The Queen to Essex

For a time I reveled in my marriage and I was happy. I had a handsome, young, adoring husband who was not constantly in attendance on another woman. My son Robert, Earl of Essex, was fast becoming one of the Queen's first favorites, and it seemed likely that he would eventually take his stepfather's place.

"One of these days I will tell the Queen that she must receive you at Court," he told me.

He was very different from Leicester, who had always been so cautious and devious. Sometimes I trembled for him. He had so little tact and was not going to pretend to what he did not feel for the sake of expediency. This could be attractive in its initial stages, but could it last with a woman as vain as the Queen, and one so accustomed to adulation as she was? At the moment Essex was refreshingly youthful, an enfant terrible. He himself had always been inordinately vain, but was he overestimating his influence with the Queen?

I discussed this with Christopher, who was of the opinion that the Queen was so enamored of his youth and good looks that she would forgive him a good deal. Christopher's youth and good looks had done likewise for him, I reflected; but I should not be ready to endure insolence, however young and good-looking he might be; and I doubted Elizabeth would either.

I had thought it wise to wait a year before marriage in view of the rumors about Leicester's death and the fact that my new husband was some twenty years younger than I. The year that followed was a happy one.

We had always been a loyal family. One of Leicester's most endearing qualities had been devotion to his; and although my children had been on the best of terms with the first of their stepfathers, they were nonetheless ready to accept the second.

My favorite daughter was Penelope. She was something of an intrigante, as I myself was, and whatever her misfortunes, they never depressed her, and she was constantly looking around for exciting adventures. I knew, of course, that her life was not quite what it seemed. She lived quite decorously at Leighs in Essex and in Lord Rich's London home. In the country she appeared to be a model of virtue, devoting herself to her growing brood. She now had five children—three sons, Robert, Henry and Charles, and two girls, Lettice (named for me) and Penelope for herself. But when she came to Court she was full of plans.

She deplored the fact that the Queen would not receive me, and kept assuring me that Essex would lose no opportunity to get me reinstated.

"If Leicester could not do it, do you think Essex can?" I demanded.

"Ah," laughed Penelope, "do you think Leicester tried hard enough?"

I had to agree that he would have found it difficult to plead the cause of his wife, who was ostracized for the very reason that she was his wife.

They were often at Leicester House—my two daughters, my son Walter, and very often Essex. His friendship with Charles Blount, with whom he had fought a duel over the chess queen, had grown, and Charles, who was after all the elder brother of my husband, was very much one of the family. Frances Sidney was also a frequent visitor; and the talk round my table was full of vitality and sometimes wild. I did not care to restrain them, because I thought it would call attention to my age as they were all younger than I, although at times I wondered what the Queen would have thought could she have heard them.

The most reckless of them all was Essex, who was growing more and more sure of his domination over the Queen. Charles Blount warned him now and then that he ought to have a care, but Essex just laughed at him.

I used to watch him with great pride, for I was sure it was not just a mother's prejudice which made him supreme in my eyes. He was no more handsome than Leicester had been in his youth, and he possessed the same magnetism; but whereas Leicester had seemed to possess all the perfections nature could bestow on a man, Essex's very weaknesses were more endearing than Leicester's strength had been.

Leicester had always calculated the effect of what he did, weighing up the advantage to himself. Essex's very impulsiveness was appealing because it was dangerous. And honest—at least as he saw it. He could be very gay and then suddenly melancholy; he was vigorous and excelled at outdoors pastimes; then suddenly he would fall ill and have to take to his bed. He had a strange loping walk which made it possible to pick him out in a group from a long distance, and somehow it touched me deeply whenever I noticed it. Of course he was very handsome with that mass of auburn hair and those dark eyes—the coloring he had inherited from me—and of course he was very different from the other young men who circulated about the Queen. They were sycophants and he was never that. Moreover, he had a genuine passion for the Queen; he was in love with her in a way, but never did he subdue his own nature to suit hers. He would not pretend that she was all-knowing, if he disagreed with her.

I was very afraid as to where his impulsive steps would lead him and I was constantly begging him to take care.

When he sat with Penelope, Charles Blount, Christopher, Frances Sidney and myself, he would talk of what he hoped to do.

He believed the Queen should be more bold with the Spaniards. They had suffered a bitter and humiliating defeat and it should be followed up. He was going to tell the Queen what course of action she should take. He had great plans. For one thing he wanted a standing army.

"Soldiers should be well trained," he cried, waving his arms enthusiastically. "Each time we go to war we have to train men and boys anew. We want them ready. I am constantly telling her this. When I take my army to the war I want soldiers not plowmen."

"She will never agree to let you go out of the country," Penelope reminded him.

"Then I shall go without her consent," retorted my son loftily.

I wondered what Leicester would have said.

Sometimes, tentatively, I reminded him of how his stepfather had behaved towards the Queen.

"Oh, he was like the rest," retorted Essex. "He dared not cross her. He pretended to agree with everything she said or did."

"Not always, and he crossed her more than once. He married me, remember."

"He never crossed her openly."

"He remained her favorite to the end of his life," I added.

"So shall I," boasted Essex, "but I shall do it my way."

I wondered, and continued to fear for him, for although Penelope was close to me, it was Essex who was my favorite. I thought how strange it was that the Queen and I should love the same men and that for so long the man who was of most importance to her should be to me also.

I knew that she still mourned Leicester. I heard that she kept a miniature of him which she looked at often; and that she had the last letter he had written her in a box which was labeled: "His last letter."

Yes, it was like a strange joke of fate that now my husband was dead the man she should most care about should be my son.

Essex was complaining that his debts were many and that, although the Queen showed her favor by keeping him at her side, she had bestowed nothing of value on him—no titles, no lands, such as those she had given to his stepfather; and he was too proud to ask her for them.

He was restive and longed for adventure of a kind that would bring him money. War was the answer, for, if it were victorious, spoils went with it. Moreover he was growing more insistent—and others agreed with him—that war with the Spaniards should be pursued.

The Queen agreed at length that an expedition might be sent out. Don Antonio, the ex-King of Portugal, had been deposed a year after he had come to the throne on the death of King Henry, and had been living in England ever since that time. Now King Philip of Spain had sent the Duke of Alva to claim Portugal for Spain. As the Portuguese were resentful of the Spanish usurpation, Portugal appeared to be a good battlefield. Sir Francis Drake was to take care of the fleet operations and Sir John Norris those of the land.

When Essex hinted that he should go, the Queen flew into a rage and he knew that it was useless to say more to her, but, being Essex, he was not deterred, and planned to go without telling her.

He came to say goodbye to me a few days before he left, and I was flattered to be taken into his confidence on this very secret matter, especially when the Queen was excluded.

I said: "She will be furious with you. It may be that she will not take you back."

He laughed at that. He was so confident of knowing how to deal with her.

I warned him, but not too seriously. To tell the truth, I was rather pleased at the thought of her anger and frustration at losing him.

How he loved intrigue! He and Penelope planned together.

The night he left he was going to invite Penelope's husband, Lord Rich, to his chamber to sup with him, and after his guest had left he would make his way to the park where his groom would be waiting for him with fleet horses.

"Drake will never allow you to board his ship," I told him. "He knows full well it would be against the Queen's wishes, and he is a man who would not risk offending her."                          •

Essex laughed. "Drake will not see me. I have arranged with Roger Williams to have a ship waiting for me. We shall put to sea and conduct a campaign of our own if they won't let us join with them."

"You terrify me," I said; but I was proud of him, proud of that bold, reckless courage which I believed he had inherited from me, for it certainly had not come from his father.