All the Queen's Men (19 page)

After a suitable interval, the indefatigable Catherine de Medici, matchmaker extraordinaire, brought forth yet another son, François, the Duke of Alençon. The initial reports of this latest cross-Channel suitor received at the English Court appeared singularly unpromising. It was said that the Duke was both exceedingly small and extremely ugly, with a face heavily pockmarked through smallpox and a nose of Cyrano de Bergerac proportions, comic beyond belief. Elizabeth was by now in her midforties, her diminutive suitor but half her age. However, the Duke was apparently extremely eager to marry Elizabeth and, unlike his elder brothers, was willing to come to England to plight his troth.

Much to everybody's amazement when Alençon arrived at Court in the summer of 1579, the Queen seemed enchanted and immediately nicknamed him ‘my little frog', finding him amusing, articulate, highly intelligent and politically astute. To a bemused Privy Council, this situation appeared to indicate a meeting of minds. Not all her courtiers or citizens were quite so enthusiastic about the prospect of the Queen marrying a French duke, particularly one who was Catholic, albeit not as devout as his brothers. Sir Philip Sidney, one of the Queen's favoured courtiers, wrote her a long letter in which he strongly voiced his disapproval of the match with a Frenchman and ‘a Papist', while John Stubbs, a Norfolk squire, wrote and published a pamphlet violently condemning the prospect of the Queen taking a French husband. Elizabeth was deeply enraged and Stubbs had his right hand publicly chopped off with a meat cleaver outside Whitehall Palace. Thereupon, according to William Camden, who witnessed the event, Stubbs doffed his hat with his left hand, shouted ‘God Save the Queen' and promptly collapsed.
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He was then taken away to the Tower.

The Privy Council met in secret to debate the prospect of the union, an all-day session which ended with the majority of the Councillors opposed to the idea of their Queen marrying the French Duke. A small deputation of the Council, led by Lord Burghley and the Earl of Leicester, condescendingly informed the Queen that they would endorse the marriage if it would please her and was what she truly wanted. Later they advised that she should decline the Duke's proposal as there was such strong opposition to the marriage right across the kingdom. Elizabeth found Leicester's rigid opposition to the thought of her marrying Alençon particularly upsetting, having recently discovered his secret marriage to Lettice Knollys, and feeling badly let down by the man to whom she had given so much love, so many titles and choice possessions. She was extremely bitter that someone who had lacked the courage to tell her about his own wedding would so openly oppose her own desire to marry. Ever sensitive to public opinion, Elizabeth reluctantly agreed to bow to the Privy Council's recommendation. Yet again, public duty was to override private happiness.

In the autumn of 1581, a changing political climate caused nuptial negotiations to be reopened again as progressively worsening relations between England and Spain led to the greater desirability for an Anglo-French alliance, symbolically sealed by a royal marriage. The Duke of Alençon journeyed to London once more and romance was in the air. It was reported ‘there is no talk of any weighty matters of the realm and the Queen doth not attend unto other matters but only to be with the Duke from morning to noon and afterwards to two to three hours before sunset. I cannot tell what the devil they do.'
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The Court awaited developments with breathless anticipation.

Matters escalated further when Elizabeth took Alençon to a service at St Paul's Cathedral and publicly kissed the Duke in front of the entire congregation. Later, when the French ambassador encountered the couple walking together in the Long Gallery at Whitehall Palace, he enquired of their intentions. The Queen warmly kissed the Duke again, took a ring from her finger and placed it on his, informing the delighted ambassador that he may tell the King of France that his brother would be marrying her. An anxious Spanish ambassador, Bernardino de Mendoza, reported to Philip of Spain:

. . . on the 22nd however, at eleven in the morning, the Queen and Alençon were walking together in a gallery, Leicester and Walsingham being present, when the French Ambassador entered and said that he wished to write to his master, from whom he had received orders to hear from the Queen's own lips, her intentions with regards to marrying his brother. She replied, ‘you may write this to the King: that the Duke of Alençon shall be my husband', and at the same time she turned to Alençon and kissed him on the mouth, drawing a ring from her own hand and giving it to him as a pledge. Alençon gave her a ring of his in return and shortly afterwards the Queen summoned the ladies and gentlemen from the Presence Chamber to the gallery, repeating to them in a loud voice, in Alençon's presence what she had previously said. Alençon and the French are all extremely overjoyed by this. . . .
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It was a moment of high drama. This sensational announcement inevitably caused great consternation at the Royal Court. The Privy Council was appalled, the courtiers confused, and Sir Christopher Hatton reduced to tears. The Queen's Ladies of the Bedchamber and her Maids of Honour become so hysterical that their cries of anguish kept Elizabeth awake throughout the night. It was as if the whole Court had conspired to orchestrate an anti-marriage campaign. Mendoza, the cynical Spanish ambassador, was less impressed, ‘Notwithstanding all this, I cannot avoid saying that, according to my poor understanding, I am unable to look upon this matter as by any means concluded.'
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Sir Christopher Hatton visited the Queen privately in order to make a passionate appeal to her to give up the French Duke for the good of her kingdom. The English sovereign quickly appreciated how her situation was publicly perceived and began to bombard the King of France with additional terms for the marriage which she knew would be totally unacceptable. This time it was Alençon's turn to burst into uncontrollable sobs. It was to be of no avail; armed with a large amount of money to fight the Spanish in the Netherlands, the ‘little frog' left the Court. Elizabeth bade a fond farewell to François, Duke of Alençon as he sailed away to war. There was no fairytale ending and the Queen never saw him again.

Had the prospect of this particular wedding proposition been more favourably received by the Privy Council, with less opposition from the Court and the nation as a whole, it seemed perfectly conceivable that Elizabeth may finally have married and taken her ‘little frog' as her lawfully wedded husband. This would have been as much for political reasons as any other: England's relationships with Spain were always fragile and Spanish military muscle was considerably enhanced when Portugal was annexed and its powerful ocean-going fleet became available to the Spanish cause. Meanwhile, the military situation between the Flemish rebels and the Spanish occupational forces in the Netherlands was worsening daily, prompting the possibility of direct English intervention to support the rebels.

Elizabeth was now well into middle age and past child-bearing age, making her a progressively less attractive marriage proposition and ultimately ending her Privy Council's desire to find for her a husband and father for her child. Whether by luck or judgement, subsequent events were to cast serious doubt over the wisdom of a marriage between the Queen and her ‘little frog'. Alençon proved to be an extremely inept military commander and died barely three years later, some say of syphilis, the form of venereal disease so prevalent at the time. If true, it would appear that both the Queen and country had a lucky escape.

The wily Mendoza's clinical analysis of this protracted romance casts an interesting light on the Queen's character and her precise motives, pointing a finger at her devious and cunning manipulation of events to suit her own purposes. Elizabeth was now able to regretfully indicate to Alençon that it was because of her Privy Council that they were unable to marry – his own brother, the French king, had also refused to accept the terms of the marriage, resulting in strained relationships between the two brothers. In turn, Elizabeth could indicate to her Council that while they repeatedly said they would like her to marry they had once again rejected a serious suitor and thereby damaged diplomatic relationships with France. Mendoza's opinion was that if Elizabeth ever seriously intended marrying Alençon she would have done so without further delay following her dramatic public announcement at Whitehall. The Spanish ambassador believed that the Queen never had any firm intention of becoming a bride; to her it was merely a game. Mendoza could well have been right.

How serious Elizabeth really was about marriage remains a matter of interesting speculation and in many respects the fact that she never took a husband is not particularly surprising. First, her choice was extremely limited to candidates either from her own aristocracy or the so-called cream of royalty from abroad. Unlike her father, Elizabeth was far too status-conscious to marry a commoner. Selection from overseas was further inhibited by the growing English antipathy towards Roman Catholicism, while very few of the foreign suitors were of her status – all too often they came from a motley bunch of dukes, princes and monarchs from minor kingdoms with major delusions of grandeur. Only King Philip of Spain equalled her as a mature ruler of a major nation, but his religion stood against him in England. Regardless of other considerations, Elizabeth needed someone of equal stature to sweep her off her feet and carry her to the altar. No such man existed in the whole of Europe throughout her reign – there was no Charlemagne, Peter the Great or Charles the Bold in the sixteenth century.

Elizabeth may always have been a reluctant bride: her father's experience of marriage, two wives divorced, two executed and one dying in childbirth was hardly a ringing endorsement of marital bliss. Henry's sixth wife, Katherine Parr, had survived him but died in childbirth shortly after remarrying. Elizabeth's half-sister Mary's husband quickly deserted her. Her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, experienced three short-lived unsuccessful marriages. Almost everywhere Elizabeth looked conveyed an unhappy picture when it came to marriage. Neither experience nor observation encouraged Elizabeth to take a husband regardless of ardent suitors or the urging of her Privy Council and Parliament. As time progressed the necessity of marriage lessened, the number of serious suitors declined, and the Council's urging became a distant murmur. Elizabeth had become accustomed to being Queen of England and had no desire to share this intoxicating power with anyone else: ‘God's death my lord, I will have here but one mistress and no master',
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were the famous words she once used to berate Robert Dudley. Power was paramount to Elizabeth: she needed to be in control, and no one should prejudice her enjoyment in exercising her authority in any way or at any time, particularly a husband.

It remains undisputed that the Queen never married, but did the fact that she never shared the English throne mean that she never shared her bed? Much is made of Elizabeth dying as a ‘Virgin Queen', but was this just another example of the Tudor propaganda machine making a virtue out of a necessity, turning an unwelcome fact into glorious fiction? Supporters of the Virgin Queen scenario largely hang their scholarly hats on Elizabeth's impassioned statement when she thought she was dying of smallpox in 1562, declaring that there had never been any impropriety between herself and Robert Dudley. It is pointed out that she would hardly perjure herself when death was thought to be so imminent. However, the Queen was delirious when she made that statement and contemporary documentation is from a prejudiced foreign source. So is this another Tudor cover-up of the true facts in order to perpetuate the fashionably shining image of the Virgin Queen, concocted some time later when the cult of ‘Gloriana' overrode everything else, including the facts?

Certainly, at the height of the Queen's affair with Robert Dudley, rumours of sexual indiscretions ran riot through the Royal Court. Dudley's quarters were conveniently close to Elizabeth's own private apartments and he was reportedly seen with her at all hours of the day and night, prompting memories of Elizabeth's own mother, Anne Boleyn, and her supposedly wanton behaviour. At the time of the liaison with Dudley, the Queen was young, lusty and in love: might it be the case of like mother, like daughter? Was her undoubted love for Dudley fully consummated? ‘Lord Robert Dudley hath had five children by the Queene',
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was one of the more scurrilous stories in circulation. Inevitably much of the more strident rumour-mongering was put about by those who had a vested interest in discrediting the Queen. According to Count Feria, the one-time Spanish ambassador, Lord Robert was so much in the Queen's favour that he was able to do exactly as he pleased and that Her Majesty would visit his chambers day and night. This vicious gossip reached such a fever pitch that Kat Ashley, Elizabeth's long-time companion who was Chief Woman of the Bedchamber, felt compelled to voice her alarm to her beloved sovereign and urged her to distance herself from Dudley to avoid doing further damage to her reputation. The Queen remarked that a thousand eyes noted everything she did. Certainly, she was always surrounded by her lady attendants; even at night they were in close proximity, one of them often sleeping in the Queen's bedroom with her. Her lady attendants were known to be notoriously indiscreet, something that the Queen was well aware of and was constantly chastising them in no uncertain terms. Kat Ashley was ‘the Queen of gossip' and Elizabeth would recall how her tittle-tattle had landed both of them in serious trouble once before when, as a young princess, she had indulged in unwise and questionable behaviour with Thomas Seymour, also a married man. Now that she was queen, she would have access to the state papers relating to these particular embarrassing incidents, documents that would provide a constant reminder of the perils of risky misconduct of a sexual nature.