My Enemy the Queen

The Exiles

I was born in the year 1541, five years after Elizabeth's mother had been executed. Elizabeth herself was eight years old. It was the year after the King had married another kinswoman of mine, Catherine Howard. Poor child, the following year a fate similar to that of Anne Boleyn overtook her, and Catherine too was beheaded at the King's command.

I had been christened Letitia after my paternal grandmother, but I was always known as Lettice. We were a large family, for I had seven brothers and three sisters. My parents were affectionate and often stern, though only for our own good, as we were often reminded.

My early years were spent in the country at Rotherfield Greys, which the King's recognition of my father's good services had secured for him some three years before I was born. The estate had come to my father through his, but the King had a habit of taking for his own any country mansion he fancied—Hampton Court was the outstanding example of this royal avarice—so that it was comforting to know that he accepted my father's claim to his own property.

My father was away from home a good deal on the King's business, but my mother rarely went to Court. It might well have been that her close connection to the King's second wife could have aroused memories in Henry's mind which he would have preferred to be without. It could hardly be expected that a member of the Boleyn family would be welcome. So we lived quietly, and in the days of my childhood I was content enough; it was only as I grew older that I became restive and impatient to escape.

There were what seemed to me interminable lessons in the schoolroom with its leaded windows and deep window seats, its long table at which we bent over our laborious tasks. My mother often came to the schoolroom to see us with our tutors and she would go through our books and listen to reports on our progress. If they were bad or even indifferent, we would be summoned to the solarium, where we would take up our needlework and listen to a lecture on the importance of education to people of our rank. Our brothers did not join us in the schoolroom. After the custom of the day they were to go to the houses of illustrious families and were brought up there until the time came for them to go to Oxford or Cambridge. Henry had already left home; the others, William, Edward, Robert, Richard and Francis, were as yet too young. As for Thomas, he was but a baby.

It was during those lectures that I and my sisters, Cecilia, Catharine and Anne, were made aware of Elizabeth. "My first cousin," my mother explained proudly. Elizabeth, we were told, was a model for us all to follow. At the age of five, it seemed, she was almost a Latin scholar, and as familiar with Greek as she was with the English tongue, besides being fluent in French and Italian. How different from her Knollys cousins, whose minds strayed from these important matters and who gazed out of the windows when their eyes should have been on their books so that their good tutors had no alternative but to complain to their mother of their inaptitude and inattention.

I was noted for saying the first thing which came into my mind, so I declared: "Elizabeth sounds dull. I dareswear that if she knows Latin and all those other languages she knows little else."

"I forbid you to speak of the Lady Elizabeth in that way again," cried my mother. "Do you know who she is?"

"She is the daughter of the King and Queen Anne Boleyn. You have told us often enough."

"Don't you understand what that means? She is of royal blood, and it is not impossible that she could be Queen one day."

We listened because our mother could easily be led to forget the purpose of our presence in the solarium and to talk of the days of her childhood; and of course that was more entertaining to us girls than a lecture on the need to apply ourselves to our lessons; and when she was thus enthralled she would not notice that our hands lay idle in our laps.

How young we were! How innocent of the world! I must have been six years old when I first began to take notice, and by then we were in the last stages of the old King's reign.

My mother talked not of the present time, which could have been dangerous, but of the past glories at Hever when as a child she had been taken to the castle to visit her grandparents. Those were the days of glory when the Boleyns' fortunes were rising fast, which was natural because they had a queen in the family.

"I saw her once or twice," said my mother. "I shall never forget her. There was a certain wildness in her then. It was after the birth of Elizabeth and Anne had been desperately hoping for a son. Only a male heir could have saved her then. My uncle George was there at Hever — one of the handsomest men I ever saw... ." There was sadness in her voice; we did not press her to tell us of Uncle George. We knew from experience that such a request might put an end to the narrative and remind her that she was talking to young children of matters beyond their understanding. In due course we discovered that handsome Uncle George was executed at the same time as his sister—accused of committing incest with her. Falsely accused, of course, because the King wished to be rid of Anne in order to marry Jane Seymour.

I often remarked to Cecilia that it was exciting belonging to a family like ours. Death was something we accepted in the nursery. Children—and particularly children of our station—thought lightly of it. When one looked at the family portraits it was said: "This one lost his head. He disagreed with the King." That heads were very precariously held on the place intended for them was a fact of life.

But in the solarium our mother made us see Hever again with its moat and portcullis and the courtyard and the hall where the King had often dined and the long gallery where he had courted our famous relative, the enchanting Anne. Our mother used to sing the songs which had been sung by the minstrels there—some composed by the King himself—and when she strummed on her lute, her eyes would grow glazed with the memories of the brief and dazzling glory of the Boleyns.

Now great-grandfather Thomas Boleyn lay buried in the church at Hever, but our grandmother Mary came to see us now and then. We were all fond of our grandmother. It was sometimes hard to imagine that she had once been the old King's mistress. She was not exactly beautiful, but she had that certain quality which I have mentioned before and which she had passed on to me. I very quickly learned that I possessed it and it delighted me, for I knew it would bring me much of what I wanted. It was indefinable—a certain appeal to the opposite sex which they found irresistible. In my grandmother Mary it had been a softness, a promise of easy yielding; not so with me. I would be calculating, watchful for advantage. Yet it was there in both of us.

In time we learned of that sad May day at the Greenwich joust when Anne had been taken to the Tower with her brother and her friends, and from which she had only emerged to be led to the scaffold. We knew of the King's immediate marriage thereafter to Jane Seymour and the birth of the King's only legitimate son, Edward, who became our King in the year 1547.

Poor Jane Seymour, dying in childbirth, had no chance to enjoy her triumph, but the little Prince lived and was the hope of the nation. Then had followed the King's brief marriage with Anne of Cleves, and after its abrupt dissolution the ill-fated union with Catherine Howard. Only his last wife, Katharine Parr, survived him and it was said she would have gone the same way as Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard if she had not been such a good nurse and the King's ulcerous leg so painful and he too far gone in years to care much for women.

So we entered a new reign—that of Edward VI. Our young King was only ten years old at the time of his accession—not much older than I; and the paragon, Elizabeth, was four years his senior. I remember my father's coming down to Rotherfield Greys, rather pleased with the turn of events. Edward Seymour, the young King's uncle, had been made Protector of the Realm, the title of Duke of Somerset having been bestowed on him; and this now all-important gentleman was a Protestant who would instill the new faith into his young nephew.

My father was leaning more and more towards Protestantism, and as he remarked to my mother the greatest calamity which could befall the country—and incidentally the Knollys family-would be the accession to the throne of Catholic Mary, the King's elder daughter by Catherine of Aragon.

"Then," prophesied my father, "the scaffolds would be stained with the blood of good Englishmen and women, and the dreaded Inquisition which flourishes in Spain would be introduced into this country. So let us thank God for the young King and ask that through His clemency and loving care, Edward VI may long reign over us."

So we knelt and prayed—a custom which I already felt was followed too zealously in our family—while our father thanked God for His goodness to England and asked Him to go on looking after that country, keeping a particular eye on the Knollys family.

Life went on as usual for a few years while we lived as country gentry do, continuing with our studies. It was a tradition in our family that even daughters of the household must be well educated; special attention was paid to music and dancing; we were taught to play lute and harpsichord, and whenever a new dance was introduced at Court we must try it. Our parents were determined to make us ready in case we should suddenly be called to Court. We used to sing madrigals in the gallery or play our instruments there.

We dined at eleven of the clock in the main hall, and when we had visitors we would sit over our meal until three in the afternoon, listening to the talk which enthralled me, for during young Edward's reign, I was growing up fast and taking a great interest in what was happening outside Rotherfield Greys. Then we would sup at six. There was always a good table and a certain amount of excitement because we could never be sure who would arrive to join us. Like most families of our standing we kept open house, for my father would not have had it thought that we could not afford hospitality. There would be great joints of beef and mutton and meat pies of all kind flavored with herbs from our gardens, venison and fish accompanied by sauces as well as conserves of fruit, marchpane, gingerbread and sugar bread. If anything was left the servants would finish it, and there were always beggars at the gates—that community, my mother was constantly remarking, had increased a thousandfold since King Henry had dissolved the monasteries.

There were celebrations at Christmas when we children amused ourselves by dressing up and performing plays. There was great excitement among us as to which one should find the silver penny in the big cake which was made for Twelfth Night and be King— or Queen—for the day; and innocently we believed it would go on like that forever.

Of course, had we been wise we should have seen the portents. Our parents did, and that was why my father often looked very grave. The King was delicate and if anything should happen to him, the heir to the throne was that Mary whom we feared—and we were not the only ones. The most powerful man in the country shared my father's apprehension. This was John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who had made himself virtual ruler of England. If Mary came to the throne it would be the end of Dudley, and as he did not relish spending the rest of his days in prison, nor yet surrendering his head to the ax, he was making plans.

I heard my parents discussing this and it was clear to me that they were very uneasy. My father was essentially a law-abiding man and, try as he might, he could not but accept the fact that the majority of the people would say that Mary was the true heir to the throne. It was an extraordinary situation because if Mary was legitimate, Elizabeth could not be. Mary's mother had been displaced when the King, eager to marry Anne Boleyn, decreed that his marriage of more than twenty years to Catherine of Aragon, was not legal. It was simple logic that if his marriage to Catherine was legal, then his marriage to Anne Boleyn was not, and Anne's child, Elizabeth, a bastard. My family—out of Boleyn loyalty and self-advancement—must of course believe that the King's first marriage was illegal; but because my father was a logical man in most matters, I guessed he had a certain difficulty in preserving his belief in Elizabeth's legitimacy.

He told my mother that he believed Northumberland was going to try to put the Lady Jane Grey on the throne. She had a certain claim, it was true, through her grandmother, Henry VIII's sister, but it was one which few people would accept. The strong Catholic factions throughout the land would stand firmly behind Mary. So it was small wonder that young King Edward's sickness gave my father great misgiving.

He did not, however, put himself oft the side of Northumberland. How could he, married to a Boleyn, support anyone but the Princess Elizabeth? And Elizabeth, as the King's daughter, surely came before Lady Jane Grey. Unfortunately there was Mary—daughter of the Spanish Princess—a fierce Catholic and the King's elder daughter.

Those were days when it was necessary to be watchful. The Duke of Northumberland had staked everything on Jane Grey by marrying her to his son, Lord Guildford Dudley.

That was the state of affairs during the last year of the young King's reign. I was then twelve years old. My sisters and I were more interested in the gossip we heard through the servants, particularly that which concerned our illustrious cousin Elizabeth. Through this we acquired a different image of her from that which our mother had instilled of the scholar of Greek and Latin, a shining example to her less virtuous and less intellectual Knollys cousins.

After the death of King Henry VIII, she had been sent to live with her stepmother, Katharine Parr, at the Dower House in Chelsea, and Katharine Pan had married Thomas Seymour, who was one of the handsomest and most attractive men in England.

"They say," one of the servants told us, "that he has a fancy for the Princess Elizabeth."

I was always interested in what the anonymous "They" said. Quite a lot of it was, of course, conjecture and should perhaps be dismissed as idle gossip, but I think there was often a germ of truth in it. However "They" said that there were exciting "goings on" at the Dower House and that there was some relationship between Elizabeth and her stepmother's husband which was inappropriate to her station as well as her character. He crept into her bedroom and tickled her when she was in bed; she ran screaming with laughter from him, but it was the kind of screaming which was not without an invitation. Once in the garden when Elizabeth was wearing a new silk gown, he, urged on by his wife, took scissors and playfully cut it to shreds.

"Poor Katharine Parr," said "They." Did she know the true nature of these frolics. Of course she must, and to give them that air of respectability which could cover the impropriety of it all, she joined in them.

I liked to think of the scholarly Elizabeth being chased around her bedroom or having her gown slashed to pieces, being tickled by the jovial Seymour with the glint in his eyes while his pregnant wife tried to pretend that the jollity was a family affair.

Then finally Katharine Parr had caught her amorous husband kissing the young Princess in a far from avuncular manner so that even she could no longer pretend, and the result was that Elizabeth left the Dower House. Naturally scandal followed her. "They" were at it again, and a rumor was spread that the Princess had been delivered of a fair young lady who was Thomas Seymour's daughter.

There were stout denials of this and indeed it seemed highly unlikely, but how interesting it was to us girls who had lived in the shadow of her virtues all those years.

It was not long afterwards when Thomas Seymour, involved in ambitious political schemes for his own advancement, was brought to trial and beheaded. Meanwhile the sad little King's health was declining. Dudley induced the dying boy to make a will passing over both Mary and Elizabeth and naming Lady Jane Grey sole heir to the throne. She had by this time married Lord Guildford. I often pondered on that in the days to come. It might so easily have been Guildford's brother Robert who was the chosen bridegroom. Robert, though, had already committed the folly —if so it could be called in view of what happened later—of marrying at the age of seventeen the daughter of Sir John Robsart. He soon tired of her, of course—but that is another story. It often appalled me later to contemplate that, but for Robert's marriage, my life—and Elizabeth Tudor's—would have been drastically different. Robert would certainly have been considered more suitable than Guildford, who was weak and far less handsome, for Robert must have been outstanding even in his youth. Heaven knows he later quickly became the brightest star at Court at the Queen's accession and remained so till his death. However, fate was looking after Robert—as she so often did—and it was poor Guildford, his younger brother, who became the husband of the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey.

As everyone knows, when the King died Northumberland put Jane on the throne, and, poor girl, she reigned for only nine days before Mary's Catholic supporters were triumphant.

My father did not join in the conflict. How could he? Mary's accession, whether legitimate or not, would be disastrous for him, but neither could he support Protestant Jane. She had no just claim in his eyes. There was one and one only whom he wanted to see on the throne. So he did what wise men do at such times. He removed himself from Court and did not take sides.

When it became clear that Jane's brief reign was over and she, with Guildford Dudley, his father and his brother Robert, were lodged in the Tower, we were summoned to the great hall and there our father told us that it was no longer safe for us to remain in England. These were not going to be good days for Protestants; the position of the Princess Elizabeth was very precarious indeed, and as it was known that we were her kinsfolk, he had come to the conclusion that the wisest steps to be taken were those which would lead us out of England.

Within a few days we were on our way to Germany.

We remained in Germany for five years, and as I grew from a child to a woman, I was aware of great restlessness and dissatisfaction with life. It is hard to be exiled from one's own country; we all felt it deeply, my parents most of all, but they seemed to take refuge in religion. If my father had previously leaned heavily towards Protestantism, he was, at the end of his sojourn in Germany, one of its strongest adherents. The news from England was one of the main reasons for his conviction. Queen Mary's marriage with King Philip of Spain had sent him into depths of despair.

"Now," he said, "we shall have the Inquisition in England."

Fortunately it did not get as far as that.

"There is one thing," he used to say to us, for naturally we saw more of him than we ever did in England when he was engaged on Court matters, "the people's dissatisfaction with the Queen will turn them to Elizabeth. But meanwhile the great fear is that Mary will have a child."

We prayed for her infertility, and I found it ironic to contemplate that she was praying equally fervently for the opposite.

"I wonder," I said flippantly to my sister Cecilia, "whose petition will be the more favorably received. They say Mary is very devout, but then so is our father. I wonder whose side God is on-Catholic or Protestant."

My sisters were shocked by my talk. So were my parents.

My father used to say: "Lettice, you will have to guard your tongue."

That was the last thing I wanted to do because my outspoken comments amused me and certainly had their effect on other people. They were a characteristic—like my smooth, delicately tinted complexion—which set me apart from other girls and made me more attractive.

My father never ceased to congratulate himself on his wisdom in escaping from the country while it was possible, though when she first came to the throne Mary showed signs of leniency. She freed Lady Jane's father, the Duke of Suffolk, and was reluctant even to sign the death warrant for Northumberland, who had been the puppet master pulling the strings he had attached to poor Jane and Guildford which had made them Queen and Queen's Consort for their brief nine days. If it had not been for the Wyatt Rebellion she might have spared Jane herself, for she was well aware that the young girl had clearly had no wish to take the crown.

When the news of Wyatt's ill-fated rebellion came to us in Germany, there was great gloom in the family because the Princess Elizabeth herself seemed to be involved.

"This will be the end," groaned my father. "So far she has had the good fortune to escape her ill wishers ... but how can she do so this time?"

He did not know her. She might be young but she was already skilled in the art of survival. Those frolics with Seymour which had ended in his journey to the scaffold had provided a lesson well learned. When they charged her with treason she had shown herself to be astute, and it was impossible for her judges to confute her. She parried their accusations with diplomatic dexterity so that none was able to prove the case against her.

Wyatt died by the ax, but Elizabeth escaped. She was imprisoned in the Tower of London for a while at the same time as Robert Dudley. What a bond that made between them I was to discover. We heard later that after many months she had been released from the menace of the Tower, whence she was taken to Richmond, and there confronted by her half sister the Queen and told of the latter's plan to marry her off to Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy.

"They want to get her out of England," cried my father. "That's clear enough, God knows."

Shrewd as ever, the young Princess declined the match and with great temerity told her sister that she could not marry. Elizabeth always knew just how far to go and in some way she succeeded in convincing Mary that marriage with any man would be distasteful to her.

When she was sent to Woodstock in the charge of Queen Mary's faithful Sir Henry Bedingfeld, the Knollys family breathed more easily, particularly as rumors of the Queen's bad state of health kept filtering in.

Terrible news came to us from England of the bitter persecution of Protestants. Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were all burned at the stake with three hundred other victims, and it was said that the smoke of the Smithfield Fires was like a black pall hanging over London.

How we applauded our father's wisdom! Who knew, had we stayed he might have been one of those destined for such a fate.

It could not continue, he told us. The people were weary of death and persecution. The whole country was ready to rise in revolt against the Queen and her Spanish adherents. However, when the news came that she was pregnant we were in despair. Her hopes—"God be praised," said my father—were soon proved to be without foundation. Poor sick Mary, she wanted a child so badly that she could delude herself into suffering all the signs of pregnancy when she was barren.

But we, who shamelessly longed for her death, had little sympathy to spare for her.

I remember well the misty November day when the messenger came with the news. It was the day we had been waiting for.

I was seventeen years old then, and I had never before seen my father so excited.

In the hall he cried: "Rejoice in this day. Queen Mary is dead. Elizabeth is proclaimed Queen of England by will of the people. Long live our Queen Elizabeth."

We knelt and gave thanks to God. Then we hastened to make our preparations for our return.