Elizabeth and Mary Read online

  Nowhere was this more keenly monitored than in France where Henri II, with his eye firmly on his daughter-in-law, Mary Queen of Scots, and the opportunity she presented of further advancing his empire, was attempting to enlist the pope as a powerful ally in his plan to outlaw Elizabeth and annex England. The grandest of Spanish ambassadors was Count de Feria who, in his report to Philip II, saw nothing but doom to Spanish hopes, to the world, if France got its way. ‘Whenever the King of France finds means in Rome to get this woman declared a heretic, together with her bas-tardy, and advances his own claim’,51 Feria believed, France would be able to walk into England, so debilitated was its exchequer and so disabled by having yet another woman ruler, this time of dubious legitimacy. All the French needed was the pope’s authority assuring the support of the English Catholics and the seductive substitute queen, Mary Stuart, as the rightful heir: already he had the one and was working on providing the other.

  Elizabeth and all her court made the journey from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey on foot. The great church, rebuilt by Henry III as a soaring monument to faith three centuries before, dominated the skyline and drew thousands of the new queen’s subjects from the grandest to the lowliest to witness and participate in this ancient rite. Elizabeth walked in procession to her coronation along a carpet of purple cloth which seemed to melt like snow and disappear the moment her feet had passed, as the crowd grabbed what they could, tearing and cutting it away, for any scrap as a memento of this auspicious day.

  Tall and slim, Elizabeth followed the procession of lords and ladies of the court and her bishops, her face pale, her hair worn loose and unadorned over her shoulders as a symbol of virginity. As she arrived at the abbey all the church bells in the city were ringing out in a clamour of celebration. Then Elizabeth mounted the high platform raised in front of the altar that exhibited her clearly to everyone and the question was asked of the people whether they wished to have her as their queen. The roared ‘YES’ was followed by a cacophony of ‘organs, fifes, trumpets, and drums playing, the bells also ringing, it seemed as if the world were come to an end’.52

  The coronation Mass proceeded to its centuries-old pattern of prayer and elaborate ritual lasting several hours, with Bishop Oglethorpe of Carlisle officiating. Resplendent on her throne, Elizabeth retained all aspects of the ceremony and Mass, except for the crucial elevation of the Host. This was a rite which she had already made clear was distasteful to her; she had ordered once before the same bishop to desist from elevating the Host at his Christmas Day mass and when he had refused she had withdrawn from the service.53 Now at her coronation, when the Host was elevated, with all the concomitant meanings of transubstantiation, a doctrine considered clearly idolatrous by the Protestant reformers, the queen once more withdrew. She only returned to her throne once the offending ritual was over.

  There was one other modification that would have given her bishops and their Catholic supporters pause for thought. At the end of the coronation ceremony itself, just prior to the Mass, the monarch accepted a ritual homage from her bishops and peers. Traditionally the archbishops headed the queue in order of seniority, followed by the bishops and then the lords. This was the order followed by Elizabeth’s father and the founder of the dynasty, her grandfather Henry VII. It was also followed closely by her sister Mary. Her brother Edward, however, accepted homage first from the Protector, the Duke of Somerset, followed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and then all the bishops and peers together with no distinction between his lords temporal or spiritual. Elizabeth instituted a significant change in accepting homage first from her officiating bishop but ‘then the Lordes went up to her Grace kneeling upon their knees and kissed her Grace. And after the Lordes had done, the Bishops came one after another kneeling and kissing her Grace.’54 This was a clear message to her bishops, and the church they represented, not to take their pre-eminence for granted.

  The news travelled fast to her Continental neighbours. The Count de Feria, always full of foreboding and implacable in his dislike and suspicion of the English and ‘that woman’ wrote to Philip of Spain in outrage and a sense of doom: ‘I had been told that the Queen [the following continued in cipher] took the holy sacrament sub utraque specie [both wine and bread] on the day of the coronation, but it was all nonsense. She did not take it.’55 His spirits were lowered further when Elizabeth told him she resented the amount of money that flowed out of the country yearly for the pope’s use and that she considered her bishops to be ‘lazy poltroons’.56 It did not need a Dr Dee to divine that change was going to come.

  Mary, along with her father-in-law Henri and her own Guise family, was increasingly concerned about the growing strength of the reformed religion in France and the inevitable factions and unrest. A desultory peace process between Spain, France and England had already begun before Elizabeth’s accession to the throne and this progressed slowly throughout the early months of her reign. Mary wrote to her mother with some of her anxieties: ‘We were hoping for a peace but that is still so uncertain … God grant it all turns out well.’57

  The greatest stumbling block in the peace negotiations between France and England was the emotive question of Calais. This was not helped by the insolence of the French negotiators who had stated initially: ‘that they knew not how to conclude a peace with the Queen’s majesty, nor to whom they should deliver Calais, but to the dolphin’s wife, [Mary Queen of Scots] whom they took for Queen of England’.58 Elizabeth’s Minister of State William Cecil, who had noted this insult in a report written in his own hand, On the Weighty Matter of Scotland, was also concerned by Mary’s manner towards Elizabeth, revealed ‘by her own disdainful speech to diverse persons’.59 The young Scottish queen’s disparagement of her older cousin was not confined to her acolytes at court but rashly had been expressed to some of Elizabeth’s own gentlewomen in France. Mary’s impetuous nature and political naivety had already begun to store up trouble for her in the fast evolving dynamic between the two queens.

  As Elizabeth left the abbey on her coronation day as Queen of England, wearing her heavy robe of cloth of gold and carrying her orb and sceptre in each hand, she was greeted by the clamour of the crowds, their voices and their musical instruments sounding, and all the city’s church bells ringing. Young, alone, and with her ministers and court processing behind her, she seemed in no way overwhelmed by the solemnity and significance of the occasion. On the contrary, she was beaming so broadly, greeting everyone who greeted her, shouting witticisms back to the crowd, sharing her delight with her exuberant subjects to such an extent that at least one of her foreign, Catholic observers looked on with disapproval: ‘in my opinion she exceeded the grounds of gravity and decorum’.60

  It was remarkable indeed that Elizabeth, still young and quite inexperienced, should exhibit such confidence and revel so obviously in the acquisition of power. Her animal high spirits naturally reciprocated her own subjects’ ebullience, and they loved her for it. In fact her ability to be affectionate and informal with the crowd was all the more surprising given that this was a queen who was a natural autocrat of the most self-conscious kind, in all ways the daughter of a ruthlessly autocratic father to whose burnished memory she aspired. With a penetrating intelligence and lively sympathy, Elizabeth was never to be as brutal or warlike as Henry, nor as self-serving, but she was capable of being as princely as Machiavelli could ever have prescribed in her pragmatic ability to do what was necessary.

  The Spanish ambassador was surprised at how superstitious he found the English to be: ‘so full of prophecies … that nothing happens but they immediately come out with some prophecy that foretold it … serious people and good Catholics even take notice of these things.’61 And so as Elizabeth walked amongst them on that cold January day, what were the prognostications for her reign? Some Catholics hoped she would only rule for a short time before Philip II of Spain was once more back in power, presumably as her consort; others thought her growing popularity and the promise of chang
e would pacify the discontented; others looked to a French Catholic alliance with Mary Queen of Scots as queen. But most rejoiced in the fact that Elizabeth was a monarch in whose veins ran unadulterated English blood. The Venetian ambassador also noted, ‘She prides herself on her father and glories in him; everybody saying that she also resembles him more than [Mary I did]; and he therefore always liked her.’62 If this imperious and clever daughter could prove herself even half the man her father was they would be happy.

  Her sex was a problem, but they consoled themselves with thoughts of Deborah, and God’s trust in her, of Mathilda, Boudicca, even of Cleopatra VII whose courage in holding off the Romans was well known to the educated through their reading of Horace and Plutarch. They had claimed Cleopatra’s conversation rather than her beauty was the secret of her fascination. But even if there were a few precedents for successful female rulers, no one considered that a woman could effectively rule alone. One thing everyone agreed on, from her first minister, William Cecil, to the lowliest beggar in the stocks: the queen must marry, and marry soon. No one seemed to take seriously Elizabeth’s professed contentment with the ring of state she had worn on her marriage finger since pledging herself to the nation at her coronation: ‘bound unto an husband, which is the kingdom of England’.63

  And so with Mary Stuart’s marriage and Elizabeth Tudor’s coronation the two most important celebrations of their lives marked the increasingly divergent yet interdependent paths of the Queen of Scotland and the Queen of England. The one had married her prince to pursue her destiny as a woman. The other had married her people in recognition of her destiny as a queen. Mary’s status as queen also mattered greatly to her but she considered it an immutable right, somehow divorced from any real sense of self-sacrifice and responsibility. Whereas Elizabeth never doubted the awesome responsibilities of her task, ‘the burden that is fallen upon me maketh me amazed’64 were amongst the first words she spoke as queen to her Lords. The struggles, triumphs and tragedies that followed were a direct result of each woman’s individual decision: the one to put the personal increasingly before the political; the other to sacrifice the personal and place her responsibilities as queen at the centre of her life.

  A fatal complication ensued when Mary turned her sights on the greater crown of England, believing it her rightful inheritance and a prize worth pursuing. Elizabeth’s fundamental insecurity in her own legitimacy, where the whole of Catholic Europe was ranged against her, the ‘bastard child of a whore’, increased the tension and emotional volatility of the issue. The complex rivalry, the feinting and parrying of their personal relationship, sprang from the challenge Mary had made for Elizabeth’s throne and the unassailable legitimacy of her claim. The powerful passions this relationship engendered in each was a result of their strikingly different natures. The fact they never met allowed their rivalry to inflate in each queen’s imagination, their qualities elaborated upon by ambassadors and courtiers intent on their own ambitions.

  In a tradition instituted by William the Conqueror, the Champion of England on coronation day would ride up through Westminster Hall and challenge anyone who disputed the right of succession. In front of the newly crowned queen and her peers, the clatter of hooves announced the arrival of the queen’s champion. Sir Edward Dymoke, the latest member of the family who for centuries had enacted this role, rode into the hall in full armour, and flung down his gauntlet, challenging anyone who questioned Elizabeth’s right to the English throne. An uneasy silence fell on the assembly. No voice was raised on this day. But Elizabeth and Mary knew that the question had already been asked, that the contest was engaged, and in a more public arena, with wider repercussions for everyone.

  A rivalry had been instituted that ‘could not be extinguished but by Death’.65

  * * *

  *La Pléiade was a group of seven French writers, led by Pierre de Ronsard and including Joachim du Bellay, Jean Dorat and Remy Belleau, who aimed to elevate the French language to the level of classical Greek and Latin as a medium for literary expression. They were named after the constellation and are considered the first representatives of French Renaissance poetry.

  *The Hamiltons became nearest family to the throne when Lord Hamilton married James II’s daughter, Princess Mary, in c. 1474. Their grandson James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran, born about 1516, engineered his position as regent and heir presumptive on the death of James V. But Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, was also descended from Princess Mary and so believed he too had a claim to be heir presumptive, possibly even more indubitably legitimate than Arran who was born of a marriage which had followed a divorce. The Hamilton – Lennox rivalry was one of the dynamic power struggles of the reign of Mary Queen of Scots.

  *William Camden (1551–1623) was an antiquary and historian, one time headmaster of Westminster School where Ben Jonson was his pupil and claimed that he owed him ‘all that I am in arts, all that I know’. In 1615 Camden published his ground-breaking and authoritative Annales Rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum Regnante Elizabetha which marked a new departure in the writing of history with its use of state papers and lively, often first-hand, description, combined with academic detachment and lack of bias.

  *Sir John Hayward (?1564–1627) a historian who was imprisoned by Elizabeth for offending her with his dedication to the Earl of Essex in his history of Henry IV (1599), suggesting Essex was likewise capable of usurping the crown. Hayward subsequently wrote a lively account of the early part of Elizabeth’s reign.

  *The French queen, Catherine de Medici, was yet to assume full regency and exercise her considerable authority and guile in the religious wars which convulsed France.

  *Schifanoya, resident in London at the time, was the author of some descriptive and lively dispatches to the Spanish court in Brussels.

  *Possibly Charles Howard, a handsome courtier born in 1536 who became Lord Chamberlain and Lord Admiral and eventually was rewarded with the earldom of Nottingham in 1597.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Disappointment of Kings

  The primogenity and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, But by degree, stand in authentic place? Take but degree away, untune that string, And, hark, what discord follows!

  Troilus and Cressida, act 1, scene 3

  IF THE RIVALRY BETWEEN these two queens would only be resolved through death, the individual significance of their births had a certain symmetry too. Both entered the world as bitter disappointments to their fathers, and the birth of each princess was a contributory factor in the untimely death of a parent. It was all a matter of sex. Both fathers were kings without legitimate male heirs. Had Elizabeth not been a girl but the longed-for, expected prince it is most unlikely that her mother would ever have been executed. It is even possible that Henry’s popular reputation might have rested more on his Reformation, encouraged by his independent-minded reformist Queen Anne, than on his grotesque failures as a husband and father.

  In the case of Mary Queen of Scots, her birth in 1542 was followed almost immediately by her father’s death. Already sick and humiliated, James V, on hearing his heir was a girl, literally turned his face to the wall like a wounded animal, and waited to die. His valedictory words showed him defeated as much by fate as by life: looking back two centuries to Marjorie Bruce, founder of the Stewart dynasty, he reputedly said to the messenger bringing the news of Mary’s birth: ‘It cam’ wi’ a lass, it will gang wi’ a lass.’1 In fact, James was as poor a prophet as he was survivor. He died aged only thirty and without seeing his daughter and heir. The Stuart* dynasty, however, managed to teeter on for a further century, despite revolution and republicanism, although Scotland’s absolute independence did not survive the reign of his daughter Mary.

  Nine years separated these two princesses, born in neighbouring kingdoms in an outlying island of Europe. England and Scotland were small and relatively unimportant, impoverished lands, mostly under threat from the many times larger and richer Continental powers o
f France and Spain, and spasmodically at war with them, and with each other. The newly established and insecure Tudor dynasty was in urgent need of a male heir; the Stewarts, although an ancient race of kings, were ill-fated, desperate for a monarch who could survive to middle age and produce a strong male heir. The last five Scottish kings had been children at their accession, most of them still in the cradle. (Mary Queen of Scots and her son, James VI, were also to succeed to the Scottish throne as infants.)

  The Stewarts were plagued by their history of monarchs dying violently and dying young (James I and James III were murdered and James II, a murderer himself, was blown up while watching his own cannon being fired) and they were undermined by the subsequent power of factious regents and murderous clan rivalry. When they eventually succeeded at the start of the seventeenth century to the English throne and moved south, their life expectancy improved. The dynasty’s star, however, continued as mismanaged and bloody as ever it was in earlier centuries, with both Mary and her grandson, Charles I, tried and beheaded for treason.

  Elizabeth was born on 7 September 1533 to a father who was already forty-one and who had longed for a healthy son during the twenty-three years of his marriage to the unimpeachable Catherine of Aragon. In despair at producing only one surviving child, Mary, born in 1516 (his other three sons and two daughters were either stillborn or died soon after birth), Henry began to wonder if somehow his lack of male heirs was not a personal punishment by God. He looked across to France at his main rival, François I, a chivalrous and extravagant Renaissance king whose reign of thirty-two years corresponded with Henry’s so closely that they even died within two months of each other, in 1547. Henry identified with this athletic, popular, resplendent monarch whose procreative vitality seemed gallingly superior to his own. François’s fragile Queen Claude had managed to produce seven live children, three of them sons, before herself dying of exhaustion at twenty-four.