Elizabeth (32 page)

The last 15 years of Elizabeth’s reign were not only peppered with personal losses, but with political difficulties. With the passing away of her old advisers and officials, a new generation was vying for control and her Privy Council suffered from factionalism, particularly between Robert Cecil, the son of her most trusted adviser, and the ambitious Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. The conflicts with Spain and Ireland were costly and the kingdom’s economy suffered. Repression against Catholics intensified. Elizabeth’s popularity became slightly tarnished by all these factors, and her personal power and acuity weakened with age.

The Queen’s health began to decline late in 1602. In February 1603, she received yet another blow – the death of Catherine Howard (
née
Carey), Countess of Nottingham, her cousin and one of her dearest friends – which left Elizabeth in a state of deep depression. In March, she fell ill and became extremely melancholic. Catherine Howard’s brother, Robert Carey, came to Court and found a frail and sad Elizabeth seated on cushions on the floor, unable or unwilling to move. He recorded later that he heard ‘forty or fifty great sighs … for in all my lifetime before, I
never knew her fetch a sigh, but when the Queen of Scots was beheaded.’
⁸

Robert Cecil, trying to rouse Elizabeth, told her she must go to bed. The Queen replied, ‘Little man, little man, the word
must
is not to be used to Princes.’
⁹
On 21 March, Catherine Howard’s grieving widower, Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham, another valued old friend, was summoned. He persuaded her to retire to the comfort of her bed.

The end was slow and terrible. Elizabeth developed a throat infection that meant she could hardly talk, eat or drink. When Robert Cecil, obliged to plan the succession, asked her if James VI of Scotland was to succeed her, she simply lifted her hand in agreement. Elizabeth I died on 24 March 1603 at the age of 69 at Richmond Palace, with her old friend Archbishop Whitgift by her bedside. He knelt and prayed, staying with her through the last day. Some time after 2 a.m. she finally slipped away ‘mildly like a lamb, easily like a ripe apple from the tree.’
¹⁰

In the end, after all the years of wrangling with her government about the succession, the solution that was found was relatively trouble-free. As Elizabeth had no lawful heirs, James VI of Scotland had a strong claim by the line of Henry VIII’s older sister, Margaret Tudor. If Elizabeth did have illegitimate children, none of them came forward to claim the throne and the transition went smoothly. James VI of Scotland took a second crown, becoming James I of England and Ireland.

Despite all the rumours and scandals over the years, the possible illegitimate child Elizabeth was suspected to have had with Robert Dudley did not become the next King of England – neither did any of the other children she was alleged to have borne out of wedlock.

T
hroughout Elizabeth’s long reign, the question of her heir was a matter of great concern and the cause of consternation both at home and abroad among her various Councillors, Europe’s royalty and aristocracy and her own favourites. Who would the Queen marry? And, if she failed to marry, who would be the next King or Queen of England?

Elizabeth, with characteristic stubbornness, resisted all attempts to marry or to name an heir. Even more frustratingly, over the years she wavered between steadfastly refusing to consider marriage and encouraging various members of the European royalty to pursue her, only to change her mind. Meanwhile, her Council feared that she would marry one of her favourites, Robert Dudley, for many years the most likely candidate. In the end, however, Elizabeth remained unmarried to the last, the Virgin Queen of legend.

For the first part of her reign, though, it seemed likely that Elizabeth would marry at some point and give birth to a legitimate heir. Why she chose not to do so is a matter of conjecture and has been the subject of a great many books, plays and films. One of the questions frequently raised is whether or not Elizabeth was able to have children. There certainly seems to be no firm evidence to support the idea that Elizabeth was incapable of conceiving. Indeed, throughout her life – even before she was Queen – there were rumours that she had had sexual liaisons with men such as Thomas Seymour and later Robert Dudley, and had given birth to an illegitimate child – possibly even children . Yet, if the rumours were true, why did she keep any child secret? It would not have been unprecedented for Elizabeth to disclose the existence of a child and for that child to be accepted as her heir. In 1571, her ministers even changed the wording of the Act of Succession, which had stated that the throne should go to the ‘issue of her body lawfully to be begotten’ to read ‘the natural issue of her body’. This meant that any child whom the Queen acknowledged as her own, even one born outside wedlock, could potentially become the future King or Queen of England.

This decision no doubt resulted from the rumours at the time that Elizabeth had conceived a child with her favourite Robert Dudley during their inseparable years at Court when both were in their twenties or early thirties. In the same way as the child Elizabeth was reported to have had with Thomas Seymour, it could have been born in secret and placed with suitable foster parents.

But if this were the case, who would be the most likely candidate to be the offspring of Elizabeth and Robert? Looking at the evidence, four men stand out as possible contenders: Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Arthur Dudley (1561–?), John Harington (1560–1612) and Robert Devereux (1566–1601).

A
ccording to the records of the time, Francis Bacon was born on 22 January 1561 at York House on the Strand in London, to Sir Nicholas Bacon and his second wife, Anne Cooke.

Sir Nicholas had graduated from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and entered Gray’s Inn (one of the Inns of Court); he was called to the Bar in 1533. During the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII, Sir Nicholas acquired several estates, including Gorhambury near St Albans, which became the family seat. He held several posts under Edward VI, as Member of Parliament, Attorney of the Court of Wards and Liveries, and Treasurer of Gray’s Inn. He was a highly skilled lawyer and a brilliant speaker. During the reign of Mary I, he lost his posts as he was a staunch Protestant, only to resume his career on the succession of Elizabeth I. The Queen immediately appointed him Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, a post in which he worked closely with his brother-in-law, William Cecil (they had married two of the learned and intelligent daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke). Francis was the youngest of all of Nicholas Bacon’s children.

The date of Francis’s conception tallies with the period during which Elizabeth and Robert Dudley were most rumoured to have engaged in a physical relationship – in anticipation of the imminent death of Robert’s wife, Amy Robsart. If Elizabeth had
conceived an illegitimate child, placing it within a family such as the Bacons, where there were children by two different mothers and family characteristics were less marked, would have been an inspired idea. Additionally, Sir Nicholas and Anne were suitable in so many other ways: he was a Protestant who had maintained his religion, as Elizabeth had done, even through the reign of Mary I, while his wife was one of Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting and a fellow scholar in Greek, Latin, French and Italian. Conversely, however, the Bacon household was only a stone’s throw from the royal palaces and the alleged foster parents were a daily part of Court life, which might not have been the best way to keep the true identity of such an important baby a secret.

Francis would have spent part of his childhood at York House, as well as at Gorhambury, where he may have attended the local grammar school at St Albans. He was an academically precocious child and was mainly schooled at home by different tutors. At the age of 12, he went to study at Cambridge with his brother Anthony, then aged 14. They went to Trinity College, where Francis, little more than a child, appears to have spoken out on various subjects, as he later wrote his opinion of the university: ‘For the studies of men in these places are so confined and as it were imprisoned in the writings of certain authors, from whom if any man dissent he is straightway arraigned as a turbulent person and an innovator.’
¹

In 1576, Francis was placed in the care of Sir Amyas Paulet, the English Ambassador to France, so he could travel to Europe to extend his education. A French author, Pierre Amboise, wrote a biography of Francis, published in 1631, saying of his time abroad:

Since both his father and his uncle, William Cecil, held posts of national importance, at the age of 15, Francis could have, with great reason, imagined himself in a similar position one day.

The travels, however, came to an end when Francis received word that his father, Sir Nicholas, had died on 20 February 1579. He immediately left France for England, but found that his father had already been buried in St Paul’s Cathedral. Sir Nicholas’s will was not kind to his youngest son: all his bequests went to his wife and to his other children. It has been suggested that Sir Nicholas was planning to make some other provision for Francis and that he died before he could do so. It has also been suggested that, if Francis was not his son, he had left his real parents to provide for the young man.

The first suggestion is possible; the second is almost certainly unlikely. A monarch would usually provide for an illegitimate child, in which case Sir Nicholas would have received additional grants of estates for the sole purpose of endowing them on the child, rather than leaving him penniless and drawing attention to his plight. A third possibility is that Sir Nicholas left nothing to Francis because he was hopeless with money. In later years, Francis would have serious problems with debt.

In lieu of a generous inheritance, in 1579, Francis entered Gray’s Inn, aged 18. Within a year, he wrote to his uncle, William Cecil, asking him
to petition the Queen for an unnamed post. He emphasized his seriousness in his law studies and reminded Cecil that he had not been ‘well left or befriended’. A second letter, written a month later, thanked Cecil in advance; he hoped to serve the Queen as his father had done, and was grateful for his uncle’s support.

However, as it turned out, the post never materialized. Perhaps Cecil never used his influence to help his nephew, possibly because he viewed this brilliant young man as a potential rival to his own son, Robert Cecil; thus he could have deliberately suppressed Francis’s attempts to advance himself in the royal service. Equally, Cecil may have been wary of the self-importance of the young man, who seemed convinced of his intellectual superiority. Such a man could be dangerous if he achieved a significant role in the political arena before he had gained some real experience of the workings of the Court. Possibly with this in mind, Cecil would later recommend Francis to the voters of Melcome Regis in Dorset, which town would duly return Francis as their Member of Parliament in 1584. A stint in Parliament would give Francis relevant experience and allow him to make his reputation with speeches and presentations.