The Elizabethan World by Lacey Baldwin Smith

Author:Lacey Baldwin Smith [Lacey Baldwin Smith]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw
Tags: History/Europe/Great Britain
ISBN: 9781612308890
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2015-07-02T16:00:00+00:00

Sixteenth-century diplomacy had most of the more insane qualities of the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Periodically everybody changed seats, but the same old dirty plates remained; ambassadors never meant what they said, but somehow always said what they meant; the riddles of diplomacy were as bewildering as any concocted by the March Hare; and Elizabeth, Mary of Scotland, and Catherine de Médicis were as extraordinary in their diplomatic tastes as any three sisters who lived in a treacle well. For all his shrewdness and secret sources of information, Philip of Spain remained a baffled stranger in this wonderland of international politics. He could never fathom the mind of Catherine, perhaps because it was so deceptively shallow. He regarded Mary as an emotional and thoroughly unreliable female; and he agreed wholeheartedly with his ambassador who reported Elizabeth to be a woman possessed of “a hundred thousand devils,” who fooled nobody with her idle chatter about becoming a nun and passing her days in quiet prayer.

Diplomats were as concerned with the pedigrees of monarchs as they were with terms of trade. Society took seriously Philip’s claims on behalf of his daughter, Isabella Eugenia, to the thrones of England and France; Elizabeth thought Mary of Scotland’s defiant display of the heraldic arms of England on her escutcheon worthy of a diplomatic protest; and English ambassadors regarded it as an insult to be invited to eat with cutlery flaunting such armorial pretensions. Heraldry and the birthrights of kings were more than window dressing left over from a bygone age. They were the only recognizable guidelines for life in a European family of adolescent states. The emerging nations, jealous of their sovereignty and fearful for their internal security, were endeavoring to formalize their relations with each other. Diplomatic procedure remained in its infancy, and its vocabulary had yet to be established; consequently statesmen had to make do with the language of heraldry and dynasty.

Ambassadors as the accredited representatives of nation-states successfully maintained the inviolability of their persons, but they were usually regarded and often behaved as if they were common spies. The principal interest of diplomats was not peace but information, and every resident ambassador in Europe had a carefully organized and well-paid network of informers. The wealthier the kingdom he represented, the more secret his sources of information, for only the great powers could afford the sums necessary to discover the truth about monarchs, the plots of councilors, and the secret plans of state. Guerau de Spes, the Spanish ambassador in London, had a spy on the Privy Council, and Mendoza, his successor, had an agent in the principal secretary’s household. If the information concerned the sovereign, no detail was too trivial to escape the watchful eyes of a diplomat, and Mendoza’s spy in the royal laundry even took careful note of Elizabeth’s menstrual periods.

In an age that still judged loyalty to kin, region, and God to be as commendable as allegiance to the crown, ambassadors found a ready audience for their tempting proposals and a fertile ground to plant the seeds of treason and discord.

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