The Other Tudors (33 page)

On 29 June 1559, there is a ‘grant for life, for his service, to John Harrington, the Queen’s servant, of the office of Receiver General of the Revenues’ of lands in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. He later swapped these counties for Dorset and Somerset. There is no mention of a wife, so Harrington was still single at this time.
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It was several years before John could marry his love, Isabella Markham. In fact, when Sir John Markham died in 1559, his will, dated 1 April, left his daughter, ‘Isabella Markham … £300 for her preferment to her marriage.’
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Sir John Markham had good reason to object to John Harrington as a sonin-law. For one thing, he had spent quite some time in the Tower, which Sir John knew only too well. All in all, John Harrington did not present the best his daughter could achieve in a husband. Even the accession of Elizabeth as queen on 17 November 1558 had not persuaded Sir John to let Elizabeth I’s two friends marry; in fact, he could wonder why so close a friend to the Queen did not achieve a much more brilliant match. The conclusion is that John and Isabella were in love, and finally married in 1559. In 1564 Harrington wrote one of his poems, a treatise on wifely duties, for Isabella.

John and Isabella had their first son, christened in the parish of Allhallows Church in 1560 on 4 August, ‘John the sunne of John Harrington’.
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On 12 March 1563 there was a grant of land at Lenton, Nottinghamshire, to John Harrington and ‘Isabel his wife, gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber’, in favour of their son.
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Little John Harrington became one of the 102 godchildren of the Queen. In 1602 Sir John wrote to his wife, ‘The goodness of our sovereign lady to me, even (I will say) before born; her affection to my mother who waited in Privy Chamber, her bettering the state of my father’s fortune … have rooted such love, such dutiful remembrance of her princely virtues.’
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What of Esther? She is rarely mentioned; in 1568 an estate at Watchfield, Berkshire was the property of John Harrington and ‘Hesterus [Hester] Harrington’, showing that she was alive in that year.
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However, one particularly interesting thing happened. On 3 May 1569, a Pardon of Marriage for William Brouncker, son and heir of Henry Brouncker (‘aged 20 and more at his said father’s death’) was made, ‘at the suit of John Harrington, the Queen’s servant, for £200, which Harrington is bound by five bonds to pay in the Court of Wards.’
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Harrington had purchased the wardship of William Brouncker for £200, which was valid for less than a year.

The wardship carried an annuity of 40 marks, but this would be paid only once. A valuable ward would be a baby or young child, since the purchaser could expect a series of lucrative annual payments, as well as taking money from the estate of the child for expenses to cover their upbringing. Then, when the child was of a suitable age, a marriage could be arranged; if the child was particularly wealthy, obviously they would be married to a member of the purchaser’s own family. Harrington could expect none of the financial rewards; what he purchased was the right to arrange William’s marriage, providing it took place between 3 May 1569 and 11 February 1570. He could have been buying a well-to-do husband for his daughter, since he had no intention of letting her take the lands her mother had brought to the marriage, which he had bought outright, and would eventually leave to his son by Isabella.

The licence to enter upon his lands was issued for William Brouncker, son of Henry, on 11 February 1570, as William had now attained the age of 21. Two months later, on 1 April 1570, William Brouncker was issued a licence to alienate lands in Wiltshire, for 55s 8d. He is referred to as ‘William Brouncker of Erlestoke, Co. Wilts.’
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On 1 February 1578, there was issued a pardon of alienation of lands acquired by ‘W. Bruncker, Michael Garneley and William Marten … and the heirs of Bruncker’ at Inglesham in Wiltshire and Burwardescott, Berkshire. The trio paid £20 to the Queen’s agent.

The Brounckers had been at Erlestoke for only a short time. The estate had belonged to the Earl of Warwick, and had passed through several generations until it was held by the Countess of Salisbury. The Crown seized the lands from the Countess and in 1540, a 21-year lease was sold to Robert Brouncker and his son Henry. In 1544 Henry Brouncker was MP for Devizes, and bought an estate at Melksham. When he died after a fall from a horse, it was Henry’s son, William, who ended up as the ward of John Harrington.
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When William died, his widow was Martha, daughter of Walter Mildmay of Apethorpe, Chancellor of the Exchequer, although there is a stone slab in the church of St James for William Brouncker, his wife Catherine Moore and four children (the arms on the slab are those of Brouncker and Moore). If he did marry Esther, she was his first wife and must have died shortly after their marriage took place.

In 1582, John Harrington died at the Prebendary House, the family London lodging, near the Bishop’s Palace. He seems to have retained hold of this, his father’s house, and it may well have been his residence when he was in London, attending the Queen. He was buried at St Gregory’s Parish Church.
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The son of John and Isabella, Sir John Harrington, was one of the Queen’s godsons. The Queen visited his house at Kelston on one of her progresses to Oxford, and local rumour says that John had to sell another of his houses, St Catherine’s Court, to pay for the privilege. Whatever the reason, in 1591, the year of the progress visit, Sir John leased a separate house called the Hermitage to Thomas Salmon, and the manor and St Catherine’s Court to ‘John Blanchard of Marshfield, gentleman’.

Sir John Harrington was a colourful character. Like his father, he was a famous poet and writer. He got into trouble with the Queen when he wrote a set of humorous verses called ‘The Triumph of Ajax’ (or A-jakes); ‘jakes’ was a slang expression for human faeces, and the piece was a vulgar condemnation of the way people defecated. The Queen was not amused, and John was temporarily banished. The production of these verses seems to have stimulated John Harrington to do something about the problem he had made fun of; he was the inventor of the first design for a flush toilet.

He capped a series of impudent escapades by joining the Earl of Essex on his ill-fated expedition to Ireland in 1599. Whilst there, and contrary to instructions from the Queen, Essex knighted his friends, John Harrington among them. When Essex returned, several of his associates were arrested, including Harrington, who was given the equivalent of a slap on the wrist, where Essex and others were imprisoned in the Tower or under house arrest. After a suitable period, Sir John had his knighthood confirmed by Elizabeth herself, and resumed his visits to court.

Sir John went to see ‘my royal godmother’ shortly before her death. He found her ill, and to amuse her, showed her some of his latest verses. The Queen, however, was too far gone; ‘I am past my relish for such matters’, she told John. He was one of the last people to speak to Elizabeth before her death.
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W
hen Henry married Anne Boleyn, he was passionately in love with her. At a banquet on 1 December 1534, Anne was talking to the French Ambassador, when she suddenly burst out laughing. The Frenchman was annoyed and asked, ‘How now, Madam, are you amusing yourself at my expense?’ Anne then explained that Henry had gone to bring another guest for her to entertain, and an important one, but on the way he had met a lady and the errand had gone completely out of his head. Now she was his wife and about to give birth to his child, Anne could find his interest in other women amusing. Henry and Anne were two proud and passionate individuals, always fighting and reconciling.
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In the summer of 1533 Anne awaited the birth of the longed-for prince. Chapuys wrote that Henry and Anne had an argument when she showed herself jealous of his affair(s), ‘and not without legitimate cause.’ Henry had been unfaithful to Catherine of Aragon when she was pregnant, and he seems to have behaved in the same way with Anne. When she learned that Henry was having an affair, Anne let him know that she was hurt and angry. According to Chapuys, the King replied, ‘that she must shut her eyes and endure as those who were better than herself had done, and that she ought to know that he could at any time lower her as much as he had raised her up.’
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When she demanded that the other woman be sent away, he told her, ‘she ought to be satisfied with what he had done for her; for, were he to begin again, he would certainly not do as much.’
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This might refer to Joanna Dingley, Mary Perrot or Jane Stukeley. It may, indeed, be another lady altogether. Henry seems to have fallen into the habit of enjoying brief and light affairs during his wives’ pregnancies. The answer was simple for Anne: ignore the meaningless dalliance – and produce a living prince.

Casual affairs aside, Anne was triumphant, but at her moment of greatness, she failed in the one thing that she most needed to succeed at. The longed-for child, whose conception had caused such havoc in England, was a girl. Anne had a difficult pregnancy, but an easy labour and birth. Elizabeth (named after Henry’s mother) was born at 3 a.m. on Sunday 7 September 1533. Chapuys wrote, ‘The King’s mistress was delivered of a girl, to the great disappointment and sorrow of the King, of the Lady herself, and of others of her party, and to the great shame and confusion of physicians, astrologers, wizards and witches, all of whom affirmed it would be a boy.’
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Yet, Henry ordered
Te Deums
(a Catholic ceremony of thanksgiving to God) and a magnificent christening.

After Anne Boleyn became queen, she saw a change in Henry’s attitude towards her. He had given up so much to make her his wife, and the birth of another daughter made all the national upheaval seem for nothing. What Henry would put up with in an adored and unattainable mistress, could not be countenanced in a wife. What had been pure love was now entangled with loyalty and duty. In fact, Anne Boleyn was rapidly becoming a liability in so many ways. She had produced a daughter when the birth of a legitimate, living son was so desperately needed. Her temperament was sometimes abrasive. Marriage to Anne had also prevented Henry from making a valuable foreign alliance by taking a French, Spanish or German princess as his wife. Anne and her faction had also given their support to aspects of the Reformation far more radical than Henry liked. He was less speedy to abandon the religion of his upbringing; he was, after all, older than Anne, and more set in his ways. He recognised that he had given up a lot for her, and all he had to show for it was another daughter. Anne needed to get pregnant again quickly, and to have a son.

The people of England felt cheated as well. They had had an unpopular nobody foisted on them for the main purpose of providing an heir to the throne. Amongst the learned men of England, the Abbot of Whitby commented, ‘the king’s grace was ruled by one common stewed whore, Anne Bullan, [sic] who made all the spirituality to be beggared and the temporality also.’
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Anne had the political support of her immediate faction – her father, brother, relatives and friends – but she had powerful enemies in the nobles who found themselves denied access to the King by the Boleyn faction. The nobility who resented Anne’s meteoric rise to power was always on the lookout to place some other lady in Henry’s orbit to distract him from his new wife.

Margaret (also known as ‘Madge’) was Anne Boleyn’s cousin, the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn’s sister, Anne, who was married to Sir John Shelton. The Sheltons had a large family: Margaret, John, Anne, Mary, Ralph, Thomas, Elizabeth, Emma and Gabrielle.

After she became queen, Anne initially seems to have favoured the Sheltons, appointing Lady Shelton to the post of governess to the young Princess Elizabeth. This job carried an additional duty; Lady Shelton was to be as spiteful as possible to Princess Mary, to put her in her place. Mary had also been ordered to attend her new half-sister as a lady-in-waiting, and the Queen is supposed to have advised Lady Shelton to box Mary’s ears ‘for a cursed bastard’.