By February 1560 there could be no disguising the fact that the Austrian marriage project was moribund. Despite all de Quadra’s persuasive efforts of the autumn, the Archduke had not set out on his journey – no Habsburg ever did anything in a hurry. A number of people, including Count von Helfenstein who had returned to London in January in a final effort to breathe new life into the negotiations, thought this was a pity. The King of Bohemia and the Duke of Bavaria both spoke out in favour of the visit being made – the latter had even offered to accompany Charles and to contribute 100,000 crowns towards his travelling expenses. But the Emperor was determined to extract some sort of understanding from Elizabeth before allowing his son to leave for London, and the result was deadlock. The Duke of Finland, on the other hand, was getting ready to go home and, although brother Eric threatened to come courting in person, no one believed there was the least likelihood of a Swedish marriage. De Quadra believed that the Queen’s tricks were finding her out, for if both her Austrian and Scandinavian suitors deserted her ‘not only will the French despise her but her own people as well and, in the event of the Scotch business turning out badly for her, as it probably will, she will be left helpless’.1
It was certainly true that ‘the Scotch business’ did not look particularly promising at the beginning of 1560. The Earl of Arran had proved a serious disappointment, both as a military commander and as leader of a popular-front movement – he was, in fact, already showing signs of the mental instability which later became hopeless insanity – and the Congregation’s repeated failure to make any noticeable headway against the forces of the Queen-Regent was driving Elizabeth into more and more open intervention on their behalf. An English fleet under the command of William Winter had sailed for the Firth of Forth in December to blockade the port of Leith, and the Duke of Norfolk was on his way north with orders to levy an army in preparation for a possible assault by land. Robert Dudley, however, remained at home, still in high favour, and de Quadra heard he had been boasting that ‘if he live another year he will be in a very different position from now. He is laying in a good stock of arms,’ went on the ambassador, ‘and is every day assuming a more masterful part in affairs. They say that he thinks of divorcing his wife.’2
Considering she was destined to become the heroine of an internationally reverberant scandal, exceedingly little is known about Amy Dudley, born Amy Robsart, only legitimate child and heiress of a substantial Norfolk landowner. She and Robert probably first met in July 1549 when he was campaigning in East Anglia with his father at the time of Jack Kett’s rebellion. Amy was then eighteen, Robert about a year younger, and there is some evidence that they fell in love – at least, William Cecil believed they did and he was in as good a position to know as anyone. They were married in June 1550 with King Edward VI among the wedding guests, for these were the years of Dudley ascendancy, but there is no record even then that Amy ever enjoyed any share of her in-laws’ new grandeur. Country bred, barely literate and utterly unused to high society, she seems to have made no attempt to keep up. Was she perhaps content to worship her godlike husband from afar, grateful for such crumbs of his company as he chose to bestow on her? When the crash came she visited him in the Tower, and during the period of eclipse between his release from prison and the outbreak of the French war in 1557 he was able to live comfortably enough down in Norfolk on John Robsart’s money. But the life of a country gentleman was emphatically not for Robert Dudley, and the moment an opportunity presented itself he was off again into the wide dangerous world where he was so much at home. There were no children to keep the marriage together and in any case such a union, based on nothing but physical attraction, was probably foredoomed to failure. Certainly by the beginning of 1559 any passion on Robert’s side was long spent. With a new, perhaps unimaginably glittering future opening before him, his wife had become an encumberance to be kept out of sight and as far as possible out of mind.
Not that there was ever an open breach between them. The fact that Amy never came to court was of little significance by itself. The wives of the Queen’s officers were not encouraged to put themselves forward and there was no accommodation for them in the overcrowded royal residences – unless, of course, they happened to hold some position in their own right. The unusual thing about the young Dudleys’ domestic arrangements was the fact that they had no home of their own. Most of the principal court officials rented a town house where they could join their wives and entertain their friends in their off-duty hours. Most rising men would also have acquired a country place where they could play the local magnate and lord it over their less fortunate neighbours. Robert did neither of these things. He remained in constant attendance on the Queen, as he was more or less forced to do if he wanted to keep the life-giving sunshine of her favour, while Amy lived as a kind of superior paying guest with various friends or connections of her husband. She spent most of 1558 and 1559 at Denchworth near Abingdon in the house of a Mr Hyde, brother-in-law of Anthony Forster who was Robert’s ‘treasurer’ or steward. It’s possible that she preferred this kind of life, which relieved her of all housekeeping responsibilities, and there’s no suggestion that she was ever in any sense a prisoner. The account books show that she moved around quite freely. She came up to London once or twice to see Robert, and he paid an occasional flying visit to Denchworth. She was attended as befitted a lady of rank and spent quite a lot of money on clothes. Sometime before midsummer 1560 she moved from Denchworth to Cumnor Place, which lay just off the main road between Abingdon and Oxford and had been leased by Anthony Forster from William Owen, son of the late George Owen, at one time physician to the royal family. Cumnor, once a monastic building, was not large and, as well as the Forsters, Mrs Owen was still occupying part of it. So when Lady Robert Dudley moved in with her servants, her personal maid Mrs Pirto, and a Mrs Odingsells, the widowed sister of her former host Mr Hyde who had apparently come along to keep her company, space must have been at a premium. It hardly seems a very suitable arrangement for the wife of such a prominent man, but whether Amy went to Cumnor because she wanted to, or whether she simply fell in with a plan made by other people, is one of the many points on which we have no information.
Round about this time the situation in Scotland was finally beginning to resolve itself. The Duke of Norfolk had crossed the border at the end of March and, although the attack on Leith mounted on 7 May resulted in ignominious failure, other factors were now working in England’s favour. For one thing, the French were experiencing the first stirrings of the civil unrest which was later to tear the country apart; storms in the North Sea the previous winter had scattered or destroyed many of the ships carrying reinforcements to the Regent, and the government in Paris, reluctant to risk a direct confrontation with the English fleet in the Forth, felt itself unable to send any further assistance. The garrison at Leith was therefore starved out, and the death of that doughty warrior Mary of Guise took all the remaining heart out of the fight. France was ready to discuss terms, and William Cecil went north to represent Queen Elizabeth at the conference table.
Cecil was away for two months and during his absence the Queen’s relationship with Robert Dudley is often said to have reached some sort of mysterious climax. In fact all that actually seems to have happened is that Elizabeth took advantage of the Secretary’s sojourn in Scotland to enjoy a brief holiday from business herself and was out all day and every day hunting and riding with, naturally, her Master of the Horse. Like all the Tudors, Elizabeth was fantastically addicted to fresh air and exercise, and under Robert’s tuition she was developing into a keen and fearless horsewoman. Indeed, as Robert told the Earl of Sussex, she was planning to send into Ireland ‘for some hobbys for her own saddle, especially for strong, good gallopers which are better than her geldings’. Gossip, of course, continued unabated, and old Annie Dow of Brentwood got into trouble with the magistrates for spreading stories that Lord Robert had given the Queen a child. But people had been gossiping about the Queen and Lord Robert for more than a year now; there was nothing new in that. All the same, when Cecil returned to court at the end of July he was, for the first time, seriously alarmed about the Dudley affair – although his concern was probably caused not so much by the Queen’s attitude to Robert Dudley as by her attitude to William Cecil.
Cecil had come home pardonably pleased with himself, for in the course of several weeks of hard bargaining in Edinburgh he had succeeded in extracting a series of important concessions from the French commissioners acting on behalf of the young Queen of Scots and her husband. It had, for example, been agreed that all French troops would be evacuated forthwith and the fortifications at Leith and Dunbar dismantled. It was also agreed that the government should be handed over to a Scottish Council, while England and France once more solemnly pledged themselves to observe a policy of non-interference. Finally, the French undertook that Mary would in future abstain from using the title and insignia of Queen of England. The religious question was carefully avoided but, as Cecil had confidently anticipated, the Scots wasted no time in adopting a Calvinistic form of Protestantism now they were free to do so and, whatever Queen Elizabeth’s opinion of the Calvinists might be, even she must admit that they would make more desirable next-door neighbours than the French Army. It was never wise to be too sure of anything in Scottish affairs, but it did really look as if the foundations of a durable peace had been laid and the bogey of invasion from the north banished for good.
The Treaty of Edinburgh was a personal triumph for William Cecil and he could reasonably expect, if not a hero’s welcome, at least some form of grateful recognition for his services. Instead the Queen virtually cut him dead and, to make matters worse, it looked as if he was going to be out of pocket as well. Exactly why Elizabeth treated her unfortunate Secretary in this unkind fashion is not very clear, but she may have been rather piqued by his success. Cecil had, from the beginning, been an enthusiastic advocate of intervention in Scotland and it was Cecil who had carried the policy through against all the Queen’s misgivings. Events had proved him right and the Queen wrong, a situation no Tudor liked to be found in, and she probably just wished to make it understood that Cecil need not think he was infallible. But Cecil himself, who had not yet learnt to understand all his mistress’s little ways, was deeply distressed and had no hesitation in laying the blame at Robert Dudley’s door. There was, not surprisingly, no love lost between the Secretary and the Master of the Horse. Each feared and resented the other’s influence, and each would have liked to dislodge the other from his privileged position in the Queen’s confidence.
On 30 August the court moved down to Windsor and it was there, some time during the weekend of 7–8 September, that William Cecil chose to unburden himself to, of all people, the Spanish ambassador. De Quadra told the Duchess of Parma, in a letter dated 11 September, that after exacting many pledges of strict secrecy, Cecil said the Queen was conducting herself in such a way that he thought of retiring. ‘He said it was a bad sailor who did not enter port if he could when he saw a storm coming on, and he clearly foresaw the ruin of the realm through Robert’s intimacy with the Queen, who surrendered all affairs to him and meant to marry him. He said he did not know how the country put up with it, and he should ask leave to go home, although he thought they would cast him into the Tower first. He ended by begging me in God’s name to point out to the Queen the effect of her misconduct, and persuade her not to abandon business entirely but to look at her realm; and then he repeated twice over to me that Lord Robert would be better in Paradise than here.’ Cecil also told de Quadra that ‘Robert was thinking of killing his wife, who was publicly announced to be ill, although she was quite well and would take very good care they did not poison her’.3
It is generally assumed that this remarkable outburst was a piece of calculated indiscretion on Cecil’s part; that, knowing Elizabeth would be unlikely to listen to him in her present mood, he had turned to de Quadra in the hope that an outsider might be able to bring her to her senses and persuade her to bring her faithful Secretary in out of the cold. This seems as good an explanation as any, for Cecil seldom said or did anything without a reason. De Quadra, naturally fascinated by what appeared to be an authentic glimpse behind the scenes, made suitably shocked noises and promised to speak to the Queen, though he felt bound to remark that she had never taken his advice in the past. But, before the Bishop could intervene, the bombshell had burst. According to de Quadra, the very day after his conversation with Cecil the Queen told him as she returned from hunting ‘that Robert’s wife was dead or nearly so’ and asked him not to say anything about it. Some people have taken this to infer that Elizabeth told King Philip’s envoy about Amy’s death before it occurred, thus tacitly admitting guilty knowledge of murder. But, if that were the case, de Quadra is curiously uninformative about dates. We know he arrived at Windsor on Friday the sixth and wrote to Brussels on the following Wednesday, by which time the Queen had ‘published’ the news; but the ambassador nowhere gives the date of his interesting little chat with William Cecil. However, since the messenger from Cumnor reached the Castle during the morning of Monday, 9 September, it can reasonably be placed at some time during Sunday the eighth – the very day of the tragedy.
By a rather odd coincidence a member of Lord Robert’s entourage, a kinsman of his named Thomas Blount, had left Windsor that Monday morning bound for Cumnor. Blount had not gone far before he encountered one Bowes, riding for his life in the opposite direction, who told him that their lady was dead ‘by a fall from a pair of stairs’. A little surprisingly Blount did not turn back for further instructions but, leaving Bowes to break the news at Windsor, he continued on his journey. Nor did he hurry on to reach Cumnor that day. Instead, he put up for the night at Abingdon because, as he presently informed his master, he was desirous to hear ‘what news went abroad in the country’. While he was at supper he therefore called for ‘mine host’ and, without revealing his identity, asked ‘what news was thereabout’. The landlord was naturally full of ‘the great misfortune’ which had befallen only three or four miles from the town – how my Lord Robert Dudley’s wife was dead by falling down a pair of stairs. He was unable to supply any details and when Blount remarked that ‘some of her people that waited on her’ should be able to say what had happened, he was told no, apparently not, for they were all at the fair in Abingdon ‘and none left with her’. Her ladyship, it seemed, had risen up early and ‘commanded all her sort to go to the fair and would suffer none to tarry at home’.4
It sounded rather an odd story, but Thomas Blount would soon be making his own enquiries on the spot and just at the moment he was more interested in what was being said about Amy’s death than in any second-hand information the landlord could give him. What was mine host’s own opinion, he asked, and what was ‘the judgement of the people’? Some were disposed to say well and some evil, answered mine host cautiously. For himself, he judged it a misfortune because it had taken place in an honest gentleman’s house.5
Blount had needed no telling that, in the circumstances, ‘the judgement of the people’ was going to be all-important and the same thought was uppermost in the mind of the newly bereaved widower at Windsor, who wrote frantically to his ‘Cousin Blount’ on the Monday evening: ‘The greatness and suddenness of the misfortune doth so perplex me until I do hear from you how the matter standeth, or how this evil should light upon me, considering what the malicious world will bruit, as I can take no rest. And, because I have no way to purge myself of the malicious talk that I know the wicked world will use, but one which is the very plain truth to be known, I do pray you as you have loved me, and do tender me and my quietness, and as now my special trust is in you, that you will use all the devices and means you can possibly for the learning of the truth, wherein have no respect to any living person.’6
But truth was to prove an elusive commodity. In his first report from Cumnor, Blount could only tell Lord Robert that the tale he had already heard from Bowes and from the landlord of the inn at Abingdon was confirmed by the household and by Amy’s maid, Mrs Pirto, who, according to Blount, ‘doth dearly love her’. Everyone agreed that her ladyship had insisted on sending all her servants out on the day of her death ‘and was so earnest to have them gone to the fair, that with any of her sort that made reason for tarrying at home she was very angry’. She had even quarrelled with Mrs Odingsells, who at first refused to go because Sunday was no day for a gentlewoman to be seen gallivanting in the town. Amy had answered that Mrs Odingsells could do as she liked, but all her people should go and ‘was very angry’. This was obviously considered uncharacteristic behaviour, and Blount remarked, ‘Certainly, my lord, as little while as I have been here, I have heard divers tales of her that maketh me to judge her to be a strange woman of mind.’ He had talked to the devoted Pirto, who should surely have known her mistress best, and went on: ‘In asking Pirto what she might think of this matter, either chance or villainy, she said by her faith she doth judge very chance, and neither done by man or by herself.’ Her lady, said Pirto, ‘was a good virtuous gentlewoman, and daily would pray upon her knees’. Nevertheless, Pirto did let fall the possibly significant information that she had more than once heard the dead woman pray to God to deliver her from desperation. Blount pounced on this – then she might have had ‘an evil toy’ on her mind? ‘No, good Mr Blount,’ cried Pirto, ‘do not judge so of my words; if you should so gather I am sorry I said so much!’ It was not conclusive, of course – ‘it passeth the judgement of man to say how it is’ – but, all the same, Blount evidently believed that suicide could not be ruled out.
Robert had been insistent that the coroner’s jury should be chosen from ‘the discreetest and most substantial men … such as for their knowledge may be able to search thoroughly the bottom of the matter, and for their uprightness will earnestly and sincerely deal therein’. Blount was now able to tell him that the jury was already chosen and its members seemed to be ‘as wise and as able men, being but countrymen, as ever I saw’. ‘And for their true search,’ he went on, ‘… I have good hope they will conceal no fault, if any be; for as they are wise, so are they, as I hear, part of them very enemies to Anthony Forster. God give them, with their wisdom, indifferency, and then be they well chosen men.’7
This sounded a trifle ominous, but for the moment there was no more to be done. The Queen had sent Robert away to his house at Kew while the matter of his wife’s death was investigated, and while the country thrummed with shocked speculation over this melodramatic climax to eighteen months of scandal-mongering the widower waited in painful suspense, being measured for mourning clothes and writing more anxious letters to Thomas Blount at Cumnor: ‘Until I hear from you again how the matter falleth out in very truth, I cannot be in quiet.’ He sent an urgent message to the jury that they were to do their duty without fear or favour and ‘find it as they shall see it fall out’. There is no record that Robert ever expressed even a passing regret over his wife’s death or showed any interest in Blount’s guarded references to her ‘strange mind’. He was quite simply obsessed with the necessity of proclaiming his own innocence by making it clear that he had nothing to hide and would welcome the fullest possible enquiry.8
Sometime during that frightening week Robert had received a visit of condolence from no less a person than Mr Secretary Cecil and wrote to him afterwards: ‘I thank you much for your being here; and the great friendship you have showed toward me I shall not forget … I pray you let me hear from you what you think best for me to do (for the sooner you advise me, the more I shall thank you). Methinks I am here all this while as it were in a dream, and too far from the place where I am bound to be … I pray you help him that sues to be at liberty out of so great a bondage. Forget me not, though you see me not, and I remember you and fail you not.’9 Why it was that William Cecil had chosen to throw out a lifeline to the man he apparently regarded as his most dangerous enemy and whom he had recently been accusing of contemplating the murder which perhaps had now been committed, is something else which is by no means clear. But Cecil, a practised exponent of the art of political survival, was always a careful man who believed in taking out as much insurance as possible.
The Secretary’s show of friendship had been a gleam of light and Robert received further comfort from Blount’s second report, written on Friday, 13 September. It seemed that, although they had taken great pains to learn the truth, the jury – somewhat to their regret, in Blount’s opinion – could find ‘no presumptions of evil’. ‘And,’ Blount went on, ‘if I judge aright, mine own opinion is much quieted; the more I search of it, the more free it doth appear unto me. I have almost nothing that can make me so much as think that any man should be the doer thereof, as, when I think your lordship’s wife before all other women should have such a chance, the circumstances and as many things as I can learn doth persuade me that only misfortune hath done it and nothing else’.10
The inquest, as Blount had predicted, presently returned a verdict of misadventure and, on 22 September, Amy was buried in the church of St Mary the Virgin at Oxford with all the funeral pomp and ceremony due to her position. Officially the incident was closed, but few people believed that ‘the very plain truth’ or anything like it had been uncovered. How did Amy Dudley die? Had she been murdered by Robert’s hired assassins – poisoned first, it was whispered, or stifled, and then arranged with a broken neck at the foot of that fatal staircase to make her death look like an accident? Had she committed suicide, driven to despair by the knowledge of her mortal illness, her husband’s callous neglect and the terrible rumours which must have reached her? Or was the jury’s verdict a true one after all? Modern medical research has revealed that in fifty per cent of cases of advanced breast cancer secondary deposits are present in the bones. The effect of such deposits in the spine is to make it extremely brittle – so brittle that the slightest stumble, even, as in Amy’s case, the mere act of walking down a flight of stairs, could result in a spontaneous fracture of the vertebrae.11 This suggestion, first put forward by Professor Ian Aird in 1956, is now generally accepted as the most likely explanation of the mystery and would certainly account for the curious fact that, although she had apparently suffered a fall violent enough to break her neck, the dead woman’s headdress was undisturbed. But it still doesn’t explain Amy’s unusual behaviour on the day of her death. Why was she so determined to be alone that Sunday? Had she been planning to take her own life, or could she perhaps have been expecting a visitor? The question marks remain and, while it is only fair to remember that not one shred of hard evidence was ever produced to implicate Robert in murder, perhaps it is hardly surprising that in the autumn of 1560 the idea that such a suspiciously convenient death could have been accidental was greeted with widespread and cynical disbelief.
Nevertheless, by the end of September Robert was back at court, a free man in every sense of the word, and the world at large waited fascinated to see what would happen next. Bishop de Quadra, that disillusioned observer of the island scene, was not committing himself. He was not sure if the Queen intended to marry Robert at once or even if she would marry at all, as he did not think her mind was sufficiently fixed. But, as he told the Duchess of Parma, ‘with these people it is always wisest to think the worst’.12
In France they were not merely thinking the worst, they were gleefully anticipating it, and the young Queen of Scots, so it was said, had exclaimed: ‘So the Queen of England is to marry her horse-keeper, who has killed his wife to make room for her!’ A remark which pretty well summed up opinion at the French court and elsewhere. Nicholas Throckmorton, Elizabeth’s ambassador in Paris, was frantic with anxiety. ‘I wish I were either dead or hence,’ he wrote on 10 October, ‘that I might not hear the dishonourable and naughty reports that are made of the Queen and the great joy among the French princes for the success they take it they are like to have in England – not letting to speak of the Queen and some others that which every hair of my head stareth at and my ears glow to hear. I am almost at my wits’ end and know not what to say. One laugheth at us, another threateneth, another revileth the Queen. 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?’‘ If these slanderous bruits be not slaked, or if they prove true, our reputation is gone forever, war follows and utter subversion of the Queen and country.’13
At home, there was one man prepared to disregard gossip and scandal and all those nasty low-minded foreigners – a man prepared to keep his eye on the object, on the urgent and fundamental reason for the Queen’s marriage. Thomas Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex, loathed Robert Dudley and could hardly bring himself to be civil to him in public, but he wrote to William Cecil that October: ‘I wish not her Majesty to linger this matter of so great importance, but to choose speedily; and therein to follow so much of her own affection as [that] by the looking upon him whom she should choose, her whole being may be moved by desire; which shall be the readiest way, with the help of God, to bring us a blessed Prince.’ If there had been other ‘rightful inheritors’ Sussex would not have advised such a desperate course, but seeing that Elizabeth was the country’s ‘ultimum refugium’, and that ‘no riches, friendship, foreign alliance or any other present commodity can serve our turn without issue of her body’, he was ready to put aside his own feelings and prejudices and urge that ‘if the Queen will love anybody, let her love where and whom she lists … And whomsoever she shall love and choose, him will I love, honour and serve to the uttermost.’14
Sussex found no supporters for this humane and generous attitude. Not even for the sake of a blessed prince would the English tolerate an upstart and a wife-murderer as their king, and Nicholas Throckmorton could hardly bring himself to contemplate the disastrous consequences of a Dudley marriage – ‘the Queen our Sovereign discredited, condemned and neglected; our country ruined, undone and made prey’.
Throckmorton, writing to Cecil on 28 October, seems to have been genuinely afraid that the matter might be ‘already determined, and so far past as advice will not serve’, and yet two weeks earlier Cecil had told de Quadra that the Queen had now definitely decided not to marry Lord Robert.15 Had she, at any time since the beginning of September, really considered it seriously? It is impossible to be absolutely certain, but the overwhelming probability is surely that she had not. If Amy had died peacefully in her bed, the Queen’s decision might just conceivably have been different. But Amy dead as the result of a mysterious ‘misadventure’ presented just as insuperable an obstacle as Amy alive, and the verdicts of a dozen coroner’s juries would not alter that. In any case, did Elizabeth need to marry Robert when she could have everything she apparently wanted from him – his daily companionship, his undivided attention and devotion – without marriage? Might there not, in fact, from the Queen’s point of view, be a good deal to be said for keeping things as they were? As consort Robert would acquire independent power and status, as well as certain ungainsayable rights. As favourite, however much latitude she chose to allow him, he must in the last resort remain her creature, her servant and plaything.
This, of course, presupposed the situation which Elizabeth’s contemporaries found so incomprehensible and which was admittedly an unusual one – an intimate relationship between a virile young man and a nubile young woman which yet was not based on physical love. For the answer to the question whether Elizabeth and Robert Dudley were lovers in the obvious sense is that they were almost certainly not. Such a thing could not have been concealed in the climate of the late fifties and early sixties when every aspect of the Queen’s personal affairs was attracting the closest scrutiny of matchmaking ambassadors. Gossip that ‘Lord Robert did swyve the Queen’ and that she had borne him a child naturally continued, but there is not a shred of evidence to support it and Bishop de Quadra, who like all envoys of first-rate powers maintained a network of paid informers within the royal household, had seen no sign of such a thing and did not believe it.
As the weeks passed with no further alarming developments the crisis began gradually to go off the boil; but Nicholas Throckmorton, in his anxiety that the Queen should fully understand what foreign reaction to a Dudley marriage would be, sent his secretary, young Mr Jones, over to England to convey an urgent personal warning. Jones saw Elizabeth towards the end of November and reported that when he came ‘to touch near the quick’ the Queen stopped him. “‘I have heard of this before,” quoth she, “and my ambassador need not have sent you withall,”’ She then went on to explain that the whole matter of Amy Dudley’s death had been carefully investigated ‘and found to be not that which was reported’. Lord Robert had been at court at the time ‘and none of his people at the attempt at his wife’s house [which sounds rather as though Elizabeth suspected foul play of some kind]; and it fell out as should touch neither his honesty nor her own honour’.16
Jones was considerably reassured as a result of this interview. He thought the Queen did not look well – ‘surely the matter of my Lord Robert doth much perplex her,’ he told Throckmorton, ‘and is never like to take place’. Talk of it had abated and, although Robert was still in high favour, favour should not, it seemed, be taken for granted. The Queen had promised him the earldom of Leicester, an honour which he greatly coveted, but Jones heard that when the letters patent for the creation were brought for Elizabeth’s signature she had taken her penknife and ‘cut them asunder’, saying that the Dudleys had been traitors for three descents. Robert sulked and reproached her for her unkindness, but Elizabeth was in a teasing mood and would not relent, though she patted his cheek and said playfully, ‘No, no, the bear and ragged staff [a reference to the Dudley crest, filched from the Neville family] are not so soon overthrown.’ All the same, when some of Robert’s friends urged her to marry him, she would only ‘pup with her lips’ and say she could not marry a subject; that would make her no better than the Duchess of Norfolk, for men would come asking for my lord’s grace. It was pointed out that she could make her husband a king, but ‘no,’ said the Queen, ‘that she would in no wise agree to’.17
And there the matter rested. William Cecil, now back in his accustomed place at the Queen’s right hand, told Throckmorton at the end of December that, ‘whatsoever reports and opinions be, I know surely that my lord Robert himself hath more fear than hope, and so doth the Queen give him cause’. But Robert had by no means given up hope and, in January 1561, de Quadra received a visit from his brother-in-law, Henry Sidney. After a good deal of beating about the bush Sidney finally came to the point which was, of course, a Dudley–Tudor alliance. Since de Quadra knew ‘how much inclined the Queen was to the marriage’ he was surprised that the ambassador had not thought of suggesting to King Philip this opportunity of winning Lord Robert’s support for, if a hand were extended to him now, ‘he would thereafter serve and obey your Majesty like one of your own vassals’.
De Quadra received this remarkable proposal with a good deal of reserve. What he had so far heard of the matter, he told Sidney, was of such a character that he had hardly ventured to write two lines to Spain about it nor, for that matter, had either the Queen or Lord Robert said a word to him that he could write. He had no means of guessing the Queen’s thoughts and, although his master was always anxious to be helpful, his advice had been consistently disregarded in the past. Sidney was obliged to admit this was true but, reported de Quadra, he went on to say ‘that if I was satisfied about the death of Robert’s wife, he saw no reason why I should hesitate to write the purport of this conversation to your Majesty, as, after all, although it was a love affair yet the object of it was marriage … As regards the death of the wife, he was certain that it was accidental, and he had never been able to learn otherwise, although he had enquired with great care and knew that public opinion held to the contrary.’
Henry Sidney then began to drop broad hints that Elizabeth was anxious to take steps to remedy the religious disorders in the country, a task in which Lord Robert would willingly help her. But now, with popular suspicion so strong against him, so that ‘even preachers in the pulpits discoursed on the matter in a way that was prejudicial to the honour and interests of the Queen’, their marriage and any subsequent easing of the Catholics’ position had become politically impossible. If, however, the Queen could be assured of the King of Spain’s support, things would be very different and she and Robert would do everything they could to restore religion without delay.
De Quadra regarded Sidney as an honest and sensible man, but felt obliged to remind him of ‘what happened with his wife in the matter of the Archduke when the Queen had deceived both of us’. The ambassador was determined not to be caught a second time. All the same, he told Philip: ‘I have no doubt that if there is any way to cure the bad spirit of the Queen, both as regards religion and your Majesty’s interests, it is by means of this marriage, at least while her desire for it lasts.’19
On 13 February, Sidney came to see de Quadra again, bringing Robert with him. Robert was in his most winning mood. He repeated everything his brother-in-law had said and promised that, if only Philip would advise the Queen to marry him, he would be the King’s servant for life. De Quadra was still wary. He was not going to risk involving his master in what might easily turn out to be some kind of trick – not at least without more definite information. But what he could do was to see Elizabeth again and urge her yet once more to marry and settle down. Then, if Robert’s name should come up, he would speak of him ‘as favourably as he could wish’.20
This interview took place two days later and the Queen responded coyly to De Quadra’s kite-flying. ‘After much circumlocution,’ he wrote, ‘she said she wished to confess to me and tell me her secret in confession, which was that she was no angel, and did not deny that she had some affection for Lord Robert for the many good qualities he possessed, but she certainly had never decided to marry him or anyone else, although she daily saw more clearly the necessity for her marriage, and to satisfy the English humour it was desirable that she should marry an Englishman, and she asked me to tell her what your Majesty would think if she married one of her servitors.’ De Quadra replied that he did not know and had not thought of asking, but he felt sure the King would be pleased to hear of her marriage, whoever she chose, as it was so important for the welfare of her kingdom. He also felt sure that Philip would be happy to hear of Lord Robert’s good fortune, as he had always understood that the King had a great affection for him and generally held him in high esteem. The Queen, commented de Quadra, ‘seemed as pleased at this as her position allowed her to be’. She said that when the time came she would speak to de Quadra again and would do nothing without Philip’s advice and approval.21
The ambassador got the impression that she would have liked to go even further but, although he felt he had been right to allow her ‘this little pleasure and hope’, he did not relax his guard. In spite of Robert’s repeated assurances that it was only ‘timidity’ and fear of what people would say which was holding Elizabeth back, and his solemn promises that once their marriage had taken place everything, including religion, would be placed in Philip’s hands, de Quadra was not convinced. He had a nasty feeling that the whole ploy might in some way be designed to discredit Philip and the Catholic cause. Certainly he had seen no signs as yet of any relaxation in the official attitude towards his co-religionists. On the contrary, he reported that the sees of the dispossessed Catholic bishops had now been given to the greatest heretics, ‘which is a very bad sign for the fulfilment of Lord Robert’s promises’. In fact, the English Catholics were becoming disturbed by de Quadra’s apparently growing friendship with Lord Robert, so that the ambassador, who maintained discreet contact with their leaders, felt obliged to reassure them privately that he was working in their interests and towards a restoration of the old faith.
Several weeks passed with no further developments, and de Quadra told Philip that Robert was ‘very aggrieved and dissatisfied that the Queen should defer placing matters in your Majesty’s hands’ and had even fallen ill with annoyance! Then, about the middle of March, William Cecil paid a visit to the Spanish embassy. It would be of great assistance to the Queen, he said, if the King of Spain could be persuaded to write to her advising her not to delay her marriage any longer and suggesting that, if she could not bring herself to accept any of her foreign suitors, she had better choose a gentleman of her own country whom Philip would befriend. This was all very well, but when de Quadra tried to find out if Cecil was speaking with authority or simply putting forward a plan of his own the Secretary hedged. The Queen was a modest maiden and reluctant to get married at all. It would not help to try to force her to propose these means and expedients herself, ‘which would make her look like a woman who sought to carry out her desires and went praying people to help her.’22
Cecil went on to explain that, since Elizabeth was resolved not to do anything without the goodwill of her subjects, she wanted Philip’s letter as an excuse for calling together a representative committee from both Houses of Parliament to lay the matters before them ‘and with the accord of these deputies to arrange the marriage with Robert’. To present Robert Dudley to Parliament as the King of Spain’s candidate would surely be the fastest way to kill the project stone dead, and de Quadra knew that Robert himself was violently opposed to such a course. ‘The sum of it all’, wrote the ambassador on 25 March, ‘is that Cecil and these heretics wish to keep the Queen bound and subject to their will and forced to maintain their heresies.’23
This was quite possibly the very impression that Elizabeth intended to create. Exactly who was fooling whom in the elaborate charade being acted for de Quadra’s benefit during the early part of 1561 is not entirely clear, but its underlying purpose was undoubtedly political and not unconnected with the reconvening of the Council of Trent. After a ten-year adjournment, this Great Council of the Church was about to make one last effort to repair the fractured unity of Christendom, and Pope Pius IV had made known his intention of inviting the Queen of England to send representatives to the negotiating-table. Elizabeth, acutely conscious of her country’s vulnerable and isolated position, had always been careful in her dealings with the European Catholics never to seem to shut the door entirely on the possibility of reconciliation; while the Vatican, prompted by Philip, had so far been equally careful not to say or do anything which might antagonise her too severely. But if she refused to admit Abbé Martinengo, the papal nuncio now on his way to England bearing a papal olive-branch, it would be tantamount to a formal declaration that she had not only shut but finally locked the door on Rome. Certainly de Quadra regarded the reception of the Abbé as an important test of the Queen’s good faith. The ambassador had no real idea what the outcome would be, but he thought there was still a chance that, with Philip’s support, Elizabeth might be prepared to make a stand and free herself from ‘the tyranny of the heretics’. Robert had recently been given new and more salubrious quarters next to the Queen’s at Greenwich – a gesture which had apparently restored his health and spirits – and de Quadra himself took lodgings at Greenwich so as to be on hand when the nuncio arrived.24
Then, suddenly, the whole house of cards collapsed. During the second week of April there was a series of arrests among prominent Catholic sympathisers in London and, to his unspeakable annoyance, the Spanish ambassador found that he was being accused of complicity in a dangerous Catholic conspiracy against the Queen. Even worse, it was now being openly said that Philip had promised to help Elizabeth to marry her lover if she would agree to turn Catholic – just the kind of damaging talk de Quadra had been most anxious to avoid. The Queen soothed him slightly by assurances that she personally did not hold him responsible, but the nuncio’s visit was off. In present circumstances it could only be regarded as provocative and might lead to unacceptable disturbance and disquietude. Besides, England could not agree to take part in the General Council as at present constituted. If a genuinely representative assembly, open to all Christian princes and independent of the Pope, were ever to be held in the future, then the Queen would be pleased to send ambassadors and learned men to explain and defend the Anglican viewpoint.25
Elizabeth’s own sympathies always inclined towards the conservative and traditionalist, and her well-known prejudice against Calvinist and Puritan bigotry was often interpreted as undue leniency to the Catholic faction; but at the same time it is surely unthinkable that she ever for one moment seriously contemplated a return to Rome. It is equally unthinkable that Elizabeth Tudor ever for one moment even considered the abject course of begging Spanish protection to enable her to make a marriage which would have caused the deepest offence to every section of her own people. It therefore looks very much as if she deliberately took advantage of Lord Robert’s consuming ambition and lack of any particular religious conviction to gain a political point. In short, that she tricked him into believing that she might for his sake be persuaded to surrender her freedom of action and to forfeit her subjects’ love and respect.
Elizabeth was all her life a politician to her fingers’ ends and it would have been entirely typical of her to use her nearest and dearest as a political weapon if she thought it necessary for her country’s good. This was a fact which her nearest and dearest would simply have to live with. Elizabeth seldom or never gave anything for nothing. She was investing a good deal of emotional and material capital in Robert Dudley and she demanded a full and fair return. If this sometimes involved being made to look like a knave and a fool, then he must accept it as the price of his unique position as the Queen’s ‘brother and best friend’.