Elizabeth (30 page)

In 1579, François sent his charming envoy Jean de Simier to begin wooing Elizabeth on his behalf. He was ‘a most choice courtier, exquisitely skilled in love toys, pleasant conceits and court dalliances.’
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Elizabeth nicknamed him the ‘Monkey’ (a play on his name ‘Simier’) and enjoyed the imagination he put into the courtship, including sneaking into her bedchamber to steal a night cap to send to François as a love token. Despite his efforts, negotiations stalled because of the Duke’s demands – he wanted to be crowned King after they married, receive a pension of £60,000 a year, and have equal rights to the Queen in allocating gifts of Crown possessions.

The issue of Elizabeth’s heir was paramount, however. Could she still bear a child at her age? This question was discussed at length by her Councillors.

In a memorandum, Cecil noted that there were precedents of noblewomen who had given birth when older than Elizabeth. He noted that the Queen seemed perfectly designed for childbearing, ‘of the largest and goodliest stature of well-shaped women, with all limbs set and proportioned in the best sort … nature cannot amend her shape in any part to make her more likely to conceive and bear children.’
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Doctors were consulted, and they concurred that Elizabeth conceiving a child was possible. Other observers disagreed, believing that Elizabeth’s health excluded the possibility given the
dangers of childbirth. François’ mother herself, Catherine de Medici, sought a report on the Queen’s childbearing prospects from an English doctor. The unnamed physician reported, ‘… if the King [François] marries I will answer for her having 10 children, and no one knows her temperament better than I do.’
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Over the years, foreign envoys and ambassadors had been reporting rumours across the spectrum, ranging from her being physically incapable of sex to her being sexually promiscuous and already a mother. Some claimed she had at least 13 illegitimate children and that ‘she never went in progress but to be delivered’, while others asserted that she was regularly ‘cupped’ (a warm cup placed over an incision in the skin to draw off a quantity of blood) to compensate for her lack of menstruation. However, Henri III’s Ambassador to Elizabeth’s Court wrote that he could state with truth that the stories of Elizabeth’s affairs ‘were sheer inventions of the malicious, and of the ambassadorial staffs, to put off those who would have found an alliance with her useful.’
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Elizabeth decided that she wanted to see François, and it was arranged that he visit England. At the news, Robert Dudley became so ‘ill’ that he was obliged to retire from Court, and Elizabeth let him go, even though she was not yet aware that he had married Lettice Knollys. Instead she found out about Robert’s betrayal after François’ envoy Simier was shot at by a guard. He suspected that Robert had been involved, and in revenge told the Queen about the secret marriage. Elizabeth was beside herself with rage and would have sent Robert to the Tower had his act been illegal; instead he was banished to his estates at Wanstead with orders to stay there until further notice.

With Robert’s actions no doubt a bitter blow, she wrote sweet letters to François, ‘I confess there is no prince in the world to whom I would more willingly yield to be his, than to yourself, nor to whom I think myself more obliged, nor with whom I would pass the years of my life, both for your rare virtues and sweet nature …’
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On 17 August, François, who was the only of the foreign princes to woo Elizabeth in person, arrived at Greenwich. He was an instant hit. Though small (under five feet) and not classically handsome, he was charming and exciting, and Elizabeth clearly found him attractive. Her French was excellent, so they could woo without an interpreter and were said to enjoy ‘secret visits’. They spent 12 days together and their romance seems to have blossomed. After leaving, he sent her ‘a little flower of gold with a frog thereon, and therein Monsieur, his physiognomy.’
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She fondly nicknamed her suitor her ‘frog’.

However, English public opinion was not in favour of the union. The persecution of Protestants in France and the ongoing religious civil war meant the French were not trusted. Despite François’ concessions to Protestants, he himself was Catholic and his mother, Catherine de Medici, was the Dowager Queen of France. A barrister from Lincoln’s Inn, John Stubbs, added fuel to the flames by writing and publishing
The Discovery of a Gaping Gulf wherein England is like to be swallowed by another French marriage, if the Lord forbid not the banns by letting her Majesty see the sin and punishment thereof.
He wrote that the Queen’s age would put her in great danger should she become pregnant, and that no young man would wish to marry an older woman unless he had an ulterior motive. François could not be trusted.

In response, a letter signed by the most influential of the Queen’s courtiers was sent to the Mayor of London, advising him that all copies of the book were to be seized and destroyed for
slandering the Queen and the Duke, and upsetting the people of the realm. The pamphlet writer Stubbs and the bookseller who had distributed it were sentenced to have their right hands cut off on 3 November 1579. François tactfully tried to intervene to gain the two men a pardon, but Elizabeth refused to back down. Each man lost his hand, and therefore his livelihood.

The Privy Council was also divided on the question. Although Cecil supported the marriage, Robert Dudley, among other Councillors, was strongly opposed. However, her Council left the final decision to her. Negotiations for the engagement continued through 1580, with François making political concessions to keep them going.

In April 1581, the new French envoy, Pierre Clausse Seigneur de Marchaumont, was invited to knight Francis Drake with the Queen’s sword on her behalf. Drake had recently returned from pillaging the Spanish treasure fleet in the West Indies. In the process, she dropped her garter and de Marchaumont begged to keep it for François. Elizabeth said she needed it to get back to the palace with her stockings in place, but he could have it later, which he did. Many assumed the marriage was as good as signed.

Later in the year, François returned to England and was again royally entertained. He wrote the Queen messages of love, stating his desire to be ‘kissing and rekissing all that Your beautiful Majesty can think of’ as well as to be ‘in bed between the sheets in your beautiful arms’.
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He had no doubt that their passion would soon engender a son ‘made and forged by the little Frenchman who is and will be eternally your humble and very loving slave’.
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Elizabeth visited François in his bedchamber, as one scandalized correspondent wrote. ‘There goes much babbling and the Queen doth not attend to other matters, but only to be together with the Duke in one chamber from morning to noon,
and afterwards till two or three hours after sunset. I cannot tell what a devil they do.’
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In October 1581, on the day she celebrated the anniversary of her accession, Elizabeth was with François at Whitehall. As they were strolling in the gallery, she kissed her suitor and gave him a ring from her finger. She informed the French Ambassador, ‘You may write this to the King, that the Duke of Alençon shall be my husband.’
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The next day she called François in and told him that, on reflection, she would not be able to marry him. The nation was opposed to the wedding, and childbirth at her age would be risky. She loved him, she said, but the marriage was impossible. François was devastated. He stayed on at Court for a further three months in case the Queen changed her mind. In the end, he was given £10,000 with the promise of £50,000 more when he left England.

In early 1582, Elizabeth accompanied him to Canterbury, where they parted in tears. Whether the whole engagement had been political theatre to gain influence in Europe, vengeance against the recently married Robert, true love, or a combination of all of these is unknown. However, Elizabeth did seem genuinely fond of the Frenchman, as is shown in her poem to him titled ‘On Monsieur’s Departure’:

Elizabeth never saw her ‘frog’ again. He returned to the Netherlands, where he contracted an illness that may have been
malaria during his unpopular military campaigns. He died of a fever in Paris on 10 June 1584. When Elizabeth was told, her Court was ordered into mourning and she is reported to have wept inconsolably.

In the following years, the Queen would continue to have favourites, but the frenetic years of political and romantic intrigue came to a close with the end of her engagement with the French Duke. She had played her hand masterfully and tactfully, maintaining the hope of her suitors and with it, political alliances. The line of separation between political angling and her true feelings is impossible to ascertain. Was her pattern of entering into and later exiting out of every marriage proposal attributable to personal or political caution?

Now middle-aged, the Queen would use her avoidance of marriage to her advantage, to demonstrate that she was dedicated solely to the nation’s interests. She was ‘married’ to her people. The last twenty years of her life would see the pinnacle of her reign, with her navy winning one of England’s greatest victories in the defeat of the Spanish Armada, England’s seafarers exploring the globe, and the nation’s poets, playwrights and essayists ushering in a golden age of literature.

I
n the early 1580s, England’s fleets were a growing asset to its strength. Sir Francis Drake had circumnavigated the globe between 1577 and 1580, for which Elizabeth knighted him in 1581. Tensions were rising between England and Spain, with the two nations and navies vying for power in the Netherlands, France and the Caribbean – and anywhere else they could sway influence. Later in the decade the tensions would heighten into war.

There were also revolts against English rule in Ireland, where it was feared the Catholic population would conspire with Spain and give it a base from which to attack England. In Scotland, the teenage James VI (King of Scotland 1567–1625) did not always have a firm grip on power and was imprisoned for a period in 1582–83 by plotting Protestant earls, and Elizabeth still feared plots hatched by Catholics who were trying to put Mary, Queen of Scots on the English throne. Some of the greatest tests and victories of Elizabeth’s reign were yet to come.

In 1581 Elizabeth had a new favourite, who reflected the renaissance spirit of the times. An adventurer, navigator, poet and soldier, Walter Raleigh (c.1552–1618) was nicknamed ‘Water’, which reflected the way his name sounded when he pronounced it in his Devonshire accent.