Sir Thomas Hoby was a noted diplomat, ambassador and leading light in the Protestant Reformation, as well as a personal friend to many of the leading reformers of the time. His wife, Elizabeth, was one of the four daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, a prominent Councillor to Edward VI (the other daughters married Sir William Cecil, Sir Nicholas Bacon and Sir Henry Kiligrew).
During the reign of Mary I, Hoby remained on good terms with Elizabeth. She stayed at Bisham Abbey sometime between 1555 and 1558, under a loose form of house arrest ordered by Mary I, and years later, when Elizabeth herself was Queen, she is reported to have said to Hoby, ‘If I had a prisoner whom I wanted to be most carefully watched, I should entrust him to your charge.’ Then she added, perhaps with a smile, ‘If I had a prisoner I wished to be most tenderly treated, I should entrust him to your care.’5 It is known that Elizabeth I visited and stayed at Bisham Abbey several times; her cousin, Margaret, daughter of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, married Thomas and Elizabeth Hoby’s son, Sir Edward.
Close as Elizabeth may have been to the Hobys, in 1549, the house belonged to someone who loved her better and in whom she could trust even more. Henry VIII had given Bisham Abbey to Anne of Cleves as part of her divorce settlement. It was not until 1552 that Anne gave the house to Thomas Hoby as part of an exchange of lands. Anne of Cleves would have been the perfect person to take care of Elizabeth’s child; she was a dear and trustworthy friend and was widely known to take in orphans, a fact that could easily explain a new baby appearing in her care.
It would have been easy for the Dennys, abetted by the Ashleys, to arrange for the child to travel the 50 miles from Cheshunt to Bisham. From Bisham, it was only about 30 miles to Anne of Cleves’ principal home at Richmond Palace where her orphans’ school was based. The baby could easily have been transported to Richmond, again confusing its place of origin.
Sadly, as so frequently happened in those times, the child did not survive his infancy. According to the legend, he was interred in Bisham Church, where Anne would have arranged for the burials of any of her household servants or the orphans she cared for that died while living at Bisham. This child, however, young as it was, was given a monument, which suggested to the local people that there was something special about him. Rumour had it that he was the child of someone important.
If the burial took place early in 1550, rumours of Elizabeth having given birth the previous year would tie in with the Bisham baby. But the legend refers to two baby boys buried at Bisham. Could it be that the baby was buried with another genuine orphan who died at the same time? Were two different children buried here at different times? Or did Elizabeth perhaps give birth to twins?
Hester Harington
Bisham offered the necessary safety for placing a royal bastard: reliable foster parents and a secret location, but it is not the only possibility. There were other people who could be trusted to care for a royal infant, who lived far enough away from Court to protect the child from exposure – moreover, among them, someone who resembled Henry VIII as much as Elizabeth did, should a likeness ever be commented on.
In 1534, while Anne Boleyn held him at arms’ length, Henry VIII had an affair with a lady named Joanna Dingley. In 1535, she gave birth to the King’s daughter, Etheldreda, who was fostered out to the household of his tailor, John Malte. In 1548, after Henry’s death, the well-dowered Etheldreda was married to John Harington, once a servant to the King, and now an attendant to Thomas Seymour. When Thomas was arrested in January of 1549, Harington was also taken into custody and imprisoned in the Tower for his links to Thomas; he spent the next year there and was released in early 1550. His release may have been triggered, in part, by his wife having need of him at home, near Bath.
Etheldreda would have been about 14 at the time and married for about a year. With her husband in prison and in some peril as a close associate of Thomas Seymour, who had been executed in March 1549, perhaps a bargain was struck. Etheldreda would take in an anonymous child and pretend it was hers if the Parrs, Ashleys, Dennys and all their influential connections would ensure that her husband was saved from a death sentence and released. What is known is that John Harington and Etheldreda Malte, in their seven years of marriage (Etheldreda died in 1555), only had one child, a daughter, Hester. The birthdate of the child was never recorded.
John Harington was completely loyal to Thomas Seymour: even after the latter’s execution, he could be trusted absolutely to protect his master’s illegitimate child. He was also loyal to Elizabeth. In 1554, he would be imprisoned in the Tower a second time, purportedly for delivering a letter to Elizabeth, who was suspected of plotting against Mary I.
Etheldreda, herself the illegitimate child of Henry VIII, was trusted by her royal siblings. Furthermore, if anyone noticed any resemblance between the little Hester and the Tudors, it could have been easily explained by Etheldreda’s paternity – she was in fact the half-sister of Elizabeth. Etheldreda and John Harington would have made ideal guardians for the infant: financially well off, living a long way from Court, discreet and unflinchingly loyal.
After Etheldreda’s death, John Harington married Isabella Markham. They would go on to have one daughter and three sons (one of whom, John Harington, would become Elizabeth’s godson; he is discussed in more detail in Chapter 12). In 1568, it is known that Hester was still alive as her name was joined with her father’s on a property deed. There is no further record of her, but in May 1569, John bought a wardship for the 20-year-old William Brouncker of Erlestoke in Wiltshire, most likely with the aim of acquiring the right to arrange William’s marriage. One might imagine that he had Hester in mind as William’s future wife, but as William’s burial monument records his wives as Catherine Moore and Martha Mildmay, it could be deduced that Hester Harington, possible illegitimate daughter of Elizabeth and Thomas Seymour, died late in 1569, aged 20, unmarried.
Hugh Bethell
An essential aspect of successfully concealing the birth of a contentious illegitimate child is to make sure it is brought up as far away from the parents as possible. Ideally there should never be an occasion when the parents and child meet. The Bisham baby (or babies) was hidden among humble orphans and Hester Harington was brought up in the Somerset countryside. A third candidate also fulfils this requirement – Hugh Bethell (or Ap Ithil in the original Welsh spelling).
Hugh’s father, Thomas, lived in Maunsel in Herefordshire. He married Elizabeth Rogers, who had five sons, John, Nicholas, Hugh, Roger and Andrew. Hugh’s birthdate is unknown and he is quite a remarkable member of an otherwise ordinary family. What makes him stand out is that he was one of the principal beneficiaries in Blanche Parry’s will. Hugh trained as a lawyer and a surveyor, and Blanche used her influence to get him his first job in 1572 as Particular Surveyor in East Riding in Yorkshire. In 1576, he was Surveyor for repairs to the castle at Kingston-upon-Hull. Under Elizabeth I, Hugh was granted the Yorkshire manor of Ellerton, while Blanche left him the Yorkshire manor of Rise and lands at Wheldrake in her will.
The question remains why would Blanche Parry have made Hugh Bethell a beneficiary? Extensive research carried out by historian Ruth Richardson has failed to find any solid link between the Parrys and the Bethells that might suggest that Hugh was a relative.6 In her will, Blanche calls this man 40 years her junior her ‘friend’, one in whom she took quite an interest.
From at least 1566, Hugh Bethell was a friend of Blanche’s favourite nephew, John Vaughan. John’s prominent position in Herefordshire and the influence of his aunt may be indicated by his marriage to Anne, daughter and heiress of Sir Christopher Pickering and the widow of Francis Weston (one of Anne Boleyn’s supposed lovers, executed in 1536) and Sir Henry Knyvett.
Despite their closeness, John and Hugh are unlikely to have been the same age, as John died in 1577 and Hugh in 1611, which would make them a generation apart. Perhaps Blanche Parry’s favourite nephew, already established as a political force in his own right, took the young Hugh, a contemporary of his own son, u
nder his wing for other reasons, as a favour to someone his mother loved?
So, if not a relative, why would Blanche and John be so kind to Hugh? If Elizabeth had a child in late 1548, she knew she could rely on Blanche Parry to help her conceal it and make sure it was well cared for and brought up in a useful profession. Blanche might have selected a family with two sons, known to her from her home county of Herefordshire (Bacton, the home of Blanche’s family, and Maunsel, the home of the Bethells, are within 15 miles of each other), presenting them with a third. When two more boys followed, the third son would be even less noticeable. But this boy was different in some way; he would be befriended by Blanche’s nephew, John, and patronized by Blanche herself. When Blanche was given lands by Elizabeth I, at least one in Yorkshire was managed by Hugh. If he was Elizabeth’s son, he could be set up on sufficient lands for him to live well, far away from London and the Court, without needing to involve the Queen, and Blanche could keep Elizabeth informed about how the young man was doing.
In any event, Hugh Bethell married twice, first of all to Joan Stephens of Devonshire, and then in around 1580 to Anne, daughter of Sir William Mallory of Studley, Yorkshire. His only surviving child was his daughter, Grissel, who married Sir John Wray. Hugh died in 1611, which, if he was born in 1548, would have made him 63, and he was succeeded in his lands and titles by the son of his elder brother, Nicholas. When this family line died out, the Bethell lands passed to the descendants of the fourth brother, Roger. There are Bethells at Rise in Yorkshire to this day, but they cannot claim descent from the Tudors. The descendants of Grissel Wray, however, are still going strong – and some people claim that a direct descendant of Sir Hugh Bethell is Camilla Shand, HRH The Duchess of Cornwall, wife of Charles HRH The Prince of Wales.7
4
The Discreet Princess 1549–58
Elizabeth began to campaign to reinstate her reputation after Thomas Seymour’s execution and her own exoneration from any involvement in his treasonous activities. If she had had a child with Seymour, with it now out of the way, either dead or, more likely, placed in safe hands, Elizabeth began to rebuild her old life, starting with the return of her old governess Kat Ashley. On 7 March 1549, Elizabeth wrote to the King’s Protector, Edward Seymour, listing the reasons why Kat should return to her:
First, because that she hath been with me a long time, and many years, and hath taken great labour and pain in bringing me up in learning and honesty; and, therefore, I ought of very duty to speak for her … The second is, because I think whatsoever she hath done in my Lord Admiral’s matter, as concerning the marrying of me, she did it because knowing him to be one of the Council, she thought he would not go about any such thing without he had the Council’s consent thereunto … The third cause is, because that it shall, and doth make men think, that I am not clear of the deed myself; but that it is pardoned to me because of my youth, because she that I loved so well is in such a place.1
Elizabeth’s well-reasoned pleas succeeded, and by autumn Kat was back in her service, as was Sir Thomas Parry, although Tyrwhitt was quick to note that, apart from being an indiscreet gossip, Parry was a hopeless bookkeeper and had got Elizabeth’s finances into a mess ‘so indiscreetly made that it doth well appear he had little understanding to execute his office.’2 Soon one of Tyrwhitt’s clerks took over the bookkeeping and Parry became Elizabeth’s secretary instead.
During this period, more references appear relating to Elizabeth’s poor health, mostly relating to her trouble with migraines and eye problems. She mentions in letters that she is unable to write more often because of the pain in her ‘evil head’ and complains of ‘a disease of the head and eyes’.
In spite of these ailments, Elizabeth kept up with her studies, working diligently with her tutor, Roger Ascham. In 1548, he had written to a friend that he was unable to leave Hatfield ‘because she [Elizabeth] never lets me go anywhere.’3 Nonetheless, he had only praise for his pupil. He wrote to John Aylmer, ‘I teach her words, and she me things. I teach her tongues to speak, and her modest and maidenly looks teach me works to do. For I think she is the best disposed of any in all Europe.’ In January 1550, however, he was removed from his post, as he put it, ‘overcome by court violence and wrongs’, having got on the wrong side of Thomas Parry, who did not like him.4
In April 1550, Ascham wrote a tender and laudatory letter about his erstwhile pupil to Johann Sturm at the University of Strasbourg:
She [Elizabeth] has just passed her sixteenth birthday and shows such dignity and gentleness as are wonderful at her age and in her rank. Her study of true religion and learning is most energetic. Her mind has no womanly weakness, her perseverance is equal to that of a man, and her memory long keeps what it quickly picks up. She talks French and Italian as well as English; she has often talked to me readily and well in Latin, and moderately so in Greek. When she writes Greek and Latin, nothing is more beautiful than her handwriting. She is as much delighted with music as she is skilful in the art. In adornment she is elegant rather than showy, and by her contempt of gold and head-dresses, she reminds one of Hippolyte rather than of Phaedra … She likes a style that grows out of the subject; chaste because it is suitable, and beautiful because it is clear … I am not inventing anything, my dear Sturm, it is all true.5
Ascham remained on good terms with Elizabeth, so much so that on her later accession to the throne she appointed him her Greek Secretary, and when he died in 1568, she is reputed to have said of him, ‘I would rather have cast ten thousand pounds in the sea than parted from my Ascham.’6
Ascham’s letter mentions a valuable part of Elizabeth’s plan to rehabilitate her reputation after an anxious period as the subject of political and sexual gossip scandals. She now declined to wear elaborate, fashionable clothes, preferring her gowns to be plain and elegant. She also refused to wear ostentatious jewellery or have her hair curled and puffed in the day’s fashion.
Others also remarked on her plain dress and simple style. In 1551, Mary of Guise, Regent of Scotland, visited the English Court on her way from France to Scotland. At the time, French fashion was all the rage, but Elizabeth ‘kept her old maiden shamefastness.’7 Dr John Aylmer, tutor to Lady Jane Grey and later Bishop of London, wrote in his book A Harbour for Faithful Subjects:
The King left her [Elizabeth] rich cloths and jewels; and I know it to be true, that in seven years after her father’s death, she never in all that time looked upon that rich attire and precious jewels but once, and that against her will. And that there never came gold or stone upon her head, till her sister forced her to lay off her former sombreness, and bear her company in her glittering gayness. And then she wore it, as every man might see that her body carried that which her heart misliked. I am sure that her maidenly apparel which she used in King Edward’s time, made the noblemen’s daughters and wives to be ashamed to be dressed and painted like peacocks; being more moved with her most virtuous example than with all that ever Peter or Paul wrote touching the matter.8
Elizabeth lived quietly, moving from house to house, with a particular preference for Hatfield and Ashridge. Now that she had been vindicated of any part in Thomas Seymour’s plans, she was able to resume her visits to Court to see her brother. Elizabeth and Edward had remained close, frequently writing to each other when they were apart. When Edward asked for a portrait of her, Elizabeth sent one with this accompanying letter:
For the face, I grant, I might well blush to offer; but the mind I shall never be ashamed to present. For though from the grace of the picture the colours may fade by time … yet the other nor time with her swift wings shall overtake, nor the misty clouds with their lowerings may darken … And further I shall most humbly beseech your Majesty that when you shall look on my picture you will witsafe to think, that as you have but the outward show of the body afore you, so my inward mind wisheth, that the body itself were oftener in your presence.9
Keeping abreast of Court activity, in early 1550 Elizabeth became friendly wit
h the new leader of the Council, John Dudley, now 2nd Earl of Warwick. He was given Hatfield, her favourite house, and when she wrote to the Council in June offering to exchange a manor in Lincolnshire for Hatfield, Dudley was pleased to agree. Elizabeth and the King’s Protector, Edward Seymour, had not always been on the best terms, and she found Dudley much easier to deal with. Their good relations were well known, so much so that Jehan Scheyfve, the Imperial Ambassador, wrote in his dispatches, ‘I have heard from a safe source that my Lord Warwick is about to cast off his wife and marry my lady Elizabeth, daughter of the late King, with whom he is said to have had several secret and intimate personal communications; and by these means he will aspire to the Crown.’10
While it was a fascinating piece of gossip, there were other plans afoot for the 17-year-old Elizabeth to marry – and not to an English nobleman. Preliminary negotiations were taking place for her to marry into a powerful European family: either a French Duke or Frederick, Crown Prince of Denmark.11 Neither plan would progress very far, but political observers would have been aware that, as a Protestant, Elizabeth’s position in the royal line was strong.
When Elizabeth visited London in January 1551, Ambassador Scheyfve wrote that she ‘was most honourably received by the Council who acted thus in order to show the people how much glory belongs to her who has embraced the new religion and is become a very great lady.’12 There is no doubt that the 13-year-old Edward loved his sister Mary, but the question of her unyielding Catholicism was souring relations between them. Elizabeth worshipped according to the King’s royal decree, made no great public shows of her faith and stayed discreet. Edward was said to have called her ‘his sweet sister Temperance’.
During this period of her quiet life in the country, Elizabeth was to develop what would become one of the key relationships of her reign. In 1550, Elizabeth hired William Cecil as Surveyor for her lands and properties at a salary of £20 a year, a post that was quite a valuable sinecure at the time. A letter dating from 1548 suggests that Elizabeth and Cecil were already known to each other, probably through his post as Secretary to the Protector. He was a skilled administrator and was eventually appointed as one of the principal secretaries to the Council and its leader, John Dudley. His position allowed Cecil privileged access to the Council members, making him a valuable ally to anyone who wished to keep abreast of the political mood of the Court. As his power grew, he would become a powerful connection for Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Page 7
