The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

15
Make Them Want to Follow You
The Law of Fickleness
lthough styles of leadership change with the times, one constant
remains: people are always ambivalent about those in power.
They want to be led but also to feel free; they want to be protected
and enjoy prosperity without making sacrifices; they both worship
the king and want to kill him. When you are the leader of a group,
people are continually prepared to turn on you the moment you seem
weak or experience a setback. Do not succumb to the prejudices of the
times, imagining that what you need to do to gain their loyalty is to
seem to be their equal or their friend; people will doubt your strength,
become suspicious of your motives, and respond with hidden
contempt. Authority is the delicate art of creating the appearance of
power, legitimacy, and fairness while getting people to identify with
you as a leader who is in their service. If you want to lead, you must
master this art from early on in your life. Once you have gained
people’s trust, they will stand by you as their leader, no matter the
bad circumstances.
The Entitlement Curse
On the morning of Saturday, January 14, 1559, English people of all
ages and classes began gathering in the streets of London. It was the
day before the coronation of their new ruler, the twenty-five-year-old
Elizabeth Tudor, to be known as Queen Elizabeth I. By tradition, the
new monarch always led a ceremonial procession through the city. For
most, it would be the first time they had ever seen Elizabeth.
Some in the crowd were anxious—England was in bad financial
shape, the government heavily in debt; beggars were everywhere in the

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streets of large cities, and thieves roamed the countryside. Worst of all,
the country had just been through a virtual civil war between Catholics
and Protestants. Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII (1491–1547), had
created the Church of England and had moved to transform England
into a Protestant country. The daughter from Henry’s first marriage
became Queen Mary I in 1553, and she tried to return England to the
Catholic fold, initiating a kind of English inquisition and earning the
nickname “Bloody Mary.” After Mary’s death in late 1558, Elizabeth
was next in line to succeed her, but was this the time for England to be
ruled by a woman who was so young and inexperienced?
Others were cautiously hopeful: like the majority of the English,
Elizabeth was a solid Protestant and would return the country to the
Church of England. But optimistic or pessimistic, no one on either side
really knew much about her. After Henry VIII had Elizabeth’s mother
and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, executed on trumped-up charges
when Elizabeth was not yet three, Elizabeth had been shunted from
stepmother to stepmother, and her presence within the court had been
minimal. The English people knew that her childhood had been
difficult and that Queen Mary had detested her, even throwing
Elizabeth into the Tower of London in 1554. (She had wanted to have
Elizabeth executed on charges of conspiring against the Crown but
could not gather enough evidence.) How had these experiences
affected the young Elizabeth? Was she as impetuous as her father or as
arrogant as her half-sister, Mary? With so much at stake, they were
beyond curious to know more about her.
For the English, the procession was a day for celebration and
merriment, and Elizabeth did not disappoint on that score. It was quite
a spectacle—colorful tapestries on the exterior walls of houses, banners
and streamers from every window, musicians and jesters roaming the
streets entertaining the crowd.
As a light snow fell, the queen-to-be herself now appeared on the
streets, and wherever she passed the crowd grew hushed. Carried in an
open litter, she wore the most beautiful golden royal robe and the most
magnificent jewels. She had a charming face and the liveliest dark eyes.
But as the procession moved along and various pageants were
performed for her benefit, the English saw something they had never
witnessed before or could even begin to imagine: the queen seemed to
enjoy mingling with the crowds, tears filling her eyes as she listened

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attentively to the poorest of Londoners with their petitions and
blessings for her reign.
When she talked, her manner of speaking was natural and even a
bit folksy. She fed off the growing excitement in the crowd, and her
affection for the people in the streets was all too apparent. One older
and quite poor woman handed her a withered sprig of rosemary for
good luck, and Elizabeth clutched it the entire day.
One witness wrote of Elizabeth, “If ever any person had either the
gift or the style to win the hearts of people, it was this Queen. . . . All
her faculties were in motion, and every motion seemed a well-guided
action: her eye was set upon one, her ear listened to another, her
judgment ran upon a third, to a fourth she addressed her speech; her
spirit seemed to be everywhere, and yet so entire in herself as it
seemed to be nowhere else. Some she pitied, some she commended,
some she thanked, at others she pleasantly and wittily jested . . . and
distributing her smiles, looks, and graces . . . that thereupon the people
again redoubled the testimony of their joys, and afterwards, raising
everything to the highest strain, filled the ears of all men with
immoderate extolling of their Prince.”
That night the city of London was abuzz with stories of the day. In
taverns and homes, people commented on Elizabeth’s strange and
electrifying presence. Kings and queens would often appear before the
public, but they were surrounded with such pomp and eager to
maintain their distance. They expected the people to obey and worship
them. But Elizabeth seemed eager to win the people’s love, and it had
charmed everyone who had seen her that day. As word spread of this
throughout the country, affection for their new queen began to swell
among the English, and they entertained some hope for the new reign.
—
Before her coronation, Elizabeth had made it known to Sir William
Cecil that she would choose him as her most trusted minister. Cecil,
thirteen years older than the queen, had served as an important
councillor under Edward VI, Elizabeth’s half-brother, who had ruled
after the death of Henry VIII in 1547 from age nine until his death at
age fifteen. Cecil had known Elizabeth since she was fourteen; they
shared similar intellectual interests and were both solid Protestants;

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they had many lively conversations and a friendly rapport. For his part,
Cecil understood her well. She was extremely intelligent, was very well
read, and spoke many languages fluently. They would often play chess,
and he was impressed with her patient style and how she often laid
elaborate traps for his pieces.
He knew that Elizabeth had been schooled in hardship. She had lost
not only her mother when she was so young but also her most beloved
stepmother, Catherine Howard, when she was eight. Catherine was
Henry’s fifth wife and a cousin of Anne Boleyn. Henry had had her
beheaded on trumped-up charges of adultery. Cecil also knew that the
few months Elizabeth had spent in the Tower of London had had a
traumatic effect on her, since she had expected to be executed at any
moment. She had emerged from all of these experiences as a
remarkably affable young woman, but Cecil knew that behind the
exterior she was willful, temperamental, and even devious.
Cecil was also certain about one more thing: ruling was not for
women. Queen Mary I had been England’s first true female ruler, and
she had proven to be a disaster. All the government ministers and
administrators were men, and a woman could not stand up to the
rough-and-tumble of dealing with them, and with male foreign
diplomats. Women were too emotional and unsteady. Elizabeth might
have a very capable mind, but she did not have the resilience for the
job. And so Cecil had formed a plan: Slowly he and his cohorts would
take over the reins, the queen advising but mostly following her
ministers’ guidance. And as quickly as possible they would get her
married, preferably to a Protestant, and her husband would take over
and rule as the king.
Almost from the beginning of her reign, however, Cecil realized that
his plan would not be so easy to enact. The queen was headstrong and
had plans of her own. In one way, he could not help but be impressed.
Her first day on the job, she held a meeting and made it clear to her
future councillors that she knew more than they did about the financial
state of the country; she was determined to make the government
solvent. She appointed Cecil as her secretary of state, and she began
meeting with him several times a day, giving him no spare hour to rest.
Unlike her father, who had let his ministers run things so he could
devote himself to hunting and pursuing young women, Elizabeth was
completely hands-on; Cecil was astounded at how many hours she put

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into the job, working well past midnight. She was exacting in what she
expected from him and the other ministers, and occasionally she could
be quite intimidating. If he pleased her with what he said or did, the
queen was all smiles and a touch coquettish. But if something turned
out wrong or if he disagreed too vociferously, she would shut him out
for days, and he would return home to stew in his anxiety. Had he lost
her trust? On occasion, she looked at him harshly or even upbraided
him in the thunderous style of her father. No, the queen would not be
easy to manage, and slowly he found himself working harder than ever
to impress her.
As part of his plan for the men to slowly take over power, he made
sure that all correspondence from foreign governments would be first
routed to his desk. He would keep the queen in the dark on several
important matters. Then he discovered that the queen had learned of
this and behind his back had ordered all diplomatic correspondence to
go through her. It was like a chess game, and she was playing several
moves ahead. He got angry and accused her of undermining him in his
work, but she stood her ground and had a very logical response: unlike
Cecil, she spoke and read all of the major European languages and
understood their nuances, and it would be better for all if she
personally conducted diplomacy and brought the ministers up to date
on foreign affairs. It was useless to argue, and he soon realized that
when it came to handling such correspondence and meetings with
diplomats, Elizabeth was a master negotiator.
Slowly his resistance wore down. Elizabeth would remain in charge,
at least for the first few years of her reign. But then she would marry
and produce the necessary heir for England, and her husband would
take over. It was unnatural for her to continue in this role as an unwed
ruler. It was rumored that she had confided in several friends that she
would never marry, and that she had an overwhelming fear of marriage
based on what she had seen with her father. But Cecil could not take
this seriously. She kept telling everyone that all that mattered was the
greater good of England, but to keep England without an heir apparent
was to risk a future civil war. Surely she could see the logic in this.
His goal was simple: to get the queen to agree to marry a foreign
prince in order to forge an alliance that would benefit England in its
weakened state. Preferably this would be a Protestant prince, but as
long as he was not a Catholic fanatic, Cecil would approve the choice.
The French were dangling before her a marriage with their fourteen-

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year-old king, Charles IX, and the Habsburgs were promoting a
marriage with Archduke Charles of Austria. Cecil’s great fear was that
she would marry the one man whom she had actually fallen in love
with, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, a man beneath her in
station who would stir up all kinds of dissension and intrigue within
the English court.
As representatives of different countries pressed their cases,
Elizabeth would seem to favor one, then grow cold. If the Spanish were
suddenly creating trouble on the Continent, she would begin marriage
negotiations with the French to make King Philip II of Spain suddenly
fear a French-English alliance and back off, or with Archduke Charles
of Austria to strike fear in both the French and Spanish. Year after year
she played this game. She confessed to Cecil she had no desire to be a
wife, but when Parliament threatened to cut off funds if she did not
promise to marry, Elizabeth would soften and negotiate with one of her
suitors. Then, once the funds from Parliament had been secured, she
would find some other excuse to break off the marriage talk—the
prince or king or archduke was too young, too fervently Catholic, not
her type, too effeminate, on and on. Not even Dudley could break her
resolve and get her to marry him.
After a few years of this, his frustration mounting, Cecil finally saw
through the game. There was nothing he could do, but at the same time
he had come to realize that Queen Elizabeth I was almost certainly a
more capable ruler than any of the foreign matches. She was so frugal
with expenses that the government was no longer in debt. As Spain
and France ruined themselves with endless wars, Elizabeth prudently
kept England out of the conflicts, and soon the country was prospering.
Although she was Protestant, she treated the English Catholics well,
and the bitter feelings from the religious wars a decade before were
now mostly gone. “There was never so wise a woman born as Queen
Elizabeth,” he would later write, and so he eventually dropped the
marriage issue, and the country itself slowly became used to the idea of
the Virgin Queen, married to her subjects.
Over the years, however, one issue would continue to eat away at
the people’s affection for the queen, and even made Cecil begin to
doubt her competence: the fate of Mary, Queen of Scots, cousin to
Elizabeth. Mary was a staunch Catholic, while Scotland had become
largely Protestant. Mary was next in line to be Queen of England, and
many Catholics asserted that Mary was in fact the rightful queen. The

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Scots themselves came to despise Mary for her religious sentiments,
for her adulterous affairs, and for her apparent implication in the
murder of her husband, Lord Darnley. In 1567 she was forced to
abdicate the Scottish throne in favor of her infant son, James VI. The
following year she escaped imprisonment in Scotland and fled to
England, putting herself in the hands of her cousin.
Elizabeth had every reason to despise Mary and return her to
Scotland. She was the polar opposite of Elizabeth—selfish, flighty, and
immoral. She was a fervent Catholic, and around her she would attract
all those in England and abroad who wanted to depose Elizabeth and
put a Catholic on the throne. She could not be trusted. But to the
dismay of Cecil, her councillors, and the English people, Elizabeth
allowed Mary to stay in the country under a mild form of house arrest.
Politically this seemed to make no sense. It infuriated the Scots and
threatened relations between the two countries.
As Mary began to secretly conspire against Elizabeth, and calls
arose from all sides to have her executed for treason, inexplicably
Elizabeth refused to take what appeared to be the rational step. Was it
simply a case of one Tudor protecting another? Did she fear the
precedent of executing a queen, and what it might mean for her own
fate? In any event, it made her look weak and selfish, as if what
mattered were protecting a fellow queen.
Then, in 1586, Mary became involved with the most audacious plot
to have Elizabeth murdered, upon which Mary would have become
Queen of England. She had secret backing from the pope and the
Spanish, and there was now incontrovertible proof of her involvement
in the plot. This outraged the public, who could well imagine the
bloody civil war that would have ensued if the plot had gone forward.
This time the pressure on Elizabeth was too great—no matter if Mary
had been a queen, she had to be executed. But yet again Elizabeth
hesitated.
A trial convicted Mary, but Elizabeth could not bring herself to sign
the death warrant. To Cecil and those in the court who saw her daily,
the queen had never appeared so distraught. Finally, in February of the
next year, she caved to the pressure and signed the death warrant.
Mary was beheaded the next day. The country erupted in celebration;
Cecil and his fellow ministers breathed a sigh of relief. There would be
no more conspiracies against Elizabeth, which would make the lack of

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an heir easier to bear. Despite her apparent mishandling of the
situation, the English people quickly forgave her. She had proven that
she could put the welfare of the country over personal considerations,
and her reluctance only made the final decision seem all the more
heroic.
—
King Philip II of Spain had known Elizabeth for many years, having
been married to her half-sister, Queen Mary I. When Mary had
imprisoned Elizabeth in the Tower of London, Philip had managed to
soften her stance and get Elizabeth released. He found the young
Elizabeth quite charming, and he admired her intelligence. But over
the years he began to dread and despise her. She was the main obstacle
to his goal of reestablishing the dominance of Catholicism, and he
would have to humble her. In his mind, she was not the legitimate
Queen of England. He began sneaking Jesuit priests into England to
spread the Catholic faith and secretly foment rebellion. He built up his
navy and stealthily prepared for what was known as the Enterprise of
England, a massive invasion that would overwhelm the island and
restore it to Catholicism. The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, was
the final straw—it was time for the invasion.
Philip felt supremely confident in the success of the Enterprise.
Over the years, he had taken the measure of his great rival. She was
crafty and clever, but she had one overwhelming disadvantage—she
was a woman. As such, she was unsuited to lead a war. In fact, she
seemed to be afraid of armed conflict, always negotiating and finding
ways to avoid it. She had never paid much attention to her military.
The English navy was relatively small, its ships not nearly as large and
powerful as the great Spanish galleons. England’s army was quite
pitiful compared with Spain’s. And Philip had the gold from the New
World to help finance the effort.
He planned for the invasion to take place in the summer of 1587,
but that year Sir Francis Drake raided the Spanish coast and destroyed
many of its ships in the harbor of Cádiz, while seizing great treasures of
gold. Philip postponed the invasion to the following year, the costs
slowly mounting for maintaining his army and building more galleons.

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Philip had overseen every detail of the invasion. He would launch
an invincible armada of some 130 ships, manned by over thirty
thousand men. They would easily destroy the English navy, link up
with a large Spanish force in the Netherlands, cross the Channel, and
sweep their way to London, where they would capture the Queen and
put her on trial for the execution of Mary Queen of Scots; he would
then put his own daughter on the throne of England.
Finally, the armada was launched in May of 1588, and by July the
Spanish fleet was maneuvering around the southwestern coast of
England. The Spanish galleons had perfected a certain form of warfare:
they were so large they would maneuver close to the enemy ships,
grapple, and board them with a virtual army. But they had never done
battle with the much smaller and faster English ships, with their long-
range cannons, and in waters much rougher than the Mediterranean.
They did not do well.
On July 27, the armada anchored at Calais, just a few miles from
where the Spanish army awaited them. In the middle of the night, the
English sent five unmanned “fireships”—loaded with flaming wood
and pitch—toward the anchored galleons. With the high winds that
evening, the fire spread quickly from ship to ship. The Spanish
galleons tried to regroup farther out to sea, but their formation was
loose and scattered, and the fast English ships fired at them like ducks
in the water. As the winds changed again, the Spanish were forced to
retreat northward, into the stormiest parts of the North Sea. Trying to
round England and retreat to Spain, they lost most of their ships and
over twenty thousand Spanish soldiers died. The English had lost no
ships and had only around a hundred casualties. It was one of the most
lopsided victories in military history.
For Philip, it was the most humiliating moment in his life. He
retired into his palace, where he holed himself up for months
contemplating the disaster. The armada had left Spain utterly
bankrupt, and in the years to come England would prosper while Spain
became the second-rate power. Somehow Elizabeth had outwitted him.
To the other leaders in Europe who hated her, she now seemed
invincible and a ruler to be feared. Pope Sixtus V, who had
excommunicated her and had given his blessing to the armada, now
exclaimed, “Just look how well she governs! She is only a woman, only
mistress of half an island, and yet she makes herself feared by Spain,
by France, by the Empire, by all!”

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—
Now in England there arose a veritable cult around the Virgin Queen.
She was now referred to as “Her Sacred Majesty.” To catch a glimpse of
her riding through London or passing on her barge on the Thames
seemed like a religious experience.
One group, however, proved less susceptible to this powerful aura—
the new generation of young men now filling the royal court. To them,
the queen was showing her age. They respected her accomplishments,
but they saw her more as a domineering mother figure. England was a
rising power. These young men yearned to make a name for
themselves on the battlefield and so earn public acclaim. Yet Elizabeth
continually thwarted this desire. She refused to finance a large-scale
campaign to finish off Philip, or to aid the French in their fight against
the Spanish. They saw her as tired and felt it was time for their
spirited, masculine generation to lead England. And the young man
who came to epitomize this new spirit was Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl
of Essex.
Born in 1566, Essex was handsome and high-strung. He knew the
queen had a weakness for young men, and he quickly charmed her,
becoming her new favorite. He genuinely liked and admired her, but at
the same time he resented the power she possessed over his fate. He
began to test her: he asked for favors, mostly money. She gave these to
him. She seemed to enjoy spoiling him. And as the relationship
progressed, Essex began to see her as a woman he could manipulate.
He started to criticize her rather boldly in front of other courtiers, and
the queen let him get away with it. She drew a line, however, when he
asked for high political positions for himself and his friends, and then
he would fly into a rage. It was humiliating to depend on the whims of
a woman! But days later he would calm down and return to his charm
offensive.
Kept away from political power, he saw that his only chance for
fame and glory was to lead an English army to victory. Elizabeth
allowed him to lead some smaller military expeditions on the
Continent. His record was mixed—he was brave but not very good at
strategy. Then, in 1596, he persuaded her to let him lead a Drake-like
raid on the Spanish coast. This time his boldness paid off, and the

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campaign was a success. To the English people, now somewhat drunk
on their new status as a European power, Essex represented their new
swagger, and he became their darling. Essex wanted more of this and
kept asking the queen for another chance in battle. He attributed her
reluctance to the many enemies he had made in the court, men who
envied him.
In 1598 news reached the court that a band of Irish rebels under
Hugh O’Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, was moving through English-
controlled territory in Ireland and wreaking havoc. Now Essex offered
his services to lead a force to crush Tyrone. He pleaded and persisted,
and Elizabeth finally relented. Feeling confident of his powers over the
queen, he requested for the campaign the largest army yet assembled
by the English. Elizabeth granted his wish. For the first time, he felt
truly appreciated by her. She did have a strange ability to make him
want to please her. He expressed his gratitude and promised to finish
the job quickly. Ireland would be the means for him to rise to the top.
Once he was there, however, the troubles mounted. It was the
winter of 1599; the weather was awful and the terrain hopelessly
boggy. He could not advance his enormous force. The Irish were
elusive and masters at guerrilla warfare. While the English remained
hobbled in their camps, thousands of soldiers died from disease and
just as many began to desert. Essex could only imagine his many
enemies at court talking behind his back. He felt certain the queen and
several ministers were somehow plotting his downfall.
He had to test her again—he asked for reinforcements. The queen
agreed, but she ordered him to finally find and fight Tyrone. Suddenly
the pressure was too much, and he blamed the queen and her envious
courtiers for trying to rush him. He felt humiliated by the position he
was in, and by the end of the summer he had decided upon a plan that
would put an end once and for all to his misery—he would secretly
negotiate a truce with Tyrone, then return to England and march on
London with his troops. He would force the queen to get rid of his
enemies within the court and secure his position as her lead councillor.
He would be forceful but respectful of her position; seeing him in
person and with his troops, the queen would certainly relent.
After a swift march through England, he suddenly showed up one
morning in her bedchamber, his uniform caked in mud. The queen,
caught by surprise and not knowing if he had come to arrest her and

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launch a coup, retained her composure. She offered him her hand to
kiss and told him they would talk of Ireland later that day. Her
calmness discomfited him; it was not what he had expected. She
possessed a strange kind of power over him. Somehow the tables had
been turned, and now he agreed to postpone their talk to the
afternoon. Within hours, he found himself taken by her soldiers and
placed under house arrest.
Counting on his influence over the queen and how often she had
forgiven him, he wrote her letter after letter, apologizing for his
actions. She did not respond. This had never happened before, and it
frightened him. Finally, in August of 1600, she freed him. Grateful for
this and plotting his comeback, he asked just one favor—to restore to
him the monopoly he had possessed over the sale of sweet wines in
England; he was hopelessly in debt and this was his principal source of
income. Much to his chagrin, she refused to honor his request. She was
playing some game, trying to teach him a lesson or tame him, but that
would never happen. She had pushed him too far.
He retired to his house in London and gathered around him all of
the disgruntled noblemen in England. Together he would lead them on
a march to the queen’s residence and take over the country. He
predicted that thousands of Englishmen, who still adored him, would
rally to his cause and swell the ranks of his troops. In early February
1601, he finally put his plan into action. To his utter dismay,
Londoners stayed in their houses and ignored him. Sensing the
foolhardiness of the venture, his fellow soldiers quickly deserted.
Virtually alone, he retreated to his house. He knew this was the end for
him, but at least he would remain defiant.
That afternoon, soldiers came to arrest Essex. Elizabeth arranged
for a quick trial, and Essex was found guilty of treason. This time
Elizabeth did not hesitate to sign the death warrant. During his trial,
Essex maintained the most insolent air. He would go to his death
denying his guilt and refusing to ask forgiveness.
The night before he was to be beheaded, the queen sent her own
chaplain to prepare him for the end. Confronted with this
representative of Elizabeth, who relayed her last words to him, Essex
broke down. All those moments in which he had sensed her authority
but had tried to resist its power, including that morning in her
bedchamber when she had stood before him so regal and self-

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possessed, suddenly overwhelmed him. He confessed his crimes to the
chaplain. In his mind, he mixed the image of his imminent judgment
before God with the majesty of the queen, and he felt the full weight of
his betrayal. He could see her face before him, and it frightened him.
He told the chaplain, “I must confess to you that I am the greatest,
the vilest, and most unthankful traitor that ever has been in the land.”
The queen was right to execute him, he said. He requested a private
execution so as not to inflame the public. In his last words, he asked
God to preserve the queen. He went to his death with a submissiveness
and quiet dignity that no one had seen or suspected in him before.
• • •