A son was born to them—another Robert Dudley—and Elizabeth did not know whether she was pleased or angry. He had once said that she should perpetuate her beauty. She thought: He has perpetuated his, mayhap, and I am glad of that, though I would the boy were not that woman’s son.
Lettice already had one son, and the Queen could not help being attracted by him in spite of his mother, for young Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, was the handsomest young man she had seen since the days when his stepfather had enchanted her.
Often she would look sadly at her Robert and think: We are getting old now—too old for jealousy, too old for enmity. She would compare him with the young man who had ridden to her at Hatfield on a white horse, to tell her she was Queen. Poor Robert, he had put on much weight; his face was over-red from too much good living; that sensuality which had been virility in youth became grossness in old age.
And she herself? She was a goddess; she would not be frightened by the encroaching years. All about her were men—men of her Robert’s age and others of young Essex’s age—to tell her she was a goddess who—without Cornelius Lanoy’s elixir—had found eternal youth.
Anjou had failed in the Netherlands, but William the Silent was waging furious war there for his people’s freedom. All eyes in England were on the Netherlands; the outcome of that war for freedom was of the utmost importance.
And the eyes of the Spaniards were on England. What sort of a woman is this? was being asked in Spanish Councils. What sort of a country does she rule? It is only part of an island, yet she acts as though she rules the world. Her seamen are arrogant pirates. They are diverting treasure from Spanish coffers. They are bold and adventurous; they have no respect for His Most Catholic Majesty. They insult the Holy Inquisition itself.
There were names which were spoken of with horror and dread in Spanish ships and Spanish territories: Drake, Hawkins … the fearless ones. How could men be so fearless as these were? How could they always win? It was because they were in the pay of the Devil. They were not men; they were sorcerers.
Clearly these men and their arrogant Queen would have to be taught a lesson. Francis Drake came sailing home from Chile and Peru with all the treasure plundered from Spanish towns in the new world, and from Spanish galleons. He had rounded the Cape, and by so doing, the world. And what did the Queen do when this pirate arrived home? Did she hang him as he deserved? Did she treat him as a thief, a robber, and a murderer of His Most Catholic Majesty’s subjects?
No! He was a handsome man, and she liked him for that among other things. She liked his Devon burr and she liked his flashing eyes. He was a man after her own heart, for, in his country way, he could pay a gallant compliment.
The Queen told him that the Spaniards went in fear of him. They called him a bold and wicked man.
“Are you such a man, sir?” she asked. “I believe you may be, and I must perforce cut off your head with a golden sword.”
She thereupon called for a sword, and bade him kneel that she might with all speed perform the task which would put an end to plain Francis Drake.
She laid the sword on his shoulders and she said: “Arise, Sir Francis.”
He rose, bowed low and kissed her hand, and said that he would sail the world twenty times and bring back twenty times as much treasure for one smile from Her Majesty’s lips.
There came a tragic year for Robert. His son—in whom he had taken great pride—died suddenly. They buried him in Beauchamp Chapel at Warwick. “Robert Dudley, aged 4 years, the noble Impe,” were the words inscribed on his tomb.
Robert was distraught and the Queen forgot her jealousy and did her best to comfort him.
Kneeling at her feet he said: “It is a retribution. I went against Your Majesty’s wishes in my marriage. This is God’s justice.”
“Nay,” she said gently, “it is not so. The innocent should not suffer. Robert, we are too old and too sad to do aught but comfort each other.”
She made him sit at her feet, and while she caressed his hair she dreamed that it was black and luxuriant as it had once been.
Robert tried to forget his loss by taking under his charge that other Robert, his son by Douglass. He railed against a fate which took his legitimate son and left the other—though he loved both boys and wished to keep them.
He was frequently ill. He had lived too well, and now that he had turned into his fifties he must pay the penalty.
He could not talk of his ailments to the Queen; she hated talk of illness.
More troubles came.
That year, Robert Parsons, a Jesuit, published a book in Antwerp. He was a Catholic, and Leicester was now known throughout the world as England’s Protestant Leader. This book, which was printed on green paper, was referred to as Father Parsons’ Green Overcoat. It was a scurrilous life-study of the Earl of Leicester; and as the Queen had played a large part in that story, she did not escape scandalous references.
Here was an account of the lust between the Queen and her favorite with no details spared. The numbers of children they were reputed to have produced were mentioned. Robert was credited, not only with the murder of Amy Robsart, but of Douglass’s husband and the husband of his present wife, Essex. Every mysterious death which had occurred—and some natural ones—were laid at the door of the Earl of Leicester and his professional poisoners.
The book was brought into England and secretly distributed. Copies were passed from hand to hand. The affairs of Leicester were discussed afresh in every tavern. He was the world’s worst villain. He had contaminated the Queen with his own evil. He was the son of the devil.
Elizabeth raged and stormed and threatened terrible punishment on anyone found with a copy of this foul book, which she swore to be utterly false.
Philip Sidney, indignant on behalf of the uncle whom he loved as a father, wrote an answer to the base knave who had dared circulate such lies against a great nobleman of England.
He declared that although through his father he belonged to a noble family, his greatest honor was to know himself a Dudley.
But no matter what was written and what was said, the memory of Amy Robsart was as fresh now as it had been nearly twenty years before. And those who understood such matters knew that this was more than an attack on Leicester and the Queen. It was a preliminary skirmish in the Catholic-Protestant war.
In that year William of Orange met his violent death. The Protector of his country, the leader, who had inspired his countrymen to fight against the Spanish tyranny, was gone.
The Netherlanders were turning desperate eyes toward England, and Elizabeth was uneasy. War, which she longed to avoid, was being thrust on her. She wanted to hold back, to cling to the prosperity she was building up through peace in her land. But there was no shutting her eyes to the position now. Most of the wool markets in the Netherlands had fallen completely under the Spanish yoke, and the prosperity which had come to England through the wool trade was declining. New markets must be found; but would the English be allowed to find them? Philip had his eyes on England, and he was a fanatic with a mission. In his harbors he was building up the greatest fleet of ships the world had ever known—the Invincible Armada, he called it; and its purpose, all knew, was to sail to the shores of that land whose Queen and whose seamen had so long defied his might.
Elizabeth called her ministers to her. They were in favor of intervention in the Netherlands. They did not feel as she did. They were men who hoped to win power and glory through war. She was only a women, longing to keep her great family of people secure, herself possessing that understanding which told her that even wars which were won brought less gain than continued peace would have brought, without waste of men and gold.