Three other candidates had much more distant claims. Henry Hastings, third earl of Huntingdon (1535-1595), a descendant of the duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV, had Puritan leanings. The Infanta Clara Eugenia, daughter of the king of Spain, was a descendant of Edward III. She had the backing of the Jesuits. And Robert Devereux, earl of Essex (1567-1601), had a very distant strain of Plantagenet blood, enough to make him believe he could save the country with his ill-advised attempt at a coup in 1601.
Once James VI of Scotland became James I of England in 1603, the succession was clear. He had two sons by Anne of Denmark (1574-1619). Henry, Prince of Wales, died at eighteen but James’s second son, Charles, became Charles I in 1625. He married Henrietta Maria of France (1609-1669).
THE COURT
“The court” was everything within a ten-mile radius of wherever the monarch was living, or the “customary precincts” of Whitehall, Richmond, or Greenwich. In some respects, the Royal Court was like a small town, or a large family. For most of the year, especially in the summer, it moved about a good deal. This was necessary to allow a royal residence to be cleaned. Some 400-800 people accompanied the monarch, most with household servants of their own. The duke of Northumberland, in 1553, had forty gentlemen and thirty yeomen ushers in his personal retinue, while the marquis of Northampton’s household at court numbered thirty-four gentlemen and thirteen yeomen.
By 1558 the Lord High Steward and Lord Great Chamberlain were both hereditary offices, ceremonial in nature. The Lord High Steward carried a white staff as a symbol of office and, at the funeral of the sovereign, broke it over his own head before the bier. The “Board of Green Cloth” consisted of the “white staves,” the treasurer and the comptroller of the household, the cofferer, and some of the clerks of the counting house. They had responsibility for day-to-day operations in the royal household. The Lord High Steward was in charge of twenty-five “below-stairs” departments, each of which had a serjeant, clerk, and purveyor, plus numerous junior assistants.
The Lord Great Chamberlain was responsible for the “above-stairs” servants, who served the monarch in the bedchamber, privy chamber, and presence chamber. Henry VII created the concept of a privy chamber, primarily to give the monarch some privacy. When Henry VIII increased the number of gentlemen of the chamber (to 112 in 1526) that original purpose was lost. In 1526 the entire household was reorganized by the Eltham Ordinances, which reduced the number of gentlemen of the chamber to twelve and the number of grooms of the chamber from sixty-nine to fifteen. At any one time, Henry VIII's attendants now included only sixteen gentlemen, two gentlemen ushers, four gentlemen ushers serving as waiters, three grooms, and two barbers in the privy chamber, and three cupbearers, three carvers, three servers, four squires of the body, and two surveyors in the outer chamber. The most important post was that of Groom of the Stool (sometimes written Stole), who was responsible for the royal close-stool.
One important and much-sought-after office was conferred by royal patent. This was the post of Master of the Horse. He had a staff of sixty under Henry VIII. The kennels alone were staffed by ten men, whose only duty was to look after the royal greyhounds, harthounds, and harriers.
A special sort of royal servant was the entertainer. King Henry VIII’s fool, Will Somers, was the most famous, but there were a number of other fools, and dwarfs, at court. There were also royal musicians, sixty of them in 1547, including fifteen trumpeters and a bagpiper.
Under Henry VIII the number of beds (and horses) permitted to courtiers varied by rank. A duke was entitled to keep twenty-four horses and got nine beds for his retainers. An earl might keep eighteen horses and have seven beds while the Lord Chamberlain was entitled to seven beds. A dowager duchess was allotted seven beds, a queen’s maid three, and the master of jewels one. Grooms of the privy chamber got two beds for four men.
The king’s wife had a separate household. Catherine of Aragon’s numbered 160 (she’d had forty-four as Princess of Wales), including eight ladies-in-waiting and eight ladies of the bedchamber and maids of honor. Anne Boleyn’s household numbered 200, as did Jane Seymour’s. Anne of Cleves made do with only 126 and the ladies-in-waiting, now reduced to six, were renamed “great ladies of the household.” In Queen Catherine Howard’s household were six “great ladies,” four ladies of the privy chamber, nine attendants “of exalted rank,” five maids of honor, a mother of maids, and several chamberers.
Since the attendants closest to Mary I and Elizabeth I were women and could not become Privy Councillors, the privy chamber lost much of its importance as a political entity after 1554. Mary had seven ladies and thirteen gentlewomen in her private retinue. Queen Elizabeth generally had four ladies of the bedchamber, seven or eight gentlewomen of the privy chamber (paid £33 6s. 3d. per annum), six to eight maids of honor, and three or four chamberers (paid £20 per annum). There were also thirty-nine unpaid “ladies of honor” during her reign, who appeared with her on ceremonial occasions.
In 1603 the privy chamber of James I consisted of forty-eight gentlemen, half of them English and half of them Scots. They waited in quarterly shifts of twelve. The size of the court increased overall under the Stuarts until, in 1640, the combined households of King Charles, his queen, and the Prince of Wales numbered over 1,700 persons.
THE PEERAGE
The peerage of England under the Tudors was relatively small. Thirty-four peers were summoned to Henry VII's first Parliament in 1485 (two dukes, ten earls, two viscounts, and twenty barons). Of a total of fifty-five lords, six were minors under the age of twenty-one and five were under attainder. Between 1485 and 1509, three viscounties and four baronies disappeared permanently from the peerage for lack of heirs. One peer created by Henry VII, Philibert de Chandee, who had been captain of Henry’s mercenary troops, vanishes from history following his elevation to Earl of Bath in 1486.
In 1509, England had only one duke, one marquis (a prisoner in Calais, accused of treason), ten earls, and thirty barons. Although Henry VIII created a number of new peers, the entire peerage had only increased to fifty-one by 1547. The upheaval of Edward VI’s minority led to the creation of two dukes, Somerset (1547) and Northumberland (1551), but both were executed for treason and their titles were forfeit. In 1553 there were fifty-six peers. This number had increased to fifty-seven by 1558 when Elizabeth I became queen but she created or restored only eighteen peerages. The only remaining duke, Norfolk, was executed for treason in 1572. No new dukes were created until 1623.
Elizabeth was not only stingy about granting peerages, she was also parsimonious when it came to gifts of land to accompany such honors. In 1572, when Sir Henry Sidney was about to he offered a barony without any property, his wife wrote to Lord Burghley to ask him to dissuade the queen. They could not, she explained, maintain a higher title than they now possessed. Sir Henry, as a loyal subject, was already spending a great deal of his own money in the service of the queen.
The right to succeed to a barony created by writ (writ of summons to Parliament) was not limited to male heirs. A woman could inherit such a barony, but in actual fact was not always allowed to. Baronies granted by patent or charter (rare before the sixteenth century) often limited the succession to male heirs.
In 1603, when James became king, there were fifty-five peers in England. In need of money, he devised a plan to sell titles and even created a new level, the baronet, in 1611. These were limited to 200 and carried a prerequisite of an annual income of £1,000. New baronets paid the Crown £1,095 for the honor. Several wealthy gentlemen acquired baronies, for £10,000 apiece. In 1623 Elizabeth Heneage, the widow of Sir Moyle Finch and only a knight’s daughter herself, paid £12,000 for the title Viscountess Maidstone. Five years later she became countess of Winchilsea for a further payment. Between 1603 and 1629, the peerage doubled in size. James I elevated forty-six commoners to the peerage and Charles I elevated twenty-six. In 1641 the number of peers stood at 121. In all, 342 peers held titles between 1558 and 1641. Approx
imately 87% of all peers’ wives came from either the peerage or the upper levels of the gentry.
THE GENTRY
Knighthoods followed a pattern similar to that of peerages. During Elizabeth’s reign, 878 new knights were created. Of those, the earl of Essex created twenty-one at Rouen in 1591, sixty-eight at Cadiz in 1596, and eighty-one in Ireland in 1599. King James I created 1,161 new knights in 1603 alone. He also granted court favorites the right to name knights and baronets and to receive the fees. Charles I continued the practice of selling knighthoods.
Esquires were those gentlemen whose ancestors had been knights. A knighthood was not inherited but a coat of arms could be. There were 2,000 new grants of arms between 1560 and 1589, and 1,760 between 1590 and 1639. The gentry as a group increased dramatically in number during the Renaissance. One estimate gives 16,500 as the number of heads of gentry families between 1590 and 1642.
By the seventeenth century there was little real distinction between the lesser gentry and the upper yeomanry and, in addition to the sons of gentlemen, “gentlemen” included lawyers, physicians, university graduates, captains in the wars, and anyone else who could “live without manual labor and . . . bear the port, charge, and countenance of a gentleman.”
For forms of address for various peers and commoners, see Chapter Sixteen. There was no equivalent term for social “class” before the eighteenth century. Indeed, there was little sense of classes at all as we know them. An early seventeenth-century list designated the following: rich men, great men, men of quality, sufficient men, men of the better sort, able persons of good estates, persons of the meaner sort, persons of the ruder sort, poor laboring men, and men of the common sort.
THE TRADE OF COURTIERSHIP—SOME NOTABLE WOMEN
A reigning queen’s ladies had no official standing as advisors. In practice, however, they might exert considerable influence. A word whispered in the royal ear was worth money to those eager for advancement. Ann Russell, countess of Warwick and a lady of the privy chamber, once turned down a bribe of £100 (to advance a lawsuit in chancery with Queen Elizabeth) because the sum was too small.
Katherine Champernowne Astley (d. 1565): Appointed waiting gentlewoman to Elizabeth in 1536 she was later her governess. Kat Astley was twice imprisoned for her close connection to the princess. In 1549 she was accused of conspiring with Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour and held for several weeks. In 1554 she was suspected of being in contact with the organizers of Wyatt’s Rebellion. She was arrested again in 1556, when a cache of seditious books was found in the house where she was staying. When Elizabeth became queen, however, Kat was made First Lady of the Bedchamber, an influential post she held until her death.
Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, countess of Lincoln (1528-1589): She was brought to England from Ireland by her English mother when her father, the earl of Kildare, was accused of treason. She was raised with the princess Mary and was an inspiration to the poet Henry Howard, earl of Surrey. Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveler (1594) later publicized the fact that she had been Surrey’s “Fair Geraldine.” As the widow of Sir Anthony Browne, she was sent to the household of Queen Dowager Catherine Parr (by that time married to Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour) at Chelsea in 1548 under orders to keep an eye on the young princess Elizabeth, who was also living there. Despite her position as a spy, and her later involvement in Northumberland’s schemes (by that time she was married to Lord Clinton) she became one of Queen Elizabeth’s closest friends and was much at court during her reign.
Lucy Harington Russell, countess of Bedford (1581-1627): Lucy became both a bride and countess of Bedford at thirteen. Family fortunes suffered a severe setback when her husband involved himself in the Essex Rebellion in 1601, but as soon as Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, Lucy was on her way to Edinburgh to ingratiate herself with the new monarch. She was appointed a lady-in-waiting and was soon wielding a great deal of influence at the new court. She is given credit for helping develop the court masque into an art form.
Helena Snakenborg, marchioness of Northampton (1549-1635): She came to England as a maid of honor to Princess Cecilia of Sweden (wife of the margrave of Baden-Rodemachern) in 1565. Sixteen at the time, Helena attracted the attention of William Parr, marquis of Northampton (brother of Henry VIII's sixth queen), then fifty-two. Northampton’s marchioness, Elizabeth, a close friend of the queen’s, had died of breast cancer earlier that year, but he had another wife still living (a scandalous story in its own right), and it was necessary for him to wait until she died, in 1571, to marry Helena. The bridegroom lived for only six months after the wedding. As marchioness of Northampton, Helena was First Lady of the Court after the queen’s heirs (who tended to be in custody elsewhere). She kept her rank even after she married Thomas Gorges, a Groom of the Privy Chamber. Queen Elizabeth detested change and almost always refused her ladies permission to marry if they asked, so Helena and Thomas followed the established procedure and married without permission. The inevitable result was a royal fit of temper, banishment and imprisonment for the newlyweds, followed by their profuse apologies, and payment of a fine, after which all was forgiven. When Elizabeth died in 1603, Helena was First Mourner at the funeral. In 1619, when Queen Anne died and three countesses were quarreling over which of them should have that honor, the threat that the old Lady Marquis of Northampton would be sent for was enough to settle the dispute.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
General
Akrigg, G.P.V. Jacobean Pageant. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962.
Emerson, Kathy Lynn. Wives and Daughters: The Women of Sixteenth Century England. Troy, New York: Whitston Publishing Company, 1984.
Hogrefe, Pearl. Tudor Women: Commoners and Queens. Ames: Iowa State Press, 1975.
Loades, David. The Tudor Court. Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes and Noble Books, 1987.
Mathew, David. The Courtiers of Henry VIII. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1970.
Rowse, A.L. Court and Country: Studies in Tudor Social History. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987.
Starkey, David, et. al. The English Court: from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War. London and New York: Longman, 1987.
Williams, Neville. All the Queen's Men. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972.
Williams, Neville. Henry VIII and his Court. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1971.
Biography
Dictionary of National Biography (DNB). Currently being revised, the present twenty-two volume version (London: Oxford University Press, 1967-8), some of which was compiled more than a century ago, contains inaccuracies. It is, however, always a good place to start and can assist in sorting out family relationships.
Beer, Barrett L. Northumberland: The Political Career of John Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland (1502-1553). Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1973.
Bruce, Mary Louise. Anne Boleyn. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1972.
Bruce, Mary Louise. The Making of Henry VIII. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1977.
Byrne, M. St. Clare. The Lisle Letters, Vol. I-VI. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981. This is an account of Arthur Plantagenet,
Lord Lisle (c. 1464-1542) and his wife, Honor Grenville (c. 1494- 1566). A one-volume edition of the letters was edited by Bridget Boland (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1983).
Chapman, Hester W. The Last Tudor King: A Study of Edward VI. London: Jonathan Cape, 1968.
Chrimes, S.B. Henry VII. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.
Durant, David N. Bess of Hardwick: Portrait of an Elizabethan Dynast.
New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1978. This is a biography of Elizabeth Hardwick, countess of Shrewsbury (1527-1608).
Erickson, Carolly. Bloody Mary: The Remarkable Life of Mary Tudor. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1978.
Erickson, Carolly. Great Harry: The Extravagant Life of Henry VIII. New York: Summit Books, 1980.
Fraser, Antonia. King James VI of Scotland and I of England.
New York: Knopf, 1975.
Fraser, Antonia. Mary Queen of Scots. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969.
Gunn, S.J. Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk c. 1484-1545. New York:
Blackwell, 1988.
Harvey, Nancy Lenz. Elizabeth of York, the Mother of Henry VIII. New York: Macmillan, 1973.
Harvey, Nancy Lenz. The Rose and the Thorn: The Lives of Mary and Margaret Tudor. New York: Macmillan, 1975.
Haynes, Alan. Robert Cecil, First Earl of Salisbury, 1563-1612: Servant of Two Sovereigns. London: P. Owen, 1989.
Haynes, Alan. The White Bear: Robert Dudley, the Elizabethan Earl of Leicester. London: P. Owen, 1987.
Hibbert, Christopher. Charles I. New York: Harper & Row, 1968.
Johnson, Paul. Elizabeth I. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974.
Lacey, Robert. Robert, Earl of Essex. New York: Atheneum, 1971.
Luke, Mary M. Catherine the Queen. New York: Coward-McCann, 1967.
Mathew, David. James I. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1967.
Mathew, David. Lady Jane Grey: The Setting of the Realm. London: Eyre Methuen Ltd., 1972.
Read, Conyers. Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth. New York: Knopf, 1960.
Read, Conyers. Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth. New York: Knopf, 1955.
Reed, Evelyn. My Lady Suffolk: A Portrait of Catherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk. New York: Knopf, 1963.
Richardson, Walter C. Mary Tudor: The White Queen. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970.
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