Elizabeth I's Secret Lover by Robert Stedall

Author:Robert Stedall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2020-07-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16 Robert survives political attempts to undermine his standing

Despite conflict abroad, Elizabeth’s control of Government had heralded a new stability at home. Although her court was divided into competing factions, she tried to ensure that its members maintained a veil of civility. Membership of her Council remained remarkably static, and Elizabeth’s strong personal friendships with councillors and members of her court were repaid with great loyalty. Some of them had come to accept the reality that she would never marry. Although this diminished Robert’s prospects, Cecil realised that their deep friendship was unshaken and he continued to have ‘favour sufficient’.1

While Cecil remained circumspect in dealing with Robert, this was not true of Norfolk and Sussex, heading a list of detractors who regularly clashed with him. Robert’s enemies also included William, 1st Lord Howard of Effingham, (whose daughter, Douglas, was soon to become Robert’s mistress) and Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon. (Effingham’s second son, Charles, later 1st Earl of Nottingham, had recently married Hunsdon’s daughter, Catherine Carey.) Cecil was not above giving them encouragement in the background. The rival groups became distinguished by the wearing of coloured favours, yellow for the Howard/Radcliffe group and purple for Robert’s supporters, resulting in occasional brawls. Even Elizabeth could see Robert’s arrogance and publicly warned him not to assume that she had no affection for others.

Robert and Norfolk realised that they needed to cool their differences and in early 1567 both left court. Norfolk was absent until September, and Throckmorton advised Robert to stay away to avoid the accusation of interference in the Austrian marriage negotiations. It seems likely that before he went, Elizabeth took the difficult decision to make clear to him that she would never marry him, and they probably ceased to sleep together. In January 1567, de Silva wrote:

The Earl of Leicester has not been in very high favour with the Queen just now, I was walking out of her chamber when she called me back and said she would be glad if I would show some love and friendship to Lord Robert as I was wont to do.2

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.