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not in the best of health, a characteristic shared by her half-sister, Mary, who had also been a good deal older when she had become Queen. Elizabeth was to enjoy remarkably good health for most of her life, which was not the case in a surprisingly large number of the male courtiers who surrounded her. It was of course an unhealthy age: diseases such as bubonic plague and smallpox were rife and consistently proved fatal. Many other illnesses had no known cure. Medical facilities and treatment were far less sophisticated and even a simple chill could prove fatal, as it was to prove with Roger Ascham and Francis Bacon, two of the great Elizabethan scholars. Ascham was Elizabeth’s teacher in her formative years and Bacon became a trusted legal and political adviser who the Queen nicknamed her ‘Young Lord Keeper’. One of Elizabeth’s inexplicable traits was a compulsive urge to give those closest to her a pet name; very often this could be one that was at best banal and at worst extremely hurtful, but consideration for men’s finer feelings was never one of Elizabeth’s attributes.
    The Queen was very image-conscious, acutely concerned about how she was perceived at home and abroad. For somebody who always appeared very robust, she could at times be remarkably thin-skinned and susceptible to wounding criticism in an age that specialized in short yet eloquent pithy put-downs, something that a Pope or person such as Catherine de Medici could excel at with devastating effect.
    Elizabeth’s reign had got off to a solid if unspectacular start when suddenly, in the autumn of 1562, the Queen succumbed to the dreaded disease of smallpox. In the sixteenth century this was often terminal. The wife of the 2nd Earl of Bedford, a member of the Queen’s Privy Council, had died of it only a few weeks earlier, so great gloom descended on the entire Court. ‘Last night the people were all in mourning for her as if she was already dead’, 3 gloated the Spanish ambassador, Alvaro de la Quadra, to King Philip. The Queen lay at Hampton Court Palace for several days with a very high fever, drifting in and out of consciousness, while distraught members of her Council gathered around her bedchamber. Ever practical in the hour of crisis, they discussed in hushed tones possible successors to the Queen, mindful of the awesome, but very real prospect of Elizabeth failing to recover. The Queen suddenly regained consciousness and staring up at their anxious faces, feebly croaked that she would like them to appoint Robert Dudley as Lord Protector of the Realm at a salary of £20,000 a year, a colossal sum in those days. Sensing their astonished reaction to this amazing suggestion, she quickly went on to reassure them that although she loved Robert Dudley dearly and would always do so, there had never been anything untoward in their relationship. ‘The Queen protested at that time that although she loved and had always loved Lord Robert dearly, as God was her witness, nothing improper had ever passed between them,’ 4 commented the Spanish ambassador. Elizabeth then lapsed back into a coma, leaving her Privy Councillors in stunned silence. ‘Everything she asked was promised but will not be fulfilled,’ 5 was the Spanish ambassador’s cynical comment.
    Desperate measures were called for to alleviate the Queen’s suffering and, having heard of an ancient remedy which supposedly cured smallpox, the Councillors had the Queen wrapped in a scarlet cloth and laid down in front of the fire which burnt brightly in her bedroom. Miraculously, this improbable sounding cure was successful and Elizabeth made a complete recovery, even her fabled fair skin was left completely unmarked. Her attendant, Lady Mary Sidney, wife of Sir Henry and sister to Robert Dudley, who had been at the Queen’s side throughout her illness, was not so fortunate. She too contracted smallpox and although she recovered, Lady