Elizabeth's Women

by Tracy Borman

  For all her defiance, those first few months at Hatfield were the most miserable of Mary’s life. Separated from her mother, ostracized by her father, and forced to pay court to the baby sister who had supplanted her, she was beaten, scorned, and humiliated relentlessly by those around her. As well as depriving her of most of her servants, the king also drastically reduced her expenses, and within weeks she was described as being “nearly destitute of clothes and other necessaries.”16

  In the spring of 1534, Mary had to suffer a further torment when her despised stepmother paid a visit to Hatfield herself. Sensing that the girl’s stubbornness would only increase the more cruelty she endured, Anne changed tack by trying to coax her into acknowledging Elizabeth’s legitimacy and her own position as Henry’s lawful wife and consort. Upon arriving at Hatfield, she sent a message to Mary inviting her to come and honor her as queen. By means of persuasion, she added that if Mary agreed to do so, she would make sure that she was “as well received [at court] as she could wish,” and would regain the king’s “good pleasure and favour” for her. Mary’s reply was curt and defiant. She retorted that she “knew not of any other queen in England, than madam, her mother,” but that if “Madam Boleyn” wished to intercede for her with the king, she would be most grateful.17 Anne was outraged by such an insult and returned to court vowing to do Mary as much harm as she could.

  But it seemed that the more Anne schemed, bullied, and cajoled, the firmer Mary’s resolve was to defend her own legitimacy as princess and that of her mother as queen. In March 1534, when she refused to accompany Elizabeth on her removal to Eltham Palace in southeast London, “she was put by force by certain gentlemen into a litter with the aunt of the King’s mistress, and thus compelled to make court to the said Bastard.” As a further punishment, she had all of her royal jewels confiscated. Afraid of being secretly put to death at the orders of her stepmother, Mary was also taunted by Lady Shelton, who told her that the king “would make her lose her head for violating the laws of his realm.”18 Little wonder that Mary and her Spanish allies hatched plans for her to escape to the Continent—all of which came to nothing.

  Meanwhile, Anne was overjoyed to see that her baby daughter was thriving. Elizabeth was, according to one contemporary, “as goodly a child as hath been seen.”19 As well as spending time with her at Hatfield, Anne and the king visited their daughter at Eltham, and Anne derived intense satisfaction from the obvious delight that her husband took in their daughter. “Her grace is much in the King’s favour,” observed one courtier who was present.20 The royal couple could not be at Eltham for the whole of Elizabeth’s visit, but Anne insured that the child would have a constant reminder of her mother by ordering her emblem to be installed in the stained-glass windows of the gallery where she played, at a cost of a shilling each.21

  Elizabeth spent much of her early childhood moving from palace to palace. As well as Eltham, she and her household stayed at Hunsdon, Langley, the More, and Richmond. For the most part, her mother was obliged to keep track of her well-being by letter rather than visits, for she was greatly preoccupied with court affairs—not to mention the pressure to produce a male heir. Elizabeth was occasionally brought to see her at court, such as in the spring of 1535, but these visits were all too rare. Anne therefore corresponded regularly with Lady Bryan and ensured that her daughter had everything necessary for her proper upbringing.

  In the autumn of that year, Anne and Margaret conferred over the weaning of Princess Elizabeth. Margaret had reported that the child was now old enough to drink from a cup and therefore no longer needed a wet nurse. This was exactly in accordance with the accepted wisdom of the time, which stated that children should be fully weaned after two years. They would then continue to be fed largely on milk, and only gradually would poultry and other white meats be introduced. Rich food was considered unsuitable, even for royal offspring, and the records show that Elizabeth enjoyed no exception to this rule. The matter was then referred to the king and the council, who agreed that “my lady princess” should be weaned “with all diligence.”22 Lady Bryan was put in charge of the task, but Anne sent her a private letter, possibly with her own maternal instructions about how it should be done.

  Anne was no less assiduous in her instructions regarding the Lady Mary, but these were to insure that she was as miserable and uncomfortable as possible. To Mary’s credit, her behavior was remarkably restrained. Rather than lashing out at her tormentors, she simply accepted their taunts and humiliations with the patience borne of a natural martyr. Like her mother, Mary was not accustomed to taking the easy path. If both women had acceded to Henry’s demands, they would have enjoyed a far more comfortable life and might even have been accorded the honor that Anne of Cleves later enjoyed for being so pliable. But unlike hers, the consciences of Catherine and her daughter were utterly inflexible. They had an unshakeable belief both in the justice of their cause and in the Roman Catholic faith. It was simply a matter of weathering the storm until the king came to his senses.

  After a time, Mary’s dignified behavior won her the respect not just of the people but of her keepers at Hatfield. Even Lady Shelton softened toward her when she saw that she would not be bullied by cruelty. This earned her a severe reprimand from the Duke of Norfolk and Queen Anne’s brother, George Boleyn, who admonished her for “behaving to the princess with too much respect and kindness, saying that she ought only to be treated as a bastard.” Likewise, it was reported that “one of the principal officers of the Bastard [Elizabeth] has been removed because he showed some affection to the Princess and did her some service.” When Mary was seen walking along a gallery at Hatfield, the “countrypeople … saluted her as their princess.” She was kept strictly out of view as a result, her windows being “nailed up through which she might have been seen.”23

  It was clear that her keepers were weakening, however. In August 1534, the household prepared to move again, this time to Greenwich. As before, Mary was required to concede precedence to Elizabeth. She duly waited as the infant was carried into her litter and it had moved off. But when she had mounted her horse, the comptroller of the household whispered to her that she might “go before or after, as she pleased.” She seized her chance to assert what she saw as her rightful position and “suddenly pushed forward,” overtaking Elizabeth’s litter and arriving at Greenwich about an hour before her. Later, when the party prepared to enter the barge to the palace, Mary “took care to secure the most honorable place.”24

  But this was at best a minor victory in a prolonged war that her stepmother and half sister looked set to win. Anne had evidently heard of Mary’s small defiance on the road to Greenwich, and when her daughter’s household removed the following month, she made sure that her stepdaughter would take the inferior place in the procession once more. Since Mary was already indisposed, this “increased her illness.”25

  Nevertheless, the ranks of Mary’s supporters seemed to grow daily. Toward the end of October 1534, Anne paid a visit to Elizabeth and Mary at Richmond Palace, accompanied by the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk. She was dismayed to find that no sooner had she entered her daughter’s apartments than the dukes excused themselves in order to pay court to Mary. Such an obvious show of allegiance to one of her greatest rivals by two of the most powerful courtiers (one of them her own uncle) was humiliating in the extreme. Little wonder that Anne came to believe that as long as Mary lived, she and her daughter would never be recognized as the true queen and heir. Mary must be dealt with or Anne must face her own downfall. “She is my death, or I am hers,” she once lamented.26

  To Anne’s horror, Henry’s attitude toward his elder daughter also began to change. There were even rumors that he would restore her to the succession and oust the “little bastard” Elizabeth. In October 1534, Chapuys excitedly related to Charles V that in an interview with Cromwell, the king had said that he “loved the Princess [Mary] more than the last born, and that he would not be long in giving clear evidence of it to th
e world.” This can be given little credence, however, for just a few months later, another court dignitary reported that Henry had denounced Mary “for the bastard she is, and he will have no other heir but the Princess.”27 While it is difficult to determine the king’s true feelings toward his two daughters, it is certain that he became more lenient toward the elder. During the first few months of 1535, he sent her gifts of money amounting to some “sixty or eighty ducats.”28

  If Henry’s former love for Mary was being revived, then this was in direct proportion to the decline of his passion for Anne Boleyn. Anne sensed this and despised her stepdaughter all the more for it. The bitterness of her hatred toward Mary would have abated considerably if she had been able to produce an undisputed heir to obliterate the claim of this “cursed bastard” for good. The signs had initially been promising. Within months of Elizabeth’s birth, Anne had fallen pregnant again. But in July 1534, all the renewed hope of an heir was crushed when the child was stillborn. Over the next twelve months, Anne was under increasing pressure. Her hold over the king seemed to be slipping each day as his disappointment with her grew and he sought consolation with other ladies at court. Worse still, he harbored a growing conviction that Anne’s failure to produce a son was a sign from God, just as it had been with Catherine of Aragon—and look how that had ended.

  In these dark months, Anne became ever more isolated, her sole comforts the little daughter whom she saw but rarely and the intimate circle of friends and admirers who surrounded her at court. In her desperation to regain Henry’s affection (and thereby her former power), she took to following him about “like a dog its master,” as one courtier observed mockingly.29 How different this was from the belle dame sans merci that she had played to perfection for seven years in order to ensnare her royal lover. Neither did she have the beguiling looks that had once so bewitched the king. The considerable stress under which she had labored as she tried in vain to claw back her power at court after Elizabeth’s birth had started to show on her face. A portrait of around 1535 forms a startling contrast to that painted just two years before, when Anne was at the height of her powers. Her famously seductive eyes have become sunken and tired; her high cheekbones have disappeared beneath skin that is beginning to sag; and her pretty, smiling lips that the king once longed to kiss have grown thin and pinched with disappointment. That same year, in a dispatch to the Doge and Senate, the Venetian ambassador described the Queen as “that thin old woman.” She would then have been thirty-five years old at most.

  Painfully aware that she could no longer rely upon her feminine charms to maintain Henry’s affection, Anne switched her attention to her daughter, Elizabeth. The king had already acknowledged her as his heir and seemed delighted with this pretty, precocious little girl. But Anne knew that this was not enough: his favor was notoriously fickle, and Elizabeth’s place in it was as fragile as her own. She therefore had to strengthen her daughter’s position. If it was against convention for female heirs to rule, then they could at least prove useful in the political power games of Europe by being married off to foreign princes. England and France had long been on hostile terms, fuelled by frequent bouts of war. But there was currently a truce between them, and in July 1535, Henry’s great rival, Francis I, finally agreed to enter negotiations for a marriage between Elizabeth and his third son, Charles. Anne was no doubt instrumental in bringing this about, for she still felt a great deal of affinity with the country in which she had spent so much of her youth. What was more, allying her daughter with a scion of the ancient Valois lineage would inject some much-needed royal blood into Elizabeth’s own children.

  With her daughter’s prospects apparently much improved, Anne accompanied her husband on their customary summer progress—a tour of selected parts of the kingdom—in 1535. In September they honored Sir John Seymour with a visit to Wolf Hall in Wiltshire. The Seymours were of an ancient lineage that stretched back to the time of William the Conqueror, whom they were said to have accompanied to England in 1066. Sir John’s wife, Margery, was of equally distinguished birth, being descended from Edward III. Their sons, Edward and Thomas, were already carving out careers for themselves at court. But it was their eldest daughter, Jane, whom the king was most particularly eager to see.

  Jane Seymour was one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting and had first appeared at court around 1529. It is likely that her introduction had been thanks to Sir Francis Bryan, son of Princess Elizabeth’s Lady Mistress, who was connected to the Seymours by marriage. She had been appointed a lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine of Aragon, whom she greatly admired, and had remained in her service until the latter had been exiled from court two years later. She had then been transferred to the service of Catherine’s archenemy, Anne Boleyn. Henry had become acquainted with her immediately, and she had been included in the list of Anne’s ladies who received a gift from him at Christmas 1533. However, it had apparently not been until late in 1534—by which time Henry was beginning to tire of his tempestuous second wife—that Jane had caught his eye. She was then about twenty-seven years old, some seven or eight years younger than her royal mistress, but still a late age to remain single at a time when most girls were married off at fifteen or sixteen.

  That Mistress Seymour had attracted the king’s attention was a source of some astonishment to contemporaries at court. True, she had good breeding to recommend her, but she seemed to have little else. She was plain and sallow faced, “so fair that one would call her rather pale than otherwise.”30 A portrait painted of her around 1536 shows her to have had a large, plump face with a double chin. Her eyes are small and beady, her lips thin and closely compressed, and she wears a cold, detached expression. One onlooker at court dismissed her as being “of middle stature and no great beauty.”31 Neither did Jane have the sparkling wit and intelligence of her predecessor; in fact, she was barely literate. Even Chapuys, who was predisposed to favor this rival to the hated “Concubine,” was at a loss to explain what the king saw in her. He could conclude only that she must have a fine “enigme,” meaning “riddle” or “secret,” which in Tudor times referred to the female genitalia.32

  But this archetypal plain Jane was exactly what the king needed. Her looks were mirrored by her demeanor. While Anne was tempestuous and flirtatious, Jane appeared meek, docile, and placid. She was so calm and quiet that scarcely any of her words are recorded in contemporary accounts—in stark contrast to the outspoken Queen Anne, who provided copious fodder for ambassadors’ scandalized letters home. While Anne created dissent and faction at court, Jane was renowned as a peacemaker. “As gentle a lady as ever I knew,” wrote one courtier, and Henry himself claimed that she was “gentle and inclined to peace.”33 She also set great store by her virtue and was unquestionably chaste. Thomas Cromwell described her as “the most virtuous lady and veriest gentlewoman that liveth,” and many others echoed his views.34 The quality that may have appealed most to Henry, however, was her submissiveness. Adopting the motto “Bound to obey and to serve,” Jane carried it out to the letter. She had none of Anne’s feistiness and independence; for her, Henry’s will was all that mattered. Only in safeguarding her chastity did she defy him, but in doing so she earned even more of his respect. Little wonder that one courtier observed: “the King hath come out of hell into heaven for the gentleness in this, and the cursedness and unhappiness in the other.”35

  For all her apparent mildness and passivity, Jane was every bit as ambitious as her brothers and had a streak of cold ruthlessness that gave her little sympathy for Anne. She had long been a supporter of Catherine of Aragon, admiring her queenly decorum and sharing her religious faith. Her loyalty to the fallen queen had not ceased when she had been transferred to Anne Boleyn’s service. Indeed, she had evidently resolved to do what she could to bring her new mistress down. Coached by her brothers, Jane played her part in court intrigues to perfection, quietly drumming up support for Anne’s enemies while maintaining a veneer of quiet detachment. Almost from the mom
ent that the king had started paying Jane attention, she had sent messages to Catherine’s daughter, Mary, urging her to have courage because her troubles would soon be at an end.

  The courtship between Henry VIII and Jane Seymour had been conducted discreetly to begin with. However, it had not escaped the notice of the ever-vigilant Imperial ambassador, Chapuys, who in October 1534 noted that the king had become “attached” to “a young lady” of the court whose credit was increasing as that of Queen Anne declined.36

  The king’s growing infatuation with Jane could not have come at a worse time for her royal mistress. Rumors had begun to circulate about the nature of Anne’s relationship with certain young men at court, including her own brother. Henry himself had begun to question her purity soon after their marriage, complaining that she had seemed more experienced than a virgin ought to be. He was apparently at a loss to explain why he had ever been so attracted to her and even whispered to one confidant that he thought it might have been witchcraft.37

  But just as Anne’s situation appeared desperate, something happened that looked set to secure her future with the king forever. During that summer progress of 1535, she fell pregnant once more. Two years had passed since the birth of Elizabeth and a year since that of her stillborn child. Surely now it would be a case of third time lucky? Her very survival depended upon it. Although delighted at his wife’s condition and outwardly solicitous of her every need, Henry could not disguise the distaste that he had come to feel for her, and courtiers noticed that in private he “shrank from her.”38

  All of this would be put aside if Anne gave Henry a son. At a stroke, it would secure the king’s lasting favor and would finally legitimize her in the eyes of the world. It is an indication of how much Anne’s confidence had been damaged by the uncertainties and betrayals of the past two years that rather than triumphing in her condition, she plunged into a depression, plagued with an intense fear of what might happen if she failed. She was also tormented by jealousy, knowing full well that her husband was pursuing Jane Seymour even as she herself was suffering the sickness and fatigue of early pregnancy.