London (94 page)

Yet even Susan had to admit, Elizabeth was showing wisdom. For as the whole of Europe drew into two huge, and increasingly hostile religious camps, the position of England’s queen was not an easy one. While she temporized with the great Catholic powers and even hinted that she might marry one of their princes and return England to Rome, she was faced in London and the other cities with an increasingly Protestant people. This was not surprising. Intelligent merchants and artisans, having once got their English Bible and Book of Common Prayer, liked thinking for themselves. Their trading partners, in the Low Countries, in Germany, even in France, were often Protestant too. Gradually the more extreme forms of Protestantism made headway. Puritans, these people began to call themselves. Even if she had hated the Protestants – and secretly she was in sympathy with them – Elizabeth could not have stopped this development without resorting to tyranny and bloodshed.

So instead, she and her wise minister, the great Cecil, had adopted an English compromise. “We do not seek to look into men’s hearts,” they said. “But outward conformity we must require.” It was a humane and necessary policy; and even Susan, on the whole, was grateful for it. So that, to her own surprise, when the Pope in Rome grew impatient with the English queen and threatened excommunication if she did not return her kingdom to the fold, Susan found herself saying irritably: “I wish he would not.”

Only one thing, in those years, drew from her a cry of fury. This was the publication, in 1563, of a single, stout book. It was known as Foxe’s
Book of Martyrs
; and it was an astonishing feat of propaganda. For this book, carefully written to evoke every man’s pity and rage, described in detail the martyrs of England – by which it meant those Protestants who had perished under Bloody Mary. Of the Catholics who had suffered martyrdom before then, it said not a word. That some of these Protestants, like vicious old Latimer, had been burners and torturers themselves, it conveniently forgot. The sale of the book was prodigious. Soon, it seemed, only Catholic persecution of Protestants had ever existed.

“’Tis a lie,” Susan would protest. “And I fear it will persist.” It would indeed. Foxe’s
Book of Martyrs
was destined to be read in families, to give warning to children, and to shape English people’s perception of the Catholic Church for generations.

Yet, apart from this one outburst, the silence of Susan continued. She had had her fill of trouble; she was determined to live at peace. And peace she was granted, at least in this life, except for one minor disturbance.

After a long career at court, where he never really advanced, her brother Thomas took a wife late in life. She was a girl of good family and some fortune, but some small blemish on her character, Susan suspected, had prevented her getting married. She gave him a son, then died. And not long after that, Susan received a letter from her brother informing her that he, too, was not long for this world and intended sending his infant son and heir to Rochester, “where I know you and Jonathan will look after him.”

And so it was, in the last years of her life, that Susan found herself with a new charge, a handsome little fellow with auburn hair and, she had to confess, great charm. His name was Edmund.

Sometimes, though, she wondered if he was not just a little too wild.

THE GLOBE

The long years of Queen Elizabeth I were remembered as a golden age, but to Londoners living at the time they were more varied. Firstly, for the most part, there was peace. Elizabeth was naturally cautious, and thanks to her father’s extravagance, she could not really afford to go to war. There was also modest prosperity. All men’s lives, even those of the tiny minority in the towns, still depended on the harvest; and Elizabeth was usually lucky with her harvests. There was adventure, too. Though seventy years had passed since Columbus found America, it was not until Elizabeth’s reign that English adventurers like Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh set out on the voyages of exploration – in truth, a mixture of piracy, trade and settlement – that began England’s huge encounter with the New World.

But the defining event of the reign took place when Elizabeth, having avoided large-scale war for thirty years, was at last, unavoidably, forced into it. The cause was religion. If the Reformation had dealt the Catholic Church a mighty blow, Rome had risen to the challenge: with dedicated orders like the Jesuits, even with the dreaded Inquisition, the Church set out to win back what was lost; and high on the list was the schismatic kingdom of England. Nothing could disguise where Elizabeth’s true sympathies lay; and many of her subjects, led by the stern Puritans, were urging her even further into the Protestant camp. Exasperated at last, the Pope told England’s Catholics that they no longer owed loyalty to the heretic queen. Indeed he wished there were someone to depose her. One candidate was her Catholic cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. Cast out by the Protestant Scots and held in a northern English castle, this romantic, wayward lady was an obvious focus for any Catholic plots. Unwisely however, she was caught in one of these and Elizabeth had been forced to order her execution. But there was another candidate, mightier by far than foolish Mary.

King Philip of Spain had hoped to obtain the Crown of England for his Habsburg family when he married Mary Tudor. Now he might win it by conquest – a chance to perform a great service for the true faith. “This is nothing less,” he announced, “than a holy crusade.”

At the end of July 1588, there set out from Spain the greatest fleet that the world had ever seen. The Armada’s mission was to land on the shores of England a huge army against which Elizabeth’s modest militia would be helpless. Philip was sure that every true Catholic in England would rise to support him.

On the little island, Englishmen trembled. But they prepared to fight. Every suitable vessel made ready at the southern ports. Great beacons were set up on hills all the way along the coast to signal the Armada’s approach. As for the Catholics, Philip was wrong. “We are Catholics, but not traitors,” they declared. But most memorable of all was the speech Elizabeth made, dressed in full armour, as she came to join her troops.

Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength in the goodwill of my subjects; and therefore I am come . . . being resolved in the midst and heat of the battle to live or die amongst you all; to lay down for God, my kingdom and for my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust.

I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman: but I have the heart and stomach of a king – and a king of England too.

As the massive galleons advanced up the English Channel, a huge storm arose, and harried by the little English vessels, the Spanish were confounded; the storm continued day after day until at last they were blown all the way round the rocky coast of Scotland and Ireland where many were wrecked. Only a fraction ever returned home and King Philip of Spain, honestly mystified, wondered if this were a sign. The English had no doubt. “We were saved by the hand of God,” men said. The Roman Catholics, henceforth, were seen as dangerous invaders. God, clearly, had chosen England as a special haven: a Protestant island kingdom. And so it would remain.

At the hub of the fortunate kingdom, London bustled as never before. Seen from a distance, the old place looked much the same. The medieval city still rose on its two hills within the ancient Roman walls, and in several places the surrounding fields and marshland still came to the city gates. On the skyline, however, the spire of St Paul’s had gone, struck by lightning, leaving only a stubby square tower, somehow less medieval than before; and in the east, the Tower had now acquired four gleaming onion domes at its corners, giving the place a more festive air, like a Tudor country palace.

Within its confines, London had swelled. The houses had grown taller: three or four timbered and gabled storeys now jutted out over the narrow streets and alleys. Unused spaces were being filled up: the old Walbrook stream between the two hills had almost disappeared under houses now. Above all, the great enclosed precincts of the old monasteries, dissolved by King Harry, were being colonized. Parts of the old religious houses were workshops; the huge Blackfriars precinct was rebuilt as fashionable houses. And the population was swelling, not because families were growing – for age and disease, in crowded Tudor London, still took away more than were born – but because of a stream of immigrants from all over England, and from overseas, especially from the Low Countries, where Protestants fled the persecuting Catholic Spanish. At the end of the Wars of the Roses, London had perhaps fifty thousand souls; by Elizabeth’s last years, four times that number.

And in busy London there now grew up one of the greatest gifts that the English genius was to leave the world. For in the reign of Elizabeth I began the first and greatest flowering of the glorious English theatre. Yet it is less generally known that in Elizabeth’s final years, when William Shakespeare had written only half his plays, the English theatre almost came to an end.

1597

Earlier that spring afternoon, there had been a cockfight and now they were baiting a bear. The circular pit of the Curtain, from which the actors’ stage had been temporarily removed, was about fifty feet across, with two tall tiers of wooden galleries enclosing it. The bear was tethered to a post in the centre by a chain which was long enough to allow it to bump into the barriers at the spectators’ feet. The bear was a splendid beast: already it had killed two of the three mastiffs which had been set on it and their bodies, pulped and bleeding, lay in the dust. But the remaining dog had put up a tremendous fight. Though a blow from the bear’s mighty paw had flung him right across the pit, he would not give up. Weaving and springing he had attacked again and again, savaging the bear’s hindquarters, driving it to a frenzy of indignation and even twice sinking his teeth into its throat when it grew tired. The crowd roared: “Well done, Scamp. Go for him, boy!” Bears were seldom killed, but the pluckiest dogs were often saved to fight another day. As the mastiff was called off, the onlookers shouted their approval.

None cried more heartily – “Bravely fought! Noble hound!” – than the handsome, auburn-haired young man in the gallery, surrounded by a group of friends who hung upon his words. He was obviously one of the young gallants of the town. His doublet was richly embroidered, dagged and – this was the fashion – formed into a stiffened curve over his midriff. Though some young men still favoured the medieval hose, which certainly showed off a fine leg and, indeed, the buttocks too, he had gone over to the newest style: a pair of woollen stockings and above these, made of the same material as the doublet, the billowing breeches known as galligaskins, secured at the knee with ribbons. On his feet were embroidered shoes, tucked into outer slippers lest the mud should soil them. Around his neck, a starched ruff, white as snow. Over his shoulders, also matching his tunic, a short cape. It was a fashion, echoing the shape of Spanish armour, that made him look both elegant and manly.

From his waist hung a rapier, its pommel embossed with gold, and at the back, a matching dagger. He wore gloves of soft and scented leather and in his right ear a golden ring. Upon his head was a high brimmed hat from which there sprouted, like fountains, three gorgeous plumes which added a foot to his height. This was the dress with which, in Elizabeth’s last years, a man decked himself out for immortality upon the stage of life. But there was one more prop to make the costume complete. With studied nonchalance, Edmund Meredith held it in his right hand. It was long, curved and made of clay.

It was a pipe. Some years before the queen’s favourite, Walter Raleigh, had learned the use of the tobacco plant from the American Indians and brought it back to England. Soon the expensive Virginian weed was all the rage amongst the fashionable. Edmund Meredith, as it happened, did not much like the taste of the pipe, but he always had one with him in a public place, to take away from his nostrils the smells, real or assumed, of the common people: “the garlic-breaths and onion-breaths,” as he liked to call them.

And it was during the lull before a pair of fighting cocks was brought into the pit, Edmund Meredith smiled at his friends.

“Shakespeare’s giving up. I’m going to take his place,” and made his remarkable boast.

Young Rose and Sterne, gallants like himself, applauded. William Bull wondered if he would get his money back. Cuthbert Carpenter trembled, because he was going to hell. Jane Fleming wondered if Edmund would marry her. And John Dogget grinned, because he had no worries anyway.

Nobody took any notice of the dark-skinned man behind them.

Edmund Meredith wanted to cut a figure in the world. He had no other motive, and there was nothing else that he wanted to achieve. But in pursuing his ambition he was single-minded. If the world was a stage, he meant to play a handsome part. He had always known that quiet old Rochester would never do for him, but fortunately his father had left him a modest income on which he could live as a single gentleman. And so he had come to London.

But what to do? How did a young man cut a figure in the world? There was the royal court of course, the great high road to rank and fortune. But the chances of failure and humiliation were high, as his father and grandfather had discovered. The law then. There were more lawsuits in busy London nowadays than ever before, and the best lawyers were making huge fortunes. He had attended the Inns of Court, therefore, and nearly completed his studies. “But law’s too dry, too tedious for me,” he judged. His cousins the Bulls were brewers. “But I’ll not dirty my hands with trade,” he vowed.

He liked to write verses. “I’ll be a poet, then,” he declared. But to be a poet you needed a patron. Without a patron the court and the fashionable world never noticed you; printers, even if they printed hundreds of copies, only paid a pittance. A rich patron, however, pleased by elegant verses dedicated to him and immortalizing his noble house, could be generous indeed. The Earl of Southampton, people said, had paid Shakespeare so well for one fine poem,
Venus and Adonis
, that the fellow had been set up for life. The only trouble was that patrons were also fickle. Poor Spenser, no less a poet than Will Shakespeare, had hung about the court for years and had scarcely made a penny.