by Lisa Hilton
This is not to say that Anne was not influential in her daughter’s life. Her trial, her execution, and the dissolution of her marriage invested her absence with a form of negative capability—an absence which has been understood as haunting her daughter’s life ever after. Two weeks before her death, the queen had written to Henry, begging him not to punish their daughter in his resentment against her, a plea which, given the declared illegality of their marriage, Henry had no choice but to ignore: the most significant aspect of Anne’s legacy to Elizabeth was the ambiguous status of her birth, the stain of illegitimacy which was to dog her well beyond her eventual accession to the throne. The comment of Elizabeth’s governess, Lady Bryan, on the sudden alteration in Elizabeth’s status—“As my lady Elizabeth is put from the degree she was in, and what degree she is at now I know not but by hearsay, I know not how to order her or myself ”—summed up a confusion which spread from the royal nursery across the courts of Europe. There was not one moment of Elizabeth’s entire life during which her status was unequivocally accepted. So while we can only surmise Elizabeth’s feelings towards Anne from a (very) limited record of her actions, Elizabeth’s refusal to accept her bastard status did at times invoke her mother, though in a symbolic or legalistic, rather than an emotional, fashion.
The very circumstances of Elizabeth’s birth have proved cause for debate. Was she “the most unwelcome royal daughter in English history” or the confirmation of God’s blessing on a controversial marriage which both parents nevertheless confidently believed, in 1533, would go on to produce sons?2 On 26 August of that year, Anne had formally “taken to her chamber” at Greenwich to await the birth of her child, in a ceremony which closely followed that set out in the Ryalle Book for the delivery of Henry’s mother, Elizabeth of York. Elizabeth’s room had been decorated in blue arras cloth and gold fleur-de-lis, because any more complex decorative scheme was considered, according to the protocol, as “not convenient about Women in such case.”3 Anne selected tapestries featuring the story of Saint Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins, a prescient choice, while her bed, fitted with feather pillows and a crimson cover finished with ermine and gold edging, followed the model of her late mother-in-law. The bed was ceremonial as much as practical, functioning as a semi-throne, surmounted with a canopy of state embroidered with the crowns and arms of the royal couple. A pallet at the foot of the bed served for daytime use, and for the labor itself when the time came. Again following the precedent of fifteenth-century queens, the birthing chamber was furnished with two cradles, one upholstered and gilded to match the state bed, the second more simply carved in wood. The chamber also contained an altar and closet for Anne’s devotions. After hearing Mass, Anne entertained the court (though not the king) in her Great Chamber, where she was served with wine and spices as she had been at her coronation. Then she retired with her women to remain enclosed until the birth. The birthing chamber was a powerful feminine space, a reliquary of sacred mystery. This still entirely feminine world, where all the roles of the queen’s household were taken by women, became the tense, beating heart of the court. As Anne waited out the long weeks in those dim, stifling rooms, she at least seemed serene as to the ritual’s end. Anne had every intention of bringing forth a prince. The court doctors and astrologers had assured the royal couple that their child would be male, and letters (later hastily amended) had been prepared to announce the birth of Henry’s true heir.
How the queen passed her time during her seclusion is not known—herbal baths were popular for women in late pregnancy, and quiet diversions such as embroidery or reading aloud were recommended; one imagines that, like all heavily pregnant women, Anne simply longed for it to be over. Nor is it known whether Anne made use of the sacred girdle of Our Lady, which had been brought from Westminster Abbey in 1502 to lend succor to Elizabeth of York. Prayer was more or less the only painkiller on offer in this age of terrifyingly high maternal mortality, and birthing girdles, associated with various saints, had been used to encourage women in childbirth for centuries. Katherine of Aragon had used the Westminster girdle and had also lent it to her sister-in-law Margaret Tudor. The use of such a relic by Anne would certainly have been controversial, given the attitude of the government at this stage of the Henrician Reformation to relics, pilgrimages, and miracles, preaching on which was officially banned for a year in 1534, but there is an interesting possibility that Anne made use of a “Protestantised” holy symbol, an amulet roll. These were scrolls containing prayers or holy stories which acted as textual interpretations of physical relics such as the Westminster girdle, invoking the same mystical connections. While disdain for relics was a principle of the reformed religion, a certain latent power still attached to them.
After a reportedly difficult labor, Anne’s confinement ended shortly after three o’clock on 7 September. The nineteenth-century biographer Agnes Strickland has the queen announcing in a remarkably complete sentence for a woman who has just given birth that “Henceforth they may with reason call this the Chamber of Virgins, for a virgin is now born in it on the vigil of that auspicious day when the church commemorates the nativity of our beloved lady the Blessed Virgin Mary.” If Miss Strickland had known of the existence of the amulet roll, she might have been less sanguine, as Saint Julitta, the subject of Anne’s scroll, met her martyrdom without her head at the hand of the tyrant king of Tarsus.
Eustace Chapuys, ambassador to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, lost no time in pronouncing on the royal couple’s despair and fury at the birth of a princess, but then Chapuys, whose master was the nephew of Katherine of Aragon, loathed Anne Boleyn and everything associated with Henry’s second marriage. Despite his gloating, there is little contemporary evidence that Henry was more than conventionally disappointed by Elizabeth’s sex; indeed, he reassured Anne of his joy in the child and his love for them both. A celebratory Te Deum was sung at St. Paul’s, and two months after Elizabeth’s birth, Chapuys noted sourly that the king had been overheard by one of Anne’s ladies saying that he should sooner beg for his bread on doorsteps than lose his wife. Unarguably, though, Anne had failed in what had always been the primary task of queens, and the succession remained perilously uncertain.
The recall of Henry’s illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy to court shortly after Elizabeth’s birth has been interpreted as an exhibition of the king’s anxiety, of his need to prove that he could father sons, but the fourteen-year-old Fitzroy’s marriage on 28 November to Mary Howard, daughter of the third Duke of Norfolk, might equally be read as cementing a Boleyn triumph, as bringing the king’s offspring safely into the Boleyn/Howard power nexus now that he had a legal heir. The idea that Elizabeth’s birth was the beginning of the end for Anne is in no way borne out by contemporary reports. Between October 1533 and June 1534, five witnesses reported king and queen to be “merry” and in fine health.
Elizabeth’s christening, on 10 September 1533, also produced disparate accounts. Chapuys, gloating that the king’s mistress had borne him a bastard girl, claimed that the ceremony was “very cold and disagreeable, both to the court and the city,” while Edward Hall, the author of the 1542 Hall’s Chronicle, which describes the history of the union of the royal houses of Lancaster and York, dwelt on the magnificence of the ceremony in the friars’ church near Greenwich Palace, enumerating the dignitaries who attended and their roles, conjuring the image of the five hundred torches which accompanied the newly baptized princess back to her mother’s arms.4 The fact that neither of Elizabeth’s parents attended the ceremony was customary, and though Henry had cancelled the tournament planned for the birth of a prince, there was nothing lacking in the observances paid to a princess, from the Archbishop of Canterbury as godfather to the purple velvet stole in which the baby was wrapped.
Some writers have claimed that Queen Anne insisted on breastfeeding her daughter, others that “we know virtually nothing of how the new princess was cared for in the first weeks of her life.”5 In December, again according
to royal convention, Elizabeth was removed to her own household at Hatfield in Hertfordshire, travelling through London in great and deliberately circuitous style so that the people could catch a glimpse of the new royal baby. (Chapuys reported with predictable distaste on the “pompous solemnity” of this journey, but then he also believed that Elizabeth had been sent to Norfolk.) That Anne was “heartbroken” at the severing of the “extremely close bond” she had forged with her daughter is, again, a matter of supposition.6 The “merriment” between Anne and Henry reported at court suggests that, whatever Anne’s private feelings may have been, she was not allowing them to show in public; moreover, her place was at the king’s side and, more importantly, in his bed, that she might conceive again as soon as possible. There is no reason to believe that Anne did not think it more suitable for her daughter to be raised in a quiet and orderly routine in the country, away from the pestilence of London, as had been the thinking and practice of generations of royal mothers before her.
And if Anne was unable to see her daughter often in person, Elizabeth’s household was a stronghold of Boleyn affinity. In charge were the queen’s aunt Lady Anne Shelton and her husband, Sir John, who served as steward, and Lady Margaret Bryan, who was half-sister to Anne Boleyn’s mother, Elizabeth Howard. After acting as a lady-in-waiting to Katherine of Aragon, Lady Bryan was given charge of Mary Tudor, with whom she remained five years, before Henry began planning to marry Anne. By now in her sixties, Lady Bryan was called out of retirement to care for Elizabeth, which suggests that Anne and Henry trusted her competence and experience, but her role also called for considerable diplomacy. To the horror of Chapuys, in October 1533, the king decided that Mary, now officially styled “the Lady Mary” in acknowledgement of her bastard status, should join her half-sister’s household. “The King, not satisfied with having taken away the name and title of Princess, has just given out that, in order to subdue the spirit of the Princess, he will deprive her of all her people,” choked the ambassador, adding that Mary had been reduced to the status of a “lady’s maid.” Mary’s arrival created a background of tension, status-mongering, and outright danger which pertained throughout her sister’s life. Even as a tiny baby, Elizabeth was not safe from politics.
Of course, Elizabeth could have known nothing of the schemes and disputes into which her household was plunged with the appearance of her furious, confused, and resentful teenage sibling. What is known of Lady Bryan’s parenting appears to have followed a sensible, thoughtful model, in keeping with the practices of her age, which nonetheless were being influenced by the exciting developments of the Renaissance new learning. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw a regeneration of interest in medicine and pediatrics, promoted by printing and the increased use of the vernacular, which allowed physicians to combine practical experience and classical learning in a new way. Numerous texts on child-rearing and the treatment of childhood diseases were published, particularly in Germany, one of which, Eucharius Rösslin’s Der Rosegarten, was the first “scientific” pediatric manual to be translated into English, in 1533 and 1540. Swaddling, wrapping babies in tight linen bands to encourage their limbs to grow straight, was widely practiced, but Rösslin took a daringly modern view: “Imagine what goes on in him [the baby] as he feels the touch of rough hands on his tender skin and is chafed with coarse woolen cloth or scratchy swaddling bands. What do you think it feels like to lie on a hard board covered with prickly straw?”7 Princess Elizabeth did not have to itch in scratchy bands or lie on straw, as Anne Boleyn provided suitably sumptuous clothes for her baby princess, including a gown of Russian velvet and embroidered purple satin sleeves, but Lady Bryan did follow some of the guidelines observed by Rösslin, such as weaning—late by modern standards—at two years on to pureed, sweetened food. She was concerned that Elizabeth, as a toddler, should not be allowed to sit up to table as it made her overexcited, and preferred her to stick to a plain, wholesome diet (which had little effect, as Elizabeth adored sweets all her life and ruined her teeth with them). We do not know whether Elizabeth possessed the latest fashionable baby accessory, a tricycle-like contraption which aided children in learning to walk, but she was taken for airings in the park and was apparently a physically lively, as well as an exceptionally mentally alert, child, “as goodly a child as hath been seen.”8 Lady Bryan wrote regularly to court with details of Elizabeth’s progress, and the child was visited quite frequently by her parents. Although her principal residence was Hatfield, Elizabeth was moved, again according to custom, between other royal residences to allow them to be cleaned and provisioned, a necessity given the size of her household. In addition to the Sheltons, Lady Bryan, and her first cofferer, William Cholmley, Elizabeth’s retinue was the equivalent of that of a great magnate, with about twenty “above stairs” offices, dispensed by her father, and a further one hundred servants’ posts. Her progress between Hatfield, Eltham, Hunsdon, Richmond, Greenwich, and Langley during her early childhood reflected the need for frequent changes of location.
It was a move to Eltham in March 1534 which provoked one of the emblematic moments of the conflict between Elizabeth’s sister and mother. From the start, Mary had proved absolutely intractable on the subject of Elizabeth’s status; on hearing the news that she was to remove to the princess’s household, she had remarked with considered disingenuousness that she wondered where, since the daughter of Anne Boleyn had no such title. When Mary refused point blank to enter the litter which was to carry her to Eltham unless she was given her own proper title, an infuriated Lady Shelton had her pushed into it by force and confiscated her jewels as punishment. Mary compounded her disobedience by complaining vociferously that she lived in daily fear of being poisoned by the “king’s mistress.” Never much of a politician, Mary could only take a martyred satisfaction in the humiliations her stubbornness provoked. Her treatment by “the concubine” was a much-vaunted scandal, but Anne Boleyn’s attitude to Mary was based as much upon fear as spite, and Mary knew it.
If Elizabeth was to be promoted, Mary must be reduced, and Anne understandably saw any leniency towards Katherine of Aragon’s daughter as undermining her own position. Anne’s bullying of Mary requires consideration, though, as much of the impetus to abase the princess came from Henry, with Anne being blamed (again following a model which had affected previous “foreign” queens whereby they were criticized for their husbands’ actions rather than condemn the king himself) for a policy which Henry believed to be necessary to reinforce the validity of his annulment of the Aragon marriage. Nevertheless, Chapuys reported in January 1534 that Anne was complaining to the king that Mary ought to be supervised more closely, fearing that Henry’s “easiness” would allow Mary to continue to use her title, which could not be permitted as it would disparage Elizabeth. Anne sent messengers, including Thomas Cromwell, to discourage Henry from seeing Mary, though the French ambassador claimed that the king’s eyes filled with tears as he spoke of his obstinate daughter. Anne instructed Lady Alice Clere, Mary’s custodian, to insist that Mary eat her breakfast at the common table, and that if Mary tried to use her title, to box her ears. The hapless Alice was also scolded by Anne’s brother Lord Rochford for treating Mary with “too much honesty and humanity.”9 At the time of the litter incident, Anne tried another tack, offering to intercede with the king if Mary could bring herself to some accommodation. Anne was invoking her queenly position here—intercession was an important traditional role in which queens could be the conduit for royal mercy—and Mary clearly grasped this, as she responded calmly that she knew of no queen in England but her mother, but if Madame de Boleyn would be so gracious as to speak to Henry, she would be suitably grateful. Anne was predictably infuriated by this superb insolence. According to Chapuys, she began plotting to eliminate Mary. Anne received some satisfaction during the Eltham visit when, in April, Elizabeth was exposed quite naked to the visiting party of the French ambassador. This might seem peculiar, but the physical examination of dynastic bri
des was nothing unusual—Edward III’s queen, Philippa of Hainault, had undergone such an examination, and at a far more embarrassing age—but in Elizabeth’s case, it was especially important, as deformity in children was attributed at the time to the sinful union of their parents. That Elizabeth should be proved flawless was encouraging, but Anne was troubled when it appeared that Elizabeth’s entry into the international marriage market was being overshadowed by her sister.
EUROPE IN THE first half of the sixteenth century was dominated politically by the two great powers of France and the Holy Roman Empire. In 1516, Charles V had succeeded to the Spanish crown, followed in 1519 by his election as Holy Roman Emperor, thus giving him control over a vast territory which stretched from Gibraltar to the north of Holland, effectively encircling the French dominions ruled since 1515 by François I. Although François never took Charles up on his offer to settle their differences in single combat, the two monarchs were almost incessantly in conflict, particularly, though by no means exclusively, over control of their respective territories on the Italian peninsula. While England could in no way compare in land, wealth, or military might with the two main players, her allegiance was useful to, and cultivated by, both, a counterweight in their endless tug of war. In the previous generation, Henry VII had sought to shore up his nascent dynasty by forming an alliance with Spain in the form of Katherine of Aragon, and subsequent English policy, while subject to the endless complexities and feints of sixteenth-century diplomacy, had remained broadly pro-Hapsburg.
