Chapter 13
'To be a king and wear a crown is more glorious to them that see it than it is a pleasure to them that bear it,' Queen Elizabeth once famously said. At the same time, she revelled in and jealously guarded the privileges of sovereignty: 'I am answerable to none for my actions otherwise than as I shall be disposed of my own free will, but to Almighty God alone.' God, she believed, had preserved her through many trials to bring her to the throne, and she was convinced that she reigned by his especial favour. In 1576, she told Parliament, 'And as for those rare and special benefits which many years have followed and accompanied me with happy reign, I attribute them to God alone. These seventeen years God hath both prospered and protected you with good success, under my direction, and I nothing doubt that the same maintaining hand will guide you still and bring you to the ripeness of perfection.'
As 'God's creature', a divinely-appointed queen, hallowed and sanctified at her coronation, Elizabeth believed that she alone was able to understand fully the complexities and mysteries of Church and State. 'Princes', she declared, 'transact business in a certain way, with a princely intelligence, such as private persons cannot imitate.' If she felt that anyone was encroaching upon this sacred privilege, she was quick to reprimand them. 'She was absolute and sovereign mistress,' remembered one courtier, Sir Robert Naunton. 'She is our god in Earth', declared Lord North, 'and if there be perfection in flesh and blood, undoubtedly it is in Her Majesty.'
What was more important to Elizabeth than anything, however, was that she reigned with her subjects' love. She proudly pointed out that she was There English', as they were, and constantly proclaimed that she was as a mother to her people, and cared deeply for the 'safety and quietness of you all'. 'She is very much wedded to the people and thinks as they do,' observed one Spanish envoy. She had their interests at heart and her instinct told her what was best for them. A stickler for justice, she 'condescended' to 'the meaner sorts', received their petitions on a daily basis, and often stood up for their rights. Sir Walter Raleigh told James I that 'Queen Elizabeth would set the reason of a mean man before the authority of the greatest counsellor she had. She was Queen of the small as well as the great, and would hear their complaints.' Her affection for her subjects is evident in contemporary sources, where her most frequently repeated utterance is, 'Thank you, my good people.'
Sir John Harington, the Queen's godson, reveals how well she understood how to deal with her subjects:
Her mind was oft-time like the gentle air that cometh from a westerly point in a summer's morn: 'twas sweet and refreshing to all around. Her speech did win all affections, and her subjects did try to show all love to her commands; for she would say her state did require her to command what she knew her people would willingly do from their own love to her. Herewith did she show her wisdom fully: for who did choose to lose her confidence, or who would withhold a show of love and obedience, when their sovereign said it was their own choice, and not her compulsion? Surely she did play her tables well to gain obedience thus, without constraint. Again, she could put forth such alterations, when obedience was lacking, as left no doubt whose daughter she was.
In an age of personal monarchy, it was important that the monarch was on show as often as possible, and Elizabeth ensured that she was highly visible, travelling on annual progresses, riding out frequently through the streets of London or being rowed in her state barge along the Thames.
She also thought it important to justify her actions to her subjects in a series of carefully composed speeches, many of them written by herself, printed pamphlets and proclamations. She was a gifted orator and actress who could speak 'extempore with many brilliant, choice and felicitous phrases', and who knew well how to manipulate her audience so that she had them eating out of her hand. 'Princes' own words be better printed in the hearers' memory than those spoken by her command,' she told Parliament. In the latter decades of her reign, her style of writing and public speaking became more florid, mannerist and extravagant, in keeping with the prevalent trend for Euphuism, a prose form invented by John Lyly in the earliest English novel, Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit,and at which Elizabeth became one of the foremost exponents.
Few realised how subtly the Queen dealt with them. 'I have seen her smile - with great semblance of good liking to all around,' recorded Harington, 'and cause everyone to open his most inward thought to her; when, on a sudden, she would ponder in private on what had passed, write down all their opinions, draw them out as occasion required, and sometimes disprove to their faces what had been delivered a month before. She caught many poor fish, who little knew what snare was laid for them.'
Not for nothing was she Henry VIII's daughter: she expected instant obedience and respect, and would have her way 'as absolutely as her father'. 'Majesty', she declared, 'makes the people bow.' She was fond of talking about Henry, and even seems to have modelled some of her speeches on his. She liked to remind her councillors how much sterner her father had been, and when they had the temerity to challenge her views, she would thunder, 'Had I been born crested, not cloven, you would not speak thus to me!' In 1593, she acknowledged her debt to Henry VIII before Parliament, as one 'whom in the duty of a child I must regard, and to whom I must acknowledge myself far shallow'. Nevertheless, she admitted that her style of government was 'more moderate' and benign than Henry's had been.
Elizabeth's command of politics and statesmanship was as exceptional as her intelligence was formidable. She was astute, pragmatic, very hardworking, and never afraid to compromise. In the face of rebellion and war, she displayed remarkable courage. The coarse buccaneer, Sir John Perrot, her deputy in Ireland, once said of her, 'Lo! Now she is ready to be-piss herself for fear of the Spaniards!' but was later forced to revise his opinion and admit that she had 'an invincible mind, that showeth from whence she came'.
Elizabeth's chief concern was to provide England with stable, orderly government. She had the gift of knowing instinctively what was right for her kingdom, her priorities being to maintain the law and the established Church, avoid war and live within her means. She told her judges, whom she selected herself, that they must 'stand pro veritate (for truth) rather than pro Regina (for the Queen)'. She loved peace, and frequently offered to mediate between warring foreign powers. Not for nothing did James VI of Scotland describe her as 'one who in wisdom and felicity of government surpassed all princes since the days of Augustus'.
'There was never so wise woman born as Queen Elizabeth', wrote Cecil in tribute, 'for she spake and understood all languages, knew all estates and dispositions and princes, and particularly was so expert in the knowledge of her own realm as no counsellor she had could tell her what she knew not before.'
For all this, there still remained in Elizabethan society a deeply ingrained prejudice against female sovereigns in general. The unhappy example of Queen Mary seemed to confirm the general view that women were not born to rule. In 1558, in his First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, John Knox wrote: 'I am assured that God hath revealed to some in this our age that it is more than a monster in nature that a woman should reign and bear empire over man.' Women, he asserted, were naturally weak, frail, impatient, feeble and foolish, the port and gate of the Devil, and insatiably covetous. The Swiss reformer John Calvin believed that the government of women was 'a deviation from the original and proper order of nature, to be ranked no less than slavery'.
A typical example of male prejudice occurred when a French envoy asked for the Council to be present at his audience with the Queen, implying that the matters of state he had come to discuss were beyond female understanding. Back came a furious answer from Her Majesty: 'The ambassador forgets himself in thinking us incapable of conceiving an answer to his message without the aid of our Council. It might be appropriate in France, where the King is young, but we are governing our realm better than the French are theirs.'
Elizabeth herself was no early feminist; she accepted the creed of her day, that women had serious limitations, speaking of herself as 'a woman wanting both wit and memory'. In a self-composed prayer, she thanked God 'for making me, though a weak woman, yet Thy instrument'. To combat prejudice and underline her position, she invariably referred to herself as a prince, comparing herself with kings and emperors, and with some success, for according to William Cecil, she was 'more than a man and, in truth, something less than a woman'. 'My experience in government', she told Henry IV of France at the end of her reign, 'has made me so stubborn as to believe that I am not ignorant of what becomes a king.'
'Although I may not be a lioness', she was fond of saying, 'I am a lion's cub, and inherit many of his qualities.' Her apologists felt bound to point out that her reign fulfilled one of the ancient prophecies of Merlin: 'Then shall a Royal Virgin reign, which shall stretch her white rod over the Belgic shore and the great Castile smite so sore withal that it shall make him shake and fall.' The 'great Castile' was, of course, Philip of Spain, whose kingdom incorporated that of Castile.
By exploiting 'my sexly weaknesses', Elizabeth converted them into the strengths she needed to survive in a man's world. She used her femininity to manipulate the men who served her and make them protective of her. Her calculated flirtatiousness kept her courtiers loyal, and by playing off one against the other, she preserved a balance of power at her court. She established the convention that, as sovereign, she was above normal social mores. She asserted before the Venetian ambassador, 'My sex cannot diminish my prestige.'
So effective was she as a ruler that she managed to overcome the prejudice, and her subjects came to regard her as one of their most successful monarchs. She was certainly one of the best loved.
Being a woman was to Elizabeth's advantage when it came to creating her own legend, because then she could assume the allegorical and mythological personae assigned her by chivalrous courtiers, writers and poets. She was the 'Rosa electa', the chosen rose, around whom a cult of adoration flourished, and who came to be regarded as little less than divine. By the end of her reign she was being referred to in Acts of Parliament as 'Her Sacred Majesty'. The composer John Dowland wrote a song entitled 'Vivat Eliza for an Ave Maria', which plainly showed how the worship of the Queen had replaced the people's need for a female deity in the post-Reformation years.
Elizabeth herself, making a virtue of a necessity, promoted the image and cult of the Virgin Queen who was wedded to her kingdom and people. She took for her personal emblems those symbols of virginity that had been associated in earlier times with the Virgin Mary: the rose, the moon, the ermine or the phoenix. She also, like Henry VII, made much of her alleged descent from King Arthur, whose legends were a dominant theme in the pageantry of her reign.
It was the poets and dramatists, however, who did most to promote the cult of Elizabeth. In his epic poem, The Faerie Queen (1596), Edmund Spenser referred to her as and 'Belphoebe'. William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Sir Walter Raleigh called her Cynthia or Diana, Diana being the virgin huntress, 'chaste and fair'. Other poets eulogised the Queen as Virgo, Pandora, Oriana, or 'England's Astraea, Albion's shining sun', while the Protestant establishment saw her as a new Judith or Deborah. Throughout her reign, poems, songs, ballads and madrigals sang her praises and called upon God to preserve her from her enemies, or commended her for her virtues and her chastity. No English sovereign, before or since, has so captured the imagination of his or her people or so roused their patriotic feelings.
As well as inspiring her subjects, Elizabeth could be infuriating, as her close advisers often found. A mistress of the subtle art of procrastination, she was marvellously adept at delaying and dissembling, and would usually shelve problems she could not immediately solve. Her courtiers, lacking tier subtlety and not understanding her motives, because she did not normally disclose them, were driven mad by her behaviour, yet they were forced to concede, in the long run, that she had often served her country better by deterring decisions than by making them hastily. Whenever she could, she would play for time.
'It maketh me weary of my life,' Sir Thomas Smith, one of her secretaries of state, complained in 1574, when Elizabeth had been particularly difficult. 'The time passeth almost irrecuperable, the advantage lost, the charges continuing, nothing resolved. I neither can get the letters signed nor the letter already signed, but day by day, and hour by hour [it is| deferred until anon, noon and tomorrow.' And Cecil once fumed, 'The lack of a resolute answer from Her Majesty drives me to the wall.'
As she grew older, she became increasingly reluctant to sign any document. Her secretaries would therefore 'entertain her with some relation or speech, whereat she may take some pleasure' to take her mind off what she was doing.
One of the Queen's mottoes, appropriately, was 'Video Taceo' - 'I see all and say nothing', and like her father, she kept her own counsel. 'For her own mind, what that really was I must leave, as a thing doubly inscrutable, both as she was a woman and a queen,' wrote the courtier Dudley Digges. She had learned early on that it was never wise to show one's hand. Harington recorded that 'Her wisest men and best councillors were oft sore troubled to know her will in matters of state, so covertly did she pass her judgement.' As princess and as queen she never knew what it was to feel secure: there was always the threat of poison or the assassin's dagger, and always enemies seeking to destroy her by one means or another. She knew she might never die peacefully in her bed.
Elizabeth could be resolute and tough when she had to be, and on two known occasions did not shrink from authorising the torture of offenders, which was officially illegal but, in her view, necessary in the interests of national security; in both cases, the victims were involved in plots against the Queen's life, but even so the gaolers in the Tower were aware that her anger would fall upon them if they exceeded their warrant. She hated executions and issued reprieves to condemned felons whenever possible, so long as justice had been seen to be done. She was, as Cecil called her, 'a very merciful lady'. She followed major trials with interest, and intervened if she felt it necessary.
She was in most respects a conservative, who respected the old medieval ideal of hierarchical order within the Christian universe, and cherished traditional notions of 'degree, priority and place'. 'Her Majesty loveth peace. Next, she loveth not change,' observed Sir Francis Bacon. One of her secretaries, Robert Beale, warned his successor to 'avoid being new-fangled and a bringer-in of new customs'.
Her councillors found her infuriatingly unpredictable. For all her common touch and geniality, she remained very much on her dignity, and woe betide those who stinted in their outward show of respect towards her or failed to show the proper humility in her presence. Etiquette required that anyone addressing the Queen should do so on bended knees and remain in that position until given leave to rise. No one might sit while she stood, and it was seen as great condescension on her part when, in later years, she permitted Cecil, aged and lame, to sit upon a stool in her presence.
One of the criticisms often levelled against her was that she was mean. In fact, having inherited huge debts from her sister, she was determined not only to clear them but also to live within her means. This meant making stringent economies that were often unpopular, but these measures kept England solvent at a time when most European countries were virtually bankrupt. Out of a relatively small annual income that rarely exceeded - 300,000, she had to defray her own expenses as well as those of the court and the government. In achieving this within her budget, Elizabeth showed that she had inherited the financial acumen of her grandfather, Henry VII, for throughout her reign she managed to accomplish much with very limited resources.
She did not, however, stint on outward show, because in an age of personal monarchy, pomp and splendour were regarded as the visual evidence of power. 'We princes are set as it were upon stages in the sight and view of all the world,' observed the Queen. Therefore no expense was spared on court ceremonial, furnishings and entertainments, nor on the Queen's wardrobe, for these were all aspects of sovereignty designed to impress foreign ambassadors and visitors to the court. It had, indeed, been the policy of successive Tudor sovereigns to maintain a magnificent court that would not only impress but also overawe all who visited it.
In the midst of all this pomp and ceremony, Elizabeth could display a very human face, as when she tickled Dudley's neck as she created him Earl of Leicester. She had the common touch, and was no slave to convention. It was not unusual for her to interrupt solemn addresses and even sermons: she would order the speaker to be quiet if he had rambled on too long for her liking. Yet when it came to an oration she admired, she was quick to praise it, as when she affectionately put her hands around the neck of a new Speaker in the Commons who had delivered an eloquent opening speech. She was sorry, she told her ladies, 'she knew him no sooner'.
Sovereignty in the sixteenth century was still viewed as an almost mystical institution, and Elizabeth I participated wholeheartedly in its ceremonies. Since the thirteenth century monarchs had touched for the King's Evil, laying their hands on scrofulous persons whom their touch was believed to cure. At Whitehall and on progress, Elizabeth would regularly 'press the sores and ulcers' of the afflicted 'boldly and without disgust', sincerely believing that she was doing some good.
Each year, just before Easter, clad in an apron and with a towel over her arm, she presided over the Royal Maundy ceremony, and, in imitation of Christ at the Last Supper, washed the feet of poor women (which had been well scrubbed beforehand by her almoners) before distributing to them lengths of cloth, fish, bread, cheese and wine. Tradition decreed that not only the towels and aprons be given to the beneficiaries but also the monarch's robe, but Elizabeth did not want the poor fighting over her gown, and initiated the custom of giving out Maundy money in red purses instead.
When it came to the government of her kingdom, Elizabeth was unusually blessed in her advisers and councillors, whom she selected herself for their loyalty, honesty and abilities, with almost unerring perspicacity. Although she told one ambassador, 'We do nothing without our Council, for nothing is so dangerous in state affairs as self- opinion,' it was she who, after sounding out all her councillors, took the major decisions, especially in the field of foreign policy, which was her prerogative. She did not feel bound to take her councillors' advice, and frequently shouted at them or banned them temporarily from court if they disagreed with her. Many were prepared to risk this minor punishment for the sake of putting their views across.
Nor did the Queen care if she inconvenienced her ministers, for she expected them to be as hard-working, efficient and devoted to duty as she was herself. If they were not, she would demand to know why; she missed nothing, and was an exacting mistress. When Lord Hunsdon outstayed leave from his official duties, the Queen raged to his son, 'God's wounds! We will set him by the feet and set another in his place if he dallies with us thus, for we will not be thus dallied withal.'
Harington records that she would keep Cecil with her
till late at night discoursing alone, and then call out another at his departure, and try the depth of all around her sometime. Each displayed his wit in private. If any dissembled with her, or stood not well to her advisings, she did not let it go unheeded, and sometimes not unpunished.
After these night-time consultations, the Queen would be ready to return to business before the next dawn had broken. She seems to have needed very little sleep, and it would be no exaggeration to state that she was, in modern terms, a workaholic. Harington attests that on one occasion she wrote one letter whilst dictating another and listening to a query to which she gave a lucid answer.
Each day she held successive private consultations with her ministers, read letters and dispatches, wrote or dictated others, checked accounts and received petitions. She kept letters, memos and notes in a 'great pouch' hung about her waist, or in her bedroom, and threw them away when they were not needed. She rarely attended the daily Council meetings, knowing that her councillors would try to impose their opinions on her - although she was perfectly capable of arguing the point with them. She preferred to keep a tight rein on affairs from behind the scenes. In the early days of her reign, Cecil tried to prevent her from dealing with matters too weighty, in his opinion, for a woman to cope with, but as the years passed he conceived a deep respect for and trust in her, both as his sovereign and as a shrewd and clever woman.
In day to day matters, Elizabeth delegated the decision-making to her Council, taking the credit herself when things turned out well. If disaster struck, the councillors got the blame. According to Harington, Cecil would 'shed a-plenty tears on any miscarriage, well knowing the difficult part was, not so much to mend the matter itself, as his mistress's humour'. Her temper was notorious: she was not above boxing the Secretary's ears, throwing her slipper at Walsingham's face, or punching others who displeased her, and after flouncing out of a Council meeting in a rage, she would retire to her Privy Chamber and read until she had calmed down, which she invariably did after these outbursts. Nor was she reluctant to admit she was in the wrong, for she would hasten to make amends. Leicester said of her, 'God be thanked, her blasts be not the storms of other princes, though they be very sharp sometimes to those she loves the best.'
'When she smiled', wrote Harington, 'it was a pure sunshine that everyone did choose to bask in if they could, but anon came a storm from a sudden gathering of clouds, and the thunder fell in wondrous manner on all alike.' One French ambassador, having witnessed the royal temper, confided, 'When I see her enraged against any person whatever, I wish myself in Calcutta, fearing her anger like death itself' As a young queen, in 1559, Elizabeth rebuked two of her servants so wrathfully that they claimed they would 'carry it to their graves'. A colleague ventured, on bended knees, to plead with his mistress 'to make them men again, who remain so amazed as nothing can breed any comfort in them'.
Cecil, as the adviser closest to the Queen, learned early on how to gauge her mood, as well as how to weather the storms of her anger. All her servants, he wrote, 'must sometimes bear the cross words, as I myself have had long experience'. For over thirty years he was her chief adviser and the greatest moderating influence on the Council. 'No prince in Europe', she once said, 'ever had such a councillor as I have had in him.'
The Queen favoured both the older aristocracy and the gentry, the 'new men' whose fortunes were founded on wealth, and picked her councillors for their abilities, as well as for their breeding. She expected the highest standards of personal service from them. Most of the men who served her were related to each other in some way, which gave the court a cohesive family atmosphere. Although Sir Robert Naunton accused her of fostering factions at court, the Sidney Papers make it clear that she 'used her wisdom in balancing the weights'.
Parliament, however, was less easily managed than the Council, to which it was subordinate. The Queen believed that, as sovereign, she had absolute authority over Parliament, but the Puritans in the Commons could be relied upon to oppose many measures, and both Houses were jealous of their powers and privileges, seeking constantly to extend them. Clashes between Queen and Parliament were therefore inevitable, and as we have seen, Elizabeth was on occasions forced to concede defeat. Whenever possible, she managed without Parliament. In the forty-five years of her reign, it sat for only ten sessions, which lasted in total just 140 weeks - less than three years. The Queen attended only the opening and closing state ceremonies, arriving by barge or on horseback and wearing her state robes and crown; she wrote her own speeches for these occasions. If the Commons or Lords wished to speak to her, they sent a delegation to wherever she was lodging. After they had addressed her on their knees, she would rise from the throne and bow or curtsey gracefully to them. Messengers brought her news of debates, and Cecil conveyed her wishes to both Houses.
'It is in me and my power to call Parliament', Elizabeth once reminded the Speaker; 'it is in my power to end and determine the same; it is in my power to dissent to any thing done in Parliaments.' Certain matters, such as the succession and her marriage, were considered by her to be inappropriate for discussion by Parliament, though Parliament increasingly thought otherwise.
In her foreign policy, Elizabeth sought to preserve England's stability and prosperity in a Europe dominated by the great Catholic powers of France and Spain. She achieved this by a policy of tortuous diplomacy that was not always understood by her own advisers. War was anathema to her because it threatened her kingdom's stability and her treasury. Unlike Philip II, she had no desire to found an empire, and in 1593 told Parliament,
It may be thought simplicity in me that all this time of my reign I have not sought to advance my territories and enlarge my dominions; for opportunity hath served me to do it. My mind was never to invade my neighbours, or to usurp over any. I am contented to reign over mine own, and to rule as a just prince.
Queen Elizabeth was a complex personality. A studious intellectual who would spend three hours a day reading history books if she could ('I suppose few that be no professors have read more,' she boasted to Parliament), and who to the end of her life would for recreation translate works by Tacitus, Boethius, Plutarch, Horace and Cicero, she could also spit and swear 'round, mouth-filling oaths', as was the habit of most great ladies of the age. Cecil once spirited away a book presented to the Queen by a Puritan, Mr Fuller, in which 'Her Gracious Majesty' was censured for swearing 'sometimes by that abominable idol, the mass, and often and grievously by God and by Christ, and by many parts of His glorified body, or by saints, faith and other forbidden things, and by Your Majesty's evil example and sufferance, the most part of your subjects do commonly swear and blaspheme, to God's unspeakable dishonour.' Elizabeth demanded to see the book, but with the connivance of one of her ladies it had fortunately been 'lost'.
Like her mother, the Queen revelled in jests, practical jokes and 'outwitting the wittiest'. She would laugh uproariously at the antics of the comic actor Richard Tarleton, and her female dwarf. Yet her table manners were perfect, and she ate and drank moderately, her preferred beverage being beer.
She herself could be very witty. When a French ambassador complained about her having kept him waiting six days for an audience, she sweetly retorted, 'It is true that the world was made in six days, but it was by God, to whose power the infirmity of man is not to be compared.'
She charmed men by her undoubted sex appeal and self-confidence, although one courtier claimed that her 'affections are not carved out of flint, but wrought out of virgin wax'. As the years went by, she took more and more extreme measures to recapture her lost youth, but her chivalrous courtiers continued to reassure her that she was the fairest lady at court, a fiction her inordinate vanity allowed her to swallow. 'She is a lady whom time hath surprised,' observed Sir Walter Raleigh.
Her chief passions were riding, in which she bore herself'gallantly', hunting and dancing. A painting at Penshurst Place shows her dancing with a man thought to be Leicester; they are performing La Volta, a controversial dance in which the man lifts the woman and twirls her round with her feet swinging out, and which was universally condemned by preachers as the cause of much debauchery and even murders. Less controversial dances required a high degree of skill and grace, especially the galliards beloved by the Queen, in which dancers took five steps, leapt high in the air, then beat their feet together on landing. The Queen insisted on extra, more intricate steps being incorporated, which effectively prevented her less skilled courtiers from participating. As she grew older, she was more often than not a spectator at court dances, but her standards were rigorous. A French ambassador noted, 'When her maids dance, she follows the cadence with her head, hand and foot. She rebukes them if they do not dance to her liking, and without doubt she is mistress of the art.'
Elizabeth's preferred table games were cards and chess. She also enjoyed plays, jousts and the cruel sport of bear baiting, maintaining her own bear pit at Paris Garden on the south bank of the Thames.
The study of philosophy was another abiding interest. In 593, upset over the French King Henry IV's conversion to Catholicism, Elizabeth spent twenty-six hours translating Boethius's Consolations of Philosophy into English, to calm her anger. Being 'indefatigably given to the study of learning', she kept up her scholarly interests and maintained her gift for languages throughout her life. 'I am more afraid of making a fault in my Latin than of the kings of Spain, France, Scotland, the whole House of Guise, and all their confederates,' she once declared. On another occasion she boasted that she was 'not afraid of a King of Spain who has been up to the age of twelve learning his alphabet'.
Elizabeth cared passionately about education, and involved herself in the life of both Eton College and Westminster School. In her desire for the middle and upper classes to become literate, she founded grammar schools, continuing the work begun by Edward VI. She also founded Jesus College, Oxford.
Music was another passion. As well as playing skilfully on the lute and virginals, the Queen 'composed ballets and music, and played and danced them'. She patronised Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, the greatest musicians of the age, and they both praised her singing voice. Her virginals, bearing the Boleyn arms, are preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Elizabeth's continued patronage of the astrologer and reputed wizard Dr John Dee certainly protected him from those who suspected him of forbidden practices and sought his rum. Dee wrote in 1564 how the Queen 'in most heroical and princely wise did comfort me and encourage me in my studies philosophical and mathematical'. She continued to visit him at Mortlake - 111 1575 he recorded that 'The Queen's Majesty with her most honourable Privy Council and other her lords and nobility visited my library.' She even offered Dee apartments at court, but he declined because he did not wish to interrupt his studies.
The Queen was fascinated, not only by Dee's scientific and esoteric work, but also by his predictions; being the product of a superstitious age, she took them seriously. In 1577 Dee predicted the founding of'an incomparable British Empire', and it was his vision that inspired Elizabeth to encourage explorers such as Drake, Raleigh and Gilbert in their voyages of discovery and their attempts to establish English colonies in the New World. She consulted Dee on a wide variety of subjects: a new comet, toothache, some scientific puzzle, or the interpretation of a dream.
When moved to it, Elizabeth could be compassionate and kind. To her close friend, Lady Norris, 'mine own Crow', who had lost a beloved son in the Irish war, she sent this sensible advice: 'Harm not yourself for bootless [useless] help, but show a good example to comfort your dolorous yoke-fellow. Now that Nature's common work is done, and he that was born to die hath paid his tribute, let the Christian discretion stay the flux of your immoderate grieving, which hath instructed you that nothing of this kind hath happiness but by God's Divine Providence.' Two years later, after two more Norris sons had been killed in Ireland, the Queen wrote to the grieving parents, 'We couple you together from desire that all the comfort we wish you may reach you both in this bitter accident. We were loath to write at all, lest we should give you fresh occasion of sorrow, but could not forbear, knowing your religious obedience to Him whose strokes are unavoidable. We propose ourselves as an example, our loss being no less than yours.' When she heard of the death of the Earl of Huntingdon, she moved the whole court to Whitehall so that she herself could break the news to his widow.
Throughout her long life, Elizabeth enjoyed remarkably robust physical health, which permitted her to indulge in rigorous daily exercise. She ate abstemiously, lived to a good age and retained her faculties and her grip on the reins of government to the last. She expended a great deal of nervous energy, and displayed an extraordinary ability to remain standing for hours, much to the discomfiture of exhausted courtiers and foreign ambassadors.
The nervous ailments of her youth had probably resulted from stress, insecurity and the tragic events of her childhood. The traumatic shocks she suffered then, particularly on learning of the fate of her mother, may well have permanently damaged her nervous system. Some of these nervous problems abated on her accession, and only reappeared with the menopause. Thereafter, she was subject to anxiety states, hysterical episodes, obsessiveness and attacks of increasingly profound depression. She hated loud noise, and her intolerance of closed windows and people crowding her suggests she was also claustrophobic. She suffered intermittent panic attacks: once, whilst walking in procession to chapel, 'she was suddenly overcome with a shock of fear', according to the Spanish ambassador, and had to be helped back to her apartments.
These ailments were almost certainly neurotic. The stresses and strains of the responsibilities she carried, and her constant awareness of threats to her security would have overwhelmed a lesser person. Her contemporaries believed that by denying herself the fulfilment of marriage and children, she was living a life against nature. In Cecil's opinion, marriage and childbearing would have cured all her nervous complaints.
By the standards of her time, Elizabeth was a fastidious woman, and very fussy. She loathed certain smells, especially that of scented leather. When one courtier came into her presence in scented leather boots, she turned down the petition he submitted to her, wrinkling her nose, whereupon he quipped, 'Tut, tut, Madam, 'tis my suit that stinks!' The Queen at once relented. She was not so forbearing when it came to bad breath. After receiving one French envoy, she exclaimed, 'Good God! What shall I do if this man stay here, for I smell him an hour after he has gone!' Her words were reported back to the envoy, who at once betook himself back to France in shame.
Elizabeth also hated kitchen odours, which was unfortunate because her privy kitchen at Hampton Court was immediately beneath her apartments, and 'Her Majesty cannot sit quiet nor without ill savour.' Attempts to perfume the air with rosewater failed to disguise the smell, and in 1567 a new kitchen had to be built. It survives today, as a tearoom within the palace.
As she grew older, Elizabeth became plagued with headaches, which may have been migraines or caused by eye-strain, and rheumatism. 'An open ulcer, above the ankle' was first mentioned in July 1569 and on several occasions thereafter prevented her from walking: in 1570 she was obliged to travel in a litter whilst on progress. Although the ulcer had healed by 1571, the Queen was left with a slight limp, about which she was very sensitive. It did not, however, prevent her from taking the long, early morning walks in which she so delighted.
Although they were legion, her complaints were chronic rather than serious, and she refused on many occasions to give in to them. Like her father, she had an abhorrence of illness, and she could not bear people thinking she was ill. In 1 577, she commanded Leicester to ask Cecil to send her some of the spa water from Buxton, where he was staying. When he did so, however, she would not drink it, on the grounds that 'It will not be of the goodness here it is there.' The real reason for her reluctance was that people were saying - with truth - that she had a 'sore leg', and that she would never admit to; in fact, she gave Leicester a dressing down for having written to Cecil.
The following year she suffered the 'grievous pangs and pains' of toothache, but because she 'doth not or will not think' that the offending tooth needed to be extracted, her doctors dared not suggest it. Various methods of relief were essayed, but all failed, and still the Queen would not 'submit to chirurgical instruments', despite the remonstrances of her Council. A heroic Bishop Aylmer of London, to demonstrate that it was not such a terrible process, offered to have one of his own decayed teeth pulled out in her presence. In December 1578, he underwent the operation, whereupon Elizabeth, after nine months of agony, finally allowed the doctors to take out her own tooth. After that, the subject of teeth became a taboo one with her, and she resolved to keep hers and suffer, rather than have them out as they decayed, for she had heard that King Philip had done so and now had to live on slops. This decision condemned her to years of intermittent pain from toothache, gum disease and resultant neuralgia in the face and neck. Contemporary sources refer to swellings in her cheeks which may have been abscesses. Her increasing preference for sugary confections, custards and puddings did not help matters, but she nevertheless succeeded in keeping some of her teeth, although a foreign observer who saw her in old age noticed that they were 'very yellow and unequal, and many of them are missing'.
Even in old age, the Queen would never admit she was unwell. In 1 597, Cecil reported that she had 'a desperate ache in her right thumb, but will not be known of it, nor the gout it cannot be, nor dare not be, but to sign [documents] will not be endured'.
Her physicians were the best that could be found in an age in which a doctor might well hasten a patient's end by employing dubious and often dangerous treatments, but Elizabeth had little time for them and avoided consulting them if she could. Nor could she easily be persuaded to take any medicine, although she was fond of pressing sick courtiers to take herbal 'cordial broths' prepared to her own recipes, which she was convinced were excellent restoratives. The Queen could sometimes even be found spoon-feeding these homely and ancient remedies to her friends, and would boast that there was not an ailment that they could not cure. The only one of her recipes to survive is a cure for deafness, which she prescribed for Lord North: 'Bake a little loaf of bean flour and, being hot, rive it in halves, and into each half pour 111 three or four spoonfuls of bitter almonds, then clap both halves to both ears before going to bed, keep them close, and keep your head warm.' History does not record whether it worked.
The Queen deplored the contemporary fashion for purgatives, mainly on the grounds that those who took them were likely to take time off work, and forbade her maids to take them. In 597, she banned two girls from her chamber for three days for disobeying her by 'taking of physic'. The reasons for Elizabeth's reluctance to admit that she was ill were not far to seek. 'In another body, [illness was) no great matter, but [it was] much in a great princess.' It meant that people would think she was, to a degree, out of control; it meant giving in to human weakness, and as we have seen, Elizabeth enjoyed being regarded as more than human. Illness also betokened advancing age, which she would never admit to, and it threatened the image of eternal youth so central to the cult of the Virgin Queen.
In Tudor times, the royal image was all-important, much more so than today, for magnificence was regarded as being synonymous with power and greatness. The Tudor monarchs were renowned for their splendour, no less than their personal charm, and this found its most evident expression in their public dress anci in the palaces they built and inhabited.
Elizabeth I's wardrobe, which was rumoured to contain more than three thousand gowns, became legendary during her lifetime, as her costumes grew ever more flamboyant and fantastic. The image of the godly Protestant virgin in sober black and white, so carefully cultivated by Elizabeth during her half-sister's reign, soon gave way to an altogether more colourful and showy image. The Queen's portraits invariably show her in dresses of silk, velvet, satin, taffeta or cloth of gold, encrusted with real gems, countless pearls and sumptuous embroidery in silver or gold thread whilst her starched ruffs and stiff gauze collars grew ever larger. Her favoured colours were black, white and silver, worn with transparent silver veils. Many gowns were embroidered with symbols and emblems such as roses, suns, rainbows, monsters, spiders, ears of wheat, mulberries, pomegranates or pansies, the flowers she loved best.
Some of Elizabeth's dresses and other items of clothing were presented to her as New Year gifts by her courtiers; some certainly remained unworn. These, with other discarded dresses and shoes, she gave away to her ladies. However, she certainly appreciated the many gifts of clothing from friends and courtiers: in 1575, having given the Queen a blue cloak embroidered with flowers and trimmed with carnation velvet, Bess of Hardwick was gratified to learn from a friend at court that 'Her Majesty never liked anything you gave her so well; the colour and strange trimming of the garment with the great cost bestowed upon it hath caused her to give out such good speeches of Your Ladyship as I never hear of better.'
As an unmarried woman, Elizabeth delighted in wearing low-cut necklines, right into old age, and on occasions wore her artificially curled hair loose, although it was usually coiled up at the back. As she grew older and greyer, she took to wearing red wigs, which were copied by the ladies of the court. Many of her clothes were made by her tailor, Walter Fish, whilst Adam Bland supplied her with furs.
It took her ladies about two hours each morning to get the Queen ready. She had bathrooms with piped water in at least four of her palaces, as well as a portable bath that she took with her from palace to palace and used twice a year for medicinal purposes. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that Elizabeth bathed more often than most people in those days, which could be as little as three times a year. She cleaned her teeth with toothpicks of gold and enamel, and then buffed them to a shine with a tooth-cloth. In old age, she chewed constantly on sweets in the mistaken belief that they would sweeten her breath.
Beneath her clothes she wore fine linen shifts to protect her unwashable gowns from the damage caused by perspiration. These gowns came in pieces - stomacher, kirtle, sleeves, underskirt and collar or ruff- which were tied or buttoned together over whalebone corsets and the ever-widening farthingale, a stiff, hooped petticoat. Elizabeth had worn this type of garment since girlhood, but sometimes required hers to be modified by the royal farthingale-maker, John Bate, since they could cause the same problems as those experienced by Victorian ladies in crinolines three centuries later. In 1579, Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, reported that he could not carry on a conversation with the Queen until she had moved her farthingale to one side and enabled him to 'get closer to her and speak without being overheard'. Yet Elizabeth never looked ridiculous: Sir John Hayward described her as having 'such state in her carriage as every motion of her seemed to bear majesty'.
Nearly every garment owned by Elizabeth was exquisitely made. Handkerchieves given her by Katherine Ashley were edged with gold and silver thread. At the beginning of her reign, the Queen had been presented with a pair of the new silk stockings from Italy, and had vowed that thereafter she would wear no other type. For much of her reign, her stockings were made by Henry Heme, or knitted by her ladies. A pair of silk stockings, reputedly Elizabeth's, are preserved at Hatfield House, along with a wide-brimmed straw hat and long- fingered gloves. The Queen's shoe-maker, Garrett Johnston, provided her with a new pair of shoes each week. In winter, her outdoor wear comprised cloaks or mantles, of which she had 198 in 1600.
In appearance, according to Sir John Hayward, Elizabeth was 'slender and straight; her hair was inclined to pale yellow, her forehead large and fair, her eyes lively and sweet, but short-sighted, her nose somewhat rising in the middle; her countenance was somewhat long, but yet of admirable beauty, in a most delightful composition of majesty and modesty'. Like many other women of her time, she used cosmetics to enhance her appearance, whitening her complexion with a lotion made from egg-whites, powdered egg-shell, alum, borax, poppy seeds and mill water, and scenting herself with marjoram or rose water. She would have her hair washed in lye, a mixture of wood-ash and water, which she kept in pots on her dressing table along with her looking glass and combs in jewelled cases.
Once dressed, she would deck herself with so many jewels that, when she stood in candlelight, they would glitter so much that they dazzled observers. In 1597, the French ambassador noted that she wore 'innumerable jewels, not only on her head, but also within her collar, about her arms and on her hands, with a very great quantity of pearls round her neck and on her bracelets. She had two bands, one on each arm, which were worth a great price.' Four years later, an Italian diplomat was impressed to see the Queen 'dressed all in white, with so many pearls, broideries and diamonds, that 1 am amazed how she could carry them'. A German visitor reported that everything she wore was 'studded with very large diamonds and other precious stones, and over her breast, which was bare, she wore a long filigree shawl, on which was set a hideous large black spider that looked as if it were natural and alive'.
Her collection of jewellery was extensive, arguably the best in Europe, and so renowned that even the Pope spoke covetously of it. By 1587, she had 628 pieces. Many had been inherited from her parents: she had Anne Boleyn's famous initial pendants, and an enormous sapphire encircled by rubies from Henry VIII, which was reset by her German jeweller, Master Spilman. Many other jewels were gifts, it being the custom for courtiers to present the Queen with costly trinkets or gifts of money each New Year and when she visited their houses. Sir Christopher Hatton gave her several beautiful sets of up to seven matched pieces. A considerable number of Elizabeth's other jewels had been looted from Spanish treasure ships. Yet more were probably designed and made for her by the goldsmith and miniaturist, Nicholas Hilliard. Several pieces were engraved with one of the Queen's mottoes, ' Semper Eadem ('Always the same').
The Queen also owned nearly a dozen jewelled watches fashioned as crucifixes, flowers or pendants, as well as gem-encrusted bracelets, girdles, collars, pendants, earrings, armlets, buttons, pomanders and aglets (cord-tips). She had fans of ostrich feathers with jewelled handles, and several novelty pieces that held symbolic meanings, or were based on a pun, often a play on her name. Her favourite jewels were fashioned as ships or animals, while her pearls, the symbols of virginity, were magnificent, and included the long ropes formerly owned by Mary, Queen of Scots. Some of these pearls now rest in the Imperial State Crown; the rest are missing. One of Elizabeth's rings, containing tiny portraits of herself and Anne Boleyn, is in the collection at Chequers. The Queen often gave away jewels as gifts to her councillors - Sir Thomas Heneage was given the exquisite Armada Jewel, a medallic portrait locket designed by Nicholas Hilliard and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum - while her god-children received some of the numerous cameos showing her in profile. The Queen's Wardrobe Books list several jewels 'lost from Her Majesty's back' on progress or elsewhere; often these were gold or diamond buttons, or a brooch in the form of a monster, which she mislaid at Wanstead in 1584. Sadly, her jewellery collection was dispersed after her death, and only a few pieces survive. 'Oh, those jewels!' lamented one MP in 1626. 'The pride and glory of this realm!'
Elizabeth put on her extravagant costumes chiefly for state occasions, court festivals, personal appearances, the receiving of ambassadors and official portraits. Her everyday dress was rather simpler - she once wore 'the same plain black dress three days running', and she was fond of spending her mornings in loose gowns edged with fur. Her clothes and jewels were her working clothes, the outward symbols of majesty, and essential for the preservation of the mythology of the Virgin Queen. No one else might aspire to such magnificence, which was why Elizabeth's costumes were more exaggerated than anyone else's.
Naturally, this drew criticism from the more puritanically-minded. One bishop dared, in a sermon preached at court, to castigate the Queen for indulging in the vanity of decking the body too finely. Afterwards, fuming at his temerity, she declared to her ladies, 'If the bishop hold more discourse on such matters, we will fit him for heaven, but he should walk thither without a staff, and leave his mantle behind him!'
The portraits of Elizabeth I have been the subject of several weighty books. Although there was a great demand for her portrait in the years after her accession, she was - according to Cecil - 'very unwilling to have a natural representation', and there was therefore a proliferation of poor likenesses. The very earliest portraits are half-lengths showing the Queen full-faced, wearing a French hood; only a few examples survive. She is also depicted full-face in her coronation portrait, formerly at Warwick Castle and now in the National Portrait Gallery. This painting on a wooden panel has been tree-ring dated to about 1600, and is probably a copy of a lost original which may have been the work of Levina Teerlinc, a Flemish woman artist who painted many miniatures for the Queen during the early years of her reign. Teerlinc is known to have painted a miniature of the Queen in coronation robes, which was copied around 1600 by Nicholas Hilliard.
By 1563, both Elizabeth and Cecil were becoming concerned about her being misrepresented: Sir Walter Raleigh later recorded that 'pictures of Queen Elizabeth made by unskilful and common painters were, by her own commandment, knocked in pieces and cast into the fire'. Cecil suggested that a good likeness of the Queen be made available for artists to copy, but Elizabeth did not like this idea, since there were, in her opinion, no artists good enough to produce such a prototype. It was not until later in the decade that Hans Eworth came into his own as a court painter, with his allegorical painting of the Queen triumphing over Juno, Minerva and Venus. Other portraits from the 1560s are rare, and in 1 567 the Earl of Sussex told the Regent of the Netherlands that most of them 'did nothing resemble' their subject.
Before 1572, Elizabeth discovered that her goldsmith, Nicholas Hilliard, was also a talented portrait painter and miniaturist, and it was he who at last produced the portrait that was to be the model for every portrait of the Queen thereafter, the famous Darnley Portrait. Later on, Hilliard painted the equally renowned Phoenix and Pelican Portraits. Elizabeth was fascinated by Hilliard's talent, officially designated him 'Queen's Limner', and spent many happy hours discussing 'divers questions in art' with him. By now, however, she was approaching forty and sensitive about the lines on her face. At her insistence, Hilliard was obliged to paint her, as he recorded, 'in the open alley of a goodly garden, where no tree was near, nor any shadow at all'. She had told him 'that best to show oneself needed no shadow, but rather the open light'. What he produced was not so much a likeness as an icon of royalty, an idealised image adorned with a glittering costume.
Thereafter, the Queen began to take an increasing interest in how she was represented, insisting upon the trappings and appearance of majesty taking precedence over any attempt at realism. In all of these later portraits, Elizabeth's face appears as a smooth, ageless, expressionless mask. It was doubtless comforting to her subjects to observe that their Queen was an unchanging institution in an insecure world, someone to whom the normal laws of humanity seemed not to apply.
During the 1580s, when there was an increased demand for portraits of the Queen, the prolific Hilliard painted miniatures of her, which her courtiers delighted in wearing, whilst her serjeant-painter, George Gower, executed larger portraits, of which the most famous is the Armada Portrait, of which several versions exist. Another favoured painter was John Bettes. The pictures by these artists, with their attention to symbols and clothes and status, set the trend for the peculiarly English costume portrait, a genre which remained popular well into the next century.
In 1592, an anonymous artist painted the magnificent Ditchley Portrait, the largest surviving full-length of Elizabeth, which shows her standing on a map of England, with her feet placed on Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire, the home of her Champion, Sir Henry Lee, who commissioned the work. The painting is full of symbolism, much of it yet to be fully understood, and it represents a high point in the portraiture of Queen Elizabeth. Although the face is similar to that in other state portraits, a discreet attempt has been made to convey an older woman.
Towards the end of the reign Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, William Segar and Robert Peake continued the tradition begun by Hilliard. In a painting now at Sherborne Castle in Dorset, Peake portrayed the ageing Queen as a young woman being carried in a litter by her courtiers to a wedding at Blackfriars. Hilliard was still working for Elizabeth, and no less than twenty of his miniatures survive from the six years before her death: all portray what is now known as the Mask of Youth. The anonymous Rainbow Portrait at Hatfield House, painted around t6oo and, again, laden with symbolism, depicts Elizabeth as a nubile and beautiful sun goddess.
There are therefore few realistic portraits of Elizabeth I. In 1575, the Italian Federico Zuccaro painted companion portraits of Elizabeth and Leicester which are, sadly, now lost; his preliminary sketches convey a degree of realism. Medals of the 1590s depict the Queen in profile with sagging chin and cheeks, and there existed - 'to her great offence' -similar portraits, for in 1596, on Elizabeth's orders, the Council seized and destroyed a number of pictures that showed her looking old, frail and ill. With the succession question still unresolved, the government could not risk disseminating amongst her subjects any image of an ageing monarch. A miniature of the Queen, almost certainly painted from life by Isaac Oliver, who attempted to portray what he saw, was never finished, and is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The famous painting of a melancholy Elizabeth with Time and Death was painted posthumously, and is therefore perhaps the most lifelike one of her to survive. The ageing face is in stark contrast to Gheeraerts' pretty icon.
In sum, virtually all we have to show us what Elizabeth I looked like are stylised images. Painters throughout history have flattered and idealised royalty, but in her case this was a deception that was deliberately maintained over a period of forty-five years. One only has to compare the early photographs of Queen Victoria with the seemingly realistic portraits of her of the same date to realise what a vast difference there can be between the painted image and the harsh reality of the camera. With Elizabeth I, this difference would without a doubt have been far more dramatic.