Endeavoring to calm her troubled soul, the archbishop gave her some (false) hope for the king’s mercy. Her agitation somewhat soothed, the queen now believed that Henry would simply denounce her and she would be punished, but afterward, she would be received back into his good graces, even if they were never to dwell together again. “What a gracious and loving prince I had,” she wept. “Alas, my lord that I am still alive; the fear of death grieved me not so much before, as doth now the remembrance of the king’s goodness.”
But there was to be no clemency.
On Sunday, February 12, Kathryn was told that she would die the next day. Utterly terrified, she asked for the block to be brought to her, so she could “make trial of it, that she might know how to place herself.” She may not have lived every day of her life with dignity, but she was determined to spend her last one dying with it. She tearfully confessed to Cranmer that she deserved a thousand deaths for so offending a king who had treated her so graciously.
Kathryn Howard was executed on the same block where Anne Boleyn had met her end six years earlier. She was probably only twenty years old at the time of her death, and had been queen for just over eighteen months.
The legend that has traveled through the centuries that Kathryn’s last words were “I die a queen, but I had rather die the wife of Thomas Culpeper,” is the stuff of fiction, a line that wouldn’t be out of place coming from the Underwood typewriter of a Hollywood hack. First of all, Kathryn wasn’t queen anymore. Second, a girl so terrified of her execution that she insisted on rehearsing with the block would scarcely be so arrogant in her final moments.
According to Ottwell Johnson, an eyewitness at Kathryn’s execution, the queen mounted the platform and stood before the block, then “uttered [her] lively faith in the blood of Christ only.” She “desired all Christian people to take regard unto [her] worthy and just punishment,” adding that she had offended “God heinously from her youth upward, in breaking all His commandments.” She had transgressed “against the King’s Royal Majesty very dangerously,” and was “justly condemned by the laws of the realm and Parliament to die.”
Just as she had practiced, Kathryn laid her head upon the block. She merited no expensive French executioner wielding an extra-sharp sword. Her red head was struck off with an axe. The weeping ladies-in-waiting wrapped her bleeding body parts in blankets and Kathryn’s remains were placed in a coffin that was buried alongside Anne Boleyn’s in the little Tower church of St. Peter ad Vincula.
Swooning with fear, Lady Rochford was dragged to the blood-soaked scaffold. In her final words, she maintained her innocence as to being Kathryn’s procuress, but admitted that she had “falsely accused” her late husband “of loving in an incestuous manner, his sister, Queen Anne Boleyn. For this I deserve to die.”
She was beheaded on the block still red with Kathryn’s blood.
Following the executions, Kathryn’s relations were released from the Tower.
Though Henry enjoyed a court banquet and feasted his eye upon numerous attractive young ladies just two weeks later, it would be eighteen months before he had recovered from the blows to his heart and his ego engendered by the queen’s infidelity.
He would take one more wife—the much-married Catherine Parr. The author of at least one devotional work, Catherine’s intellectual accomplishments were rare for her day; she was one of only seven early-Tudor-era females to be a published author. Her first book, printed in November 1545, went through nineteen editions during the sixteenth century.
The Act of Attainder against Kathryn and Lady Rochford stood until 1553, when Henry’s daughter, Mary I—the monarch whose moniker was “Bloody” because of her execution of hundreds of religious dissenters—reversed the act because it lacked the sovereign’s signature. It was far too late to do her late stepmother any good, but it was a noble gesture nonetheless.
ELIZABETH I
1533-1603 RULED 1558-1603
ELIZABETH I, THE DAUGHTER OF HENRY VIII AND ANNE Boleyn, was twenty-five years old when she became queen upon the death of her half sister, Mary I, on November 17, 1558. She reigned for nearly forty-five years, creating the cult of the Virgin Queen by staunchly refusing to marry, claiming she was wed instead to England and her subjects were her children.
Mary I had only ruled for five years, but she’d left the realm in a sorry state. She’d lost Calais, the last English territory on the Continent, to the French. Religious tensions abounded between Catholics, Protestants, and the new evangelical Puritans. The Treasury was bankrupt from financing the foreign wars fought by her husband, King Philip of Spain. The cities were crowded, squalid, and dangerous.
One of Elizabeth’s key political concerns during her lengthy reign was the subject of her marriage (or not) to ensure the smooth succession of her crown. Over the years, several suitors, foreign and English, vied for her hand, but she had a valid political reason for rejecting each of them.
Her personal aversion to the institution aside, marriage presented a minefield of obstacles. Most foreign princes were Catholic, and Elizabeth staunchly refused to renounce her own religion. Additionally, if she married a foreign prince, England would end up a vassal to his crown. And if she chose an English husband, it would create factions among her nobles, which might result in civil strife. There was also the issue of the man’s birthright and nobility. Every man in England was beneath her.
Elizabeth put her realm on the road to becoming a great empire. She decimated the Spanish navy with the defeat of its legendary Armada, and risked her popularity and her reputation by executing a foreign queen—her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots—for plotting against her.
Elizabeth was the first English monarch to lend her name to an entire age, shaped by the force of her policy and personality. During her reign, poetry and theatre blossomed and flourished. It was an era of adventure and piracy on the high seas and exploration in the New World, embodied by the dashing Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh.
In the late winter of 1603, Elizabeth began to slow down. Although she had lost the power of speech in her final days, she pantomimed a crown above her head with her hands, which was interpreted as a sign for King James VI, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, to succeed her. At her behest, her Secretary of State, Robert Cecil, had been working behind the scenes since 1601 to ensure James’s smooth accession to the English throne, so there was little question that James was Elizabeth’s legitimate choice to succeed her.
In the wee hours of March 24, 1603, the sixty-nine-year-old Elizabeth died in her sleep. A sapphire ring was prized from her finger by her trusted lady-in-waiting, Lady Scrope, and sent to Scotland in a horseback ride that made history for speed; it was the official signal for James to take his place on the English throne.
ELIZABETH I and Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester 1533-1588
One of the greatest love stories in British royal history became a scandal even though the parties weren’t having sex.
Elizabeth and Robert Dudley, the son of the Duke of Northumberland, were childhood playfellows. Ironically, Dudley was the first to learn of Elizabeth’s intention never to marry; and yet, if she had been free of political constraints and considerations, he was the one man she would have chosen for a husband. Speaking to Elizabeth’s ministers, Dudley once affirmed the intimate nature of their long-standing friendship, insisting, “I have known her better than any man alive since she was eight years old.” That was their age in 1542, when Elizabeth’s third stepmother, Kathryn Howard, received the full measure of her husband’s wrath and met her grisly end. “I will never marry,” the little red-haired princess had said resolutely. And she meant it.
Robert Dudley’s father lost his head for backing a plot to place Mary Tudor’s granddaughter, Lady Jane Grey, on the throne as Edward VI’s successor. In the fallout, Robert was imprisoned in the Tower for a while on suspicion of treason. Some have posited that Robert renewed his friendship with Elizabeth when she was remanded to the Tower for three mont
hs in 1554, for her suspected participation in Thomas Wyatt’s plot against her half sister Queen Mary’s marriage to Philip of Spain. This scenario is not likely, as Elizabeth was heavily monitored and housed in another area of the Tower from young Dudley. He was also married, and his wife was permitted visits at any hour. Additionally, if Elizabeth were to be seen conversing (or more) with Dudley, the son and grandson of convicted traitors, her guilt by association would have quickly led her to the block.
Dudley had wed an heiress, Amy Robsart, in 1550. As the years wore on, their childless marriage, begun for love, became lackluster.
It was really Elizabeth who was the great love of his life.
As soon as Dudley heard the news that Queen Mary had died, he rode hell for leather to Hatfield on a white charger and offered Elizabeth his services. Faced with such a wildly romantic gesture, how could she possibly refuse him? On November 18, 1558, the day after she learned she was queen, she appointed Dudley Master of the Horse. It was an appropriate fit; Robert was an expert equestrian and a superb jouster. As a military man he had acquitted himself well, fighting with valor at the Battle of St. Quentin in 1557.
As Master of the Horse, Dudley was entitled to a suite of rooms at court and his own retinue of servants, who would be permitted to wear the green and white livery of the Tudor court. His job was to purchase, train, breed, and maintain the horses for the queen and her court, at a salary of £1,500 a year—nearly $700,000 in today’s economy.
The appointment had another perquisite: Elizabeth adored riding and Dudley’s position put the two of them into daily contact. Often they would ride out together for hours, as alone as they could possibly be.
They made an attractive couple, both tall, slim, and good-looking. A contemporary described Elizabeth by saying, “Her face is comely rather than handsome, but she is well formed and has fine eyes.” Elizabeth was fine-boned, with long, tapered fingers, high cheekbones, piercingly intelligent eyes, a long, slightly hooked nose, a small bosom, and a tiny waist. She had inherited her father’s curly Tudor-red hair, and her mother’s sallow complexion, which she always endeavored to lighten with a facial scrub mixed from eggshells and egg whites, alum and borax, and poppy seeds.
The six-foot-tall Dudley’s complexion was so swarthy that he had earned the nickname of “Gypsy.” But to Elizabeth he would always be her “bonny sweet Robin.” Dudley was thought to be “a very goodly person and singular well-featured, and all his youth well-favored, but high-foreheaded.” His mustache and beard were lighter and redder than his hair, his nose was high-bridged, and his heavy-lidded eyes lent him a sardonically sexy appearance. He was a true Renaissance man—athletic, artistic, musical, literary, well-read and informed in science and philosophy, and a consummate linguist.
It was soon abundantly apparent to the entire court, including the foreign envoys, that Dudley was the queen’s favorite, and their relationship several cuts above the ordinary preferment. She leapt into his arms as he partnered her in lively galliards, and they were openly affectionate, leading to the charge that Dudley was overly familiar with the person of the queen. The court hummed with gossip.
On April 18, 1559, just five months after Elizabeth’s accession, Count de Feria, ambassador to Philip of Spain, wrote to his sovereign: Lord Robert has come so much into favor that he does whatever he likes with affairs. It is even said that Her Majesty visits him in his chamber day and night. People talk of this so freely that they go so far to say that his wife has a malady in one of her breasts, and that the Queen is only waiting for her to die to marry Lord Robert. I can assure Your Majesty that matters have reached such a pass that I have been brought to consider whether it would be well to approach Lord Robert on Your Majesty’s behalf, promising your help and favor and coming to terms with him.
The Venetian ambassador arrived at the same conclusion: if Lady Dudley “were perchance to die, the Queen might easily take him for her husband.”
It would never have been “easy.” Nevertheless, the issue eventually came to haunt both “lovers.”
Baron Breuner, a suitor for her hand, correctly summed up the temperature of the times: “If she took my Lord Robert, she will incur so much enmity that she may one evening lay herself down as the Queen of England, and rise the next morning as plain Mistress Elizabeth.”
On April 23, 1559, Elizabeth made Dudley a Knight of the Garter, angering some of his fellow courtiers, who felt that a descendant of traitors should never receive such an honor. There were men among them who had served England long and valiantly. Why were they overlooked for a man whose only qualifications were his good looks and his equestrian prowess?
But to Elizabeth, Dudley was everything a man should be. She admired his robust taste for adventure, his bravery and nerve. She made it clear that his presence raised her spirits, and for that reason she must see him every day. She granted Dudley money, state offices, and property. In the Privy Council he enjoyed a place of preference, and Elizabeth entertained nothing that had not been reviewed and vetted by him. Naturally, factions formed against him, and before long he was the most despised man in England, even though his detractors could ill afford to publicly malign him, since the queen might one day be mercurial enough to marry him.
Dudley’s personality made it too easy for his enemies to align against him. He was haughty and ambitious and had an unpleasant tendency to speak ill of his “friends” behind their backs. And he very much wanted the crown matrimonial. But he wanted Elizabeth just as much. Any crown was not an acceptable consolation prize if he could not have her hand.
People were talking and gossip was getting ugly. Elizabeth’s oldest friends and closest confidantes, such as her former school-mistress Kat Ashley, urged her to marry Dudley or stop flirting with him and caressing him before the entire court. Her lovestruck behavior was ruining her reputation, something she could ill afford.
Elizabeth gave Kat her stock answer about weighing the pros and cons of any union and marrying for the good of the country or not at all. In that case, Kat replied, put some distance between Dudley and yourself.
But Elizabeth would have sooner lost her sight. And yet she knew she could never marry him.
In 1560, Elizabeth embarked on one of her famous progresses throughout the kingdom; Dudley was her constant companion. They spent entire days cozily closeted together, giving the impression that they were lovers in every way. One envious courtier exclaimed, “Not a man in England but cries out at the top of his voice, this fellow is ruining the country with his vanity.”
Meanwhile, Amy, Lady Dudley, was in the country, living a peripatetic existence between the homes of friends and family, where she would stay for weeks or months at a time. The queen had given Dudley a house in Kew so he could reside near the court, but Her Majesty had a habit of dropping in unannounced and Amy was too mortified to ever risk being there at the same time. In 1560, she had been married to Dudley for a decade, and yet they rarely saw each other, because Elizabeth insisted that he remain at court and spend each day with her.
Elizabeth made it very difficult and expensive for courtiers to house their wives at court, and greatly discouraged the practice. With Amy in particular, Elizabeth made it abundantly clear that even a reference to her name was displeasing to her ears. Rumors must have reached Amy of her husband’s flirtatious dalliances with Her Majesty, but what was the poor woman to do about it? If she complained, who knows what might befall her? So she kept her thoughts to herself, as illness and melancholy replaced Dudley as her daily companions. Her material needs were always provided for; Amy lacked for nothing but her husband’s love and attention.
By early September of 1560, it was widely known that Amy was very depressed. The doctors told her that she was suffering from a terminal illness in the breast, and no doubt she was in considerable physical pain. She was then residing at Cumnor Place, a house leased by Dudley’s former steward. Along with the home’s usual residents, she was accompanied by a female chaperone and attended by
a small staff of servants. On September 8, Amy urged her servants to attend a local fair, almost anxious to get them out of the house. The only one to remain behind was her traveling companion, who refused to rub shoulders with a bunch of peasants. When the servants returned to Cumnor Place that evening, they found Amy dead, at the foot of a shallow flight of stone steps leading from her bedroom to the hallway. Her neck was broken.
On September 9, when she heard the news of Amy’s death, the queen was shocked speechless. Dudley appeared bewildered. He ordered a full inquiry, and two days later Elizabeth declared that the entire matter should be made public so that it would not appear as though the crown had willfully concealed anything. Despite the suspicious circumstances, the coroner’s inquest deemed her death the result of an accidental slip and fall.
Amy got her revenge from the grave, for now Elizabeth and Dudley could never marry. Apart from the fact that Dudley’s rank and general unpopularity made him an unsuitable candidate for king consort, he had become tainted with suspicion, even though no complicity in Amy’s death was ever proved.
Amy’s body lay in state on September 22 and was buried the next day. Dudley did not attend the funeral, as it was the custom at the time for mourners to be of the same sex as the deceased.
Tongues continued to cluck when Elizabeth welcomed Dudley back to court. How could a sovereign admit to her favor a courtier who might have killed his wife?
But she shocked them further on September 28, 1564, when she elevated Dudley to the peerage, creating him Baron Denbigh and Earl of Leicester. Sir James Melville, a Scottish envoy, noticed that when the queen smilingly bestowed the collar of his earldom on her dear Robin, she affectionately tickled his neck.
Royal Affairs: A Lusty Romp through the Extramarital Adventures that Rocked the British Monarchy Page 12
