She was now stepmother to five children from her husband’s first marriage and mistress of Holme Lacy, the Scudamore family home in Herefordshire, yet she was seldom there as it was hard to obtain leave from the Queen to be away from court.

On 9 October 1576, when Mary was away with her husband, she was hastily summoned back to court, as Lady Dorothy Stafford, the Queen’s regular bedfellow, had broken her leg in a riding accident. The Earl of Sussex wrote to Mary at Holme Lacy: ‘I fear until you come her Majesty shall not in the night have for the most part so good rest as shall take after your coming.’
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Mary had become one of Elizabeth’s most trusted intimates and favourite sleeping companions. Weeks later, when the Queen fell ill, Mary was at her side preparing warm drinks and possets and providing comfort through the day and night.

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Whilst Mary Scudamore was cementing her position in the Queen’s favour, Lady Mary Sidney, sister of Robert Dudley, was losing Elizabeth’s goodwill and becoming increasingly embittered at what she felt was a lack of regard by the Queen. Despite having nursed Elizabeth through her smallpox, Lady Sidney suffered as a result of the Queen’s strained and volatile relationship with her brother, and no matter how selfless and faithful she was, Elizabeth just seemed to be irritated by her. In July 1573, when Mary Sidney appeared at court wearing a gown made from velvet that her husband had sent from Ireland, the Queen immediately demanded that he send some for her. Mary was forced to write a somewhat hysterical letter to her steward, John Cockrame, urging him to procure the material at any cost:

Her Majesty likes so well of the velvet it my Lord gave me last for a Gown as she hath very earnestly willed me to send her so much of it as will make her a loose gown. I understand my Lord had his at Coopers or Cookes I pray you fail not to inquire certainly for it of whom and what is left of it. If there be 12 yards it is enough. You may not slack the care here of for she will take it ill and it is now in the worst time for my lord for diverse considerations to dislike her for such a trifle. Wherefore I once again earnestly require it.
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It remains unclear whether Mary’s petition was successful and if Cockrame managed to buy the last twelve yards of the cloth. There is no record of that length a piece of cloth entering the Wardrobe of Robes at this point so perhaps her efforts to keep Elizabeth happy failed.

The Sidneys had grown increasingly impoverished. As an unsalaried member of the Privy Chamber, Mary was dependent upon annual stipends from her husband, Sir Henry Sidney, but he too was sinking further into debt, thanks to the huge sums he had paid out in Ireland and in his Welsh estates. Mary was regularly petitioning the Queen to repay her husband some of the money he had spent in government service. When Sir Henry was offered a barony, the lowest of the aristocratic titles in 1572, he could scarcely afford the expenses that went with it, and his wife therefore begged Cecil that he might be excused from the honour unless it was accompanied by an increase in his estate.
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As Mary explained, Sir Henry was ‘greatly dismayed’ with the ‘hard choice’ he had to make – either to bear the financial burden or ‘else in refusing it to incur her Highness’ displeasure’.
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Their loyalty to the Queen and years of service had cost the Sidney family much of their fortune. In August 1573, Mary was forced to beg Cockrame, her own servant, to provide her with £10 to cover expenses incurred since Sir Henry had last departed – mainly for hats, gloves, medical bills and the furthering of clients’ suits at court – as, she explained in her letter to him from Greenwich, ‘I am already very near moneyless,’ and added, ‘under ten pounds at this present will not serve my turn … send it this night though you strain your uttermost credit’.
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Having been absent from court because of ill health, Lady Sidney returned to find that her accustomed rooms which, thanks to her brother’s intervention, were spacious and comfortable and close to the Queen, had been given to somebody else. The chamber which she had been allocated, formerly a servant’s, was too cold and had no easy access to Elizabeth. As Mary wrote angrily, ‘I dare say her Majesty would not wish me to be in it. Neither ever will I with my goodwill … I have lately with an ill lodging taken heavy pain more than I am likely to be rid of this year.’
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Mary grew more and more aggrieved and by 1574 was refusing to attend on Elizabeth unless she could return to the chamber she had come to regard as hers. She resolved to write to the Lord Chamberlain, her brother-in-law the Earl of Sussex, who was one of the most outspoken opponents of her brother, Dudley, but who was responsible for room allocation at court. ‘Her Majesty hath commanded me to come to the court and my chamber is very cold and my own hangings very scant and nothing warm,’ she complained. Her health had been irreparably damaged by the smallpox, and her living conditions at court had aggravated her various ailments. She told the Lord Chamberlain that her ‘great extremity of sickness’ meant that she dare not ‘venture to lie in so cold a lodging without some further help’. She was now forced to beg for ‘3 or 4 lined pieces of hangings’ to keep out the draughts. She assured Sussex that as soon as the weather turned warmer, ‘they shall be safely delivered again. And I shall think myself most bound unto you if your pleasure be to show me this favour.’
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Lady Sidney’s pleas fell upon deaf ears. Sussex was keen to prevent Mary from attending court so that she could not influence the Queen in favour of her brother’s policies and went as far as accusing her of stealing ‘certain things’ from the Queen’s wardrobe that had been lent to her during the birth of her son, Thomas, five years before. Sidney assured him that a servant of hers had been instructed to return the items but had clearly acted fraudulently. She promised that restitution would be made on her husband’s return.
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