The Year after the Armada, and Other Historical Studies

by Martin A. S. Hume

Of the few Spanish nobles of high rank who stayed with Philip II. during the whole of his residence in England after his marriage with Queen Mary, one was Gomez Suarez de Figueroa, Count de Feria, a prime favourite and close friend of Philip. This nobleman had fallen deeply in love with Miss Jane Dormer, one of Mary's maids of honour, and married her, and although the secret of the union had been well kept, circumstances made it necessary to openly avow it before the King and his suite left London for Flanders in September, 1555. Feria was again in London with the King in March, 1557, for a few months, but in January, 1558, he came back in another capacity. The war was going badly for Philip and England. The French had taken Calais, and Guines was on the point of falling; if the contest was to be carried on at all more money and more men must be squeezed out of unwilling England, or otherwise peace must be made, with England for a scapegoat. Philip could not come himself, so he sent his haughty, overbearing favourite Feria as his ambassador to bully and bribe the English courtiers and coerce the sorely beset Queen. He came with a large train of servants and with great magnificence; his English wife, a country knight's daughter only as she was, as proud as himself; and he was granted the use of Durham Place, furnished from the Queen's own house, as other great ambassadors had been granted it before him. Egmont had been lodged there with his splendid train in January, 1554, when he had come to offer Philip's hand to Mary. Chatillon, the French ambassador, too, had been given the use of the house during his short embassy in 1550, so that there was nothing extraordinary in the granting of the house to Feria. Only that former ambassadors had stayed for a few weeks, whereas Feria and his successor remained in possession for five years and a half, and made of Durham Place a trysting-place for treason during the most of that time.

Whilst Elizabeth was striving against terrible odds with all her subtle statecraft to lay the foundation of a united nation on the broken elements of civil and religious discord, her task was hourly rendered more difficult by the plots hatched in her own house at Durham Place. All the disaffected and discontented found a welcome there; emissaries from Shan O'Neil flitted backwards and forwards at night by the river gate. Stukeley whispered here his willingness to desert with the Queen's ships to the King of Spain, and here Hawkins himself humbly begged to be bought. Lady Sidney, Robert Dudley's sister, Dudley himself, Arundel, Lumley, Montague, and Winchester found in the secret rooms at Durham Place open but discreet ears to listen to their plans for preventing the establishment of Protestantism in England, and for bringing the country again under the sway of the Pope. Madcap Arthur Pole appealed first to Durham Place when he wanted aid for his silly plot in favour of Mary Stuart, and long-headed Lethington came at dead of night by the silent river on a similar but far more serious errand. The publication of the correspondence of the Spanish ambassadors in England during the reign of Elizabeth (Rolls Series) adds many interesting pages to the history of Durham Place, and renders the memories of the house more important than ever to the students of the Reformation period in England.

Feria arrived in London and took up his residence at Durham Place on the 26th of January, 1558, having, as he says, lingered on the way in order not to bring the unwelcome news of the surrender of Guines by the English, which news had crossed the Channel with him. In addition to Durham Place, where he and his household were lodged, he had the same privileges as to an apartment in the Queen's palace as those which appertained to an English Privy Councillor—privileges which he tried hard to have confirmed to him by the new Queen when Mary died, in order, as he says, that he might keep his foot in the place and spy out what was going on. But Elizabeth and Cecil knew full well what his object was, and were quite shocked at the idea of the representative of a possible suitor for her hand sleeping under the same roof as the maiden Queen, so Feria had to depend upon his paid agents in the palace, and even in the Council itself, to bring him news to Durham Place of what was going on.

With the evidence now before us we can form an approximate idea of the appearance of Durham Place at the time. The Strand was a rough, unpaved road, with a fringe of shops and taverns on the northern side, whilst on the south side were the back walls and outer courts of the riverine mansions. The principal land gateway of Durham Place stood exactly opposite the spot now occupied by the Adelphi Theatre. The English custodian or porter, who was in the pay of the Queen, had his dwelling just inside the gate, where he could spy those who went in and out on the land side. On each side of the gate in the outer courtyard were stables and outhouses, and in and around the gateway in the street were benches where idlers and hangers-on sat and lounged through the day gossiping, in various tongues, and boasting of the prowess of their respective countrymen. On the other side of the street, nearly opposite, was a tavern called the "Chequers,"[[4]] which drove a roaring trade with the men-at-arms, Court-danglers, and serving-men who were constantly passing to and from Whitehall and St. James'. Opposite the gateway, across the large outer courtyard, was the door of the great hall, generally standing open for the neighbours to pass through[[5]] it to the inner or smaller courtyard, in which stood a water conduit fed by a "spring of fairwater in Covent Garden."[[6]] Beyond this inner courtyard stood the house itself at the bottom of the slope on the bank of the river at the spot now occupied by the arches that support Adelphi Terrace. It was a castellated structure, with its water-gate placed in the middle of the curtain between two turrets, and leading not, as usually was the case, through a garden, but straight from the steps into the house itself by an enclosed pent-house doorway. The domestic offices, and probably the chapel, were on the ground floor, but the principal dwelling-rooms were all upstairs and in the turrets. Aubrey, in his letters (vol. iii. 573), thus speaks of Raleigh's occupancy of one of these turrets: "Durham House was a noble palace. After he came to his greatness, he lived there or in some apartment of it. I well remember his study, which was on a little turret that looked into and over the Thames, and had a prospect which is as pleasant as any in the world."

The water-gate of the house was not the only approach to the river, as there was a space with trees on each side of the house, with a dwarf wall fronting the water, and a descent on one side by which the neighbours were allowed to get water from the stream for washing and similar purposes. It will thus be seen that the only really private part was the house itself between the inner courtyard and the river; the great hall and both courtyards being practically open to the public under the supervision of the custodian at the outer gate, who was responsible only to the Queen, and was a constant source of friction with the foreign occupants of the house.

Feria stayed at Durham Place until August, 1558, taking an active part in the distracted Councils of the Queen; and then, having found that Mary's hopes of an heir were again fallacious, and having bullied and frightened the Queen and Council into raising all the money they could beg or borrow for Philip's service, he went back to Flanders, leaving his English wife in London, with a Flemish and a Spanish ambassador of lower rank than himself to represent his master. But when Mary was known to be dying, he posted back again to be on the spot when the great change took place, and Durham Place was avoided like a plague-spot thenceforward for many days by the courtiers and time-servers who wished to stand well with the new Queen.

The proud Spaniard repaid distrust by bitter resentment, and soon found that his arrogance made him unfit instrument for cajolery. So he sent for a softer spoken diplomatist to act as his "tender," and the wily, silken Bishop of Aquila became his guest at Durham Place. Feria could not for long brook the need of paying supple court to the people over whom he had ridden roughshod, and an excuse was soon found by which he might be withdrawn without an open confession of his unfitness, and in May, 1559, he left Durham Place for good, leaving his English Countess and the Bishop of Aquila in possession.

At Dover he met Baron Ravenstein, who was coming from the Emperor to offer the hand of the Archduke Charles to Elizabeth, and as such a match would only have subserved Spanish interests if it had been effected by the aid of Spanish diplomacy, Feria asked the German to become his guest at Durham Place, which he did, and was made much of by the Countess and the Bishop. But he wore out his welcome very soon, particularly with the latter, a portion of whose apartments he occupied, and the Bishop sneers at him for his constant attendance at Mass. "He is quite a good fellow," he says, "but surely this must be the first negotiation he ever conducted in his life." The Countess soon came to high words with the new Queen, and in a month or so left Durham Place in a dudgeon to join her husband in Flanders, thenceforward to see England no more. With her went, in addition to her escort, Don Juan de Ayala, her grandmother, Lady Dormer, and that Mistress Susan Clarencis who was Queen Mary's most devoted attendant. From that time, namely, July, 1559, the Bishop was temporary master of Durham Place by favour of the Queen, against whom he never ceased to intrigue as far as he dared.