Transcription
[Music] It is 1559. England has a newly crowned queen. Elizabeth has overcome extraordinary obstacles to gain the crown, but the struggle isn't over. There's one thing about her that will lead to doubt, that will compromise her power, threaten her security, and demand terrible personal sacrifice: she is a woman. [Music]
Elizabeth inherited a part that was traditionally played by two people—king and queen, male and female. A king was supposed to be strong-willed and assertive, a decisive leader in war and peace. The queen, on the other hand, embodied softer, more feminine virtues. She was to be pious, merciful, and charitable, but above all, she was a royal breeding machine. It was her duty to get pregnant early and often. So, for Elizabeth to succeed, she had to do something extraordinary, unnatural, even evil: she had to be a royal hermaphrodite—to rule like a man and a king, and to bear children like a queen and a woman. [Music]
Elizabeth would have to fight to survive, and in a man's world, she would need men to help her do it. Her first task as queen was to establish her own court—her counsel, who would be in charge of the everyday running of the country, and her household staff, who would look after her. The old regime was Catholic; the new was largely Protestant, though a few favored Catholics survived—some counselors, old hands who had served under her father. But the top job went to a younger man, William Cecil, who became Secretary of State. He was 38, serious, brilliant, with an instinctive grasp of politics and a fierce loyalty to the queen. In a flamboyant age, he dressed in black and he rode a mule because it was modest and good for his gout. There were also surprises in the new household. As Master of the Horse—the man responsible for the queen's safety—Elizabeth appointed the son of a traitor, Robert Dudley. [Music]
Robert Dudley's father had been executed for his treachery, but the family remained tainted by the crime. Known disparagingly as "the gypsy" because of his dark looks, charm, and cunning, Dudley's appointment raised more than a few eyebrows at court. Elizabeth and Dudley were the same age; they'd known each other in childhood. They may also have met under less happy circumstances—here in the Tower, where they were both imprisoned at the same time early in Mary's reign. Elizabeth was in fear of death; Dudley had already seen his father, his brother, and his sister-in-law executed, and he was under sentence of death himself. It was this common experience of imprisonment and imminent death that lay at the basis of that unbreakable, instinctive bond of sympathy that joined the queen and her favorite. Elizabeth's choice of Cecil was about politics and duty; the choice of Dudley was about pleasure and desire.
Elizabeth had inherited from her sister Mary a nation that was bankrupt, militarily weak, and hemmed in by enemies. In the parlance of the time, the country was "a bone between two dogs"—France and Spain. England needed friends; the obvious way to achieve it was an alliance through marriage. The queen must marry, and soon. Parliament petitioned the queen, asking her to pledge herself to a suitable international marriage. Three days later, she gave her response: "Now that the public care of governing the kingdom is laid upon me, to draw upon me also the cares of marriage may seem a point of inconsiderate folly; yea, to satisfy you, I have already joined myself in marriage to an husband, namely the kingdom of England; and for me it shall be a full satisfaction if, when I shall let my last breath, it may be engraven upon my marble tomb: Here lieth Elizabeth, which reigned a virgin and died a virgin."
But the queen wasn't behaving like a virgin, as the Spanish ambassador insinuatingly observed: "During the last few days Lord Robert has come so much into favour that he does whatever he likes with affairs, and it is even said that Her Majesty visits him in his chamber day and night." [Music] By the end of April, the ambassador reported that the queen was in love with Robert and wouldn't let him leave her side. But the queen's closeness to Dudley disturbed her courtiers. As a colleague, they could put up with him; as a potential king, he was intolerable. [Music]
I think that William Cecil was very worried about Dudley. Indeed, he saw him as a huge threat both to national prosperity if he married the queen and also to his own position at court. I think he was the one man—really, he was fussed about—and also I suspect there was a certain amount of jealousy. I mean, he adored the queen, and there was this guy he considered to be rather lightweight coming between him and her, and he certainly did not want him to get married to her. Cecil stepped up the pressure for the queen to marry a European prince. There was no shortage of candidates: King Philip of Spain (Catholic and widower of Elizabeth's sister Mary); Charles IX of France (Catholic and a mere sickly boy); the Archduke Charles (the most promising candidate, but still a Catholic). Elizabeth was playing hard-to-get, for reasons that were political as well as personal. She'd seen the problems created by her sister Mary's disastrous marriage to Philip of Spain, and she was determined to avoid them. But actually, that was easier said than done. So, if she married a foreigner, how could England avoid the kind of disastrous foreign entanglements that would lead to the loss of talent? If she married a Catholic—and almost all the suitors for her hand were Catholics—how would Protestant England cope with a Catholic king? And finally, and above all, how could she be happy if she married a man that she'd never seen? Sometimes she must have reflected it was safer to follow her own inclination and not marry at all. [Music]
Elizabeth faced her second major challenge: she was a Protestant queen in a country that was still officially Catholic. Her sister Mary had stamped Catholicism on England with extraordinary violence, burning at the stake over 300 Protestant men, women, and children. Elizabeth had finally got Parliament to agree to restore Protestantism in England. Mary's Catholic bishops had fought her all the way, and when they were ordered to swear an oath accepting the queen as head of the new church, all but one of them refused. Her response was swift. On the 20th of May 1560, Thomas Watson, Bishop of Lincoln, was sent to the Tower. In the following weeks, many more bishops were arrested, as well as some of the exhibition's—the surviving Catholic members of Mary's Council were also arrested. But Elizabeth, unlike her sister Mary, didn't try to force them to convert. "It wasn't my business," she said, "to make windows into men's souls." Because Elizabeth was subtler, she insisted only on outward conformity. They had to acknowledge her supremacy, and they were allowed to celebrate Mass only privately. The result deprived Catholicism of the publicity of martyrdom; instead, it reduced it to something furtive, to be allowed in a Sabbath, hoped slowly to wither away. [Music]
Whilst Catholicism was forced underground, England's new religion was given a bold, public face. [Music] This is the rood screen. "Rood" means cross, and originally an image of Christ hanging on the cross stood in the center of the screen, with the Virgin Mary on one side and St. John on the other. Under Elizabeth, these images were torn down because they were seen as being idolatrous, and they were replaced instead with this painted, gigantic version of the Royal Arms—Queen Elizabeth—the arms say, God's direct representative here on earth. Church and state are one, and when the congregation knelt to pray, they worshiped not only God but also the English nation as embodied in its virgin queen. [Music] [Music]
But the Virgin Queen's relationship with Robert Dudley was by now a national scandal. Both court and public were appalled at his arrogance, offended by his brashness, and suspicious of his motives. And there was another thing: he was married. Dudley's wife, Amy Robsart, was rumored to be very ill—it was claimed that Dudley was simply waiting for her to die so that he could marry the queen. [Music]
Cecil was close to despair and confided in the Spanish ambassador: "I am," Secretary Cecil said, "that the Queen was going on so strangely that he was about to withdraw from her service. He perceived the most manifest ruin impending over the Queen through her intimacy with Lord Robert. He had made himself master of the business of state and of the person of the Queen to the extreme injury of the realm, with the intention of marrying. Last of all," he said, "there was a conspiracy to kill Lord Robert's wife." A late afternoon on the 8th of September 1560 had come to a place in Oxfordshire—the home of Lord Robert Dudley, the Queen's favorite, and Amy Robsart, his wife of five years' standing. The house had been unusually quiet all afternoon because the servants had been given the day off to attend a local fair. When they returned, they found Lady Dudley's body at the foot of the staircase, dead, and with her neck broken. Dudley's first reaction was fear for his reputation; he was right to be. [Music]
A major scandal erupts at court: the Queen's favorite murders his wife—the clear way to the Queen's bed. Elizabeth, fearful for her reputation, couldn't allow the scandal to besmirch her. Reluctantly, she banishes Dudley from court. The inquest exonerated Dudley by returning a verdict of accidental death, but his enemies were confident that his reputation was beyond repair—that he would never recover his all-too-intimate relationship with the queen. It is October 1562. [Music] Queen Elizabeth has lain unconscious in a coma for the last 24 hours. The physicians have diagnosed smallpox, and she is not expected to live. [Music]
In a nearby room, the Privy Council is in crisis. It is three years into her reign, but Elizabeth has neither married nor named a successor. If she dies, there will be a constitutional crisis, possibly a civil war. And a new threat was waiting in the wings. On the 19th of August 1561, a tall, striking-looking woman stepped ashore at Leith, near Edinburgh. It was Mary, Queen of Scots, returning to her kingdom. There was a thick sea mist that morning; some later saw this as an evil omen of the sorrow, the darkness, and the impiety which her return was to bring to Scotland. The 18-year-old Queen of Scots had been brought up in France, and she hadn't seen Scotland for 13 years. But even when she was back in Scotland, her sights were set on another, greater kingdom—England. [Music]
The Catholic Mary was Elizabeth's cousin and had a very strong claim to the English throne. She posed a double threat to Elizabeth: Protestantism was only recently established and still vulnerable, and with Elizabeth unmarried, childless, and in poor health, the succession was dangerously open. [Music]
But Elizabeth recovered, and for the moment the crisis was over. Her first words on regaining consciousness were to command her council to appoint a Lord Protector in the event of her death. His salary, she specified, would be a staggering 20,000 pounds—more than was spent on the coronation. The man she named was Robert Dudley. The scandal of his wife's death had died away, and Dudley's reputation had recovered. Now he was back in favor, in spectacular style. Only three months after her illness, Elizabeth faced a fresh ordeal. Parliament had been summoned for January 1563, and everybody knew that a reluctant queen would be forced once more to confront the issue of the succession. The Parliament was opened with a sermon preached in Westminster Abbey by Alexander Nowell, the Dean of St. Paul's. Nowell put into words what most people only dared think: "All the Queen's most noble ancestors have commonly had some issue to succeed them, but Her Majesty yet none. The wants of your marriage and issue is likely to prove a plague. If your parents had been of your mind, where had you been then? Alack, what shall become of us now? I reckon that's pretty straight talking." It was a very small part of the sermon, but this, if you like, was almost before a state opening of Parliament. Now, I don't know if Dean Nowell had been put up to it by Elizabeth's political advisors or whether he was just speaking for himself, but I do think he was taking a bit of a risk. Nowell would not have been the first churchman to be sent to the Tower. He'd had a bit of a run-in at St. Paul's the year before when he'd given her a prayer book, you know, with pictures of saints, and she took exception to this—this was a kind of idolatry that she'd forbidden. So he was playing with fire a bit, but clearly he was prepared to nail his colours to this particular mast.
Nowell's tough words set the tone for the Parliament, but again the queen hedged and obfuscated. Her marriage was simply not on the cards. Mary, though, showed no such reluctance and was entertaining the suits of several European Catholics. An alliance between Scotland and one of England's enemies could spell disaster, so Elizabeth requested diplomatic talks with the Scots. Nine days she entertained the ambassador, Sir James Melville. "She desired to know of me whether my Queen's hair or hers was best, which of the two was fairest. I said she was the fairest queen in England, and mine the fairest queen in Scotland. She inquired which of them was of highest stature. I said my queen. 'Then she is too high,' saith she, 'for I myself am neither too high nor too low.'"
There was a final round in this game of diplomacy. Elizabeth offered an English candidate for the hand of the Queen of Scots—Lord Robert Dudley. "Her Majesty called him her brother and best friend, whom she could have married had she ever minded to have taken a husband, but being determined to end her life in virginity, she wished that the Queen, her sister, might marry him." But did Elizabeth really intend to give the man that she'd loved to Mary, Queen of Scots? Well, Robert Dudley, who should have known, took her intentions seriously enough to do everything that he could to scupper the scheme. But actually, there was a lot to be said for it politically. It would have solved the problem of what to do with Dudley—he wouldn't have become King of England, but he would have become King consort of Mary, Queen of Scots—and it would solve the problem of what to do with Mary—she'd have been safely married to an Englishman and so kept out of the clutches of a foreigner and the foreign alliance that the English so feared for their northern neighbor—and it would solve the problem of the succession. There would have been no difficulty about recognizing the children of the marriage as heirs to the English throne. But the scheme did fail, not because of Elizabeth, but because of Mary's contempt for the man that she called Elizabeth's horse keeper. Mary had her own ideas about love. Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was 18, tall, handsome, and a fine lute player. Mary described him as "the lustiest and best proportioned long lad" she had ever seen. When he fell ill, she nursed him; they fell in love. [Music]
It was a whirlwind romance, and four months later, in the Chapel Royal at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, they were married. The effect on Elizabeth was dramatic. Within a few days, it was reported that she and Robert had become inseparable again. If the young Queen of Scots could marry for love, why couldn't England's queen do the same? But the return of the rumor of marriage brought new and fierce resistance. The Duke of Norfolk, the most powerful noble in the land, was the queen's closest male relative, and he was bitterly opposed to the prospective marriage. Norfolk had always resented the rise to power of the upstart Dudley; the resentment intensified by his own failure to gain higher office. He became the focus of the anti-Dudley camp. Their rivalry split the court. Dudley's side took to wearing purple ribbons; Norfolk's, yellow. The two factions roamed the corridors of power, armed and angry. [Music]
The queen intervened to slap both sides down. When Dudley objected to the queen's flirtation with a young, pretty courtier, she lashed him with her tongue loud enough for the whole court to hear: "I will have here but one mistress and no master." Norfolk, too, found himself in disgrace. At a Privy Council meeting, he raised the matter of the queen's marriage and the succession. She flew into a rage, calling him a traitor and adding that she would not name a successor and she had no wish to be buried alive. For good measure, she also threatened to have the Duke arrested. But tough words could not resolve the tensions, of course. Behind the bickering lay the real problem: the succession. Until Elizabeth married and produced an heir, the crisis would never go away. [Music]
While Elizabeth tried to hold the men of her court together, Mary enjoyed a female triumph. On the 19th of June 1566, in a tiny room in the castle at Edinburgh, Mary fulfilled her duty as a woman and as a queen: she had a child. Her labor was long and hard, but the baby was healthy, and it was a boy. They christened him James. Scotland now had an heir, and Mary, Queen of Scots, a son. When the English ambassador saw the baby a few days later, he reported that he was likely to prove a goodly prince. The news was far from goodly for Elizabeth. She burst out to some of her ladies: "But the Queen of Scots was mother of a fair son, while she was but a barren stock." But Mary's triumph did not last. The initial euphoria of marriage had faded as Darnley's true nature emerged. He was violent, an arrogant drunkard, with all the makings of a psychopath. Darnley had become insanely jealous of David Rizzio, Mary's Italian secretary, whom he suspected of having an affair with the queen. A group of Protestant Scottish lords also hated Rizzio because he was a Catholic and the queen's favorite. So the two groups of Rizzio's enemies came together and signed a contract to murder him. On the night of the 9th of March 1566, the conspirators burst into the queen's smallest chamber, where they found Rizzio having one of his late-night tête-à-têtes with the queen. He was dragged outside and stabbed 57 times. The conspirators thoughtfully left Darnley's dagger sticking in Rizzio's belly. Less than a year later, Darnley himself was dead. The house where he was staying was blown up, and Darnley was found strangled in the orchard. Everything suggested that the man responsible for the crime was James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, who was one of Mary's leading supporters. Still worse, the finger of suspicion also pointed at Mary herself. And as Elizabeth told her bluntly, her behavior was making a bad situation worse: "Madam, my ears have been so astounded, my heart so frightened to hear of the horrible and abominable murder of your former husband, our mutual cousin, that I have scarcely spirit to write; yet I cannot conceal that I grieve more for you than for him." But there was still worse to come. Mary was abducted, taken by force to Dunbar, and raped. The perpetrator was James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell. Two weeks later, they were married. [Music]
"Madam, how could a worse choice be made for your honour than in such haste to marry a subject who, besides other notorious lacks, is publicly famed to have charged with the murder of your late husband?" Within a few weeks, Mary paid a terrible price for her folly. A large party of the Scottish nobility rose up in arms against their scandalous queen. [Music]
The two sides joined in battle, but Mary's troops melted away without striking a blow. Even her husband, Bothwell, negotiated a safe conduct for himself from the field of battle. Mary was defeated and abandoned. Mary was brought as a prisoner here to the island fortress of Loch Leven, where she miscarried of twins. Then, broken in body and mind, under the immediate threat of physical force, she was compelled to abdicate in favor of her one-year-old son, James. She was never to see him again. Mary had married unwisely, for love and for lust. The consequence: she had lost her crown, her son, and her liberty. Perhaps, after all, there was wisdom in living and ruling alone. [Music] [Laughter]
"To be led from the place of arraignment to the Tower of London, and from thence to the gallows at Tyburn; and there to be hanged, and being half-dead, to be cut down; the bowels to be taken out of the belly and thrown into the fire; and the heads to be cut off, and the body to be divided into four parts; and the head and four quarters to be set up and disposed at our pleasure; which manner of execution is due to every person that committed treason. Given under our Signet at our Palace of Westminster." Elizabeth, for the Tudors, treason was the worst of crimes, which deserved the worst of punishments. It is a birth; she had personal experience of its terrors because she had been imprisoned in the Tower on charges of treason herself. When she became queen, she hoped that the moderation of her rule would make treason and its terrible penalties a forgotten memory. But a decade after her accession, these hopes were fading. Catholicism hadn't withered away as she'd hoped; the nobility were no longer content simply with honor and dignity; instead, some of them wanted real power, which Elizabeth was reluctant to give them; and above all, there were the great unsolved questions of the succession and her marriage. It was a combustible mixture, needing only a spark to set it alight. In May 1568, Mary escaped from her island prison. Thousands of troops flocked to join her standard, but once again she was defeated in battle. At this time, the defeat is fine. [Music] She escaped from the field of battle, but she was now alone and desperate. She fled to the only place that might offer her safety, protection, even support—England. [Music]
Elizabeth dispatched one of her counselors to Carlisle to convey Mary to a place of refuge and to treat her with all honor as befitted her status as a queen. In reality, she was a prisoner. Mary's arrival in England was a disaster. Until now, Elizabeth the queen had kept Catholicism under control, but Mary gave English Catholics, especially those in the north, a figurehead around whom they could rally. Even earlier, the north of England had been the scene of the biggest rebellion against Henry VIII. Now insurrection was brewing again. The population had remained largely Catholic and felt little loyalty to the Protestant queen far away in London. [Music]
The northern earls were Catholic, too. They had been prepared to put up with Elizabeth providing she left them alone, but slowly the government was nibbling away at their independence. The earls looked to Norfolk for leadership. Norfolk was not a natural rebel, and he, too, was aggrieved and disaffected, ripe for rebellion. In June 1568, Mary's envoy approached the Duke of Norfolk with an extraordinary suggestion: he proposed that the Duke should marry Mary, Queen of Scots, and retake Scotland. Norfolk would then exchange a ducal coronet for the royal crown of Scotland, whilst his and Mary's children would be the natural heirs of England—also attractive, but dangerous. Norfolk had in his pocket a commission from Elizabeth in which she stated that anybody marrying Mary would be forthwith adjudged a traitor. And Norfolk himself was convinced of Mary's guilt as a murderer and an adulterer. But ambition brings strange bedfellows. Rumors of his dangerous conversations reached Elizabeth, and she summoned Norfolk to court. Her cousin denied the charge. She gave him two more chances to come clean. His small, lame denials roused her suspicions. This was more than just a covert marriage plan; it was a plot to overthrow her. [Music]
Norfolk suddenly left the Queen's summer progress and returned here to the Charterhouse, his London residence. He agreed to join in a plot hatched by the Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland. The earls would raise the north, liberate Mary, Queen of Scots, and bring about her marriage to Norfolk. "All the north," Northumberland boasted, "will rally at his command." Thomas Percy, the Earl of Northumberland, had his own reasons for rebellion. It was partly about religion—the Percys had remained staunchly Catholic—but at heart it was about power. Northumberland felt he had a right to share in power; Elizabeth was prepared to share power with no one. Thomas was really driven to rebellion by Elizabeth and Cecil in particular. Cecil didn't like the power of the Percys in the north and the fact that they were Catholic as well. And a lot of the people in this area were Catholic meant that there was a power base in the north, close to Scotland, obviously close to Mary, Queen of Scots, that presented a serious problem to the crown. Thomas could have had a very easy life. He was wealthy enough to maintain his life in Northumberland; he loved country pursuits; he had a wonderful wife; he had four beautiful children. He risked everything, basically. [Music]
But the risk was too much for Norfolk. He wrote to Northumberland begging him to cancel the rising, but it was too late. Midnight on November the 9th, 1569. Churches all over the north rang their bells backwards—a signal for the rebellion to begin. [Music] On the 10th of November, the rebels entered the city of Durham and broke open the doors of this great cathedral. And here they performed an act of calculated defiance: they tore up and burned the Protestant Bibles and prayer books—the symbols of the new religion.
They celebrated the central mystery of the old by attending a Catholic Mass. They had crosses on their armor, and they carried the badge and the banner of the five wounds of Christ. It looked like a holy war, a crusade.
The loss of Durham was a catastrophe. The city was a fortress to stop an invasion from Scotland; now it had fallen to the rebels and could be turned against the Queen.
Elizabeth was paying a heavy price for her mishandling of the northern Earls, by bullying them like her father, his worst. He had pushed them over the edge.
That goal was obvious: to rescue Mary from captivity. Mary was imprisoned in a tough, brain Staffordshire. If they managed to reach her, they would hold not only half of England; they would have an alternative Queen.
Elizabeth acted decisively. She had her cousin moved further south to Coventry, when inside the Protestant heartland and beyond the rebels' reach. She also ordered the rapid deployment of an armed force to the north to intercept them. The rebel Earls had advanced south confidently, expecting that other noblemen would join them. So when they heard instead that the southern Lords were marching against them with royal troops in overwhelming numbers, they were taken off guard. They decided to retreat, to fight on their own territory. But the retreat was the stuffing out of the rebellion; their troops melted away, and the Earls fled towards Scotland.
Elizabeth was exultant. By behaving like her father, she'd helped to provoke the rebellion; now she actually outdid him in the savagery with which she punished the rebels. Spare no offenders. We are in nothing moved to spare them. The bodies to remain till they fall to pieces where they hang. 700 men were put to death, including the Earl of Northumberland. No village was without at least one execution. Lands were seized and distributed amongst Elizabeth's Protestant supporters. The north of England would never be the same again.
Norfolk was arrested, but there wasn't enough evidence to execute him for treason. But whilst under house arrest, he became involved in a new plot, masterminded by the Italian banker Ridolfi.
The conspirators were careless. English spies captured incriminating letters, and the plotters were rounded up. It was more than enough to seal Norfolk's fate.
A Queen could not bring herself to execute England's only Duke, a closest male relative. Three times she signed the execution warrant; three times she called it back and destroyed it. For five months she procrastinated; she was staving off the inevitable. Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, late of Kenning Hall in the county of Norfolk, on judgement day this day a ready should be fled from the messiest arraignments at the Tower of London, his immense should be drawn from his body to be divided into four parts, and his hand and out of his borders to be said Arthur disposed and his head to be cut off, which matters constitutionalized into every person that committed treason.
Yet we, being moved to pity of our grace appeased to change such manner of execution to cause only that his head to be smitten from his body at the Tower, he'll be accustomed place of execution. Given under our signet at our Palace of Westminster the thirteenth year of our reign, Elizabeth our.
On the morning of the 2nd of June 1570, Norfolk was led to the scaffold. Stoical to the last, he rearranged the straw, lay down, stretched out his neck, and then, as a crowd murmured, "Lord Jesus, have on thy soul," the executioner cut off his head with a single stroke.
Elizabeth reigned for 14 years. She had beaten off rebellion; she had resisted the pressure to marry; and she had survived. But Mary and religion, that divided her country and her Catholic enemies abroad, were muscling their forces. Elizabeth and her Protestant people would be plunged into war.