Character of Elizabeth and her contemporaries—Main object of her policy—Youth of Elizabeth—The Duke of Angoulême—Philip of Spain—Seymour and Catharine Parr—Mrs. Ashley’s and Parry’s confessions—Execution of Seymour—Proposed marriage of Elizabeth with a son of the Duke of Ferrara—With a son of Hans Frederick of Saxony—Courtney—Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy—Prince Eric of Sweden—Death of Queen Mary—The Earl of Arundel.

The greatest diplomatic game ever played on the world’s chessboard was that consummate succession of intrigues which for nearly half a century was carried on by Queen Elizabeth and her ministers with the object of playing off one great Continental power against another for the benefit of England and Protestantism, with which the interests of the Queen herself were indissolubly bound up. Those who were in the midst of the strife were for the most part working for immediate aims, and probably understood or cared but little about the ultimate result of their efforts; but we, looking back as over a plain that has been traversed, can see that, from the tangle of duplicity which obscured the issue to the actors, there emerged a new era of civilisation and a host of young, new, vigorous thoughts of which we still feel the impetus. We perceive now that modern ideas of liberty and enlightenment are2 the natural outcome of the victory of England in that devious and tortuous struggle, which engaged for so long some of the keenest intellects, masculine and feminine, which have ever existed in Europe. It seems impossible that the result could have been attained excepting under the very peculiar combination of circumstances and persons then existing in England. Elizabeth triumphed as much by her weakness as by her strength; her bad qualities were as valuable to her as her good ones. Strong and steadfast Cecil would never have held the helm so long if he had not constantly been contrasted with the shifty, greedy, treacherous crew of councillors who were for ever ravening after foreign bribes as payment for their honour and their loyalty. Without Leicester as a permanent matrimonial possibility to fall back upon, the endless negotiations for marriage with foreign princes would soon have become pointless and ineffectual, and the balance would have been lost. But for the follies of Mary Stuart, which led to her downfall and lifelong imprisonment, the Catholic party in England could never have been subjected so easily as it was. Elizabeth, with little fixed religious conviction, would, with her characteristic instability, almost certainly at one difficult juncture or another have been drawn into a recognition of the papal power, and so would have destroyed the nice counterpoise, but for the unexampled fact that such recognition would have upset her own legitimacy and right to reign. The combination of circumstances on the Continent also seems to have been exactly that necessary to aid the result most favourable to English interests; and the special personal qualities3 both of Philip II. and Catharine de Medici were as if expressly moulded to contribute to the same end. But propitious, almost providential, as the circumstances were, the making of England and the establishment of Protestantism as a permanent power in Europe could never have been effected without the supreme and sustained statecraft of the Queen and her great minister. The nimble shifting from side to side, the encouragement or discouragement of the French and Flemish Protestants as the policy of the moment dictated, the alternate flouting and flattering of the rival powers, and the agile utilisation of the Queen’s sex and feminine love of admiration to provoke competing offers for her hand, all exhibit statesmanship as keen as it was unscrupulous. The political methods adopted were perhaps those which met with general acceptance at the time, but the dexterous juggling through a long course of years with regard to Elizabeth’s marriage is unexampled in the history of government. Not a point was missed. Full advantage was taken of the Queen’s maiden state, of her feminine fickleness, of her solitary sovereignty, of her assumed religious uncertainty, of her accepted beauty, and of the keen competition for her hand. In very many cases neither the wooer nor the wooed was in earnest, and the courtship was merely a polite fiction to cover other objects; but at least on two occasions, if not three, the Queen was very nearly forced by circumstances or her own feelings into a position which would have made her marriage inevitable. Her caution, however, on each occasion caused her to withdraw in time without mortal offence to the family of her suitor; and to the end of her days she was able, painted old4 harridan though she was, to act coquettishly the part of the peerless beauty whose fair hand might possibly reward the devoted admiration paid to her, with their tongues in their cheeks, by the bright young gallants who sought her smiles. The story of the various negotiations for the Queen’s marriage has been told in more or less detail in the histories of the times, but no comprehensive view has yet been given of the marriage negotiations alone: nor has their successive relation to other events been set forth as a connected narrative. Within the last few years much new material for such a narrative has become available both in England and on the Continent, and it is now possible to see with a certain amount of clearness the hands of the other players besides that of the English Queen. The approaches made to Elizabeth by the brothers de Valois, or rather by their intriguing mother, Catharine de Medici, have been related somewhat fully, mainly from the documents in the National Library in Paris, by the Count de la Ferrière,1 and the recent publication of the Spanish State Papers at Simancas of the reign of Elizabeth by the Record Office,2 puts us into possession of a vast quantity of hitherto unused material of the highest interest, especially with regard to the matrimonial overtures made by Philip II. and the princes of the house of Austria; whilst the full text of the extraordinary private letters to and from the Queen in relation to the Alen?on match, 1579–82, printed by the Historical5 MSS. Commission from the Hatfield Papers, affords an opportunity of the greatest value for criticising the by-play in this curious comedy. From these sources, from the Walsingham Papers from the French diplomatic correspondence, from the Foreign, Domestic, and Venetian Calendars of State Papers, and from the various contemporary and later chroniclers of the times, it is proposed to construct a consecutive narrative of most of the important attempts made to persuade the “Virgin Queen” to abandon her much-boasted celibacy.

In October, 1532, exactly eleven months before the birth of Elizabeth, Henry VIII. paid his pompous visit to the French king, accompanied by his privately married wife, Anne Boleyn, Marchioness of Pembroke. He had deeply offended the Spanish Emperor by his treatment of Queen Catharine, and felt the need of drawing closer the bonds of union with Francis I., which twelve years before had been tied on the Field of the Cloth of Gold; and almost as soon as the little Princess Elizabeth was born, negotiations were opened for her marriage with the child-prince, Duke of Angoulême, third son of Francis I. Henry asked for too much, as was his wont. He required the French king and his nobles to make a declaration of approval of the Act of Succession which had been passed in England defying the Pope and settling the crown on the issue of Anne Boleyn. Francis was to press the Pope to revoke the anathemas that the Church had hurled upon the schismatic king, and the little prince was to be brought up in England, holding his dukedom as an independent fief of the French crown. The last two demands might have been complied with,6 as they could subsequently have been revoked, but the eldest son of the Church could never accept the first article, which would have brought him into definite defiance of the papacy; and the negotiation fell through.

Elizabeth was only three years old when her mother’s fall removed her from the line of the succession, and with the strange vicissitudes of her early girlhood we have nothing here to do. When, however, in 1542, the death of James V. of Scotland and the almost simultaneous birth of his daughter Mary seemed to bring nearer to its consummation Henry’s idea of a union of the two crowns, he proposed to marry the baby Queen of Scots to his own infant son and at the same time offered the hand of Elizabeth, who was then nine years old, to the Earl of Arran, head of the house of Hamilton, the next heir to the Scottish crown. The man was nearly an idiot and failed to see the advantages of such a connection, the consequence being that French intrigue and French money, backed up by the influence of the Queen Dowager of Scotland, Mary of Lorraine, were victorious; and Henry was thwarted of his desire. The fact that he had been checkmated by the French king in this matter rankled in his breast and caused that foolish and profitless war, in alliance with the Emperor, against France, which is principally remembered for the siege and capture and subsequent loss of Boulogne. Charles V. tried very hard to get his cousin, Mary Tudor, Henry’s elder daughter, acknowledged as legitimate, but although this was not done in so many words, both she and her sister Elizabeth were restored to their respective places in the line of succession; and whilst7 the treaty of alliance between the two sovereigns was under discussion a suggestion was made that Charles’ son, Philip of Spain, then a lad of seventeen, should be betrothed to Elizabeth, who was eleven. It was probably never meant to be anything but a compliment, and certainly would not have been seriously entertained by the Emperor, but in any case the suggestion was quietly dropped and Spanish and English interests rapidly drifted apart again. In January, 1547, Henry VIII. died, leaving the succession to his two daughters in tail after his child-son Edward VI. and his heirs. The Queen Dowager, Catharine Parr, immediately married Sir Thomas Seymour, brother of the Protector Somerset, and uncle of the little King. To their care was confided Princess Elizabeth, then a girl of fourteen, who resided principally in the Queen’s dower houses at Chelsea and Hanworth, and it was at this critical period of her life that her personal interest in her love affairs may be said to have commenced.

When, subsequent to the death of the Queen Dowager, a short year afterwards, her husband’s ambitious schemes had aroused the jealousy of his all-powerful brother, one of the charges made against him was that he had planned to marry the Princess Elizabeth and use her as one of his instruments for obtaining supreme power. The original confessions and declarations of those who were supposed to be concerned with him in the plot, which are still amongst Lord Salisbury’s papers at Hatfield, were published in full many years ago by Haynes, and have more recently been calendared by the Historical MSS. Commission. They have been used by all historians of the times, and there is no8 intention of repeating here fully the oft-told story divulged by these curious declarations. It is needless to say that they disclose scandalous treatment of a young and sensitive girl both by Seymour and Catharine Parr, even after allowing for the free manners then prevalent. It is difficult to understand, indeed, what can have been Seymour’s real intention towards the Princess, unless it was the guilty satisfaction of his own passions. His wife was young and healthy, and in the natural course of events might have been expected to live long, so that he could hardly have looked forward to his marriage with Elizabeth; and yet Mrs. Ashley,3 her governess, confessed in the Tower in February, 1549, that Seymour was in the habit of visiting the girl’s bedroom before she was dressed, sometimes by himself and sometimes with his wife, and there indulged in much indelicate and suggestive romping, in which Catharine Parr herself occasionally took part. Thomas Parry,4 the cofferer, repeats in his confession a story told him by Mrs. Ashley which carries the matter somewhat further. “She said the Lord Admiral loved the Lady Elizabeth but too well, and had done so for a good while, and this was the cause that the Queen was jealous of him and Lady Elizabeth. On one occasion the Queen coming suddenly upon them had found him holding the Lady Elizabeth in his arms; upon which she fell out with them both, and this was the cause why the Queen and Lady Elizabeth parted.”

Whatever may have been Seymour’s intentions9 towards Elizabeth during his wife’s life, he left them in no doubt as soon as she died. For a conspirator, indeed, he was the most open-mouthed person imaginable. By the confessions, early in 1549, of Wightman, Sharington, Dorset, Harrington, and Parry, it would appear that he had openly expressed his discontent with his brother’s supremacy and made no secret of his pretensions to the guardianship of the young King and the hand of Elizabeth. His accomplice, Sharington, master of the Bristol mint, was coining testoons out of the national treasure, and hoarding vast sums of coin for his use; noblemen were advised by him to retire to their estates and raise forces to support him; and the seizure of himself and his friends was a mere movement of self-defence on the part of the Protector. With regard to the match with Elizabeth, Parry appears to have been the first person approached directly. He was closely attached to the person of the Princess, and had been sent to Seymour ostensibly to ask for the use of Durham Place as a temporary town residence for her. Seymour said this could not be, as the house was to be made into a mint, but she could have his own house to stay in until she could see the King. Parry confesses that Seymour asked him many questions about Elizabeth’s pecuniary means; and when he got back to Hatfield the cofferer asked the young Princess whether she would be willing to accept Seymour for a husband if the Council were agreeable. She asked Parry sharply who told him to put such a question to her, to which he answered that “nobody had done so, but he thought he perceived by Seymour’s inquiries that he was given10 that way.” “She said that she could not tell her mind therein.”5

When the Master of the Household and Denny suddenly arrived at Hatfield to interrogate the household as to their communications with Seymour Parry quite lost his head, “went to his own chamber and said to his wife, 'I would I had never been born, for I am undone,’ and wrung his hands, cast away his chain from his neck and his rings from his fingers.”

Elizabeth’s profound diplomacy and quick intelligence were shown even thus early at this critical juncture. Sir Robert Tyrwhitt and his wife were sent by the Protector to worm out of her all she knew of the plot. Threats, cajolery, forged letters and invented confessions, were all tried upon her in vain. She would tell nothing of importance. “She hath,” says Tyrwhitt, “a very good wit and nothing is gotten of her but by great policy.” She bitterly resented the imprisonment of her governess, Mrs. Ashley, and the substitution of Lady Tyrwhitt; and said that she had not so behaved that they need put more mistresses upon her; wept all night and sulked all day, but withal was too much for Tyrwhitt, who avowed that “if he had to say his fantasy he thinks it more meet she should have two governesses than one.”

The confessions of Parry and Ashley with regard to Elizabeth’s conduct, and their own, are bad enough; but they probably kept back far more than they told, for on Elizabeth’s succession, and for the rest of their lives, they were treated with marked11 favour: Parry was knighted and made Treasurer of the Household, and on Mrs. Ashley’s death in July, 1565, the Queen visited her in person and mourned her with great grief. It is probable that the inexperienced girl was really in love with the handsome, showy Seymour; but how far their relations went will most likely never now be known. She indignantly wrote to the Protector complaining of the slanders that were current about her, to the effect that she was with child by the Lord Admiral and demanded to be allowed to come to Court and “show herself as she was”; but virtuous indignation, real and assumed, was always one of her favourite weapons. Tyrwhitt said he believed a secret compact had been entered into between her and Ashley and Parry never to confess during their lives. “They all sing one song and she hath set the note for them.”

After this dangerous escapade and the execution of Seymour, Elizabeth became almost ostentatiously saintly and straitlaced, until the accession of her sister made her the heiress presumptive to the crown and the hope of the Protestant party, now that Northumberland’s nominees had been disposed of. Even before this event, the reforming party in England were anxious to further strengthen themselves by allying her to a foreign prince of Protestant leanings, not powerful enough to force her claims to the crown upon them, but of sufficient weight to give them moral support, whilst removing her from the way in England. As early as August, 1551, Northumberland (or, as he was then, the Earl of Warwick) had put his agents upon the alert on the Continent to find a suitable match for her, and12 one of them, Sir Anthony Guidotti,6 says that the Duke of Guise had suggested the Duke of Ferrara’s son, “who was one of the goodliest young men of all Italy.” The youth was a son of that Renée of France, Duchess of Ferrara, who vied with her kinswoman, Jeanne d’Albret, in her attachment to the reformed faith, but Northumberland would hardly accept the recommendation of the Guises as disinterested; and the matter went no further. The same agent suggests that the son of the Duke of Florence (Medici) who was then only eleven years old might do, and “if this party were liked it were an easy matter to be concluded without any excessive dote.” This was less likely to please even than the previous proposal, and nothing was done; but the Ferrara family were apparently anxious for the connection, and early in 1553 Sir Richard Morysine,7 the English envoy in Antwerp, wrote to the Council reporting that Francesco d’Este, the brother of the Duke of Ferrara, had approached him on the matter and had asked for a description of the Princess. Morysine replied that “If God had made her Grace a poor man’s daughter he did not know of a prince that might not think himself happy to be the husband of such a lady,” and added that d’Este was of the same opinion “at present.” A much more likely match had been privately suggested to Cecil by Morysine shortly before this.8 “Hans Frederick’s (of Saxony) second son, who is the goodlier gentleman, would, if he durst, bear a great affection towards the Lady Elizabeth’s grace. The land in Germany is divided, and as much comes to13 the second son as to the eldest, which eldest is thought to be of no long life. Were Dukes Maurice and Frederick to die their lands go to Hans Frederick’s sons.” But the collapse of Northumberland and the accession of Mary entirely changed Elizabeth’s prospects, so that her marriage had to be considered in conjunction with Mary’s own, and the capture of the Queen by the Spanish interest made it desirable to secure her sister if possible for the same side. In the autumn of 1553, Simon Renard had suggested to Mary a marriage between herself and Prince Philip. She herself was in grave doubt at that time and afterwards as to its wisdom or practicability. Young Courtney had been designated by the public voice as the most fitting consort for her; and although the romantic theories of many historians as to her supposed attachment to him are unsupported by a single shred of evidence, it is certain that for a time she seriously contemplated the wisdom of conciliating English feeling by marrying the man who was one of her first competitors for the possession of the throne. Gradually, however, Renard, with his logical persuasiveness, convinced her that she would acquire more strength by an alliance with the only son of the Emperor than by a marriage “with one of her own vassals, without credit, power, or assistance, who has seen and knows nothing of the world, having been reared in servitude and never left England.”9

Renard presented the Emperor’s formal offer of his son’s hand to the Queen on the 6th of October, and after some hesitation she asked him to put upon paper his arguments in favour of the match. He14 did so in a long paper dated the 11th, which will be found in the Renard Correspondence transcripts in the Record Office. In it he tells her that she is surrounded by dangers against which only a powerful marriage can protect her. She has, he says, four sets of enemies: namely, the heretics and schismatics, the rebels and friends of Northumberland, the powers of France and Scotland, and Madam Elizabeth, who would never cease to trouble and threaten her. Mary replied that she knew all about the French intrigues, and was certain to be kept well informed of approaches made by the French ambassador Noailles to Elizabeth and Courtney. In conversation with Renard afterwards she told him, and he faithfully transmitted the conversation to his master,10 that she had had a long talk with Courtney three days before at the instance of his mother, and he had told her in all simplicity that an English lord had suggested to him that he should marry Elizabeth, since he could not now hope to obtain the Queen. If he took the Princess either he or his heirs might hope to succeed to the throne as the Queen was getting old. The idea seems to have originated with Lord Paget, who was doubtless the lord referred to by Courtney, and who thought to stand well with all parties in future by the device. As he was the principal supporter in the Privy Council of the Spanish match, Renard could not at first openly veto the suggestion. Mary consulted Renard upon the subject, and told him that Courtney had said that his own thought was only to “marry a simple lady rather than Elizabeth who15 was too proud a heretic and of a doubtful race on her mother’s side.” The imperial ambassador replied that such a marriage would have to be very deeply weighed and discussed,11 and so politely shelved the question. On the other hand, the idea was zealously promoted by Noailles, who, Courtney asserted some months afterwards, pressed him warmly to marry Elizabeth,12 and it was considered even by the strongest Spanish partisans in the Council to be a happy combination which would conjure away all dangers. How far Elizabeth herself was a consenting party it is difficult to say, but Noailles, who was in the heart of the intrigue, writes to his king on the 14th of December that it depends entirely on Courtney whether she married him and joined him in Devonshire to raise the flag of revolt. “But the trouble,” he says, “is that Courtney is so alarmed and timid that he dares nothing.” So Courtney disappears promptly from the scene where soon such rough work was to be undertaken. Even before the arrival of Egmont in the winter of 1553 to offer formally Philip’s hand to Mary, the Council was mainly opposed to the match. Paget was first bought over with a large sum of money, then Gardiner, Courtney’s greatest friend, was reluctantly won with the promise of a cardinal’s hat, and others by similar means; but the self-seeking Earl of Arundel immediately saw how his own interests might be benefited by the Spanish match. De Noailles says that he knew that at the Queen’s age, and with her health, every month’s delay decreased the probability of her having issue; and he, therefore,16 warmly supported the marriage with Philip, which could not be rapidly effected, in order to marry his young son to Elizabeth, and so, practically, get the reversion to the crown. The matter never seems to have got beyond a suggestion; and the youth soon after dying, Arundel, as will be told, subsequently became a suitor himself. But whilst these nebulous speculations with regard to Elizabeth’s hand were going on, Renard had been arranging a clever scheme by which the Spanish party should ensure to themselves the control of England not only during the Queen’s life but after her death. When Egmont and his splendid embassy arrived all England was in a whirlwind of panic and indignation at the idea of a Spanish match. Elizabeth had retired to Woodstock, ostensibly on friendly terms with the Queen, but deeply wounded at her contemptuous treatment, and at the equivocal position she occupied, now that the divorce pronounced by Cranmer of Henry VIII. and Catharine of Aragon had been quashed, and Elizabeth consequently bastardised. Egmont was instructed to point out to the Queen that all might be pleasantly settled by marrying her sister to the gallant young Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, the son of the Emperor’s sister, and consequently first cousin to Philip. His patrimonial states, all but a mere shred of them in the valley of Aosta, had been occupied by the French in the course of the war, and the prince was fighting like a hero in the Emperor’s army. But his blood was the bluest of any in Europe, and before he could marry Elizabeth she must be legitimised and placed in the order of the succession, without which the throne would probably pass on Mary’s17 death to the French candidate, Mary of Scotland. This was gall and wormwood to Mary Tudor. They could not both be legitimate. If the grounds for the divorce of Queen Catharine were good she was never Henry’s lawful wife, and her daughter had no right to the crown. If they were bad, then Elizabeth was necessarily the bastard that the law of England inferentially had just declared her to be. The King of France, foiled in his attempts to prevent the Queen’s Spanish marriage, instructed de Noailles13 to use every possible means to hinder a match between Elizabeth and Savoy, “poor and dispossessed as he is”; and, alert as the ambassador was, no great effort on his part was needed. The Queen, bitterly jealous of her sister, who she knew was more or less openly working with the Carews, the Courtneys, the Wyatts and others to undermine her throne, peremptorily refused to rehabilitate Elizabeth’s birth. Then came the Wyatt rebellion and Elizabeth’s imprisonment. In after years both Philip and Elizabeth often referred to the fact that at one juncture he had saved her life, and it is highly probable that the Princess was released from the Tower in May, 1554 on the recommendation of Renard, made in the name of the coming bridegroom of the Queen. De Noailles writes that she was to go to Richmond from the Tower, and was there to receive two gentlemen from the Emperor who were to sound her as to a marriage with Emmanuel of Savoy. If she refused the match she was to be taken to Woodstock under guard, again a prisoner. De Noailles knew that the best way of preventing such a match was to arouse the Queen’s18 suspicion that Elizabeth was plotting with the French. So with devilish ingenuity he sent a man with a present of apples to the Princess to meet her on her arrival at Richmond. The man was seized and searched to the skin, and no letters were found, but to de Noailles’ undisguised glee the Princess was hurried off at once to Woodstock without seeing the Emperor’s envoys. Again by Philip’s intercession Elizabeth was released, and invited to be present at the Queen’s entry into London after her marriage. Philip had been anxious that his favourite cousin of Savoy should have come to England for the ceremony, but Emmanuel was in the midst of war in an important command, his own oppressed people, the prey of a ruthless invader, were imploring him, their prince, to come and rescue them; he was desperately short of money, and his visit to England had to be deferred. Soon after the wedding he sent a confidential envoy named Langosco to pave the way for his coming, and subsequently (December, 1554) the Prince himself arrived. Elizabeth’s town house, Somerset House, was placed at his disposal, and he was made as welcome as his cousin could make him. Philip tried his hardest to get him into the good graces of the Queen. She was kindly and sympathetic; gave him the Garter, and went so far to please Philip as once more to liberate Elizabeth at his urgent request, but she would not let the Princess and her suitor meet. Emmanuel’s thoughts, moreover, were elsewhere. An unsuccessful attempt was being made to patch up a peace between Spain and France, and the young Prince’s one idea was to get his patrimonial Piedmont restored to him in the scramble. So he had to hurry back again to19 Flanders with nothing done about the marriage. The idea was not dropped, however. Renard gave wise advice to Philip in his constant letters. He told him, amongst other things, that now that the Queen’s hopes of progeny had proved illusive the only way to prevent England from slipping through their fingers was to get command of Elizabeth. “You cannot,” he said, “change the succession as laid down in King Henry’s will without causing a rebellion. Marry Elizabeth to the Duke of Savoy, it will please the English and be popular, provided that her right to the succession be not interfered with; and it might be a means towards expelling the French from Piedmont.” Philip’s agents found plenty of opportunities for trying to ingratiate themselves with the Princess, but she was cool and cautious; professed that she had no desire to marry, and so forth. She was quite aware of the reason for the Spanish desire that she should marry Savoy, and even thus early began her great policy of keeping people friendly by deferring their hopes. As the clouds gathered ever darker over the miserable Mary in the last sad months of her life, and Elizabeth’s star rose, suitors became more plentiful. At the beginning of 1558 Philip had sent haughty Feria as his ambassador to his wife to drive her into providing men and money to help him in his war against France. Calais and Guisnes had just been lost to England, and Mary, all her hopes and illusions fled, was fretting her heart out in despair. In April an ambassador arrived from the King of Sweden, Gustavus, with letters to the Queen proposing a treaty of commerce between the two countries, and the marriage of his eldest son,20 Eric, with Princess Elizabeth. The ambassador was in no hurry to seek audience of the Queen—her day was already on the wane—but posted down to Hatfield to see the Princess, to whom he delivered a letter from Prince Eric himself. The Queen was overcome with rage at this and with fear that Philip would blame her for refusing his request to restore Elizabeth in blood and marry her to Emmanuel of Savoy, and thus giving rise to this embarrassing Swedish offer. Hearing that Feria was about to send a courier to Flanders, she summoned him, and in a violent passion of tears reproached him with wishing to be beforehand with her in telling the story to her husband. Feria says, “Her Majesty has been in great anguish about it, but since hearing that Madam Elizabeth gave answer that she had no desire to marry she has become calmer, but is still terribly passionate in the matter. One of the reasons why she is so grieved about the miscarriage is the fear that your Majesty should press her about Savoy and Madam Elizabeth. Figueroa and I think that the opportunity of the coming of this ambassador, and the illusion about the pregnancy should be taken advantage of to do so; but it must not be done at the same time as we press her about raising troops here. In short, I do not think now that she will stand in the way of her sister’s succession if providence do not bless your Majesty with children.”14

The Swedish ambassador was to have been openly reproved by the Queen before the whole Court, but the Queen thought better of it, and received him in the presence of Gardiner and the21 Marquis of Winchester only. She dismissed him curtly—almost rudely—and told him that after committing such a breach of etiquette as to deliver a letter to her sister before presenting his credentials, he had better go home and never come back to England with such a message as that again. Before Feria left England to see his master in July, 1558, he visited Elizabeth at Hatfield, and did his best to persuade her that she had all Philip’s sympathy, and that her safe course would be to adhere to the Spanish connection. He was no match for her in diplomacy even then, and got nothing but smiles and genial generalities. In November Mary was dying, and Dassonleville, the Flemish agent, wrote to the King begging him to send Feria back again to forward Spanish interests, “as the common people are so full of projects for marrying Madam Elizabeth to the Earl of Arundel or some one else.” On the 8th of November a committee of the Council went to Hatfield to see Elizabeth and deliver to her the dying Queen’s message, begging her “when she should be Queen to maintain the Catholic Church and pay her (Mary’s) debts.” Elizabeth would pledge herself to nothing. She knew now that she must succeed, with or without Mary’s good-will, and she meant to have a free hand. Before the Queen died even, Feria, who had arrived when she was already almost unconscious, hastened to Hatfield to see the coming Queen. So long as he confined himself to courteous commonplace she answered him in the same spirit, but as soon as he began to patronise her and hint that she owed her coming crown to the intervention and support of Philip, she stopped him at once, and said that she would owe it only to22 her people. She was equally firm and queenly when Feria thus early hinted at her marriage with her Spanish brother-in-law before the breath was out of Mary’s body, and showed a firm determination to hold her own and resist all attempts to place her under the tutelage of Philip. A week afterwards the Queen died, and then began the keen contest of wits around the matrimonial possibilities of Elizabeth, which ended in the making of modern England.

The first letter that Feria wrote to Philip after the new Queen’s accession indicated how powerless had been all his blandishments to pledge Elizabeth. “The new Queen and her people,” he says, “hold themselves free from your Majesty, and will listen to any ambassadors who may come to treat of marriage. Your Majesty understands better than I how important it is that this affair should go through your hands, which ... will be difficult except with great negotiation and money. I wish, therefore, your Majesty to keep in view all the steps to be taken on your behalf; one of them being that the Emperor should not send any ambassador here to treat of this, for it would be inconvenient enough for Ferdinand to marry here even if he took the titbit from your Majesty’s hand, but very much worse if it were arranged in any other way. For the present, I know for certain they will not hear the name of the Duke of Savoy mentioned, as they fear he will want to recover his estates with English forces, and will keep them constantly at war. I am very pleased to see that the nobles are beginning to open their eyes to the fact that it will not do to marry this woman in the country itself.... The more I think over this business the more certain I am that everything23 depends upon the husband this woman may take. If he be a suitable one, religious matters will go on well, and the kingdom will remain friendly with your Majesty, but if not it will all be spoilt. If she decide to marry out of the country she will at once fix her eyes on your Majesty, although some of them here are sure to pitch upon the Archduke Ferdinand.”15 Feria was wrong in his estimate of Elizabeth’s character. From the first she had determined to be a popular sovereign, and all observers remarked her almost undignified anxiety to catch the cheers of the crowd. She knew that the most unpopular step she could take would be one that bound her interests to Spain, and particularly a marriage with Philip. A French marriage was impossible, for the heir to the crown of France was married to Mary Stuart, whose legal right to the English throne was undoubtedly stronger than that of Elizabeth herself.

So the Englishmen began to pluck up heart and to think that the great prize might fall to one of them. Early in December the Earl of Arundel came over from Flanders, and Feria remarks in one of his letters that he had seen him at the palace, “looking very smart and clean, and they say he carries his thoughts very high.” He was a widower of mature age, foppish and foolish, but, with the exception of his son-in-law, the Duke of Norfolk, the only English noble whose position and descent were such as to enable him without impropriety to aspire to mate with royalty, and for a short time after his arrival he was certainly looked upon by the populace as the most likely husband for the young Queen.