Читать книгу The Queens and the Hive - Edith Sitwell - Страница 14

Table of Contents

Of the four men who were to be the chief Councillors to the new Queen, it was said that Lord Robert Dudley (afterwards Earl of Leycester) ‘seemed wiser than he was; but Sir Nicholas Bacon was wiser than he seemed to be; Lord Hunsdon (Anne Boleyn’s nephew) neither was wise, nor seemed to be’. As for Sir Nicholas Bacon’s brother-in-law, Sir William Cecil—afterwards Lord Burleigh—he was ‘the youngest, the oldest, the gravest and greatest councillor in Christendom’.

‘There was, before his death,’ said a writer of the time, ‘never a counsellor left alive in Europe, that was counsellor when he was first made one. He was made a counsellor at twenty-five years of age. And so continued foure yeares, in King Edward’s time—and was the first counsellor Queen Elizabeth had.

‘And so continued to the fortieth yeare of her reign. A long, happie tyme, to live in such a place, in so great account and reputation! And, in the end, having lived so honourablie, virtuouslie, peaceablie, to die so goodlie, is an example of God’s wonderful and rare blessinge, seldome found in men of his estate and employment.’

Now, unobtrusively, in his country house, he was waiting for the news that would summon him to Hatfield.

One candle threw a thick gold thread over the snow that was dark green as strawberry leaves under the shadow of the winter trees. Then even that thread of light was extinguished, and the cares and hopes of the day were forgotten by him who, when old, used to say ‘when he put off his gown: “Lie there, lord treasurer”, and, bidding adieu to all state affairs, he would dispose himself to his quiet rest.’^[1]

His escapes from danger, his variations from truth-telling boldness to subterfuge, had, during the last years, been of a startling character. He had, with some difficulty, avoided being involved in the disgrace of the Protector, the Duke of Somerset, to whom he was secretary. At the time of that disgrace, he crossed over to the enemy, and became secretary to the Duke of Northumberland, who superseded the disgraced man.

At the time of the Northumberland rebellion, he had thought it best to absent himself from Court, giving an imaginary illness as his excuse. But this illness, owing to fright, soon became a reality. So much so, indeed, that his kinsman, Lord Audley, wrote to him, advising him: ‘Good Mr. Cecil, be of good comfort and plucke up a lustie merrie heart, and thus shall you overcome all diseases’. He recommended him to take, as remedy, ‘A Porpin, otherwise called an Englishe Hedgehog, and quarter hym in peeces, and put the said Beeste in a styll with these Ingredients: item: a quart of Red Wine, a pinte of Rose-water, a quart of Sugar, Cinnamone and great Raisines’.

Whether or not this was, as Lord Audley claimed, ‘a proved Remedie’, the sufferer’s health improved. But this may, perhaps, be ascribed to the fact that Lady Bacon, his sister-in-law, one of Queen Mary’s ladies, had succeeded in averting from him the Queen’s wrath.

When we think of him, we see him (perhaps because of his great wisdom and experience) as an old man, one full of cares and honours—see him as when, like another old counsellor,

His beard was white as snow,

All flaxen was his poll.

But at the time of Queen Elizabeth’s accession, he was aged thirty-eight, and his hair was brown—it had not yet faded to flaxen like the dying snow; and he walked with a lively step, not yet having been afflicted by that ‘unhappie griefe in the foote’, the gout. ‘He was rather meanely statured’, wrote the author of Desiderata Curiosa, ‘and more well-proportioned than tall.... He was verie well-favoured, and of an excellent Complexion. Inasmuch as even in his later dayes, when he was well and warme, or had newe dined or supped, he had as good a colour in his face as most faire Women.’ (Of ‘an orient colour’, perhaps, like his prized gilliflowers who ‘stayed till hotter beams are prepared to infuse a spicy redness into (their) odours, and tincture (their) complexion with the deepest crimson’.)

‘I think’, continued the same writer, ‘there were few who knew him but will say he was one of the sweetest and most well-mannered olde Men that hath beene seene.... He liked not an indirect or frivolous answere. Nor a tedious tale. Yet would he heare all though sometimes telle their faults.

‘Most parte of the tyme, he was noted to be most patient in hearing (and so milde and readie answering as no Man went away discontented or without a reasonable Answere and quicke Despatch). Until three or foure yeares before his Deathe, when surprised with Age’s Imperfections, he was a little sharpe in wordes, sometymes; but it would vanishe like the Winde.

‘In his old Age, if he could gett his table sette round with young, littel children, he was then in his Kingdome. And it was an exceeding pleasure, to heare what sporte he would make with them, with such prettie Questions, and wittie Allurements, as much delighted himselfe, the Children, and their hearers.... Or if he could get anie of his old Acquaintance, who could discourse of their youthe, or of thinges past in olde tyme, it was notable to heare what merrie tales he would tell.

‘He had a great Household, and manie Gentlemen’s sonnes among them.

‘Bookes he loved, but after bookes, his Garden was his chiefe pleasure.’

This garden was ruled over by John Gerard, the herbalist—John Gerard with eyes as dark and clear and flashing as thieving blackbirds, and a ruff as clear and fresh as one of his own pinks. The Lord Treasurer’s garden was full of gilliflowers discovered and fostered by Master Ralph Tuggie, Gerard’s friend, whose garden in Westminster was famous: ‘The Princesse, the fairest of all these variable tawnies, of a stammell^* colour, striped and marbled with white stripes and veines’. ‘Master Tuggie’s Rose Gilliflower, onely possessed by him that is the most industrious preserver of all nature’s beauties, being of a fine stammell colour, very like unto a small rose, much like unto the red Rose Campion, both for forme, colour, and roundnesse, but larger for size.’ ‘A Gillofloure with yellow flowers, the which a worshipful Merchant of London, Mr. Nicholas Leete, procured from Poland....’

These were the delight of the leisure of that ‘industrious perceiver of all nature’s beauties’, Queen Elizabeth’s chief statesman.

•••••

The wise old man was in the habit of saying, ‘That nothing was truly for a prince’s profit, that was not for his honour’. ‘That war is soon kindled, but peace very hardly procured.’ He would often say that he thought “there was never so wise a woman born, for all respects, as Queen Elizabeth. For she spake and understood all languages. Knew all estates and dispositions of all princes. And (particularly was) so expert in the knowledge of her own realm and estate as no counsellor she had, could tell her what she knew not before.

‘She had also so rare gifts, as when her Counsellors had said all they could say, she would then frame out a wise counsel beyond all theirs.’

•••••

On Sunday the 20th of November, the new Queen gave her first audience to her Ministers.

After the oaths of allegiance had been taken, the Queen addressed the assembly:

‘My Lords,

‘The laws of Nature move me to sorrow for my sister; the burden that has fallen upon me maketh me amazed: and yet considering I am God’s creature ordained to obey His appointment I will thereto yield; desiring from the bottom of my heart that I may have assistance of His Grace, to be the minister of His heavenly will in the office now committed to me. And as I am but one body naturally considered, though by His permission a body politic to govern, so shall I desire you all, my Lords, chiefly you of the nobility, every one in his degree and power to be assistant to me; that I with my ruling and you with your service may make a good account to Almighty God, and leave some comfort to our posterity on earth....’

As Sir William Cecil knelt before the Queen, and took his oath of allegiance as Secretary, she said to him, ‘I give you this charge that you shall be of my Privy Council, and content yourself to take pains for me and my realm. This judgment I have of you, that you will not be corrupted by any manner of gifts, and that you will be faithful to the State; and that without respect of my private will you will give me that Counsel which you think best; and if you shall know anything necessary to be declared unto me of secrecy, you shall show it to myself only; and assure yourself, I will not fail to keep taciturnity thereto.’^[2]

To these charges he was faithful to his death.

So he was seen by most observers. But the light could change the shadows cast by him to strange shapes. Those shadows could be dark and deep.

At this same audience, Sir Nicholas Bacon was made Lord Keeper, and Cecil’s kinsman and friend, the fat and fussy Thomas Parry, was knighted and made Controller of the Queen’s household.

This Polonius of a man, this old courtier whose ear, one imagines, was always at the keyhole, whose tongue was never silent, whose speeches were like a swirl of dry dust in a little air, had been in her life since her early childhood.

He had been forgiven for his gross indiscretion, years ago, when Admiral Seymour, the Protector’s brother (a strong-voiced, gallant, swashbuckling, thirty-eight-year-old man—‘fierce in courage, courtly in fashion, in personage stately, in voice magnificent, but somewhat empty of matter’^[3]), having succeeded in marrying King Henry’s widow Catherine Parr—secretly, for his brother would not have allowed the marriage—turned his attention, immediately after his wife’s death, to the fifteen-year-old Elizabeth.^[4]

Before the Queen’s death, when the Princess was living in her stepmother’s house, Mrs. Ashley, the girl’s governess, had strongly disapproved of the Admiral’s conduct. However, as soon as he became a widower, she and Parry, the Princess’s cofferer, did their utmost to further his new ambition, with the result that they brought, not only their lives, but that of the Princess, into danger. When the news reached the Princess’s house that the Admiral had been sent to the Tower on the charge of high treason (an attempt to get possession of the person of his nephew the boy-King), and that ‘my lord Great Master and Master Denny’ had arrived to arrest both governess and cofferer for advancing the Admiral’s ambition to marry the Princess, ‘the Cofferer turned horribly pale, went hastily to his chamber, and said to my lady his wife “I would I had never been born for I am undone”—and wrung his hands, and cast away his chain from his neck and his rings from his fingers’.

Thomas Parry and Mrs. Ashley were sent to the Tower. There, in fear of his life, he repeated all Mrs. Ashley’s indiscreet remarks.

That lady had many virtues, but discretion was not among them. Her tongue was a babbling brook, and she could not conceive of a heaven in which there was neither marrying nor giving in marriage.

EARL OF LEYCESTER

That babbling tongue had helped to bring them to the Tower. After Queen Catherine’s death, on Twelfth Night, she told the cofferer that the Queen’s ladies had said evil things ... that ‘the Admiral had loved the Princess but too well, and had so done for a long while’; and that ‘the Queen, suspecting too often access of the Admiral to the lady Elizabeth’s Grace, came suddenly upon them, when they were all alone (he having her in his arms). Whereupon the Queen fell out both with the Lord Admiral and with her Grace also.... And this was not long before they parted asunder their families [households]. I do not know whether ... she went herself, or was sent away....’^[5]

This was the gist of Thomas Parry’s revelations in the Tower....

One false step on the part of this fifteen-year-old girl, left alone, with no one to advise her ... then the Tower—the headsman’s block for herself, and for others.

The questioners were unable to bring Elizabeth to say one thing which could inculpate Mrs. Ashley or Parry. They, and in particular Parry, had told everything which could reflect discredit upon the young girl in their charge. But, with the true Elizabethan greatness, that young girl asserted their entire innocence. They had never, she declared, tried to further the Admiral’s plans.

On their release, the Princess received them back into her household, and Thomas Parry had, though a Protestant, been allowed by Queen Mary to attend the Princess at Hatfield, though not to live actually in the house. Incurably addicted to the promotion of matrimony, and not in the least discouraged by his sojourn in the Tower for that offence, he was soon to become one of the chief instigators of the plan that the Queen should marry Lord Robert Dudley.^†

He was not to serve his mistress for long. He died on the 15th of December 1560 of ‘mere ill humour’.