Elizabeth's Women

by Tracy Borman

  The quarrel between King Henry and his new wife lasted for several days and was the talk of the court. Having made many enemies on her path to the throne, there was little sympathy now for Anne, who was left to seethe and fret in the confines of her chamber. Perhaps she reasoned that the only way to regain her husband’s affection and avoid sliding into obscurity would be to give him the son for which he had so long craved.

  In the middle of August, Henry and Anne moved from Hampton Court to Windsor, and from there to Greenwich, the king’s favorite palace, which had been appointed for Anne’s confinement, or “lying in.” His daughter, Mary, was ordered to join the ladies who had assembled there to attend Queen Anne. Mary’s feelings at being so cloistered with the woman whom she saw as the architect of all the evils that had befallen her and her mother can only be imagined. Thanks to Anne, she was no longer a princess but simply “Lady Mary,” the king’s bastard daughter. And now she was forced to stand by and witness firsthand this whore’s ultimate triumph as she gave birth to a prince.

  Meanwhile, there was frenzied activity at Greenwich Palace as preparations were made for Anne to “take to her chamber.” A queen’s confinement was subject to an elaborate set of conventions—part religious, part medical—that stretched back hundreds of years. They had been refined in the fifteenth century by Lady Margaret Beaufort, who had drawn up strict ordinances for “the deliverance of a queen.” These dictated that a queen would effectively go into seclusion some four to six weeks before the birth was expected. As one foreign observer noted with some bemusement: “This is an ancient custom in England whenever a princess is about to be confined: to remain in retirement forty days before and forty after.”27 She would be confined to her chamber, which was actually a suite of rooms based upon the privy chamber apartments usually found at court (to which only the most privileged persons would gain access), but with certain modifications. For example, an oratory would be installed so that prayers could add necessary succor in an age when knowledge of obstetrics was limited, together with a font to provide a quick baptism for a sickly baby.

  The expectant queen would herself select the room in which she wished to give birth. This received the greatest attention, being hung with heavy tapestries—“sides, roof, windows and all”—depicting scenes from romances or other pleasant subjects, so as not to upset mother or child. The theme for the tapestries in Anne’s chamber was the story of Saint Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins. It would prove a peculiarly fitting one. Once the tapestries had been hung, the floor would be “laid all over with thick carpets,” and even the keyholes would be blocked up to keep out any glimmer of light from the world beyond. Finally, a specially constructed bed of state upon which the precious infant would be born was installed. This would comprise a mattress stuffed with wool and covered with sheets of the finest linen, and two large pillows filled with down. The bed prepared for Anne’s confinement at Greenwich was bedecked with an elaborate counterpane, “richly embossed upon crimson velvet,” lined with ermine and edged with gold. It was rumored to have formed part of the ransom of the Duke of Alençon, who had been captured at Verneuil in 1424. If this was true, then perhaps Queen Anne wished to be reminded of the country in which she had spent so much of her youth.

  A crimson satin tester and curtains embroidered with gold crowns completed the effect, with the Queen’s arms being added as another reminder of her lineage—and, therefore, her right to the throne. The final touch was the installation of two cradles: one a “great cradle of estate,” richly upholstered with crimson cloth of gold and an ermine-lined counterpane to match that of the Queen’s bed; the other a more modest carved wooden cradle painted with gold.

  The whole effect of this richly arrayed birthing chamber was designed to impress. But it would also have been stifling and oppressive for those within, with its heavy tapestries that shut out all light, and the thick velvet fabrics that smothered the bed, especially given that it was the middle of August. This was made worse still by the braziers, which were lit some days before the Queen entered her chamber, and also by the rich perfumes that filled the air from the unstoppered bottles that were scattered around the room.

  While these preparations were under way, Anne made a request of her own regarding the birth of her child. She asked her husband to procure from his former wife the “rich triumphal cloth” that Catherine of Aragon had brought with her from Spain for the baptism of her future children. This cloth, a painful reminder of all her children who had been stillborn or died within days of birth, was one of the few possessions that Catherine had left, and she was outraged when she heard of Anne’s request. Although it was undoubtedly a callous, cold-hearted act on Anne’s part, she was perhaps driven by more than sheer vindictiveness. As the hour of her lying-in grew closer, she was determined to prove the legitimacy of her child, which she knew was the subject of increasingly vociferous whispers that it was a bastard, conceived out of lawful wedlock. In her jaundiced view, the baptismal cloth of her predecessor, who was still revered by the people as their true queen, was a symbol of legitimate royal blood, and she was desperate to secure it for her unborn child. But Catherine held firm, and Anne was eventually forced to relent, perhaps aware—for once—of the widespread resentment that would follow if she got her own way.

  On August 26, Anne formally took to her chamber. As custom dictated, she heard Mass in the palace chapel before hosting a banquet for all the lords and ladies of the court in her great chamber, which had been richly decorated for the occasion. There “spices and wine” were served to Anne and her guests, and soon afterward she was escorted to the door of her bedchamber by two high-ranking ladies. Here she took formal leave not just of the king but of all the male courtiers, officials, and servants, and entered an exclusively female world, in which women were to take over all the positions in her household usually occupied by men. As Lady Margaret Beaufort’s ordinances dictated: “women were to be made all manner of officers, as butlers, panters, sewers.”28 Any provisions or other necessary items would be brought to the door of the great chamber and passed to one of the female attendants within. Even the king was refused entry.

  All of this was intended to emphasize that childbirth was a purely female mystery. In a male-dominated society, this was the only sphere in which women held precedence. But there was a price to pay for this temporary superiority: at the end of the elaborate, exclusively female ritual, the Queen must produce a male heir. Anne herself seemed confident enough of this. She had ordered a letter announcing the birth to be written in advance. Clearly not overly concerned about tempting fate, she thanked God for sending her “good speed, in the deliverance and bringing forth of a prince.”29 The king shared his wife’s optimism and had already decided that the boy would be christened Henry or Edward. He also spent what should have been anxious days awaiting news in planning a splendid joust to mark the safe delivery of his son. One courtier remarked that he had never seen His Majesty so “merry.” If the astrologers and soothsayers were to be believed, then he had good reason, for all bar one had predicted the birth of a prince. The exception was the renowned “seer” William Glover, who had dared to tell Queen Anne that he had had a vision of her bearing “a woman child.” This had not been well received.

  Quite apart from the sex of her child, there must have been some concern about its chances of survival. Childbirth was fraught with danger in Tudor times and often resulted in the death of the mother, child, or both. Around a quarter of children died at birth, and the same number died in infancy. Worse still, Anne’s closest female relations had suffered an unfortunate history in this respect. Her mother had lost several babies in infancy, and her sister, Mary, had borne a son with mental disabilities whom Anne would not suffer to be at court. But in her favor was the fact that her health was generally good, and as one observer remarked, she seemed “likely enough to bear children.” What was more, she had become pregnant almost immediately after becoming Henry’s lover, which surely augured well�
��for both this and all future conceptions.

  On September 7, the eve of the Feast of the Virgin, just twelve days after entering her confinement, Anne went into labor. This was much earlier than anticipated, so it was assumed that either the baby was premature or the midwives had miscalculated. Or perhaps Anne had bent the truth a little when telling them the date of conception. She and Henry had started sleeping together at least a month before their marriage, but of course it would not do to reveal this fact when questions were already being raised about the child’s legitimacy.

  The king and his courtiers waited eagerly for news as the labor progressed throughout the morning and early afternoon. Meanwhile, inside the Queen’s bedchamber, women rushed to and fro in the cloistered darkness, bringing the necessary provisions and equipment for the midwives and keeping a tense vigil. The past seven years had been building up to this moment. The waiting, frustrations, turmoil, and hostility that Anne had endured would all be swept away in one glorious moment.

  Shortly after three o’clock in the afternoon, the baby was born. Just as Anne had hoped, this child would one day bring England to such glory and power that its name would echo down the centuries as one of the greatest monarchs who ever lived. But in the stifling confines of the birthing chamber on that hot September day, none of this could have been predicted, for the child that Anne had borne was not the hoped-for prince. It was a girl.

  After all the upheaval that the king and his country had endured to attain an heir, this was surely a disaster. No woman had sat upon the throne of England for centuries, and then it had been a catastrophe, plunging the country into civil war.30 Besides, the king already had a female heir (albeit an illegitimate one, thanks to the annulment of his marriage to Catherine), and he would not welcome another.

  Amidst their quiet consternation, Anne is alleged to have declared: “Henceforth they may with reason call this room the Chamber of Virgins, for a virgin is now born in it on the vigil of that auspicious day when the church commemorates the nativity of our blessed lady the Virgin Mary.”31 Even if this quote is erroneous, it would have been entirely in character for Anne to have brazened it out. After all, had she not been delivered of a perfect, healthy child, who, with her flame-red hair, bore all the marks of the Tudor dynasty? Moreover, the labor had been straightforward (albeit “particularly painful,” according to her earliest biographer, William Latymer), and there were no signs to suggest that she might not bear the king many more children.

  In the meantime, a herald had announced the news to the waiting courtiers that “the queen was delivered of a fair lady,” and the letter that had been prepared to announce the arrival of a prince had to be hastily amended with an additional s.32 The king, on the surface at least, showed little of the fury that historians have since assigned to him upon hearing that his long quest for a male heir was still not over. Upon visiting his newborn daughter for the first time, he remarked to the Queen with a sanguinity similar to her own that as they were both still young, they might confidently expect to have sons in due course. He then announced that the girl would be named Elizabeth, after both his mother and Anne’s.

  According to Chapuys, such optimism on the part of the royal couple was little more than a front. On the day of the christening, he wrote to his Imperial master, Charles V: “the King’s mistress was delivered of a daughter, to the great regret both of him and the lady, and to the great reproach of physicians, astrologers, sorcerers, and sorceresses, who affirmed that it would be a male child. But the people are doubly glad that it is a daughter rather than a son, and delight to mock those who put faith in such divinations, and to see them so full of shame.”33 He later added that the new queen had shown “great disappointment and anger” at the birth of her daughter.

  If, as Chapuys claimed, the king was furious when he learned of the baby’s sex, then it would have been understandable: He had, after all, moved heaven and earth in his frustrated attempts to secure an annulment from Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne, and all to achieve his desperate desire for a male heir. But the only direct evidence for his and the Queen’s dismayed reaction to Elizabeth’s birth comes from Catholic or pro-Spanish sources, both of which may well have been layering their own prejudices onto the accounts they gave. The historical narratives written in the centuries after the event have often exaggerated how disastrous it was because they had the benefit of knowing that Elizabeth would turn out to be the only living child that Anne was able to provide her husband. In fact, George Wyatt’s account, written in Elizabeth’s reign, may have carried equal merit. According to him, the king was delighted at the birth of a healthy daughter and “expressed his joy for that fruit sprung of himself, and his yet more confirmed love towards her [Anne].”34

  There is very little contemporary evidence to suggest that giving birth to a girl irrevocably damaged the relationship between Henry and Anne. It is therefore tempting to conclude that Anne’s failure to produce the hoped-for male child at the first attempt would have been seen as a temporary setback—albeit a bitterly disappointing one, after all the anticipation—rather than an unmitigated disaster.

  But there was more to it than that. Although Elizabeth’s birth had not destroyed Anne’s marriage, it had significantly weakened her position in the eyes of her people—and, indeed, of the world. Throughout the arduous negotiations for an annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine, whose childbearing years seemed to be over, Anne had represented youth and fertility, and the whole prospect of her marrying the king had rested on the premise that she would give him a son. Without it, she was just the daughter of a family whose prominence was based upon trade. Even the elaborate symbolism of her coronation had merely papered over the cracks. She was still a usurper in the eyes of most people—including those at the center of political power. Giving birth to a son would make her virtually invincible, certainly in the eyes of the king, who could hardly forsake the mother of his legitimate heir. It would even help Anne to face down the might of Catherine’s Habsburg supporters across Europe and of her daughter, Mary, whose claim to the throne would have withered away against that of a boy.

  The gamble had failed—at least on the first throw of the dice. With a mere daughter, Anne was no better than Henry’s rejected first wife; indeed, in the eyes of Catholic Europe and most of her English subjects, she was a good deal worse. The child who should have been her security threatened to be her undoing, and Anne was plunged back into a world of uncertainty and hostility. Her enemies at court and abroad now had still more ammunition against this pretender to the throne. Even her husband was hedging his bets, and within weeks of Elizabeth’s birth, he had summoned his illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, home from France. Either he wanted to make a statement and emphasize the fact that he could father sons, or, more worryingly for Anne, he planned to keep the boy in reserve in case she failed in her duty.

  The king’s new daughter was christened on September 10 in the Chapel of the Observant Friars at Greenwich, with notables from across the kingdom in attendance, including the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, who escorted the baby Elizabeth to the chapel, and the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, who carried her in her arms under the canopy of estate. Elizabeth was wrapped in a purple mantle with a long train edged with ermine, which was borne by the Countess of Kent. The baby’s half sister, the Lady Mary, who had been at Greenwich during Anne’s confinement, was also in attendance. As custom dictated, neither the king nor the Queen was present, as this was an occasion primarily for the godparents, but after the ceremony, their child was brought to them in a procession that made its way through corridors lit by five hundred torches. Waiting in the Queen’s apartments was Anne, robed and lying on the magnificent bed on which she had given birth three days before, with Henry by her side. The couple showed every sign of rejoicing when they saw their little daughter, and celebrated heartily with their guests.

  As a public relations exercise, it was faultless. But cracks had already begun to appear. Although
the christening was observed with all due ceremony, it somehow lacked conviction as a celebration of the king’s new heir, and Chapuys described it as “cold and disagreeable.”35 Furthermore, it had not been followed by the jousts, fireworks, and bonfires that would have been staged for a prince. There were also rumblings among the people, who were still disapproving of Queen Anne and thought still less of her for producing a useless daughter after everything they had gone through on her behalf. Elizabeth herself became the subject of hatred. Two friars were arrested for saying that the princess had been christened in hot water, “but it was not hot enough.”36 Meanwhile, the Spanish referred to the “concubine’s daughter” as the “little whore” or “little bastard.” They had greeted her arrival with barely concealed amusement, delighted at what they perceived to be God’s punishment for the English king’s expulsion of papal authority.