The first Elizabeth Read online

  As it turned out, of course, Henry did not disown Elizabeth (though she was declared illegitimate) and even succeeded in convincing one observer that he had a father's warm affection toward her, and loved her very much. 11 Xo record of his true feelings remains. Doubtless to Henry Eliza-

  beth was many things—a fragile and pitiable little girl, the daughter of a traitress and a witch, a distasteful reminder of his greatest love and crudest disenchantment. If he believed her to be another man's child he never said so, and the one slander he forbore to bring against Anne Boleyn was that she had not been able to conceive. But Elizabeth was primarily a political asset, all the more to be protected in that her half-brother Henry Fitzroy had recently died.

  This shadowy figure, in practice heir to the throne for the last ten years and more, had reached his seventeenth year in near total obscurity, and his death was kept as veiled as his life. There was no state funeral or burial, and though the boy had been provided for in princely style his eighty-five servants, his four great warhorses, his gifts of jewels and plate from the king and even his Garter mantle were easily disposed of. Mary and Elizabeth were left as sole contenders, under the new Act of Succession, for designation as Henry VIII's successor should Queen Jane have no child.

  That the king continued to acknowledge Elizabeth as his did nothing to dam the groundswell of rumors about Anne, rumors which, no doubt, reached her growing daughter throughout her childhood. Anne had not only been promiscuous—which her condemned lovers, in conventional scaffold confessions, seemed to affirm—she had been guilty of worse crimes. Some said it was Anne, not Henry, who had poisoned Queen Katherine. No less an authority than the king, weeping as he spoke, told Fitzroy shortly before his death that he and Mary "were greatly bound to God for having escaped the hands of that accursed whore, who had determined to poison them." 12 Adultery, incest, murder or attempted murder, not to mention witchcraft—to these were added the further ominous revelation of other nameless crimes, too sinful to be written or spoken, which would forever be known only to a few. The confessions of Anne's lovers, Cromwell wrote to the king's envoy Stephen Gardiner in Rome, contained disclosures "so abominable that a great part of them were never given in evidence, but clearly kept secret." 13

  All this, and behind it the added weight of public mockery and contempt —Anne the Bawd, the she-devil, the English Messalina, the "goggle-eyed whore"—tipped the scales heavily against Anne, and seemed to put her guilt beyond question. Held in the greatest contempt when she became queen, Anne was doubly to be despised for turning against the man who had raised her to his throne. Hussey spoke for many in saying that all the evil deeds ascribed to women since the time of Adam and Eve "were nothing in comparison of that which has been done and committed by Anne the queen." He could not believe that she had actually done all the scurrilous things she was accused of, yet even if only some of the charges

  were accurate her behavior was "so abominable and detestable" that he could hardly bring himself to set it down. 14

  It was a black legacy. But was it true? The whisperings that sounded though Elizabeth's childhood were not unanimously to Anne's discredit. Archbishop Cranmer, a humane and thoughtful man who had been a chaplain in the Boleyn household and had known Anne for years, professed to be "clean amazed" to learn of her adultery. "I had never better opinion of woman," he wrote flatly to Henry VIII, expressing with his usual candor a dangerously controversial view. 15 Cranmer's opinion was not disinterested; he spoke for the liberals in religion who had from the start been associated with Anne, and had in mind that he, Cranmer, had been the one to pronounce sentence against the king's first marriage just as he would against the second. But there were other exonerating tales. The woman who had charge of Anne during her imprisonment in the Tower sent word to Chapuys, in the greatest secrecy, that Anne had sworn her innocence "on the damnation of her soul," before and after receiving the sacrament —moments hardly conducive to deceit. And at her trial she had not only denied the accusations made against her but had "given to each a plausible answer," raising more than a few suspicions about her accusers, especially as no witnesses were brought against her. 16

  But it was King Henry's behavior that gave rise to the most serious questions. His conduct, however one looked at it, was below reproach. Leaving aside the unfathomable issue of how any man, king or no, could in cold blood send a woman he had once worshiped to her death, there was the additional scandal of his grotesque rejoicing over it, and of his hasty third marriage.

  It was generally known that Henry had filled the short weeks between Anne's arrest and her execution with exuberant merrymaking, taking his barge upriver every evening to dine in the company of beautiful women, then returning after midnight, his chamber singers and other musicians filling the night with fervent song. Such celebration "sounded ill in the ears of the people," who took his gaiety to mean, not only that he was glad to be rid of a "thin, old cantankerous nag," but that there was already a new filly in his stable. As soon as he received word that Anne was dead Henry went to the house where Jane Seymour was staying, and the next day they were formally betrothed. Ten days later they were privately married, and news of the marriage spread through the court despite the king's efforts to prevent it.

  There was much murmuring over this, and suspicion that Henry and Jane had arrived at an understanding long before Anne was arrested. The high-handed proceedings at her trial, the lack of witnesses, Mark Smeaton's

  singular, torture-induced confession reinforced the view that Anne had simply stood between Henry and his desire, and he had swept her aside. "People think he invented this device to get rid of her," wrote the regent of Flanders, sister of Charles V; what she did not add, though it must have been obvious, was that at one blow Henry had carried out a palace revolution, sweeping away not only his wife but his leading chamber gentlemen (her alleged lovers), leaving the way open for new men, prominent among them Jane's brother Edward Seymour, to surround him. 17

  The king's capering and gloating, his evident self-interest and, in one view, calculated betrayal of Anne muddled the question of her guilt almost past clarification. Her daughter, buffeted by contrary rumors and stigmatized by her mother's ill repute, was left to sort out the stories and to piece together a truth from them over time.

  What that truth was cannot now be discovered, and her extreme reticence about her mother is a striking fact of Elizabeth's adult life. But at some point she must have begun to comprehend and to envision the fate that overtook the mother she only dimly remembered. There were witnesses enough to recall, at a young child's urging, how "to aggravate her grief" Anne had been forced to watch her convicted accomplices die before her, their heads severed by the sharp blade of an axe, then their bodies quartered and the bloody quarters buried without ceremony. Two days after this Anne herself had climbed the steps of the scaffold, newly built and "of such a height that all present might see it," to face the hundreds—some said thousands—of spectators that spilled out down the hill before the White Tower on the morning of her execution. To the end, these witnesses recalled, she had appeared dazed, as if in disbelief to find herself so close to death, confident, with the confidence of the condemned, that in the final moment the king would save her. Throughout her trial she had sworn that, whatever happened, she was "safe from death." Now, as she approached the block, she "looked frequently behind her," as if watching in vain for the royal messenger bearing a pardon sealed with the king's seal. 18

  No pardon arrived, and the waiting onlookers were not cheated of their spectacle. As they watched Anne stepped forward to make a brief speech. She acquitted herself with dignity; she must by then have realized that the words she spoke would be her last. She was ready, she said, to "yield herself humbly to the will of the king," and to prove it she laid aside the furred mantle of her gray gown and crushed her abundant black hair under a plain linen cap, baring her long, white neck to the executioner's sword.

  All this and more Elizabeth must have h
eard, how the swordsman had finished his task with one stroke, how the head had been wrapped in a white

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  cloth, how the old women who charmed herbs and cast spells crowded to the scaffold to catch drops of Anne's blood, for the blood of the condemned was especially potent.

  What little Elizabeth remembered of her mother in life—a hauntingly beautiful, brooding face, a scent, a voice singing a French lullaby—must have become confused with what she imagined of her death, until the whole took on the flavor of a dark fairy tale. The years passed, and other scandals arose to lure gossip and deflect attention from Anne Boleyn's daughter, and by then she was building an armor of silence. Even so the stigma lingered, and it would be many years before Anne's ghost was laid to rest.

  Not long after Anne's death Elizabeth's governess Lady Bryan wrote a long, distraught letter to Cromwell. She was newly widowed and, as she put it, "succourless, and as a redeless creature." She was totally reliant on her position as lady mistress to the royal children—a post she had held for twenty years—for her support, and now that Elizabeth's status was changing she feared to lose her own rank of baroness and the comforts that went with it. In her uncertainty and distress she felt her control over the other servants slipping. "Now it is so, my lady Elizabeth is put from that degree she was afore, and what degree she is at now, I know not but by hearsay. Therefore I know not how to order her, nor myself, nor none of hers that I have the rule of—that is, her women and grooms, beseeching you to be good lord to my lady, and all hers." 19

  Apparently the little girl had outgrown all the gowns and jeweled caps her mother had ordered for her, and no larger ones had been provided. "She hath neither gown, nor kirtle, nor petticoat, nor no manner of linen—nor forsmocks [overdresses], nor kerchiefs, nor rails [nightdresses], nor body-stitchets [corsets], nor handkerchieves, nor sleeves, nor mufflers, nor big-gens [nightcaps]." She was destitute, and poor Lady Bryan could no longer make do. Urgent enough from day to day, the need for clothing would become particularly acute next time the king ordered Elizabeth "set abroad," to be viewed in public. At such times it fell to the lady mistress to make certain Elizabeth looked and acted like a king's daughter, and proper clothes were essential to the role.

  The state of Elizabeth's wardrobe reflected the general penury of the household. The steward, John Shelton, who was responsible for keeping up the supplies of beef and corn and wine and dozens of other necessary supplies, wrote to Cromwell shortly after Lady Bryan did to complain that he was running short of money and "could not continue" without more. The aid he asked for may have been a long time in coming. The king's

  secretary Brian Tuke had made it clear only a week earlier that he hoped Mr. Shelton would not be appealing for additional funds, as he had little or nothing to give him. 20

  Somehow, though, the beef and mutton and fowl in abundance and many kinds of fish found their way into the dining hall, heavily spiced and smothered in the rich sauces characteristic of Tudor cookery. And there, Lady Bryan explained at length to Cromwell, lay a major bone of contention between herself and Mr. Shelton. For the steward, who loudly proclaimed himself "master of the house" ("What fashion that shall be I cannot tell," the lady mistress added, "for I have not seen it before"), insisted that Elizabeth eat with the adults, where there were "divers meats, fruits and wine" to tempt her. Lady Bryan despaired of restraining her infant greed, finding Elizabeth "too young to correct greatly" and fearing that she would make herself sick.

  She appealed to Cromwell to intervene and establish a more healthful (and incidentally more economical) regimen. Elizabeth should eat in her own apartments, with one plate of beef or game and "a good dish or two that is meet for her grace to eat of." Her leavings would feed all eleven of her personal servants, thinning the ranks of those to be fed in the dining hall.

  There was another reason for keeping the child in her own apartments. "God knoweth," Lady Bryan wrote, "my lady hath great pain with her great teeth, and they come very slowly forth, which causeth me to suffer her grace to have her will more than I would." Evidently the lady mistress was an indulgent guardian, and her charge sometimes got out of hand. "I trust to God, once her teeth were well graft, to have her grace after another fashion than she is yet," she said hopefully, "for she is as toward a child, and as gentle of conditions, as ever I knew any in my life. Jesu preserve her grace!"

  As Elizabeth struggled with her "great teeth" and Lady Bryan struggled with the steward, the household servants let their duties go and spent their afternoons poaching in the king's hunting parks. Both Hunsdon and Hatfield—the usual residences of the royal children—were full of deer, and it was some months before the park keepers uncovered the misdoings, aided by a buck's head found concealed in a wheat field, a buck and doe found in the household servants' lodging, and the talebearings of one Roger of the Bakehouse. Eventually the facts came out. Roger himself had been among the guilty, along with Ralph of the Chandlery and several of the steward's servants. In complicity with at least one of the keepers the poachers coursed the deer with dogs and, on one occasion, hunted with crossbows. The principal culprit, Ralph Shelton, also shot birds with a handgun, and "drove away all the old breeders." It is tempting to connect

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  Ralph Shelton with John Shelton the steward, but if they were related, the steward was unable to prevent his kinsman from serving a term in the Fleet prison; the lesser hunters were shut up in the stocks. 21

  All in all it was an unsettled household, and much in need of reform. In the fall of 1536 a new governess arrived at Hunsdon to take over Elizabeth's upbringing. Her tutelage, and the subsequent arrival of several other new officers, inaugurated a transformation, and set Elizabeth's beclouded childhood on a new track.

  My prime of youth is but a frost of cares; My feast of joy is but a dish of pain; My crop of corn is but a field of tares; And all my good is but vain hope of gain; My life is fled, and yet I saw no sun; And now I live, and now my life is done.

  V Then

  hen Catherine Champernowne took up her post as lady mistress to Elizabeth, she joined a moderately large household living most of the time at Hatfield in Hertfordshire. The old-fashioned red brick manor house, with its squat central tower and graceless crenellated turrets, was a shabby enough setting for a royal nursery, though its grounds were vast and inviting. The huge forested hunting park, which had given so many hours of illicit pleasure to the wayward servants, stretched away for miles, while in the nearby Innings Park domesticated animals, including hundreds of black rabbits, were raised for food. The country air was sweet and, in plague season, safer than the damp, choking atmosphere of London, full of fogs and infection. To Elizabeth Hatfield was the welcoming, homelike center of her itinerant life, and the other familiar palaces of her childhood— Hunsdon, Ashridge, the More, and lesser houses—were merely temporary quarters to be occupied for a season while Hatfield was freshened and cleaned.

  Mistress Champernowne joined some thirty-two other principal servants to Elizabeth, among them Blanche and Thomas Parry, who were to have long and eventful careers in her service. The gentlemen and gentlewomen appointed to her household were drawn from the least influential, least ambitious strata of the nobility; the lady mistress herself was from an

  obscure Devonshire family without rank at court. Gentility, not pomp, was the keynote. Royal ceremony was to be reserved for the king's future child by Queen Jane, the child designated, well in advance of its birth, as heir to the throne.

  Shortly after Elizabeth's fourth birthday that child was born. He was christened with the name Henry had once considered for the unborn Elizabeth: Edward. And his birth was celebrated with all the festive merrymaking once planned, and canceled, for the hoped-for son of Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth took part in the glorious christening, dressed in a fine gown with a long train, clutching her infant brother's heavy, jewel-studded baptismal robe. Edward Seymour, the prince's uncle, held Elizabeth in turn, though at the conclusion of the ceremony she too
k her sister Mary's hand for the dignified procession out of the church.

  With Edward's birth Elizabeth was all but forgotten. Living among nobodies in obscure country houses—save when, for economy's sake, she was thrown together with Mary or the little prince—Elizabeth grew out of babyhood unremarked, her holiday appearances at court little more than formalities. Her father, scrupulously attentive to all his possessions, saw to it that her household costs were paid and ordered new clothes for her from time to time (in 1539 he dressed his children, his gentlemen and his fools in one sweeping requisition), but otherwise ignored her. He did keep an eye on her servants. The distasteful memory of Anne Boleyn's crimes gave cause for concern about her daughter's morals, and Henry made it known that he preferred "ancient and sad persons" for her household. When a young girl of good family applied to enter Elizabeth's service the king refused her in favor of a "gentlewoman of elder years," adding that his daughter already had too many young people around her. 1

  Given this preference of the king's it would be interesting to know how old Catherine Champernowne was when she became lady mistress in the fall of 1536. But this, like much else about her, must remain conjecture. That she was educated, personable, and of presentable appearance seems likely. She was probably reasonably well spoken—though with a hint of broad Devon in her speech—and had been trained to write with facility. Whatever her nature, she won from Elizabeth an affection and loyalty so complete and unwavering it surpassed even a parent's due.