Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Alison Weir
Illustrations
Genealogical Table: The Heirs of Henry VIII
Dedication
Title Page
Preface
Introduction: The Lion’s Cubs
Part One: Edward, Mary and Elizabeth
Prologue: 28 January 1547
1 The king’s uncles
2 Amorous intrigues
3 A royal scandal
4 ‘The most unstable man in England’
5 Keeping the faith
6 Pining away
Part Two: Jane and Mary
7 ‘Jane the Queen’
8 God’s miracle
Part Three: Mary and Elizabeth
9 ‘A merciful princess’
10 ‘The marriages of princes’
11 Heretics and traitors
12 ‘Much suspected of me’
13 The Spanish marriage
14 True religion restored
15 ‘A miracle will come to pass’
16 Bloody Mary
17 ‘Little children like angels’
Epilogue: Elizabeth
Afterwards
Picture Section
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Index
Copyright
BRITAIN’S ROYAL FAMILIES:
The Complete Genealogy
THE SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII
RICHARD III AND THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER
LANCASTER AND YORK:
The Wars of the Roses
ELIZABETH THE QUEEN
ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE
HENRY VIII:
King and Court
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS
AND THE MURDER OF LORD DARNLEY
ISABELLA:
She-Wolf of France, Queen of England
KATHERINE SWYNFORD:
The Story of John of Gaunt and His Scandalous Duchess
THE LADY IN THE TOWER:
The Fall of Anne Boleyn
MARY BOLEYN:
‘The Great and Infamous Whore’
ELIZABETH OF YORK:
The First Tudor Queen
THE LOST TUDOR PRINCESS:
A Life of Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox
As co-author
THE RING AND THE CROWN:
A History of Royal Weddings, 1066–2011
INNOCENT TRAITOR
THE LADY ELIZABETH
THE CAPTIVE QUEEN
A DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
THE MARRIAGE GAME
SIX TUDOR QUEENS:
Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen
Quick Reads
TRAITORS OF THE TOWER
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VINTAGE
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Vintage is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
Copyright © Alison Weir 1996
Alison Weir has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Cover portrait details (clockwise from top left): Queen Elizabeth I by unknown artist (National Portrait Gallery, London); Lady Jane Dudley (née Grey) by unknown artist (NPG); King Edward VI by unknown artist (NPG); Mary I by Anthonis Mor (Isabelle Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA/Bridgeman)
First published by Jonathan Cape 1996
Pimlico edition 1997
Published by Vintage 2008
www.penguin.co.uk/vintage
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
CHILDREN OF ENGLAND
is dedicated to all the children in my family:
at Carshalton, John and Katherine Weir;
at Chesterfield, David and Andrew Weir;
at Edinburgh, Paul Masterton, Stephen and Susan Scott;
at Kidderminster, David and Peter Marston;
at Melbourne, Gemma and Kevin Cullen;
at York, Angus, Bruce and Douglas Weir.
1 Edward VI, portrait by Guillim Stretes. (The Royal Collection © Her Majesty the Queen)
2 Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, by an unknown artist. (By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)
3 John Cheke, by an unknown artist. (Private Collection)
4 Thomas Seymour, Lord Sudeley, by an unknown artist. (By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)
5 Portrait of Elizabeth I as princess. (The Royal Collection © Her Majesty the Queen)
6 Katherine Ashley. (Courtesy of Lord Hastings)
7 Sir Thomas Parry, by Hans Holbein. (The Royal Collection © Her Majesty the Queen)
8 Hatfield Palace. (By courtesy of The Marquess of Salisbury)
9 Allegory on the abdication of Charles V in Brussels by Frans Francken. (© Rijksmuseum–Stichting, Amsterdam)
10 John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. (Reproduced by kind permission of Viscount De L’Isle, from his private collection)
11 Engraving of Lady Jane Grey by Willem and Madgalena van de Passe. (By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)
12 Portrait of Mary I by Hans Eworth. (By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)
13 Philip of Spain, portrait by an unknown artist after Titian. (By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)
14 Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. (© National Trust Photographic Library/J. Whitaker)
15 Portrait of Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon, by Sir A. More (From the Courtenay Collection at Powderham Castle, Devon)
16 The Bell Tower, Tower of London. (© Crown Copyright. Historic Royal Palaces)
17 The Remains of Woodstock (Palace) As They Appeared in 1714: from The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth by John Nichols, Volume I, 1823 (Shelfmark = A.5.287/1. Opposite page 9). (Courtesy of the Bodleian Library)
18 Elizabeth I, by an unknown artist c. 1558. (By kind permission of His Grace the Duke of Northumberland)
19 Reginald Pole, Archbishop of Canterbury. (Courtesy of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Trustees of Lambeth Palace Library)
20 Portrait of Sir William Paget by the Master of Statthalteri. (By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)
21 William Paulet, Marquess of Winchester, by an unknown artist. (By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)
22 Sir William Petre, by an unknown artist. (By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)
I should like to express my gratitude to all those who have helped me with this book, and particularly to Mr Michael Cameron, formerly Senior Consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at St Thomas’s Hospital, London, for his kindness in reading the manuscript and for giving me his professional views on Mary Tudor’s confinements; this invaluable assistance enabled me to arrive at a convincing solution to the mystery surrounding Mary’s two supposed pregnancies.
My grateful thanks are, as ever, also due to my wonderfully supportive editor, Jill Black, who suggested this project; to my equally supportive agent, Julian Alexander, whose enthusiasm and encouragement never flags; to Pascal Cariss, for all his hard work on the manuscript; and to Sophie Martin for her painstaking efforts to track down the illustrations.
Lastly, but not least, I owe special thanks to my husband and children, who have patiently borne the absence of a wife and mother over so many evenings and weekends, so that this book could be completed on schedule. Without their unfailing support, it would not have been possible.
THIS BOOK IS not a history of England during the troubled reigns of Edward VI, Jane Grey, Mary I and Elizabeth I, but a chronicle of the personal lives of four English sovereigns, and the relationships between them, during the period 1547 to 1558. When Henry VIII died in 1547, he left three highly intelligent children to succeed him in turn – Edward, Mary and Elizabeth, to be followed, if their lines failed, by the descendants of his sister Mary Tudor, one of whom was the ill-fated nine-days queen, Lady Jane Grey.
The relationships between the royal siblings were never easy ones for several reasons: all had very dissimilar characters, and while they took after their father in many ways, they had each inherited diverse characteristics from their mothers, who had been the first three of Henry VIII’s six wives. Each child had spent its formative years in vastly different circumstances, and had enjoyed – or suffered – varying relations with its formidable father. Mary’s mother had been supplanted in King Henry’s affections by Elizabeth’s mother, who had, in her turn, been supplanted by Edward’s mother. And while the King’s daughters suffered several vicissitudes of fortune in Henry’s lifetime, his son grew up secure in his august father’s love and protection.
In the pages of this book, which begins at the point where my earlier book The Six Wives of Henry VIII came to an end, I have tried to portray the characters of these royal siblings and their cousin Jane Grey as realistically as possible, and to describe how their personal relationships with each other were affected by political and religious considerations. In order to achieve this, I have consulted a wealth of documentary evidence contemporary to the period, including numerous private and official letters, the great calendars of state and the masses of diplomatic papers, as well as memorials and chronicles by contemporary writers, including Edward VI’s own journal, and more mundane records, such as lists of privy purse expenses, which can in fact yield fascinating information.
There have been many biographies of the later Tudor monarchs, but never a book in which their personal lives and relations with each other, and the effect of these factors upon the history of England, have been the central theme. One cannot of course write about kings and queens without touching on the political and social issues of their times, but what I have tried to bring into focus here is personal information that has until now been treated as generally subsidiary to the political ethos of other works. This book is not intended to replace such works, but to complement them.
In these pages, we go back in time to an age in which the personalities of monarchs and their familial connections had the power to influence governments, and it is vital to our knowledge of the period to understand what shaped the characters of these four monarchs, who were among the most charismatic and vivid personalities ever to have graced the throne of England. Naturally, our human condition makes us eager to learn about the private things, the everyday trivia, the scandals, and the sheer ‘feel’ of ages long gone. We want to bridge the gap, to discover that even these long-dead kings and queens felt as we do, and come to know them through the writings and mementoes they have left behind. We are fortunate, therefore, that the Tudor period is one rich in source material, in which fascinating – and sometimes astonishing – discoveries may be made. These, and one or two tantalising mysteries, are the things I have included in this book, the things that bring us closer to the past.
Set against a background of turbulent change and intrigue, the story that unfolds will, I hope, bring to life four Tudor sovereigns and those whose lives they touched, and will portray them not only as Renaissance princes, but as individuals, who, in the final analysis, were people not so very unlike ourselves.
Alison Weir
Carshalton, Surrey
May 1996
THE TUDORS WERE not a prolific race; although King Henry VIII of England married six times, only his first three wives bore him children, and of a probable total of eleven pregnancies between them produced only three surviving children. The fact that these royal heirs were born to different mothers would have a direct bearing on the history of England for several decades, for old grudges and jealousies and disagreements over religion remained lively in the hearts of these siblings until death divided them.
Henry VIII, who ascended the throne in 1509, was a true prince of the Renaissance, a brilliant scholar and sportsman whose good looks, splendid physique and kingly bearing were the talk of Christendom. The magnificence of his court attracted many great and learned men, and in the first half of his reign no expense was spared on lavish ceremonial and display. The young King delighted in tournaments and in sumptuous pageants based on classical or allegorical themes, and spent vast sums on costumes and scenery, much of which was made from cloth of gold. Later in his reign the more dramatic masque, an Italian novelty, became popular. Besides these more superficial entertainments, Henry delighted in the company of scholars, artists and musicians, and his court became a renowned centre of culture. It seemed that England had embarked upon a new golden age of glory and prosperity, and that Henry would found a dynasty that would surpass even the splendour and fame of the Plantagenets, whose throne the King’s father had usurped in 1485.
After his accession, Henry VIII wasted no time in marrying his sister-in-law, the Princess Katherine of Aragon, who had originally come from Spain in 1501 as the bride of his elder brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales. Arthur, however, had died six months after their wedding, and in 1509 Henry obtained a papal dispensation permitting him to marry his brother’s widow, who possessed all the qualities and virtues required of a medieval queen. However, Katherine was unable to give Henry the one thing he wanted most: a male heir. Her three sons died at or soon after birth, as did one of her daughters; another daughter was stillborn. The only child of this marriage to survive was the Princess Mary, who was born on 18 February 1516 at Greenwich Palace.
When Katherine failed to bear him a living son, Henry VIII conveniently remembered that marriage with one’s brother’s wife was prohibited in Holy Scripture, and applied to the Pope for an annulment. Because of political pressure from Katherine’s nephew, the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, who was also King of Spain and the Indies and ruler of the Low Countries, the Pope dithered for six years, having also heard that Henry’s pangs of conscience over his marriage had been prompted by his falling in love with Katherine’s maid-of-honour, Anne Boleyn. Tired of waiting for the Pope to pronounce sentence, Henry decreed that the Church of England be separated from that of Rome and made himself its Supreme Head and Governor, declaring that the Pope’s authority no longer held sway in England. After this, he appointed a new Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, who in 1533 declared that the King’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon was null and void and that the marriage Henry had already entered into with Anne Boleyn was valid.
These events had a devastating effect on the young Princess Mary. Adored and cherished in childhood by both parents, she suddenly found herself at loggerheads with a father who had become a distant, frightening tyrant, and compelled to defend the cause of her beloved mother, whom she considered to have been shockingly treated. Katherine always maintained that she was the King’s true wife and that she would never do or say anything to jeopardise her daughter’s title or future succession; for this defiance she was banished from court in 1531 and thereafter kept in close confinement in one unhealthy house after another. Mary never saw her mother again. In 1533 she was declared a bastard and unfit to inherit the crown, and made to wait upon her new half-sister, the Princess Elizabeth, to whom Anne Boleyn had given birth at Greenwich on 7 September. Anne always treated Mary with calculated cruelty, heaping humiliations on her and urging the King to have her put to death. Despite her stepmother’s threats to do away with her or marry her to a low-born husband, Mary would not capitulate or acknowledge Anne as queen.
In 1536 Katherine died of cancer; a few months later Anne herself went to the block, having been convicted of adultery and plotting the death of the King. Henry’s new wife, Jane Seymour, begged him to bring Mary back to court and be reconciled with her, but Henry would not agree unless Mary signed a document acknowledging her mother’s marriage to be incestuous and unlawful. Under tremendous pressure, not only from her father but also from her cousin Charles V, on whose self-interested advice she was to rely all her life, Mary signed, but she never forgave herself for betraying her mother’s memory or her principles. That Christmas, she was welcomed back at court.
Thereafter, she lived as a royal princess, even if that title was no longer hers. After Queen Jane died in 1537 after bearing the King his longed-for son and heir, Edward, Mary was first lady in the land until the arrival of Henry’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, who was not to his taste and whose marriage was annulled after six months, having remained unconsummated. Anne was replaced by the flighty young Katherine Howard, with whom Mary had little in common, and who went to the block for infidelity in 1542.
In 1543, Henry VIII married Katherine Parr, an intelligent, learned woman, the patroness of humanists and a secret Protestant. She was also gentle, dignified, kind and maternal, and she made an ideal stepmother for the King’s children. She warmly befriended Mary, and it was thanks to her influence that both princesses were reinstated in the succession by an Act of Parliament passed in 1543, although neither were declared legitimate. Henry could think of no alternative heir if the son Jane Seymour had borne him were to die childless.
Renowned for her steadfastness and her piety, Mary – according to the Imperial ambassador, Eustache Chapuys – was ‘universally adored’ by her father’s subjects, who saw in her the embodiment of the old order that was rapidly disappearing, and famed throughout Europe for her ‘virtue and learning’.
Thanks to the good offices of her mother, Mary had been well-educated. Her first tutor was Thomas Linacre, who had taught Prince Arthur. He devised a formal curriculum for her and wrote a Latin textbook, Rudimenta Grammatices, which became very successful. Unfortunately he died soon afterwards, and in 1523 the Queen engaged a Spanish educationist, Juan Luis Vives, to teach her daughter. Vives had an excellent reputation as a scholar – Sir Thomas More called him the best teacher in Europe – and wrote a treatise entitled The Education of a Christian Woman for Mary’s guidance. In it he advocated a rigorous programme of study of the Scriptures and the classics. If any pupil, male or female, did not work hard, they were to be whipped: ‘The daughter especially shall be handled without cherishing. For cherishing marreth sons, but it utterly destroyeth daughters.’
Mary was subject to this severe régime for the next five years of her life, some of which were spent at Ludlow Castle on the Welsh border. After that time, Nicholas Udall, Provost of Eton, took over her education, since Vives had returned to Spain.
By now Mary was proficient in speaking and writing Latin and French, could read Spanish and Greek, and was well read in theology and history. When she was eleven, she was able to translate a prayer of St Thomas Aquinas from Latin into English; later on, under Katherine Parr’s auspices, she translated Erasmus’s Paraphrases of the Gospel of St John from the Latin. However, despite having had teachers who were all eminent humanists, Mary would have nothing to do with the new learning when she grew up, identifying it with Anne Boleyn’s reformist opinions.
What Mary did excel at was music. She was an expert player on the lute and virginals, and had shown virtuosity on these instruments at a very early age. She practised and played regularly throughout her life, and her account books are full of payments for new strings for her lute. Even though her speaking voice was unusually deep and gruff for a woman, she could sing well, as her father did.
Mary had been a graceful child with glorious long red hair, ‘as beautiful as ever seen on human head’. In 1531 the Venetian ambassador described her as having a ‘pretty face, a very beautiful complexion [and a] well-proportioned physique’. Two years later, another Venetian wrote that she was ‘of low stature with a red and white complexion, and very thin’. Her eyes were large and pale, ‘so piercing that they inspire not only respect but fear’. However, her alarming stare was the result of her eyesight being so poor ‘that to read she must hold the page close to her face’. She had a tightly-buttoned, thin-lipped mouth and a flat, retroussé nose; by the time she entered adulthood she had, like many of her contemporaries, lost most of her teeth.
The tragedies that marred Mary’s life were reflected in her face; after the traumas of adolescence, no one ever again referred to her as pretty or beautiful. She had a delicate appearance, being small and spare with a thin body and arms. By the time she was twenty, she suffered chronic ill health. The onset of puberty had coincided with her parents’ separation, and this in turn led to a succession of severe illnesses that were probably psychological in origin. From her teens to the end of her life she suffered from what now would be diagnosed as premenstrual tension; her periods were often infrequent or absent, and when they did arrive they were accompanied by pain, which she tried to counteract by taking long walks in the country. She suffered miseries from toothache, palpitations, depression, headaches, and the effects of what she called ‘bad air’, which were probably due to hypochondria. Every autumn during her adult life, she fell ill with a variety of symptoms – modern doctors might well conclude that she suffered from a seasonal affective disorder.
Mary displayed many great qualities, notably courage, steadfastness and compassion. She demonstrated staunch loyalty to her principles, her religion, and those she loved, in whom she in turn inspired a touching devotion. Many of her attendants spent the best part of their lives in her service, including Susan Clarencieux, later her Mistress of the Robes, who served Mary for twenty-five years. Her friends were constantly inviting her to be godmother to their children, a duty she performed punctiliously and with generosity. Her love of children was boundless, and she longed all her life to have her own.
Mary was virtuous, kind, truthful, affectionate, conscientious, dignified and gracious. Her abilities, however, were better suited to a married gentlewoman or nun than to a future queen. She was never happier than when she was in the domestic sphere, visiting the poor in their homes, attired simply, dispensing charity, discussing children with her ladies, or choosing the magnificent gowns and jewels she so delighted in wearing on public occasions. Despite her academic education, she was not really interested in books. She lacked the pragmatism of the other Tudor monarchs, being emotional, insecure, unable to compromise, and lacking in worldliness, foresight and political judgement. She could never understand an opposing point of view, being convinced that she alone was always right. Proud, stubborn and obstinate, as her mother had been, she stood on her regal dignity and, if sufficiently provoked, was capable of throwing temper tantrums. Even so, she was easily placated, and her outbursts never lasted long. She was not cruel, and her vices were few: her chief indulgence was gambling at cards or bowls, and sometimes losing large amounts of money.
Her innocence was the subject of many jokes at court. Jane Dormer, another of her ladies-in-waiting, recalled that she was ‘so bred as she knew no foul or unclean speeches, which, when her lord father understood, he would not believe it’. He is alleged to have ordered a courtier to test Mary’s virtue by using sexual swear-words during a court masque. Those within earshot smothered their laughter and the ladies blushed, but Mary was at a loss to know what the joke was. This innocence lasted throughout her adult life. Dormer tells how, when she was in her late thirties, and queen, her Lord Chamberlain, Lord William Howard, began flirting with Frances Neville, one of Mary’s maids-of-honour, in the Queen’s ante-chamber, little realising that Mary could overhear every word they were saying. Tickling Frances’s chin, Lord William teased, ‘My pretty whore, how dost thou?’ Mary, listening, had no idea what a whore was.
A little later, when Frances was helping her mistress to dress, Mary exclaimed, ‘God-a-mercy, my pretty whore!’ The maid was shocked and begged the Queen not to use such words about her. Mary said she had heard the Lord Chamberlain use the term, whereupon Frances said, ‘My Lord Chamberlain is an idle gentleman, and we respect not what he saith or doth. But Your Majesty, from whom I think never any heard such a word, doth amaze me to be called so by you. A whore is a wicked, misliving woman.’ Mary replied that she had not intended any insult, as she had never heard the word before.
Throughout Henry VIII’s reign there had been projects to marry Mary to various European princes, but all came to nothing, largely because Mary had been declared illegitimate. By the time she was twenty-five, she was trying to resign herself to spinsterhood, describing herself as ‘the most unhappy lady in Christendom’. Not only had she been deprived of a husband, but as time went by her chances of motherhood became less and less, and the one thing Mary desired was children. Her frustrated maternal feelings found their outlet in illness, a vicarious interest in the marriages, children and christenings of those in her circle, and religion.
Her faith was the most important thing in Mary’s life. She inherited her piety and love of religion from her mother, and made it her life’s crusade to restore to England the faith to which her mother had been devoted. She could not tolerate the reformed faith and had no time for the genuine doubts of others. In the rites of the Roman Church she found the security of her early childhood; her first recorded word had been ‘Priest!’ The Protestant faith threatened the traditional concept of an ordered world, which was rapidly being overthrown, and Mary saw it as a very serious threat indeed. As far as she was concerned, such heresies must be ruthlessly stamped out and eradicated. That, she was convinced, was what God wanted, and she had absolute faith in her own convictions. The Venetian diplomat Francesco Soranzo says that she would often walk about murmuring to herself, ‘Si Deus est pro nobis, quis contra nos? – If God is for us, who is against us?’
The birth of Henry VIII’s younger daughter, Elizabeth, in 1533 had been a disappointment to her parents, who had longed for a son, but before she was a year old the King had caused an Act of Succession to be passed in her favour, which made her his heir in place of Mary. At the time of her mother’s execution in 1536, however, she too was declared a bastard and struck from the succession.
We do not know when Elizabeth first found out the terrible truth or who told her what had happened to her mother. In all her long life she made only two recorded references to Anne Boleyn. In 1553, when she was twenty, she intimated to the Spanish ambassador that her sister Mary was hostile towards her because of the injuries that Mary and her mother had been dealt by Anne Boleyn. On another occasion she firmly told the Venetian ambassador that her mother would never have cohabited with Henry VIII except in a marriage that had been declared legal by the Archbishop of Canterbury. In fact, Elizabeth had been conceived outside wedlock, but this was undoubtedly a highly sensitive point with her. Yet for all her silence on the subject of her mother, she showed remarkable loyalty towards her Boleyn relations – Careys, Howards, Norrises and Knollyses.
After her fall from favour, Elizabeth was brought up by governesses. The first was the warm-hearted Lady Margaret Bryan, who had to beg Mr Secretary Cromwell for such essentials as nightgowns and chemises when her young charge grew out of the lavish clothing ordered by Anne Boleyn. When Elizabeth was four, Lady Margaret transferred to the household of the newly-born Prince Edward, and the little girl passed into the care of Katherine Champemowne.
Katherine was the daughter of solidly respectable gentlefolk from Devonshire, and in 1545 became the wife of John Ashley, a cousin and senior gentleman attendant of Anne Boleyn’s. Kat Ashley, as she was then known, came to exercise considerable influence over the growing Elizabeth, to whom she was utterly devoted. However, despite being kindly and very loyal, time would show that she was neither wise nor discreet, nor was she capable of properly controlling her charge. Elizabeth was blind to Kat’s faults; she loved her almost as a mother, and later remarked that she had ‘taken great labour and pain in bringing me up in learning and honesty’.
Kat Ashley, who had received an unusually advanced education for a woman at that time, took charge of Elizabeth’s elementary education, teaching her mathematics, history, geography, astronomy, architecture, needlework, dancing, riding and deportment. She also imparted the rudiments of French, Italian, Spanish and Flemish. In fact, the education given by Kat was of such a high standard that Sir Thomas Wriothesley, who visited Elizabeth when she was six, was moved to comment that ‘if she be no worse educated than she now appeareth to me, she will prove of no less honour to womanhood than shall beseem her father’s daughter’. Kat Ashley herself had come to recognise the girl’s remarkable intellectual qualities and took pride in her rapid progress.
Elizabeth spent most of her childhood in various royal houses situated north of London. Her household had first been established at Hatfield, a red brick palace built around a quadrangle by Cardinal John Morton between 1480 and 1497. Only the western range, including the great hall, survives today, because after her death the old house was demolished by Robert Cecil to make way for a splendid Jacobean mansion, Hatfield House, and what is left was much altered in 1830. In Elizabeth’s time the palace was surrounded by pretty arbours, flower gardens, shaded paths and a deer park full of majestic trees, which stretched for several miles. The River Lea flowed through the park. Hatfield was granted to Elizabeth in 1550 and became her principal residence in 1555.
One of Elizabeth’s favourite childhood homes was Ashridge House, originally a monastery founded by the order of Bonhommes in 1283. The house was attractively sited on the crest of the Chiltem Hills overlooking Berkhamsted, and was deemed to be a healthy place for the royal children. Henry VIII acquired the property after expelling the monks in 1539, and from then on Elizabeth and Edward stayed there often. In 1550 the house was granted to Elizabeth as sole owner, yet by 1564 it was reported to be in a poor state of repair. It was later demolished and rebuilt by James Wyatt in 1808 as a Gothic mansion, and is now a management college.
Another property given to Elizabeth in 1550, in which she had already stayed many times, was Enfield Palace. In the 1540s all three of Henry VIII’s children had suites of rooms there. The palace is thought to have been built on the site of a medieval manor house. It was small, with only seventeen rooms and a great hall, but very luxurious and richly furnished, with gardens to one side and a hunting chase. It stood where Pearson’s Department Store now stands. In the 1920s high Tudor chimney stacks could still be seen, but nothing now remains of the palace above ground, save a stone fireplace, wooden panelling and a plasterwork ceiling, all of which are now in Little Park, a private house in Gentleman’s Row, Enfield.
Nearby was Elsynge Place, also at Enfield, a much larger palace, mainly fifteen-century in origin but much enlarged and refurbished by Henry VIII when he acquired it in 1540. Set in a great deer park in woodland, it occupied a site overlooking a wide lake and bordered by an avenue of trees and a stream called the Maiden’s Brook. The house was constructed around two courtyards dominated by magnificent gatehouses. Entry was via a drawbridge over the moat. The royal apartments were approached through the King’s Gate – Henry himself often stayed here, as did all his children. Nearby, for their recreation, were a bowling house, archery frames, orchards and gardens. Elsynge was demolished during the Civil War, and a Jacobean mansion, Forty Hall, now stands at the other side of the lake.
As a child, Elizabeth divided her time mainly between these four houses, remaining secluded from public life. Sometimes her brother or sister stayed with her. Her father the King could not, for a time, bring himself to see her, but the intercession of three stepmothers – Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard – made him relent, with the result that Elizabeth received the occasional summons to come to court, albeit rarely. More often than not the King would send a messenger to enquire after her health and education. She knew little of his spasmodic plans to find a husband for her, all of which came to nothing because of the taint of bastardy and her mother’s notorious reputation.
When Elizabeth was eight, Katherine Howard was executed for adultery. This event seems to have made a dramatic impression on her, resurrecting horrifying memories of Anne Boleyn’s fate. Elizabeth had been fond of Katherine Howard, her mother’s cousin, and in 1562, Robert Dudley, then Earl of Leicester, informed the French ambassador that he had known Elizabeth since she was eight and that from that time she had always said, ‘I will never marry.’ Perhaps marriage was irrevocably equated with death in her mind.
After 1543, Elizabeth benefited enormously from Katherine Parr’s influence. The King allowed her to welcome his younger children into her household, and Elizabeth and Mary were chief among the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting ‘accustomed to be lodged within the King’s Majesty’s house’. Not only did Katherine now supervise Elizabeth’s education, but she also acted as mediator when Elizabeth fell foul of her father for some unknown offence in 1546, which resulted in her being banished from his presence for a whole year. The Queen’s quiet persistence led Henry at length to pardon his daughter, and Elizabeth’s gratitude was boundless. To mark it, she presented her stepmother with her own translation ‘out of French rhyme into English prose’ of a poem entitled ‘The Mirror or Glass of a Sinful Soul’.
Kat Ashley had ceased to be responsible for Elizabeth’s education in 1542, when the child began sharing some lessons with her brother Edward under the auspices of Dr Richard Coxe. In 1544, Katherine Parr appointed her a tutor of her own, the Greek scholar William Grindal. Grindal had been associated with John Cheke and Roger Ascham in the education of Prince Edward, and Ascham in particular took a great interest in Elizabeth’s academic development, maintaining a regular correspondence with her and Mrs Ashley from 1545, urging his protégée to ever greater efforts. Ascham, a Yorkshireman who was Senior Fellow at St John’s College, Cambridge, later wrote, ‘I have dealt with many learned ladies, but among them all the brightest star is my illustrious Lady Elizabeth.’ He referred to Kat’s ‘diligent overseeing’ of her charge’s private study, and exhorted the governess ‘to favour somewhat this rare intelligence, for the younger, the more tender, the quicker, the easier to break’. Ascham also gave Grindal advice as to which books to study and how to approach them.
Henry VIII never intended Elizabeth’s education to be a preparation for queenship. His purpose was that she should become an erudite example of her sex and an ornament to the House of Tudor. From Grindal, Elizabeth learned Greek (a recent addition to the traditional curriculum thanks to the influence of Desiderius Erasmus, John Cheke and others) and Latin, which she spoke, read and wrote fluently. This study of the classics in time enabled Elizabeth to gain a sophisticated understanding of history, philosophy and the art of oratory. In addition she studied the Scriptures and the early Fathers of the Church. Battista Castiglione taught her Italian; her earliest surviving letter, sent to Katherine Parr in 1544, is in that language, and she later became especially fluent in it, which gave her an advantage when it came to conversing with foreign diplomats, since Italian was rapidly replacing Latin as the language of diplomacy.
Elizabeth grew up to be an excellent linguist, although her French accent, mimicked by a French ambassador, was marred by overlong ‘A’ sounds, such as ‘Paar Dieu, paar maa foi!’ Blanche Parry, who had served her in her chamber since her birth, is believed to have taught her some Welsh, the language of her Tudor forbears. She even mastered Spanish, but not until she was in her twenties. By the age of thirteen, Elizabeth had presented Katharine Parr with several of her own translations of devotional works: ‘The Mirror of a Sinful Soul’ (from French to English), Katherine’s own book, Prayers and Meditations (from English into Latin, French and Italian) and The Dialogue of Faith (from Latin into French).
Educated as she was by men who all held firm reformist views on religion, Elizabeth could not have failed to be influenced by them, nor could she have been unaware of Katherine Parr’s own secret convictions, for in 1547 she translated yet another work for her stepmother, the Institution de la Vie Chréstienne by John Calvin, the eminent French Protestant scholar and reformer. Yet already she had learned to keep her own counsel in matters of religion, for while her father lived it was dangerous to hold Protestant views.
As a child, Elizabeth was taught to write in the ‘secretary’ script that had dominated European calligraphy since the time of Charlemagne. Castiglione then taught her to write a fine Italic script, which she later improved under Ascham’s tutelage. As a result, she raised the skill of handwriting to an art form, signing her name with magnificent loops and flourishes. She also wrote a rapid, spidery hand when engaged upon private correspondence and notes.
Elizabeth’s education was outstandingly successful and laid the foundations for habits of study that were to last all her life. Although the curriculum she followed was demanding and often strict, she was formidably intelligent and loved learning for its own sake. Her biographer, William Camden, observed later that never a day went past without her reading or writing something for recreation.
She was never beautiful, although she was striking to look at. She inherited her father’s red hair and hooked nose and her mother’s long, thin, pale face, pointed chin and witty dark eyes. Her eyebrows and lashes were so fair as to appear non-existent. There exists in the Royal Collection a portrait of Elizabeth at the age of about thirteen, which depicts a serious-looking adolescent in a crimson gown, holding a book. Her face is fuller than in later portraits and the eyes are dark and wary. Her air of gravity makes her appear older than her years. Yet already she was displaying her beautiful white hands with their long, tapering fingers to advantage, a habit that would endure into old age, for she was inordinately vain about them.
In 1552, a Venetian ambassador described Elizabeth as ‘very handsome’ and praised her regal dignity. Another Venetian, Giovanni Michieli, writing in 1557, wrote: ‘Her face is comely rather than handsome, but she is tall and well-formed, with a good skin, though swarthy. She has fine eyes.’ He described her as ‘slender and straight’. One of the greatest compliments men could pay her was to comment on her likeness to her father, Henry VIII: given the rumours about her paternity, and her reverence for his memory, it is not hard to see why.
As a child, Elizabeth was usually composed, well-mannered and possessed of a certain gravity. William Thomas called her ‘a very witty and gentle young lady’. Roger Ascham wrote in 1549: ‘Her mind has no womanly weakness, her perseverence is equal to that of a man, and her memory long keeps what it quickly picks up.’ Michieli was equally landatory, opining, in 1557, that ‘her intellect and understanding are wonderful’.
On the other hand, Jane Dormer, who did not like her, remembered that at thirteen Elizabeth was so ‘proud and disdainful’ that it ‘much blemished the handsomeness and beauty of her person’. And the Duke of Feria reported in 1558 that she was certainly clever but ‘very vain’. She had inherited her inordinate vanity from Anne Boleyn, and, like her mother, she thrived on the attentions and compliments of courtiers. Both women were markedly flirtatious. Elizabeth was also very quick-tempered, easily provoked into violent outbursts of rage, which ceased almost as soon as they had begun. She could be sharp and caustic when irritated, and excessively temperamental: Anne Boleyn had exhibited immoderate, sometimes hysterical, behaviour, and her daughter displayed similar tendencies. Her childhood experiences had left her distrustful of others, cautious and emotionally unstable. Her neuroses expressed themselves in fainting fits, anxiety states and panic attacks during adolescence, in which she was filled with feelings of inexplicable dread, so terrifying that they almost paralysed her.
At other times, Elizabeth could display as much vitality and self-confidence as her father. Most people were impressed by her bearing, her shrewdness, her awesome intellect, her prudence, her pragmatic business sense, her tenacity and, later, above all, her consummate statecraft.
As far as religion was concerned, Elizabeth kept her own counsel. We know very little of what she was taught as a child, only that she came under the influence of the Cambridge reformers who tutored her and her brother, and of her Protestant stepmother, Katherine Parr. Although she herself came to embrace their views, circumstances often dictated that she had to be discreet, so she learned a certain pragmatism with regard to religion. As a result, she was never a bigot or a fanatic. She was not even very pious. As an adult, she commissioned a private prayer in which she gave thanks to God for having ‘from my earliest days kept me back from the deep abysses of natural ignorance and damnable superstition, that I might enjoy the great sun of righteousness which brings with its rays life and salvation, while leaving so many kings, princes and princesses in ignorance under the power of Satan’. On another occasion she displayed an unusually enlightened view for her time when she declared: ‘There is only one faith and one Jesus Christ; the rest is a dispute about trifles.’
Not surprisingly, Elizabeth’s relationship with her sister Mary was rarely an easy one. Despite their mothers’ rivalry and Mary’s hatred of Anne Boleyn, she had in fact played a mother’s part to Elizabeth after Anne’s death, lavishing all her frustrated maternal feelings on her bereft little sister and showering her with gifts that included yellow satin for a gown, occasional pocket money, necklaces, brooches, a box embroidered with silver and a gold ball with a clock in it, made to contain perfume. Mary took great delight in Elizabeth’s infant precocity, and on one occasion wrote to inform their father that ‘My sister Elizabeth is in good health and, thanks be to Our Lord, such a child toward as I doubt not Your Highness shall have cause to rejoice of in time coming.’
But when that time came, Mary herself found that there was small cause for rejoicing. As Elizabeth grew more and more to resemble her mother, both in appearance and character, rivalry and distrust between the sisters became increasingly apparent. Mary’s increasing antagonism and ‘evil disposition’ towards Elizabeth was attributed by foreign envoys to the simple fact that she was Anne Boleyn’s daughter, but it went deeper than that. Mary did not believe that Henry VIII was Elizabeth’s father, and would often remark in private to her friends and attendants that the girl ‘had the face and countenance of Mark Smeaton’ – a musician who was one of the men executed for alleged criminal intercourse with Anne Boleyn – ‘who was a very handsome man’. Those who commented on the fact that Elizabeth resembled Henry VIII more than Mary did were doubtless nearer the truth, but this did nothing to allay Mary’s resentment. Put simply, Elizabeth was a living reminder of all that she and her mother had suffered as a result of Anne Boleyn’s bewitchment of her father. As far as Elizabeth was concerned, however, Mary’s hostility stemmed from the fact that ‘we differed on religion’. The devout Mary was appalled by her sister’s leanings towards the reformed faith, and came to view her as a dangerous rival.
Henry VIII had waited twenty-eight long and frustrating years for God to answer his prayers for a healthy, living son, and from the time of his birth at Hampton Court on 12 October 1537, ‘the high and mighty Prince Edward’ had never wanted for anything. His father spared no pains to ensure his survival of the very real hazards of infancy. Stringent precautions were ordered to protect the Prince from any chance infection or disease. The walls and floors of his apartments were washed down thrice daily, his food was of the best quality and cleanly prepared and served, and an army of servants was appointed to administer to his every need. He was over-protected and almost suffocated by careful nurturing.
For all his much-vaunted love for his son, Henry VIII visited the child infrequently, and regular reports on the baby’s progress were sent, not to the King, but to Master Secretary Cromwell. Until he was six, Edward was brought up, as he himself records in his journal, ‘among the women’, the chief of these being his nurse, Mother Jack. As he grew, he had impressed upon him the importance of his royal rank and the fact that his father was the greatest man in the world, whom he must try his best to emulate. When he was two, Hans Holbein painted his portrait as a New Year’s gift for the King; the Prince is depicted in long robes and a feathered bonnet of cloth of gold, and holds a bejewelled rattle. The portrait bears the Latin inscription: ‘Little boy, take after your father and also inherit his virtues. The world in its immensity contains nothing greater. You are to surpass the deeds of such a father!’ Small wonder that the child quickly became a model of precocity.
What Edward lacked most was a mother’s love. He had never known his own mother, and his first two stepmothers, Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard, had little to do with him. It was not until the King married Katherine Parr in 1543 that Edward came to know something of normal family life, albeit on a grand scale. He quickly grew to love his stepmother, and in no time at all was referring to her as ‘Mother’.
When he was six, the Prince was given over to the governance of men and his royal training and formal education began in earnest. His first tutor, or governor, was Richard Coxe, later Bishop of Ely, a progressive educationist selected by Henry VIII. Coxe held the then advanced view that learning should be enjoyed rather than instilled by constant beatings. He was also a closet Protestant, whose views were to influence Edward in years to come.
Coxe was soon joined by Dr John Cheke, a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, a renowned lecturer in Greek and a prominent humanist scholar. Katherine Parr is usually credited with having secured Cheke’s services for her stepson; certainly she took a keen interest in Edward’s education. William Grindal joined the Prince’s household in 1545. By now, Edward was spending a great deal of time at his studies, devoting several hours a day to the study of the Roman and Greek classics, the Scriptures, history and geography. John Belmayne taught him French, a Master Randolph taught German, and Philip von Wilder lute. William Thomas, Clerk to the King’s Council, gave the Prince regular lessons in politics and statecraft, while Roger Ascham was brought in to teach him Italianate handwriting. Edward was also taught manners, fencing, horsemanship and the rules of hunting.
Robert Dudley, son of John Dudley