THIRTY-TWO
‘MY AUDIT IS MADE’
If Henry stood ready to greet his glorious tomorrows, fit, poised, trained and vigorous, weapons sitting easily in his practised hand, eyes peeled for the pursuit of greatness, then by the spring of 1612 it was clear the Crown’s greatest servant was not going to be there to counsel Henry IX. Though still flogging himself through a mountain of work, Lord Salisbury’s physician had diagnosed the earl with stomach cancer.
He collapsed and left for Bath to take the waters, hoping to ease the pain. His chaplain accompanied him. They talked of life and death and the salvation of the soul. Salisbury comforted himself with the thought that ‘my audit is made’ – appropriately for a Lord Treasurer. To Salisbury’s great joy, Henry gave William Cranborne permission to leave and ride to his father. The king and queen sent Salisbury presents in the hand of the king’s most flamboyant favourite, Lord Hay. Salisbury began a slow journey home to London. Physical agony forced him to stop at Marlborough. He died there on 24 May 1612. With him, the era of Cecil political domination ended.
His death cut Henry’s finest link into the heart of government. Salisbury had involved him, kept him informed, trained him, and joined with him and his mother in opposing the king’s bedchamber coterie. Henry had to act fast if he was to establish his own power bloc in council, and at his father’s court. Rochester sat with the prince on the Privy Council now – an established rival for Henry’s access to his father.
William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, moved closer to Henry’s court. Long enjoying a good relationship with Henry, the two men shared interests in commerce and colonial development. Some of Pembroke’s clients built up the Herbert–Pembroke presence at St James’s by attending on Henry. The prince, Pembroke and the Earl of Southampton united in being the Earl of Essex’s closest supporters at court. It angered them to see the suffering caused to Essex by the intensifying affair between Rochester and Frances Howard, Essex’s now estranged wife.
As Salisbury’s death unleashed furious libelling of his reputation, competition for his positions and access to the rivers of patronage he had controlled, Henry determined to head off the favourite. The prince requested his own nominees be given some of the positions vacated by Salisbury’s death. John Chamberlain, a close observer of the court, wrote to his friend, Dudley Carleton, who was seeking a post: ‘If I might advise, I would you could rather devise how to grow in with the Prince, and not without need if all be true I have heard.’
Henry asked for the post of Secretary of State to go to his candidate, Sir Ralph Winwood. Recently returned from a mission in The Hague, Winwood called on Anne and Henry at Greenwich. He spent an afternoon ‘with the Queen who used him extraordinarily well, and had long talks with him and commanded him to come to her again before his departure’. Next day, ‘he took his leave of the Prince and had the same usage’. Winwood had spent years with the Dutch and Maurice. Henry could use a man like this.
Another individual ready to come home and be rewarded with high office, Sir Henry Wotton, ambassador to Venice, canvassed Henry and Anne for their support. ‘The Queen and the Prince are in earnest in Sir Henry Wotton’s behalf, and the Lord of Rochester is not willing, after his late reconciliation’ with Anne and Henry, ‘to oppose himself, or stand in the breach, against such assailants.’
As much as Rochester wanted to be seen as building bridges with the queen and prince’s courts, he craved old Salisbury’s offices more. James settled the matter by announcing he would be his own Secretary of State. Then, within weeks, he appointed Rochester his private secretary. Rochester had outmanoeuvred queen and prince. The private secretary was the tongue and pen of the royal master, literally writing his letters in his name – the role Sir Adam Newton occupied for Henry. The favourite’s star had truly ascended. He saw everything that came to James, and Henry was certain he did not always pass it to St James’s, as Salisbury had. Someone saw the prince lash out one day, hitting Rochester on the back with a tennis racket.
Henry wrote to Sir Thomas Edmondes, out of sorts. ‘As matters go here now’ – meaning the dominance of Rochester – ‘I shall deal in no business of importance for some respects,’ he fumed. However, when he was king, he ‘would not leave one of that family to piss against the wall’.