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of England needed to be quickly done, but at an auspicious time too. The country was impoverished by injudicious wars, humiliated by the loss of Calais, vulnerable on the Scottish border and confused and suspicious after the reversals of religious dogma during the previous two reigns. Elizabeth’s potential as a queen was unknown but her popularity among her people was certainly growing. Since her accession she had been the centre of intense activity at Hatfield with the selection of advisers and discussions of policy, but within the week, she began her progress to London. People travelled many miles out of the city to greet her. Her reign began as it so distinctively would continue, with a lively interest in and concern for her people exhibited in an exceptional common touch:

      All her faculties were in motion, and every motion seemed a well guided action; her eye was set upon one, her ear listened to another, her judgement ran upon a third, to a fourth she addressed her speech; her spirit seemed to be everywhere, and yet so entire in herself, as it seemed to be nowhere else. Some she pitied, some she commended, some she thanked, at others she pleasantly and wittily jested, condemning no person, neglecting no office; and distributing her smiles, looks, and graces so [artfully], that thereupon the people again redoubled the testimonies of their joys.²⁶

      A few days later, on 28 November, Elizabeth took possession of the city in style. Alone in her carriage, surrounded by horsemen and the trappings of monarchy, she entered through Cripplegate, to be greeted by fluttering banners of the guilds and excited Londoners hanging from the windows and pushing through the narrow lanes. At the gate to the city she mounted her own horse, on this occasion a striking grey. Elizabeth, dressed in purple velvet, was skilled as a horsewoman and graceful in the saddle. This majestic spectacle of their new queen on horseback was glamorized further by the first sight of her Master of the Queen’s Horse, riding just behind her on a magnificent black charger.

      An excellent judge of horseflesh, Lord Robert Dudley always made sure he had a mount that equalled his own physical splendour. Elizabeth’s friend from her youth, and a lifetime favourite, was a tall, powerful, handsome man, probably the best horseman in England and one of the most ambitious of an ambitious line. Elizabeth’s first biographer pointed out that her ‘rare and Royal Clemency’ meant she had ‘heaped Honours upon him, saving his life, whose Father would have Her destroyed’.²⁷ In fact the consummate ability and ambition of the Dudleys was akin to that of the Guises but, unlike the French, the English peers were strong enough to chop them down. And when the hated Lord Robert was too well loved by the queen for them to harm him, Elizabeth was clever enough to keep him ultimately in check herself.

      To all who hailed her from the crowd, Elizabeth exhibited the authority and gift of attention that had so distinguished her in her dealings with her subjects so far. A salty humour and an air of God-given majesty seemed to her eager people to be united in Elizabeth Tudor in irresistible combination. She indulged in the kind of direct dialogue and repartee which the French court never encouraged in their monarchs. The Tower was her final destination and as she entered the dark stone portal, she recalled the memories of the last time she had been there as a prisoner, frightened for her life. With genuine emotion and a natural appreciation for dramatic peripeteia she addressed the people around her: ‘Some have fallen from being Princes of this land, to be prisoners in this place; I am raised from being prisoner in this place, to be Prince of this land’, and she thanked God for her elevation.²⁸

Even a devout Catholic observer, like the Italian Schifanoya,^* with a natural bias against her, was in no doubt about Elizabeth’s appeal: ‘… the Queen, by frequently showing herself in public, giving audience to all who would wish for it, and using every mark of great graciousness towards every one, daily gains favour and affection from all her people’.²⁹ Her ability to unite magisterial grandeur with informality was at the heart of her unique attraction to even her humblest subjects. It also discomfited her enemies. The Spanish ambassador related with disapproval how, on her return from the Tower, Elizabeth caught sight of Catherine Parr’s brother, the Marquis of Northampton, watching from a window. He was suffering from one of the periodic malarial fevers which afflicted most of the populace then. The queen pulled her horse out of the procession and rode up to his window and spent a good time commiserating with him about his health, ‘in the most cordial way in the world’.³⁰

      But there was still a general uneasiness as to what sort of monarch she would make. When she succeeded to the throne no one was certain even quite what form her religious policy would take. There was a national longing for a strong wholly English king. Despite her many good personal qualities and the great swell of popular support with which she began her rule, Mary I’s reign had been disastrous. Now people wondered if Knox and Calvin, the Classical philosophers and the Bible were all correct in deploring a woman raised beyond her natural estate to be a ruler over men. What if Elizabeth, with all her well-known virtues, was to fail as calamitously as her sister? There was a natural optimism at the prospect of this new reign after the miseries of the last, but everyone from her greatest ministers of state to her lowliest subjects agreed Queen Elizabeth had to marry, and marry quickly. A king was desperately needed, first as her consort, the steadying hand on the tiller of this vast ship of state, and then as the progenitor of a male heir to secure the succession.

Whom she would marry was one of the major topics of gossip and at times it seemed that any man of noble enough birth was mooted as the chosen one. Apart from Philip II of Spain and Crown Prince Eric of Sweden, there was the Earl of Arundel, although court chatter suggested also younger, more romantic possibilities: ‘a very handsome youth, 18 or 20 years of age^* … because at dances and other public places she prefers him more than any one else’.³¹ But then, it was said, there was also that fine looking young nobleman, Sir William Pickering, still in exile in France because of his religion: the general speculation and excitement was palpable. No one seemed to take seriously Elizabeth’s own often expressed contentment with the spinster state. In fact, in her first speech before Parliament she could not have made it plainer. She was married to her kingdom with all the advantages that conferred on her people. ‘In the end this shall be for me sufficient: that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.’³²

      Equally serious and compelling to Elizabeth-watchers during the first months of her reign was the subject of religion. She was known to have been brought up in the reformed religion alongside her brother Edward, but her exact beliefs and her intentions so far as the nation’s spiritual leadership were concerned were far from clear. Protestant exiles were beginning to stream back into the country, expecting a return to the pre-Marian state of radical reform. Her Catholic subjects and the Catholic states watched anxiously. When necessary Elizabeth was a master of equivocation. Never was this more evident than in her stance on religion. As Francis Bacon famously said of her, she did not choose to make windows into men’s souls and her soul was conveniently adaptable, and naturally more conservative than any of her closest advisers.

      Court life had revived within the month. Having been secluded for so long, careful to be seen as modest, scholarly and not overly ambitious, Elizabeth now joined her courtiers, feasting and dancing into the early morning. Her physical vitality reminded the older ones present of her father when a young man; but unlike him, her energy and physical fitness lasted well into late middle age when she still could hunt and dance her noblemen to a standstill. Elizabeth began that Christmas to exhibit something of her capacity for epic enjoyment. In another dispatch, Schifanoya was rather disapproving: ‘The Court is held at Westminster, and they are intent on amusing themselves and on dancing till after midnight,’³³ he sniffily reported to the Mantuan ambassador at the court of Philip II in Brussels. A month later he was deploring ‘the levities and unusual licentiousness’

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