Essex had no intention of harming Elizabeth, but by the end of 1600 he
decided it was payback time. He got together like-minded people who had
an axe to grind against the Cecilocracy (the government of the Cecils) and
made plans to overthrow the Court, sack the Privy Council and form a new
Parliament.
On 7 February 1601 the Council called upon Essex to explain himself. Robert
Cecil (who'd taken over as spymaster) probably knew exactly what was going
on � after all, he certainly did in the infamous Gunpowder Plot four years
later, which was designed to kill James I.
Essex refused to attend the Council, so they went to him. When the lord
keeper, Thomas Egerton, turned up at Essex House, Essex kidnapped him and
let 300 swordsmen loose in the streets of London. But nobody backed Essex
and when the authorities moved in most of the 300 melted away. Essex sur-
rendered the same evening, despite having vowed to fight to the death.
Essex's guilt wasn't in question. He'd appeared, armed, against the queen's
peace and that was treason. At his trial, at the Court of the High Steward, on
19 February Cecil let him have it:
For wit, I give you pre-eminence. For nobility I also give you place. I am no
swordsman; there you also have the odds. But I have innocence, conscience,
truth and honesty to defend me . . . and your Lordship is a delinquent.
Essex was beheaded privately in the grounds of the Tower on 25 February.
Looking Beyond England
Events of the Tudor era didn't come to an end neatly at the end of a reign,
and in 1603, when Elizabeth died, unfinished business remained.
Spain
The war with the world's only superpower dragged on into the next century.
As long as Philip II was still building � and actually sending out � Armadas,
Elizabeth had to respond.
On 1 June 1596 a huge combined fleet of Anglo-Dutch warships (100 in all)
sailed for Cadiz under the command of Howard of Effingham. Essex, at that
point still in favour at Court, led the soldiers. The raid was a brilliant success.
The English captured the city, and most of the Spanish fleet moored there was
set on fired by their own crews, who did a bit of plundering first, and sunk. By
the time the Spanish commander Medina Sidonia arrived, it was all over. 276 Part IV: Ending with Elizabeth
No looting (along the lines of Drake) took place, and a vast amount of cash
(about �7 million) should have reached Elizabeth, but didn't. The money prob-
ably popped into the pockets of the commanders. The taking of Cadiz should
have been the high water mark of English success against Spain, but instead
people remember the more dramatic if less successful Armada of 1588 (see
Chapter 15).
After Cadiz the fire went out of Spanish foreign policy as far as England was
concerned.
Increasingly, the country was bankrupt, ruined by expensive war and
the hyper-inflation caused by flooding the economy with silver.
Philip II died in 1598 and his son, Philip III, had other problems and
other ambitions.
After Elizabeth neither the new king, James I, nor his principal secretary,
Robert Cecil, were warmongers.
Spain and England signed a peace treaty in a new spirit of `friendship and
amity' in 1604, and Spain was to begin its long, slow decline into being one of
the poorest countries in Europe.
Ireland
The earl of Tyrone's success in the 1590s (see the earlier section `Tackling
Tyrone') led to an actual tie-up with Spain in 1601, but the timing was bad.
Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, took over as governor after Essex's recall
and forced Tyrone back on the defensive. By the time the Spaniards arrived,
Munster was peaceful. The Spaniards, under Don Juan del Aguila, were
outnumbered by Mountjoy and defeated at Kinsale on 2 January. Elizabeth
allowed Mountjoy to agree to terms with Tyrone, who gave up the Spanish
connection and his authority as head of the O'Neills. By 1603 the Wild Lands
(see Chapter 2) had gone and Ireland was divided into counties just like
England and Wales.
Ireland was only partly sorted. Further rebellions and vicious retaliation fol-
lowed in the centuries to come, and as late as 1869 British Prime Minister
William Gladstone was saying that his `mission is to pacify Ireland'. The sad
story of that country is that peace still isn't secure.
France
England's old enemy continued to be tied up in their internal religious and
political problems. Elizabeth had backed Henri IV when he asked her for help
against the Catholic League, but his sudden conversion to Catholicism in
1593 changed the goal posts and English involvement there ended with the
capture of El Leon near the naval port of Brest in 1594.
In 1598 Philip of Spain signed the Treaty of Vervains with Henri, burying the
hatchet after years of warfare.
The 17th and 18th centuries are the years of French greatness � as Spain fell,
France rose. England, as always, watched from the sidelines and considered
carefully whether or not to get involved. Increasingly, many Englishmen
believed `abroad was a bloody place' and wanted little to do with it.
The Netherlands
English backing of the Dutch proved successful in the short term. When the
brilliant duke of Parma died in 1593, no one of his calibre existed to replace
him and the Dutch had found their own excellent general in Maurice of
Nassau, son of William the Silent.
The Dutch finally became independent in 1609 and remained on friendly
terms with James I, Elizabeth's successor.
In the longer term the English and Dutch fought each other over fishing rights
in the 1660s, but in 1688 a Dutchman, William of Orange, became king of
England. The Tudors would have collectively turned in their graves.
Saying Farewell to Gloriana
As the century turned it was obvious that the queen wouldn't last much
longer. Friends were dying all around her, and increasingly her letters were
about old friends she missed and places she'd never visit again. When
William Cecil was dying in August 1598 she sat by his bedside and fed him
soup.
In her last speech to Parliament in November 1601, when they were com-
plaining about the monopolies they accused her of passing out to favourites,
she told them, `Though you have had and may have many mightier and wiser
princes, yet you never had nor never shall have any that love you better.'
The queen remained tetchy and quick-tempered to the last � a man who
talked about the succession risked death. And even in her last days when
Robert Cecil told her she must go to bed, she said, `The word must is not to
be used to princes . . . little man, little man, you know that I must die and that
makes you so presumptuous.'
With the exception of two serious illnesses earlier in her reign (see Chapter
12), which were smallpox and probably malaria, Elizabeth was extremely
healthy. She danced, rode and hunted well into her 60s. On the other hand,
her teeth were black and rotten and she probably suffered from toothache.
Leaving an image of strength
Image was as important to Elizabeth as it was It screams wealth, it screams power and you
to Henry VIII (see Chapter 3) � perhaps more cross it at your peril.
so because she was a woman competing in
Okay, so Elizabeth doesn't, in the portraits,
a man's world. So everything was carefully
stand like Henry VIII � that would be silly. But
stage-managed and the truth has got lost in the
everything else you see is a mixture of macho
fiction.
and desirability. In the Armada portrait you see
She was careful not to let unofficial portraits her brilliant warships in the window behind her
see the light of day � they were banned in 1563, and her right hand rests lightly on the globe that
but the official portraits say it all. The 18th- had been rounded by Francis Drake. It's almost
century gossip Horace Walpole got it right � `A as if she's pointing to the future � her country
pale Roman nose, a head of hair loaded with would one day own vast chunks of that globe
crowns and powdered with diamonds, a vast and be the greatest imperial power in history.
ruff, a vaster farthingale and a bushel of pearls.'
Elizabeth spent Christmas 1602 at her lodge in Whitechapel and caught a
severe cold in January, developing a boil on her face. By the end of a wet
and gloomy month she was having difficulty swallowing, and on 20 March
she collapsed on her way into chapel. She wouldn't go to bed, despite Cecil's
attempts, and sat propped on cushions with her finger in her mouth, refusing
to eat. She lost the power of speech and died in the early hours of 24 March
1603, almost certainly of pneumonia.
The queen left instructions that she wasn't to be embalmed, but she was,
and her heart was enclosed in the same casket as her sister Mary's in
Westminster Abbey (check out their tombs there today).
`Some,' wrote the poet Thomas Dekker, `call her Pandora, some Gloriana,
some Cynthia, some Belphoebe, some Astraea . . . I am one of her country
and we adore her by the name of Eliza.'
Gangin' Doon wi' Wee Jamie, or Going
Down with King James VI
As Elizabeth had grown older, the issue of who'd take over from her became
more urgent. She refused to talk about succession, but the practical men of
the Council had a job to do.
Back in 1543, the Succession Act of that year said Chapter 16: Ending an Era: 1590�1603 279
Edward would succeed Henry VIII as Edward VI.
If Edward died childless the crown would pass to Mary I.
If Mary died childless the crown would pass to Elizabeth I.
Mary and Elizabeth were included despite the fact that both of them had
been declared bastards. Mary Queen of Scots was ignored because she was
`alien born' (in other words, although she was descended from the Tudors,
her father was James V of Scotland, one of the Stuart family).
Technically, Mary of Scots had a legal claim to the throne that was stronger
than anyone else's apart from Elizabeth, and when she was executed in 1587
that claim passed to her son James, who was now James VI of Scotland.
Elizabeth wasn't likely to repeal Henry VIII's Act of Succession because some
would say that gave Mary of Scots as good a claim to the throne as Elizabeth,
and Elizabeth didn't want Mary and her line to have the throne because Mary
was a Catholic (see Chapter 13 for more on Elizabeth's attitude towards
Mary). James Stuart, however, was brought up in the Protestant faith, so the
problem went away.
The only other claimant possible for the throne in 1603 was Arabella Stuart, a
granddaughter of Margaret Clifford and a niece of James's dad, Lord Darnley.
But Margaret was never really a front runner and the earl of Essex had been
in secret communication with James VI for some time. Essex's fall (see
`Rebelling with Essex', earlier in the chapter) caused a slight hitch, but the
queen's crafty adviser Robert Cecil sent emissaries to James and assured him
of his support after the queen had gone.
The wisest fool in Christendom This book is all about the Tudors, not the Stuarts, from knife attacks and because he was terri- but it won't hurt to have a look at the man who fied of the naked steel of armour. He spoke with was to take over in 1603. James had been king a broad Scots accent (which took time for his of Scotland for 35 years by the time he took over courtiers to understand), hated tobacco, which the England job and was now 37 years old. He he called the `noxious weed', and was afraid of was married in 1589 to the 15-year-old Anne of witches, whose work he'd seen up close and Denmark and the couple would eventually have personal. seven children.
Time would show James to be bisexual, intol- James's first appearance in London horrified erant and an appalling handler of parliaments, many courtiers. The man's head was too big even though he was scholarly and cultured. for his body, his tongue lolled and he dribbled. It was Henri IV of France who called him `the His skinny little legs were in marked contrast wisest fool in Christendom'. But James's full to his big thighs and body. James wasn't fat � story belongs to another book. his clothes were double padded to safeguard 280 Part IV: Ending with Elizabeth
When Elizabeth passed away on 24 March, after a gruelling ride of 60 hours,
with frequent changes of horse, courtier Robert Carey reached Edinburgh to
break the news to James. When asked who should follow her, Elizabeth, in
her last coherent moments, had said, `Who but our cousin of Scotland?'
Looking back, Cecil missed Elizabeth and life working for James was no bed
of roses. `I wish,' he wrote, `I waited now in her Presence Chamber with ease
at my foot and rest in my bed.'
And the legends began to grow about the Tudors and the last of them, Good
Queen Bess.
fast and fun information. Sample the delights of Hampton Court, find out why bad boy Kit Marlowe died, and dabble in magic with Dr Dee. We have something here for everyone � snippets from a vanished and fasci- nating age.