Elizabeth’s secret aid to embattled French king
Newly discovered letters reveal Queen offered help as enemies planned to overthrow Henry III
FRANCE was a thorn in Elizabeth I’s side for much of her reign. But newly uncovered letters suggest the Tudor queen was a trusted confidant to King Henry III and broke protocol to warn him of an attempt to steal his crown.
When King Henry’s brother and heir to the French throne, the Duke of Anjou, died in 1584, Henry of Navarre, a distant cousin and a Protestant, was next in line.
This enraged the Catholic League, an alliance of radical anti-Protestant families funded in large part by Spain, Protestant England’s great enemy.
Warning the French king of the league’s attempts to usurp him, Elizabeth chided: “My God, what necromancer has blinded your eyes, that you cannot see your own danger.”
Elizabeth went on to warn him that his true enemies were the Catholics, writing: “With my very genuine prayers to God who will inspire you for the best to open your eyes and to see clearly your detractors, between whom, I will be in the last place, your abused good sister.”
He agreed, writing back that his enemies were hers.
At the time Elizabeth was isolated and vulnerable as a Protestant leader facing the possibility of a Catholic invasion.
Desperately in need of an ally on the continent, Elizabeth I had spent much of the 1570s discussing a possible alliance with France based on a marriage between her and the Duke of Anjou. At one stage, King Henry himself was seen as a potential p suitor.
While neither marriage arriage materialised, partly y due to virulent anti-French and anti-Catholic ti-Catholic sentiment at home, , the talks helped Elizabeth build uild a relationship with the he unpopular King of France as the he alliance between the Catholic lic League and Spain risked giving ving the latter control of France, ance, a potential disaster for or Elizabeth.
Dr Estelle Paranque, que, who discovered the e letters in the National nal
Archives and French ch records, told The Sunday Telegraph the queen used “very strong language” with Henry, “which is highly unusual”.
“She even told him off for doing a bad job,” Dr Paranque said. “She completely spoke her mind.”
In 1588, Henry told the English ambassador to pass on his thanks for the advice – and for keeping their friendship a secret. The ambassador wrote that the king “desired you [Elizabeth] to put your helping hand to it; that though his Council, and especially Queen Mother dissuaded him to desire at your hands, as a thing unhonorable to him to desire that you should meddle between him and his subjects, yet he did secretly by me desire and beseech you, and that he should think himself beholding to you for it and most of all for doing it upon his request, and keeping secret that he hath requested you.”
Dr Paranque explained: “You would never expect a Protestant queen to wade in and advise a Catholic king. He obviously thought she was wise.”
Dr Paranque, a history lecturer at the New College of Humanities, added: “There was a massive gap in history knowledge about her relationship with the Valois kings, the dynasty that were ruling in France at the same time as the Tudors.
“The role she played in French politics has been massively understated and it became a huge secret as it could not be known that a Protestant queen was advising a Catholic king.
“She did not use diplomatic language – she said that the Catholic League were the true enemies and he had to open his eyes and listen to her.”
The letters also show Queen Elizabeth’s interest in Europe and her desire for peace on the continent.
Dr Paranque said: “She was writing about French politics. It casts a new light on Elizabeth’s political influence on the European scene.
“Of course she was a very English queen. But she cared a lot about what was happening to the people in Europe and cared a lot about the
‘The letters cast a new light on Queen Elizabeth’s political influence on the European scene’
relations with the European countries – she wanted peace and she wanted trade treaties.”
Dr Paranque’s book, Elizabeth I of England Through Valois Eyes: Power, Representation, and Diplomacy in the Reign of the Queen, 1558-1588, is due to be released later this year.