Just a few months in, the Spanish ambassador the Count de Feria is already reporting what will be a whispered until Dudley death some 30 years later.
During the last few days Lord Robert has come so much into favour that he does whatever he likes with affairs and it is even said that her Majesty visits him in his chamber day and night. People talk of this so freely that they go so far as to say that his wife has a malady in one of her breasts and the Queen is only waiting for her to die to marry Lord Robert. I can assure your Majesty that matters have reached such a pass that I have been brought to consider whether it would not be well to approach Lord Robert on your Majesty's behalf, promising him your help and favour and coming to terms with him.1
Even his wife's breast cancer is part of an insidious plot. The ambassador observes that the Queen's favorite needs allies. The old blood nobility is infuriated by his proud bearing and access. The Queen is perceived as love-struck.
Feria was only the first of a succession of ambassadors the Spanish King went through in search of one who could thrive in the chaos of the new Queen's Court. A few months later, the new ambassador, Alvaro de la Quadra, the Bishop Of Aquila, reported to the King's close advisor that matters have escalated.
I have only been able to find out about this plot what I am told by a great friend of Robert's, who says that at a banquet given by the earl of Arundel to the Queen she was to be poisoned and he murdered, which is the same as Lady Sidney said.2
The stolid bishop had passed through the looking glass. This was only the beginning of four years of clandestine misdirection and exasperation.
The gossip was touring through all of the courts of Europe.
[Sir Nicholas Throgmorton] had written to her Majesty at his being ambassador in France that he heard reported at Duke Memorance’s [Montmorency’s] table that the Queen of England had a meaning to marry her horsekeeper);3
Some three years later, after many strange adventures, Quadra was informed by the Queen that she was furious with him.
The particulars were discussed with her advisors William Howard, the Baron Effingham (her Lord Chamberlain), and Dr. Nicholas Wotton.
20 June 1562. MINUTE of the Conversation between the AMBASSADOR and
the LORD CHAMBERLAIN and DR. WOTTON respecting the charges made against the AMBASSADOR [Bishop Quadra].
6. That I had written to his Majesty that the Queen had been secretly married to Lord Robert at the earl of Pembroke's house.
What I wrote to his Majesty about this was the same as I said to the Queen, which was that people were saying all over the town that the wedding had taken place, which at the time neither surprised nor annoyed her, and she said it was not only people outside of the palace who had thought such a thing, as on her return that afternoon from the Earl's house her own ladies in waiting when she entered her chamber with Lord Robert asked whether they were to kiss his hand as well as hers to which she had told them no, and that they were not to believe what people said. In addition to this he (Robert) told me two or three days after that the Queen had promised to marry him but not this year. She had told me also with an oath that if she had to marry an Englishman it should only be Robert.4
Among the charges, he was accused of reporting rumors of the Queen's secret marriage to Lord Robert as actual fact. Gossip on the nature of their relationship still dominated the Court. The ladies loved the soap opera. The noblemen courtiers smoldered with jealousy.
The good bishop died deeply in debt, betrayed by his own servant who had become a paid instrument of the English Court and surrounded by bedlam. Among his replacement's first conversations with the Queen he quotes her:
They charge me with a good many things in my own country and elsewhere, and, amongst others, that I show more favour to Robert than is fitting; speaking of me as they might speak of an immodest woman. I am not surprised that the occasion for it should have been given by a young woman and young man of good qualities, to whose merits and goodness I have shown favour, although not so much as he deserves, but God knows how great a slander it is, and a time will come when the world will know it. My life is in the open, and I have so so many witnesses that I cannot understand how so bad a judgment can have been formed of me.5
Still the favorite topic of gossip throughout Europe and her kingdom was the daring love affair all felt certain was going on between she and Robert Dudley. Surely, she mused, the fact that she rarely had so much as a few minutes alone without attendants should have forefended any such gossip.
1 Spanish Letters and State Papers, I.XX. 18 April, 1559. Count de Feria to the King.
2Ibid., I.96. 9 Sept.1559. The Bishop Of Aquila to the Duke Of Alba.
3Anonymous. Leicester's Commonwealth (1584, 1985). Peck, ed. 60. Also 132n: “This joke originated with the Queen of Scots, then still in France, on the occasion of Amy’s death; Leicester was Elizabeth’s Master of the Horse. Throgmorton sent word of it from Paris to Cecil via his secretary, Robert Jones (26 Nov. 1560); Cecil told the Queen, who in turn twitted Dudley with it, and he learned its provenance by interrogation of Jones. See Jones to Throgmorton, 30 Nov. 1560, Hardwicke State Papers, 1: 164. Anne de Montmorency (d. 1567), Constable of France, was then close to Mary’s kinsmen the Guises.”
4Spanish Letters and State Papers, I.XX 20 June, 1562. Bishop Quadra to the King.
5Ibid. I.387. 9 Oct. 1564. Guzman De Silva to the King.
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