'Tis known I am Fair, And Brisk as the Air; Not one in a thousand With Me can Compare.
T
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he boy-king Edward was proving to be none too hardy. Dudley was toughening him by letting him ride and wrestle and run at the ring—sports Edward Seymour had never permitted—but he took such a jolting in the saddle that his delicate physique looked as if it would fly to pieces, and his boyish grimace of determination made him seem all the more vulnerable. In November of 1550 he was very ill, and though the episode was kept as secret as possible one ambassador learned soon afterward that he had been near death, and that even his doctors had given up hope. 1
If Edward should die before marrying and begetting an heir the presumption was that Mary, as the elder sister, would succeed him, despite her opposition to the prevailing faith. Yet Mary was sickly, and had been since adolescence. From time to time she slipped into deep melancholia and coma-like immobility, her skin drained of color and her face haggard and aged. Mary's chronic illness struck each year at the "fall of the leaf," and sometimes oftener. Her survival could not be counted on. "My health," she wrote to the council early in 1551, "is more unstable than that of any creature." 2
Next in line, surely, was "the right excellent princess the lady Elizabeth her grace." Such was the exalted style by which she was known at court;
the people too called her princess, fully sensitive to the implications of the title.
Overshadowing the mortality of King Edward and both his sisters was the dark menace of the sweating sickness. In the summer of 1551 the deaths began, a few in the first days, then dozens, then hundreds. It had been nearly a quarter of a century since the last virulent epidemic of the sweat had driven Londoners into the countryside in panic in an effort to flee the contagion. That had been in 1528, a year memorable for terrible loss of life and for the mantle of sickening fear that closed in as the corpses multiplied. Now in 1551 the visitation returned. As if struck by the angry hand of God men and women staggered and cried out, suddenly disoriented and terrified. Their heads throbbing, burning with fever and exuding a stinking sweat, they were overcome by a desire to sleep yet dared not sleep, for if they did they became delirious and died within hours raving mad.
Old people who had survived the last epidemic were agreed that this one was worse—"more vehement than the old sweat"—and got away as quickly as they could. The king braved it out for a time, but when the daily death toll in London reached a hundred and twenty he too fled. "One of my gentlemen, another of my grooms fell sick and died," Edward wrote dispassionately in his journal. "I removed to Hampton Court with very few with me. 3
The long summer dragged past, a summer of tolling bells and shuttered houses, with creaking wagons bearing cartloads of the dead through the deserted streets. And even as they stood in the shadow of death the disaffected English did not forget to rail against the merchants, who had "suddenly raised the prices of all things to a marvelous reckoning," to rebel against the payment of tithes and the plunging value of coins, above all to denounce the councilors, especially Dudley, for their corruption and mis-government. Troops of horsemen were sent out into the countryside by the council as a show of force, yet the loud denunciations could not be stilled. And the king, though he escaped the sweat, succumbed to his own frailty. During the late summer and fall he became "very thin and weak," causing Dudley and the others to fret once more over the succession and turn over in their minds the counterbalancing merits of the king's two sisters.
Elizabeth, meanwhile, turned her attention to the running of her great household at Hatfield. The house was hers now; Dudley, who got it from the king, had made it over to her, at the same time securing to her the rest of her lands—the lands Thomas Seymour had been so inquisitive about. It must have been comforting to Elizabeth to know that the house which had been her home for so much of her life would now be hers forever, its vast
green parks, "replenished with wood of great age," its gardens and orchards, its "very stately lodgings" a permanent sanctuary amid uncertainty.
A book of household accounts kept at Hatfield in these years tells a little about her life there. Its rubric indicates her regality: a rosebush was intertwined with the opening letters, with the red and white roses of her Tudor and Plantagenet grandparents and her own initial E overlaid. At the bottom of each page was the chamberlain's name and Elizabeth's own bold signature, with its elaborate scrollwork and flourishes; Thomas Parry had resumed his office of cofferer, but the detailed accounting was now out of his hands. 4 Wages for the servants indicate a very large and active household, with thirteen liveried gentlemen and a number of ladies and gentlewomen constituting a minor court and dozens of yeomen, grooms, chamber women and kitchen servants laboring to warm and clean the rooms, cook the food, look after the clothes and tend the animals and grounds for the grander staff. The Ashleys were on the household rolls along with Thomas Parry, and Blanche Parry, who was far into her second decade of service to Elizabeth and had decided to go on serving her, forgoing marriage for her mistress's sake.
One familiar name was missing from the rolls: Roger Ascham. He had left her service sometime in 1549 or early 1550, "shipwrecked" by a storm of "recent violence and injury at court." It had been Elizabeth's steward and not Elizabeth herself who had sent him away; she had shown her continued good will by reinstalling him at Cambridge through her patronage. Yet it rankled with Ascham that still another of his hopeful beginnings had ended in bitterness and bad luck, and as he returned to the scholarly life he took solace in his favorite diversions of archery and cockfighting, and gambled away his earnings and what remained of his youth. 5
Hatfield was many things—a great house, a country estate, and a working farm whose fields and pasturelands yielded an abundance of food. Beef, mutton and veal for the long tables in the great hall came from cattle and sheep that grew fat on the grazing lands of the estate; suet from the butchered animals yielded tallow for candles and soap; their wool made cloaks and tunics and their leather, a multitude of things. There was abundance enough, in 1551 and 1552, to supply most household needs and to provide mutton, candles, wood and fresh fish to the court of King Edward as well.
The rhythm of life at the manor followed that of the agricultural year, with plowing, weeding and the felling of timber in the spring, shearing in June, then the climax of the cycle, the high season of summer when wagonloads of newly harvested hay and grain choked the manor courtyard
and purveyors of foodstuffs and other necessities came to sell goods to be laid up for the winter. On through the fall the heightened activity continued, with laborers picking fruit and chopping and stacking logs and gathering fresh rushes to store against the cold season to come. Then at last, with the onset of the autumn frosts, the chimneys were cleaned and the strawberries and flowers covered, and the household settled in around the hearth to celebrate the holidays and wait for the spring thaw.
In her accounts Elizabeth showed a countrywoman's frugality. Nothing was wasted. Oxhides and calfskins and the entrails of the cattle were sold. Sheep yielded high profits in woolfells—at least until 1551, when in response to severe devaluation the demand for English wool dropped sharply —and the Hatfield account book records that even the remains of diseased animals were turned to profit. Along with the income from wool of various grades is an entry for "mutton skins which died of the rot." But parsimony did not preclude charity. Among the payments are subsidies to poor scholars at Oxford and Cambridge, and to "a poor woman that came out of Ireland," and alms whose recipients were not described. Relatives were generously rewarded. Seventy pounds was paid to "Edmund Boleyn, her grace's kinsman," and gifts of money were made "at the christening of Mr. Carey's child" and again "to Mistress Carey at her departing from Hatfield"—possibly, though not certainly, George Carey, son of Mary Boleyn and Elizabeth's first cousin, and his wife.
The household accounts preserve something of the flavor of daily life. There are charges for the care of Eliz
abeth's two geldings, for lute strings, and for the flowers and herbs she used to freshen her chamber and other rooms in the house. The bills from Warren the tailor list such plain fabrics as fustian and cotton alongside the sober black velvet that went into her robes and hoods, and the two Bibles she ordered echo Elizabeth's newfound image of godliness. Other entries are reminders of her rank—costly New Year's gifts formally received from courtiers and others she ordered from a goldsmith to be sent in return, rewards to the footmen, grooms, and minstrels of Edward's court when she visited St. James's in 1552, payments to the companies of boys who presented plays before her, and to the playwrights.
Life at Protestant Hatfield was tranquil indeed compared to Mary's Catholic establishment, where a siege mentality gripped both Mary herself and the embattled coreligionists who had enrolled themselves in large numbers in her service. Since the start of the reign Mary's relations with the ruling group had grown steadily worse; King Edward was persuaded that her faith put her at odds with him, while the Protector and, later, Dudley
saw her Catholicism not only as a peril to her soul but as a danger to the security of the kingdom.
Mary had lately shown just how great a danger she represented. In June of 1550 she had tried to escape. Charles V had sent an expedition to rescue her: a flat-bottomed grain ship slipped into an Essex harbor, waiting to take her aboard in disguise and carry her to Flanders. A last-minute confusion of events made escape impossible, but Mary's determination to risk all was never in doubt, and if she had been able to get away the consequences might have been far-reaching. The emperor, it was said, had planned to marry his cousin Mary to his son Philip, who would then inherit Mary's claim to the throne. Philip would invade England, setting King Edward aside as a schismatic and bastard, and ruling in his wife's name but in the Hapsburg interests. 6
The contrast between the king's sisters was becoming more and more pronounced. Londoners were growing accustomed to watching their imposing, handsomely appointed retinues pass through the streets on their way to and from court, and to noting the size and character of their escorts. When Elizabeth entered London to spend the Christmas season with her brother careful note was taken of the "great suite" of gentlemen and ladies that accompanied her, and of the hundred horsemen of the royal guard provided by the king. The conspicuous respect shown her by the council on her arrival was also observed with interest; the councilors "acted thus," the imperial ambassador wrote, "to show the people how much glory belongs to her who has embraced the new religion and is become a very great lady."
Epiphany was celebrated with a sumptuous banquet, with Elizabeth in the place of honor below her brother, and after the feasting the king and princess were taken to see bear-baiting and other entertainments. Elizabeth was just seventeen, Edward thirteen; as they sat together, alike in coloring and in the delicacy of their features, they might have been any well-born brother and sister watching a holiday performance. Dudley, who sat nearby, deep in conversation with the French ambassador, might have been a benevolent guardian and not the feared power behind the throne. 7
But Mary too could show what a "very great lady" she was, with or without the council's support. Two months later she rode into the capital with a huge train of followers. A liveried guard of fifty preceded her, and eighty gentlemen and ladies rode behind—the council provided no escort —but the parade was swollen in size by the hundreds of ordinary citizens who had gone out from the city to greet her and accompany her to the palace. All the mounted riders, and no doubt many of those who followed
on foot, wore large rosaries, making this as much a religious procession as a state entry. The event had an aura of sacred drama. Spectators reported seeing visions in the sky—armored horsemen, miraculous suns glowing with otherworldly fire—as Mary and her supporters passed, and feeling the earth shake beneath them with awesome force.
It was no wonder Dudley feared Mary, for she commanded wide popular support and incarnated both the old faith and the old ways of more settled times. So far, despite persuasions and threats, he had not been able to force her to give up the mass, or even to keep her worship private, restricting her large and influential household from joining in. Dudley "governed absolutely," it was said; with his allies William Parr, marquess of Northampton, and "that mad, fighting fellow" William Herbert, soon to become earl of Pembroke, Dudley so overawed the council that none dared oppose him. Yet Mary stubbornly resisted, and Dudley had not yet found a way to break her as he had all other opposition.
He was about to complete the destruction of his only potential rival, Edward Seymour. The former Protector, released from imprisonment in the Tower early in 1550, had inched his way back toward membership in the council and in a gesture of submissive reconciliation had married his daughter to Dudley's eldest son! But by spring, 1551, he was conspiring to maneuver the arrest of Dudley, Northampton and Pembroke, and though before long he decided the scheme was unworkable, several of his coconspirators could not be held in check; through their blundering he was arrested and eventually convicted on a charge of felony.
The day Seymour was arrested Dudley inaugurated such security precautions as had not been seen since the great rebellions of 1549. All approaches to the capital were blocked by mounted guards; a night watch was set; vagabonds and suspect persons with no responsible citizen to vouch for them were expelled. To forestall a public outcry when news of the arrest spread the officers and wardens of the livery companies were told the official account of Seymour's activities. He had meant to seize the Tower, then to "have destroyed the city of London, and the substantial men of the same." There was much resentment, but no uprising, when Seymour was executed the following January, the words "Lord Jesus, save me" on his lips. 8
Dudley's apprehension and overarmed safety measures were indicative of his paramount fear: that the underlying weakness of his rule would be detected, and that the floodgates of rebellion would open in a final apocalyptic burst. The only hope lay in the semblance of power, and in the immediate and savage suppression of even the slightest disorder. Convinced that he had to act quickly, Dudley entrenched himself behind a semi-permanent army of mercenaries and private troops led by trusted
councilors and peers licensed to maintain them at state expense. These "lords lieutenants," he hoped, would hold the country together while King Edward's minority lasted, which he expected would not be too much longer. In this year of 1551 he brought Edward into the council meetings and encouraged him to employ his excellent education in writing long analyses of governmental issues—copied from drafts prepared by others— in elegant Latin. The young man was gaining a solid grasp of affairs, and lacked only strength and size—and health—to make a promising king.
But Edward's health was in the hands of fate, and as he grew older it began to seem that fate would be cruel. For several years courtiers had been saying privately that the king was not likely to live long; his astrology foretold an early death. In the fall of 1552 he was visited by Girolamo Cardano, a physician and medical astrologer. Cardano found the contrast between Edward's unusual physical beauty and mental endowments and his inherent frailty tragic. He agreed with the appraisal of a visiting French nobleman that the king was "an angel in human form," his face and figure as beautiful as could be imagined. Yet his vital powers were irremediably weak, Cardano judged, and there was "an appearance on his face denoting early death." 9
His final illness began as a rasping cough which racked his slender frame and seemed to drain his spirits as well. Before long he had begun to spit up corrupt matter from his lungs, some of it "pink like the color of blood," and his thin arms and legs grew thinner and his muscles too weak to support him. The outcome was clear, and the physicians admitted it, though Londoners who spread rumors that their king was dead or dying had their ears torn off in punishment.
By mid-May there was no longer any question of whether the king would die; there was only the question of when. Ulcers broke out on his fevered body, and his swollen belly�
�swollen from malnutrition, as he could eat nothing and was subsisting on the reeking compounds prescribed by his apothecaries—made a grotesque contrast to his shrunken limbs. He coughed continuously.
There was wild speculation about the succession. It was hardly conceivable that the Catholic Mary, designated heir under the 1544 Act of Succession and Henry VIILs will, would be crowned queen when Edward died. Quite apart from the issue of her sex, and her unmarried status, she would undo the reformation in England, which only in the last year had taken full form with the passage of the second Act of Uniformity and introduction of the revised Book of Common Prayer. The communion service in the new-prayer book had no resemblance to the mass, and was at base a commemoration rather than a miraculous reenactment of Christ's sacrifice. Mary
would undoubtedly sweep this away, along with every other piece of ecclesiastical legislation enacted over the last twenty years, and such a thoroughgoing change would threaten far more people—prominent among them the holders of former monastic lands—than would welcome it.
And if Mary was unsuitable, then the natural choice would be Elizabeth. Rumor had it, in fact, that Elizabeth would soon be in London, and that Dudley's eldest son John intended to put aside his wife and marry her. The story was not entirely implausible, though Dudley's younger son Robert would have been more to Elizabeth's taste. Her childhood companion, Robert Dudley had continued his close ties to Elizabeth in adolescence; Ascham had tutored them both. In 1551 Robert had married a Norfolk heiress, Amy Robsart, but the marriage had been childless and the couple had become estranged. If any Dudley was to be linked with Elizabeth, it would most likely be Lord Robert.
The first Elizabeth Page 12
