A Favorite of the Queen: The Story of Lord Robert Dudley and Elizabeth 1

TEN

She took him back, but whenever she saw him with Lettice she was jealous and alert.

She was angry because the marriage seemed to be successful. Robert had ceased to look at other women. Was it his age? wondered the Queen. Or had that she-wolf some magic power? She was sure the wolf was capable of anything. Wolves were treacherous animals.

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.

But she could no longer hold back, and the Netherlands were asking that one to whom they could look as a leader be sent to them, one whom they could follow as they had followed their own William of Orange. This was the man who had put himself at the head of the Protestant Party and was, as the world knew, so beloved of the Queen that she would never set him at the head of an enterprise to which she would not give her wholehearted support.

The Netherlands were crying out for Leicester.

And so she gave her consent that he should go.

As she bade him a fond farewell, she thought how handsome he was, how full of enthusiasm and ambition. He appeared to be almost a young man again.

He did not suffer at the parting as she did. He was going in search of honor and that military glory which had always appealed to him.

She must stay behind, following his exploits through dispatches and letters, rejoicing in one fact only: if he were separated from her, he was also separated from his wife.

Robert rode in state through the clean little towns to the sound of rapturous applause. It was as though a lifelong ambition was at last realized. For so many years he had longed to be a King; and these people cheered him, knelt before him, as though he were more than a King—their savior.

It was shortly after his arrival at the Hague that the greatest honor of his life was paid to him.

It was New Year’s morning, and he was dressing in his chamber when a delegation arrived to see him. Without waiting to finish his dressing he went to the antechamber. There the leader of the delegation knelt and told him that Dutchmen, looking upon him as their leader, wished to offer him all those titles which had belonged to the Prince of Orange. He should be Governor, ruler, Stadholder.

Robert was overwhelmed with delight. He had longed all his life for something like this: his own kingdom to rule, a kingdom he owed, not to the good graces of the Queen, but to his own statesmanship and popularity.

This was the great testing time of Robert’s life; and how was he to know that, when honors came easily, the hands did not grow strong enough to hold them, that it was by hard work and achievement only that such strength came? He had been carried up to greatness in a litter prepared for him by a doting woman; when he reached the top the air was too rarified for him without his litter to support him; and these Hollanders were asking him to stand on his own feet. Philip of Spain was close; the Duke of Parma was waiting; and in England there was the Queen, who must give her consent to his acceptance of such honors.

He hesitated. He wanted to accept, to take his laurels. He longed to ride through the streets and receive the people’s homage. Dare he do so, and later persuade the Queen to support him? It was an irritating shock to realize that he could not maintain his position without that support.

He hesitated and succumbed to temptation.

He was the Governor of the Netherlands now. He was to be Stadholder, and the people called him Excellency.

The news came to England.

Lettice, seeing herself as the Queen of the Netherlands, decided to join her husband in his new kingdom.

Great preparations were made. Lettice would travel in state to the Hague, with all the trappings of a Queen.

Elizabeth, furious because he had dared accept his new position without even consulting her, was writing angry letters to him. He should at once renounce what he had dared to take up.

“How contemptuously we conceive ourselves to have been used by you, you shall by this bearer understand. We could not have imagined had we not seen it come to pass, that a man raised up by ourself, and extraordinarily favored by us above any other subject in the land, would have so contemptuously broken our commandment …”

While she was writing, Kat came to tell her of the preparations Lettice was making to join her husband.

Elizabeth laid down her pen.

“She may prepare all she will,” she sneered. “She shall never go.”

“She plans to go in the state of a Queen, surpassing even Your Majesty’s state.”

Elizabeth’s eyes blazed. “Let the she-wolf make her plans. She shall ere long wish she had not joined herself to a man whom I shall bring so low as I shall this one. This is the end of the kindness I have shown my lord of Leicester. That man, I promise you, shall wish he had never been born. As for that harlot, that she-wolf, we shall soon see her deserting him. He will see who his friends are. Does he think she has been faithful to him while he has been away?”

“I know, Your Majesty, there are rumors of that most handsome Christopher Blount.”

“Years younger than she is!” snapped the Queen. “A friend of her son’s. There is pleasant news for my lord! But I shall make him smart more than she ever can!”

She picked up her pen and wrote, commanding him to lay aside his newfound honors. He would make an open and public resignation in the very place where he had accepted absolute government without his Queen’s consent. He would show himself to his new “people” as a man of no account, a man unable to make a decision without the consent of his mistress—and most firmly she withheld that consent.

“Fail you not,” she ended, “as you will answer the contrary at your uttermost peril.”

Then she laid aside her pen and let her anger blaze, while she thought with furious resentment of the wicked woman who had dared betray him with a younger man.

Robert, in desperation, sent home two men to plead his cause with the Queen. The matter was too far gone for open withdrawal he pointed out. If she repudiated him, the people of the Netherlands would lose heart; and she must think what that would mean to England. He was contrite; he had offended her and he would rather have died than have done that. But for the good of England, she must give him time to slip out gracefully from his terrible blunder; she must see that public repudiation would be playing into the hands of Philip of Spain.

Her ministers agreed with that view. Robert had to be allowed to disentangle himself with as much tact as possible.

She was now in turn outraged mistress and apprehensive Queen. Worried by the state of affairs in the Netherlands, fervently she wished that England had not become so involved. She accused Robert of squandering England’s money. To that accusation he made a magnificent gesture by selling his own lands and giving up a great part of his fortune to the campaign in the Netherlands.

But he was not suited to his task. He had been too long favored, and had never learned to win success through tedious application. His experience of war was limited. He could sense approaching that military disaster, which lack of the Queen’s support must mean.

His greatest source of consolation was his nephew, Philip Sidney, who was there with him.

He dearly loved Philip and trusted him completely. Philip had urged him not to send for Lettice, and Philip was proved right; for Robert, knowing Elizabeth, realized that the real cause of her anger was the fact that Lettice had arrogantly prepared to join him with the state of a Queen.

Philip had sent one of his players, who had accompanied them to Holland, with urgent messages to Walsingham—Philip’s father-in-law—asking him to use all his influence to prevent Lettice making the journey.

Unfortunately the player had been a head-in-the-clouds fellow—a young man named Will, an actor from Stratford-on-Avon—and, said Philip, recalling the way in which this actor had performed his mission, it would have been a better thing if he had stayed in Stratford; for he had delivered the letters to Lettice herself instead of to Walsingham, and thereby much trouble had been caused which might have been avoided.

Robert was beginning to hate the Netherlands; he was longing for nothing so much as to return home. He wished he had never thought of leaving England and had not been tempted lightly to take that which had been offered.

His melancholy turned to bitter grief when, after the battle of Zutphen, in which he himself fought valiantly, the dead were brought in and he found among them the body of his nephew.

He listened to the accounts of how nobly Philip Sidney had died. This gallant young man had given part of his armor to another man, although he knew himself to be in need of it. When Philip had been fainting from wounds a cup of water had been put to his lips by one of his men; but Philip, seeing a soldier close by groaning in agony, had sent his man over to the sufferer that the water might be given to one who was in greater need of it than he himself. Robert was proud of his nephew, but he felt that he would have given everything that was left to him if he might have brought him back to life.

So Robert lived through his gloomiest hour. He felt in that moment that death would have been preferable to the plight in which he found himself.

When Robert was suffering in the Netherlands, news of the Babington Conspiracy swept through England. Babington, a young man fascinated by the charm of the Queen of Scots when he had been a page in her household, had been persuaded by a group of men to communicate with the Queen with a view to effecting the assassination of Elizabeth and the setting of Mary upon the throne.

Mary had lost none of her impetuosity during the years and, to her, plotting was an exciting pastime.

The conspirators had forgotten what elaborate spy-systems had been set in motion by the alert Walsingham.

Walsingham understood what was happening in the early stages of the plot, for a priest, Gilbert Gifford, having been sent to England secretly to work against Protestantism with the help of the great Catholic families, was captured. Walsingham promised to spare his life if he would become his spy.

This the priest agreed to do and, when Mary was removed from Tutbury to Chartley, Gifford arranged with the brewer who supplied the Chartley beer to convey letters to and from Mary. These were wrapped in waterproof cases and put through the bunghole of the kegs—letters going to Mary in full kegs, hers coming out in empty ones. Gifford took these letters and, before passing them on to those for whom they were intended, handed them to Walsingham, who, putting them into the hands of an expert decoder, learned their contents and was able to follow every twist and turn of the plot.

It was arranged that six men should assassinate Elizabeth. One of the six was to be Babington. If the deed were successfully carried out, these men believed that it would be a simple matter to set Mary on the throne.

Walsingham, as one of the leaders of the Protestant Party, had always deplored the fact that Mary had been allowed to live; and as soon as Mary’s letter to the conspirators—in which she gave her full support to the assassination of Elizabeth—was in his hands, he lost no time in arresting the men and laying the whole plot before the Queen and her Council.

All England rejoiced as soon as the news was made known. Bonfires were lighted; in the country there was dancing on the village greens; in the towns there was singing in the streets. The beloved Queen had narrowly escaped, and at last the Jezebel of Scotland was shown to her most merciful Majesty for what she was. There were services in the churches and on street corners.

Elizabeth noted these expressions of love and loyalty with deep gratification; but she knew that the people were demanding the death of Mary.

Seven of the conspirators whose names had appeared in the letters were placed on hurdles and dragged through the City from Tower Hill to St. Giles’ Fields. Anthony Babington was one of the seven. After these seven had been hanged, they were cut down alive and disemboweled while still living. Such cruelties had been frequently witnessed during the reign of the great Henry; they were rarer in these days.

The agonized screams of tortured men were heard beyond St. Giles’ Fields, and many thought, as they listened, of the wicked woman whom they held responsible for the terrible suffering of these men whose crime was that they had attempted to serve her.

The next day seven more men were condemned to die in the same terrible manner; but Elizabeth, who knew the mood of the people, and who knew too that they expected clemency from her, commanded that the men should not be cut down until they were dead. The mutilations of their bodies should be performed after death.

There remained Mary; and Elizabeth knew that she must die, Queen though she was.

She was taken from Chartley to Fotheringay and there tried before the commissioners of peers, privy councillors and judges; and in spite of her protestations of innocence, her repeated cries that Walsingham had forged the letters which he had laid before the Queen and her ministers, she was found guilty of plotting against Elizabeth and condemned to die.

Elizabeth was even now reluctant to sign the death warrant. That Queens were above the judgment of ordinary men was a maxim she wished to preserve; but great pressure was brought upon her. The situation vis-à-vis Spain was recalled to her mind, and eventually she was prevailed upon to sign the warrant. But she did not dispatch it; and as Walsingham was at that time indisposed, the responsibility for sending the warrant to Fotheringay fell upon a secretary, William Davison.

One February morning, Mary, dressed in black velvet, her crucifix in her hand, went to the hall of the castle of Fotheringay where the block and the executioner were awaiting her. Calmly she bade farewell to her servants.

“Weep not,” she told them, “for thou hast cause rather to joy than to mourn, for now thou shalt see Mary Stuart’s troubles receive their long-expected end.”

The whole Catholic world was talking of the wicked Walsingham’s forgeries, of the evil act of the Jezebel of England whose hands were red with the blood of her enemies.

Walsingham and Burghley would snap their fingers at their enemies. Not so the Queen. The threat of war was moving nearer; in the Spanish harbors work was going on apace in the building of that Armada which was to conquer the world; and its first victim was to be Elizabeth’s England.

The Queen sought to placate her enemies. Her great desire was to hold off the evil day. Time was her ally—now as ever.

She chose William Davison as her scapegoat. She declared she had never meant the warrant to be sent to Fotheringay. She mourned her sister of Scotland. She had never wished for Mary’s death.

She had Davison sent to the Tower. He was to pay a fine which would impoverish him. But she told him before he went that she would continue to pay his salary while he was a prisoner and, as he fell on his knees before her, she let one of her long slender hands pat his shoulder.

The Queen’s reassuring touch told Davison that he was merely the scapegoat she was offering to Spain; and she herself hated Spain as fiercely as any in her realm.

As it turned out, Davison continued to receive his salary, for the Queen kept her word; and when he was shortly afterward released, she did not forget to reward him.

So Mary Stuart died; but the Spanish menace grew and Elizabeth knew that the whole of England was threatened.

When Robert returned from the Netherlands he was greeted rapturously by the Queen. It was a year since she had seen him, and she felt a great and tender pity touch her as she looked into his face.

How he had suffered! His dignity was lost, and the great position for which he had longed was taken from him. She had heard that he was ill in the Netherlands and needed his English doctors. She had at once had them sent to him, for when she heard of his illness all her rancor had disappeared. Lettice was blatantly unfaithful with that young and handsome Christopher Blount. So how could Elizabeth scold him at such a time? How could she do anything but take him under her wing? He had lost dear Philip Sidney, that handsome and most clever young man. Life had suddenly turned cruel to Robert; and seeing this, the Queen knew the height, depth and breadth of her love which had flickered and flamed for nearly forty years and which, she knew, nothing could ever entirely extinguish.

Now she would keep him by her side. She would make up to him for the loss of his beloved nephew, for the loss of his honor, and for the unfaithfulness of his wife. Dear Robert, once the conquering hero, was now the conquered.

Elizabeth had believed that it would be impossible for her to love a man who was no longer handsome, who was no longer the most perfect, the most virtuous; nevertheless she found that she could not cease to love Robert.

The whole country was in a state of tension.

All along the south coast the watchers were alert for the first sight of a sail. The bonfires were ready. In Plymouth Sir Francis Drake was impatient to get at the enemy. Lord Howard of Effingham was begging the Queen for more supplies. The ships, even in the little harbors, were being hastily made ready all through the nights by the light of flares and cressets. The coastal fortifications were being strengthened at fever-heat; and off the Devon coast Ark and Achates, Revenge and Rainbow, Elizabeth Bonaventure and Elizabeth Jonas with their fellow escorts were waiting.

Burghley and Walsingham were frantically counting the cost of the preparations, demanding of one another whence the money was coming to pay for this and that. The Queen, who was always reluctant to spend money, was refusing permission to victual the ships, refusing the money to pay her seamen.

Elizabeth knew that she now faced the greatest peril of her reign, of her life; if her gallant sailors failed to beat off the invader, England would suffer worse than death. Elizabeth loved her country with a great maternal love, with a passion she had never given to any person. Her one idea had been to bring it through peace to prosperity; and this she had done; and this she would have continued to do had that tyrant of the Escorial allowed men and women to follow the religion of their choice. Let him have his priests and his Holy Inquisition—that unholy band of torturers—let him burn his own subjects at the stake; let him torture them on the chevalet; let him tear their limbs with red hot pincers in the name of the Holy Catholic Church; Elizabeth cared not that this should be. If they chose to follow such a Faith and such a King, let them.

But it was not as easy as that. They were sailing now steadily toward her shores—Andalucian, Biscayan, San Felipe, San Juan, and many others; they brought the Spanish dons, the Spanish grandees, the Spanish soldiers and sailors; but they brought more than these: they brought their priests, their inquisitors; they brought the instruments of torture from their dark chambers of pain. They hoped to bring, not only conquest, but the Inquisition.

She had been afraid, but she would overcome that fear. How could she lose? How could England be beaten? It was impossible. She had her men—her beloved men—who in the service of the goddess, the perfect woman, the Queen, the mistress, the mother, could never fail.

There was Lord Howard of Effingham, that fine sailor; there was the incomparable Drake; there was Frobisher, Hawkins; and there were all her dear friends: her Spirit, her Moor, her old Mutton and Bellwether—all those whom she loved; and above all there was Robert.

She had shown her confidence in him, and the return of all her love in this great emergency. He was forgiven the terrible calamity in the Netherlands for which she knew she must accept part of the blame; for if Lettice had not thought of joining him as his Queen, would Elizabeth have felt so insistent on robbing him of his new office, of destroying Flemish trust in England?

She had appointed Robert Lieutenant and General of her Armies and Companies. That would show everyone what she thought of him. That would make it clear that in adversity they stood together, as they had stood when Amy Robsart had died and he had been accused of her murder.

She trusted him; he was her beloved; he was again her Eyes; he was the only man she would have married if she had decided to take a husband.

Robert had divided his forces into two armies—one of which he had stationed at St. James’s, the other at Tilbury. They would be ready, those soldiers of his, to defend their country if the dons dared to land. But Howard and Drake and their men were determined they should never land. Would English seamen give the victory to English soldiers? Never! England owed her prosperity to her seamen—so said Drake—and he was bent on capturing the credit for himself.

Elizabeth wished to be with her armies at such a time—and was not Robert at the head of those armies? She sent a dispatch to him, telling him of her determination to see and talk with her soldiers.

His answer came back.

“Your person,” he wrote, “is the most sacred and dainty thing that we have in the world to care for, and a man must tremble when he thinks of it …”

He would have preferred her, he said, to have stayed in the safest place in England.

“Yet I will not that in some sort so princely and so rare a magnanimity should not appear to your people and the world as it is …”

She read the letter through many times; she kept it with her; she kissed it often, as she used to kiss his letters in the early days.

When she reached Tilbury, gay with flags, Robert met the barge to the sound of thundering cannon, and rode with her in a coach decorated with diamonds, emeralds, and rubies.

She was truly noble as she went among her soldiers. This she knew to be the greatest moment of her country’s history; therefore it was Elizabeth’s greatest moment. Her fear had left her; she no longer believed in the possibility of defeat. The odds might seem against the English. The Spaniards had the ships; they had the ammunition; but they had not Elizabeth; they had not Drake; they had not—and this was their greatest lack—the calm knowledge that they could not fail.

There at Tilbury she mounted a great horse and, holding a truncheon in her hand, she sat more like a soldier than a woman; and thus she addressed them:

“My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety to take heed how we commit ourself to armed multitudes for fear of treachery. But I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and my loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst of the heat and battle, to live or die amongst you all, to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honor and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which, rather than any dishonor shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know, already for your forwardness, you have deserved rewards and crowns; and we do assure you, in the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you.”

This speech of the Queen’s put courage into the hearts of all those who heard it. She was invincible, as she had always known she would be, for, foolish though she might be, vain, coquettish, ill-tempered, selfish—when the occasion arose, she had the gift of greatness.

And the Armada sailed into the English Channel.

It was Spain’s tragedy that, with the finest ships in the world, with the best ammunition and equipment, she was doomed to failure. Her commander had no wish for the task which he had implored the King to give to another. His seamen were afraid of El Draque, the Dragon, that Englishman whom they believed to be no ordinary man, but one possessed of superhuman power, and destined to destroy them. They had seen him in action, and no ordinary man was ever so fearless as El Draque. He had sailed calmly into Cadiz Harbor and burned and pillaged the ships which lay at anchor there; he had delicately referred to this operation as “Singeing the Beard of the King of Spain.” He had sailed the high seas, and he had come back with Spanish treasure rich enough to fortify his country against Spain. The Devil was at work here, and Spaniards feared the Devil.

It was England’s glory that, with her little ships, ill-equipped, her sailors short of food, with sickness aboard and a tragic lack of shot and powder, she was invincible. She believed in victory. She had not the hope that she would win; she had the knowledge that she could not fail.

The fight was not of long duration.

The Spaniards were outclassed in courage and the genius of seamanship which the world had already seen displayed by Drake.

The battle raged. The fire-ships were sent among the Spaniards who were beaten before a storm arose to make their disaster complete.

England was saved. The might of Spain was broken.

The Inquisition would never come to the Queen’s England.

It was the greatest hour of a proud reign.

The Queen of half an island had set herself against the mightiest monarch in the world; and a small, courageous nation had beaten and broken the power of mighty Spain.

All through the towns and villages there was rejoicing such as had never before been known. The church bells rang out. With the appearance of the first stars the bonfires were lighted. Revelry was heard throughout the land.

Robert wrote to the Queen that he longed to be with her, but the fever which had troubled him so often had returned and he was going to Kenilworth, and thence to Leamington to take the baths, that he might not present himself until he felt well enough to enjoy that which gave him more delight than anything in the world—the company of his beloved and gracious mistress.

In the course of his journey he paused at a mansion in Rycott, and there he wrote to her again.

“I most humbly beseech Your Majesty to pardon an old servant who is so bold as to write and ask how my gracious lady doth. The chiefest thing in the world I do pray for is for her to have good health and a long life. I hope to find a perfect cure at the bath and with the continuance of my wonted prayer for Your Majesty’s most happy preservation, I humbly kiss your foot.”

She read this through several times and tenderly put it into the box where she kept his letters.

Then she went forth to the rejoicing.

It was September, less than a month after she had talked to her soldiers at Tilbury, when Kat brought the news to her.

Kat came and knelt before her and, lifting her face to that of her mistress, could find no words. Elizabeth looked into this dear friend’s face and, seeing the tears flow slowly down her cheeks, she herself was afraid to speak.

She feared this news. She wanted to run from it; but she was calm as she would always be in the important moments of her life, whatever sorrow they might bring her.

“What is it, sweet Kat? Do not be afraid.”

Still Kat could not speak.

“Mayhap I know,” said Elizabeth. “He looked so sick when I last saw him.”

“It was at Cornbury near Oxford, Your Majesty. It was the continual fever. It returned more violently and … he did not rise from his bed.”

The Queen did not speak. She sat very still. She was thinking: So he died near Oxford—near Cumnor Place. It is twenty-eight years since they found her at the foot of the stairs. Oh, Robert, Robert … never to see your face again! But we have been so near, so close in all things. Dearest Eyes, why have I lost you? How can I be aught but blind to the joy in life without you?

“Dearest …” said Kat; and she threw her arms about the Queen and sobbed wildly.

Elizabeth was quiet while the tears flowed down her cheeks. Suddenly she spoke: “In the streets they are still shouting Victory, Kat. I have a warm place in their hearts. They love me—their Queen—as they never loved King or Queen before me. Once I thought that was my dearest wish … so to be loved, Kat, by my own people. Our country is safe from danger; and I, who should be the happiest woman in the world, am the most wretched.”

“Dearest, do not speak,” implored Kat. “It hurts you so, sweetest Majesty.”

“I will speak,” she said. “I will speak through my tears and my torment. I loved him. I always loved him; and I shall love him till I die. Philip has lost his Armada, but mayhap he is not less happy this night than I. For I have lost Robert, sweet Robin, my love, my Eyes.”

Now she began to give way to her grief, and her sobs were so violent that they frightened Kat, who threw her arms about the Queen once more and comforted her.

“Dearest, remember your life lies before you. You are a Queen, my darling. My dearest, there is much left for you. You are no ordinary woman to cry for a lost lover. You are a Queen—and Queen of England.”

Then Elizabeth looked at Kat and, laying her hands gently on her shoulders, kissed her. “You are right, Kat. You are right, dear friend. I am the Queen.”

Then she went to the box wherein she kept his letters. She took out the one she had received but a few days before, and calmly she wrote upon it: “His last letter.”

She kissed it vehemently and put it quickly into the box. She turned, and she was smiling with apparent serenity.

Robert had gone, and he had taken much of the joy from her life, but when she faced Kat she was no longer the woman who had lost the only man she had loved; she was the triumphant Queen of victorious England.