A myth is as good as a male
Kevin Sharpe
ELIZABETH I by Jasper Ridley
Constable, .£15
It may be revealing that whilst the symbol of Britain is the bulldog, it is our female rulers whom historians have most venerated. And it is certainly curious that the monarch we have most obviously canonised was a woman reigning in a century when most shared the opinion of John Knox that female rule was a 'mon- strous regiment'. Perhaps because the age of Elizabeth saw the defeat of the Armada, the establishment of Protestantism and the great voyages of discovery, the Queen herself has been depicted as the heroic Protestant empress. But we are not always as ready simply to accredit a ruler with the achievements of a reign and we are usually quicker than historians of Elizabeth have been to blame the monarch for its failures and disasters. Even that most professional of Tudor historians, Sir John Neale, seems in his study of Elizabeth to have fallen in love with his subject; the Virgin Queen fascinated and seduced biographers before and has since.
What Jasper Ridley's biography shows or more accurately what emerges from his largely familiar narrative — is that encomium of Elizabeth is even more inex- plicable than we thought. The Queen was celebrated as the Deborah who rescued England from popery and as the champion of the Protestant cause. Yet despite the commitment to her religion expressed in her devotional poems, Elizabeth, during Mary's reign, attended mass and later refused to punish those who had then burned Protestants as heretics. She re- tained a crucifix in her chapel as queen, and to the despair of her councillors acted at times, in Knollys's words, as though 'she is in as much danger of such as are called Puritans as she is of papists'. In Scotland though under pressure from Cecil she supported the Protestant revolution led by Knox, she in 1567 contemplated war in support of Mary Queen of Scots whom she refused to exclude from succession to the English throne. After Mary's execution — which she regretted to her death bed — she appointed a Catholic regent, Lennox, dur- ing the minority of James VI.
Her reputation as the protector of Euro- pean Protestantism is even harder to sus- tain. For though on occasion Elizabeth aided the French and Dutch Huguenots she supported them tardily, half-heartedly and reluctantly from considerations of real politik rather than enthusiastically from religious zeal. Sarcastically disdainful of their 'fine Christianity which led subjects to defy their sovereign', Elizabeth scarcely concealed her hatred for the continental Calvinists. In contrast to the few thousand pounds she loaned the Dutch rebels, we must place the far larger sums she granted Henri III of France, one of the authors of that bloody purge of Protestants, the Mas- sacre of St Bartholomew.
Like the Protestant heroine, the imperial princess of history emerges as more a myth than reality. Whilst Elizabeth was a monarch of strong principles, Ridley's narrative shows that she was emotional and volatile — very far from decisive or auto- cratic, let alone ruthless. Councillors ques- tioned her wisdom with a freedom that Henry VIII would never have tolerated and on occasions, the support for Scotch and Dutch Protestants being two, pushed her to act against her own inclinations. On the very point of Drake's voyage preemp- tively to strike the armada in the harbour at Cadiz, she changed her orders twice; it was the failure to reach him of her final order rescinding the attack that led to the success of his enterprise. Elizabeth made grave political miscalculations (allowing Darnley to go to Scotland) and exhibited 'incompetence and blundering in wartime'. Far from being the subtle schemer she was less Machiavellian, and perhaps in con- sequence, less heroic than she has been portrayed. Her biographer, indeed, finds her in many respects distant from the adventurous spirit of the Elizabethan age.
Why then the veneration? Jasper Ridley acknowledges that he has offered no satis- factory answer to the question: 'The pre- stige of kingship does not entirely explain the devotion which she inspired'. Here some of the fundamental weaknesses of Ridley's biography are revealed: not only the failure to examine any new evidence, but a neglect of important recent research on Tudor power and politics. We glean very little sense from Ridley of the com- plex and subtle relationship of royal au- thority and the need to take counsel, of the issuing of orders and the need to persuade, of intrinsic loyalty to the crown and yet the careful use of patronage to secure it. Most importantly we find disappointingly little discussion here — ironically given the lavish illustrations — of that intricate relationship between the reality and image of power that the Tudors, and especially Elizabeth, so skilfully manipulated to their advantage. The myth of Elizabeth, the imperial Protestant Deborah, the Fairy Queen, was a contemporary as well as a historical myth. Even that greatest failing of a monarch — the failure to provide an heir and secure the succession — was positively incorporated into the mystical cult of the Royal Virgin.
Elizabeth's virginity has sometimes been doubted and has always been a puzzle. Real politik — fear of subordinating the country to a foreign consort — does not explain it, for the marriage to the Duke of Anjou in 1579 would arguably have been greatly to England's advantage. And not all foreign monarchs spent their time and amorous energy like Henri III in flagella- tion games with male favourites. The Queen's early pronouncements of her com- mitment to virginity and her testy aversion in old age to her maids' natural inclinations to matrimony suggest a deeper aversion. Here Jasper Ridley may help us to compre- hend that aversion. When Elizabeth was 14, she lived in the household of Thomas Seymour and Catherine Parr. Thomas, we are told, indulged in 'amorous play' with her.
He used to come into her room early in the morning when she was still in bed, and try to kiss her and slap her on the buttocks. . . On one occasion when Seymour chased and caught Elizabeth in the garden, Catherine helped hold her while Seymour cut her dress
into strips to get a good look at her body and underclothes.
There may be more in that account than in all of Spenser for an understanding of Elizabeth's commitment to virginity. Or was that too a myth?
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