Warrior Queens: Boadicea's Chariot (WOMEN IN HISTORY)

by Fraser, Antonia

  This was the moral of Tacitus: ‘If thou mislike their wars be thankful for thine own peace; if thou dost abhor their tyrannies, love and reverence thine own wise just and excellent Prince. If thou doest detest their Anarchy, acknowledge our own happy government, and thank God for her, under whom England enjoys as many benefits, as ever Reign did suffer miseries under the greatest Tyrant.’ And so we come back, but now in English, to the fortunes of the Britons’ previous queen ‘Voadica [sic], a lady of the blood of kings: for in the matter of governing in chief, they make no distinction of sex.’

  The story of Boadicea had already been introduced to readers in Latin through the works of Polydore Vergil, an Italian humanist, who came to England at the beginning of the sixteenth century and became a member of the circle of Sir Thomas More. Polydore Vergil’s Anglica Historica, written about 1512, with its first printed edition in Basle in 1534, drew on both Tacitus in the original and those epitomes of Dio Cassius, which were the only form in which his works survived.40 It was Polydore Vergil who divided the protean Warrior Queen into two: in his case named Voadicia and Bonduica, using Tacitus for one and Dio for the other, an error which along with his confused geography was later copied by the Scottish chronicler Hector Boëce.

  Boëce, a native of Dundee also writing in Latin, followed Polydore Vergil by placing all the fatal events of Boadicea’s rebellion in the north: his Queen Voada, as he calls her, is the widow of Arviragus (Prasutagus), and when she is daily lashed with ‘insufferable stakes’ while her daughters are deflowered, she appeals to her brother Corbrede, King of Scots, to avenge her. The King does send a message of protest to the Romans, only to receive an ‘outrageous answer’ loftily dismissing the protests of a mere ‘barbarian people’, with a reference to the ‘majesty’ of Rome itself.41

  It was Boëce’s History of Scotland which Ralph Holinshed quarried for his own chronicles, first issued in 1577; just as Shakespeare in his turn would work over Holinshed’s material.42 It must indeed remain one of the minor but titillating What-might-have-beens of literature to speculate what would have happened if Shakespeare’s fancy had lighted on the story of Boadicea instead of, say, that of Macbeth, also taken via Holinshed from Boëce. Holinshed’s Queen Voada – a woman ‘not unworthy to be numbered among doughty chieftains’ – strongly resembles that of Boëce except that she has been brought slightly further south. The characters of her two daughters, unnamed by Tacitus or Dio, are also for the first time developed, as they were to be in subsequent seventeenth-and eighteenth-century dramas.

  The elder daughter, also named Voada, subsequently marries that ‘noble Roman’ called Marius ‘who had deflowered her before her time’. (This sexual theme of the raped daughter either marrying a Roman or falling in love with him will be developed in the Boadicean plays of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.) The younger daughter, Voadicia, having gathered together a crew of soldiers on the Isle of Man, attacks the Romans as her mother had done, and is captured in Galloway by the Roman Petilius: ‘Upon her stout answers made unto him as he questioned with her about her bold enterprises, she was presently slain by the soldiers.’

  The false distinction created by Polydore Vergil between Voadicia and Bonduica was one which Petruccio Ubaldini, an enterprising Florentine desiring royal patronage, kept alive. After a series of travels, including a visit to Scotland, Ubaldini, born in about 1542, settled down in England under the patronage of the twelfth Earl of Arundel. But he was after bigger game. In 1576 he presented to Queen Elizabeth the manuscript of Le vite delle Donne illustri del regno d’Inghilterra, e del regno di Scotia, which was printed still in Italian in 1591 (Italian was of course among the many languages in which the Queen was proficient).43 There is a long dedicatory epistle ‘to the most serene and very wise Elizabeth, most powerful Queen of England …’ in which Ubaldini manages to blow his own trumpet as a scholar with almost as much vigour as he proclaims the Queen’s manifold virtues, which include, incidentally, her ‘valour’ in defending her peoples from the enemy, as well as her ‘clemency’. Among the illustrious ladies considered are Cartimandua, ‘a warlike woman’, and Matilda Augusta (Maud), praised for playing a manly role (intervenedo virilmente), which demonstrates that ‘women can be wise, prudent and capable …’ so long as they eschew all ‘softness’.

  The next year Ubaldini gave Queen Elizabeth a further volume in manuscript, Le vite e i fatti di sei Donne illustri, which was never printed, perhaps because it did not involve British queens. The six ladies included Zenobia who was described as virile: ‘in that while her husband lived she was his equal in virtue and valour, and after his death she became famous far and wide for her great achievements in peace and in war’. Thanks, presumably, to this historical barrage, the relationship flourished: not only in 1577 but in 1588 the Queen and Ubaldini exchanged New Year gifts.44

  Both Spenser in the reign of Queen Elizabeth and Ben Jonson in that of James I (for his Masque of Queenes) drew upon the Britannia of William Camden for their allusions to Boadicea. Camden’s is an upbeat picture: ‘the Britains under the conduct of Boadicea had unanimously resolved to recover their old liberty’. It is also scholarly: based, as ever with Camden, on a proper study of the available sources, including not only Tacitus but the monk Gildas.45 And although he hesitates over the name of the Warrior Queen as many have done before and since – Boadicea? Bunduica? Boodicia? – he places the Iceni in roughly their correct geographical position; it is true that Boadicea is described as capturing Maldon in Essex instead of Colchester, but the East Anglian Queen is no longer driving her chariot through the mountain passes of the north.

  Spenser’s Warrior Queen, ‘stout Bunduca’, is one of the several ‘women valorous’ who are celebrated as the ancestresses to his ‘fair martial maid’, Britomart. It is a sympathetic portrait, with ‘stout Bunduca’ seen as a patriot, who ‘up arose and taking arms the Britons to her drew’; there is no hint of any atrocities being committed. Even her defeat is blamed upon the treachery of her captain, here named as Paulinus, and as for her suicide, that too is seen as glorious:

  And yet, though overcome in happless fight,

  She triumphed on death, in enemies despite.46

  Britomart herself, who dresses in man’s clothes for convenience, has had the classical Tomboy upbringing: as her father’s only daughter and his heir, she is taught to upset the most warlike rider with her spear and shield. (She naturally loathes such ladies’ pastimes as ‘to finger the fine needle and nice thread’.) Britomart’s whole delight is in ‘feats of arms’: the feat to which she is set by Spenser is that of rescuing the knight Artegall from the clutches of the evil Radegunde, Queen of the Amazons.

  Nothing illustrates more forcibly the distinction successfully made by the 1590s between one valorous female warrior and the general notion of female rulership than Spenser’s treatment of Radegunde and Britomart respectively. Like the other captured knights in the Amazonian stronghold of Radegunde, Artegall is set to spin and sew: nor is there a choice in the matter for this captive househusband, for Artegall has to spin before he is allowed to eat. This behaviour on the part of the Amazons represents an odiously unnatural order to Spenser, as it did to the ancient Greeks. The Amazons are cruel (like Queen Margaret of Anjou) just because ‘they have shaken off the shamefast band, With which wise Nature did them strongly bind’, which is to obey the orders and laws of men. In short:

  Virtuous women wisely understand

  That they were born to base humility

  Unless the heavens them lift to lawful sovereignty.

  Britomart herself, her task of rescue performed, and the ‘Tyranesse’ Radegunde defeated, removes the helmet which made her look like the war goddess Bellona, and drops her shield. She now becomes ‘a gentle courteous Dame’. For a while she remains with the chastened Amazons, to be adored as a goddess; taking the opportunity however to repeal that ‘liberty of women … which they had long usurped; and them restoring to men’s subjection …’ Her story e
nds with her happy union with the knight Artegall, the warrior maid symbolizing Chastity – one of the many allegorical figures representing Queen Elizabeth in the poem – united to the knight who symbolizes Justice.

  Throughout The Faerie Queene there are plenty of other women lifted (like Queen Elizabeth) to ‘lawful sovereignty’, who exist to be contrasted with those evil or licentious creatures such as Radegunde, Semiramis and Cleopatra.47 The last named, a figure of lust, is now to be found in the unpleasant House of Pride: in contrast the lawful queens are virgins or at least chaste. There is Belphoebe (one of Elizabeth’s favourite allegorical incarnations), the huntress who puts Braggadochio to flight; Mercilla, ‘a Maiden Queen of high renown’, who wins her duel with the malevolent Duessa, representing Mary Queen of Scots. Most powerfully described of all is Spenser’s Gloriana, ‘the flower of grace and chastity’. Having been chosen – like Queen Elizabeth herself – to rule by God, Gloriana inspires a ‘sacred reverence’ in all her subjects, as being ‘Th’ Idol of her makers [God’s] great magnificence’. It was this sacred reverence which Queen Elizabeth I, no Radegunde at the head of an unnatural order of cruel women, had worked so hard to inspire.

  Queen Elizabeth’s incandescent appearance at Tilbury in August 1588, at a moment of national peril, affirmed in practical terms her theoretical triumph. It was just on thirty years since Elizabeth’s tricky accession to the throne of England, when the cry was ‘they do not want women rulers’. Now her country was facing, as it was thought, the assault of the Spanish Armada. Here was one challenge from which this reluctant Britomart could not gracefully extricate herself. Instead, how brilliant she made of the challenge the apogee of her glory both as a monarch and as a Warrior Queen!

  Leicester described how her appearance ‘inflamed the hearts of her poor subjects’. Bishop Goodman spoke for many who would now freely ‘adventure our lives to her service’. Camden, as her first historian, summed it up: ‘Her presence and words fortified the courage of the captains and soldiers beyond all belief.’48 Emulating chaste Diana might be her preferred course in public, but in 1588 Bellona too proved to be within Elizabeth’s range: at least, her own special version of Bellona.

  This was her version and this was her performance. A woman in her mid-fifties, raddled and rather overdressed, mounted on a carefully selected docile horse, reviewed loyal troops on top of a small hill in Essex. Yet that feat on the part of the Queen – if feat it can be called – quickly passed into the romantic annals of our history as a deed of daring to be ranked with the first charges of Boadicea’s scythe-wheeled chariot fifteen hundred years before. Boadicea and her daughters were said to have lived again at Tilbury ‘through this our Queen, England’s happie Queene’, in the words of a contemporary poet (James Aske); their bravery no greater ‘in those actual deeds … than did our sacred Queene, Here signs display of courage wonderful’.49

  The Earl of Leicester officially invited his sovereign to visit Tilbury on 27 July 1588. He did so in his capacity of the ‘Queen’s lieutenant’ or the ‘Lord General’ as he was sometimes otherwise known. Tilbury Camp – actually at West Tilbury where a church recently turned to a private dwelling now stands – contained the flower of the Queen’s troops and was consequently known as the Camp Royal. Tilbury Fort itself, on the River Thames, some twenty-six miles below London Bridge, had been constructed by Henry VIII in 1539. Some two miles from the river, the site of the camp had been chosen with a view to blocking the Spanish invader from reaching London either by road or river, part of a network of defensive fortifications. Since it lay on a kind of plateau on top of its hill – its sides about one hundred and fifty feet high – the camp provided ‘as goodly a prospect as may be seen or found’.50

  It was on 20 July that the Spanish Armada had been sighted approaching the English Channel; whereupon the English fleet engaged it. Such was the good fortune of the English fireships that by the end of the month the Spanish fleet was compelled to flee northwards, ‘driven like a flock of sheep’ in the immortal phrase of Sir Francis Drake. At this point however the stately Spanish galleon–sheep vanished from view. It is important to realize that just because they did vanish, the extent of their dispersal and damage was not appreciated for some time. (Some messages concerning the damage were received while the Queen was actually at Tilbury.) Elizabeth’s appearance, dea ex machina, at Tilbury, should not therefore be understood in terms of an empty exercise. It was an exercise, it is true, but one intended to perform a vital function in rallying the national morale in time of war. ‘Ye shall comfort not only these thousands’, wrote Leicester of the camp’s inhabitants, ‘but many more that shall hear of it.’

  The Queen set forth for Tilbury by water on 8 August. Silver trumpets blew to mark her progress, or as one of the contemporary eyewitness accounts had it, with a characteristic allusion to her illustrious parentage:

  And to barge upon the water

  Being King Henry’s royal daughter

  She did go with trumpet’s sounding …

  But when she landed at about midday (at the present blockhouse of the fort) there was music of a more martial kind: drums, fifes were heard and finally the guns thundered. And so like Boadicea – in the words of the Essex historian Morant like the war goddess Bellona, or like ‘a king’ in other contemporary accounts – Queen Elizabeth was brought ceremonially into the centre of the Camp Royal.

  The method of transport used was a coach: but this bejewelled and spangled affair was indeed different from Boadicea’s mythical chariot, and different again from the light wooden structure of the Celts which that forgotten figure Boudica would actually have used. This chariot – never intended to see a battlefield – was chequered with precious stones in patterns of emeralds, diamonds and rubies. According to the poet James Aske (who was present among the soldiers) it reminded observers of nothing so much as ‘the heavenly car’ of the sun god Phoebus, drawn by his ‘foaming steeds’.

  One side-effect of Elizabeth’s thirty-year propaganda campaign was the frantic desire to protect and cosset the Queen’s own person, a desire which of its very nature could never have been applied to the same extent to a male sovereign. (The Earl of Pembroke offered to attend Her Majesty with 300 horses and 500 foot armed at his own cost; a Dorset regiment was said to have offered five hundred pounds to form part of the Queen’s Guard.)51 Now, as she passed, the men actually fell on their knees as though in prayer to her. Aske, whose descriptive poem of the whole wondrous occasion was aptly titled Elizabetha Triumphans, described her passage thus:

  They couch their pikes and bow their ensigns down

  When as their sacred royal Queen passed by

  In token of their loyal bearèd hearts

  To her alone, and none but only she …

  It was ironic that at one point the cries of the kneeling soldiers as they called out blessings upon her name became so enthusiastic that the Protestant Queen sent messengers of reproof. Officially at least Elizabeth frowned upon such ‘idolatrous reverence’. However much her subjects might happily sublimate their feelings for the banished Virgin Mary of the old Catholic religion in their adoration of their female sovereign, this was not to be a conscious process. Deafening cries of ‘God Save the Queen’ were one thing, prayers quite another. The Queen’s behaviour looked forward not back: for her particular stance, ‘cheerfully her body bending’ and ‘waving her royal hand’, prefigured royal behaviour on ceremonial occasions up to and including the present day.

  The Queen spent the night at Saffron Garden.52 The next day – 9 August – she returned to the camp, and with her princely image cunningly enhanced by the expedient of abandoning her customary female attendants – ‘her ladies she did leave behind her’, wrote Aske – she reviewed her troops and made that speech which would make of her the female equivalent of King Arthur, a symbol of a nation’s proud defiance of danger. Furthermore, for once it is gratifying to relate that mythology has not burnished the event, for Queen Elizabeth I did deliver the fa
mous speech – we have the evidence of the Earl of Leicester’s chaplain, Leonel Sharp, who was present at Tilbury, was summoned to record it the next day and related her words later to the Duke of Buckingham: ‘This I thought would delight your Grace …’53 (It should be further noted that its contents, far from being unusual, were, as we have seen, at the very core of her utterances concerning her ‘sexly weakness’ from beginning to end of her reign.)

  The Queen was dressed in white velvet, with a silver cuirass over her dress, to symbolize once more – to those who might have missed it – the ever-present danger to her person: ‘the most dainty and sacred thing we have in this world to care for’, as Leicester expressed it.54 A page walked behind her holding a helmet adorned with white plumes: but this Bellona-like helmet was never actually put on, lest one iota of the contrast between the Queen’s fragile femininity of person and the bold masculinity of her demeanour be missed by her audience. Part of the review was conducted on foot. But for the speech itself the Queen was, in Aske’s words, ‘most bravely mounted on a stately steed’: the steed in question being a stout white gelding which could be trusted to behave itself, specially imported for the occasion. Nevertheless the presence of the white horse – which could be a mettlesome charge in the eye of an adoring beholder – was, like the armour and helmet, another piece of careful planning; these were the sumptuous trappings for the message which was to follow.

  She had come among them, said Queen Elizabeth, as they could see, ‘not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all, to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust’. She continued with that deathless declaration, the very watchword of Elizabeth I as a Warrior Queen: ‘I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a King, and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain or any Prince of Europe should invade the borders of my realm …’ Aske, paraphrasing that section of her speech in his verse tribute, fails, unlike the Queen, at the last fence of inspiration: