Sweet Robin

ELIZABETH AND LEICESTER -- Milton Waldman--Houghton Mifflin ($3).

One cold, rainy morning in the reign of Mary Tudor, an official barge swept up to the landing stage of the Tower of London. Out stepped 20-year-old Elizabeth, Queen Mary's red-haired half-sister, who had just been arrested on suspicion of treason. At sight of the terrible Tower, where her luckless mother, Queen Anne Boleyn, had lost her head, the Lady Elizabeth's legs sank under her, and she fell weeping on the wet stones. Then she pulled herself together and walked into the prison with her head held high.

In a nearby cell of the Tower languished another treason suspect--handsome, youthful Lord Robert Dudley, whose father, the Duke of Northumberland, had just been beheaded. As children, Lord Robert and the Lady Elizabeth had played together; they had studied Latin under the same tutor. In the Tower they met again. Soon it was rumored that dashing Prisoner Dudley had so bewitched Prisoner Elizabeth that she had fallen hopelessly in love with him. The rumor seemed to be confirmed nearly five years later, when Elizabeth rode in state to her coronation, and Robert Dudley, her newly created Master of the Horse, proudly held the leading rein of her snow-white palfrey. In one way or another, Robert Dudley, royal favorite and most envied man in England, was to hold the Queen's leading rein for the next 30 years.

Historian Milton Waldman, a Cleveland-born expatriate, who has lived in England for more than 20 years and has made the life and times of Elizabeth his specialty (England's Elizabeth; Sir Wal ter Raleigh; The Absolute Rulers of England), believes that historians have tended to neglect or forget Robert Dudley's vital role in English history. He believes that too much romantic limelight has been thrown on the young man who succeeded Dudley as the Queen's "most overwritten favorite"--Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. Elizabeth and Leicester reads like a prim rebuke to Lytton Strachey's witty, popular Elizabeth and Essex.

But Milton Waldman's book is also a good deal more than a studious appraisal of the Queen's relations with her first great favorite. Waldman sees in Robert Dudley's rise to power a symbol of Elizabethan England's rise from "a somewhat backward island" to a world power.

"My Two Eyes." Within a year of her accession Elizabeth had ruled that Dudley must never leave her side under any circumstances. She nicknamed him "my sweet Robin" and "my two eyes" (later, she dubbed Sir Walter Raleigh "my two Lydds"), and later, when her advisers began to press her to marry a foreign prince, she would point to Robert Dudley and exclaim that there was the only man she would wish to marry--"not one who would sit at home all day among the cinders." When he took part in public games, she dressed up as a serving maid and hid in the crowd to watch him, and she was delighted when he impudently snatched her handkerchief and mopped his brow with it during a tennis match.

But her courtiers were horrified by such behavior. One bold gentleman even summoned up the courage to rebuke the Queen--who only giggled, and coyly "turned herself to one side and then the other." She gave her sweet Robin a suite of rooms adjoining her own and, when she created him Earl of Leicester, ruined the immense dignity of the ceremony by bending over his kneeling figure and tick ling him on the back of the neck.

Woman, growled dour John Knox, is a creature "painted forth by nature to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish," and the Queen's first duty was to find a husband "to relieve herself of those labors which are fit only for men." And no one counted Robert Dudley out of the running just because he already had a wife living in melancholy loneliness on one of his country estates.

But the Spanish ambassador was shocked one day to hear court gossip that "they" (Elizabeth and Robert) were plotting to murder Amy Dudley. The very next day, Amy was found with a broken neck at the bottom of a flight of stairs.

No one knows the truth about Amy's death. Author Waldman, like other historians, thinks it probable that the neglected wife committed suicide. But the whole of England -- all of Europe, in fact -- expected any morning to wake up and find Robert sharing the throne of England. Elizabeth's Catholic enemies made Amy's "murder" their most effective propaganda weapon, and for years Robert Dudley was England's most hated citizen.

The Stately Stomach. But as the Queen's dependence upon her favorite grew, her fear of him as a husband-- or even a friend -- grew too. "I know your stately stomach, Madame," observed a canny Scots diplomat. "Ye think that [if] ye married ye would be but Queen of England, and now ye are King and Queen baith." And already Robert's position as first favorite had raised him virtually to the level of Prince Consort. He was one of the triumvirate (the other two: William Cecil and Francis Walsingham) who ruled England until the defeat of the Armada. He subbed for the Queen not only as host to foreign dignitaries but as the head of her table and master of her palace. On his travels he was received with the honors of a reigning monarch.

He was also the richest man in England. The main source of his wealth was also the source of the future British Empire. He enthusiastically subsidized such ventures as Francis Drake's famed voyage round the world-- a treasure hunt that paid shareholders 447%. He was one of the first to open British trade with India.

In all these ventures Elizabeth both aid ed and plagued her favorite. His bottom less ambition made her vacillate between a passionate admiration of him and a jealousy that often came close to hatred. Her heart sometimes led her to rush partly dressed to the window when she heard he was riding past. But in court, her stately stomach would revolt, and she would up braid him furiously. "My lord," she would scream, ". . . if you think to rule here, I will take a course to see you forthcoming! I will have here but one mistress and no master."

Last Service. By middle age, Leicester was no longer the slim, handsome gallant who had dazzled Elizabeth in the Tower. His face was red, his beard streaked with grey, his hair thin. And despite Elizabeth's efforts to keep him on a diet ("two ounces of flesh" a day, and "the twentieth part of a pint of wine to comfort his stomach"), sweet Robin was getting paunchy. And then, one day, the Queen discovered that he had secretly married handsome, widowed Lettice Knollys, Countess of Essex --or "that she-wolf," as the Queen preferred to call her.

For a while it seemed that Leicester's marriage might change the course of history by provoking his angry Queen into marriage herself. When France's Duke of Alengon sent an ambassador to sound her out, Elizabeth fondly nicknamed the ambassador "her Monkey," and hugged him to her breast on public occasions. When the hopeful Duke--an ugly little man with pockmarks--scurried over, Elizabeth mooned with him in corners and proclaimed him her long-sought true love. But overnight she decided that he was just a pest--and summoned sweet Robin to escort the Duke home again.

She even forgave Leicester his last, most presumptuous burst of ambition--his assumption of a princely title ("Excellency") when he led English troops into The Netherlands to fight the Spaniards. And when the Spanish Armada itself came beating up the Channel in 1588, Leicester was made commander of England's military forces. But this was his last service to his Queen. At the height of national rejoicing over the Armada's defeat, Leicester caught fever and died.

The aging queen promptly promoted Leicester's stepson, the Earl of Essex, to her old favorite's place. She also gleefully hounded the widowed "she-wolf" until she had got back every penny Leicester owed her. But she kept a soft spot in her heart for her old favorite. On the note that the dying man had sent her from the country, she wrote, "His last letter," and laid it away in a chest beside her bed.

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