Blair Worden - A Book of Friendship

BLAIR WORDEN - A BOOK OF FRIENDSHIP

‘Guess who he is!’ 3 At the end of the month the general opinion was that Elizabeth would take as consort ‘Master Pickering ( quel Mastro Pincarin )’. 4 In early May ‘ M[aest]ro. Piccherin ’ was ‘regarded by all the people as the future husband of her Majesty. He remains at home ( in casa ) [in London], courted by many lords of the council, and by very many other lords and knights. He has not yet appeared at court’. Reportedly, Parliament was to settle what title he should be given, ‘but nothing was done’. 5 Spanish observers, too, took notice of Pickering. Already in December 1558 the Count of Feria believed that Elizabeth would not marry a foreigner, but ‘for caprice’. He named Pickering. 6 By 10th May 1559 he reported that in London ‘they are giving 25 to 100’ that Pickering would be king. Feria’s evidence was that Pickering, who had very recently returned to England from Germany, had been ‘much visited by the queen’s favourites’. ‘She saw him secretly two days after his arrival, and yesterday he came to the palace publicly and remained with her four or five hours’. Moreover, ‘they tell me Lord Robert is not so friendly with him as he was’. On the day of Pickering’s secret visit Dudley was hunting in Windsor and did not know of it. ‘If these things were not of such great importance and so lamentable some of them would be very ridiculous’, thought Feria. 7 The Spanish ambassador, Alvaro de Quadra, bishop of Aquila, reported that ‘Pickering entertains largely and is very extravagant. He himself always dines apart with music playing’. 8 The scene of this entertainment was his ‘faire greate house’ in St Andrew Undershaft in the City of London. 9 On 21st June, so De Quadra reported, the queen had gone to Greenwich, ‘where she is very solitary’, many of her courtiers having left for their country estates. ‘She has ordered Pickering, with whom she has had long conversations lately, to be given lodgings in the palace, and they say that she has made him a member of the council’. 10 But, as for Pickering himself, he said that ‘the queen would laugh at him, and all the rest of them as he knew that she meant to die a maid’. 11 3 CSPVen ., 19, p. 28. 4 CSPVen ., 28, pp. 36-7. 5 CSPVen ., 71, p. 85. 6 Calendar of Letters and State Papers relating to English Affairs preserved principally in the Archives of Simancas , 1, Elizabeth, 1558-1567 , ed. M.A.S. Hume (London, 1892) ( CLSP ), 4, p. 8. 7 CLSP , 31, p. 67. 8 CLSP , 35, pp. 73-4. 9 A Survey of London by John Stow , ed. C.L. Kingsford, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1908), I, p. 146.

10 CLSP , 39, p. 79. 11 CLSP , 35, p. 74.

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