Chapter 17
In January 1575, the leaders of the Protestant states of the Netherlands, in gratitude for her constant support, asked Elizabeth to accept the crown of Holland and Zeeland. Personally, she disliked the Dutch Protestants, and had disapproved of their hitherto republican sentiments: her help had been given purely with the intention of keeping Alva's army occupied. But although it was both flattering and tempting to be offered a crown, the Queen found herself confronting once again the same principles that had stayed her hand against Mary Stuart: Philip was an anointed king, the hereditary ruler of the Netherlands, and divinely appointed to rule there. If Elizabeth accepted the sovereignty, she would be supporting the rebels in the overthrow of a fellow monarch, even if she would be relieved to see the back of the Spanish presence in the Netherlands. It was an impossible dilemma, and she could not reach a decision. The eventual result was that the Dutch took offence at her prevarication and there was bitter criticism from her own subjects.
Nevertheless, by 1575 Elizabeth had cleared most of her debts, and with the restoration of trade with the Low Countries, England entered a period of economic prosperity. Friendlier relations with Spain had been established, and in April 1575, Henry III ended a year of tension when he requested a renewal of the Treaty of Blois, to which Elizabeth responded by honouring him with the Order of the Garter. Finally, Walsingham's spies had at last infiltrated Mary Stuart's household. For a while, it appeared that international affairs had stabilised.
On 17 May 1575, Matthew Parker, Elizabeth 's first and most tolerant Archbishop of Canterbury, died. In considering his replacement, Burghley made one of the greatest blunders of his career by nominating Edmund Grindal. Grindal turned out to be an unacceptably strict Puritan whose 'prophesyings' were, in the opinion of the Queen, seditious and subversive. His faults were not immediately apparent, but would become a matter of concern during the next two years.
Rather than strive in vain to keep the restless Earl of Oxford at court, Elizabeth gave her blessing in 1575 to him travelling abroad. He went first to Italy, where he squandered much of his inheritance. When he returned, he presented the Queen with a pair of embroidered gloves, but he would not return to court until she gave him an assurance that his wife would not be there. This was arranged, and the dissolute Earl was soon back in favour - so much so, that shortly afterwards the gossips were claiming that he and the Queen were lovers. In later years, it would even be said - without the slightest foundation - that the Earl of Southampton, who was born at this time, was their bastard child.
Another royal favourite was also causing a stir. In the spring of 1575, Christopher Hatton expressed a desire to acquire Ely Place in Holborn, the London residence of the bishops of Ely which had pleasant gardens. Elizabeth, pleased that Hatton would have a fine town house in which to entertain her, also saw this as a means of discountenancing its proprietor, Richard Cox, Bishop of Ely, with whom she had often clashed over religion. Cox was understandably reluctant to lease Ely Place to Hatton, resenting the appropriation by court 'harpies and wolves' of Church property, but the Queen was determined he should do so. She therefore instructed Lord North to write threatening the Bishop with interrogation by the Council for exploiting Church lands, an offence that could cost him his see and even lead to his being defrocked. Cox immediately yielded to the Queen's 'known clemency', and Ely Place passed to Hatton.
In the summer of 1575, the Queen went on her most famous progress of all, which culminated in the now legendary at Kenilworth, where her host, Leicester, provided the most extravagant and costly entertainments of the reign over a period often days. Several eyewitness accounts survive, notably those by George Gascoigne, the playwright, and Robert Laneham, Leicester's gentleman-usher.
On this, her third visit to the castle, the Queen arrived on Saturday, 9 July, Leicester having ridden out to greet her seven miles away at Long Itchington, where he had entertained her to dinner in a sumptuous pavilion erected specially for the purpose. At eight o'clock in the evening, after an afternoon's hunting and a frantic search for some suitable ale for the Queen to drink on this very hot day, he escorted her up to the castle, which was illuminated by thousands of torches and candles. The pillars of the drawbridge were decorated with cornucopias of fruit and vines, to symbolise earthly bounty. On some were hung musical instruments, and on others armour, to remind the Queen that Leicester was ready to lay down his life for her.
When Elizabeth came to the outer gatehouse, her attention was focused on the lake, where there had just appeared 'a floating island, bright blazing with torches, on which were clad in silks the Lady of the Lake and two nymphs waiting on her, who made a speech to the Queen of the antiquity and owners of the castle', linking its history to the Arthurian legends and offering the castle to the Queen, who was heard to comment that she was under the impression that it was hers already.
Musicians played, and at the castle gate, a sybil clad in a white silk robe recited verses of welcome and prophesied that the Queen would enjoy long life, peace and prosperity. She was joined by a tall Oxford scholar dressed as 'Hercules the Porter', who performed a comic routine and affected to be put out by the noise and stamping made by the Queen's retinue. He was then prevailed upon to present to Her Majesty the keys to the castle. When she entered the Base Court to the sound of trumpets, she was greeted by gentlemen in the guise of King Arthur's knights, and as she was escorted to her apartments in the new tower called Leicester's Building, with its beautiful oriel windows, guns sounded a salute and fireworks exploded in the sky; the noise was heard twenty miles away. Fortunately, the Italian expert in pyrotechnics who had been hired for the occasion was persuaded not to carry out his original plan to shoot live dogs and cats into the air.
Leicester had made further improvements to Kenilworth since Elizabeth had last visited, and it was now one of the 'wonder houses' of the age, restored, not in Renaissance style like most Elizabethan houses, but in a medieval style in keeping with its twelfth-century structure. It had, wrote Laneham, 'every room so spacious, so well lighted and so high-roofed within, so glittering of glass a-nights by continual candle- fire and torchlight'. On the lake was a fountain with statues of naked nymphs that Laneham thought would 'inflame any mind after too long looking'. To the west was an extensive deer park and hunting chase. Leicester proudly wrote to Burghley, 'I assure you, I think Her Majesty never came to a place in her life she liked better or commended more, her own lodgings specially.'
It is said that, when the Queen pointed out to Leicester that she could not see the formal garden from her windows, he ordered a similar garden to be laid out below them overnight, engaging an army of workmen for the purpose. When Elizabeth looked out the next morning, there, to her astonishment and pleasure, was the new garden. Both gardens have gone now, as has most of the castle: only a ruin stands to bear mute witness to the former glories of Kenilworth.
On Sunday morning the Queen attended the parish church, and after dinner in John of Gaunt's magnificent great hall, was entertained by 'excellent music of sundry sweet instruments' and dancing. A second firework display took place that evening, continuing until midnight.
It was very hot the next day, and Elizabeth rested in her room, emerging late in the afternoon to go hunting. Four hours later, returning in a torchlit procession, she was surprised to encounter a 'wild man' who turned out to be George Gascoigne, who had been commissioned by Leicester to write the speeches and entertainments. On this occasion, Gascoigne was dressed in a costume of moss green with ivy leaves attached, and was accompanied by a player representing 'Echo'; the two of them engaged in a rhyming dialogue, and then the 'wild man' submitted to the Queen's authority by breaking a branch over his knee. Unfortunately, one half ricocheted and barely missed the head of the Queen's horse, causing it to rear in terror. But Elizabeth expertly calmed it.
'No hurt! No hurt!' she cried, as Gascoigne quaked with relief.
She was out hunting again on Tuesday, 12 July, and two days later attended a bear-baiting in the inner court of the castle, featuring thirteen bears against some small mastiffs. There were fireworks again that night, with some burning below the surface of the lake, and an Italian acrobat who was so agile that it seemed, according to Laneham, that his spine was made of lute-strings.
Bad weather put a stop to outdoor entertainment during the next two days, but on Sunday the 17th it was fine again, and after church the Queen was guest of honour at a country wedding feast or bride-ale in the castle courtyard. The rustic bridegroom, who had broken his leg playing football, arrived limping and wearing a tawny doublet of his father's, in the company of sixteen other men, all of whom had a try at tossing the quintain. This was followed by Morris dancing, after which spice cakes were served while the bride-cup, from which the newlyweds' health would be drunk, was borne by someone who appeared to be the local village idiot. Then came the bride, past her prime at thirty, ugly and foul-smelling, attended by a dozen bridesmaids. She was so puffed up at the prospect of dancing before the Queen that she gave herself airs and carried herself as if she were as pretty as her bridesmaids. After the dancing, the guests sat down to watch a pageant performed in the open air by a company of players from Coventry. The Queen, for whom such occasions as this were a novelty, watched the proceedings from her window, and requested that the pageant be performed again two days hence.
That evening, she graced an 'ambrosial banquet' with her presence, the table being laid with a thousand pieces of glass and silver and three hundred dishes being served by two hundred gentlemen. She only picked at her food, although she enjoyed the masque that was presented afterwards.
On Monday the 18th she knighted five gentlemen, including Burghley's son Thomas, and touched nine scrofulous persons for the King's Evil. It was very hot again, and she was obliged to keep to her chamber until five in the afternoon, when she went hunting. A water pageant was staged upon her return, for which had been built an eighteen-foot-long model of a mermaid and a twenty-four-foot-long dolphin, in which was concealed a consort of musicians and a singer representing the god Arion. The Lady of the Lake made another appearance, in company with the sea-god Triton and a villainous knight, Sir Bruce sans Pitee.
The Coventry pageant was repeated on the Tuesday, and on Wednesday, 20 July was to come the climax of the festivities, a richly- costumed mythological masque which Leicester had commissioned from George Gascoigne at 'incredible cost'. The story told how two goddesses, the virgin huntress, Diana, and the goddess of marriage, Juno, each tried to persuade a nymph, Zabeta - a near-anagram of the Queen's name - to follow their example. It ended with Juno warning Zabeta that she should not heed Diana, but should find more reason to marry like Juno. The underlying message was that Elizabeth should do likewise, and it was intended that in due course the company were to be left in no doubt as to whom she should marry. No one, of course, knew about Douglas Sheffield, who was not present during the royal visit, and it seems that, by this time, Leicester had tired of her and regarded himself as not legally bound in marriage.
Unfortunately for Leicester, it rained on that Wednesday, and, as the masque in which his message was to be delivered was to have been staged in a pavilion three miles away, it had to be abandoned, for the Queen remained indoors. The Earl was deeply disappointed: Elizabeth was due to leave on the following day, and he asked Gascoigne to write some farewell verses with a similar message.
On Thursday the 19th Elizabeth left Kenilworth, her courtiers declaring that they had never known anything to equal their experiences there. As she rode away, Gascoigne, in the guise of Sylvanus, sprang from a holly bush and walked and then ran beside her, declaiming his hastily composed doggerel, in which he described the heavy rain as the tears of the gods, weeping at her departure, and begged her to stay. When Elizabeth pulled up her palfrey, he cried breathlessly that she did not need to slow her pace, as he would run with her for twenty miles if need be to complete his tale. So the Queen rode away; Gascoigne, of course, could not keep up with her, and consequently, she never heard his verses.
Leicester and his household had worked very hard to ensure that the programme ran smoothly, and there was no doubt that the visit had been a great success and would never be forgotten by the courtiers or local people. Nor would Leicester's coffers ever recover from the huge expenditure. However, the purpose of it all, which was to convince the Queen that she should marry him, had been defeated by, of all things, the weather, and he knew that such a chance would never come again. It is no coincidence that, after Kenilworth, he began to seek comfort elsewhere.
From Kenilworth, the Queen, accompanied by Leicester and his talented young nephew, Philip Sidney, moved to the Earl of Essex's house at Chartley; the Earl was away in Ireland, but Elizabeth was made welcome by the Countess, who was her cousin, Lettice Knollys. Lettice had been a guest at Kenilworth, and although several courtiers guessed that she and Leicester were harbouring a secret passion for each other, the Queen remained oblivious to it.
After the progress, Philip Sidney came to court, and was soon afterwards appointed Standard Bearer to the Queen. Although he was the godson of Philip of Spain, he had been brought up in the Protestant faith and educated at Oxford, after which he had travelled in Europe, where he met and impressed many statesmen and scholars with his erudition, sense of chivalry and obvious ability. The Massacre of St Bartholemew had prompted him to call for the forming of a Protestant league of princes to counteract Catholic aggression, and in this, he was supported by his uncle, Leicester. Although Elizabeth was wary of Sidney's militant views, she began in 1575 to send him on routine diplomatic errands.
On T3 August, Elizabeth arrived in Worcester, her visit being intended to boost the declining woollen-cloth industry. Frantic preparations had been made on the orders of the city fathers: the gates were painted grey, with the arms of England mounted on them, and all the houses on the royal route had been lime-washed.
Ignoring the rain, Elizabeth came riding into the city and graciously accepted the mandatory silver-gilt cup. Soaking wet, she expressed delight at the laudatory verses of welcome and only when they were finished did she call for a cloak and hat. She then toured the cathedral, where her uncle, Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales, lay entombed, and where she was entertained by a consort of cornets, sackbuts and voices. Afterwards, she went to her lodging in the bishop's palace. On Sunday, as the crowds roared themselves hoarse, she rode in an open coach to morning service in the cathedral, repeatedly calling, 'I thank you! I thank you all!' When she left the city two days later to dine with her cofferer nearby, she was escorted by local dignitaries to its boundaries. When the time came to say farewell, they made to dismount and kneel in the mud, but Elizabeth raised her hand, saying, 'I pray you, keep your horses and do not alight.' On her return to Worcester that evening, it was pouring again, but she remained on horseback, greeting the people with 'cheerful, princely countenance' and conversing with them.
After leaving Worcester, the Queen stayed for a few days with Sir Henry Lee at Woodstock, where she saw a play depicting the triumph of patriotism over love, before returning home.
By the end of 575, Leicester had tired of Douglas Howard and was in hot pursuit of the Queen's cousin, Lettice Knollys, daughter of his friend and fellow councillor, Sir Francis Knollys, by Katherine Carey, and wife of Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex. Leicester and Lettice had enjoyed a brief flirtation in 1565, and if they thought that this time their relationship was a secret, they were much mistaken, for a Spanish agent reported in December: 'As the thing is publicly talked of in the streets, there is no objection to my writing openly about the great enmity that exists between the Earl of Leicester and the Earl of Essex in consequence, it is said, of the fact that, while Essex was in Ireland, his wife had two children by Leicester. Great discord is expected.'
Lettice was thirty-five and her portrait at Longleat, painted in 1585, bears witness to her sloe-eyed, seductive beauty. She had been married at twenty to Walter Devereux, then Earl of Hereford, and had lived thereafter mainly at Chartley, but although the couple had five children, it seems they were incompatible.
Essex headed a military expedition to Ireland in 1573, where he earned great renown for his courage and ruthlessness. He returned to England in November 1575, and it could not have been long before he heard the rumours about his wife and Leicester. Although many of them - including that reported by the Spaniard, which is the only source for the allegation that Lettice had borne Leicester two children - were probably wildly inaccurate, there can be little doubt that some were based on truth. For a knight to seduce the wife of another knight was a gross breach of the code of chivalry, and it was probably this that influenced Essex's decision to alter his will to the effect that, if he died while they were still young, his children were to be brought up under the guardianship of the Earl of Huntingdon, his most influential relation, whose wife was Leicester's sister. According to Sir Henry Sidney, who could not 'brook' the man, Essex was set to become the violent enemy of Leicester.
In July 1576, the Earl of Essex returned to duty in Ireland. His marriage was foundering and he had quarrelled with Leicester over Lettice. Two months later, when he and several other people fell ill with dysentery in Dublin Castle, he concluded that he had been poisoned with 'some evil' in his drink. Neither he nor anyone else at the time suggested that Leicester was responsible. After Essex died on 22 September, Sir Henry Sidney, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, ordered an immediate post-mortem, but, as he reported in detail to the Council, there was no evidence of foul play, nor did the doctors who had attended Essex believe that he had died of anything other than natural causes.
Essex was succeeded in his title by his nine-year-old son, Robert Devereux. The dying Earl had sent a message to the Queen hoping 'it will please Your Majesty to be as a mother to my children', especially his son, who would now be dependent on her. Elizabeth cancelled the debts the boy had inherited and gave his wardship to Lord Burghley, who had brought Robert up in his own household since the age of six. The young Essex was presented to the Queen that year at Cecil House in London. His mother, Lettice, had retired to her father's house near Oxford, her other children having, according to her husband's last wishes, been sent to live with the Earl and Countess of Huntingdon at Ashby-de-la-Zouche in Leicestershire.
Another boy who was much in Elizabeth's thoughts at this time was her fifteen-year-old godson, John Harington. His parents had served her well: Sir John Harington had been one of her father's courtiers and had later acted as an intermediary between Elizabeth and Admiral Thomas Seymour. In 1554, after Wyatt's rebellion, when Elizabeth was sent to the Tower, he and his wife, Isabella Markham, were both imprisoned on suspicion of being in league with her. Their loyalty was rewarded when Elizabeth came to the throne: Isabella was appointed a lady in waiting, and in 1561 the Queen stood godmother to the Haringtons' eldest son.
Young John was a bright, intelligent and creative boy, with a dry sense of humour that came to appeal to Elizabeth. Her first surviving letter to him dates from 1576, when he was still a schoolboy at Eton College. Obviously she thought it was time he started taking an interest in public affairs, for she enclosed a copy of her closing speech to Parliament, in which she had expressed her preference for the single life. She wrote:
Boy Jack, I have made a clerk write fair my poor words for thine use, as it cannot be such striplings have entrance into Parliament assembly as yet. Ponder them in thy hours of leisure, and play with them till they enter thy understanding; so shall thou hereafter, perchance, find some good fruits hereof when thy godmother is out of remembrance. And I do this because thy father was ready to serve and love us 111 trouble and thrall.
Later on, Harington came to court, and his letters and published writings would become some of the richest sources of information about the Queen's later years.
During the past months, Elizabeth's relations with Archbishop Grindal had rapidly deteriorated. In the autumn of 1576, she summoned him before her and commanded him to ensure that all Puritan forms of worship were suppressed. Grindal, a Puritan himself, could not in his conscience obey her, and in the weeks that followed prepared a written defence of his objections.
In December he gave it to Leicester to submit to the Queen, but Elizabeth was most displeased by it. She barred the Archbishop from court, and all communication between them was conducted through Leicester. When the Earl, who was sympathetic towards the Archbishop's viewpoint, tried to suggest a compromise, neither Elizabeth nor Grindal would give way. Thus a deadlock was reached, which lasted until the following spring.
In May 1577, the Queen asked Archbishop Grindal one final time if he would prohibit Puritan practices within the Church. He refused, and begged to remind Her Majesty that she too was mortal and would have to answer for her actions at God's judgement seat. He declared that he would rather 'offend an earthly majesty than the heavenly majesty of God'. Mortified at his continuing defiance, Elizabeth placed the Archbishop under house arrest at Lambeth Palace, thus effectively preventing him from exercising his authority as Primate of England. She also ordered Burghley to command her bishops, in her name, to suppress all forms of Puritan worship.
In taking such a stand, the Queen was demonstrating that it was she, the Supreme Governor, and not the Archbishop, who was the ultimate authority in the Anglican Church. Even so, her councillors thought she was unfair to Grindal, and spoke up in his defence, urging her to treat him with greater moderation. If the Archbishop persisted in his stubborn attitude, she raged, he must be deprived of his See. In the event, thanks to the intercession of Leicester and others, he remained in office, but the Queen never again permitted him to carry out any of his archiepiscopal duties. For the next five years, therefore, the Church of England was effectively without a spiritual leader, and Elizabeth gave orders directly to her bishops. Her actions rebounded against her in the long run, however, for they only served to weaken the Church and give impetus to the Puritan movement.
Although Sir Christopher Hatton's enemies were of the opinion that his chief talents lay in dancing and jousting, Elizabeth recognised that he had real abilities that could be put to good use. He also shared her contempt for Puritanism and, anticipating that he would back her in her stand against Grindal's supporters, she knighted him, made him Vice- Chamberlain of her household, and appointed him to her Council on 11 November 1577.
In February 1576, Philip II had sent an envoy, the Sieur de Champigny, to Elizabeth to ask her, quite candidly, if she intended to give aid to his Protestant rebels in future. After keeping the envoy waiting for two weeks, she evaded giving him an answer, and complained instead that Philip had not written to her, which she found most hurtful. She added that Spain's attempt to establish absolute dominion in the Low Countries was intolerable to her; her beloved father would not have tolerated it, and she, though a woman, 'would know how to look to it'. However - and here she had smiled mischievously - she had a great personal liking for King Philip. Poor de Champigny withdrew in a state of bewildered perplexity.
Elizabeth was still keeping up the pretence that she was contemplating marrying the Duke of Alencon, if only to give Philip pause for thought, but by the spring of 1576, even she had to concede that the project was moribund. 'No one thing hath procured her so much hatred abroad as these wooing matters,' observed an exasperated Walsingham.
Elizabeth had by then decided to turn down the sovereignty of the Netherlands. When, in the summer, Spanish troops there mutinied and rioted over non-payment of their wages, their behaviour caused Dutch Catholics and Protestants to unite against a common enemy under the leadership of William of Orange. Later in the year, the rebels agreed at Ghent that they should elect their own assembly and fight for independence. Philip reacted angrily to this rebellion and appointed a new Regent, his half brother Don John of Austria, the most renowned soldier in Europe, who had commanded his forces at a recent naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto.
Elizabeth, whilst remaining outwardly friendly towards Philip, was still sending money to the rebels, while Leicester, possibly without her knowledge, had offered to support William of Orange with an English army if need be. The Dutch rebels, meanwhile, were urging that England and the Netherlands should combine their military forces to form a Protestant army with Elizabeth as its leader. The Queen rejected this proposal because she did not want to finance such a costly venture. She had already given the Dutch - 20,000, and loaned them another _ 106,000 - almost half her annual income. Furthermore, she feared that, if she joined them in this war, she would risk losing her throne.
Elizabeth had offered to act as mediator between the Dutch and Don John of Austria, though in January 1577 the Dutch rejected this, being more interested in Leicester's offer of military assistance. However, when, later in the year, Don John offered them favourable terms for a peace, they wrote to the Earl to say that his help was no longer needed. This was perhaps as well, since Leicester had not served in a military capacity for over twenty years. He was now forty-four, 'high coloured and red-faced', and, having grown portly through good living, no longer even jousted. He was nevertheless bitterly disappointed not to have been given the chance to earn international renown as the armed champion of Protestantism.
'I am melancholy,' he wrote to a Dutch associate. 'I have almost neither face nor countenance to write to the Prince [William of Orange], his expectation being so greatly deceived.'
During the early months of 1577, Walsingham's spies gradually exposed a Catholic conspiracy masterminded by Don John of Austria, who, assisted by the Duke of Guise, was plotting to invade England with ten thousand troops, depose Elizabeth and return the kingdom to the Catholic fold. Don John then planned to marry Mary Stuart and rule jointly with her. Walsingham urged the Queen to take punitive measures against Mary, but once again she refused. She did, however, knight Walsingham that year for his services to the state. Fortunately, Don John was too preoccupied with affairs in the Netherlands to put into effect his plans for England.
In May, 1577, the Queen visited Gorhambury again. Mindful of his sovereign's remarks during her earlier stay in 1572, Lord Keeper Bacon had enlarged his house to twice its original size, and had added a Tuscan colonnade for good measure. The Queen was impressed by the changes and also by the lovely gardens and the 'noble' standard of living enjoyed by Bacon, who 'at every meal had his table strewed with sweet herbs and flowers'. Her Majesty stayed for five days, taking picnics in the little banqueting house in the orchard, or feasting on food prepared by twelve cooks specially brought from London. Although the Puritanical Lord Keeper considered courtly revels to be sinful, he swallowed his principles and laid out 20 for performers for his sovereign's sake. Altogether the visit cost him 577.
Gorhambury, like many other noble palaces of the age, is no more. It was a ruinous, ivy-shrouded shell by the end of the eighteenth century, and was pulled down soon afterwards.
The summer of 1577 brought with it a particularly bad outbreak of plague, which prevented the Queen from going on her usual progress. Instead she remained at Greenwich, although she is recorded as having spent two very pleasant days at Loseley House near Guildford in Surrey.
In June, Leicester, whose health was no longer so robust, travelled north to Buxton to take the waters. On the way he stayed as the guest of his friends the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury. The Countess, Bess of Hardwick, was now back in favour after her spell in prison, and the Queen had already written in mischievous vein to warn her of Leicester's voracious appetite.
'We think it meet to prescribe unto you a diet which we mean in no case you shall exceed,' she advised, 'and that is to allow him by the day for his meat two ounces of flesh, referring the quality to yourselves, so as you exceed not the quantity, and for his drink the twentieth part of a pint of wine to comfort his stomach, and as much of St Anne's sacred water as he listeth to drink. On festival days, as is meet for a man of his quality, we can be content you shall enlarge his diet by allowing unto him for his dinner the shoulder of a wren, for his supper a leg of the same, besides his ordinary ounces.'
History does not record whether Bess attempted to follow the royal advice, but what is certain is that, while at Chatsworth, Leicester was presented to the Queen of Scots. Their conversation was limited mainly to pleasantries, although when Mary complained about her continuing confinement, Leicester expressed polite sympathy. Afterwards he wrote an account of the meeting for Burghley, which prompted the Lord Treasurer to ask the Queen if he might visit Mary himself. But she refused, having heard too often how her cousin's beauty and charm were capable of making the wisest men act foolishly.
Bess of Hardwick also produced her infant granddaughter, Arbella Stewart, for Leicester's inspection, hoping he would agree with her that Arbella's claim to the throne was better than Mary's and that he would try to persuade Elizabeth to name the child as her successor. Arbella was the great-granddaughter of Henry VII, and was being brought up in England in the Protestant faith, untainted by treason and scandal: in every respect she would be a better candidate than the Queen of Scots. Urged by her grandmother, Leicester could see that this was sound reasoning, and also perceived that there might be some advantage to himself in it. He was now resigned to the fact that he would never wear the crown matrimonial, but his ambition would be satisfied if his descendants were to occupy the throne of England. With this in mind, he suggested that Bess marry her granddaughter to his 'base son', a suggestion which the formidable matriarch accepted with alacrity, since the Earl, with his considerable influence and wide net of patronage, could do much for her and her family.
The Elizabethan age was one of discovery and geographical expansion. During the century before Elizabeth's accession, Spain had established colonies in the Americas and the Indies, whilst Portugal had colonised large parts of Africa and what is now Brazil. New trade routes meant wider markets and better opportunities for plunder, and there were several English privateers who, succumbing to the lure of adventure and easy spoils, ventured upon the high seas in a quest for riches, new markets for English goods, the chance to discountenance the Spaniards, or even the opportunity to found new colonies in the Queen's name.
Such a man was Francis Drake, a Devon mariner, who, on 24 May 1572, had sailed from Plymouth to the New World, his purpose being to exact retribution from the Spaniards, who had attacked and harried his ships during earlier voyages. Fifteen months later he returned from the Americas with a fabulous horde of treasure looted from Spanish ships. This was not the first time that English privateers had seized Spanish treasure, but it was the greatest haul.
News of Drake's booty and his colourful adventures soon reached the Queen, who was jubilant at the thought of how maddened King Philip would be by such blatant piracy, and fascinated by Drake's exploits. Overnight, he became famous throughout England, and notorious in Spain, where he was called 'El Draque' - the Dragon. Naturally, the Spaniards complained to Elizabeth, but while she was vaguely conciliatory, or affected to be concerned, she did nothing to stop these acts of piracy, and indeed benefited from them, since much of the looted treasure went into her coffers.
At the end of 1577, Francis Drake set off in his ship, the Pelican, on what was to be an epic world voyage. His priority, however, was not exploration but to harry the Spaniards, who had retaliated for his seizure of their treasure by attacking English ships. There was a great deal of public interest in the venture, and Walsingham arranged for Drake to be presented to the Queen before he left.
'Drake!' she greeted him effusively. 'So it is that I would be revenged on the King of Spain for divers injuries that I have received.' Drake answered that the most effective way to do this would be to prey on Philip's ships and settlements in the Indies, with which Elizabeth wholeheartedly agreed. Burghley, however, was not to be told about the expedition until it had sailed, since he felt it unwise to provoke the Spaniards any further. According to Drake, the Queen invested 1000 marks (nearly 665) in the voyage; other backers included Leicester, Walsingham and Hatton.
Just before Drake sailed, a royal messenger arrived bearing gifts from the Queen, an embroidered sea cap and a silk scarf on which she had stitched the words, 'The Lord guide and preserve thee until the end'.
Morton's regency in Scotland came to an abrupt end in March 1578, when the lords mounted a coup against him, which resulted in James VI, now nearly twelve, being declared of an age to assume personal rule.
On 4 April, Mary Stuart's husband, the Earl of Bothwell, died, mad and chained to a pillar in the dungeons of Dragsholm Castle in Denmark, where he had been held prisoner since soon after his flight from Scotland in 1567. The rigours of his imprisonment and the ever- present fear of imminent execution had unhinged his mind, although there were still those among Mary's supporters who claimed that, at the last, he had dictated a confession which cleared her of all complicity in Darnley's murder. This is unlikely, however, given his mental state at the time. Bothwell's mummified body may be seen today, under glass, at Faarevejle Church near Dragsholm.