The Other Tudors (42 page)

Certainly Sir Henry Lee (1533–1611) lies buried in St Peter’s Chapel in Quarendon; the chapel was largely rebuilt by Sir Henry, but fell into disrepair and is a virtual ruin. His effigy was portrayed in gilded armour. Anne Vavasour is also buried in the chapel with her own effigy, although the verse on her tomb is slightly less vulgar than the one quoted by Aubrey:

It is not only the verse that Aubrey seems to have got wrong. Sir Henry Lee was indeed married, to the daughter of Lord Paget. She died in 1584 and is buried with her own family at Aylesbury.

Sir Henry Lee was the son of Sir Anthony Lee and Margaret, the daughter of Henry Wyatt, Privy Councillor to Henry VIII. There was certainly no contemporary suggestion that Sir Henry Lee was Henry VIII’s son. He was born c.1533, and as a child he was sent to the household of his uncle, Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet.

Lee was Elizabeth I’s Champion from 1570 to 1590 (when he was 57 and his ‘golden locks time hath turned to silver’), and Master of the Royal Armouries from 1580. He organised the Accession Day tourneys, held each year on 17 November. He assembled the contestants and at the beginning of each of his bouts he threw down a gauntlet in Elizabeth’s defence as the Queen’s champion, dressed in elaborate costume and with a laudatory speech, some of which he certainly penned himself.

After his wife’s death Sir Henry, aged almost 60, set up house with Mistress Anne Vavasour, one of the gentlewomen of the queen’s bedchamber since 1580. When she moved in with Sir Harry, she was indeed known as his ‘reading lady’, an anachronistic term that gave a polite face to their true relationship. In 1581, Anne Vavasour, daughter of Henry Vavasour and Margaret Knyvett, had enjoyed a liaison with Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, (he was married to Lord Burghley’s daughter) that resulted in her giving birth to his son, later known as Sir Edward Vere. Elizabeth I was not amused. Sir Francis Walsingham wrote to the Earl of Huntingdon: ‘One Tuesday at night Anne Vavysor was brought to bed of a son in the maidens’ chamber. The E of Oxford is avowed to be the father, who hath withdrawn himself with the intent, as it is thought, to pass the seas. The ports are laid for him and therefore if he had any such determination it is not likely that he will escape. The gentlewoman the selfsame night she was delivered was conveyed out of the house and the next day committed to the Tower.’
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Oxford’s action led to a state of warfare existing between Oxford’s supporters and the Vavasour and Knyvett families for some years. The boy, however, seems to have been close to his mother. Young Edward may well have accompanied his mother to Sir Henry Lee’s house, where she eventually gave birth to his half-brother, Thomas Vavasour (also known as Thomas Freeman), Sir Henry’s son. Sadly Thomas could not claim his father’s estate; this passed to a cousin, another Sir Henry Lee. The irony was that Anne gave both Oxford and Sir Henry a son, yet both men died without legitimate male heirs.

Not unsurprisingly, Elizabeth I seems to have disapproved of their relationship at first, but in 1592 Elizabeth visited Ditchley where Sir Henry and Anne Vavasour acted as her hosts. The visit was so successful that Sir Henry commissioned a portrait of the Queen, known as the Ditchley Portrait, painted by Marcus Gheeraerts. The Queen is shown standing on a map of England, her foot on Oxfordshire and her heel on Ditchley. Behind her are shown a storm over her left shoulder and a sunny day over her right, symbolising her power and her glory.

When David Dean Edwards of Baltimore wrote his family history,
The Edwards Legacy
(1992), he found one of his ancestors to be of particular interest. Richard Edwardes was born in March 1525, to William Edwardes and his wife Agnes. At least, the boy was born to Agnes, whose maiden name is variously given as Blewitt, Bewitt and Beupine. According to family legend, Henry VIII was Richard’s father.

The child grew up at North Petherton in Somerset where there was a Royal hunting park and a hunting lodge that Henry VIII used to use. It was surmised that it was here that the King set eyes on the lovely Agnes and had an affair with her. When she was pregnant, Henry may have arranged for her marriage to a suitable gentleman. However, she may have already been the wife of William Edwardes, the father of her other two sons, William and Henry. Richard grew up in the Edwardes family and, again from family history, he may have spent part of his childhood as one of the choirboys to the Chapel Royal where he would have received an early education in music. Alternatively, he may have been brought up by his mother’s family in Scotland.

At the age of 15, Richard was sent to Corpus Christi college, Oxford University. The Edwardes family was poor, but on two occasions money was made available for the education of family members. In the year after Richard was born, money was found to send his uncle Edward Edwardes to Oxford and, again, in 1540 funds became available to send Richard. Family history recorded that Henry VIII rewarded the Edwardes family on the child’s birth and then sponsored Richard, paying for his tuition. One of Richard’s poems recorded the ‘poore estate’ of his family.

At Oxford Richard studied music with George Etheridge, one of the country’s most distinguished musicians. In 1544 Richard became a Fellow and received his BA; two years later he took his MA and was ordained as a priest in the Church of England. In 1550 Richard was elected Theologian at Christ Church College. Around this time he was given the living of St Helen’s in Worcester, as there is a record of his resigning from the position of Rector dated to July 1555.

By 1558 Richard was associated with the Chapel Royal as he was one of the gentlemen given seven yards of black cloth to provide his mourning for Mary I. Shortly afterwards he received four yards of scarlet for the coronation of Elizabeth I. In May 1560 he received a patent as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, Deputy Master of the Children and a year later, when the Master died, Richard took over his position. This was an important role and meant that Richard would have been in regular attendance on the Queen. He was also expected to write words and music for the boys to sing and plays suitable for them to perform.

In April 1560 Richard married Margaret Babb, at North Petherton. The following November his first son, William, was born, but his wife did not survive. In 1562 Richard married again, with an infant son to provide for. His second wife, Helene Griffith, had four more children; Marie, Gwyn, Elizabeth and John.

Richard Edwardes is credited with the writing of several plays for his young charges.
Damon and Pithias
(first published, posthumously, in 1571), whose title page reads, ‘The excellent Comedy of two the most faithfullest Friends, Damon and Pithias, Newly imprinted, as the same was showed before the Queen’s Majesty, by the Children of her Grace’s Chapel, except the Prologue that is somewhat altered ... Made by Master Edwardes, then being Master of the Children, 1571.’

He also wrote a play called
Misogomus
, and a comedy called
Palamon and Arcite
, which was performed before Elizabeth I at Oxford in 1566. Unfortunately, one reason that the performance is remembered is that at some time during the play the stage collapsed: five people were injured and three killed. In true thespian traditions, the show went on. As the play concluded, the Queen made a speech, thanking Richard and all those involved. The following day he waited beside her on the steps outside St Mary’s Church where they stood ‘exchanging witticisms’.

In the 1560s Richard was also assembling a collection of contemporary poems from poets like Lord Vaux, the Earl of Oxford and others, to be published as
The Paradyse of Dainty Devises
. It remained incomplete at his death, and was printed some time later under his name, including 10 of his own verses.

In 1567 Richard died, at the relatively young age of 42, at Edwards Hall near Cardiff. Bruce Edwards wrote in his family history that the house had been the Edwardes family home since the 11th century.
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This particular lady appeared as a character in the recent television series,
The Tudors
, from US network Showtime, starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers. The Lady is fictional, but she is already appearing on internet pages as one of the King’s mistresses. One wonders how long it will be before she is assigned dates of birth and death, a family and a history!
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‘Mistress Parker’ is sometimes referred to as one of the mistresses of King Henry VIII (particularly on web pages devoted to him) at around 1520, after his relationship with Bessie Blount and before Mary Boleyn. According to writer and historian Beverley Murphy, Bessie Blount was not in attendance at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, possibly indicating that her affair with the King was over by then. Hubert S. Burke cites an Arabella Parker, ‘the wife of a city merchant’ as Bessie’s successor. Although there was a Mistress Parker in the revels of March 1522, this was probably Margery Parker, who had been part of Princess Mary’s household since 1516.
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The major work of Hubert S. Burke was his
Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty and the Reformation Period
, Vols. I–IV, John Hodges, London, 1879–83. Burke appears to be the only source for information on this ‘Arabella Parker’.

Another candidate is Jane Parker, daughter of Sir William Parker, born c. 1505 and so about 15 years of age in 1520. She appeared in the masque of the Chateau Vert (the Green Castle) in 1522 and would make her mark on the Tudor Court when she married George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford. She was a witness for the prosecution at the trials of both Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. In 1520, however, she was still a child and so is unlikely to have been Henry VIII’s lover.

Another possible ‘Mistress Parker’ was Jane’s mother, Alice St John, born c.1484, who had married their father, Henry Parker, Baron Morley; in 1520 the lady would have been in her mid-30s.

In 1532, a lady called Elizabeth Amadas was arrested on charges of treason. She had called Anne Boleyn a harlot and said that she should be burned. The diatribe, including a rant that the King had set a precedent for the men of England by putting aside his loyal wife for a younger woman of questionable morals, may have been influenced by the fact that her own husband, Robert Amadas, had recently left her. Elizabeth went further and admitted that she was herself ‘a witch and a prophetess’, and gave details of having been solicited to enjoy a romantic liaison with Henry VIII. According to Elizabeth, the couple had used Sir William Compton’s house in Thames Street for their rendezvous and Compton and Master Dauncey (Sir Thomas More’s son-in-law and a Knight of the Body to the King) had acted as messengers between the couple, although she did not report whether or not the liaison had been consummated.
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In spite of these confessions, Elizabeth Amadas was released. Part of this may have been that she was not in her right mind or may have been due to her family and background. Elizabeth was the daughter of the courtier Sir Hugh Brice, the son of Hugh Brice, the Court goldsmith. Her husband, Robert Amadas, was also a goldsmith, an extremely wealthy man with strong connections to the King and Court, Master of the Jewel House and the Mint. He and Elizabeth had a daughter, also called Elizabeth, born in 1508, who married Richard Scrope (they had one child, yet another Elizabeth) and died in 1531, the year before her mother’s breakdown. Robert, having abandoned his wife of more than 20 years for another woman, also died that year. The loss of both her only child and her faithless husband may have been seen as mitigating circumstances to her outburst.
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Later, in 1532, Elizabeth remarried. Her second husband was Thomas Neville, great-grandson of Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland, and Joan Beaufort, the illegitimate daughter of John of Gaunt, third son of Edward III. Elizabeth, born c.1580, would have been around 50, but she was the sole heiress of one wealthy goldsmith (her brother Hugh had died in infancy) and the widow of another. It is to be hoped that Neville was kind to his second wife.

As Prince of Wales and King of England, Henry VIII was perfect and immaculate, incapable of doing wrong or behaving badly. He was a man with a strong sexual appetite who lived at a time and in a society that applauded him if he strayed from the marriage bed. He was handsome, lusty and charming and possessed that ultimate aphrodisiac, wealth and power – and yet he longed for love. He was inspired by the chase, by romantic pursuit of the lady he loved; he could be enormously generous, even humble, to the woman who won his devotion.

The question remains what would have happened if even one of Catherine of Aragon’s sons had lived? Henry would have most probably remained married to her. Wolsey would have stayed as Cardinal, never quite achieving his ambition to be Pope, and the Roman Catholic Church would have continued in England. Anne Boleyn might have been a mistress, dearly beloved, but very easy to discard if he tired of her. Henry would have found a husband for Anne and most probably never set his sights on the plain, quiet Jane Seymour. He would have carried on choosing his loves and likes, spending years with the same mistress whilst offering his occasional adoration to a range of charming, married ladies.

Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, might never have risen to such a high status or, indeed, have ever been acknowledged. As Earl of Richmond he would have been a discreet if loveable ornament to his father’s Court. Etheldreda would have been joined by Elizabeth as the bastard daughters of the King; Elizabeth too would have been fostered out to a suitable family and lived a shallow, blameless married life in the shadow of her half-brother Henry IX. Henry Carey would still have served; Thomas Stukeley would still have connived; John Perrot would still have blustered.