Elizabeth (5 page)
Henry’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard, who he wedded immediately after the annulment of his marriage to Anne of Cleves, was said to be poorly educated, selfish and foolish. It appears that she got on badly with Mary who, she said, failed to treat her with ‘the same respect as her two predecessors’ (Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves).
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Catherine tried to have two of Mary’s maids, who presumably offended her, sent away from Court. It also cannot have helped that Mary was three years older
than her stepmother, and that she was well-educated, beautifully mannered and the daughter of Spanish royalty. She had very little in common with a poor relation from a nouveau-noble family who was barely able to read or write.
Catherine Howard, however, was a close relation of young Elizabeth. Catherine and Anne Boleyn had been first cousins. Some accounts suggest that Queen Catherine made a gift of some small items of inexpensive jewellery to Elizabeth and also invited the girl to sit opposite her at table, just as Queen Jane had done for Mary. However, as Catherine was only Queen of England for 16 months and spent a large proportion of that time away from London under arrest, it is hard to gauge exactly what relationship the two had, if they had one at all.
It is clear, however, that Catherine Howard’s beheading for infidelity in 1542 had a lasting impression on the eight-year-old Elizabeth. Many years later, Robert Dudley, who was the same age as Elizabeth and a page to the King at the time, told the French Ambassador that Elizabeth had announced, ‘I will never marry.’
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He sighed as he recalled her words.
The arrest, trial and execution of Catherine Howard, her mother’s cousin, must have prompted Elizabeth to recall the circumstances of Anne Boleyn’s death. Kat Champernowne may have used the occasion to tell Elizabeth about her mother’s death, explaining the political context to ease the horror of Anne Boleyn’s condemnation. Although she rarely mentioned her mother, Elizabeth took one of her emblems as her own: a crowned white falcon perched on a tree stump from which grew red and white roses. The Chequers Ring, which is supposed to have belonged to Elizabeth, also still exists; it is hinged and opens to show tiny portraits of Elizabeth and a second lady who looks very similar to Anne Boleyn.
Elizabeth’s childhood experiences may explain why she never took the final step to marriage: refusing to put herself wholly in the power of another. Even at her tender age, Elizabeth’s vision of married life must have been tainted by her father’s treatment of his various wives: Catherine of Aragon had come to a strange land to be pushed aside and left to die in poverty because she failed to have a son. Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn, had been beheaded for treason, while Jane Seymour, her dear stepmother, had died in childbirth. Anne of Cleves had been abandoned by Henry, seemingly on a whim, and now history was repeating itself with Catherine Howard’s imprisonment and execution.
Meanwhile, Henry continued his political manoeuvring in planning alliances for his son, Edward, and his daughters. After the Scottish King James V died a week after his daughter Mary’s birth in 1542, leaving the baby Queen (Mary, Queen of Scots, 1542–67), Henry had taken an interest in the young girl, thinking to unite Scotland and England through marriage. He immediately entered into negotiations with Mary’s Regent, James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran, pressing for the marriage of Mary to his five-year-old son, Prince Edward.
To sweeten the negotiations, Henry suggested that the Regent’s son, James Hamilton, might marry the young Elizabeth. As Regent, Hamilton Senior, was the next heir to the Scottish throne should Mary die, thus if both marriages took place, whatever occurred, Scotland and England would eventually unite. The negotiations later faltered when Hamilton Senior attempted to marry Mary, Queen of Scots to his son James, and in 1548, they failed completely when Marie of Guise, the Dowager Queen, took her five-year-old daughter to France and arranged for her betrothal to the three-year-old French Dauphin, François.
Although busy plotting marriages for his children, Henry did not give up on his own needs. In July 1543, he married for the last
time, making Catherine Parr his sixth wife. Elizabeth was nearly 10 years of age at the time of their marriage, and Catherine, of all Henry’s wives, had the greatest impact on her. She was a well-educated and intelligent woman, and she formed an immediate bond with both of her stepdaughters. She knew Mary already: as children they had had lessons together, as her mother had been an attendant of Catherine of Aragon.
A contemporary Spanish writer described Catherine Parr as ‘quieter than any of the young wives the King had had, and as she knew more of the world she always got on pleasantly with the King, and had no caprices, and paid much honour to Madam Mary and the wives of the nobles.’
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Catherine and Mary often wrote to each other, exchanging gifts and even lending one another servants. Their friendship surmounted their religious beliefs: Mary was an uncompromising Catholic, as her later reign would illustrate quite bloodily, and Catherine, a dedicated Protestant.
Not only did Catherine do much to reconcile Henry with his daughters, but she likely influenced the Act of Succession passed by Parliament in 1543 to restore Mary and Elizabeth’s succession to the throne, behind their brother, Edward. Catherine also acted as Regent when Henry went on campaign to France from July to September 1544 to attack the French city of Boulogne.
Catherine was responsible for the family while the King was away. In late summer, she took the children to Hampton Court, where their education continued in earnest, particularly that of Elizabeth. Nicholas Udall, master of Eton and an editor of Greek and Latin translations, noted the increase in classical education for girls.
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Before she joined her stepmother at Hampton Court, Elizabeth had written to her on 31 July 1544, bemoaning the fact that she had not seen Catherine or her father for some time, due to severe ill health. She asked the Queen to mention her to her father, the
King, wished them both well and hoped that she would see them again as soon as possible:
Inimical fortune, envious of all good and ever revolving human affairs, has deprived me for a whole year of your most illustrious presence, and, not thus content, has yet again robbed me of the same good; which thing would be intolerable to me, did I not hope to enjoy it very soon. And in this my exile I well know that the clemency of your Highness has had as much care and solicitude for my health as the King’s Majesty himself. By which thing I am not only bound to serve you, but also to revere you with filial love, since I understand that your most illustrious Highness has not forgotten me every time you have written to the King’s Majesty, which, indeed, it was my duty to have requested from you. For heretofore I have not dared to write to him. Wherefore I now humbly pray your most excellent Highness, that, when you write to his Majesty, you will condescend to recommend me to him, praying ever for his sweet benediction, and similarly entreating our Lord God to send him best success, and the obtaining of victory over his enemies, so that your Highness and I may, as soon as possible, rejoice together with him on his happy return. No less pray I God that he would preserve your most illustrious Highness; to whose grace, humbly kissing your hands, I offer and recommend myself …
Your most obedient daughter, and most faithful servant, Elizabeth.
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Elizabeth’s letter mixes affection and diplomacy remarkably well for one so young – she was 11 years old.
The political situation at the time, particularly Henry VIII’s alliance with Charles V, raised the question of other possible dynastic marriages for Henry’s heirs. In 1545, a treaty between the two Kings included the proposal that Prince Edward marry Charles V’s daughter, Maria, and that Mary would marry Charles V himself (at 29 years of age, she was 16 years younger than Charles).
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It also mooted the idea of Elizabeth’s marriage to Charles V’s son and heir, Philip of Spain, although that failed to go beyond the initial stages of negotiation. Charles was polite, but not encouraging. Nine years later, Philip would come to make a far better match with the Tudors by wedding Mary, who had then become Queen of England (1553–58), and who also shared his Catholic faith.
Queen Catherine had every reason to be proud of her stepchildren. Little Edward, around seven at the time, was developing well and was happy to call her ‘mother’, Mary was friendly and much happier now that Henry had married Catherine, and Elizabeth was already a notable scholar and shared Edward’s classes with Dr Richard Cox and Sir John Cheke. In 1544, Elizabeth was given her own tutor, William Grindall, and showed particular skill as a linguist; she was now fluent in Latin and Greek, in French and Italian, and was conversant in Spanish.
In 1545, Elizabeth sent Catherine a book that she had handwritten herself, a translation from the French of
The Glass or Mirror of the Sinful Soul
by the French princess Margaret of Angoulême, with a cover she had herself embroidered. The following year, she presented Catherine with another personally embroidered and translated volume,
How We Ought to Know God
by Jean Calvin, and she gave her father a selection of his wife’s
favourite prayers translated from English into Latin, French and Italian.
These gifts were labours of love for Elizabeth, and an attempt to win the admiration and praise of the two people who mattered most to her personal well-being. The letter Elizabeth wrote to accompany the book to Henry VIII illustrates her reverence for him:
To the most illustrious and most mighty King Henry the Eighth, King of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and second to Christ, supreme head of the English and Irish Church, Elizabeth, his majesty’s most humble daughter, wishes all happiness, and begs his blessing. As an immortal soul is superior to a mortal body, so whoever is wise judges things done by the soul more to be esteemed and worthy of greater praise than any act of the body. And thus, as your majesty is of such excellence that none or few are to be compared with you in royal and ample marks of honour, and I am bound unto you as lord by the law of royal authority, as lord and father by the law of nature, and as greatest lord and matchless and most benevolent father by the divine law, and by all laws and duties I am bound unto your majesty in various and manifold ways, so I gladly asked, which it was my duty to do, by what means I might offer to your greatness the most excellent tribute that my capacity and diligence could discover. In the which, I only fear lest slight and unfinished studies and childish ripeness of mind diminish the praise of this undertaking and the commendation which accomplished talents draw from a most divine subject. For nothing ought to be more acceptable to a king, whom philosophers regard as a god on earth, than this labour of the soul, which raises us up to heaven and on
earth makes us heavenly and divine in the flesh; and while we may be enveloped by continual and infinite miseries, even then it renders us blessed and happy.
Which work, since it is so pious, and by the pious exertion and great diligence of a most illustrious queen [Catherine] has been composed in English, and on that account may be more desirable to all and held in greater value by your majesty, it was thought by me a most suitable thing that this work, which is more worthy because it was indeed a composition by a queen as a subject for her king, be translated into other languages by me, your daughter … May He who is King of kings, in whose hand are the hearts of kings, so govern your soul and protect your life that in true piety and religion we may live long under your majesty’s dominion.
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Elizabeth’s feelings for her stepmother were perhaps less reverent, but still very fond. In 1546, Mary and Elizabeth were invited to Court to live with the Queen as ladies-in-waiting and act as her companions. Settled and secure, Elizabeth developed a real affection for Catherine Parr and many of the Queen’s ladies would play a significant part in Elizabeth’s life. They included Anne Parr (Catherine’s sister), wife of William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke; Maud Parr (Catherine’s cousin), widow of Sir Ralph Lane; Elizabeth Borough (Catherine’s stepdaughter), wife of Sir Robert Tyrwhitt; Joan Champernowne (Kat’s sister), wife of Sir Anthony Denny; Katherine Willoughby d’Eresby, widow of Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk; Margaret Stanley, wife of Robert Radcliffe, 1st Earl of Sussex; Anne Shapcote, wife of Sir William Fitzwilliam (his aunt was married to Sir Anthony Cooke, whose daughters married William Cecil, Sir Nicholas Bacon and Sir Thomas Hoby); Jane Guildford, wife of Sir John Dudley,
Viscount Lisle (later 1st Duke of Northumberland), and Anne Stanhope, wife of Sir Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford (later 1st Duke of Somerset).
The Act of Succession that Henry VIII had recently passed stated that in the case of his death the throne would pass to his son Edward and his heirs, but, if Edward died without children, Princess Mary would succeed to the throne. If she, too, died without heirs, the throne would pass to Princess Elizabeth, and after her to Frances Brandon (Lady Grey, Duchess of Suffolk) and then to Eleanor Brandon, the surviving children of Henry VIII’s younger sister, Mary Tudor, and her husband, Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. He excluded his elder sister, Margaret Tudor’s heirs (she had died in 1541), who were the royal family of Scotland. Margaret had married James IV (King of Scotland 1488–1513); Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus; and then Henry Stewart, and was survived by a daughter, Lady Margaret Douglas, and a granddaughter, the infant Mary, Queen of Scots.
