Elizabeth's Women

by Tracy Borman

  The structure of her household was also carefully controlled by the new queen. This was based around her public and private persona and was reflected by the layout of the rooms, which followed a similar pattern in all of the royal palaces. Beyond the gallery, great hall, and great chamber was the Queen’s suite of rooms, and the further a courtier was able to progress into them, the more important he was deemed to be. First there was the presence chamber, to which most courtiers flocked in the hope of gaining an audience with the Queen. To get there, they would often have spent months writing letters, sending gifts, or offering bribes, but even then they were not guaranteed an audience. The presence chamber was filled by noblemen and other supplicants, who would regularly spend many hours waiting for Elizabeth to emerge from her more private rooms beyond—often entirely in vain.

  Beyond this, there was the privy chamber, a day room for the sovereign, where she tended to take her meals. Only the most exalted members of court were admitted, such as Privy Councillors, ambassadors, or close favorites. Toward the end of Elizabeth’s reign, her disgraced favorite, the Earl of Essex, lamented that although he had been given “access” to the presence chamber, he had been denied “near access”—in other words, admittance to the privy chamber, which he observed was given only to those whom the Queen “favours extraordinarily.”37 Yet there was still a more exclusive sanctum, and this was the Queen’s bedchamber. It was exceptionally rare for any male courtier to gain admittance to this inner sanctum, for it was here that Elizabeth would seek refuge from the hustle and bustle of the court, the pressures of her council, or the solicitations of ambassadors and supplicants for her favor. It was an almost exclusively female domain, for the Queen would be served by a small number of her most trusted or highest-ranking ladies. They would see the private face—or “backstage persona”—that she kept hidden in the public rooms beyond.38

  The bedchamber, privy chamber, and presence chamber would each be staffed by a select group of women who were assigned positions of varying status. After the chief and second gentlewomen of the privy chamber, there were the ladies of the bedchamber, followed by the ladies of the privy chamber, and, finally, the ladies of the presence chamber. In addition, there were the maids of honor—unmarried young ladies whose presence was largely decorative and who could move among the three chambers. They were under the supervision of the “mother” of the maids, although the chief gentlewoman would also insure that they did not step out of line. Lower down the scale, there were the chamberers, who undertook most of the menial duties within the household, such as cleaning, laundry, and mending. Finally, there were the women “extraordinary”: unsalaried ladies who were kept in reserve for when the regular attendants were sick or otherwise absent from court, and only paid when their service was required.

  Elizabeth was hardly ever alone. She herself admitted that she was “always surrounded by my Ladies of the Bedchamber and maids of honour.”39 At least one of them would sleep in the same room as her, usually upon a truckle bed at the end of the Queen’s own bed. Whatever she wished for, day or night, they would make it their business to procure at any cost. Those who proved loyal and capable she would reward with gifts and friendship; those who vexed her would suffer punishments and reproofs that often far outweighed the crime.

  Service to the Queen was certainly no sinecure. By the time she ascended the throne, Elizabeth had grown used to being attended by an entourage of ladies and servants, and she had become an exacting mistress. She expected all of her women to be in constant attendance upon her and to put her needs above any personal concerns. Illness, unless it was very severe, was no excuse for absence; neither was marriage nor domestic matters. If any of her ladies fell pregnant, they were expected to return to court as soon as possible after the birth, leaving their offspring to the care of wet nurses and governesses. She took a dim view of any requests for leave in order to attend to a sick child or spouse, seeing this as a great inconvenience to her own needs.

  The Queen’s female attendants carried out a range of duties according to their position and status. The ladies of the presence chamber were required to attend only “when the queen’s Majesty calleth for them,” which was usually when she granted audiences to ambassadors or other prestigious guests.40 These were always impressive occasions. In May 1559, Elizabeth hosted a visit by the Duc de Montmorency at Whitehall Palace and staged lavish entertainments in his honor. The weather being fine, she directed that a “sumptuous feast” be prepared in the garden of the palace. Her servants constructed a large outdoor gallery, which was bedecked with gold and silver brocade, and an artificial door was made from roses and other flowers. This theme was continued throughout. “The whole gallery was closed in with wreaths of flowers and leaves of most beautiful designs, which gave a very sweet odour and were marvellous to behold, having been prepared in less than two evenings to keep them fresh,” enthused Il Schifanoya, a Venetian envoy. Meanwhile, two separate tables were prepared for the Queen and the duc, together with a large table “54 paces in length” for the other guests. In two corners of the gallery were large semicircular cupboards “laden with most precious and costly drinking cups of gold and of rock crystal and other jewels.” When supper was ready to be served, trumpets sounded, and the Queen progressed through the assembled guests to take her seat at the top table. Huge joints of meat and many other rich dishes were served at the banquet, which was accompanied by “music of several sorts.” Afterward, the tables were swiftly cleared, and there was dancing “till the eleventh hour of the night.” Elizabeth then retired, which gave the guests their cue that they should do the same.41

  Not all the Queen’s ladies were fortunate enough to attend such gatherings. The maids of honor provided the necessary backdrop on less formal occasions and were otherwise to be found running errands for their royal mistress. For the ladies of the privy chamber and bedchamber, the duties were more closely defined: they would wash her, attend to her makeup and coiffure, choose her clothes and jewels and assist her in putting them on, serve her food and drink, and carry out any other task she saw fit to demand.

  Although the chamberers carried out the more menial duties, such as cleaning the Queen’s apartments, emptying her washbowls, and arranging her bed linen, service for the ladies of her household was still exacting. It also followed a strict routine. Elizabeth herself admitted: “I am no morning woman,”42 and she would eschew the company of her male councillors and suitors until she had been dressed and adorned. But she had a habit of going for early morning walks in the gardens of her palaces still dressed in her night garments and always accompanied by a train of ladies. Once back in the seclusion of her bedchamber, the ceremony of her enrobing would begin. By the standards of the day, the Queen was unusually fastidious about her personal hygiene and would take regular baths in a specially made tub that would travel with her from palace to palace. On other occasions, she would be washed by her ladies with cloths soaked in water from pewter bowls. They would clean her teeth with a range of largely ineffective products, including a concoction of white wine and vinegar boiled up with honey, which would be rubbed on with fine cloths.

  This task performed, it would take at least an hour to dress Elizabeth in the robes that she or her ladies had chosen for that day. This was not something she could have done alone, even if she had wished to. Each layer of clothing—from the farthingales and bodices to the outer garments, ruffs, and scented gloves—had to be carefully fastened into place with pins and laces. Often the gowns had to be sewn on each day and then the stitches carefully unpicked before she retired at night. As Elizabeth’s gowns became ever more ostentatious, so the task of dressing her became increasingly complicated and time consuming. The same was true for attending to the Queen’s hair. In the early years of her reign, she displayed her long auburn tresses to maximum effect, curled, pinned, and adorned with priceless pearls and other jewels, but later she took to wearing ever more elaborate wigs.

  After the Queen’s ladies h
ad completed the painstaking ceremony of her dressing, which took two hours in all, they would have a range of other tasks. These included ordering and caring for their royal mistress’s considerable wardrobe and jewels. They would mend and in some cases make her garments, take stock of those that were sent to her as gifts, and carefully catalogue both these and the many jewels in the Queen’s collection. The more valuable the item, the higher the status of the lady who cared for it. During Elizabeth’s courtship with the Duke of Alençon, her suitor made a great show of proving his “love and goodwill” by presenting her with “a most beautiful and precious diamond, of the value of 5,000 crowns.” In return, “the Queen, on her part, having commanded her lady in waiting to bring her a small jewelled harquebus of a very great price, made Monsieur a present of it.”43 The women would also take charge of any other gifts received by their royal mistress. Some of these required a good deal of care, for as well as the various jewels and ornaments with which Elizabeth was routinely presented, she also received a pet dog, a monkey, and a parrot in a gilded cage.

  Many of the delicacies that Elizabeth enjoyed at mealtimes were prepared and cooked by her ladies, including the sweet drinks and confections for which she had a weakness. The main meal of the day was served at noon, followed by supper at around five o’clock. The Queen usually took her meals in her private apartments, where she would be served by a select group of her ladies “with particular solemnity … and it is very seldom that any body, foreign or native, is admitted at that time.”44 Some would also attend her on the occasions when she dined in state, and would observe great ceremony in doing so. One visitor to court described how the ladies who had been appointed for the task would enter the presence chamber and “make three reverences, the one by the door, the next in the middle of the chamber, the third by the table.”45 They would then proceed to serve each dish with great solemnity, which, given the fact that Elizabeth regularly had twenty or more to choose from, took some considerable time.

  It was essential that this unmarried queen should be accompanied by her ladies at all times in order to avoid any slur on her reputation. They would attend her as she progressed in state to chapel, dealt with correspondence or other official business, and gave audiences to ambassadors, councillors, and favorites. That one or more of them also slept in the same room as her at night was necessary for reasons of security, as well as propriety, for the Queen was under constant threat of assassination, particularly after 1570, when the Pope issued a bull of excommunication and encouraged her Catholic subjects to rise against her. Although her guards were exclusively male, the women who served her were invaluable for their constant presence and vigilance. They would taste each dish before it was served to the Queen to insure that it was not poisoned, test any perfume that was sent to her as a gift, and carry out nightly searches of her private apartments.

  The new queen had long been plagued by a host of ailments, which would flare up at times of stress. She suffered headaches, stomach pains, aching limbs, breathlessness, and insomnia. Little wonder that the Spanish ambassador predicted early on in her reign that she was “not likely to have a long life.”46 Elizabeth was no easy patient. Like her father, she perceived illness as a sign of weakness and would rail against her ladies and physicians as they attempted to nurse her, insisting that there was nothing wrong. On one occasion, she ordered some water to be fetched from the Derbyshire town of Buxton, famous for its health-giving springs, so that she might bathe in it and thus ease a persistent pain in her leg. But when the water arrived, she flew into a rage and sent it away again, because by then, rumor had got out that she was unwell.47 There were other occasions when the Queen was so ill that she had no choice but to retreat to her private chambers, attended only by her ladies. One time, she hid herself away for three days and was said to be “very unapt to be dealt with … being trobled with an exstreame cowld and defluxion into her eyes, so as she cannot indure to reade any thing.”48

  When Elizabeth was in good health, her ladies were expected to be accomplished in all things that would tend to her comfort or amusement. They would entertain her by reading aloud—often in several languages—playing cards or gossiping with her about the latest scandals and events at court. The ability to ride was an essential prerequisite for members of her household, for they would accompany her on the many hunting expeditions she undertook during her reign, sometimes riding at breakneck speed to keep up with her.

  Elizabeth was an accomplished dancer and loved to show off her prowess by performing energetic routines such as the galliard or volta. As her ladies were often required to take part in court masques or other entertainments, the Queen would spend long hours with them rehearsing the complicated steps over and over again until they attained perfection. When the dances were performed, she would watch the ladies like a hawk, calling out sharp reproofs if they put a foot wrong. “She takes such pleasure in it [music] that when her Maids dance she follows the cadence with her head, hand and foot. She rebukes them if they do not dance to her liking, and without doubt she is a mistress of the art,” remarked Monsieur de Maisse, a foreign visitor to court in the 1590s.49

  When Elizabeth retired to her private apartments at the end of each long evening of court entertainments, she would be attended by her ladies. Away from the prying eyes of her courtiers, they would carefully undress her, take off her makeup, and unpin her hair. The separation of her public and private personas was as essential to her authority as queen as it was to her vanity as a woman, and none but her ladies was permitted to see both.

  The women who served Elizabeth at court received only modest payment for the myriad duties that they had to perform. Indeed, some—like the maids of honor and ladies of the presence chamber—were rarely paid at all. The ladies of the privy chamber and bedchamber received an annual salary of around £33 (equivalent to around £5,600 or $8,945 today), and this sum remained the same throughout their mistress’s long reign. Moreover, unlike the men at court, Elizabeth’s ladies were unable to supplement their income with lucrative appointments or monopolies. They were, though, allowed “bouge of court,” which included food, accommodation, lights, and fuel. They were also given livery (uniform) to wear, which eased the pressure on their meagre allowance. Their meals tended to comprise leftovers from the Queen’s table, which amounted to little when shared among around twenty women. Most of them would take their repasts in the great chamber, and they were often obliged to sit on the floor, because their dresses were so wide—according to the fashion—that they took up too much room on the benches.

  The living quarters allocated to the Queen’s ladies tended to be cramped and uncomfortable. In stark contrast to the rich tapestries and velvet-covered furniture that adorned their mistress’s state and private apartments, their own were often lacking in even the most basic of facilities. At Windsor Castle, for example, the maids of honors’ chamber was little more than a makeshift enclosure, which lacked a ceiling and was partitioned by hastily assembled wooden boards. They were eventually obliged to request that these boards be made higher “for that the servants look over.”50 Few women were afforded the luxury of a fireplace in their chambers, so these rooms would become unbearably cold during the depths of winter.

  Sanitation was also poor, and there were neither bathrooms nor flushing toilets for the courtiers. As a result, after a few weeks’ residence in any palace, the stench would become “evill and contagious.”51 Elizabeth and her court were therefore obliged to make regular “removes” so that the palaces could be thoroughly cleaned and all the human waste disposed of. Although these removes gave her ladies some variety, they often entailed even worse accommodations than they endured in the royal palaces. William Cecil’s house at Theobalds was particularly dreaded, for almost all of the ladies and chamberers were obliged to share just two small rooms, only one of which had any heating. Privacy was a rare luxury for the women of Elizabeth’s household, and as one contemporary noted, solitude “was very hard to do in that place.�
�52 Life at court was therefore a good deal harder for most of the Queen’s ladies than that which they would have enjoyed at their own houses and estates.

  Moreover, Elizabeth was every bit as strict as her late mother had been toward her own ladies. She demanded exceedingly high standards and would tolerate no deviation from them. If they failed in any of their duties, she would fly into a rage and deal them slaps or blows. When one poor lady was clumsy in serving her at table, Elizabeth stabbed her in the hand. A foreign visitor to court observed: “She is a haughty woman, falling easily into rebuke … She thinks highly of herself and has little regard for her servants and Council, being of opinion that she is far wiser than they; she mocks them and often cries out upon them.”53 Her notoriously fickle temper, which she also inherited from Anne Boleyn, kept both her ladies and courtiers at heel. “When she smiled, it was a pure sunshine, that every one did chuse to baske in, if they could,” wrote her godson, Sir John Harington, “but anon came a storm from a sudden gathering of clouds, and the thunder fell in wondrous manner on all alike.”54