All the Queen's Men (20 page)

There was also the decided risk of becoming pregnant, birth control being virtually non-existent in Tudor times. There is no proven indication of any illegitimate children belonging to Elizabeth, unlike her father Henry VIII who had an illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, conceived by his mistress Elizabeth Blount. Henry made his son Duke of Richmond in 1525 and had even considered him as his successor but the young Duke suffered from consumption and died in 1536, the year before Jane Seymour produced the future Edward VI, Elizabeth's half-brother. No factual record exists of Elizabeth ever conceiving, not even the vestige of a rumour in an age of decidedly double-standards, when a man fathering an illegitimate child caused little comment but a woman was universally damned. Furthermore, syphilis was rife in the sixteenth century, posing a grave risk in an undoubtedly highly promiscuous age. Dudley already had a high-profile reputation as a sexual athlete. Whether or not Elizabeth had sexual relations with him or indeed with anybody else is of no historical consequence and had no material subsequent effect on the Crown. Salacious speculation is considerably outweighed by the undoubted certainty that she never took a husband or produced an illegitimate heir to the throne with the consequences that would have ensued. The resultant effect of a childless queen was the demise of the Tudor dynasty and the enforced introduction of the Stuarts onto the English throne, permanently altering the authority of the monarchy and quickly plunging the nation back into a civil war far worse than the one which Elizabeth's grandfather Henry VII had rescued it from in 1485.

Had any one of Elizabeth's suitors proven to be successful there may have been no Gunpowder Plot, no Pilgrim Fathers, no Oliver Cromwell, no English republic, and Charles I might have kept his head. The longer-term implications are equally interesting: no Dutch or German monarchs on the English throne, no Bonnie Prince Charlie, no Highland Clearances nor Orangemen still celebrating the Battle of the Boyne every year. Speculation is an entertaining, yet futile pastime – nevertheless, the failure of any of the Queen's suitors to persuade her to abandon her spinsterhood, undoubtedly had profound consequences for the English nation subsequent to her death. In the short term, it undid many of the achievements of her lifetime, as her Stuart successors failed to keep up the momentum that she had created during forty-five years of largely successful rule.

Elizabeth usually demonstrated a wonderful ability to choose men to perform important tasks, but this attribute deserted her when it came to picking a man for herself. She consistently proved to have a poor judgement in choosing her favourites. Robert Dudley was married and generally unpopular at Court. Hatton and Ralegh were considered upstart opportunists with inadequate social background. Heneage and the Earl of Oxford were never serious contenders, the latter squandering his fortune only to rely on a small pension from Elizabeth in order to eke out a meagre existence. As the Queen aged, the men who attracted her became progressively younger and Elizabeth's biggest mistake was the 2nd Earl of Essex, a classic example of someone for whom success had come too early and too easily, making him impetuous, spoilt, petulant and arrogant. Perhaps the ageing Queen was trying to turn back the clock in order to relive those carefree, earlier days with Robert Dudley. Once more tongues wagged around the Court: ‘When she is abroad nobody is near her but my Lord of Essex. . . . He cometh not to his own lodgings until birds sing in the morning',11 wrote the young courtier Anthony Bagot to his father.

In the last decade of the sixteenth century, Elizabeth was in her late fifties, her looks had faded along with the energy and vitality of earlier years. Her once auburn hair was now thin and grey, hidden under a very obvious and garish wig, her skin ravaged by time and concealed under heavy white make-up, so thick in appearance that it looked like plaster. An allegorical portrait, now in Corsham Court, that magnificent Wiltshire treasure house, shows a sad-faced old lady staring into space, not liking what she sees. The artist is unknown and the picture was probably painted after her death as a realistic portrayal of the Queen – such a portrait as this would never have been permitted during her lifetime.

For some considerable time, artists had been forbidden on orders of the Privy Council to paint Elizabeth as an ageing queen. Instead, they formulated the ingenious solution of showing her to be completely ageless, resulting in portraits which conveyed an almost Madonna-like image. One of the supreme ironies of the Elizabethan era is that the nation who had removed worship of the Virgin Mary from the religious service, had later replaced her with their own version: Elizabeth as a visionary, celestial figure, majestic, all powerful and immortal. By the 1580s Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester had also aged, the once trim figure had thickened, the once finely chiselled face coarsened, his skin reddened. Leicester was unconcerned that his stepson Essex had assumed the position of Elizabeth's favourite; on the contrary, he positively welcomed it as it helped to weaken Sir Walter Ralegh's hold on the Queen's affections.

The besotted Elizabeth indulged young Essex outrageously, much to Lord Burghley's irritation – the veteran statesman must have felt an acute sense of
déjà vu
. It was as if a miraculously rejuvenated Robert Dudley had somehow contrived to return in order to once more distract the Queen and disrupt his plans. This time Burghley felt far less concerned than he had been at the time of Dudley's relationship with the Queen nearly thirty years earlier. So outrageous was Essex's conduct, so much did he upset the more powerful members of Court and Council, that Burghley felt quietly confident that Essex would somehow self-destruct. Thus it was to prove when his arrogance had totally outstripped his abilities, and he was sent to the scaffold. The relationship had, however, been a disastrous one for Elizabeth and one which considerably damaged the Queen's reputation late in her reign.

Traditionally, it is customary in marriage for the man to seek the bride, but because Elizabeth was the ruler of a major sovereign state, this precept did not apply and the initiative was therefore with Elizabeth to choose a suitable companion. However, a chronic inability to make decisions was essentially the Queen's greatest weakness. When she hesitated on other issues, the Privy Council was there to stiffen Elizabeth's resolve. On the question of marriage they were keen on the concept, yet lukewarm on the contenders, and never gave their wholehearted support to any of the serious suitors. Therefore, it was as much their fault as Elizabeth's that she never found a husband. Maybe both Elizabeth and her Privy Councillors were too stringent in their requirements or perhaps, secretly, in the final analysis when it became necessary to act, neither Queen nor Council really wanted a marriage. Whatever the motives, whatever the reasons, when it came to the decisive moment, none of the suitors proved suitable.

A
t the time when Elizabeth became Queen, England was still essentially a Catholic kingdom, practising the same faith which had existed within the nation for many centuries, except for a short period of Protestantism under her half-brother, Edward VI, before this process was swiftly reversed by Elizabeth's half-sister Mary. This rapid swing of the religious pendulum may well have gone largely unheeded by the majority of England's population, particularly those outside the towns and in northern England. Out in the country, the ordinary folk continued to worship in much the same manner as they had throughout the Middle Ages. Elizabeth had inherited a predominately Catholic country, albeit a very divided one, and she may well have been inclined to keep it that way, for it would have been easier to continue a religious practice that was reassuringly familiar to the majority of her citizens. It was also the official faith of both Spain and France, the two most significant nations in western Europe, at the time of her succession to the throne in 1558.

Even when her father Henry VIII had ceased to recognize the Pope in Rome as head of the English Church, the King was still regarded as ‘His Most Catholic Majesty'. The bidding prayer of 1544 declares Henry VIII as, ‘being only immediately next unto God, the only and supreme head of this Catholic Church, of England'. Elizabeth may have been tempted to re-establish the official religion in England precisely as it had been in the land of her father – it would have suited her conservative inclinations, been much simpler, and avoided a potential confrontation early in her reign with either France or Spain, respectively controlled by the Catholic Catherine de Medici and Philip II. On her northern frontier, her Catholic cousin, Mary, ruled Scotland which was at that time at war with England. Retaining the religious status quo was at first sight the easy option.

However, when Elizabeth became Queen, most of Europe was in religious turmoil as the old Catholic order was threatened by new religious doctrines; radical concepts questioned established theological values, challenging fundamental thinking which had existed almost since the dawn of Christianity. Men such as Martin Luther, Jean Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli had vigorously pioneered a new theology that was to have a profound impact on the traditional way in which the Christian faith had been practised for so many centuries. This trio of eminent theologians were active in the first half of the sixteenth century, the French-born Calvin in Geneva and Zwingli in Switzerland, while the German Luther, originally an Augustinian monk, lived in the university town of Wittenberg, where he had become both teacher and preacher. Luther was largely instrumental as the founder of Protestantism while Calvin's concepts led to Presbyterianism, which in turn exercised a lasting impression on the Scottish reformer John Knox, who was to found the Church of Scotland in the early part of Elizabeth's reign.

These new religious philosophies were to have an equally significant impact on English hearts and minds; in Tudor England, Cambridge University was the place destined to become the centre of the developing Protestant faith in the kingdom along with Puritanism, a more extreme form of this new theological thinking. Three of the best-known Protestant martyrs burnt at the stake during Mary's reign – Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer – had been at Cambridge. Parker, Grindal and Whitgift, the three clerics who Elizabeth was to successively choose to become her Archbishops of Canterbury, had also been exposed to the new Protestant thinking during their time at Cambridge, as had William Cecil while studying at St John's College. Thus the most prominent men surrounding the new young Queen when she came to the throne were virtually all Protestant in their convictions. Elizabeth was acutely conscious that they regarded her as the new champion of Protestantism and the saviour of their faith, dedicated to sweep away all traces of Catholicism from her new kingdom. Indeed, John Foxe, author of
Acts and Monuments
, better known as
The Book of Martyrs
, stated in that hugely influential publication that Elizabeth had been protected by God for that very purpose. Foxe's book did much to popularize Protestantism during Elizabeth's reign, particularly among the ordinary people, while stirring up anti-Catholic feeling across the nation.

Elizabeth had long been subject to strong Protestant influence. Her stepmother, Katherine Parr, had been a devout member of that faith, being a friend of Miles Coverdale, the English Protestant priest. Coverdale's complete translation of the Bible in 1535 was the first to be printed in English, thereby continuing the earlier work of Tyndale, while his translation of the Psalms still features in the Book of Common Prayer. The widespread availability of these religious works in the nation's own language was to have a considerable influence on the thinking of the Queen's citizens. Katherine Parr had ensured that the young princess was diligently brought up in the Protestant faith during the time that Elizabeth lived with her, a process continued by Roger Ascham, her principal tutor, also a devout Protestant. By the time Elizabeth had come to the throne she was firmly immersed in the ‘New Religion', a devoted, if not particularly fervent member of that faith, ‘an image of demure evangelicalism',
¹
as one observer noted. She attended morning service daily in her private chapel and undoubtedly regarded herself as firmly Protestant. The new Queen, therefore, understandably came to the momentous conclusion that England should become a Protestant kingdom. It was her first major decision, one not entirely of her own choosing but nevertheless a hugely courageous one so early in her reign. It was a decision that was to have an enormous impact both on her personal life and the nation as a whole, governing the destiny of both Queen and country for the rest of her time on the throne and establishing the lasting nature of the Church of England right up to the present day.

Elizabeth instinctively sensed that the mood of the nation was to become Protestant. Unlike her half-sister Mary, she responded to this feeling rather than superimposing her own beliefs regardless of the best interests of her subjects. However, she wanted to be Queen of the whole of England, not just the Protestants and this desire governed her initial attitude towards the many Catholics residing within her kingdom. Elizabeth was no fanatic – indeed, she was just as conservative in her religious outlook as in other important issues. She did not wish to alienate a large number of Catholics within England at the beginning of her reign or risk antagonizing Spain in the initial phase of her rule. Conversely, she needed to distance herself from her half-sister's unpopular reign together with the religious extremism that had prevailed during those unhappy years. It was important that Elizabeth should retain the loyalty and justify the expectations of powerful Protestants such as William Cecil, who had enabled her to become Queen of England. Thus she gave out strong and very public signals as to her intentions from the beginning of her reign, in order to clearly indicate that she was a Protestant Queen but one who was tolerant towards Catholics, without approving of their customs if they should deviate from the principles of Protestantism. When Bishop Ogelthorpe attempted to celebrate Mass in the traditional way by elevating the Host, the Queen ostentatiously rose to her feet and left the service. ‘Away with those torches, for we see very well,'
²
Elizabeth declared as she swept past a group of monks carrying tapers when she entered Westminster Abbey for her first opening of Parliament in January 1559, amid clouds of incense and much sprinkling of holy water.