The first Elizabeth Read online

  What curriculum Grindal prescribed for Elizabeth can be guessed from the schedule Ascham designed for her later: probably the mornings were given over to Greek, with lessons in grammar and translation of simple texts giving way in time to reading the New Testament and the less demanding classical authors. Most likely she read Latin, chiefly Cicero and Livy, in the afternoons, and divided the remainder of her time between French and

  Italian. Her facility in Italian Elizabeth shared with her stepmother Catherine Parr (though not with her half-sister Mary, educated in the 1520s, before Italian culture came strongly into vogue), and by at least the age of eleven Elizabeth was able to show off her mastery of the language in decorous letters addressed to the queen.

  A test of Elizabeth's abilities came at about this time when John Leland, the "king's antiquary," visited John Cheke's schoolroom. Cheke presented the historian to Edward, then brought him "to the Lady Elizabeth to have a sight of her." He asked her to address Leland in Latin, "the which she did." The antiquary, favorably impressed by the learning and poise of the slim, redheaded little girl and always eager to please his patron her father, preserved the event in Latin poetry.

  For her New Year's gift at the close of 1544 Elizabeth sent her stepmother something which displayed all her accomplishments to advantage. It was a handwritten book, and its cover, beautifully embroidered in blue and silver threads, with clusters of purple heart's-ease and the queen's initials intertwined, proclaimed the giver's proficiency in needlework. The penmanship was admirable in itself, while Elizabeth's translation—for she had turned a French work into fluent, if overornate, English—showed a high level of literacy in both languages. These features, welcome as they were, may have pleased Catherine Parr no more greatly than the choice of text. Elizabeth had chosen a contemporary devotional work, not dissimilar to Catherine's own writings— The Classe of the Synnefull Soule, by the French princess Marguerite de Navarre. It was a cheerless, spiritually anguished little book, full of Old Testament mournfulness and self-mortification, and Elizabeth had prefaced it with a solemn, involuted dedication embroidered with classical maxims:

  "Knowing that pusillanimity and idleness are most repugnant unto a reasonable creature," the dedication began, "and that (as the philosopher sayeth) even as an instrument of iron or other metal waxeth soon rusty unless it be continually occupied, even so shall the wit of a man or woman wax dull and unapt to do or understand anything perfectly unless it be always occupied upon some manner of study. Which things considered," she went on, "hath moved so small a portion as God has lent me, to prove what I could do."

  Elizabeth was only too aware of the shortcomings of her efforts, she said, but she had faith in the alchemy of her learned stepmother's tolerant perusal of the book. Once Catherine read it, Elizabeth believed, "its imperfections would all be smoothed and polished by the file of her highness' excellent wit and godly learning"; "after it shall have passed through her hands, it would come forth as it were in a new form." 6

  Elizabeth made several such manuscript books at this period of her life. One of these she kept in the royal library at Whitehall until the end of her reign. It was inscribed, in French, 'To the right high and right mighty and redoubtable Prince Henry, Eighth of that name, king of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, Elizabeth, his right humble daughter, gives greeting and obedience." 7

  Though privately tutored by Grindal Elizabeth did not undertake her intellectual efforts alone. A contemporary called Catherine Parr's household "a school of virtue for learned virgins," where "it was now a common thing to see young virgins so trained in the study of good letters that they willingly set all other vain pastimes at naught for learning's sake." 8 A number of young women were educated under the queen's supervision and with her encouragement, among them her younger sister Ann Parr, the four daughters of the Cambridge scholar Anthony Cooke, and Jane Grey, great-granddaughter of Henry VII and, after the king's own children, next in line of succession to the throne. Mary Tudor, though belonging to an older generation, was also among the "learned virgins," and secured her place among them by serving as one of the translators of Erasmus' Paraphrases on the Four Gospels, a publishing project financed by the queen.

  Like Elizabeth, Jane Grey stood out from the others. Tutored assiduously from the age of four—the tutor had carried her in his arms, teaching her to pronounce words—Jane seems to have developed preternatural ability and scholarly insight. Quickly mastering the grammatical facility needed to read the classics with her tutor, she passed on to a higher plane of appreciation, and read them on her own, for pleasure. When Roger Ascham visited her at age twelve or thirteen, he found her in her chamber, reading Plato's Phaedo in Greek, "and that with as much delight as some gentleman would read a merry tale in Boccaccio."

  Henry VIII's reign was drawing to an end, and Elizabeth's childhood ebbed with it. She was growing tall, and acquiring the watchful self-awareness of a young woman, part vanity, part defensiveness. A portrait painted sometime in early adolescence catches a hint of steely vigilance in her grave, unsmiling stare—or perhaps she was merely trying to look regal. We who know what her future was to hold can read much into that tight-lipped countenance: self-control, resolute modesty, even defiance. The forced maturity in the expression is touching, for the face has not quite lost its childish contour. Still, what is telling about the portrait is how the intelligent power of Elizabeth's expression overwhelms all else—the elegance of her crimson kirtle and embroidered gown, her restrained adornments of pearls and jet, her sloe eyes, bright red hair and milk-white skin, clear and free of the pimply "wheals" that "disgraced the faces" of sixteenth-century

  adolescents, even her remarkable hands, their long, spider-thin fingers holding a velvet-bound book.

  Jane Dormer, who as a child was among Elizabeth's companions, recalled her striking looks at thirteen, but noted that her ''proud and disdainful" expression and manner "much blemished the handsomeness and beauty of her person." Elizabeth at thirteen and fourteen was already a figure to be reckoned with, her charisma still embryonic, her physical attraction great and her outward reserve strengthened by a singular force of mind.

  In the capital the old king lay dying. Physicians and apothecaries hovered over him, forcing evil-smelling liquids down his throat, collecting and measuring every drop of his urine and cauterizing his swollen legs with hot irons. He had been ill since late summer, yet each time he took to his bed in "great danger" of death he confounded everyone by quickly getting out again to go hunting. His unwieldy body seemed unconquerable, yet the physicians continued to give one another knowing looks (they dared not speak openly of their prognoses) and foreign ambassadors, denied access to the palace, warned their governments to expect an imminent transfer of power in England. Queen Catherine and Henry's three children, staying in separate residences and not allowed to come to the dying king's bedside, fretted and waited for news; among the people it was whispered that he was already dead.

  An unspoken anxiety hung over every mention of the king: would nine-year-old Prince Edward succeed him, and if so, who would govern in fact?

  That Edward would succeed seemed certain, though Mary's rights and possible preeminence were not discounted. Two things weighed in her favor: she was much loved by the people, as her mother had been before her, and her powerful cousin, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, stood ready to defend her rights by force should his own interests make it advisable. Mary had a glaring liability, however: she belonged to that minority of the English who were still committed to the Roman faith. Despite King Henry's breach with the pope, despite his destruction of the monasteries and expropriation of monastic wealth, despite the doctrinal reversals that, with seesaw changefulness, had guided public faith for a decade and more, Mary stood firmly with those who held to the mass, the saints, and the time-honored belief.

  Her Catholicism, combined with her status as heir apparent, made Mary the natural focus of any rebellion or conspiracy that might arise o
nce the new reign began. Like it or not she was bound to come into collision with the king's ambitious councilors, who now gathered at his bedside waiting to make their bid for power.

  Finally, in the early hours of January 28, 1547, Henry died. His death

  unleashed a maelstrom of political maneuvering, with each of the privy councilors—particularly Edward Seymour, who emerged almost immediately as leader of the new government, as Lord Protector of his nephew Edward VI, his subtle ally William Paget, John Dudley, a crafty soldier ambitious for influence, and the handsome, aggressive Thomas Seymour— intriguing to advance himself at the expense of the others.

  Thomas Seymour was as flamboyant in his tactics as he was in personality. Having become a member of the privy council in Henry's final days (an appointment the king had always resolutely opposed until then), Seymour made himself very visible in the early weeks of the new reign. His tall, energetic figure was much in view at the tournaments celebrating King Edward's accession, and he was addressed now as Baron Seymour of Sude-ley, having been made a peer (as well as a Garter Knight) by the young king. But these were minor honors compared to the exalted role he coveted.

  He was an eligible bachelor; Edward's court was full of marriageable women, several of them in line for the throne. Cocksure and thoughtless, Thomas Seymour approached his brother and asked him to support his plan to marry Mary Tudor. According to the imperial ambassador, a quarrel broke out between them. Edward Seymour, indignant that his younger brother should presume so high, lectured him on humility and ordered him to "thank God and be satisfied" with the status he had. Besides, the Protector added, Mary would never consent.

  This insult to his power over women Thomas Seymour dismissed with a smile. He would look after that problem if it arose, he said; all he wanted was his brother's blessing. But the Protector was firm, and they parted on bad terms—made worse by the intervention of Dudley, who saw in Seymour a limitless lust for power that mirrored his own, and was determined to stop him.

  What Seymour did next is unclear. Apparently he did not approach Mary directly, but according to rumor he attempted to gain the assent of the royal council—without whose approval marriage to either Mary or Elizabeth was illegal—to marry Elizabeth. Failing in this attempt (and, according to the French ambassador, in his efforts to court Anne of Cleves, who had long since made herself at home in England and was a familiar presence at court), Seymour fell back on yet another alternative, and revived his long dormant suit to Catherine Parr.

  Queen Catherine—for she kept her royal title, with all its prerogatives, as Henry VIII's widow—was the highest-ranking woman at court, yielding precedence only to the king's two sisters. She had long been among the wealthiest women in England, for in addition to the lands she held from her first two marriages Henry had settled on her all of Anne Boleyn's and

  Catherine Howard's lands, and many others besides. Since 1543 a council of overseers had been charged with keeping the voluminous records and collecting the rents from her hundreds of estates. Now, with the king's death, her wealth was increased by £1,000 in coin and £3,000 in plate and jewels, besides all the other valuables King Henry had presented to her while he was alive. In one respect alone he might have been seen to slight her. He made no provision for Catherine's last resting place in his will, and ordered that Jane Seymour's body be interred beside his in the soaring marble tomb—as yet unfinished—that was to house his remains. But this was easily forgiven: Jane was the new king's mother, and Catherine understood that dynastic considerations took precedence. Besides, her thoughts were not on her dead husband, but on her handsome, living lover; to her inexpressible delight, Thomas Seymour had asked her to marry him.

  That their wooing was secret—and politically dangerous—only added to Catherine's excitement. To avert suspicion he came to her at daybreak, frowning purposefully as he strode across the fields that surrounded her dower house at Chelsea. They dared not be seen together, and Seymour, who realized what opposition he faced from his senior colleagues on the council, was determined to marry Catherine before his intentions could be guessed. Within two or three months of the old king's death Catherine Parr married Thomas Seymour in a ceremony so clandestine its date was not recorded. The bride was as radiant, as diffident as if the marriage had been her first. Her good fortune transformed her. Normally an articulate woman, Catherine was reduced to few words. Surely, she wrote in a letter to her beloved, "God is a marvellous man." 9

  Elizabeth was living with Catherine at Chelsea during this breathless courtship. Though she was officially in mourning for her father her grief cannot have overwhelmed her. She had seen little of him in recent years, and when in his company court protocol had strictly governed her behavior. A visitor to Henry's palace had once been astonished to see Elizabeth sink deferentially to her knees before her father three times in the course of a single audience. Beyond signing the warrants that gave authorization for her household staff, her clothing, and other needs Henry paid her little or no attention. She had reached marriageable age, and in consequence his envoys did not hesitate to offer her hand—to the earl of Arran's son, to a brother of the king of Denmark, or to his son the crown prince. But it is doubtful whether she was informed of these transient bargainings, which like earlier such initiatives came to nothing in the end.

  Thomas More, one of the best and wisest fathers of the Tudor age, wrote that "a man does not merit the name of father who does not weep for the tears of his children." Henry VIII was a man who wept easily, but rarely,

  it may be supposed, for his children's sorrows. Elizabeth, however she may have invoked his authority in later years, could hardly have felt he lived up to More's dictum.

  In truth she found more to think on in the upheavals in her stepmother's life than in the passing of her father. She saw clearly the joy Catherine's marriage gave her, and welcomed Seymour into the household with excited trepidation. Probably she said little, devoting her time to diligent study and intricate needlework. But she felt an unmistakable tension in Seymour's presence, and Kat Ashley and others noticed how she smiled and blushed when she heard his name.

  Everyone, perhaps even Catherine herself, had heard the rumor that Seymour had sought permission to marry Elizabeth. But only Elizabeth and Kat Ashley knew the truth, as Kat said she had it from his own mouth: Seymour had sought her, not for her royal blood and prospects, but because he truly desired her. All else aside, Elizabeth believed, she, and not her starry-eyed stepmother, had been the choice of Thomas Seymour's impetuous heart.

  PART TWO

  God'sVirgin

  // anyone at fifteen hath taken up and found A pretty thing that hath her maidenhead unbound: If any gallant have with catertray Played the wisacre, and made all away:

  Let him come to the crier. There will he laid a thousand pound to ten That none of these will e 'er be had again.

  T

  JLhc

  homas Seymour, lord high admiral of England, strode boldly into Elizabeth's life just as she reached adolescence. His turbulent masculinity and forceful manner sent shock waves through the quiet household, leaving none of the women, from Catherine Parr's ladies to the young gentlewomen who attended Elizabeth, untouched by his magnetism. "Women commend a modest man, but like him not," ran the proverb, and the lord high admiral embodied many women's secret preference for immodesty and swaggering ribaldry. He was a man of action, of aggressive physicality: a flawed hero, in fact, whose very overconfidence ensured his ruin.

  Seymour once sent a messenger to Kat Ashley, ordering the man to present his compliments and then ask her "whether her great buttocks were grown any less or no?" 1 He joked and teased with a Rabelaisian license, even about such dangerous issues as the succession. "I tell you this but merrily, I tell you this but merrily," he assured Elizabeth's dismayed cofferer Thomas Parry after repeating a groundless rumor about his having secret plans to marry Jane Grey. 2 He had a highly volatile sense of the absurd, and displayed it even at the expense of dis
cretion. Yet his jests put no one at ease, for his anger was as volatile as his hilarity and his favorite oath—"By God's precious soul!"-—rang out often as he talked.

  In an age that valued (and fostered) circumspection the lord high admiral

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  was uninhibited and raw, his feelings ever close to the surface and his reactions close to the bone. He was, or appeared to be, fearless, and his fearlessness made him fearsome to others. He was also completely convinced of the reliability of his own judgment—a quality which, if it led him into foolhardy undertakings, at least lent him the strength to attempt them without tormenting doubts. "If he had once conceived opinion by his own persuasions," his servant Wightman wrote, "neither lawyer nor other could turn him." 3 That his opinions lacked subtlety and his persuasions force put him at a disadvantage in the treacherous, power-hungry court of Edward VI. But he had other tactics.

  Some years earlier, when Seymour had been put forward as a husband for Norfolk's only daughter Mary (who, as Henry Fitzroy's widow, was the first in a long line of royal relicts and other female relations Seymour coveted), Henry VIII remarked that Norfolk meant to "couple her with one of such lust and youth as should be able to please her well at all points." His jovial reference to the admiral's potency echoed common gossip. The admiral was, by general repute, a man of hearty sexual appetites who looked on women in frank appraisal and was more of an opportunist than a gentleman. This is not to say that, by the standards of his time, he was either lecherous or cynical about women: merely that he saw in them desirable possessions to be ranked, obtained, and used to advantage. His own attractiveness, of course, gave him an immeasurable advantage, as did the unique state of the English succession in the late 1540s: apart from the young king himself, all the claimants to the throne were women.