Folger Finds: A letter from the Queen's lifelong favorite

Most of the men who hoped to marry Elizabeth were foreign royals seeking an alliance of state. But an Englishman, Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester (1532–88), was the suitor who was probably closest to her heart. The two had first met when they were children, and the attraction seems to have been mutual. When Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558, she made Leicester Master of the Horse and a member of her Privy Council, and over the years granted him various licenses and manors that brought him great wealth. In the early years of her reign, rumors circulated of an affair between the two, and if she had married anyone, it probably would have been him. One initial obstacle was his marriage to Amy Robsart, but she died rather mysteriously from a fall at home in 1560.

In 1578, realizing that the queen would never take him as a husband, Leicester married Lettice Knollys, countess of Essex. His friendship with the queen continued, however, as is evidenced by this letter written on August 3, 1588, one of the last he ever sent to her. It is addressed from the royal camp at Tilbury, where Leicester was organizing the defense of Britain against the Spanish Armada. The letter is on exhibit in How to Be a Power Player: Tudor Edition.

IN THE SUMMER OF 1588, Spain prepared to punish the heretic nation that once had been its ally. In the not so distant past, the marriages of King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon, and of Queen Mary to King Philip II, ensured some measure of political and religious congruity between England and Spain. Elizabeth’s coronation, however, brought not only a Protestant ruler to the throne, but also a self-possessed woman who refused Philip’s offer to marry. Her government defied Spain’s imperial claim to the distant lands of the Americas and to the nearby states of the Low Countries. Her captains prowled Atlantic sea-lanes to rob Philip’s treasure fleet and to raid his harbors. As a result, a vast armada of Spanish ships was making for England’s coasts when Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, Lieutenant and Captain-General of the Queen’s Armies and Companies, wrote to Queen Elizabeth from the English military camp at Tilbury on Saturday August 3.

Across the Channel, the duke of Parma, commanding thousands of seasoned soldiers, awaited only wind and tide to begin the invasion. When or where the combined Spanish forces would land was the subject of frenzied speculation.

As Leicester penned this letter, troops were marshalling close by his tent for the defense of London. But to Elizabeth, his “mõõste dere Lady,” he displayed no hint of alarm. Rather, with words of reassurance and endearment, he reported that her camp was quiet and well ordered, her soldiers as “forwardly bent” as any in the world, and the news he heard was that God “fighteth for you & your enymyes fall before you.” Though he scribbled in haste, his tone was leisurely and playful: it bespoke the amity of time-tested lovers whose regard for one another, rooted in youthful friendship, evolving from dalliance to reckless ardor, surviving political pressure and personal betrayal, had come round at last to bedrock devotion. “I may not forget,” he wrote, “vppon my knees to yeld to your mõõste swete maiestie, all humble & dutyful thankes for the great comfort I receive euer from your owen swete self.” Leicester closed the letter using the mark signaling her nickname for her “most faythfull & most obedient ^~^~.” Twice within the text Leicester draws eyebrows over the letters o in the word “moost,” in reference to the queen’s nickname for him, which was “Eyes.” This coded and private reference within a letter of conventional courtly love certainly suggests a degree of intimacy between Leicester and Elizabeth.

On August 9, Elizabeth joined Leicester at Tilbury, the site of one of her most famous speeches, the courageous and defiant words that ring down the centuries of English memory: “I am come … resolved in the midst and heat of battle to live and die amongst you … I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king and of a king of England too—and take foul scorn that Parma or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm.” She promised that her lieutenant general “shall be in my stead” in battle, adding, “than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject.” By the valor of her troops and their “obedience to myself and my general,” they would “shortly have a famous victory over these enemies of my God and of my kingdom.”

Within days, superior English naval strategy combined with violent storms had thrown the Invincible Armada into disarray. While his troops disbanded, the visibly ailing lieutenant-general departed Tilbury. On September 4, traveling toward a rest-cure at Buxton, Leicester died unexpectedly in Cornbury. Elizabeth, when told of his death, is said to have fled into her private chamber, and “for some days,” “mourned alone and inconsolable.”