After Elizabeth Read online

  The Lord Deputy, Mountjoy, was pressing for Elizabeth to grant Tyrone a pardon so that the war could be concluded. Cecil supported him, arguing that if they were to defend themselves from the Spanish, Ireland needed to be secure. Elizabeth, however, had turned down Mountjoy’s request, informing him that she would not accept any submission from “the author of so much misery to our loving subjects.” The Irish rebels had indeed been cruel. The wives of English settlers in Munster had been forced to watch their own children being slain, and had then been raped, had their noses slit and were whipped as they ran naked down the roads. But now the rebel army was ruined and the Irish people were starving. Essex’s former secretary in Ireland, Fynes Moryson, recorded “no spectacle was more frequent in the ditches of towns, and especially in wasted countries, than to see multitudes of these poor people dead with their mouths all coloured green by eating nettles, docks, and all things they could rend up above ground.” 25 Harington described the famine as “so terrible . . . as no chronicle of Jew or Gentile hath the like.”26 No purpose, not even revenge, could be served by continuing the war.

  Cecil enclosed a letter of his own with Elizabeth’s instructions to Mountjoy, confiding his belief that the Queen was “almost in conflict with herself” as to what to do about Tyrone. He believed her fundamental concern was her own position and “how to terrify future traitors when so horrible a traitor [as Tyrone] is received.”27 The long shadow of the Essex revolt still hung over Elizabeth; she knew that even now—perhaps especially now—she might not be allowed to die peacefully in her bed. When Cecil continued to try to persuade her to pardon Tyrone she turned on him, claiming it “most dishonourable to pardon a rebel that had made seven years war with her; whereas she could not be permitted to spare Essex’s head for one day’s delict.”28 Eventually Cecil succeeded in getting her agreement to the pardon, but her depression worsened. Letters were arriving from Arbella claiming that she had a secret admirer at court—a man whose credit was “great with her Majesty.”

  As Elizabeth pondered who this potential new traitor might be, her misery was compounded by the death of her cousin Elizabeth Carey, Countess of Nottingham. The Countess had been Elizabeth’s longest-serving Lady of the Bedchamber and the Queen’s grief was insupportable. She disappeared to her room, the dancing at court stopped and the gossip on her state of health grew louder. “And now Brouncker is again sent unto [Arbella] and it is thought will bring her to Woodstock, where she shall be kept,” Anthony Rivers informed his Jesuit contacts in Europe. “What the design may be cannot yet be discovered.” He had noticed the Shrewsburys were in close contact with Cecil: “many secret meetings are made between them, where, after serious consults, they dispatch messengers and packets of letters, and this sometimes twice in a week.”29 The old rumors of Cecil’s interest in marrying Arbella were revived and Rivers thought it possible that Cecil was behind Arbella’s action, for “so subtle is the Secretary that hardly can it be judged which way he will take, and as yet he rules all.”30

  Arbella had begun to eat again at Owlcotes and by the beginning of March she was well enough to return to Hardwick for a new round of interviews with Brouncker. She was delighted that her invention of an admirer had brought Brouncker back and she answered all his queries about the identity of her friend with the answer “the King of Scots,” the one man she could name without harm to anyone. Brouncker quickly realized that they had been duped and, angry to have been lured from court at such a crucial time, announced that he would be returning to Richmond immediately. Distraught at the idea of being left again at Hardwick, Arbella wrote to the Queen, apologizing for her recent behavior, in tones of the greatest bitterness. She realized, she told Elizabeth, that her life was to be more unfortunate than she had ever thought possible and only death could make her “absolutely and eternally happy.”

  After Brouncker had gone, Arbella went to the long gallery where he had first interviewed her, this time with her young cousin Mary Talbot, the daughter of Mary and Gilbert Shrewsbury. The fire was smoking and it stung their eyes as they walked “sullenly as if our hearts had been too great to give one another a good word, and so to dinner.” After Arbella had eaten she went to ask her grandmother’s blessing, as part of her nightly routine. She was met with a “volley of most bitter and injurious words” from Bess and a stream of questions from her uncle William. She ran to her study. They followed her and watched as she started writing a letter, demanding to know whom the letter was to. She told them it was to Brouncker and read it aloud before running back to the long gallery to find a servant to carry it. Arbella found the household warming themselves by the fire. As she burst in they shrank back “as if they had been afraid of me.” She had already caused the death of one servant and the ruin of another, but one man who “stood with his hat in his hand and my glove in his hat” offered to take her letter to Brouncker. 31

  It was a long, rambling missive and Cecil marked it with the comment, “I think she has some strange vapours to her brain.” Many other letters followed as Brouncker made his way back to Richmond. Sometimes she wrote twice a day, often letters of thousands of words, pouring forth a great spate of misery and recrimination. “If you think to make me weary of my life and so conclude it according to Mr Starkey’s tragical example you are deceived,” she wrote in one. “I recommend my innocent cause to your consideration, and God’s holy protection . . . for all men are liars. There is no trust in man whose breath is in his nostrils.”3219

  Brouncker arrived back at court just as Elizabeth emerged from her room. She was described as in such “a deep melancholy that she must die herself,” but the business of government went on. The Treasurer, Lord Buckhurst, was telling her that her coffers were empty and that immediate funds were required for Ireland, while the City of London pressed hard for the repayment of her debts. She became so testy and impatient that soon only Cecil dared approach her.33 Elizabeth appeared suspicious that some men around her were “ill affected” and she complained frequently about Arbella and whoever might be supporting her. 34 On 9 March Cecil wrote to the English ambassador in Edinburgh, George Nicolson, warning that Elizabeth’s ill health and depression had become so serious that her life could be measured in months at most. The Queen was eating little and although she did not have a cough or a fever, her mouth and tongue were dry and her chest hot. She couldn’t sleep and would not stay in bed or take physic; instead, to everyone’s dismay, she had spent the previous three days walking restlessly in the garden.35

  The spy Rivers gave his contacts additional information on the Queen’s state of health. Every day, he wrote, Elizabeth would complain of some new infirmity, “as imposthumation near her head, aches in her bones, and continual colds in her legs, besides a notable disease of judgement and memory insomuch as she cannot abide discourses of government and state, but delights to have old Canterbury tales to which she is very attentive.” When the Venetian Scaramelli sought a second audience with the Queen he was amazed to be sent a message that she wished to discuss only “pleasant topics” and that if he wanted to return to the matter of Piers the pirate he would have to wait for the report of her Commissioners. The mood at court was gloomy: “all are in a damp,” Rivers reported: “Matters of succession are now ordinary discourse, both in court and country, but no appearance of any likely to prevail but the King of Scots, upon whom the far greater part of the realm seem to have fixed their hopes. Many have utter aversion that way, and would be opposite had they any potent competitor.”

  Arbella was seen as James’s chief rival and his supporters were doing their best to damage her reputation, encouraging rumors that she was mad. Scaramelli observed that the kings of Spain and France were, nevertheless, publicly well disposed toward her. Henri IV was particularly active and tried to deflect Elizabeth’s mistrust of Arbella’s supporters by informing her that several members of her nobility were in secret contact with James. This she easily believed, according to the historian William Camden, as “some of the Lords
of the Court (to say nothing of the Ladies), who had the least reason of all to have done it, ungratefully . . . forsook her.” 36 They included the Countess of Nottingham’s sister, Lady Scrope, a lady of the Privy Chamber, and Elizabeth’s pampered godson, Sir John Harington, who railed at dinners about the shortcomings of her government. Some courtiers were even overheard arguing that James should be sent for.

  As the sense of impending crisis deepened, the head of the Jesuits in England, Henry Garnet, showed a group of former soldiers the secret papal brief ordering all Catholics to oppose the crowning of a heretic. They included the Essex rebel and future gunpowder plotter Robert Catesby. The Jesuit faction was desperate for the Spanish to fulfill their promises to carry out an invasion that month and a son of Lord Buckhurst, the Catholic Thomas Sackville, was on his way to Rome to try to hurry preparations. The Spanish, however, were only now composing a letter to Rome confirming their support for an English-born candidate. A Scots invasion seemed more likely and it was variously reported that James would bring 14,000 or 30,000 troops into the field to secure the succession. Rivers heard that troops had been made ready in the north to confront them: “My Lord Burghley, the President, is sent down to see this done, and all this to withstand the Scot.”37 Work was meanwhile going ahead for the defense of London: “the Council have consented to have thirty thousand quarters of wheat to be put by, laid up in our storehouses of London, and that the ditches shall be cleansed and enlarged two feet.”

  But the Council’s immediate fear was not, in fact, of invasion by Scotland or even Spain. It was of revolution in England. The previous decade had seen much social unrest. In rural areas public anger centered on the enclosure and intensive use of common land by the larger landowners. During the famine year of 1596 there had been riots and disturbances in Derbyshire, Northamptonshire, Somerset and Oxfordshire, where, it was said, peasants hoped “to knock down the gentlemen and rich men.”38 London, however, had also seen violence. On 27 June 1595 large numbers of London apprentices, angry that the rich were evading their share of taxation, had gathered in Leadenhall and Cheapside: 1,800 people marched to the Mayor of London’s house and erected a gallows in front of his door. Two days later the Attorney General saw a further thousand armed with “guns . . . pikes, pole axes, swords, daggers, staves and such like” rioting on Tower Hill. Elizabeth had declared martial law but it was several days before the situation was brought under control.39 The elite feared that Elizabeth’s death could now be the trigger to revolution, since it was widely believed that during an interregnum no legitimate government existed. It would be weeks, or months, before James could be installed and during that period England could be in a state of anarchy.

  It was only a matter of time before news of Elizabeth’s poor health reached the wider public. The ideal opportunity for the government to quash rumors and issue warnings was through the sermon delivered on 13 March, the first Sunday of Lent, at the Pulpit Cross in the churchyard of St. Paul’s. The Cross marked the heart of the capital and the site had been used to disseminate information and propaganda for generations. Henry III had consulted with Londoners at Paul’s Cross in the thirteenth century; sermons were being recorded at the beginning of the fourteenth, and under Henry VIII Paul’s Cross became the platform for a state-sponsored revolution. Every note in the cacophony of opinion released at the Reformation was, at one time or another, expressed on the octagonal, framed stage where the preachers stood. The area was also a hotbed for gossip, bustling with courtiers and apprentices, actors and aldermen, spies and lawyers. Some came for the books sold hot off the presses in nearby streets, others to exchange news or views with friends and self-proclaimed experts on court affairs. The Lenten sermon could thus preempt any dangerous talk on Elizabeth’s health and be used to recite punishments that might be expected by troublemakers. But instead of ensuring that they had a man on whom they could rely in the pulpit, on Sunday the thirteenth, a Puritan divine called Richard Stock took to the churchyard stage and prepared to deliver what he knew would be a controversial sermon.

  Most of Stock’s congregation stood in the open air, with gentlemen sitting at the front, their hats on their heads. At the very back, however, were those to whom his sermon was to be aimed: the dignitaries in their private boxes in the galleries built up against the transept and choir of the old Gothic cathedral. They included the Mayor of London, his aldermen, noblemen, Privy Councilors and their wives. For two hours Stock lectured them on their greed and venality: “I have lived here some few years, and every year I have heard an exceeding outcry of the poor that they are much oppressed of the rich of this city, in plain terms, of the Common Council. All or most charges are raised by your fifteenths, wherein the burden is more heavy upon a mechanical and handicraft poor man than upon an alderman, proportion for proportion,” he reminded them. “You are magistrates for the good of them that are under you, not to oppress them for your own ease. I would speak to him who is chief of the city for this year. What is past cannot be remedied, but for the future, as far as lies in your power, prevent these things.”40

  The subject matter of Stock’s sermon was all too reminiscent of the trigger for the riots of 1595. The Lord Mayor, Robert Lee, was furious. But he also knew that punishing Stock could spark the disorder the government was anxious to avoid and so Stock was let alone. 20 The Mayor and Privy Councilors would, however, be more careful about who gave the key sermons in the next few weeks.

  The Council had by now decided that it was time something was done about Arbella’s stream of letters and complaints, the latest of which had just arrived. It was her longest yet and, disturbingly, it appealed for help from the old Essex faction. The letter was dated 9 March, Ash Wednesday, the second anniversary of Essex’s execution, “and the new dropping tears of some might make you remember it, if it were possible you could forget,” she wrote. Arbella drew attention to the parallels between Essex’s fate and her own. He had been allowed to die at the hands of his enemies; now her life was threatened by the same anti-Essex faction. “You saw what a despair the greatness of my enemies . . . drove innocent, discreet, learned and Godly Mr. Starkey into”; Cecil, Stanhope and Hertford, she implied, now hoped for her suicide, and she accused the Queen of taking their side against hers, just as she had taken their side against Essex.

  Arbella asked all those who loved Essex to come forward in her defense. He had been her “noble friend” in difficult times and “I never had nor shall have . . . the like time to this to need a friend in court.” It was Hertford’s own plans that had inspired her attempted marriage, she pleaded: “What fair words have I had of Courtiers and Councillors and lo they are vanished into smoke. Who is amongst you all dare be sworn in his conscience I have wrong? And dare tell the Earl of Hertford he hath done it? and the 2 Councillors [i.e., Cecil and Stanhope] they wrong their estate . . . to let innocence be thus oppressed and truth suppressed.” 41

  On Monday 14 March, Cecil drafted a letter to Arbella’s grandmother insisting that “as much as maybe, her sending up and down such strange letters may be forborne.” It asked for William Cavendish to take Arbella back to Owlcotes, where she might be happier and quieter. But the ink was barely dry when Cecil and Stanhope received shocking news from Arbella’s grandmother. The very same day Arbella had written the letter, she had sent her page, the fourteen-year-old son of Owen Tudor, to an inn in Mansfield. There Henry Cavendish and Richard Stapleton were waiting to conclude arrangements for another escape attempt. On Thursday the tenth, Cavendish and Stapleton rode to the hamlet of Hucknall, half a mile from the gates of Hardwick, with six other horsemen. A further band of forty or so armed men waited in woodland nearby. Arbella was expected to find an excuse to go out for a walk and join them sometime before noon. Midday came and went, however, without any sign of Arbella.

  Arbella had tried to leave Hardwick, saying she wished to go for her walk, but her grandmother had pointed out it was “dinner time” and obliged her to stay in the house. Cavendish wai
ted at Hucknall until nearly two o’clock before deciding to fetch Arbella himself. He had fought the Spanish in the Netherlands, but at the gates of Hardwick he proved no match for his septuagenarian mother. Bess agreed “my bad son Henry” could enter, but she refused to allow Stapleton or the other horsemen through the gate. Arbella, seeing that her opportunity of escape was slipping away, asked her grandmother if she could speak with Stapleton. Bess refused. Arbella demanded to know if she was a prisoner, “and said she would see and so went to the gate, and would have gone out, but was not suffered.”

  In desperation Arbella had shouted through the bars telling Stapleton to go back to Mansfield until he heard from her. Cavendish gesticulated back, trying to arrange a time for them to meet the following day, but Arbella was by then being dragged off and was unable to reply. When she heard her uncle and Stapleton ride away she became hysterical and tried to follow them, begging to be allowed to go for a walk, “which I thought not convenient she should do,” Bess noted in her letter to court, “and so she stayed.”42

  Exasperated, Cecil sent Brouncker north once more, this time to interview Richard Stapleton and Henry Cavendish as well as Arbella. Elizabeth was informed, but she was growing weaker by the day and her doctors were warning “that if this continues she must needs fall into a distemper, not a frenzy, but rather a dullness and a lethargy.”43 Those who had thought she might live for months now revised their estimate to weeks and, inevitably, the news began to leak beyond the court. People studied the faces of the Councilors as they came and went from Richmond, sometimes looking anxious, as if they feared for Elizabeth’s health, sometimes cheerful, as if she might be recovering. According to one court servant, everyone knew that Elizabeth was dying when Councilors, fearful of their impending loss of authority, dropped the harsh tone they habitually used to those asking them for favors, “changing into a mild and affable demeanour, saluting by name such as they met, even of the meaner sort, and giving very gracious answers and ready dispatch to all suitors.”