Elizabeth Read online

  Contents

  *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  List of Illustrations

  Author’s Note

  Introduction

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Photos

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  Epilogue

  Appendix

  Notes

  Sources

  Index

  About the Author

  First U.S. edition

  Copyright © 2015 by Lisa Hilton

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  www.hmhco.com

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Hilton, Lisa, date.

  Elizabeth : Renaissance prince / Lisa Hilton.—First U.S. edition.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-544-57784-8 (hardback)—ISBN 978-0-544-57785-5 (ebook)

  1. Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 1533–1603. 2. Great Britain—History—Elizabeth, 1558–1603. 3. Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527—Influence. 4. Queens—Great Britain—Biography. I. Title.

  DA355.H56 2015

  942.05‘5092—dc23

  [B]

  2015004340

  Cover design by Martha Kennedy

  Cover image: Burghley House Collection, Lincolnshire, UK/Bridgeman Images

  Author photograph © Guy Isherwood

  v1.1115

  To my daughter, Ottavia

  Princes have mysterious spirits and properties, unknown to all others.

  —THOMAS CROMWELL

  List of Illustrations

  *

  ANNE BOLEYN, c. 1533–36 (black and colored chalks on paper), by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543). Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2014/Bridgeman Images

  THOMAS WYATT, c. 1535–37 (colored chalks with pen and ink on paper), by Hans Holbein the Younger. Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2014/Bridgeman Images

  The Family of Henry VIII, c. 1545 (oil on canvas), English School (16th century). Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2014/Bridgeman Images

  ELIZABETH I when a princess, c. 1546 (oil on panel), attributed to William Scrots (fl. 1537–53). Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2014/Bridgeman Images

  MARY I, 1554 (oil on oak), by Hans Eworth (fl. 1520–74). Society of Antiquaries of London, UK/Bridgeman Images

  EDWARD VI when Prince of Wales, 1546 (oil on panel), attributed to William Scrots. Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2014/Pictorial Press Ltd./Alamy

  RICHARD II, 1390 (oil on panel), by an unknown artist. Westminster Abbey, London/akg-images/De Agostini Picture Library

  ELIZABETH I, c. 1600 (oil on panel), English School (16th century). National Portrait Gallery, London, UK/Bridgeman Images

  THE CLOPTON PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH I, c. 1560–65 (panel), English School (16th century). Private Collection. Photograph © Philip Mould Ltd., London, UK/Bridgeman Images

  Elizabeth I and the Three Goddesses, 1569 (oil on panel), attributed to Hans Eworth or Joris Hoefnagel (1542–1601). Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2014/Bridgeman Images

  WILLIAM CECIL, 1558 (oil on canvas), English School (16th century). IAM/akg-images

  PHILIP II OF SPAIN, c. 1553 (oil on canvas), by Titian (c. 1488/90–1576). Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence © akg-images/Nimatallah

  ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER, c. 1557–1609 (drawing on paper), by Federico Zuccaro (1542–1609). © The Trustees of the British Museum

  NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI, second half of 16th century (oil on canvas), by Santi di Tito (1536–1603). Palazzo Vecchio, Florence © GL Archive/Alamy

  THE PELICAN PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH I, c. 1574 (oil on panel), by Nicholas Hilliard (1547–1619). © Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool/Bridgeman Images

  IVAN IV THE TERRIBLE (color woodcut), by Hans Weigel (fl. 1577). Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs, Paris/Archives Charmet/Bridgeman Images

  MURAD III, 1808, by John Young. © Heritage Image Partnership Ltd./Alamy

  MEHMET III (oil painting on panel), after Cristofano Dell’ Altissimo (c. 1525–1605). © National Trust

  The tomb of BATTISTA CASTIGLIONE in St. Mary’s Church, Speen. Photograph © Peter Orr

  HENRY LEE, 1568 (panel), by Anthonis Mor (1517/20–76/7). National Portrait Gallery, London, UK/Bridgeman Images

  FRANCIS WALSINGHAM, c. 1585 (oil on panel), attributed to John de Critz the Elder (c. 1552–1642). © World History Archive/Alamy

  FRANCIS, DUKE OF ANJOU, late 1560s, French School (16th century). © Heritage Image Partnership Ltd./Alamy

  MARY STUART, c. 1560 (oil on panel), follower of François Clouet (c. 1510–72). Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK/Bridgeman Images

  THE ARMADA PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH I, c. 1588 (oil on panel), attributed to George Gower (1540–96). Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire, UK/Bridgeman Images

  ELIZABETH I in old age, c. 1610 (oil on panel), English School (17th century). Corsham Court, Wiltshire/Bridgeman Images

  The signature of ELIZABETH I on a letter to Lady Southwell, 15 October 1598. © Rex/Nigel R. Barklie

  Author’s Note

  Elizabethan spelling is notoriously whimsical—I have generally modernized where it seemed necessary for clarity. And William Cecil, Baron Burghley, ought properly to be referred to as Lord Burghley from 1571, but somehow has remained Cecil, as that was how I thought of him for four years.

  Introduction

  *

  BETWEEN 1569 AND 1603, a painting by the Dutch artist Joris Hoefnagel was seen by the thousands of visitors who streamed through the court of Elizabeth I at Whitehall. They came to admire, to solicit, to petition, to intrigue. Some, it was said, came for love, and others, it was also said, came to murder. All were conscious of the presiding presence of the mysterious and magnificent ruler of England, the nation’s second Queen Regnant, “Great Harry’s” daughter, Elizabeth herself. But when they stood beneath Elizabeth I and the Three Goddesses, what did they see?

  This first known allegorical portrait of Elizabeth is a product of the Protestant diaspora of the mid-sixteenth century. Ten years into the queen’s reign, her contentious (and, by Elizabeth herself at least, somewhat resented) position as the figurehead of religious reform across Europe had already transcended her role as monarch of what was then “the small, impoverished island kingdom of England.” The artist was a refugee from the Netherlands, where reformist rebels were locked in conflict with the Catholic power of Spain. In choosing to display Hoefnagel’s picture so prominently, Elizabeth was making a powerful statement about her conception of herself as a ruler, a statement which relied on its viewers’ ability to interpret the classical visual language of the picture. To contemporaries then, “seeing” the picture properly required both an understanding of Elizabeth’s place in the confessional politics of Europe and the capacity to filter that understanding through t
he “new learning” which had revolutionized European thought over the preceding centuries. Put simply, it is a Renaissance picture, and it depicts a Renaissance prince.

  The painting is a rendition of the Judgment of Paris, in which Elizabeth, holding her orb and scepter, faces the three goddesses Juno, Minerva, and Venus. Juno, the Queen of Heaven, holds her hand to the skies, expressing the endorsement of Elizabeth’s judgment by God. The attributes of the three deities—a scepter, a quiver of arrows, and a sheaf of roses—lie on the ground, uniting the rival goddesses in their “defeat” by Elizabeth, who has reconciled their respective qualities of intellect, power, and beauty. Elizabeth is cast in the male role, as Paris, whose award of the prize in the ancient world’s most lethal beauty contest to Venus brought about the Trojan War. One myth surrounding the foundation of the kingdom of Britain attributes it to Aeneas, one of the few inhabitants of Troy who escaped Greek devastation. So history might suggest that Elizabeth/Paris had not only reconciled the qualities of the three goddesses, but in doing so, had followed Aeneas in refounding her nation, battered yet triumphant after a great conflict.

  In the twenty-first century, we might perceive something else. Hoefnagel’s canvas is divided into two distinct parts. On the left stands Elizabeth, erect and crowned, stiff in her brocaded gown, her canopy of state just visible behind, enclosed by the forbidding wall of a palace. To the right, the goddesses are posed in a bright, gentle landscape, delicately ethereal, the trees in full leaf, the grass lush. Above them, in the distance, is another palace, not a gloomy defensive fortress but a turreted fantasy, a tower of delight. To my eyes, the distinction in the picture is between the past and the future. Elizabeth I reigned from 1558 to 1603. In those forty-five years, something occurred in England, something which recalibrated ideas about Englishness and nationhood and which left the country a very different place at the end of the period than at the beginning. Elizabeth herself is absolutely central to the manner in which this shift is brought about, yet somehow the ever-burgeoning interest in the queen and her Tudor ancestors—the miniseries, the films, the abundant literature, the documentaries—has had the effect of diminishing her, reducing her to little more than a bewigged farthingale with a mysterious sex life. The young woman confronting the classical goddesses of Hoefnagel’s portrait is a very different creature from the perennially frozen mask of magnificence which conventionally characterizes her reign. In the picture, Elizabeth is in motion, moving from the darkened constrictions of medievalism towards a recognizable world, one informed by the new learning the goddesses embody. She is stepping forward into the light, into the Renaissance, into a princely modernity.

  NEARLY EVERY BIOGRAPHY of the queen begins from the premise that her rule was in some way anomalous, by virtue of her gender. Often, the fact of Elizabeth’s biological femininity has then been used as a basis from which to interpret nearly every aspect of her governance. In my view, this is simply wrong. Elizabeth herself was happy to play on the conventions of gender when it suited her “weak and feeble” woman’s body to do so, but convention is not fact any more than rhetoric is reality. Arguably, contemporary conceptions of sexual difference were considerably more supple and sophisticated, and far less constricting, than those of the twenty-first century. Practically, Elizabeth’s gender was significant in certain areas—the organization of her household, for example, or her inability to lead her troops in battle, but Elizabeth’s intellectual upbringing, and particularly the influence of the “new learning,” gave her a princely self-image not in the least circumscribed by femininity. Elizabeth saw herself primarily as a prince, in the sense that royalty, in the perceptual model of her times, negated gender. Furthermore, it was as a modern monarch, a “Renaissance prince,” that Elizabeth attempted to govern and refashion her realm. Elizabeth was not, primarily, an exceptional woman; she was an exceptional ruler, and one way in which she became so was to envisage herself, as she once told the Venetian ambassador, as a “prince from a line of princes,” even where those princes were not necessarily male. Elizabeth I may have been the second of England’s Queens Regnant, but she was descended from a tradition of ruling women in both England and Europe.

  What, then, were the qualities of a Renaissance prince? How can we recognize one, and how can it be claimed that Elizabeth was one? Definitions of the Renaissance itself are notoriously slippery. Everyone has an idea of what the Renaissance was, but of what exactly it consisted is more fluid, if not downright confusing. As a concept, it exists beyond the world of scholarship and thus defies scholarly attempts to argue it out of existence; however, it is not quite possible, Dr. Johnson–style, to aim a kick at Brunelleschi’s dome in Florence and refute its absence thus. The Renaissance is a nineteenth-century definition of a movement in learning and the arts that may have begun in the tenth century, or the twelfth, or, according to some theories, never have begun at all. Nevertheless, two salient features are broadly accepted. Chronologically, the most acceptable definition of the Renaissance is the period between 1300 and 1600, to which might be added, psychologically, a sense that something was changing, something was happening, and that this “something” was man’s sense of his own place in the universe: “The new man, the modern man, was a man who made himself, who constructed himself, and who was conscious of this creation. This was, precisely, the ‘Renaissance man.’”1 Renaissance, of course, means “rebirth,” and what was reborn during the period in question was not only the classical learning of ancient Greece and Rome, which was being rediscovered across that period, but “a renewed affirmation of the human,” which affected not just works of art (the most popular association of the Renaissance) but politics, medicine, civic life, education, war, architecture, and ultimately religion.2 Humanist learning exploded medieval certainties as thoroughly, and sometimes as destructively, as a bomb. In the fallout, everything looked different. Humanism was not one set of thoughts or ideas which all practicing humanists supported, but, rather, a collective conviction that the study of classical texts provided the opportunity to envisage the world anew. The word humanist was in use in the universities of Italy by the fifteenth century, denoting one who practiced studia humanitatis, that is, grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy, based on the study of classical authors. The combination of rhetorical training of the bureaucrats of the Italian city-states, which had its roots in Roman custom; Latin grammar from the thirteenth century; and classical Greek literature brought to Europe after the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottomans in 1453 revolutionized European thought between 1300 and 1600. The discovery of Greek and Latin manuscripts, their study and diffusion, and the translation of Greek into more accessible Latin produced a wealth of knowledge which Europe had never seen before. Scholars worked on history and mythology in order to better understand the texts, and produced works not just of literature and history but of mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and biology. Humanism “represented a body of scholarship and literature that was secular, without being scientific, and that occupied a place of its own, independent of, though not opposed to, both theology and the sciences.”3 With the advent of the printing press in 1450, the total change in the intellectual climate effected by human­-ism was disseminated, again as never before, by the new possibility of mass production. What united humanists above all was that selfconscious belief that they lived in an age of dramatic progress, of reinvention, of wonder.

  The “new learning” was more than an intellectual and artistic movement: it transformed not only the way people thought but the way they lived. Technological advances in warfare meant that towns looked physically different, and the way in which they were governed changed, too. The period saw feudalism give way to capitalism, and with this a fundamental shift in the methods and practice of authority from which emerged the nation-state. The very nature of power was being altered. Rulers were becoming liberated from the constraints of medieval social structure; they were able to consolidate their power through the deployment of stand
ing armies, more effective taxation, and a professionalized “civil servant” class. As the influence of both nobility and Church diminished, rulers centralized power through their courts and began, notably, to engage with “mercantilist” politics designed to stimulate economic growth while depriving potential enemies of resources. To arrive at a definition of a Renaissance prince would thus require a blending of these two elements. The term could encompass, but not be limited to, patronage of the arts, of the new learning, within the period, but also an appreciation of this fresh concept of the state. The morphology of this state was first articulated by Machiavelli, whose works The Prince and the Discourses were in circulation in manuscript from 1513, though they were not published until 1532.4 In 1559, the Vatican placed Machiavelli’s works on its list of prohibited books, where they remained until the twentieth century. Even now, the name Machiavelli is suggestive of duplicity and cynicism, of ruthless self-interest and the notorious moral catch-all of the “ends justifying the means” (as though anything other than the ends might be proposed to justify them). Five centuries’ worth of prejudice has its roots among Machiavelli’s sixteenth-century readers—by 1590, Machiavelli had become a stock stage villain, a byword for manipulation and general tricksiness. Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta claims the Florentine writer as the reincarnation of the Duc de Guise, whom Elizabeth I once described as her “greatest enemy,” while the next year, Shakespeare referred to that “notorious Machiavel” in Henry VI, Part I. Machiavelli’s ideas represent the collision of two conflicting ideologies, two very distinct ways of looking at the world, an opposition which has its source in the developments of the new learning. Yet why did Machiavelli’s first readers find these ideas as shocking and disturbing as they found them compelling? And why should they be so essential to a definition of a Renaissance prince?

  The Prince is often understood as a “mirror book” for rulers (the term refers to the instruction manuals which proliferated during the Renaissance, giving advice on everything from religious observation to table manners), a how-to manual for the contemporary ruler. Recent scholarship posits it as something more, a constitutional tract produced as a consequence of “the change from feudalism to the princely state.”5 Contrary to the stereotype, Machiavelli’s works are more than an ABC for the forward-thinking tyrant; they are a philosophical reaction to the radical changes in the form and practice of governance which his age witnessed. Throughout the 1490s, Machiavelli had seen his own beloved city of Florence descend from a notionally free republic to a theocracy to a city under alien occupation by the French to a ducal state governed by Lorenzo de Medici, the dedicatee of The Prince. The overarching preoccupation of that work and the Discourses is if and how a state which has been corrupted can regain and maintain its liberty. For Machiavelli, the ruler’s primary duty was the preservation of the state at any cost. This was also one of the principal concerns of Elizabeth I and her ministers throughout her reign; indeed, arguably, it was the creation and secure maintenance of England as a state which was that reign’s object.