The Boleyns (22 page)
By this time, Lord Hunsdon was settled at the court, although he still retained his interests in the north. In 1592 it was noted again that no one knew ‘the Scottish causes’ better than the Lord Chamberlain, who should be consulted over any matter relating to King James or his conduct over the English succession.
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He also held Norham Castle of the Queen, and the fishing rights in the river Tweed, which had come to the Crown from the bishopric of Durham by a statute of the first year of her reign. These would have gone along with his governorship of Berwick, a post which he continued to hold, and would have been leased out to those with the relevant interests, while Norham would have been in the hands of a reliable deputy.
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He continued to be busy almost to the end, but his health was giving way, and in March 1596 the Earl of Essex reported to Sir Robert Sidney, the Governor of Flushing that he was likely to die. In the event he survived until 23 July when he expired at Somerset House at the age of seventy. The Queen’s personal reaction is not known, but he was one of the last of her early favourites, and his death severed a link with her mother which she must surely have valued.
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Her feelings are probably best gauged by the fact that she promptly bestowed the chamberlainship upon his son George, who became the second Lord Hunsdon. George’s brothers Henry, Robert and Edward were also in the royal service, so the image of her cousin lived on in his descendants. The elder Henry is alleged to have been discontented that he was never promoted to an earldom in spite of his closeness to the Queen, but Elizabeth’s creations at that level were so few that it is not surprising. Moreover, although his services were worthy, and extended over many years, they lacked the distinction of her lord admirals, created Earls of Lincoln and Nottingham respectively in 1572 and 1597. In spite of her early flutter with the Earl of Leicester, the Queen was not anxious that it should appear that she was promoting peers primarily for kinship to herself. Her affection for her cousin is probably best expressed in the fact that she paid for his funeral, which cost her £800, and gave Lady Hunsdon and her daughters £400 by way of a gift in November 1596. Shortly after, on 5 December she also took the most unusual step of conferring the keepership of Somerset House upon Ann, with all the rights and fees dependent upon that office, and the following July gave her an annuity of £200, which would have made her virtually independent of her son.
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George, as we have seen, sued unsuccessfully for the earldom of Ormond in 1597, and may have done his own chances no good by being notoriously opposed to the pretensions of the Earl of Essex. He would probably have been raised to a superior title by King James, who was much more generous than his predecessor, but he died at the age of fifty-six on 8 September 1603, before the King had got around to thinking about him. His mother outlived him, dying at Somerset House in 1607. His son, Henry, the third Lord Hunsdon, was created Viscount Rochford in 1621, in what must have been a deliberate echo of his family history, and Earl of Dover on 8 March 1628. When his son John, the second Earl, died in May 1677 the senior branch of the Carey line became extinct.
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It was left to the descendants of George’s younger brothers to carry the Carey descent down to the present day.
There was only one stain on the married life of Henry Carey, and that is the existence of an illegitimate son, one Valentine Carey, who became Bishop of Exeter in 1621 and died in 1626.
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He must have been born about 1560, and the name of his mother is not known, but he appears to have been acknowledged and educated at his father’s expense. Ann, who was herself the mother of at least six children, left no recorded opinion of her husband’s waywardness, and perhaps she did not mind very much. She and Henry must often have been apart as he pursued his various official duties, and it is even possible that she never found out. Like his uncle, Lord Rochford, Lord Hunsdon left a legacy to the Church of England.
ELIZABETH I, THE BOLEYN DAUGHTER – THE DUDLEY YEARS
It needs to be remembered that Elizabeth I had two grandfathers – King Henry VII and Sir Thomas Boleyn, and that Anne Boleyn was her mother. She had been less than three years old when Anne was executed, and would hardly have noticed her absence. Her mother had been an occasional visitor to the daughter’s household rather than a regular presence, and the child’s affections were probably more focussed upon her nurse. Nevertheless, she had her mother’s genes, and they included not only her deviousness and acute political intelligence, but also her sexuality. We are told that Elizabeth ‘gloried’ in her father, and had learned his way of doing business. ‘She intends to have her way absolutely as her father did,’ observed the Count of Feria a few days before her accession; and indeed she inherited her imperious demeanour as well as her colouring from Henry VIII.
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She never spoke of her mother, but promoted her Carey relations, not only Henry but also his wife Anne, his sister Catherine and Catherine’s husband Sir Francis Knollys. Elizabeth owed her evangelical upbringing to Catherine Parr rather than to Anne, and her outright Protestantism to her brother Edward and his tutors, but she must have been aware of her mother’s reputation as a promoter of reform, and determined to tread in her footsteps. Sexually, her encounter with Thomas Seymour had taught her caution, and she was careful not to allow any man’s name to be associated with hers as long as Mary was alive. Philip had been keen to marry her to a loyal Catholic and Habsburg supporter, and had endeavoured to match her with the Duke of Savoy. However, she had rejected all overtures on the pretext that she was not ready for such a commitment, realising perfectly well that his real objective was to limit her freedom of action if (or when) she should come to the throne.
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She had affected a puritanical plainness of dress, and professed a complete lack of interest in sexual activity, lest it lead to her entrapment in an unfavourable marriage. When she came to the throne, therefore, at the age of twenty-five, she suddenly found herself the most attractive bride in Europe, and free to chose whatever partner she liked.
In his despatch of 14 November, Feria speculated on who would be in favour and who out when the new regime took effect. Among those not presently councillors, he mentioned the Earl of Bedford, Sir Peter Carew and Sir William Cecil as likely to be promoted. He also referred to Lord Robert (Dudley), although without any particular emphasis.
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He reported that Elizabeth regarded talk of her marriage to the Earl of Arundel as a joke, and beyond that it was Lord Paget’s opinion that there was no one outside the kingdom or within it upon whom she had an eye. Sir William Pickering was mentioned (although not by Feria) as a possibility, but this seems to have been on no stronger grounds than that he was fine upstanding man, and worthy of any damsel’s favour. Although she talked to the ambassador with remarkable freedom, this was one subject that was not discussed between them, and he declined to speculate. It was, however, a live issue for her council as soon as she had one, and her first parliament in January 1559 petitioned her to marry. Her reply was typically devious, outlining the circumstances which had hitherto deterred her, she went on:
Although my youth and words may seem to some hardly to agree together, yet it is most true that at this day I stand free from any other meaning that either I have had in time past or have at this present. With which trade of life I am so thoroughly acquainted that I trust God, who hath hitherto preserved me and led me by the hand, will not now of his goodness suffer me to go alone.
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She would marry, but in God’s good time, and taking careful thought for the well being of her realm. She knew perfectly well that it was not out of any solicitude for her happiness that this course was urged upon her.
And albeit it might please Almighty God to continue me still in this mind to live out of the state of marriage, yet it is not to be feared but that he will so work in my heart and in your wisdoms as good provision by his help may be made in convenient time, whereby the realm shall not remain destitute of an heir ...
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Elizabeth did not, however, place this at the head of her list of priorities. God had given her a realm to rule, not as a consort but as a sovereign, and it remained to be seen whether she could square the duties which that imposed upon her with the submissiveness required of a sixteenth-century wife. Her sister Mary had faced that same difficulty, and had never satisfactorily resolved it, while her own mother, although not a sovereign, had faced a similar conflict between her political instincts and her conjugal duty. Under the stern eye of Henry VIII, that had led to disaster, but Elizabeth was answerable to no one but God, and perhaps He would sympathise. John Aylmer saw her as being two distinct persons, the one public and the other private. Responding to a conventional argument he said:
You say God hath appointed her to be subject to her husband … therefore she may not be the head. I grant that, so far as pertaining to the bands of marriage, and to the offices of a wife, she must be a subject; but as a Magistrate she may be her husbands head. Why may not the woman be the husband’s inferior in matters of wedlock, and his head in the guiding of the commonwealth.
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Elizabeth, however, rightly perceived that this dichotomy would not work. A sovereign who was also a wife needed to be emancipated from the normal constraints of matrimony, and it would be very difficult to find a husband on those terms.
However, such thoughts did not deter her from entering the European marriage market, where her price could well be unique. It is not clear what conditions her former brother-in-law, Philip of Spain, had in mind when he proposed to her in December 1558, except that it would have been a highly political marriage.
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The story that he had become enamoured of his attractive sister-inlaw before his wife’s death unfortunately belongs to the world of historical fiction. Philip was concerned to continue the Anglo- Spanish alliance which was currently fighting against France, and any consideration of personal or sexual gratification was distinctly secondary. Realising this perfectly well, Elizabeth politely declined his offer. The prospect of a Habsburg alliance was nevertheless an attractive one, particularly to the council, and a positive response was made to the suggestion of the Archduke Charles, a younger son of the Emperor Ferdinand, as a candidate. The Queen’s reaction was equivocal. She professed her preference for the single life, but recognised the legitimacy of concern about the succession, and did not reject him out of hand. Consequently in 1559 a protracted and convoluted negotiation began, which concentrated particularly on the nature of the Archduke’s position as King of England, and on the religious rights which might accompany any marriage.
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Charles (and his advisers) naturally insisted upon the mass as the minimum concession, and while some members of her council might have been willing to concede this, Elizabeth herself was adamantly opposed. Whether this was out of genuine conviction, or a desire to protract the negotiations in the interests of national security is not apparent, but by 1565 the exchanges were becoming unreal, and collapsed eventually in 1567, to widespread sighs of relief from the more committed Protestants in Elizabeth’s court.
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While this negotiation chugged discouragingly ahead, the Queen, operating on a different level of reality, had fallen in love. This time it was not rather theoretical arguments about gender and authority which created the imperative, but sex. Elizabeth knew she was a woman like any other, but since the Seymour episode had kept herself on a tight leash. However, the attractiveness of Robert Dudley proved too much for her defences. She began a flirtation of which her mother might have been proud. He was the third son of John Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland, and they had known each other in a sense since both were adolescents at King Edward’s court.
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They had shared the perils of Mary’s reign, and had even been lodged in the Tower at the same time in 1554, although it is unlikely that that experience improved their acquaintance. After their release, their friendship had been maintained, and it is even rumoured that she borrowed money off him at one juncture, although her financial circumstances should have been a good deal easier than his. At that time he was living the life of a country gentleman in Norfolk, married since 1549 to Amy, the daughter of Sir John Robsart. Elizabeth’s accession to the throne led to an immediate recall to the court, and she almost immediately conferred upon him the office of Master of the Horse, a position worth £1,500 a year, and carrying regular rights of access to the royal person.
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His prospects were transformed overnight, and within about six months it was being rumoured that he was putting his rights of access to improper use. Kate Ashley, Elizabeth’s Principal Gentlewoman and general chaperone, became understandably anxious at these rumours, declaring that in showing herself so affectionate towards him, her honour and dignity were becoming sullied.
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Dudley’s favour was also creating unhealthy rivalries within the court, because the older nobility resented him bitterly as the son of a parvenue, and one moreover who had been executed for high treason. The Duke of Norfolk blamed the difficulties of the Habsburg marriage negotiations on these reports of the Queen’s behaviour, while a number of young hopefuls hitched their wagons to his in the hope of rising with him. She was not only flirting with a young man of no lineage, she was also flirting with a married man, whom she could not be intending to marry. Early in 1560 the rumours subsided, because everyone, including the Queen was preoccupied with the affairs of Scotland, but no sooner had William Cecil returned to London with the completed treaty of Edinburgh than they began again. Cecil himself was in despair, and spoke of resigning the secretaryship, more because of Elizabeth’s behaviour than because the success of his Scottish labours had been largely ignored in the orgy of lustful speculation.
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It was widely believed that Dudley had designs on his wife’s life, so that he might be free to marry the Queen; and then in September it happened. Amy was found dead at the foot of the stairs in Cumnor Hall, which she and Robert were renting while he was occupied at court. The circumstances were suspicious, and all fingers pointed at Robert Dudley.
Any forensic examination of Amy Dudley’s death is likely to be inconclusive.
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The servants had been given a day off, which looks suspicious but could be entirely innocent. It has been argued that a fall down stairs would have been unlikely to be fatal, and was not the real cause of her death. On the other hand, it was reported at the time that she was unwell, with a ‘malady in one of her breasts’, which sounds like breast cancer, which, undiagnosed and untreated, would have given her brittle bones. Lord Robert was carefully kept away from Cumnor while the coroner’s jury considered the evidence, and indeed was as keen as anyone that the jury should operate free from any suspected interference. The Queen was equally cautious, and kept him away from the court while the deliberations were on-going. The coroner’s court returned a verdict of death by misadventure, and that should have been the end of the matter; but of course it wasn’t.
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One anonymous chronicler noted that ‘the people say she was killed by reason that he [Dudley] forsook her company without cause’. The people no doubt said lots of other things, because Dudley was not popular, and careful though she was, the Queen’s reputation was tarnished. Sir Nicholas Throgmorton at the French court, was assailed with ribald humour:
… one laugheth at us, an other threateneth, an other revileth her Majesty, and some let not to say what religion is this that a subject shall kill his wife, and the prince not only bear withal but marry with him …
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