The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court Read online

To counteract Nostradamus’ prophecies, Elizabeth called on the services of mathematician, astrologer and necromancer Dr John Dee, who had been a keen supporter of Elizabeth during the years before her accession.20 Dee performed an electionary horoscope about the day that had been appointed for Elizabeth’s coronation. The configuration of the heavens on Sunday 15 January, would, he determined, presage a long and successful reign.21 As the traditional procession on the eve of the coronation passed through the City of London, en route to Westminster, pageants lined the streets heralding the new reign as a decisive break from the Catholic past with tableaux depicting ‘pure religion’ treading upon ‘superstition and ignorance’.22 At the Little Conduit in Cheapside, Elizabeth took the English Bible proffered her by an allegorical figure of Truth, kissed the book, held it aloft, and then clasped it to her breast.

  Once she was crowned, Elizabeth moved quickly to end the years of uncertainty over her royal title and establish her legitimacy to the throne. In the first Parliament of the reign, which met ten days after the coronation, a statute was passed which declared the Queen ‘rightly, lineally and lawfully descended from the blood royal’, and pronounced ‘all sentences and Acts of Parliament derogatory to this declaration to be void’.23 She was no longer a royal bastard.

  Elizabeth’s very existence was a result of England’s breach with Rome and therefore, as Queen, and not acknowledged as such in many parts of Catholic Europe, she was bound to restore the royal supremacy which her sister Mary had repudiated. While she had outwardly conformed to Catholicism during her youth, in her prayers Elizabeth thanked God that he had from her ‘earliest days’ kept her away from the ‘deep abysses of natural ignorance and damnable superstitions’.24 She later confirmed her longstanding devotion to the reformed religion: ‘When I first took the sceptre, my title made me not forget the giver, and therefore [I] began as it became me, with such religion as both I was born in, bred in, and, I trust, shall die in’.25 She had also absented herself from mass at the opening of Parliament and when greeted at Westminster Abbey by the abbot and his monks carrying lighted torches she exclaimed, ‘Away with these torches, for we see very well.’26

  All the religious legislation of the previous reign was swiftly repealed and the Act of Uniformity imposed a Book of Common Prayer, which was essentially the 1552 Edwardian book with a few significant alterations designed to reconcile confessional differences. Most notably the words of the communion had been altered to allow a Catholic interpretation of the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine. Nevertheless the celebration of the mass was now illegal and all subjects were to attend the services of the new Church on Sundays and holy days on penalty of a shilling fine for every absence. By the Act of Supremacy which was passed on 29 April 1559, Elizabeth was proclaimed Supreme Governor of the Church of England, not Supreme Head in deference to objections because she was a woman. All office holders – clergymen, judges, Justices of the Peace, mayors and royal officials – were now required to swear an oath acknowledging Elizabeth as Supreme Governor of the Church. Refusal to do so would result in loss of office. Anyone writing, teaching or preaching that Elizabeth should be subject to the authority of a foreign power (including the Pope) would lose all his or her property and moveable possessions. Repeated offences would be judged high treason and incur the death penalty.

  3

  Familia Reginae

  The coronation marked the first ceremonial outing of Elizabeth’s new court. One witness described how, as the snow fell, it seemed ‘the whole court so sparkled with jewels and gold collars that they clear the air’.1 Before the Queen, who was carried on an open litter surrounded by her ladies and gentlewomen, processed her household, her bishops, the peers of the realm and foreign ambassadors. Directly behind her rode Robert Dudley, her newly appointed Master of the Horse. The procession was flanked by a thousand horsemen and by royal guards in crimson jackets, each adorned with Elizabeth’s initials and the Tudor rose.2

  The court as a whole was a vast institution of more than a thousand servants and attendants, ranging from brewers and bakers, cooks, tailors and stable hands to courtiers and ambassadors. While it was a place of provision, patronage, power and display, it was also, of course, Elizabeth’s home, albeit an itinerant one. The Queen and her court would regularly move between the royal palaces which lined the Thames – Whitehall, Hampton Court, Richmond, and Windsor – so that each could be cleaned, ‘sweetened’ and aired. Some three hundred carts of furniture, tapestries, gowns and ornaments would be moved with meticulous organisation. The court generally followed a fairly regular pattern in its movement between royal palaces, spending six weeks or so at Whitehall in the winter, then moving between Richmond, Greenwich, Hampton Court and Nonsuch in Surrey, and then perhaps to Windsor or Whitehall for Easter. Each summer, when the plague was often rife in London, the Queen and her entourage would venture beyond the capital on a series of visits to towns and aristocratic homes in southern England.

  In whichever residence Elizabeth found herself she required a suite of rooms – the privy lodgings – where she would be largely secluded from the hustle and bustle of the main court. The privy lodgings consisted of a series of rooms – a Presence Chamber, a Privy Chamber and a Bedchamber – which led off from the great hall. Entry into each room denoted greater intimacy with the monarch’s natural body. The Privy Chamber formed the frontier between Queen’s public and private worlds; while the outer rooms of the palaces swarmed with courtiers, the inner rooms beyond it were closely guarded and only few would have access. The Presence Chamber, a large reception room with a throne and canopy of state, was accessible to anyone entitled to appear at court. A throng of suitors, foreign ambassadors, bishops and courtiers would regularly gather there hoping to catch the Queen as she passed through. The Privy Chamber was where Elizabeth would spend most of her day, surrounded by her favoured ladies, transacting government business, listening to music, dancing, playing cards, sewing or gossiping. It was heavily guarded with 146 Yeomen of the Guard.3

  Elizabeth had two to three Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber and between five and ten grooms, who supervised the outer chamber, and four Esquires of the Body, who took charge of the whole chamber through the night. There were two rooms which led off from the Privy Chamber. The first of these was the Privy Closet, a small private chapel and the second, the Queen’s Bedchamber. This was the very centre of the court and the most private place in the Elizabethan realm. Here the Queen’s natural body would be laid bare and Elizabeth’s trusted women would take it in turns to sleep either with the Queen or on a truckle bed adjacent to her.

  During the reign of her father Henry VIII and brother Edward VI, the privy lodgings had been an exclusively male preserve. However, for Elizabeth, as for her sister Mary, these rooms were principally staffed by a small group of women.4 The first women to serve Elizabeth in her privy lodgings are listed in the coronation account book. Here the women are divided into groups of different status denoting the different kinds of cloth for their coronation clothes; purple tinsel for the more senior ladies, crimson velvet for the others.5 There were four women who served specifically in the Bedchamber, three women identified as ‘Chamberers’, seven women who served ‘in the Privy Chamber without wage’, and six young, unmarried girls served as maids of the Privy Chamber under the supervision of the ‘mother of the maids’, who would be solely responsible for their care and conduct. Under the heading ‘Ladies and Gentlewomen of the Household’, eighteen women are listed.6 In total twenty-eight women served in Elizabeth’s private chambers at some time during her reign. It was a small number and this meant there was fierce competition for places. Ultimately it was the women and their individual relationships with Elizabeth that mattered most and those most favoured might even find themselves in bed with the Queen. The friendships and intimacies between Elizabeth and her women underpinned her reign.

  * * *

  In the years before she became Queen, Elizabeth was surrounded by the ‘old flo
ck of Hatfield’, a tightly knit group of loyal female attendants who were now drawn to the heart of the new court.7 Some were Boleyn cousins; others had been appointed by her father and had since become old friends and political allies. Now on Elizabeth’s accession their loyalty was to be rewarded with positions of intimacy and trust in the new royal household. Other women returned from having been in religious exile and took up positions in the queen’s entourage.

  Katherine Carey was first cousin to the Queen through Anne Boleyn’s sister Mary Boleyn Carey.8 She was born around 1524 and had served as a maid of honour to Anne of Cleves, Henry’s third wife, before marrying Sir Francis Knollys in 1540. Katherine and Francis’s adherence to Protestantism led to them, with their five children, leaving England during the reign of Mary Tudor and moving to Frankfurt.9 A letter dated 1553 from Elizabeth to Katherine may have been written in response to the news that Katherine was leaving the country. Perhaps Katherine had already spent some time in the Princess Elizabeth’s household, as the letter suggests a close relationship and the promise of favour to come. Elizabeth then signed her letter cor rotto, or ‘broken heart’.

  Relieve your sorrow for your far journey with joy of your short return, and think this pilgrimage rather a proof of your friends, than a leaving of your country, the length of time, and distance of the place, separates not the love of friends, nor deprives not the show of good will … when your need shall be most you shall find my friendship greatest … My power but small my love as great as those whose gifts may tell their friendships tale …

  Your loving cousin and ready friend cor rotto.10

  As soon as Elizabeth succeeded to the throne, Lady Katherine Knollys and her husband returned to England and they, together with their daughters Lettice, then just fifteen, and Elizabeth, then only nine, were appointed to her household.11 Lady Katherine became one of the Queen’s most senior ladies-in-waiting and for the first ten years of the reign combined this with motherhood to thirteen children. Less than a year after Elizabeth’s coronation Katherine temporarily withdrew from court to give birth to her thirteenth child, before returning to the Queen’s side weeks later, having left her baby in the care of a wet nurse. Her nieces, Katherine and Philadelphia Carey, were also appointed to the Queen’s entourage shortly after her accession.12

  Beyond her mother’s kith and kin, Elizabeth also had strong emotional ties with a number of women whom she had known almost all her life, and certainly from her earliest infancy. Blanche Parry, a no-nonsense Welshwoman from Herefordshire, had ‘rocked’ the cradle of the young princess, and was twenty-five years older than Elizabeth. Unusually for the time, Blanche never married and for the rest of her long life remained devoted and unswervingly loyal to Elizabeth.13

  Kat Ashley was Elizabeth’s other longest-serving and most-trusted woman. She had taught her, defended her honour against the scandalous talk of her relationship with her stepfather, and had on two occasions found herself imprisoned for her loyal devotion to the princess. Ashley was now appointed First Lady of the Bedchamber, the most prestigious position in the royal household, while her husband, John, a cousin of Anne Boleyn’s, was given the important post of Master of the Jewel House, which he retained until his death in 1596.14

  A number of Elizabeth’s other trusted women were themselves of royal blood or had distant claims to the throne. Elizabeth Fiennes de Clinton, known in her youth as ‘Fair Geraldine’ and considered one of the beauties of the age, was one such woman. Her mother Lady Elizabeth Grey was the granddaughter of Edward IV’s queen, Elizabeth Woodville, and first cousin to Henry VIII. After her father Gerald Fitzgerald, 9th Earl of Kildare, was imprisoned on corruption charges and then died in the Tower in 1534, Henry had taken pity on his cousin Lady Elizabeth Grey and invited her youngest daughter Elizabeth, then about eight years old, to join the household of the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth at Hunsdon in Hertfordshire. Elizabeth, who was just two or three years old at the time, became particularly fond of her older cousin and their relationship lasted into adulthood. In the weeks immediately before Mary I’s death, Elizabeth Fitzgerald married Edward Fiennes de Clinton, 9th Lord High Admiral, rejoined Elizabeth’s household and became one of the leading ladies of the new Queen’s court.15

  Dorothy Stafford, the Protestant daughter of Henry Stafford, a Catholic nobleman, also returned from religious exile on the continent soon after Elizabeth’s accession.16 She had married her cousin Sir William Stafford, widower of Elizabeth’s aunt Mary Boleyn, and together they had fled England for Geneva during Mary’s reign as the persecution of Protestants gathered pace.17 Dorothy returned to England a widow with six children and entered Elizabeth’s service in the Bedchamber where she would remain until the Queen’s death more than forty years later.18

  It was women such as these who formed the close entourage that surrounded Elizabeth and each, richly clad in specially ordered clothes, proudly formed the train behind Elizabeth in her coronation procession and attended on her during the various changes of robes in the ceremony itself.19 For the Ladies of the Privy Chamber and Bedchamber their duties were to wash the Queen, attend to her make-up and her hair, choose her clothes and jewels and assist her in putting them on. They would also help serve her food and drink, to monitor it for poison or other harmful substances. The Chamberers would carry out more menial duties, such as cleaning the Queen’s rooms, emptying her wash bowls and arranging her bed linen, while the young unmarried maids of honour provided companionship and entertainment. The maids of honour were girls of good birth who, generally dressed in white, attended the Queen in public, carried her train, sat and walked with her in the Privy Chamber and kept her entertained with dancing.

  The women received only modest payment for the myriad of duties they had to perform. Some, like the maids of honour, were rarely paid at all. The Ladies of the Privy Chamber and Bedchamber received an annual salary of around £33 6s.8d (about £5,600 today). While the wages were not large, the women received board and lodgings for themselves and their own servants, together with clothing for day wear and for special occasions and sometimes even received the Queen’s own cast-offs. The size and quality of the lodgings varied enormously from palace to palace; space was at a premium and privacy unusual. Privy Chamber staff generally slept where they worked and only when they were off duty did they have the luxury of private lodgings. The maids of honour all slept together in the Coffer Chamber, which was very often cramped and uncomfortable. At Windsor their apartments were so primitive they had to ask ‘to have their chambers ceiled, and the partition, that is of boards there, to be made higher, for that the servants look over’.20

  Elizabeth expected all her women to be in constant attendance and to put her needs above any personal concerns. Illness, unless it was severe, was no excuse for absence; neither were marriage or children. Elizabeth required complete loyalty and commitment. If any of her married ladies fell pregnant they were expected to continue to attend the Queen until very late in their pregnancy, when they could retire for the ‘lying-in’, and then return to court as soon as possible after the birth, leaving their children in the care of wet nurses and governesses. In an age where motherhood and marriage were deemed to be the highest state to which a woman could aspire, here was a group of ladies in attendance on an unmarried queen who defied convention without losing status.

  Together these were among the most favoured women who would be at the very heart of the court day and night. While they were valuable companions, sleeping alongside the Queen in the dark or candle-lit Bedchamber, they were also bodyguards who played an important role in attending to and protecting the body of the Queen. As long as Elizabeth had neither husband nor successor, her life always would be in danger. Across the reign the risk of assassination was greater than the Queen being killed in open rebellion. Similarly, the women of the Bedchamber were closest to the Queen’s thoughts and moods, and courtiers and ambassadors continually looked to curry favour with this elite group of women in order that they might
promote their interests and present their petitions. Indeed Robert Beale, then a clerk of the Privy Council, later prepared a memorandum of advice about the post of Principal Secretary to the Queen and explicitly acknowledged the importance of the women: ‘Learn before you access her Majesty’s disposition by some in the Privy Chamber, with whom you must keep credit.’21 To know the Queen’s mood would prove vital for her ministers.

  4

  Not a Morning Person

  When Elizabeth left Hatfield to begin her journey to London, she ordered that her best bed with its gilded bedstead, six yards square and carved with ‘eight beasts’, be delivered to Whitehall. It was undoubtedly a bed fit for a queen. The valance of purple velvet laced with gold and ‘garnished with a thin fringe of Venice gold’, was surrounded by thirty-four silk tassels hanging down from curtains of purple damask with a bedhead of purple velvet to match.1 It became the very heart of Elizabeth’s new court and a stage upon which her life and reign would be played out.

  The palace at Whitehall, the Queen’s chief London residence, covered a site of twenty-three acres. The hall and chapel, the royal lodgings, galleries and privy garden stood on the east side and were connected with the river by a flight of privy stairs. To the west were many extra lodgings grouped around a cockpit, tiltyard and tennis court. The palace was a labyrinth of narrow, winding corridors and some two thousand rooms. It had been built by Cardinal Wolsey and then extended by Henry VIII and altered to receive Anne Boleyn as Queen in 1533. When in residence, Elizabeth occupied what had formerly been the King’s lodgings and left vacant the rooms intended for a consort.2 All the rooms were furnished with great splendour, with a multitude of statues and pictures, including a bust of Attila, King of the Huns, a genealogical table of the Kings of England, a sundial in the form of a monkey, an astrolabe that calculated the rising and setting of the sun, and many fine instruments.