The Last Tudor

GREENWICH PALACE,

WINTER 1567

There is no summons to court at Westminster, not for my lady grandmother, nor for her children, nor for me, but the gossip seeps downriver from servant to servant, carried by pedlars, brought by candle sellers, and volunteered by milkmaids. Everyone in London, including us, knows that Elizabeth is preparing to marry at last, and her choice has fallen on Charles II the Archduke of Austria, son of the late Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand.

It will be a mighty alliance, joining England to the great power of Europe, the Habsburgs. It will make us safe from invasion from any of the continental powers, inured to the enmity of the Pope. It will mean that we are restored to our place in Christendom, no longer a heretical outsider to the faith of Europe. We can aid Mary Queen of Scots or not, as we like. Her fall or her rise will not threaten us when we have the Habsburgs as our allies.

We will achieve this at almost no price. Elizabeth would not have to change her religion, the country would not change its religion. She would not have to put him, as a husband, above her. This is not to be a king consort. He is a younger son: he knows all about coming second. Best of all, perhaps, the archduke would not change his religion, he would practice his faith in private, there would be a chapel in every royal palace and a priest would travel with him. He would hold a Mass but not force it on any other. We would show, as we should, in this country, which has been papist and Protestant and papist and Protestant, turn and turn about with one ruler after another, that we can live in harmony. That there is one God, but different ways of approaching Him. That God’s will is that we should love one another. Nowhere does Jesus say that we should persecute one another to death. No passage in the Bible required Jane’s death; no law of man nor God requires our imprisonment.

But I am not tempted by this glittering prospect for my cousin Elizabeth. If I were free, I would not waste a moment of my time on it. Elizabeth persuades her council that she intends to marry the archduke. She would never persuade me that she will ever put a man in Robert Dudley’s place; but the Privy Council are hugely relieved at this solution to the inheritance question—and then—to further divert them, she asks them for their opinion and advice.

This is mostly to satisfy those lords and commoners who demanded last year that she name a successor and insisted that it be a legitimate Protestant—my sister Katherine. Now Elizabeth, like a marketplace mountebank who charms coppers out of the pockets of the credulous, says that she has taken their advice that she must marry, that she is minded to marry a papist Habsburg, that the happy couple will (no doubt) conceive an autumn child, so she need name neither Mary Queen of Scots—trapped on her island—nor Katherine—locked up with Sir Owen. But Elizabeth can promise that she will have a baby, a beautiful son, who will be the nephew of the Holy Roman Emperor and the grandson of Henry VIII, and all the world can rejoice that love has found a way where hatred could not, to bring papistry and Protestantism into harmony once more and everyone can be happy—except, of course, Katherine and I, and Mary Queen of Scots. We will all three be left in imprisonment forever and (hopefully) forgotten.

In scraps and words, the gossip comes from London and goes on beyond us—all over the kingdom. Though Elizabeth the queen is apparently willing and prepared to marry for the sake of the country, though she has convinced the Holy Roman Emperor that she will take his brother, the council is divided and, using their uncertainty as her shield, Elizabeth hides her determination to live and die a single woman. Her cousin Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, says that there can be no danger to the kingdom but much benefit in marrying such a great prince, and his faith is no obstacle. The archduke has made such offers, and given such promises, that we can live with the queen’s husband as a papist who receives Mass in private. Not so, says the rest of the council: Francis Knollys, that staunch Protestant; Robert Dudley, that staunch Dudleyist. The Protestant lords Sir William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, and Sir William Parr, the Marquess of Northampton, join together to warn the queen that the country cannot tolerate a papist husband, will not drink the health of a half-papist baby in the cradle. Robert Dudley suggests that a foreign suitor is unattractive, too. Someone tells the queen that he is ugly, that all Habsburgs have terribly weak chins; does she want to marry a man who looks like a squirrel?

Just before Christmas, Elizabeth sends to the Holy Roman Emperor and finally says that she cannot marry his brother the archduke Charles. Of course, the entire Habsburg family is hugely offended, and all of papist Christendom sees England as stubbornly and persistently heretical. It would have been better for us all if she had never gone through the charade of pretending that she was willing. Now they see us as perfidious. The French, who are persecuting every Protestant in their realm, are particularly bitter, and Elizabeth is without an heir once more, except for the deposed Queen Mary in her prison and my poor sister, in hers. We are back where we always seem to be—playing with the inheritance of the kingdom so that Elizabeth can remain free to love Robert Dudley.