Elizabeth Regina by Alison Plowden

Author:Alison Plowden
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752467399
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2011-08-08T04:00:00+00:00

6

A VERY GREAT PRINCESS

Love wing’d my Hopes and taught me how to fly

Far from base earth, but not to mount too high:

For true pleasure

Live in measure,

Which if men forsake,

Blinded they into folly run and grief for pleasure take.

‘We may say, and that truly, that God fought for us … for certainly the enemy’s designs were dangerous, and not to be diverted by our force; but by His will who would not suffer the Spaniards in any of their attempts to set footing in England.’ This, at least, was the considered verdict of William Monson on the Armada of 1597 and one which was most probably shared by Queen Elizabeth. Having once more been obliged to watch her men of war deliberately disobeying their instructions with what might have been very serious consequences, it would hardly be surprising if she had come to regard the Almighty as her only reliable supporter.

Nor was it surprising that the Earl of Essex should have received a chilly welcome when he returned to Court at the end of October. The Queen had been listening to Walter Raleigh’s friends and made no secret of her anger and disappointment with her commander-in-chief. It was the return from Cadiz all over again, but this time there was no compensating triumph. This time, too, Essex, himself deeply disappointed, overtired, irritable and on the defensive, was in no mood of resignation and quickly found a grievance of his own to exploit.

After church on Sunday, 23 October, in a grand ceremony in the Presence Chamber, the Queen had conferred the earldom of Nottingham on Charles Howard – an event made the more noticeable by the extreme rarity of Elizabethan peerages. Some people might have seen this one as a well-deserved, if belated, recognition of a distinguished servant of the Crown. Essex chose to see it as a deliberate insult, taking special umbrage over the wording of Howard’s patent, which not only mentioned his great services against the Armada of 1588, but also in the action at Cadiz, the credit for which, in Essex’s opinion, belonged to him alone. To make matters worse, the new earl, as Lord High Admiral and Lord Steward of the present Parliament, would now take precedence over him on public and state occasions – a humiliation Essex was not prepared to endure. He took himself off to his house at Wanstead on the pretext of having to attend to his own long-neglected affairs and proceeded to indulge in an attack of galloping self-pity. Being Essex, of course, he was over-reacting, but the timing of Charles Howard’s elevation does lead to the suspicion that it had been intended, if not as a direct snub, at least as a strong hint that the Queen’s favour was not to be considered as anyone’s exclusive property.

The absence of my lord of Essex naturally became the chief topic of conversation at Court, Rowland Whyte speculating that the peace concluded between him and Robert Cecil would once more ‘burst out to terms of unkindness’.

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