Life of Elizabeth I (46 page)

First, above all things not to forget to use daily prayers to Almighty God, then apply yourself wholly to the service of Her Majesty, with all meekness, love and obedience, wherein you must be diligent, secret and faithful. Generally be no meddler in the causes of others. Use much silence, for that becometh maids, especially of your calling. Your speech and endeavours must ever tend to the good of all and to the hurt of none. If you have grace to follow these rules, you shall find the benefit.

The Queen required all her female attendants to wear black and/or white, so that the vivid colours and embellishments of her own costume stood out dramatically. Woe betide the lady whose dress excelled the Queen's, as did one of Lady Mary Howard's gowns, which was so gorgeous that a jealous Elizabeth tried it on without its owner's permission, only to find it too short. She thereupon told Mary it was 'too fine' for her, and the hapless girl was obliged to lay away the dress until after the Queen's death.

Stabling was provided for the ladies' horses, whilst the maids, who were paid so little that they could not afford horses of their own, were allowed to borrow horses from the royal stables. Often, the Queen's women were the recipients of gifts from visiting dignitaries, and Elizabeth herself often passed on very costly and beautiful items of clothing to them.

Many of the Queen's ladies are known to history: her former nurse and governess, Blanche Parry - the longest serving of the Queen's women - and Katherine Ashley; Isabella Markham, who had attended Elizabeth during her imprisonment in the tower in 1554, and who would later marry John Harington and become the mother of the Queen's famous godson of the same name. Mary Radcliffe served Elizabeth for forty years and turned down all suitors to remain with her beloved mistress. Lady Mary Sidney, although ravaged by smallpox, remained very close to Elizabeth until her own death in 1586: she was the mother of the famous soldier and poet, Sir Philip Sidney, and was herself a very erudite woman. Philip's celebrated sister, another Mary, who was a poet herself and, according to Spenser, 'in her sex more wonderful and rare' than any riches, became a Lady of the Bedchamber on her marriage, aged fifteen, in 1576. It was not unusual for three generations of the same family to serve the Queen as maids of honour.

Anne Russell was the wife of Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick and before her lavish marriage at Whitehall in 1565 had been lauded by poets for her virgin grace, her genius and her charming voice. In later years, Elizabeth became close to the Swedish Helena Ulsdotter, third wife of William Parr, Marquess of Northampton, who was forty years her senior. Helena was much at court, and when she remarried after Parr's death, the Queen allowed her to retain her title of Marchioness and the precedence it conferred, and granted her the old royal manor of Sheen in Surrey.

Although at the beginning of her reign Elizabeth had enjoined her ladies 'never to speak to her on business affairs', aspiring courtiers attempted - often successfully - to bribe them to carry petitions to their mistress, and this was often the ladies' most lucrative source of money. 'We worshipped no saints, but we prayed to ladies in the Queen's time,' quipped one court wit. According to Raleigh, these ladies were 'like witches, capable of doing great harm, but no good'. Sir Robert Sidney once importuned Lady Scudamore to pass on a letter requesting the post of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

'Do you know the contents of it?' asked the Queen.

'No, Madam,' replied Lady Scudamore.

'Here is much ado about the Cinque Ports', muttered Elizabeth as she read the letter 'with two or three poohs!' Soon afterwards, she gave the post to Sidney's rival, Lord Cobham, whose claim had been put forward by another lady, Mistress Russell.

Much has been written about Elizabeth's attitude towards the romantic and sexual adventures of her maids of honour. Although it is fair to say that she became less tolerant of young people as she aged, it is unlikely that mere sexual envy was at the root of her notorious disapproval. Not only was she
in loco parentis
to these unmarried girls - some as young as fourteen - and the guardian of their honour, but their parents also hoped that their daughters would make advantageous marriages through being in the Queen's service, and everyone knew that a deflowered virgin was worthless in the marriage market. Elizabeth was furious if her maids attempted to arrange their own marriages without her consent - which amounted to a grossly offensive breach of etiquette, since the responsibility for arranging suitable marriages for her maids rested with her. She was also conscious that 'scandal and infamy' and the loss of a maid's reputation would reflect badly upon her own morals. Thus she was excessively severe with those who broke the rules.

We have already learned of the sad fates of Lady Katherine and Lady Mary Grey. Later in the reign Sir Walter Raleigh would suffer the Queen's wrath after seducing and then marrying one of her maids. When one maid, Mary Shelton, a Boleyn cousin, secretly married James 
Scudamore, the Queen was 'liberal in blows and words' and Mary ended up with a broken finger; 'no one ever bought her husband more dearly'. Later Elizabeth apologised and appointed Mary a Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber. Frances Vavasour incurred similar displeasure for the same offence, while her sister Anne, a 'drab' who secretly bore the Earl of Oxford's bastard in the Maidens' Chamber in 1581, was irrevocably disgraced, since her lover refused to marry her, although the Queen made him settle 2000 on the child, imprisoned him briefly in the Tower, then banished him from court.

In fact, the records show that Elizabeth was not against her maids marrying, provided they chose approved suitors. There is not a single example of her refusing an advantageous marriage for them, and eighteen of them were married to peers of the realm. Yet until such an opportunity presented itself, the Queen expected her maids to rejoice in their virginity, as she did. Harington records that she often asked her maids 'if they loved to think of marriage', and would 'much exhort all her women to remain in virgin state; the wise ones did conceal well their liking thereto, as knowing the Queen's judgement'.

Elizabeth also protected her women from marriages they did not want, as when, in 1583, Tsar Ivan the Terrible desired to marry Lady Mary Hastings in order to cement an Anglo-Russian alliance. Mary was terrified of being sent to Russia, with its barbaric customs, and the Queen refused to allow it, though for many years after that Mary was nicknamed 'the Tsarina of Muscovy'. On another occasion, the Queen, using 'many persuasions', tried to deter Lady Frances Floward from marrying the Earl of Hertford, because she believed that he did not really love and care for Frances. But faced with a girl besotted with love, the Queen 'in the end said she would not be against my desire', although she was ultimately proved right, for the marriage foundered, as did so many other aristocratic unions of the period.

The result of the Queen's strictures was that the maids
of
honour were too terrified of their mistress to confide in her when they fell in love - which happened frequently in a court peopled with men - and were frequently compelled to conduct their often innocent liaisons in furtive secrecy. Towards the end of the reign, as the Queen's intolerance increased in parity with the loosening of her grip on affairs, there were more and more illicit affairs involving her maids. Hence the 1590s were a decade of court scandals. When Elizabeth Vernon was rumoured to be pregnant by the Earl of Southampton, it was said that she had taken a fencing thrust 'under the girdle and swells upon it, yet she complains not of foul play, but says the Earl will justify it'. She was right, for he did marry her, but only just in time for the baby to be born legitimate. Elizabeth was so angry that she consigned the Earl and his new wife to 
the Fleet Prison for a fortnight. Mary Fitton, who had gone out dressed as a man to meet her lover, was also imprisoned for becoming an unmarried mother, and was exiled permanently from court. In 1591, Leicester's bastard son suffered a similar exile for merely kissing Mistress Cavendish.

Naturally, these young girls found it hard to repress their high spirits, and after a day of decorous behaviour, they would let off steam in the Maidens' or Coffer Chamber, their spartan dormitory - an unheated room below the rafters, under a leaking roof. Lesser servants slept behind a low partition at one end, so there was little privacy. The girls were meant to be under the supervision of the Mother of the Maids, but the holders of this post seem to have been fairly lax, and these night-time antics constantly aggravated older courtiers who slept nearby.

The Lord Knollys had his lodging at court where some of the maids of honour used to frisk and hey about in the next room, to his extreme disquiet at nights, though he had often warned them of it. At last, he gets one to bolt their own back door, when they were all in one night in their revels, strips off his [night] shirt, and so with a pair of spectacles on his nose and Aretino in his hand, comes marching in at a postern door of his own chamber, reading, very gravely, full upon the faces of them. Now let the reader judge what a sad spectacle and pitiful sight these poor creatures endured, for he faced them and often traversed the room in this posture above an hour.

Often there were jealousies and quarrels in this all-female household, and although the Queen expected arguments to be patched up for her sake, she was not above playing off one protagonist against the other. Yet she often did show a very human face to her ladies, and was especially kind when any of them had suffered bereavement or family problems.

During her reign, Elizabeth I undertook twenty-five progresses through her kingdom, usually during the months of July and August, when plague could be rife in London. For her, a progress was an enjoyable holiday, a rest from the usual routine of state duties, and a chance to meet her people and win their hearts. She visited twenty counties, most of them in the south and west, and many towns; plans for a northern progress never came to fruition, and the farthest north the Queen travelled was Stafford. At each county boundary she would be welcomed by the local sheriff and his officers, and they would remain with her during her stay, while at each town she would be greeted by the 
mayor and aldermen in robes and regalia, who would hand her the ceremonial keys. Wherever she went, church bells rang out in celebration of her arrival.

Travel in the sixteenth century was not easy: most roads were poorly maintained, and some were little more than trackways that became waterlogged with rain. Carts and carriages could get stuck, and if it was wet - rain never deterred the Queen - everyone would be spattered with mud. Even on a good day, the court could only travel a distance of ten or twelve miles. When Elizabeth visited Bristol, she faced a 'long and dangerous journey', for the roads in the West Country were notoriously bad, and when she arrived she gave thanks to God for her preservation. In 1573, Cecil reported that she 'had a hard beginning of her progress in Kent and Sussex, where surely were more dangerous rocks and valleys and much worse ground than was in the Peak'.

The Queen travelled either on horseback, in an open, horse-drawn litter padded with cushions, or - from 1564, when this mode of transport was first introduced into England from Holland - in an uncomfortable, unsprung, twelve-wheeled coach of red leather studded with gilt nails, seating only two persons. Two empty litters accompanied her in case of accidents or them being required by her ladies. Behind Elizabeth stretched her retinue of about five hundred people and an endless procession of 2,400 horses and 400-600 carts laden with clothing and jewellery, provisions, household effects, state papers and tents for those servants who could not be accommodated in the houses they would visit.

Elizabeth's energy never flagged during these exhausting journeys, and she expected her courtiers to show the same enthusiasm. Most councillors resented the enormous expense involved - which Cecil estimated at around 2000 a year - and did their best to persuade the Queen to abandon her plans, but she persisted right up to the last year of her life. In 1601, when her courtiers were moaning about the prospect of yet another long progress, the sixty-eight-year-old Queen told 'the old to stay behind and the young and able go with her'.

In Elizabeth's opinion, going on progress saved on expenditure, since the cost of maintaining her court was being borne by her subjects, although she was careful never to exploit those who could not afford the expense, and the Exchequer and the Revels Office often contributed. But her officials resented the vast amount of preparation and upheaval that these progresses entailed, which mirrored the preparations for royal tours today. The Vice-Chamberlain would draw up the itinerary in consultation with the Queen, and would then make direct arrangements with civic dignitaries, sheriffs and potential hosts. Then the royal harbinger and two ushers of the Bedchamber would inspect the 
accommodation set aside for the Queen. The route would be decided and checked for safety and security. Then there was endless packing to be done.

The Queen began her progresses almost at the beginning of her reign, and undertook them roughly every two years during the 1 560s. Their golden age was the 1570s, when their organisation had been brought to a fine art. Security dictated restrictions on progresses during the 1580s, but there was a revival in the 1590s when the ageing Queen seemed determined to prove that she was as sprightly as she had been in her youth.

There is no doubt that her progresses contributed to Elizabeth's popularity. A vast train of officials and servants, many colourfully attired, accompanied the court, and a splendid spectacle they made for the crowds who flocked to see the Queen along the way. The poor folk would drop to their knees and cry out, 'God save Your Majesty!' People were encouraged to come forward and speak with the Queen or hand her petitions, and everyone would be amazed at how accessible and friendly their sovereign could be.