The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court (9 page)

‘I was certain that he spoke truly and was not deceiving me,’ wrote an astounded de Quadra.
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The following day he added the dramatic postscript, ‘After I wrote this the queen has made public the death of M.Robert and has said in Italian –
Que si ha rotto
il collo
– that she has broken her neck and must have fallen down a staircase.’
23
On Sunday 8 September at Cumnor Place, a manor house in Berkshire, twenty-eight-year-old Amy Robsart was found dead. Murder, suicide, accident; all were possible. On the day she died, Amy had sent off her servants to the fair at Abingdon, and she was later discovered dead at the foot of a flight of stairs.
24

Gossip had long centred on rumours that Robert Dudley planned to kill his wife so he would be free to marry the Queen, and now urgent questions were asked. Was Dudley involved? Might Elizabeth be implicated?
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Having written a letter to Dudley consoling him on the ‘cruel mischance late happened to my lady your late bedfellow’, the ambassador Sir Nicholas Throckmorton wrote to William Parr, the Marquis of Northampton, of his alarm at the slanderous talk which now circulated at the French court and across Paris. ‘My lord, I wish I were either dead, or that I were hence, that I might not hear the dishonourable and naughty reports that are here made of ye Queen’s Majesty my gracious sovereign lady’ that made ‘every hair of my head’ stand on end ‘and my ears glow to hear. I am almost at my wit’s end and know not what to say; one laugheth at us, another threateneth, another revileth her Majesty,’ and bewailed, ‘my heart bleedeth to think upon the slanderous bruits I hear, which if they be not slaked or that they prove true, our reputation is gone forever, war followeth and utter subversion of our Queen and country’.
26

Upon learning of his wife’s death, Dudley immediately withdrew from the court to his house at Kew: Amy was buried in the chancel of the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford; the funeral cost Lord Robert £500, though he did not attend nor erect any memorial to her. Less than a month later he returned to the Queen’s side and, it appears, resumed his courtship of her.
27
‘The Lord Rob in great hope to marry the Queen,’ one courtier observed, ‘for she maketh such appearance of good will to him.’
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For some this was an inevitable outcome. Even Thomas Radcliffe, the Earl of Sussex, Lady Sidney’s brother-in-law, who had an increasingly acrimonious relationship with Dudley, had come to the conclusion that the most important thing was for the Queen to produce an heir and that therefore the union with Dudley might be a necessary evil:

I wish not her Majesty to linger this matter of so great importance, but to choose speedily; and therein to follow so much her own affection as [that] by the looking upon him whom she should choose,
omnes ejus sensus titillarentur
(all the senses being excited) which shall be the readiest way, with the help of God, to bring us a blessed prince which shall redeem us out of thraldom. If I knew that England had other rightful inheritors I would then advise otherwise, and seek to serve the time by a husband’s choice. But seeing that she is
ultimatum refugium
, and that no riches, friendship, foreign alliance, or any other present commodity that might come by a husband, can serve our turn, without issue of her body, if the Queen will love anybody, let her love where and whom she lists, so much thirst I to see her love. And whomsoever she shall love and choose, him will I love, honour and serve to the uttermost.
29

Sussex alluded to the contemporary belief that sexual activity was necessary for the health of women and of men.
30
Virgins were believed to suffer from disorders associated with the accumulation of unfertilised seeds which were thought to cause hysteria and illnesses known as ‘mother fits’, ‘suffocation of the womb’ and ‘greensickness’.
31
Such disorders might be cured by marriage and a wife was therefore thought to be in a more healthful state than a virgin or a widow.
32

Many did not share Sussex’s view and believed marriage between Elizabeth and Dudley would spell disaster. Hubert Languet, a Burgundian diplomat, reported that the English leaders had ‘made it plain to her that her too great familiarity with my Lord Robert Dudley displeases them and that they will by no means allow him to wed her’.
33
‘I know not what to think,’ wrote Throckmorton from the French court, ‘the bruits be so brim, and so maliciously reported here, touching the marriage of the Lord Robert, and the death of his wife, as I know not where to turn me, not what countenance to bear.’ The prospect of their marriage had to be stopped, ‘the matter succeeding, our state, is in great danger of utter ruin and destruction. And so far as methinketh I see into the matter, as I wish myself already dead, because I would not live in that time.’ Throckmorton begged Cecil to do all he could ‘to hinder the marriage’, otherwise the consequences were unthinkable. ‘The Queen our sovereign discredited, condemned and neglected; our country ruined, undone and made prey … the Commonwealth … lieth now in great hazard.’
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Throckmorton resolved on direct and decisive action. He would send his secretary Robert Jones to England, to warn the Queen in person of the scandalous tales that were making her a laughing stock in the French court, and to underline the risk to her reputation if she chose to marry her favourite.

*   *   *

On the evening of Monday 25 November, Robert Jones arrived at the riverside palace at Greenwich, the place of Elizabeth’s birth and one of her favourite residences.
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Mullioned bay windows adorned its river frontage and in the protruding tower lay the Queen’s privy apartments. Elizabeth would often receive ambassadors at Greenwich, given its position close to the docks, wharfs and custom houses.

Upon his arrival, Jones visited Cecil with the latest news from the French court. Mary Queen of Scots had heard the gossip surrounding the death of Amy Robsart and responded that Elizabeth ‘would marry her horse-keeper’. The situation had got out of hand; Cecil was furious.

The following evening Robert Jones dined with Dudley and the Privy Council at the Scottish ambassador’s residence. Halfway through the meal, Dudley excused himself saying he had to return to court. Minutes later, a gentleman appeared at the dining table requesting that Jones go outside where he was informed that Dudley wished to meet him in secret later that evening. After the meal had finished, Jones made his way to Dudley’s chambers at court. He found him in a foul rage; the news of the French court had reached Elizabeth, then at Eltham Palace: she had been told of Mary’s malicious remark.

On Wednesday evening, Jones was finally granted an audience with the Queen, in the Presence Chamber of Greenwich Palace. He described the meeting in a dispatch sent to Throckmorton in Paris. When he told Elizabeth that the Spanish and Venetian ambassadors were spreading the rumour that she was to marry Robert Dudley, Elizabeth was dismissive. ‘By my troth,’ she replied, ‘I thought it was such a matter, and he need not have sent you hither, for it had been more meet to keep you still.’ The envoy decided to persist nonetheless and explained that Throckmorton felt duty bound to inform her ‘of such things as might touch her’ in person, rather than risk them becoming further public knowledge. When Jones told her plainly what was being said about her relationship with Lord Robert, and their possible involvement in the sudden death of Amy Robsart, Elizabeth moved restlessly in her chair and covered her face with her hands, then broke into nervous laughter. She insisted that the circumstances of the death of Dudley’s wife should ‘neither touch his honesty nor her honour’.
36

Still, Elizabeth looked strained and ill in the weeks that followed Amy Robsart’s death. Jones thought the whole business ‘doth much perplex her’ and noticed a definite change in her mood; ‘the Queen’s Majesty looketh not so hearty and well as she did’.
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Jones’s visit had little effect on cooling relations between Elizabeth and her favourite, and weeks later Throckmorton was reporting rumours that the Queen and Robert Dudley had secretly married. The Spanish ambassador in France had told him that Elizabeth had shown ‘she hath honour but for a few in her realm, for no man will advise her to her folly’. In a letter to Cecil, Throckmorton anxiously petitioned him to take firmer action and curb the passions of their headstrong Queen. ‘Remember your mistress is young and subject to affections; you are her sworn councillor and in great credit with her.’
38

It was not only Elizabeth’s countrymen that were petitioning her to amend her ‘mode of life’. In December, Adolphus, Duke of Holstein and uncle of the King of Denmark, one of Elizabeth’s early suitors, wrote of his alarm at the continued reports from England of her conduct.
39
His letter horrified the Queen, which she treated as humiliating testament to the ubiquity of the licentious rumours. In her reply to Holstein written in the New Year she thanked him for his concern for her honour and assured him that she would ‘never forget what is due to herself in this respect’. She would ‘consider it a favour if he will believe none of the rumours which he hears, if they are inconsistent with her true honour and royal dignity’. Finally she assured him that in all her actions she sought nothing but ‘the glory of God and the preservation of her own dignity’.
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Elizabeth’s enemies soon began to use charges against her mother as inspiration for further attacks. She was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, Europe’s ‘great whore’; what more could be expected of her? In August, Throckmorton wrote to Cecil that one Gabriel de Sacconay had devised and printed a defamatory tract, which denounced Elizabeth’s mother as a ‘Jezebel’, and compared her to the ‘heathen wives of Solomon’ for persuading Henry VIII to turn his back on the true Church of Rome. Their ‘foul matrimony’ was a result of lust and Anne had met with just punishment for her wickedness. Cecil was horrified: if Elizabeth found out about the publication it would jeopardise the fragile alliance with France that was crucial to England’s security. While Cecil procrastinated, hundreds of copies of de Sacconay’s book were printed and disseminated across Paris and beyond. Finally, in mid-September, more than a month after receiving Throckmorton’s letter, Cecil broke the news to Elizabeth. She wrote immediately to her ambassador ordering him to go ‘with all haste’ to Catherine de Medici, mother of the young King Charles IX, and demand that the ‘lewd’ book be immediately suppressed. But while the queen mother expressed her shock and disgust at the slanderous publication, Catherine did not move to prevent further copies of the book being published. Instead she promised only to look at a copy of the book so that she ‘might cause it to be so considered, and thereupon give order for the matter’.

Catherine and her son Charles had every reason to delay taking action. Their support for Mary Queen of Scots’s claim to the English throne was well known and this salacious tract played to their hand. Eventually an order was issued in Charles IX’s name to, ‘alter the offensive passages’ from the book until which time no further copies should be sold. Elizabeth was far from satisfied and in letter after letter to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton demanded that
all
copies of the book be destroyed.

Finally, in the second week of October, the ambassador was able to report that the French King had at last issued a command that all the books should be confiscated. By then the damage had been done. Elizabeth’s resentment towards Catherine and Charles simmered. Throckmorton urged her to thank them for agreeing to suppress the publication, but she refused even though, as Throckmorton pointed out, the queen mother would be highly offended by the lack of courtesy. When in late November Elizabeth did reluctantly forward a note of thanks, she did so through her ambassador in Spain. It was a deliberate discourtesy that made it clear she had not forgiven the French for slandering her mother.
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8

Carnal Copulation

While Elizabeth was repeatedly urged to break off relations with her favourite, Dudley appeared to be committed to a marriage with Elizabeth and began to offer political favours in return for decisive foreign support to win the Queen’s hand. Marriage to Elizabeth would bring unrivalled power and security for him and his family; the ultimate rehabilitation after the nadir of the execution of his father and brother by Mary I. Undoubtedly Dudley had strong feelings for Elizabeth but it is hard to separate his love and devotion to Elizabeth the woman, from the favour and riches he sought from Elizabeth the Queen.

As for Elizabeth, one wonders what her true feelings and desires were. Did she ever imagine she might marry Dudley? Did she really want to? Was she in love with him? He was certainly a man whom she trusted, and she described him as ‘her only source of happiness’. On another occasion she wrote that if she wished to marry, she would prefer him ‘to all the princes in the world’.
1
That Elizabeth adored Dudley was painfully obvious. Together they danced, hunted, shared private jokes and were rarely out of each other’s company; it was their easy familiarity and affectionate displays which spawned the rumours as to the nature of their relationship. Even Cecil acknowledged that ‘on account of his eminent endowments of mind and body’, Robert Dudley was ‘so dear to the Queen’.
2
Rather than avoid such gossip, Elizabeth seemed to delight in the attention it brought her. Certainly she was playing a dangerous game in not heeding advice to change her behaviour. But in truth she must have known, particularly after the death of Amy Robsart, that marrying Robert Dudley would never be possible.

*   *   *

In January 1561, Sir Henry Sidney approached the Spanish ambassador on his brother-in-law’s behalf with an offer for his master: if King Philip supported Dudley’s marriage to Elizabeth he would find Dudley ready to obey him and ‘do service as one of his vassals’.
3
He would ‘procure the banishment of the Gospel’ and secure the Queen’s agreement for the papal nuncio, Abbot Martinego, to enter England with an invitation to the Council of Trent, the reforming council of the Catholic Church.
4
Sidney was a well-known and highly favoured supporter of the Spanish and so was an obvious choice as Dudley’s go-between. However, he was also the husband of Mary Sidney, one of the Queen’s closest confidantes and he might therefore have, or be expected to have, particular insight into Elizabeth’s thoughts and feelings. Sir Henry told de Quadra ‘how much inclined the Queen was to the marriage’. He acknowledged that that they had ‘a love affair’ but assured the ambassador that ‘the object of it was marriage’ and there was ‘nothing illicit about it or such as could not be set right by your Majesty’s authority’. Did he have particular knowledge of the Queen’s relationship with Dudley and her desire to marry him? Certainly it served his interests to promote the match of his brother-in-law to the Queen and to defend the charges of Dudley’s involvement in his wife’s death. Although Sidney said that there was ‘hardly a person who did not believe that there had been foul play’, and even ‘preachers in the pulpits spoke of it, not sparing even the honour of the Queen’, he was ‘certain it was accidental’.
5