Elizabeth's Women Read online

  ALSO BY TRACY BORMAN

  King’s Mistress, Queen’s Servant:

  The Life and Times of Henrietta Howard

  Copyright © 2009 by Tracy Borman

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, a division of The Random House Group Limited.

  eISBN: 978-0-553-90786-5

  www.bantamdell.com

  Title-page illustration: Coronation portrait of Elizabeth I, modern reproduction of a lost original, by Peter Taylor.

  v3.1

  To my parents, John and Joan Borman,

  with love and thanks for

  all their support

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  List of Illustrations

  Introduction

  CHAPTER 1: Mother

  CHAPTER 2: “The Little Whore”

  CHAPTER 3: The Royal Nursery

  CHAPTER 4: Stepmothers

  CHAPTER 5: Governess

  CHAPTER 6: Sister

  Photo Insert 1

  CHAPTER 7: The Queen’s Hive

  CHAPTER 8: The Virgin Queen

  CHAPTER 9: Cousins

  Photo Insert 2

  CHAPTER 10: Faithful Servants

  CHAPTER 11: “That She-Wolf”

  CHAPTER 12: “The Bosom Serpent”

  CHAPTER 13: Gloriana

  CHAPTER 14: “Witches”

  CHAPTER 15: “Flouting Wenches”

  CHAPTER 16: “The Sun Now Ready to Set”

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  Illustrations

  SECTION 1

  1.1 Elizabeth I when princess. By kind permission of the Royal Collection, © 2009 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

  1.2 Anne Boleyn by unknown artist. By kind permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

  1.3 Locket ring belonging to Queen Elizabeth I, circa 1575. By kind permission of the Trustees of the Chequers Estate/Mark Fiennes/the Bridgeman Art Library.

  1.4 Henry VIII and his children, with Will Somers, his court jester. By kind permission of the collection of the Trustees of the 9th Duke of Buccleuch’s Chattels Fund.

  1.5 Family of Henry VIII. By kind permission of the Royal Collection, © 2009 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

  1.6 Blanche Parry’s memorial, Bacton Church, Herefordshire. By Tracy Borman.

  1.7 Kat Astley. By kind permission of Lord Hastings.

  1.8 Princess Mary at the age of twenty-eight, by Master John. By kind permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London, UK/the Bridgeman Art Library.

  1.9 Jane Seymour, 1536 (oil on panel), by Holbein, Hans the Younger. By kind permission of Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria/the Bridgeman Art Library.

  1.10 Portrait of Anne of Cleves (1515–57), by Holbein, Hans the Younger. By kind permission of the Louvre, Paris, France/Giraudon/the Bridgeman Art Library.

  1.11 Katherine Howard. By kind permission of the Royal Collection, © 2009 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

  1.12 Portrait of Catherine Parr (1512–48). By kind permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London, UK/the Bridgeman Art Library.

  1.13 Queen Mary I of England, by Mor, Anthonis, © Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA/the Bridgeman Art Library.

  SECTION 2

  2.1 Coronation portrait, modern reproduction of a lost original, by Peter Taylor.

  2.2 La volta. By kind permission of Viscount De L’Isle from his private collection at Penshurst Place.

  2.3 Queen Elizabeth receives Dutch ambassadors, by Dutch School. Neue Galerie, Kassel, Germany/© Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel/the Bridgeman Art Library.

  2.4 Portrait miniature of Lady Katherine Seymour, née Grey, by Teerlink, Lievine, © Belvoir Castle, UK/the Bridgeman Art Library.

  2.5 Lady Mary Grey (1545–78), by Eworth, Hans. By kind permission of the Trustees of the Chequers Estate/Mark Fiennes/the Bridgeman Art Library.

  2.6 Mary, Queen of Scots. By kind permission of the collection of the Trustees of the 9th Duke of Buccleuch’s Chattels Fund.

  2.7 Unknown woman, formerly known as Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, by unknown artist. By kind permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

  2.8 Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, by unknown artist. By kind permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

  2.9 Lady Arabella Stuart, aged thirteen, by Rowland Lockey after English School, 1589, Hardwick Hall. By kind permission of the Devonshire Collection, © NTPL/John Hammond.

  2.10 Portrait of Elizabeth Fitzgerald, after Stephen van der Meulen (1632–90). By kind permission of Private Collection/the Stapleton Collection/the Bridgeman Art Library.

  2.11 Lady Mary Dudley, Lady Sidney, circle of Hans Eworth. By kind permission of Petworth House, the Egremont Collection, © NTPL/Derrick E. Witty.

  2.12 A young lady aged twenty-one, possibly Helena Snakenborg, later Marchioness of Northampton, © Tate, London 2009.

  2.13 Elizabeth Knollys, attributed to George Gower, Montacute, the Sir Malcolm Stewart bequest (the National Trust), © NTPL/Derrick E. Witty.

  2.14 Elizabeth Vernon. By kind permission of the collection of the Trustees of the 9th Duke of Buccleuch’s Chattels Fund.

  2.15 Bess Throckmorton. By kind permission of the National Gallery of Ireland. Photo © National Gallery of Ireland.

  2.16 Queen Elizabeth in old age, English School/Corsham Court, Wiltshire/the Bridgeman Art Library.

  2.17 Funeral procession of Elizabeth I, 1603. By kind permission of William Camden British Library, London, UK, © British Library Board. All rights reserved/the Bridgeman Art Library.

  Introduction

  Elizabeth once famously declared: “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman.” This line, and the apparent regret with which she uttered it, has been taken to represent her conformity to the view that her sex was naturally subject to “womanly weakness.” Although she is often hailed as a shining beacon for womanhood, the embodiment of feminism before that term was even invented, Elizabeth was deeply conventional in her views of the female sex. When a foreign visitor to court complimented her upon her ability to speak many languages, she retorted “that it was no marvel to teach a woman to talk; it were far harder to teach her to hold her tongue.”1

  It is partly for this reason that Elizabeth is universally accepted as being a man’s woman. As well as taking every opportunity to deride her sex, she loved to flirt with the many ambitious young men who frequented her court. Her liaison with Robert Dudley is well documented, as is her infatuation in old age with his stepson, the Earl of Essex, and her more sober relationships with trusted advisers such as Lord Burghley. Yet this tells only part of the story. Elizabeth deliberately showcased these relationships in order to carve out a place in what was essentially a man’s world. In her own private world, the story was very different. Here it was the women, more than the men, who held sway.

  Elizabeth was born into a world of women. No man had been admitted to the presence of her mother, Anne Boleyn, during her confinement at Greenwich Palace, childbirth being a strictly female mystery in the sixteenth century. As a child, she was served by a predominantly female household of attendants and governesses, interspersed with occasional visits from her mother and the wives who later took her place. As queen, Elizabeth was constan
tly attended by ladies of the bedchamber, maids of honor, and other members of her household. They clothed her, bathed her, and watched her while she ate. Among her family, it was her female relations who had the greatest influence: from her half sister, Mary, who distrusted and later imprisoned her, to her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, who posed a constant and dangerous threat to her crown for almost thirty years.

  Elizabeth met, corresponded with, and was influenced by hundreds if not thousands of women during the course of her long life. I have focused the story upon those women who help to reveal Elizabeth the woman, as well as Elizabeth the Queen. From her bewitching mother, Anne Boleyn, to her dangerously obsessive sister, Mary Tudor, and from the rivals to her throne such as the Grey sisters and Mary, Queen of Scots, to the “flouting wenches” like Lettice Knollys, who stole her closest male favorite, these were the women who shaped the Virgin Queen, and it is through their eyes that the real Elizabeth, stripped of her carefully cultivated image, is revealed.

  Researching the life of Elizabeth and the women who surrounded her has taken me to some fascinating places, including magnificent palaces such as Hampton Court and Hatfield House, and the treasure trove of national and local archives containing her correspondence, most notably the British Library. I have consulted both original material and the wealth of published correspondence that exists for the period. When an original manuscript is cited, I have retained the contemporary spelling. This may be idiosyncratic in places, but it also reveals something of the writer. Elizabeth often referred to Mary Tudor as “sistar” in her letters, which provides a clue to the way that she might have spoken. Where possible, I have therefore preserved such details because they give a wonderful sense of the period.

  There are no doubt many other women whose stories could have been told in this book—women such as the tragic Amy Robsart, whose death effectively put paid to any hopes that Elizabeth might have had of marrying Robert Dudley; Sybil Penn, the woman who helped nurse her through an attack of smallpox that almost killed her; or Lady Mary Herbert, a brilliant writer and literary patron whose intellectual talents were on a par with Elizabeth’s own. But I have focused upon those women who had the greatest influence on Elizabeth: those who forged her opinions in childhood, trained her for queenship, and helped her to achieve legendary status as Gloriana, the Virgin Queen. I hope that the women whose lives are explored in this book will delight and intrigue the reader in their own right, as well as for the light that they shed upon one of the most iconic women in history.

  CHAPTER 1

  Mother

  Giovanni Michiel, the Venetian ambassador to England during “Bloody” Mary Tudor’s reign, noted with barely concealed distaste that the Queen’s younger sister, Elizabeth, “is proud and haughty … although she knows that she was born of such a mother.”1 Clearly he, and many others like him at the Marian court, believed that the Lady Elizabeth ought to be ashamed of being the offspring of Henry VIII’s disgraced second wife, the infamous Anne Boleyn—variously referred to as “the concubine” and “the whore.” After all, Mistress Boleyn had usurped the place of the rightful queen, Mary’s mother, Catherine of Aragon. Her subsequent alleged infidelities had led to her downfall and execution, and to her only child, Elizabeth, being declared a bastard. Little wonder, then, that the Venetian ambassador marvelled that this child should grow up apparently either oblivious to or, worse, not caring about the scandal of her mother’s past. Surely she ought rather to hide herself away in perpetual shame at being the daughter of an infamous adulteress? Yet here she was, displaying all the traits with which Anne had so beguiled her male courtiers—not to mention King Henry himself. And her coal-black eyes were an uncomfortable reminder that for all her Tudor traits (most notably her abundant red hair), she was very much her mother’s daughter.

  Yet the common view of Elizabeth that has developed over the centuries since her death is that she had little regard for Anne Boleyn, preferring to gloss over that shady side of her history and instead boast about the fact that she was the daughter of England’s “Good King Hal.” “She prides herself on her father and glories in him,” remarked one observer at court.2 The many references that she made to Henry VIII, and the way in which she tried to emulate his style of monarchy when she became queen, all support this view. By contrast, she is commonly believed to have referred directly to her mother only twice throughout the whole of her life, and neither of these references is particularly significant or revealing. Unlike her sister, Mary, she made no attempt to restore her mother’s reputation when she became queen, either by passing an act to declare Anne’s marriage to Henry lawful or by having her remains removed from the Tower and reburied in more fitting surrounds. One might therefore be forgiven for concluding that Elizabeth was at best indifferent toward, and at worst ashamed of, her mother. Far from it. It would be her actions rather than her words (or lack thereof) that would betray her true feelings.

  Anne was the second of three surviving children born to the ambitious courtier Thomas Boleyn and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Howard, second Duke of Norfolk. A combination of shrewd political acumen and advantageous marriages had transformed the Boleyn family from relatively obscure tenant farmers into titled gentry with a presence at court. Thomas’s marriage to the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter had served him well, both politically and dynastically. “She brought me every year a child,” he noted, and even though only three of these survived into adulthood, there was the vital son, George, to carry on the family line. The two daughters, Mary and Anne, might prove useful in the marriage market.

  The date of Anne’s birth was not recorded, but it is estimated at being around 1500 or 1501.3 From the outset, she and her sister, Mary, were groomed to make marriages that would boost their family’s aristocratic credentials and enable Thomas to move further up the political ladder. Anne soon emerged as the more intelligent of the two girls, and her father noted that she was exceptionally “toward” (an adjective that would later be applied to her daughter, Elizabeth), and resolved to take “all possible care for her good education.” As was customary for girls at that time, Anne received a good deal of “virtuous instruction,” but it was in the more courtly accomplishments of singing and dancing that she really excelled. She played the lute and virginals with a skill beyond her years, and also became adept at poetry and verse. The more academic subjects of literature and languages completed her education, and by the age of eleven, she could speak French extremely well.

  All of this was quite typical of the education received by other girls of her class, but in 1512 an opportunity arose to set herself apart from her peers. It was in this year that her father was appointed ambassador to the Regent of the Netherlands, Margaret of Austria. Margaret’s court was renowned for being the most sophisticated and prestigious in Europe, an ideal training ground for young aristocratic men or women who wished to enhance their social standing. Thomas used his skills in diplomacy and charm to persuade the archduchess to take Anne under her wing. And so, at the tender age of twelve, Anne set sail for the Netherlands. She was quick to absorb the full range of skills expected of a court lady. By all accounts, Margaret was delighted with her and wrote how “bright and pleasant” she was for her young age.

  But it was in France that Anne’s education in court life reached its zenith, and her experiences there would have a profound effect upon her character and demeanor. This time, Thomas Boleyn used his political contacts to secure places for both Anne and her elder sister, Mary, in the household of Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII, who had recently been betrothed to the aged King Louis XII. The Regent Margaret was sad to lose this lively and engaging addition to her court, but Anne shared her father’s ambition and was delighted at the prospect of serving Henry VIII’s sister, a renowned beauty. She travelled straight to France from the Netherlands, arriving there in August 1513. It was to be a brief service, however, for Louis died just three months after the wedding (some said the exertion of satisfying his young bride h
ad led to his demise), and Mary caused a scandal by marrying her brother’s best friend, Charles Brandon, in secret, before hastily returning to England. Anne had acquired a taste for life in France, however, and so remained there after Mary’s departure, transferring her service to Queen Claude, wife of the new king, Francis I.

  Her sister, Mary, preferred the diversions on offer at the king’s court, which was one of the most licentious in Europe. Francis was even more notorious a philanderer than his great rival across the channel, Henry VIII, and it was not long before the alluring Mary Boleyn caught his eye. She proved so easy a conquest that he nicknamed her his “English mare” and “hackney,” whom he had the pleasure of riding on many occasions. By the time she returned to England, her reputation had preceded her, and, never one to be outdone by his French rival, Henry VIII also took her as his mistress. Like Francis, he quickly tired of a bait so easily caught.

  Meanwhile, in stark contrast to her sister, Anne was earning a reputation as one of the most graceful and accomplished ladies of the queen’s household. She thrived in the lively and intellectually stimulating French court and developed a love of learning that continued throughout her life. Among her closest companions was Margaret of Navarre, sister of Francis I, who was regarded as something of a radical for her views on women, and she encouraged Anne’s interest in literature and poetry. It was here that Anne also developed a love of lively conversation, a skill that would set her apart from the quieter, more placid ladies at the English court when she made her entrée there.

  So entirely did Anne embrace the French manners, language, and customs that the court poet, Lancelot de Carles, observed: “She became so graceful that you would never have taken her for an Englishwoman, but for a French woman born.” Another contemporary remarked: “Besides singing like a syren, accompanying herself on the lute, she harped better than King David and handled cleverly both flute and rebec.”4 Anne was particularly admired for her exquisite taste and the elegance of her dress, earning her the praise of Pierre de Brantôme, a seasoned courtier, who noted that all the fashionable ladies at court tried to emulate her style, but that she possessed a “gracefulness that rivalled Venus.” She was, he concluded, “the fairest and most bewitching of all the lovely dames of the French court.”5