Elizabeth (25 page)

He continued, claiming that despite Robert giving the Queen an extravagant gift in the expectation of a title (probably a dukedom, to make him a more fitting consort for the Queen) and
a large sum of money, he had in fact received no title and a small gift of land. Dymock told the Swedes that some of the Lords would surely support Eric’s suit and that he should push forward. He even claimed that Robert would also be in favour of a marriage between Eric and Elizabeth, especially if Robert were given the hand of Eric’s sister, Princess Cecilia, with a suitably large dowry.
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Eric appears to have taken much of this at face value since he continued his unwelcome wooing. He would also make an unsuccessful marriage proposal to Mary, Queen of Scots.

In reality, Robert had no intention of reducing his pressure on Elizabeth to marry him, despite the evolving political outlook and his own changed fortunes. By January 1561, he had come up with a new scheme to persuade Elizabeth to overcome her fears and make him her husband. Ambassador de Quadra wrote to Philip II that Sir Henry Sidney, Robert’s brother-in-law, had approached him to tell him that the Queen was wishful to marry Robert, and suggested that if Philip supported the idea, Robert would become ‘like one of your own vassals’.
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As an extra bargaining point, Sidney remarked that Elizabeth was tired of the ranting of the extreme Protestant preachers, and that this might be a time to negotiate with her over how the state religion could develop in future. De Quadra, looking ahead, finished:

In February, Robert spoke directly to de Quadra, confirming what Sidney had said. De Quadra agreed to speak to the Queen, who told him she was indeed fond of Robert and that her subjects preferred that she marry an Englishman, although she had not definitely made her mind up to marry Robert – or anyone. Provocatively, she added in confidence that she would like to make de Quadra her confessor, as she had a secret she would like to tell him.

What she wished to divulge will rest forever unknown as de Quadra and Philip did not trust Elizabeth, who they felt prevaricated for her own political purposes. Philip told de Quadra: ‘… her words are so little to be depended upon … she has no intention of fulfilling what she says and only wishes to use your authority for her own designs and intentions.’
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Could the secret have been that she was already married to Robert or perhaps even pregnant? The idea was not a stranger to public gossip: in the same month, on 27 February 1561, Thomas Burley was on trial on charges of slandering Elizabeth by saying, ‘Lord Robert did swive [have penetrative sex with] the Queen.’
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Several months later, on 30 June 1561, Robert organized a banquet for the Queen, followed by a river party. Elizabeth, Robert and de Quadra were together on a barge, watching the other boats loaded with her courtiers. The mood was joyful, with singing and music, laughing and joking. Robert suggested that since de Quadra was a bishop, he should marry Robert and Elizabeth there and then. As de Quadra reported, ‘They went so far with their jokes that Lord Robert told her that, if she liked, I could be the minister to perform the act of marriage and she, nothing loath to hear it,
said she was not sure whether I knew enough English.’
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De Quadra tried to join in with the spirit of the moment and replied that if she got rid of her Protestant advisers and restored Catholicism, he would be delighted to marry them whenever they liked.

However, the laughter seems to have faded by July, when Elizabeth went on a progress to Essex and Suffolk. She was said to be irritable and to look pale, ‘like one lately come out of childbed’.
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Apart from how she might have been feeling physically, she would have been aware that Mary, Queen of Scots would be imminently arriving in Scotland, and, as a young widow, she was an attractive marriage prospect. Elizabeth would have to play her cards carefully. She knew that foreign kings might reason that by wedding Mary they could rule Scotland, and could then conquer England in her name. In the face of competition from her cousin to the north, Elizabeth needed to exert all her charm and diplomatic skill to maintain European interest in her as a possible choice for marriage.

The summer of 1561 was also disastrous for one of Elizabeth’s possible heirs, Lady Catherine Grey, the younger sister of Lady Jane Grey. As the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s sister Mary, she had a potentially legitimate claim to the throne. She had already suffered a fall from grace when her sister Jane was overthrown, resulting in Catherine removed from being first in succession to the throne and her first marriage annulled. Mary I had made Catherine and another sister, Mary, Ladies of the Privy Chamber, but Elizabeth, who did not much like the sisters, had demoted them to the lesser rank of Ladies of the Presence Chamber. Catherine was angered, as she saw herself as Elizabeth’s legal heir and thought her rank should be higher.

In 1561, the relations between Elizabeth and Catherine worsened dramatically. At the end of 1560, Catherine had clandestinely married the son of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset (Edward VI’s former Protector who had been executed
for treason, and who had been partly responsible for the execution of his brother Thomas Seymour). Catherine married Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford, without asking the Queen’s permission, which was a penal offence. By the summer of 1561, she found herself pregnant. To make matters worse, she had lost the deed of jointure (a document detailing the financial arrangements of husband and wife), so she had no official proof of the secret marriage, which would make the child illegitimate.

Desperate, Catherine sought the help of Robert, who was her brother-in-law. As she was on the summer progress with the Royal Court, she crept into his bedroom one night, the only time she could find him alone, woke him and told him all, begging him to intercede with Elizabeth for her. The next morning, Robert told the Queen, who was furious. Not only had Catherine married without notifying her, she had no official evidence of the marriage, and Elizabeth did not approve of her choice of husband. She was also with child, something that was potentially dangerous to Elizabeth as it could make Catherine the focus of a rebellion to oust Elizabeth, who had no heir, from power. Elizabeth sent her to the Tower, where Edward Seymour would later join her.

Robert continued to try to gain leverage in his pursuit of the Queen, but Elizabeth seemed to have hardened in her attitude towards marrying him, at least publicly. The scandal over his wife’s death may have cast a long shadow. Robert Kyle, an Englishman acting for Eric XIV of Sweden, wrote to the Swedish King on 27 July that Robert had threatened to have him imprisoned for putting the King’s marriage proposal before the Queen. Kyle’s letter reported that Elizabeth proceeded to humiliate Robert in front of her nobles, maintaining that ‘Lord Robert had plain answer from the Queen’s mouth in the Chamber of Presence, all the nobility being there, that she would never marry him, nor none
so mean as he, with a great rage and great checks and taunts to such as travailed for him, seeing they went about to dishonour her.’
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Robert, his pride wounded, asked permission to go abroad, which was granted. He left the Court in high dudgeon, presumably hoping that Elizabeth would soon beg him to return.

In France, there was renewed interest in Elizabeth’s marital status. Stricken by religious conflicts, France had agreed to withdraw its troops from Scotland in the Treaty of Edinburgh that Cecil had negotiated. Scotland itself was torn between Catholic and Protestant factions. All the Royal Courts angled to try to gain the best possible position, and one arm of French foreign policy was alliance through marriage.

In August 1561, Mary, Queen of Scots arrived back in Scotland, escorted by three of her uncles, including François de Lorraine, Chevalier de Guise, the Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of the French Navy. He was an exciting and extremely handsome gentleman. The three noblemen decided to pay a visit to the English Court before returning to France. Reportedly, Elizabeth enjoyed a most pleasant flirtation with François.

Later in the year, a former French suitor reappeared, Jacques de Savoy, Duc de Nemours; he wanted to send his brother, the Cardinal of Ferrara, to England to ask for Elizabeth’s hand. His suit foundered when it became clear that the Cardinal’s main aim was to use the question of marriage as a means to discuss England returning to the Catholic fold. Elizabeth refused him entry to England on the basis that she would happily accept his visit as a royal messenger, but ‘not as the Bishop of Rome’s minister’.
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By autumn 1561, Robert’s plans to win Elizabeth’s hand were in disarray. It was clear he could not rely wholly on Spanish support
to persuade Elizabeth to marry him. He contacted the Huguenot Henri de Navarre, the cousin of 10-year-old Charles IX (King of France 1560–74), and offered English support for the Huguenots in the French Wars of Religion in turn for Henri’s support for Robert’s marriage to Elizabeth. Henri refused to commit himself.

Throckmorton, the English Ambassador in Paris, was furious that Robert had acted independently and in a manner against official policy, but Robert did not care; his hopes were renewed as Elizabeth was granting him gifts that showed he was still in her favour. In February 1562, he was made Constable of Windsor Castle, and later, Constable and Steward of Warwick Castle. He was also finally allowed to inherit the estates of his deceased uncle.

Then, in June 1562, more rumours began to surface, this time about Elizabeth’s marriage to Robert. William Cecil had managed to turn one of de Quadra’s servants, Borghese Venturini, into a spy. Venturini made a report to him about the dispatches de Quadra had sent to Philip, which alleged ‘… that the Queen was married to Lord Robert before only two or three witnesses …’ and that Venturini had heard de Quadra say ‘… that the Queen was secretly married to Lord Robert, of which he had informed the King of Spain.’
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According to Venturini, another of de Quadra’s dispatches reported that the Queen herself had told the Ambassador that, on coming back from William Herbert, Lord Pembroke’s house one afternoon, her ladies had asked if they should kiss Robert’s hand after they kissed hers, if he was now her consort? ‘She told them, no, and they must not believe everything they heard.’
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Presented with this information by Cecil and accused of acting inappropriately, de Quadra was quite annoyed, not least because he’d been striving for years to convince Elizabeth to marry. He told the Council, ‘I do not think, considering what others say of the Queen, that I should be doing her any injury in writing to his
Majesty [Philip II] that she was married, which in fact I never have written, and I am sorry I cannot do so with truth.’
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This gossip, though vehemently denied, revealed the Spanish involvement in Robert’s plans and put paid to his ability to use Spanish influence to gain the Queen’s hand. As Elizabeth reduced her contact with de Quadra to almost none, Robert now made his support of the French Huguenots public, offering them his backing, doubtless expecting their support for his marriage with Elizabeth in return. His brother-in-law, Sir Henry Sidney, joined Sir Nicholas Throckmorton in Paris to try to broker a peace between the Catholic and Protestant factions and may have also lobbied the French Protestant faction on Robert’s behalf.

Robert also used English politics to help gain support for marrying Elizabeth. In the summer of 1562, Mary, Queen of Scots requested a royal meeting in York in order to try to persuade Elizabeth to name her as the formal, legal heir to the English throne. As Mary had refused to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh (which acknowledged Elizabeth as lawful Queen of England) on her return from France, the Council voted against Elizabeth going to such a meeting. Robert, however, was firmly in favour. He reasoned that if Elizabeth named the Catholic Mary as heiress, then the Protestant Lords would be forced to support him as the Queen’s husband in their urgency to get her married and to create a Tudor heir in the line of succession.

However, concerns about the broader political context won out. At the time, in France, the Catholic House of Guise (Mary’s relatives) were attacking the Protestant Huguenots. The Council felt that if François, Duc de Guise was successful in defeating the Huguenots, he might try to attack England on Mary’s behalf. Elizabeth and her Council decided that England should give limited support to the Huguenots and that a meeting with Mary
was impossible. The question of Elizabeth’s heir would have to wait. Or had it already been dealt with? Did Elizabeth already have a child, albeit an illegitimate one? Were Robert’s efforts to gain Elizabeth’s hand a way of making a secret liaison an official one? The rumours persisted. In June 1562, testimony was given in a Wiltshire court recounting the following conversation: ‘It is said my Lord Robert is fled out of the realm … It is told me he hath the Queen with child, and therefore he is fled.’
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