Sir Henry Unton, Elizabeth I and Chivalric Diplomacy

Elizabeth I may not have been England’s first queen regnant, but it was in her reign that the full implications of female monarchy were felt in English diplomacy. The theoretical justification of English ambassadors had often rested on the political closeness of the ambassador to the monarch, yet an unmarried queen surrounded by rumours of a lack of chastity—her own and her mother’s—had to be careful about just how intimate she appeared to be to her male courtiers and counsellors. This essay examines gendered notions and chivalry within Elizabethan diplomatic practices. First it analyses the utility of chivalric discourses during the reign of a queen and the ways in which Elizabeth’s ambassadors used chivalry as a means of reconciling their ambassadorial character—that is their position as the proxy of their queen—with Elizabeth’s gender. Chivalric tropes offered a way of expressing their political intimacy with the queen in a way that did not suggest any sexual impropriety (an important consideration given Catholic propaganda against Elizabeth). Secondly, it focusses on the relationship between chivalry and service in the embassies of Sir Henry Unton to the martial court of Henry IV of France. After examining chivalric language in Unton’s correspondence, the essay turns to consider the highly irregular actions of Unton in challenging the Duke of Guise to a duel. In doing so, it interrogates how chivalry further problematized the already complicated relationship between the personal and official personas of the ambassador