Chapter 2
On the morning of her coronation eve, Queen Elizabeth was attired in a robe made from twenty-three yards of cloth of gold and silver, trimmed with ermine and overlaid with gold lace - one of four she had ordered for her coronation, and on her head was set a golden cap ringed with a princess's crown. Outside, light flakes of snow were drifting down and the sky was leaden, but the courtiers in the Queen's vast retinue glowed in their rich satins and velvets and glittered with jewels. The magnificent procession formed, with over a thousand mounted dignitaries, and Elizabeth walked to her waiting litter, which was lined with white satin, trimmed with gold damask and drawn by two 'very handsome mules'.
Before climbing in, she prayed aloud, 'O Almighty and Everlasting God, I give Thee most hearty thanks that Thou hast been so merciful unto me to spare me to behold this joyful day. Thou hast dealt as wonderfully and as mercifully with me as Thou didst with Daniel, whom Thou delivered out of the den from the cruelty of the raging lions.' Even so was I overwhelmed, and only by Thee delivered.' This was an apt prayer, as the lions in the Tower menagerie were just then making their presence known by roars and growls and the bystanders applauded warmly.
Having reiterated her conviction that God Himself had brought her to her throne, the Queen entered her litter, made herself comfortable on eight enormous satin cushions, and with a canopy of estate borne above her head, was carried in state, 'with great majesty', through four miles of London's streets to a tumultuous welcome. The whole event had been planned as a propaganda exercise, intended to cement the harmonious relationship between Elizabeth and her people and herald the new age that was beginning.
Alongside the Queen's litter walked her personal guard, the Gentlemen Pensioners, wearing their livery of crimson damask and carrying ceremonial gilt battleaxes. She was attended also by many footmen in jerkins of crimson velvet studded with gilt and silver buttons and embroidered with the red and white rose of the Tudors and the initials E R. Before the Queen marched her trumpeters in scarlet, while behind her rode Robert Dudley as Master of the Horse, leading the Queen's palfrey, followed by thirty-nine ladies, all in crimson velvet gowns with cloth of gold sleeves. The Privy Councillors also rode in the procession, bravely decked out in splendid robes of satin.
The City had made great efforts, the Mayor and aldermen having commissioned and spent large sums on a series of five 'stately pageants [and] sumptuous shows and devices' at strategic points along the route, which was packed with sightseers, many of whom had camped out overnight to get a good view of the Queen. Behind wooden rails draped with painted cloths and tapestries stood the members of the City guilds, important in their fur-lined gowns and company liveries. The City was a bastion of Protestantism, and its pageants and tableaux all incorporated meaningful references to the bad days of Queen Mary that were now past and the good things that were hoped for from her successor. Chief among them was the establishment of true religion, and when the Queen heard references to this, she raised her eyes and hands heavenwards and called upon her subjects to repeat 'Amen'.
The City's celebrations began at Fenchurch Street, where a little child attempted to recite welcoming verses against the roar of the crowd. The Queen begged for quiet, and listened 'with a perpetual attentiveness in her face and a marvellous change of look, as if the child's words touched her person'.
The first pageant, 'The Pageant of the Roses', was in Gracechurch Street, and it displayed, on a three-tiered platform, persons representing the Tudor dynasty, supported by Unity and Concord. On the lowest tier were shown - together for the first time in twenty-five years -Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and on the highest tier Elizabeth herself appeared.
Next to the conduit in Cornhill, a child representing the Queen sat enthroned on the Seat of Worthy Governance, supported by four allegorical figures of the Virtues, including one called Good Religion, who trod the Vices, among them Superstition and Ignorance, underfoot.
Cheapside was noisy with fanfares of trumpets and the singing of the City waits, who stood beside the Eleanor Cross, which had been decorated for the occasion. Here, as custom decreed, the City Recorder presented the Queen with 1000 gold marks ( 666) in a purse of crimson satin. She accepted it graciously, saying, I thank my Lord Mayor, his brethren and you all. And whereas your request is that I should continue your good lady and queen, be ye assured that I will be as good unto you as ever queen was to her people. And persuade yourselves that for the safety and quietness of you all, I will not spare, if need be, to spend my blood. God thank you all.
Her speech prompted a 'marvellous shout and rejoicing' from the bystanders, who were 'wonderfully ravished' by it.
The pageant at Little Conduit had as its centrepiece Time. The Queen gazed at it and mused, 'Time! And Time hath brought me hither.' The pageant depicted two pastoral scenes representing a flourishing commonwealth and a decayed one. A figure representing Truth emerged from between the two, led by Time, and received from Heaven an English Bible. A child explained in pretty verses that the Bible taught how to change a decayed state into a flourishing empire. Truth presented the Bible to the Queen, who kissed it and held it to her heart, thanking the City most warmly for it and 'promising to be a diligent reader thereof.
Outside St Paul's Cathedral, a scholar of St Paul's School made a speech in Latin extolling Elizabeth's wisdom, learning and other virtues. Music played as she passed through Ludgate into Fleet Street, where she watched the final pageant, which portrayed Deborah, 'the judge and restorer of the House of Israel', who had been sent by God to rule His people wisely for forty years. Deborah was depicted wearing Parliament robes and sitting on a throne, consulting with the three estates of the realm as to how best to provide good government. A poem was presented to the Queen reminding her how Deborah had restored Truth in place of Error.
Elizabeth exhibited great interest and delight in the pageants, and constantly expressed her gratitude to her subjects, being genuinely touched by the welcome afforded her. When the crowds cheered, she waved at them with 'a merry countenance', repeating again and again, 'God save them all!' Several times along the way she demonstrated her humanity by stopping her litter to speak in the most 'tender and gentle language' to humble folk, or accept small gifts, such as posies of flowers offered by poor women. She kept a spray of rosemary, given by a woman supplicant at Fleet Bridge, beside her in the litter all the way to Westminster. Some foreign observers felt that she was over-familiar with her subjects and exceeded the bounds of decorum that preserved a monarch's dignity, but Elizabeth knew her people better. They were responding to her common touch, and if this was the way to win and retain their favour, then she would follow her instincts. Her father had had such a way with him, and one person, seeing the resemblance, cried out, 'Remember old King Harry the Eighth?' Elizabeth was seen to smile at this.
'Be ye well assured, I will stand your good Queen. I wish neither prosperity nor safety to myself which might not be for our common good,' she declared to her people, and they knew she meant it. An old man turned away, but not before she had espied him weeping. 'I warrant you it is for gladness,' she told those close by.
At Temple Bar, which was surmounted for the occasion by two huge statues of figures from London mythology - Gogmagog the Albion and Corineus the Briton - the City authorities formally took their leave of Elizabeth, and a little child recited a poem, 'Farewell, O worthy Queen!' A pamphlet describing the events of the day came off the publisher Richard Tothill's press ten days later, and was much sought after as a souvenir of the occasion, running into three editions.
At the end of this long and triumphant day, Elizabeth came to the Palace of Westminster, where she lay that night.
Sunday, 15 January - Elizabeth's coronation day - was frosty and crisp, with a light covering of snow on the ground. The Queen emerged from Westminster Hall, wearing her coronation robes beneath a swirling mantle of embroidered silk lined with ermine, with fine silk and gold stockings and a crimson velvet cap adorned with Venice gold and pearls. To the joyous sound of fifes, drums, portable organs and all the bells of London's churches, she went in procession from Westminster Hall to the Abbey along a blue carpet beneath a canopy borne by the Barons of the Cinque Ports; she was followed by the Duchess of Norfolk, who bore her train. No sooner had Elizabeth passed than the crowds fell upon the carpet, tearing off pieces as souvenirs, and almost knocking over the hapless Duchess in the process.
Westminster Abbey glowed with the light of hundreds of torches and candles, which illumined the rich tapestries that had been hung on its walls, tapestries that had been commissioned by Henry VIII and based on designs by Raphael. Elizabeth's magnificent coronation service was notable not only for its glorious music, but also because it was the last in England to be conducted - at Bishop Oglethorpe's insistence according to the medieval Latin rubric, although parts of it - the Epistle and Gospel - were read in English as well. Oglethorpe officiated, assisted by Dr Feckenham, the last Abbot of Westminster. During the mass, the Queen refused to be present at the elevation of the Host, and retired to a curtained pew in St Edward's Chapel until that part of the ritual was over, a gesture applauded by her hopeful Protestant subjects. Her coronation oath was administered from an English Bible held aloft by William Cecil, although she was nevertheless proclaimed 'Defender of the True, Ancient, Catholic Faith'.
Nearly the whole peerage was present in the Abbey, and when the Queen was presented for her subjects' acceptance, there were such shouts of acclaim, and such thundering and crashing of organs, trumpets and bells that it seemed to some as if the end of the world had arrived. Elizabeth retired to change her gown during the lengthy ceremonies that followed, emerging after her anointing in crimson velvet surmounted by a mantle of cloth of gold. In this she sat enthroned, as the ring that symbolically wedded her to her people was placed upon the fourth finger of her right hand to the sound of trumpets. Then came the climax of the ceremonies, the crowning itself, when first St Edward's crown and then the imperial crown of England, weighing seven pounds, were placed in turn on Elizabeth's red head.
After the ceremonies were ended, Elizabeth, in full regalia and wearing a smaller crown - perhaps that made for Anne Boleyn in 1533 - and carrying the orb and sceptre, walked in procession back the way she had come, smiling broadly and shouting greetings to the enthusiastic crowds lining her way. 'In my opinion', sniffed the Mantuan ambassador, 'she exceeded the bounds of gravity and decorum.'
There followed the traditional lavish coronation banquet in Westminster Hall, a custom that ended with George IV in 1821. This lasted from three in the afternoon until one o'clock the next morning, and during it, as was customary, the Queen's Champion, Sir Edward Dymoke, rode into the Hall in full armour, daring any to challenge her title. The Queen presided from the high table, beneath a canopy of estate, having changed into yet another gown, this one of purple velvet. Music played throughout, and a delicious variety of dishes were served to her on bended knee by her great-uncle, Lord William Howard, and the Earl of Sussex. The nobility were permitted to keep their coronets on during the feasting, only uncovering when the Queen rose to drink their health, thanking them for all the trouble they had taken on her behalf.
On 16 January, because 'Her Majesty was feeling rather tired' and was suffering from a heavy cold, she postponed the tournament planned for that day, remaining in her Privy Chamber to sleep and attend to state business. The celebrations continued with banquets, masques, and a series of jousts held over the next few days, Robert Dudley being prominent among the contestants. Foreign observers were unanimously impressed with the coronation and its attendant festivities, which had been lavishly staged in order to give the impression that England was a land of great wealth and power. A full-faced portrait, which is no longer extant, of Elizabeth in coronation robes was painted, which was used as a model for the image on her first Great Seal and early official documents; a later copy, dating from around 1600 and once at Warwick Castle, is now in the National Portrait Gallery.
Now that she was firmly established on her throne, Elizabeth turned her attention to the urgent matters of state that would be debated in her first Parliament. Two issues seemed likely to do mini ate the session: the controversial subject of religion, and the more delicate matter of the Queen's marriage. For most people, it was not a question of whether she would marry, but whom she would marry. Linked to this was the ongoing problem of the Tudor succession, which had exercised politicians' minds for four decades now; it was not clear who would succeed in the event of Elizabeth's early death.
On the political front there were hopes that a peace would be concluded with France, thereby frustrating those w ho wished to support the Dauphine Mary Stuart's dynastic claims and removing the necessity for French troops to remain in Scotland. Such a peace was rendered all the more necessary by the news that on 16 January Mary and her husband had begun styling themselves King and Queen of England. Yet it was also imperative that England maintain her friendship with Spain in grder to safeguard the lucrative trading links between the two powers arid" perhaps obtain protection against French ambitions. It was obvious to the Queen from the first that her success in tbie field of diplomacy would depend upon playing off those bitter enemies France and Spain one against the other.
Lack of money was a major problem that would have to be addressed. Elizabeth's annual income was about 250,000, out of which she had to finance the needs of court and government and p ay off Queen Mary's debts of 266,000. Prices were rising all the time, yet Elizabeth set herself to live within her means by practising the most stringent economies and selling off Crown lands. As a result, her annual expenditure never exceeded 300,000 throughout her reign.
Elizabeth went in state wearing her coronation robes, attended by forty-six peers, to open her first Parliament on 25 January 1559, after postponing the ceremony for two days because of her cold and the atrocious weather, which had delayed the arrival in London of many MPs. De Feria informed King Philip that 'the Catholics are very fearful of the measures to be taken in this Parliament' and Elizabeth's own behaviour gave a hint of what was to come. On her way to the House of Lords for the opening of the new session she was met by the Abbot of Westminster at the head of his monks, all carrying lighted tapers, symbols of the old faith that were frowned upon by Protestant divines.
'Away with those tapers!' snapped the Queen tartly. 'We see well enough!' As she was standing on sanctified ground, the Abbot was profoundly shocked by her words. Still in a bad mood, she stamped to her throne by the high altar in the Abbey, and was only partially mollified when she heard Dr Richard Cox, formerly tutor to King Edward VI, preach a vituperative sermon against monks in general, accusing them of participating in the burning of Protestants. God, he thundered, had raised His servant Elizabeth to the dignity of Queen that she might put an end to the Catholic practices restored by Queen Mary, and he urged her to cast down all images of the saints, to purify her churches of idolatry, and dissolve all religious houses re-established by Mary. Cox ranted on for an hour and a half, while the Queen, who hated sermons, fidgeted and became increasingly irritated, and the peers stood sweating in their robes.
Once enthroned in Parliament in a chair padded with gold cushions, Elizabeth made it clear that she would not brook any presumptuous behaviour from members of the Commons, many of whom expected a female sovereign to be tractable and easily manipulated.
One of the first Acts passed by Queen Mary had been one declaring herself legitimate, Henry VIII having decreed that his marriage to her mother had never been lawful. Elizabeth was in a similar situation: bastardised in 1536, she had been 'excluded and barred' by statute from the succession. This had never been repealed, although in his 1544 Act of Succession Henry named her as his heir after Edward and Mary. Hence Elizabeth's title to the throne was open to question, and she consulted Sir Nicholas Bacon as to whether she should take steps to legitimise herself. His advice was to let sleeping dogs lie, and she took it, but the taint of her bastardy, and its implications for the security of her throne, was to remain a sensitive subject with her to the end of her days.
The succession was another sensitive issue. The Tudors were not a fertile family and there was a dearth of suitable heirs to replace the Queen should she die childless. The 1544 Act and Henry VIII's will provided that, after Elizabeth, the crown should pass to the heirs of his younger sister Mary, Duchess of Suffolk. Mary had left two daughters, Frances and Eleanor Brandon. The elder, Frances, had produced three daughters, one of whom had been the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey. The two other daughters were Lady Katherine and Lady Mary Grey, aged nineteen and fourteen respectively in 1559.
Both were Protestants but Elizabeth heartily disliked them, especially Katherine - 'the Queen could not abide the sight of her'. She was particularly suspicious of their dynastic pretensions, and perhaps with cause, for 'in 1559 there were rumours that King Philip, aware that Lady Katherine Grey had the strongest claim to the English succession, was plotting to abduct her and make her the wife of his heir, the degenerate Don Carlos. Katherine was aware of Elizabeth's dislike, and in March 1559 revealed to the Spanish ambassador that she knew her cousin did not wish her to succeed her. Nor was the Queen much more enamoured of Lady Mary Grey, a hunchbacked dwarf. Many people shared Elizabeth's antipathy towards the Grey sisters, and some argued that their father's treason in supporting Northumberland had rendered their claim to a place in the succession forfeit.
Next in the Suffolk line after the Grey sisters came Margaret, the only child of Eleanor Brandon, who was married to Henry, Lord Strange, later Earl of Derby. In Queen Mary's time, some people had viewed Margaret as a likely successor to the throne in view of the fact that, unlike the Grey family, she had not taken part in Northumberland's treacherous coup of 1553. Despite the fact that Margaret had no desire for a crown, Elizabeth insisted upon her coming often to court 'as one very near in blood to us', so as to keep an eye on her. Poor Margaret hated the court as much as she hated her home life with her quarrelsome husband, and never knew true happiness or peace of mind.
All the Suffolk claimants were tainted with a suspected stain of bastardy, for there had always been doubts as to the validity of Mary Tudor's union with the Duke of Suffolk, who had put away two previous wives by questionable processes.
Another possible Protestant claimant was Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon, a descendant of Edward III. Like Margaret Strange, he had no wish to be England's king, although Queen Elizabeth would sometimes give his wife (as he told his brother-in-law Robert Dudley) 'a privy nip concerning myself as a warning not to become too ambitious. He never did, avoiding 'conceiving any greatness of myself, and served her loyally.
Henry VIII had been at war with Scotland when the Act of Succession was passed, and at that time his ambition was to marry his son Edward to his young great-niece the Scots Queen, Mary Stuart, and so unite England and Scotland under English rule. The Scots resisted this violently, and therefore, when determining who was to succeed him, Henry passed over the heirs of his elder sister Margaret, who had married James IV of Scotland and was the grandmother of Mary Stuart. Hence, although many Catholics regarded Mary as the rightful Queen of England, or at the least the claimant with the greatest right to succeed Elizabeth, she had no right to a place in the succession according to English law. Some took the view that a foreigner born out of the realm was automatically barred from succeeding to the throne, because such people were legally prohibited from inheriting property in England. Others argued that the Crown was exempt from such constraints.
Similarly passed over by Henry VIII was Lady Margaret Douglas, Margaret Tudor's daughter by her second marriage to the Earl of Angus, and now the wife of Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, by whom she had two sons, a strong point in her favour. However, doubts as to the validity of her parents' marriage meant that few regarded her as a strong contender for a place in the succession. Lady Margaret, however, was a very ambitious woman, not for herself, but for her elder son, Henry, Lord Darnley, who had been born in England. This alone, some felt, gave him a better title than Mary Stuart, a foreigner.
In 1561, the Scots ambassador observed to the Queen that, apart from Mary Stuart, 'none of all the others who had any interest were meet for the Crown, or yet worthy of it'. The Queen's response was noncommittal. In fact, the subject of the succession was taboo with Elizabeth. From the first she made it clear that she had an abhorrence of naming an heir to succeed her. She had known what it was like to be the heir and to be the focus of conspiracy and rebellion, and there were threats enough to her security without that. If she acknowledged the right of any of these claimants to succeed, she once declared, she would be back in the Tower 'within a month'.
The answer, of course, was for her to marry and bear children, and de Feria was at hand to assist in this matter. Elizabeth had been so busy that he had seen her only once that January, coming out of her Privy Chamber. She had talked 'very gaily' to him, despite her cold, and, in response to his guarded query, informed him that the issue of her marriage would be raised in Parliament. He therefore decided to wait and see what transpired before laying Philip's proposal before her.
On Saturday, 4 February, the Commons drafted a formal petition to the Queen, asking her to marry as soon as possible in order to safeguard the succession. This petition was delivered to her two days later at Whitehall by a deputation from the House.
The petition reminded Elizabeth that it would be better for her 'and her kingdom if she would take a consort who might relieve her of those labours which are only fit for men', and the Speaker, Sir Thomas Gargrave, kneeling, candidly reminded her that, while princes are mortal, commonwealths are immortal. If she remained 'unmarried and, as it were, a vestal virgin', such a thing would be 'contrary to the public respects'.
When she heard his words, the Queen was plainly astonished at his boldness in broaching such a delicate issue, but she recovered herself and responded graciously, saying, 'In a matter most unpleasing, pleasing to me is the apparent goodwill of you and my people.' She stated that she had chosen to stay single despite being offered marriage by 'most potent princes', and that she considered she already had a husband and children. Showing them her coronation ring, she declared, as she was to do on many subsequent occasions: 'I am already bound unto a husband, which is the kingdom of England.' As for children, 'Every one of you, and as many as are Englishmen, are children and kinsmen to me.' She was gratified that the deputation had not named any potential husband, 'For that were most unbeseeming the majesty of an absolute princess, and unbeseeming your wisdom, who are subjects born.'
Elizabeth went on to assure her Commons that she would do as God directed her. She had never been inclined towards matrimony, but would not rule it out completely. If she did marry, she would not do anything to prejudice the commonwealth, but would choose a husband who 'would be as careful for the preservation of the realm as she was herself. However, it was possible that it would 'please Almighty God to continue me still in the mind to live out of the state of marriage'.
As for the succession, the Queen promised that 'the realm shall not remain destitute of an heir', yet who that heir was to be she did not specify. If she remained single, she continued, she was certain 'that God would so direct mine and your counsels that ye shall not need to doubt of a successor, who may be more beneficial to the commonwealth than he who may be born of me, considering that the issue of the best princes many times degenerateth'. Her children might 'grow out of kind, and become perhaps ungracious'. She was implying that any son of her body might conspire to overthrow her, a mere woman, a thing which few among her patriarchal advisers would try to prevent. At best, pressure might be put upon her to abdicate in favour of that son. In 1561, she confided to the Scots ambassador her belief that 'Princes cannot like their children, those that should succeed unto them,' quoting many notable examples where there had been discord and strife between monarchs and their heirs. There is little evidence anyway that the young Elizabeth was particularly fond of children, although she was to become godmother to over one hundred of them. All things considered, she continued, she would prefer, for her part, to leave the matter of her successor to Providence, trusting that, with divine help 'an heir that may be a fit governor' would somehow materialise.
Concluding, she declared: 'In the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.' Thus was born the legend of the Virgin Queen, upon which Elizabeth would capitalise to full advantage, and which would achieve cult status in the years to come.
A transcript of the Queen's speech was read out to the Commons on 10 February. Naturally, Parliament was startled and alarmed by Elizabeth's response: if she did not marry, there would be no heirs of her body to counteract the ever-present threats to her safety and security, and no satisfactory resolution to the succession question. The hoped-for religious settlement would be at risk, not to mention the lives of all her Protestant subjects. For a woman to reject marriage was seen as against the laws of nature, and most men concluded that their mistress was merely displaying an innate maidenly modesty, and would soon come to her senses when she realised the necessity for marriage. William Cecil's continual prayer would from henceforth be that 'God would send our mistress a husband, and by and by a son, that we may hope our posterity shall have a masculine succession'. He would repeatedly remind Elizabeth of his hope that God 'would direct Your Highness to procure a father for your children'. To Cecil, this petticoat government was an unnatural aberration; he longed to see a man in control of the government, and that could only be achieved once Elizabeth was married and preoccupied with her proper business of bearing children. Then her husband could rule in her name.
But the fact remained that, although Elizabeth was undoubtedly, as one councillor put it, 'the best marriage in her parish', she had no wish to marry. Politically, there were advantages to her remaining single. Her sister's unhappy example had exposed the dangers of espousing a foreign prince. Such a husband might offer protection against England's enemies, but he might also drain her resources in wars of his own. He might regard England as a mere satellite state of his own country, and -if he were a sovereign in his own right - he would certainly have to spend long periods out of the country. Moreover, the English were an insular, even xenophobic, nation, who had reacted adversely, indeed violently in some cases, to Queen Mary's Spanish match; they were unlikely to accept another foreign consort.
Of course, Elizabeth could always marry one of her own subjects, which was what the majority of Englishmen desired her to do. 'We are all of us in favour of one of our own countrymen in preference to a stranger,' wrote Roger Ascham, and Il Schifanoya reported how everyone 'agreed in wishing her to take an Englishman'. The main exceptions were Cecil, Arundel and the Duke of Norfolk, Elizabeth's cousin, who all foresaw greater advantages from a princely alliance.
However, the Queen had no desire to marry one of her subjects, predicting that to do so would cause dangerous rivalries at court and in the country. Factions would form, as in the Wars of the Roses, and the tensions thus created might even lead to civil war, as was to happen in Scotland within the decade. Furthermore, Elizabeth hesitated to demean her royal blood by marrying a commoner.
Above all, she did not want to lose her newly-gained freedom, having suffered constraints of one kind or other throughout her young life. Sixteenth-century husbands - even those married to queens regnant -were notoriously autocratic, and society regarded them as the masters in their homes. Wives were expected to be submissive and obedient, in honour of their marriage vows. A queen regnant was a novelty in that age, and stood in a virtually impossible position: placed by God in authority over her people, she was yet required to be subject to her husband. Queen Mary had reached an uneasy compromise in this respect, but was much resented by King Philip when she did not heed his advice or requests. Such a situation did not make for marital harmony, and Elizabeth was of a far more independent mind than her sister. Her formidable intellect and pride in her royal blood would have made it difficult for her to become the subordinate of any man. She meant to rule by herself, and had no intention of permitting any interference with her prerogative. If she married, both independence and prerogative would be under threat.
Privately, she was inclined towards a single existence. In 1559, she confided to a German envoy that 'she had found the celibate life so agreeable, and was so accustomed to it that she would rather go into a nunnery, or for that matter suffer death', than be forced to renounce it. The Imperial ambassador was informed by her that she would much prefer to be a 'beggarwoman and single, far rather than a queen and married'. On another occasion she stated that she took the issue of her marriage very seriously, it was a matter of earnest with her, and she could not marry as others did. She once told Parliament, 'If I were a milkmaid with a pail on my arm, whereby my private person might be little set by, I would not forsake that poor and single state to match with the greatest monarch.' She seems to have regarded marriage as a refuge for those who could not contain their lust: in 1576, she told Parliament that she held nothing against matrimony, nor would she judge amiss of such as, forced by necessity, cannot dispose themselves to another life'. She herself was determined not to give in to such fleshly weakness.
Writers have endlessly speculated that there was a more fundamental reason for her aversion to marriage. Robert Dudley later told a French ambassador that, from the age of eight, the Queen had declared that she would never marry. She had been eight when Henry VIII's fifth wife Katherine Howard had been executed for adultery, and this may have awakened a painful awareness of how her father had similarly killed her mother. When she was fifteen, the man who had sexually first aroused her in her early teens - Admiral Seymour - had gone to the block. It is possible that these events so traumatised her that she could only equate marriage with death. She herself told a Scots envoy in 1561 that certain events in her youth made it impossible for her to regard marriage with equanimity or equate it with security. She blamed this on the marital problems of her father and his sisters: 'Some say that this marriage was unlawful, some that one was a bastard, some other to and fro, as they favoured or misliked. So many doubts of marriage was in all hands that I stand [in] awe myself to enter into marriage, fearing the controversy.' In addition to this, the tragic connubial experiences of her sister Mary and the unhappy example of many marriages amongst the peerage cannot have failed to deter the Queen. In that age of arranged marriages, many well-born persons suffered in incompatible unions, and some, such as the Earls of Worcester, Derby and Shrewsbury, even separated from their wives. In each case Elizabeth would act as an unofficial marriage guidance counsellor, insisting - without success - upon reconciliation.
Another reason for her reluctance to marry may have been fear of childbirth. The whole business of childbearing was dangerous in the sixteenth century, and maternal mortality rates were high: two of Elizabeth's stepmothers, Jane Seymour and Katherine Parr, as well as her grandmother, Elizabeth of York, had succumbed to puerperal fever. Queen Mary had suffered the mortifying humiliation of two phantom pregnancies. Young brides, such as the late Duchess of Norfolk, could marry, conceive, give birth and die within the space of a year. The Queen's physician, Dr Huick, once warned her that childbirth might not be easy for her, and succeeded in scaring her profoundly. Time and again Elizabeth would flirt with the idea of marriage, only to shy away from the commitment at the last minute. It is true that there were often good political reasons for doing so, but it is possible that an inherent fear of childbirth was a factor.
It has also been suggested - as it was speculated in her own time - that Elizabeth was reluctant to marry because she knew that she could never bear children. The evidence for this is contradictory. Her ability to conceive was naturally the subject of intense, discreet diplomatic speculation and inquiry, and because of her reluctance to marry rumours abounded. In 1559 de Feria reported: 'If my spies do not lie, which I believe they do not, for a certain reason which they have recently given me, I understand she will not bear children.' In 1561, his successor wrote: 'The common opinion, confirmed by certain physicians, is that this woman is unhealthy, and it is believed certain that she will not bear children.' However, he had also heard other scurrilous rumours: there was 'no lack of people who say she already has some [children], but of this I have seen no trace, and do not believe it'. The Venetian ambassador informed the Doge that Elizabeth was barren, saying he had been told certain secrets about her that he did 'not dare to write'.
Thereafter, it became de rigueur for foreign emissaries to pursue the most delicate investigations in order to safeguard their masters' dynastic interests. Discreet inquiries were made of the royal chamberwomen, and the Spaniards regularly offered bribes to the Queen's laundress to divulge whether or not Her Majesty menstruated regularly. The woman reported that Elizabeth functioned perfectly normally as a woman, and thereafter King Philip always conducted diplomatic negotiations on the assumption that she would marry and produce heirs. He is unlikely to have done so had there been any good reason for believing otherwise.
Elizabeth herself seems to have fuelled the rumours. She once told the Earl of Sussex mysteriously that 'for her part, she hated the idea of marriage every day more, for reasons which she would not divulge to a twin soul, if she had one, much less to a living creature'. In 1566, the French ambassador's nephew quizzed one of the Queen's doctors on her ability to bear children. He told the doctor that Her Majesty had stated in the past that she understood from her physicians that she was barren, and he needed to know if this was true because, if it was, he would not wish the Queen to marry a member of the French royal house. The doctor stated that his mistress had been talking nonsense, and that she sometimes said such things out of caprice. If she did marry, he himself would answer for it that she was capable of bearing ten children, adding, 'There is not a man in the kingdom who knows her constitution better than I.'
In 1579, when Elizabeth was in her mid-forties, William Cecil himself closely questioned her physicians, laundresses and ladies as to whether she might still hope to bear children, and in a private memorandum he recorded: 'Considering the proportion of her body, having no impediment of smallness in stature, of largeness in body, nor no sickness nor lack of natural functions in those things that properly belong to the procreation of children, but contrariwise by judgement of physicians that know her estate in those things, and by the opinion of women, being more acquainted with Her Majesty's body', it could only be concluded that there was an overwhelming 'probability of her aptness to have children'. This investigation was also prompted by fears that bearing children so late in life would endanger the Queen's life. The report was not intended for public - or royal - consumption, and Cecil was apparently satisfied with the results.
But as the years passed, and the Queen remained childless, a lot of people came to believe she had indeed been infertile all along. Mary, Queen of Scots, many years later, claimed that Bess of Hardwick had informed her that Elizabeth was 'not like other women', but she had an ulterior motive tor doing so, since she had quarrelled with Bess and wished to expose her to the Queen as a spiteful gossip; therefore we must not place too much weight on her allegation. A more reliable witness was Elizabeth's godson, Sir John Harington, who in the 1590s voiced the general and widespread viewpoint when he wrote: 'In mind, she hath ever had an aversion and (as many think) in body some indisposition to the act of marriage.' Elizabeth may well have confided to Harington the fact that she had a mental aversion to sex - although this is by no means certain - but he was purely speculating as to the physical indisposition. In fact, in her courtships, Elizabeth usually assumed that her marriage would be fruitful.
When she was dead, the playwright Benjonson - no admirer of hers- told a Scots friend, William Drummond of Hawthornden, whilst they were drinking wine together, that the Queen had 'had a membrane on her, which made her incapable of man, though for her delight she tried many'. His source for this information is unknown, and he was probably repeating mere gossip, or inventing it under the influence of alcohol.
Modern writers have speculated that the gossip had its basis in fact, and that Elizabeth either had an abnormally thick hymen or suffered from an hysterical condition that causes sexual penetration to be excruciatingly painful. Recently, the writer Michael Bloch has suggested that the Queen, like the Duchess of Windsor, was a victim of Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. In such cases, sufferers are born with male XY chromosomes but, owing to the body's failure to produce male sex hormones, develop outwardly as females. However, they have no ovaries, and only a deformed womb and a shallow vagina. Of course, it is impossible for them to bear children or even, in some cases, achieve sexual intercourse. Adults tend to be tall, mannish, and straight-limbed with 'strident personalities', although they can appear to be very attractive women. Elizabeth, argues Mr Bloch, may well have suffered from AIS. However, unless one takes into account Ben Jonson's highly dubious testimony, there is no proof to support this or any other of these theories.
At the beginning of her reign, Sir Thomas Challoner warned Elizabeth: 'A young princess cannot be too wary what countenance of familiar demonstration she maketh.' In other words, she could not be too circumspect in her behaviour. But it was not long before fantastic tales of her alleged promiscuity abounded, particularly in the courts of Catholic princes, where she was sometimes reviled - much as her mother had been - as a virtual nymphomaniac. It was said that she refrained from marriage so as to gratify her lusts with numerous lovers. Unfortunately, Elizabeth made no secret of the fact that she was interested in sex, and demonstrated a vicarious pleasure in talking about it. This, along with her known partiality for handsome, virile, intelligent men, her notorious flirtatiousness and sometimes outrageous behaviour led many to believe that rumour did not lie and that she was not the Virgin Queen she claimed to be.
There were numerous stories that she had secretly borne children, although how she could have done so without people knowing of it, given the very public life she led, remained unexplained. The jealous Bess of Hardwick was fond of relaying to Mary, Queen of Scots all the nasty tales she had heard of Elizabeth, such as how she had been discovered often in bed with the Earl of Leicester, or how she had forced Sir Christopher Hatton to make love to her. Mary very rashly repeated all this in a letter to her cousin, in a deliberate attempt to get Bess into trouble. Luckily for Bess, Cecil intercepted the letter and ensured that the Queen never saw it. Bess later confessed to the Council that she had made up all the tales, and Hatton would swear to Sir John Harington, 'voluntarily and with vehement asservation, that he never had any carnal knowledge of Her Majesty's body'.
Abroad, Catholic writers such as the English Jesuits, Nicholas Sanders and Robert Parsons and Cardinal William Allen, were the source of many of the scurrilous - and untrue - stories about Elizabeth's promiscuity.
In England, as we shall see, those who were caught spreading malicious gossip about the Queen were often punished by the authorities, for fear that ignorant people would believe and spread the rumours. As late as 1598, Edward Francis of Dorset was hauled before the justices for having said, in an attempt to persuade one Elizabeth Baylie to cohabit with him, 'that the best in England had done so, and had three bastards by noblemen of the court, and was herself base-born'.
In later years, the notorious sadist, Richard Topclyffe, who tortured prisoners in the Tower of London, boasted of having touched Elizabeth's breasts and seen her bare thighs. He was probably fantasising, although, as we shall see, on one occasion in old age, the Queen appeared to enjoy exposing her breasts to a French ambassador.
Yet Elizabeth was too much mistress of herself and too great a stateswoman to succumb to the temptations of illicit sex. She was a proud and normally dignified woman who was very conscious of her exalted status and strict about observing propriety, and it is hardly likely that she would have risked her reputation, or the possible security of her throne, for physical pleasure. There was no effective contraception in those days, and a pregnancy outside wedlock would have spelled ruin for her. The very fact that she took no pains to hide her love and admiration for certain men indicates that her relations with them were above reproach. There is no proof to support the gossip. In 1561, when the rumours were at their most rampant, Nils Guilderstern, Chancellor of Sweden, came to England to press the suit of his master, King Erik. Having observed Elizabeth at court, Guilderstern reported: 'I saw no signs of an immodest life, but I did see many signs of chastity, virginity and true modesty; so that I would stake my life itself that she is most chaste.'
This was a view that would be shared by many other ambassadors in the years to come. Most agreed that the rumours were 'but the spawn of envy and malice'. In 1571, the French envoy, de la Mothe Fenelon, informed the Queen of France that Elizabeth was 'good and virtuous', adding that the gossip could not be believed when one had experienced the ethos of the English court, where the Queen, who was watched 'with Argus eyes', both inspired and received such a degree of respect as to preclude any possibility of her being unchaste.
Another French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau, Sieur de la Mauvissiere, having been acquainted with Elizabeth for a quarter of a century, stated: 'If attempts were made falsely to accuse her of love affairs, I can say with truth that these were sheer inventions of the malicious and of the ambassadorial staffs, to put off those who would have found an alliance with her useful.' Most Spanish ambassadors were hostile to the English Queen, but one, de Silva, admitted that he was never able to find any truth in the rumours about her virtue. Elizabeth herself had told him: 'I do not live in a corner. A thousand eyes see all I do, and calumny will not fasten on me for ever.' There was no question in the minds of most of the Queen's subjects that she was inviolably chaste. Years later, the Lord Chief Justice, the brilliant Francis Bacon, described her as 'certainly good and moral; and as such she desired to appear' and his sentiments were echoed by others who knew her well, such as William Cecil and Sir Francis Walsingham, successive Secretaries of State.
The Queen's much vaunted virginity was a matter, not of personal choice, but of state policy, and in many ways it cost her dear, condemning her to a lifetime of lonely isolation, emotional deprivation and enforced chastity. She did indeed make a virtue of what she saw to be a necessity, and the strain sometimes showed. She may have teased her lovers and allowed them certain liberties - she was undoubtedly of an amorous nature - but never more than that. It may well be that the sex act itself did frighten her in some way, that she was psychologically unable to give herself to a man. But even if this were true, it did not alter the fact that she felt more invincible in the persona of the Virgin Queen than she would have done as a married sovereign. To remain invincible, she must not only bear the name but also play the part with conviction. And that meant that illicit sexual intercourse was forever strictly out of the question, whatever her private feelings about it.
Many people believed, and some still do, that because Elizabeth loved courtship and flirtation she was sexually immoral, but in fact she lived a very circumscribed life - she was hardly ever alone, being (as she said herself) 'always surrounded by my Ladies of the Bedchamber and maids of honour', who slept in her room - and she valued herself and her honour highly: it would have been unthinkable tor the Queen of England to become some man's plaything. 'My life is in the open, and I have so many witnesses,' she once said, having learned what was being said about her abroad. 'I cannot understand how so bad a judgement can have been formed of me.' She had, moreover, learned what happened to queens - and, for that matter, princesses - who were suspected of overstepping the bounds of morality, and it had been a grim lesson. Besides, while she remained unattainable, she remained in control of her relationships, and that was how she liked things to be.
Hardly anyone took Elizabeth at her word when she expressed her wish to stay single. Both Parliament and the Council would behave as if only the choice of husband was an issue, and foreign ambassadors would press the suits of their various masters with good hopes of success. Elizabeth played along with this game enthusiastically. She loved nothing better than masculine attention and flattery, and revelled in the rituals of courtship. So well did she play her part that most people were deceived into thinking that she had indeed changed her mind about remaining celibate, and that it was only a matter of time and choice before she gave herself in marriage. This view was given credence by Elizabeth's fondness for discussing her possible nuptials, or declaring that 'She was but human and not insensible to human emotions, and when it became a question of the weal of her kingdom, or it might be for other reasons, her heart and mind might change.' She became, it was said by a courtier, 'greedy of marriage proposals'. It would also prove advantageous to her to have European princes competing for her hand and England's friendship at a time when the country was weak and impoverished. While they believed they stood a chance of success, they would not think of making war or stirring up trouble.
The matter of the Queen's marriage was to dominate English political thinking and policy and provoke endless speculation for a quarter of a century, with many tortuous twists and turns along the way that would cause untold grief and anguish to Her Majesty's beleaguered advisers, most of whom were utterly perplexed by her contrary behaviour. Few, even Cecil, realised that she meant it when she said, as she did on numerous occasions, that she had no desire to marry.
A quarter of a century of queenly prevarication was initiated in February 1559, when Elizabeth received the first marriage proposal since her accesssion. De Feria at last obtained a private audience and informed the Queen of King Philip's hopes. He was disconcerted when she displayed no sense of the honour being done her, and even more so when she responded by delivering a coy speech about the virtues of remaining a virgin. Unimpressed, the ambassador retorted that, if she did not marry and produce an heir to sit on England's throne, the King of France would rise against her and place Mary Stuart there instead.
This was a red rag before a bull, and prompted a furious outburst from the Queen, in which she 'began to rave' against King Henry II, the Dauphin, Mary Stuart and the French and Scottish nations in general. So vehement was her anger that, having raged and stormed for a considerable time, she collapsed with fatigue into a chair, telling de Feria that she needed time to think about King Philip's proposal.
A few days later, she was more rational, although she did point out the objections that could be made against such a marriage. The King's marriage to her sister had placed herself and Philip within the forbidden degrees of affinity; although the Pope would hardly be likely to refuse Philip a dispensation, this would be controversial in England, for had not Henry VIII been so 'scrupulous' as to question the Pope's right to issue a dispensation allowing him to marry his brother's widow? An English court had declared that marriage invalid, and it was likely that the validity of a marriage between Elizabeth and her sister's widower would be similarly disputed. The Queen quoted the Book of Leviticus to de Feria to prove her point, saying that she could never accept a papal decree which contravened the Word of God. For these reasons, she went on, she could not marry her sister's husband without dishonouring her father's memory.
However, all was not lost. She would, she promised, lay the matter before Parliament and the Council, and in the meantime the ambassador could assure King Philip that, if she married at all, she would prefer to take him before all others.
For the next month she considered the matter, while de Feria grew daily more optimistic. But the Queen's councillors, when they heard of the proposal, were aghast that their mistress could even contemplate accepting it, and in heated discussions did their best to dissuade her from doing so. She assured them that she would do nothing prejudicial to England's interests: 'I am descended by father and mother of mere English blood, and not of Spain, as my late sister was,' she told them. Nevertheless, it would not be politic to turn down King Philip with unflattering haste, because England still needed Spain's friendship, especially since a peace with France had not yet been concluded. For the time being, therefore, de Feria might continue to hope for a favourable answer.