by Tracy Borman
CHAPTER 4
Stepmothers
We are more bounde to them that bringeth us up wel than to our parents, for our parents do that wiche is natural for them, that is bringeth us into this worlde but our brinkers up ar a cause to make us live wel in it.
Elizabeth quoted these words of Saint Gregory in 1549 when she was facing the greatest crisis of her young life since the death of her mother. The “brinker up” to whom she was referring had been in charge of her upbringing for almost thirteen years, and had had a profound effect on the girl’s intellectual, spiritual, and, above all, emotional development. Those who saw them together were astonished by the close bond that existed between them. Many said that she was the mother that Elizabeth had never had.
Katherine (or “Kat,” as Elizabeth affectionately called her) Champernowne had been appointed to her royal charge’s household in the autumn of 1536. Like all those with responsibility for the king’s children, she had excellent credentials. She was the daughter of Sir Philip Champernowne, a landowner in Devon, and Katherine, daughter of Sir Edmund Carew of the same county. Both were ancient families with a pedigree stretching back hundreds of years, and their union meant that Kat was related to all the leading gentry of the West Country. Her father was immensely proud of this fact, and engaged in learned discussions about his family’s history with the antiquarian John Leland.
As well as her pedigree, Kat had the advantage of being raised in an enlightened household where the benefits of a good education were fully believed in and promoted. It was common for aristocratic households to employ private tutors for their children, and their education began from about the age of five. Unusually for the time, Sir Philip was as committed to his daughters’ education as he was to his sons’. Kat developed an interest in humanism and classical scholarship, which had become popular in the Tudor court from the early sixteenth century. Her sister Joan, meanwhile, became a passionate advocate of the rights of women in society—a deeply shocking concept in the early sixteenth century.
All of this was in stark contrast to the education received by most aristocratic women, which was woefully inadequate when compared to that received by men. The king’s late wife, Jane Seymour, had been barely literate. The primary aim of a woman’s education was to produce wives schooled in godly and moral precepts, as well as in household management, sewing, embroidery, dancing, music, and riding, rather than to promote independent thinking. So long as a woman was able to act as a charming hostess and manage the household efficiently, then her husband would have no cause for complaint. Such social skills were easily passed on from one generation to the next, and most girls were educated by their mothers or other female guardians. Katherine Pole, Countess of Huntingdon, considered that her four daughters had left her care “literate, although not overstuffed with learning.” All of this was a natural and satisfactory state as far as men were concerned. Indeed, some compared a woman with a good education to a madman with a sword: She would handle it without reason, and only as violent fits of illness compelled her.
Kat’s own experience aside, there were other exceptions to this general rule. Sir Thomas More saw to it that all his daughters received an education on a par with that given to young men, and Lady Jane Grey was renowned as an excellent scholar. Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, became, during Elizabeth’s reign, a poet and literary figure in her own right. But even those women complied with the most important lesson taught to all their sex: that their position in society was one of subservience to men. Sixteenth-century society was shaped by the Church, which taught the misogynistic lessons of Saint Paul. Women were the authors of original sin; instruments of the devil. Their only hope for salvation was to accept their natural inferiority to men; as the Calvinist preacher John Knoxe declared: “Woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man.” The young Elizabeth would have cause to rejoice that Kat had not conformed to this view.
Kat’s introduction to court was facilitated by the career of her eldest brother, John, who was said to have been a favorite of Henry VIII because of his “quaint conceits.” It was also helped by the advantageous marriage that her sister Joan had made to Sir Anthony Denny, a gentleman of the king’s privy chamber, which gave her a further entrée into court circles. Kat soon became known for her humanist principles, which automatically won her favor with the most powerful minister at court, Thomas Cromwell. He was sufficiently impressed to recommend her to the king as a suitable companion for his daughter.
Kat had joined the Lady Elizabeth’s household by October 1536, although it is not clear in what capacity. She was probably then in her late twenties or early thirties, and certainly unmarried. She wrote to thank Cromwell for his favor in “reporting well of her to the King” and securing a position for her. However, it was with some embarrassment that she also had to beg him to procure her a salary, for she had no other means to sustain herself and was loath to burden her father with her upkeep, “who has as much to do with the little living he has as any man.”1 It seems that she was successful, for her name appears in the household accounts some time later as a salaried employee.2 When Lady Margaret Bryan was transferred to Prince Edward’s household shortly afterward, Kat was presented with an ideal opportunity to advance her career. As an unmarried woman, she could not assume the position of Lady Mistress, and this title went to Lady Troy. But she was more than consoled by being appointed governess to the three-year-old Elizabeth—an honor for one of her youth and slender experience.
Kat was an instant hit with the young Elizabeth. She was of an altogether different character than the formidable Lady Bryan. Her enlightened education had given her a much stronger sense of independence than most women of her age, and her keen intellect was appealing to the precocious child for whose education she was now responsible. She was also of a warm, kind-hearted disposition and had a lively sense of fun, which occasionally bordered on irreverence. The only known portrait of her shows an attractive but homely woman with large dark eyes and an expression that suggests some secret amusement. She is dressed in fine but sombre clothes, as befits her station. Beside her is a painted skull, which was a symbol both of humility and of the need to meditate upon one’s salvation. Further proof of her moral uprightness is given in the inscription, which affirms the sitter’s ability to resist temptation. The overall image is exactly appropriate for the governess of a king’s daughter. But then, appearances can be deceptive.
No doubt it was less Kat’s sound moral purpose and piety that impressed the young Elizabeth than her lively humor and challenging intellect. For the first time since the death of her mother, she had found a woman who just might be a fitting replacement. One of the strongest attractions was the fact that Kat was deeply unconventional in her approach to child care. Various contemporary tracts provided strict guidelines for governesses in raising young girls. For a start, they should be encouraged to play with girls their own age. The surviving evidence suggests that this was something Elizabeth rarely did; Kat was the closest she had to a playmate, as well as being a role model during her most formative years. Governesses were also discouraged from displaying affection toward their charges. Kat almost certainly failed in this respect: the closeness of the bond she shared with Elizabeth cannot have rested upon intellectual compatibility alone. Finally—and most important—girls were to be kept away from all men (with the exception of tutors and clerics), on the basis that “our love naturally continues toward those with whom we have passed our youth.”3 As the years to come would prove, this last lesson was one that Kat would have done well to heed.
Not everyone in the household at Hunsdon was as impressed with Mistress Champernowne as her young charge. The bond that had developed so quickly between them excited a degree of jealousy among the other women of the household. Kat did not help matters by appearing to shun all other rivals to Elizabeth’s affections. It was customary for the Lady Mistress and one other female servant (usually Blanche Parry) to sleep in Elizabeth’s bed
chamber. However, a number of Elizabeth’s other ladies later attested that Kat had ousted Lady Troy and her niece from this duty, saying that she “could abide nobody there but herself.”4 It was further alleged that Lady Troy eventually tired of Kat’s domineering influence and resigned her post. Blanche Parry endured it more stoically, being of a calmer temperament, and established a relatively harmonious—if not overly friendly—working relationship with the governess. Nevertheless, Kat’s presence was said to have caused an uncomfortable atmosphere in the household.
Meanwhile, at court there was hardly any mention of Elizabeth and her sister, Mary, during the months immediately following the death of Jane Seymour. The king was content to leave the direction of their households to others. By contrast, he took a keen interest in the health and upbringing of his new heir, Prince Edward. He and his ministers were also preoccupied by the progress of the Reformation and the country’s relations with its Continental neighbors. It was the latter consideration that drove Thomas Cromwell to seek a new bride for his royal master in 1539. After the turmoil of his marital history so far, Henry was prepared to let his chief minister arrange his fourth marriage as a matter of state, free from the complications of love and desire. Besides, he now had a male heir, which considerably reduced the pressure on any such union.
In January 1539, Pope Paul III had reissued the bull of excommunication against Henry, which had first been presented upon the latter’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon. This, coupled with a dangerous alliance between the two greatest powers in Europe, France and Spain, prompted Cromwell to seek an alliance with a Protestant state in order to neutralize the increased Catholic threat. He alighted upon the Duchy of Cleves, a strategically important principality of the Holy Roman Empire that connected the Habsburgs’ dominions in the Netherlands with their Italian territories. Although nominally part of the Empire, the Duchy was virtually independent from Charles V’s authority and was renowned for its reformist Catholic tendencies, which were exactly in line with those held by Henry in England. Cromwell therefore pursued the alliance as a means of consolidating the English Reformation.
The Duchy offered a potential bride for Henry in the form of Anne, daughter of the late duke, Johann III, and sister of his successor, Wilhelm. Anne was then twenty-three years of age and had already been used as a pawn in the international marriage market when she had been betrothed to François, heir to the Duchy of Lorraine, in 1527. This had come to nothing, leaving her free to marry elsewhere. Cromwell duly began negotiations in March 1539, and by late summer an agreement had been reached.
Although the English emissaries praised Anne for her beauty, Hans Holbein was dispatched to paint a portrait of her so that Henry could see what he was letting himself in for. He received this a short while later and was said to have been delighted as he surveyed the pretty, doll-like face that looked back at him, with its fair hair, delicate eyes, mouth, and chin, and demure, maidenly expression. The match was confirmed, and a treaty was signed in October. A few weeks later, Anne embarked upon her journey to England.
On New Year’s Eve, she arrived at a stormy, windswept Rochester Castle in Kent. The next day, following the custom favored by Renaissance monarchs who were betrothed to foreign brides whom they had never met, Henry hastened to greet her in disguise. He was horrified with what he saw. “I like her not! I like her not!” he shouted at Cromwell when the meeting was over. It seemed that Anne had been rather flattered by her portrait. In contrast to the petite stature of his first three wives, she was tall, big boned, and strong featured. Her face was dominated by a large nose that had been cleverly disguised by the angle of Holbein’s portrait, and her skin was pitted with the marks of smallpox. She also suffered from a body odor so strong that it was remarked on by several members of the court even at a time when personal hygiene was by no means fastidious.
However abhorrent his new bride might be to Henry, there was no going back. It would have caused a major diplomatic incident if he had reneged on the treaty, and England could ill afford to lose allies. The wedding duly took place on January 6, and the king now had to do his duty by consummating it. To be fair, although much has been written of the physical shortcomings of the “Flanders Mare,” Henry himself cannot have presented a very alluring prospect. He was more than twice his young bride’s age, his girth had increased considerably in recent years, and he suffered from stinking sores on his legs, caused by injuries inflicted while jousting in his younger days. But Anne was an apparently willing bride and gave every appearance of joy in her new husband. She did not have much to compare him to, for as well as being chaste, she was entirely innocent of the ways of the world and apparently had no idea what was involved in consummation.
Thanks to the events that happened afterward, a detailed account of the wedding night exists among the records of Henry’s reign. The king had run his hands all over his new wife’s body, which had so repelled him that he had found himself incapable of doing any more. The following morning, he told Cromwell that he found Anne even more abhorrent than when he had first beheld her, bemoaning: “she is nothing fair, and have very evil smells about her.” He went on to claim that there had been certain “tokens” to suggest that she was no maid, not least “the looseness of her breasts,” which he had apparently examined closely. As a result, the lady had been “indisposed to excite and provoke any lust” in him, and he concluded that he had “left her as good a maid as I found her.” For her part, Anne’s innocence had been proved by her confiding to her maids that she believed she might be pregnant because the king had “kissed her good night.”5
To the outside world, everything was as it should be. Anne wrote to her family assuring them that she was very happy with her husband. She was probably telling the truth: her innocence prevented her knowing that anything was amiss. Meanwhile, Henry made sure that he appeared in public with his new queen as often as could be expected. A month after the wedding, they rode by barge to Westminster and were feted by the Londoners who lined the route. Anne received gifts from her new subjects and entered into the court festivities with all due alacrity. The royal couple attended the May Day tournaments, and the king dined in his new wife’s apartments—a sign of intimacy.
But behind the scenes, Henry was working to secure an annulment. Not only did Anne repel him physically, but her character and accomplishments were not what was expected of a Queen of England. The education of noble ladies in Cleves was very different from that in her new country. The English ambassador there noted that “they take it here in Germany for a rebuke and an occasion of lightness that great ladies should be learned or have any knowledge of music.”6 As a result, Anne could neither dance nor play a musical instrument, and her ignorance and shyness rendered her an embarrassment in the sophisticated world of the Tudor court. The sooner Henry could be rid of her, the better.
None of this was known to the king’s younger daughter, Elizabeth, who was at her residence of Hertford Castle, eagerly awaiting an invitation to come meet her new stepmother. At six and a half years of age, Elizabeth had clearly matured a great deal since the death of her first stepmother in 1537. Having been in the political wilderness for three years, she seemed to appreciate the necessity of ingratiating herself with her father’s new wife in order to enhance her own position. She therefore wrote to Anne shortly after the wedding, entreating her: “Permit me to show, by this billet, the zeal with which I devote my respect to you as queen, and my entire obedience to you as my mother.” In words of the utmost deference and courtesy, she went on to say: “I am too young and feeble to have power to do more than felicitate you with all my heart in this commencement of your marriage. I hope your Majesty will have as much goodwill for me as I have zeal for your service.”7 It was a masterly composition, worthy of one much older in years than Elizabeth. She had evidently learned a great deal from the vicissitudes of her father’s favor and the ever-changing pattern of his marital relations.
Anne was charmed when she received thi
s letter. In her guileless state, she immediately showed it to the king and asked if Elizabeth might come to court. Expecting him to share in her delight at his daughter’s precocity, she was taken aback when her husband angrily denied her request. Irritated by this reminder of another marriage that he would rather forget, he gave the letter to Cromwell, ordering him to write a suitable reply. “Tell her that she had a mother so different from this woman that she ought not to wish to see her,” he added spitefully.8
Whether Anne succeeded in persuading Henry to reconsider is not certain, but she subsequently became acquainted with all of his children. Although she was shy and uncultured, she was also sensible and kind, and rapidly established a good rapport with them. At twenty-four, she was close to Mary’s age, and the two struck up an apparently warm friendship. Although she sent gifts to Prince Edward, Anne evidently reasoned that he had nurses and governesses enough to fuss over him, for the child that she focused most attention upon was Elizabeth. Having been predisposed to like the young girl by that charming note she had received soon after her marriage, she perhaps also came to pity her for her motherless state and the king’s cruel neglect.
But events at court looked set to deprive Elizabeth of yet another benign female influence. By June 1540, Henry had formed an attachment to Katherine Howard, a pretty young lady-in-waiting in his wife’s household. It was not long before Anne herself found out. On June 20, she confided to the Cleves ambassador, one of her few friends at court, that she knew all about her husband’s affair. Just four days later, she received orders from the council to remove herself from court and go to Richmond Palace. Henry had apparently found a way to rid himself of his unwanted new wife.
