The other queen

1570, MAY, CHATSWORTH: BESS

Ihear them ringing the bells in the church at Chatsworth as I am ordering the linen for the Scots queen’s bed. She is to come here within a few days, and my heart rushes in sudden terror. It can’t be an uprising again. Pray God it is not the landing of the Spanish armada. I send one of the page boys racing to discover what is amiss now. He comes back and finds me in the laundry room, a list of linen in my shaking hand, and tells me that the queen Mary Stuart has been declared the true Queen of England and the Pope has called on all those of the old faith to destroy the bastard Elizabeth and put the true queen, Mary, in her place, and there is an uprising for her in Norwich and they say the whole of the east of England will turn out for the true queen and the true faith.

I am so shocked for a moment that I pretend I want some fresh air and go out to the gallery and sink down on a bench among all the painted saints. I can hardly believe that this nightmare goes on, goes on and on, and we never achieve victory, and we never achieve peace. I look at my painted saints, as if they could tell me the answer to the purgatory of the times that we endure. God knows we are a small country and there are very few of us with a vision as to how the country should be. Now the old scarlet whore of Rome has called down on us the rage of the rest of Christendom: Philip of Spain, Madame Serpent in France—they will think that battle against us is a crusade, a holy war. They will think themselves commanded by God to destroy us. They will come against us; united they will master us.

“We are so few,” I whisper to myself. It is true. We are a little island, with enemies for neighbors in Ireland and France and the Spanish Netherlands just half a day’s sail away. We are so few who really understand what destiny God has given us. We are so few who are prepared to serve as His saints to bring the purity of His true church to England, His chosen country. We are surrounded by enemies, we are tempted by Satan, we are besieged by the superstitions and lies of the old faith; they will destroy us if they can.

I tell the boy to run and order the vicar to stop them ringing the bells. Tell him it is my command. If they are pealing to sound a warning, we none of us need to be reminded that we are on the edge of disaster. An old woman on the throne, no heir in the nursery, a faith under constant threat, a nation in the making which could be wiped out in a moment. On the other hand, if they are ringing the peal, as they did at Durham and York, at Ripon and even in the end at Barnard Castle, to say that the old faith will triumph, then they can silence the bells and go to hell while my word carries any weight in Derbyshire.

I am a Protestant. I will live and die a Protestant. My enemies will think that is because it has been a religion to profit me; cynics will point to my gold candlesticks and my lead mines and my coal mines and my stone quarries, and even to these stolen painted saints in my gallery. But what the cynics don’t understand is that these are the goods that God has given to me as a reward for the purity of my faith. I am a Protestant through and through. I don’t acknowledge this Stuart Papist queen; I deny the wisdom of the priest of Rome; I deny the sanctity of the bread and wine. It is bread, it is wine. It is not body and blood of Christ. The Virgin Mary was a woman, like any of us; Jesus was a carpenter, a working man proud of his tables, as I am a working woman proud of my houses and lands. The kingdom of the saints will come when the world has earned purity, not when enough money has been poured into the collecting plate of the church. I believe in God—not in a wizard doled out at a price by the priests of the old church. I believe in the Bible, which I can read for myself in English. And more than anything else I believe in me, in my view of the world. I believe in my responsibility for my own destiny, guilt for my own sins, merit for my own good deeds, determination of my own life, and in my accounts books which tell me how well or ill I am doing. I don’t believe in miracles, I believe in hard work. And I don’t believe that Queen Mary is now Queen of England just because some old fool in Rome chooses to say so.