Elizabeth's Rival

by Nicola Tallis

  It was probably with some positive assurance from Calvin that Francis and his son were able to return home to England. They had certainly arrived by the autumn of 1554, for at this time Lettice’s mother fell pregnant once more. For a short time life resumed its normal course in the Knollys household.29 However, as Mary’s reign progressed, her toleration for English Protestants began to dissolve. Her fervour to rid her realm of heretics was heightened by the encouragement of several of her ministers, notably Cardinal Reginald Pole and Bishop Edmund Bonner, who were almost as fanatical as she was. Mary was also supported by Parliament, who reintroduced all of the old heresy laws. This enabled Protestants to be tried for heresy, and executed if they were found guilty. On 4 February 1555, the first Protestant burning of Mary’s reign took place, and others swiftly followed.30 During Mary’s five-year reign ‘divers burned in Smithfield for heresy’ and elsewhere in the realm, including Edward VI’s former Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, who was ‘disgraded of all his orders and dignities’ and burned at Oxford on 21 March 1556.31 The historian William Camden, who would later write the first history of Elizabeth I’s reign, wrote that Mary’s ‘days have been ill spoken of, by reason of the barbarous cruelty of the Bishops, who with a most sad spectacle, in all places polluted England by burning Protestants alive’.32 It was becoming clear that nobody was safe, as the burnings affected all levels of society. As known Protestants, the persecution placed Sir Francis Knollys and his family in serious danger.

  In order to avoid persecution, many English Protestants were fleeing England for Europe, seeking refuge in Protestant-dominated cities such as Frankfurt, Geneva, Zurich and Strasbourg. Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, was among those of the nobility who had abandoned her home country, eventually finding sanctuary in Poland, while Katherine Knollys’s stepfather, William Stafford, also fled. Stafford and his second wife Dorothy Stafford, who he had married in 1552, reached Geneva in March 1554 with their children.33 He may have crossed paths with Francis and Henry, but what is certain is that he would never see his stepdaughter Katherine or his home country again; still in Geneva, Stafford died on 5 May 1556. To make matters worse, the Knollyses would have been alarmed to discover that during the first examination of Julius Palmer, the man formerly employed as a tutor to their children, Francis’s name had been mentioned. When Palmer was brought before the Mayor of Reading accused of heresy, Foxe alleged that one of the ‘greatest proofs against him’ was that ‘certain servants of Sir Francis Knollys and others, resorting to his lectures, had fallen out among themselves, and were like to have committed murder; and therefore he was a sower of sedition, and a procurer of unlawful assemblies’.34

  Although Francis himself had been accused of nothing, the fact that his name had been raised was troubling. With friends and family leaving England and under question, the net around Protestants and the Knollys’s circle was tightening. It was not long before Lettice’s family had resolved to abandon their home.

  Following his meeting with Calvin in Geneva, Francis felt confident of receiving a safe haven in Europe, and consequently decided to leave England with his family. By the summer of 1555, he and Katherine had added another child to their brood, a daughter, Anne, who was born on 19 July. As parents to eleven children, given the logistical difficulties of sixteenth-century travel it was inconceivable for the whole family to desert England in order to flee into self-imposed exile. Travelling by both land and sea was fraught with many dangers; the journey could take weeks. At some point, therefore, a decision was made for the family temporarily to separate, and it cannot have been an easy one. The first one to leave was Francis; it is unclear precisely when he left England, or if he took any of his children with him, but he had probably gone on ahead in order to secure a proper home for his family, who would follow him shortly. His brother Henry also left, and may have travelled with him. The first occasion on which his name is mentioned is in the winter of 1556, by which time he had reached Basle in Switzerland. It is possible that he met William Stafford’s widow Dorothy and her children while he was there, for following the death of her husband earlier that year it was to Basle that Dorothy had relocated with her young family.

  No matter how short a period of time they perceived their separation to be, it was a heart-wrenching decision for Francis to leave behind his home, his beloved wife and his children. Back in England, meanwhile, Lettice’s mother was making preparations to join her husband. It was simply not possible for Katherine Knollys to take her eleven children abroad with her, but the prospect of leaving some of them behind was also difficult to contemplate. She had no choice, and by 10 June 1557 she and her husband, together with five of their children and a maid, were in the German city of Frankfurt.35 Whether Katherine journeyed to Basle first to meet Francis is unclear, but she had been reunited with him before June, for their son Thomas was born at the beginning of 1558, on ‘ye Wednesday before Candlemas Day’. Their separation does, however, explain why there was almost a three-year gap in between the births of their daughter Anne in July 1555 and Thomas. Once in Frankfurt the family settled in a house owned by John Weller, a burgher of the city, and there they remained for more than a year, free from the threat of persecution but separated from half of their children.36 As Camden later related, though it was self-imposed, Francis ‘for the truth of the Gospel had been banished into Germany’.37

  The identities of the five children who joined their parents in exile abroad are unknown, but it is unlikely that Lettice was one of them.38 More probable is that Katherine Knollys took the youngest of her children with her while places for the remaining six children, including Lettice, were presumably found with people whom the Knollyses trusted. In an age that was rocked by religious turbulence, Lettice’s parents were hopeful that either their remaining children would eventually be able to join them or that the family would be able to return home at some point in the future.

  If Lettice did not accompany her parents, where was she? In November 1556 she turned thirteen, and it is possible that, having almost certainly remained in England, she joined the household of her twenty-three-year-old cousin, the Lady Elizabeth, at Hatfield. The epitaph on Lettice’s tomb in St Mary’s Church, Warwick, states that ‘in her youth [she] had been, Darling to the maiden Queen’, and it may be that a place was found for her with Elizabeth, and possibly for her fourteen-year-old sister Mary, too. If this was the case, then her placement there was probably a favour for Lettice’s mother. It was, though, by no means a safe option, for Elizabeth too faced danger during Mary’s reign.

  UNLIKE LETTICE, HER kinswoman Elizabeth had enjoyed none of the parental stability that the Knollys were able to offer their children; nor had her family life been as happy. Elizabeth was just short of her third birthday when her mother, Anne Boleyn, had been executed. Like her half-sister Mary before her, she had been declared illegitimate by her father, excluded from her place in the line of succession, and banished from her father’s presence. The rest of Elizabeth’s childhood had been spent cast under a cloud, enjoying brief periods of rehabilitation before losing her father’s favour once more. There is no doubt that all of this had an intense effect on the young girl, and shaped her attitudes and behaviour as she grew. By the time that she was eight years old, she had witnessed the death, annulment and execution of three more of her father’s brides: Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard. This had shown her that matrimony was by no means a stable course, and was fraught with insecurity. It was not until Henry VIII married the twice-widowed Katherine Parr on 12 July 1543 that life began to take a more stable course for Elizabeth.39 Katherine took a great interest in all three of her royal stepchildren, and chose to supervise the education of both Prince Edward and Elizabeth personally. Under Katherine’s watchful eye, Elizabeth flourished.

  After her father’s death, Elizabeth remained in Katherine’s care, primarily at her palace of Chelsea, and continued with her lessons. However, in May 1548 the revelation of a danger
ous flirtation with Katherine’s fourth husband, Edward VI’s younger maternal uncle Sir Thomas Seymour, led to her banishment from the Queen Dowager’s household. It was an experience that would tarnish Elizabeth’s reputation, but it taught her a valuable lesson about her dealings with men.

  In appearance, Elizabeth had inherited many of the Tudor characteristics, including flame-red hair like her father. The Venetian ambassador reported that ‘her face is comely rather than handsome’, she was tall and slim, ‘with a good skin, although swarthy’ which she had inherited from her mother.40 She also had fine eyes and ‘above all a beautiful hand of which she makes a display’.41 She was one of the most intelligent young women in the kingdom, and had been privileged enough to be taught by some of the finest minds in the country, including William Grindal and the accomplished scholar Roger Ascham.42 Under Ascham’s tutelage Elizabeth excelled, and her brilliant mind impressed many of her contemporaries, including her tutors. Ascham later enthusiastically praised ‘my illustrious mistress, the Lady Elizabeth’, who ‘shines like a star’.43 John Foxe also wrote about her in complimentary terms, relating that she did ‘rather excel in all manner of virtue and knowledge of learning’.44 She was particularly skilled at languages, and wrote and spoke several fluently. These included Latin, French, Spanish, Italian and Greek, and she continued to do the exercises in translations that she had started as a child for the rest of her life. One of the most notable surviving examples of her work was the translation of Marguerite d’Angouleme’s verse The Mirror or Glass of the Sinful Soul, which Elizabeth translated from French to English as a New Year’s gift for Katherine Parr in 1544.45 William Camden would later praise her talents, including her

  modest gratuity, excellent wit, royal mind, happy memory, and indefatigable study of learning, insomuch before she was seventeen years of age, she understood well the Latin, French and Italian tongues, and was indifferently well seen in the Greek. Neither did she neglect music, so far forth as might beseem a Princess, being able to sing and play on the lute prettily and sweetly.46

  Like Lettice, Elizabeth had also been raised as a Protestant and she shared similar views to her half-brother Edward, to whom she was close. The two were only four years apart in age and also had their academic interests in common. The same could not be said of her half-sister, Mary. Their father had separated from Mary’s mother, Katherine of Aragon, in order to marry Elizabeth’s, and the wound ran deep. The emotional impact that her parents’ annulment case had had on Mary had been overwhelming. It had caused a huge rift between father and daughter, as Mary refused to obey her father’s demands that she acknowledge her mother’s marriage to have been invalid. Further resentment had been caused when Anne Boleyn had ordered Mary to join the household of her baby half-sister at Hatfield. Despite the unhappy circumstances in which she found herself, and to her own surprise, Mary had grown fond of Elizabeth. There was a seventeen-year age gap between the half-sisters, and consequently Mary had in many ways assumed the role of mother to Elizabeth, playing with her and showering her with gifts.

  Following the death, though, of Henry VIII, the relationship between the two half-sisters had become more strained. Mary had been shocked by Katherine Parr’s speedy remarriage to Thomas Seymour, and she disapproved of Elizabeth’s decision to join Katherine’s household.47 Besides that, their religious differences were starting to become more apparent. When Edward VI died, during the brief days of Lady Jane Grey’s queenship Elizabeth laid low at Hatfield, waiting to see how events unfolded. When Mary successfully toppled Jane, Elizabeth was determined to share in her glory. She wrote Mary a congratulatory note, and set out for the capital in order to greet her. On 3 August, Elizabeth was by Mary’s side as she entered London in triumph, but despite this outward display of loyalty, beneath the surface tension simmered. Nevertheless, she participated in the celebrations for Mary’s coronation, travelling through London on 30 September with her former stepmother Anne of Cleves in a ‘rich chariot covered with cloth of silver’ behind the Queen.48

  Elizabeth was a well-known Protestant, but in spite of this she appeared outwardly to conform with Mary’s religious policies. In December 1553, the Imperial ambassador had informed the Emperor Charles V that when Elizabeth left court for her own estates, she had written to ask the Queen ‘for ornaments for her chapel: copes, chasubles, chalices, crosses, patens and other similar objects. The Queen had ordered all these things to be sent to her, as it was for God’s service and Elizabeth wished to bear witness to the religion she had declared she meant to follow.’49 Mary and her advisors were yet suspicious of Elizabeth’s true motives, and with good reason.

  In January 1554, the Wyatt Rebellion came to light, and for Elizabeth, matters were about to become a whole lot worse. The plot, led by a Kentish gentleman named Sir Thomas Wyatt, was an attempt to protest against the Queen’s intended Spanish marriage to Prince Philip, but there was also a more sinister twist. Another of the rebels’ primary objectives was to remove the Catholic Queen Mary and replace her with her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth. The rebellion was crushed, but it would have fateful consequences for many. Since her arrest in July 1553, Lady Jane Grey had languished in the Tower of London; on 13 November she had been condemned for treason, but no further move had been made against her. She had no knowledge, involvement or place in the Wyatt Rebellion, but her father did. The Duke of Suffolk’s involvement, as a key conspirator, sealed his daughter’s fate, and that of his son-in-law. On the morning of 12 February 1554, Jane and Guildford Dudley were executed, and eleven days later Suffolk followed them to the block.50

  Following the discovery of Wyatt’s treason it was not long before the Queen’s officers came knocking at Elizabeth’s door, as she had known they would. On 9 February they had arrived at Ashridge, the palatial Hertfordshire residence which had been left to Elizabeth by her father, and in which she had passed many of her turbulent adolescent years. They informed her that she must accompany them to the safety of London, where they could be sure to monitor her activities. It was not the first time she had been summoned, for just weeks earlier, at the outset of rebellion, the Queen had personally written to her half-sister, inviting her to court for her own safety. But Elizabeth was determined to resist all attempts to cage her, and eager to see how events played out she had declared that she was too ill to travel the twenty miles to the capital. Preoccupied with the suppression of the rebellion, the Queen’s Council had let her be. Once the danger had passed, though, and the traitor Wyatt had been incarcerated in the Tower, Elizabeth had to be brought to heel.

  Summoned to London for questioning, Elizabeth repudiated everything. If the Council wanted a confession from her, other tactics would be required. For this reason the decision was taken to send Elizabeth to the Tower, in the hope of extracting an admission of her guilt. It was Palm Sunday, 18 March, when Elizabeth was ‘had to the Tower from Westminster by water privily’.51 The rain poured ceaselessly as she boarded a barge that conveyed her to the mighty fortress, and as she landed at the Tower wharf, she took the opportunity to declare her innocence: ‘Here landeth as true a subject, being prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs; and before thee, O God! I speak it, having no other friends but thee alone.’52 Always her father’s daughter, Elizabeth knew how to maximize the Tudor propaganda system, and played it for all it was worth. It was a moving speech, but one which did nothing to alter her situation.

  In a further distressing twist, Elizabeth was led through the Tower precincts to the Royal Apartments, close to where the scaffold that had recently severed Lady Jane Grey’s head still stood. Whether by chance or design, she was taken to the exact same rooms that her mother had once occupied in the days leading up to her execution less than two decades earlier.53 Despite her perilous circumstances, Elizabeth would confess to nothing. She was clever, and while plans for the Wyatt Rebellion had been laid, she had been careful to ensure that there was nothing that could directly incriminate her – much to the Council’s frustratio
n. There was no doubt that she had been kept informed of the progress of the rebellion, for Wyatt himself had admitted as much under interrogation, but no evidence could be found that she had indeed approved of, or participated in, the plans. She had been mindful, and had given only non-committal oral replies to Wyatt’s messages.

  Under pressure Elizabeth kept her composure, yet still the Queen and Council were determined to break her down. Convinced of her half-sister’s guilt, Queen Mary had remarked to the Imperial ambassador, Simon Renard, that ‘Elizabeth’s character was just what she had always believed it to be’, and the Council began to turn up the pressure on the unfortunate girl.54 No evidence against her was forthcoming; Thomas Wyatt declared Elizabeth to be blameless as he stood on the scaffold on 11 April, and ultimately Mary was left with no choice: on 19 May, the anniversary of her mother’s execution, Elizabeth was removed from the Tower and ‘went through London Bridge in her barge’ to Richmond Palace, but her imprisonment was not at an end.55 The following day she began the journey to the crumbling royal palace at Woodstock, ‘there to remain at the Queen’s pleasure’.56 Once there, Elizabeth was forced to endure almost another year of house imprisonment under the supervision of Sir Henry Bedingfield, a Catholic gentleman who was utterly loyal to Queen Mary.57 It was not until the spring of 1555 that she was summoned to attend on the Queen at Hampton Court. By that time Mary believed herself to be pregnant and had retired from the noise and dirt of London for her confinement. She had high hopes of producing a son – a Catholic prince to succeed her – but alas, to Mary’s sorrow the pregnancy was a phantom one.