Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2013, vol. 8

Elisabeth Parr’s Renaissance at the Mid-Tudor Court Helen Graham-Matheson

oan Kelly’s ground-breaking article, “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” Jcenters on four criteria for ascertaining the “relative contraction (or expansion) of the powers of Renaissance women”: women’s economic, political, cultural roles and the ideology about women across the mid- Tudor period. Focusing particularly on cultural and political roles, this essay applies Kelly’s criteria to Elisabeth Parr née Brooke, Marchioness of Northampton (1526–1565) and sister-in-law of Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s last wife, whose controversial court career evinces women’s lived experience and their contemporary political importance across the mid- Tudor courts of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and . By taking each reign in isolation, this essay follows Kelly’s call to question “accepted schemes of periodization” and reassesses whether “events that further the historical development of men, liberating them from natural, social, or ideological constraints, have quite different, even opposite, effects upon women.”1 The key point of departure of my essay from Kelly’s argument is that she states that women’s involvement in the public sphere and politics lessened in the Italian cinquecento, whereas my findings suggest that in women such as Elisabeth Parr increasingly involved themselves in the public world of court politics. According to Kelly,

1 Joan Kelly, ”Did Women Have a Renaissance?” Feminism and Renaissance Studies, ed. L. Hutson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 21.

289 290 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Helen Graham-Matheson

[n]oblewomen . . . were increasingly removed from public con- cerns — economic, political, and cultural — and although they did not disappear into a private realm of family and domestic concerns . . . their loss of public power made itself felt in new constraints placed upon their personal as well as their social lives.2

My research into Parr’s life suggests that some women of the Tudor court took advantage of the divide between public and private activity to con- struct and utilize unprecedented political agency precisely because of their gender and the fact that they were removed from public power. Parr was politically active under all four monarchs (arguably five, including Queen Jane) during this turbulent mid-Tudor period: from her arrival at the Henrician Court ca. 1540 to her untimely death at the Elizabethan court in 1565. Elisabeth’s career trajectory suggests that particular circumstances across the mid-16th century combined to produce aristocratic and noble women with a humanist education and reformist sympathies. Elisabeth Brooke arrived at the court of Henry VIII ca. 1542, and when suggested as a possible sixth wife for the , the Spanish ambas- sador Eustace Chapuys described her as a “pretty young thing with wit enough to do as the others [Henry’s previous wives] have done should she consider it worth her while.” By 1562, her position at court had improved notably, to the extent that when she was suffering from a severe case of jaundice, William Cecil proclaimed ”Almighty God comfort hir, and per- mitt us to enioye her for I think none shall be more grevoosly lost of a sub- ject of this Court.”3 Elisabeth’s rise to prominence began in 1543 when she formed a relationship with William Parr, of , later of Northampton, married brother of the new queen, Katherine Parr. I believe that Elisabeth and William’s relationship — their efforts to secure William a divorce so they could marry and their battle to remain married during

2 Ibid., 45. 3 Eustace Chapuys to Charles V, 9 Feb 1542, vol. 17, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. James Gairdner and R. H. Brodie (: 1894–1910) vols. 14–21; TNA State Papers, 70/40 fol. 239, William Cecil to Nicholas Throckmorton, 29 August 1562. Renaissance at the Mid-Tudor Court 291

the Somerset Protectorate and the Marian counter- — con- tributed in a previously unseen way to the shape of domestic politics across the mid-sixteenth century. Although there is no space here to discuss more fully her activity and agency, I hope to show that Elisabeth utilized her position and the circumstances in which she found herself to manifest her political significance. It cannot be overstated that the circumstances that led to Elisabeth’s peculiar career were unprecedented and that she herself was paradigmatic of how a woman might operate, though most did not. Her lived experience enables a recounting of the opportunities available to a woman who was well-positioned, highly regarded, and lucky; not neces- sarily in terms of the circumstances she faced, but in how events unfolded across the reigns of Edward VI and Elizabeth I. Almost as soon as Henry VIII died, William Parr appealed to the young King Edward, his “nephew,” for a commission to legalize his divorce and allow him to marry Elisabeth Brooke. Despite the favorable findings of the commission set up to consider the couple’s right to marry, the Protector Edward Seymour, of Somerset, ruled against the mar- riage, and in 1548 Elisabeth was sent to live at Chelsea Manor with the Dowager Queen Katherine Parr, Elizabeth Tudor, and Jane Grey. These associations and Somerset’s animosity towards Elisabeth and the Northamptons were the catalysts that shaped her activity and agenda for the remainder of her life. Following the court coup against Somerset in 1549, in which William Parr was second in importance only to John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, and the Somersets’ subsequent reduction in power, there is a marked increase in the activity of noblewomen at the Edwardian court. From the mid 1550s, Elisabeth was recognized at court as Marchioness of Northampton for the first time4 and immediately proved herself comfortable in the upper echelons of court society, stepping into the

4 Their marriage was not formally legalized until the Divorce Act of 1552. I believe Elisabeth’s return to court in 1550 marks the change in attitudes following Somerset’s removal as Lord Protector and Warwick’s rewarding of Northampton for his loyalty in the coup. I believe that Northampton’s support of Warwick over Somerset was partly motivated by his desire to have Elisabeth acknowledged as his wife and to exact revenge on Somerset for his treatment of not only himself and Elisabeth but also for his treatment of Katherine Parr, who had earlier married Somerset’s brother, Thomas Seymour. 292 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Helen Graham-Matheson

power vacuum created by the absence of a after the demo- tion of Anne Seymour, Duchess of Somerset. This was clearly obvious at a banquet hosted by the French Ambassador, the Vidame de Chartres, to celebrate the supposed reunion of the Duke of Somerset and the Earl of Warwick by means of a marriage between Dudley’s son and heir John and Seymour’s eldest daughter Anne. According to Jehan Schefve

My Lord the Vidame’s banquet was a brave and rich sight. . . . [The] Marchioness received at table a present from the Vidame, an enamelled chain worth about two hundred crowns. All the other present, and the three daughters of the said Somerset, one of whom was the bride, received a present, each one according to her station. . . . The Vidame did not take par- ticular notice of anyone except of the Duke of Somerset and the Marchioness. He showed himself often in their company, and talked to the said Marchioness through an interpreter, who was mostly my Lord Grey, once captain of Boulogne.5

Elisabeth tried to present herself as a political persona worthy of public and courtly acknowledgment through the strategic commissioning of a secular text — and a decisive Renaissance text at that. Manifold evidence survives to assert that Elisabeth was responsible for commissioning the first English vernacular translation by of Baldassare Castiglione’s Il Libro del Cortegiano (1528). Book III of The Courtyer, as Hoby’s translation was known, is the book of the Courtesan, or female courtier, and the first edition bears the heading

THE THIRDE BOOKE OF the Courtier of Baldessar Casti- lio vnto M Alphonsus Ariosto. Englisshed at the request of the Ladye

5 Jehan Schefve to Emperor Charles V, 17 June 1550, Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, ed. Royall Tyler, et al. (London: 1862–1964), vols. 1550–1552, 110 [original in French and ciphered]. Renaissance at the Mid-Tudor Court 293

Marquesse of Northamp- ton, in anno.1551.6

Other paratextual material also reveals Elisabeth’s involvement; Hoby details his “duetie done in translating the thirde booke (that entreateth of a Gentlewoman of the Courte),”7 and Hoby’s Life and Travails relates that he completed the commission upon his arrival in Paris in 1552, claiming that “the first thing I did was to translate into Englishe the third booke of the ‘Cowrtisan’, which my Ladie Marquess had often willed me to do, and for lacke of time ever differred it.”8 By associating herself with the first vernacular translation of this text, Elisabeth Parr was seemingly attempting to align herself with the text’s central female figures — the hostess Elisabetta Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino, and the idealized female courtier discussed in Book III, based, one assumes, on the Duchess herself. The text of Book III is replete with references to women’s virtues and modes of behavior that would clearly resonate with the Marchioness at this important time of her career. As Lord Julian, Hoby’s rendering of Guiliano de’Medici, highlights, a woman at court

ought also to be more circumspect and take better heed that she give no occasion to be yll reported of, and so to beehave her selfe, that she be not onlye not spotted wyth anye fault, but not so much as with suspicion. Bicause a woman has not so manye ways to defende her selfe from sclaunderous reportes, as hath a man.9

6 Balthazar Castiglione, The Courtyer of Count Baldessar Castilio, trans. Thomas Hoby (London: William Series, 1561), sig. Aaiiiiv. 7 The Courtyer, sig. Bi. 8 Thomas Hoby, The travels and life of Sir Thomas Hoby, Kt of Bisham Abbey, written by himself: 1547–1564, ed. Edgar Powell, Camden, Third Series, vol. 4 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1902), 78. 9 The Courtyer, sig. Bii 294 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Helen Graham-Matheson

Coinciding with her official recognition as Marchioness of Northampton, following four years of scandal while the Privy Council and learned com- mission debated Parr’s first marriage and his right to divorce and remarry, Elisabeth’s textual commission of The Courtyer was a subtly brilliant pro- active defense of her reputation, as well as a declaration of her political authority. Elisabeth was an educated woman: she was clearly highly literate and evidence survives that she could write in Greek. However, even if she could have translated the text herself, it is doubtful that she would have done so, as she knew that her implicit alliance with Elisabetta Gonzaga would be a more powerful and impactful statement. Before Hoby’s text was printed, Elisabeth’s circumstances took a dramatic turn when the young king Edward died and the Catholic Mary Tudor acceded the throne, though not before Elisabeth arguably contrib- uted to the shaping of English history by engaging in the coup to replace Mary in the line of succession with the Protestant heiress . That Elisabeth suggested the marriage between Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guildford Dudley seems to be evidenced by her inclusion in a warrant from King Edward distributing wedding apparel to those involved in the wedding party and referred to by William Cecil.10 At the time of the mar- riage, Edward VI’s device for the succession was not public knowledge, nor was the young king apparently near death, so Elisabeth was unaware of the consequences of her actions. She undeniably supported Lady Jane´s claim over Mary Tudor and was with Jane in the when she was proclaimed queen.11 There are many reasons — political, religious, and personal — why Elisabeth Parr would have supported Jane’s claim.

10 British Library, Royal MS 18. C. XXIV, fols. 340, 361; John Strype, Annals of the reformation and establishment of religion, and other various occurrences in the Church of England (Oxford: 1824), vol. 4, 485. Strype quotes a letter from Roger Alford to William Cecil from 4 October 1573. During the events of 1553 Cecil was in the service of the Dudleys and Alford a member of the secretariat. Alford asserts that Cecil told him on the eve of Jane and Guildford’s marriage that Elisabeth had been the greatest ‘”doer.” 11 John Gough Nichols ed., “Diary: 1553 (Jul–Dec),” The Diary of Henry Machyn: Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London (1550–1563) (London: Camden Society, 1848), 34–50; Eric Ives, Lady Jane Grey, A Tudor Mystery (London: Blackwell, 2009), 187; and Renaissance at the Mid-Tudor Court 295

Elisabeth was a child of the Reformation through the timing of her birth and her kinship associations — she was ’s second cousin, for example — thus her reluctance to embrace a Catholic queen. She was also close to the Dudley and Grey families, so politically she stood to gain from their continued prominence. Fundamentally, however, Elisabeth’s drive to support Jane was due to the fact that the accession of the Catholic Mary Tudor would lead to the dissolution of her marriage to Parr, as indeed it did. Mary’s accession meant that Elisabeth lost her position as Parr’s wife and as Marchioness of Northampton, since he was ordered to return to his first and true wife, in Catholic eyes, forcing her to return to her family in Kent. During Mary’s reign, Elisabeth’s family was involved in the rebellion of her first cousin Sir Thomas Wyatt (1554). Both she and her brother George acted covertly against the queen, feeding intelligence to the French ambassador and passing messages from the French to Princess Elizabeth, thus protecting political and proto-Protestant interests from their vantage point discreetly outside the court. Although she found ways to continue to assert her own agenda during Mary’s reign, it was not until Elizabeth’s accession that Elisabeth regained her prominence, at which time her politi- cal significance far exceeded anything she had achieved before. Upon Elizabeth’s accession, Elisabeth was reinstated as Marchioness of Northampton, one of the five most important ladies in the order of precedence at court (ca. 1559–1564).12 As a high-ranking noblewoman, she held no formal position in the court but was an integral part of the workings of the queen’s newly politicized Privy Chamber. She acted as patroness for male and female members of the court and beyond, petition- ing the queen and acting as her advisor and intimate confidante. So close was she to Elizabeth that the Habsburg ambassador de Quadra said of her “if she is mistaken I am mistaken also” when reporting what she had told him of the queen’s health and personal business in his dispatches. An English ambassador to Madrid, Sir Thomas Chaloner, referred to her as one of the Queen’s “Counseilloresses” when discussing the transfer of

Leanda de Lisle, The Sisters Who Would Be Queen: The Tragedy of Mary, Katherine, and Lady Jane Grey (London: Harper, 2010), 110. 12 British Library, Lansdowne MS 104, fol. 11. 296 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Helen Graham-Matheson

information from the queen’s Privy Chamber, which he tellingly refers to as the “Counseil.” Chaloner was likely being a little sarcastic, for the let- ter is critical of women as spreaders of information and gossip, but in the context of the Privy Chamber, this term’s inclusion highlights the extent to which the space was recognized as political, as were the women who frequented it. More significantly, Chaloner stresses that the transfer of politically significant information, or intelligence, in and out of the Privy Chamber by female courtiers was a common and acknowledged feature of Elizabeth’s court. Elisabeth’s position as paradigmatic female courtier and her sig- nificance to the queen is manifested in the following anecdote: when Katherine Ashley, Queen Elizabeth’s former governess and First Lady of the Bedchamber, was seeking to familiarize the Swedish king and his court with the Queen of England’s character, court, and habits, she advised them to read The Courtisan, which seems to refer to a French translation of Book III of the Courtyer.13 A full vernacular English version including Elisabeth’s commission was finally printed in 1562. By this time Elisabeth fully embodied the idealized female courtier to which she had aspired at the time of the commissioning in 1551. The extent to which Elisabeth’s close relationship with the queen and the queen’s willingness to employ her female courtiers as quasi-diplomatic agents played a part in the key political issues of her early reign can be seen in cases such as Elisabeth Parr’s role in the marriage negotiations between Queen Elizabeth and the Habsburg Duke, Charles of Austria. Charles and his delegations were skeptical of Elizabeth’s intentions, given previous failures in negotiation. A new ambassador, Diego Guzmán de Silva, was sent by the Habsburgs to rekindle the negotiations in spring 1564. Instrumental in convincing the ambassador of the queen’s sincerity was the relationship the ambassador formed with Elisabeth Parr over the summer of 1564. While the court was in progress, Elisabeth fell terminally ill and was confined to her suite at Whitehall Palace. As de Silva also remained in London, they became

13 TNA State Papers, 70/40, fol. 64, Dymock’s Statement, 6 August 1562. Dymock recounts that according to Katherine Ashley’s instructions he had presented the Swedish king with a black velvet and gilt volume of The Cowrtisan. Renaissance at the Mid-Tudor Court 297

acquainted. He reported to the Duchess of Parma that “the marchioness of Northampton is a great favorite of the queen, and I am gaining the goodwill of her intimates so as to gain more influence over her mistress.”14 De Silva arranged what he thought was a private visit to Elisabeth to pay his respects and hear what she had said she needed to tell him. When he arrived he found her alone with the queen. In his dispatch de Silva reported,

They played me in this trick between them and kept the secret until I was in the Queen’s presence, and then laughed greatly at it. I was there until almost night, the Marchioness on her couch and the Queen near her.

The women talked about many things, including marriage and the queen’s favored suitors, and a few days later Elisabeth sent to de Silva

a Treasury secretary, who is catholic with another of her friends and an | Englishman, catholic also, to tell me that [she] had discussed several marriage | options with the Queen and that, if I were able to arrange a dialogue between | the Queen and Archduke Charles, that she believes this to be a great | opportu- nity, and in asking, that I present myself as someone in whom he places | great trust, giving me great hope, but that this is sensi- tive material to be treated with great care.15

14 “La marquesa de Noranthon es muy favorida de esta Reyna . . . y yo he procu- rado grangear las voluntades de sus privados para tener mas ganada la de su ama,” De Silva to the Duchess, 23 September 1564, No. MCCLXX , 110–113, vol. 4: Kervyn de Lettenhove, J. M. B. C., Relations Politiques des Pays Bas et de l’Angleterre, sous le règne de Phillippe II, 11 vols (Brussels, 1888–1900); originally Archives du Royaume à Bruxelles, Corresp. de la duchesse de Parme, 21; a translated version is printed in Calendar of State Papers Foreign Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth: 1564–1565, ed. Joseph Stevenson (London: 1870), 287. 15 “. . . estava alli quando embie a saber de la Marquesa, como despues entendi, y quisieron hazerme esta burla, teniendo secreto hasta que yo me vi con la Reyna de que ella rio mucho. Estuvo casi hasta la noche alli la Marquesa en su Camilla y la Reyna cabe ella. Lo mas que alli se trato, fueron euentos que la Reyna dixo y conversacion ordinaria, 298 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Helen Graham-Matheson

De Silva’s account of these unorthodox negotiations and events survive in the letters he wrote to, among others, Margaret, Duchess of Parma, Regent of the Netherlands, seeking her advice on how best to proceed. Elisabeth and the duchess had become associated when she had stayed at the duch- ess’s court when undergoing treatment for cancer in spring 1564. This incident is a clear demonstration of the informal and gendered manner in which Queen Elizabeth used her female courtiers as aides in enacting aspects of her international policy, in addition to the personal responsibili- ties that they took for furthering the queen’s wishes and intentions. The above examples are a few of many such situations from Elisabeth Parr’s life that highlight her political and cultural roles and significance during the English Renaissance. In the context of Kelly’s article, I want finally to underscore the differences not just between the English and Italian Renaissances but also between Kelly’s views and my own. There are obvious differences between Kelly’s Italian Renaissance and my English one, not least that those involved are hundreds of miles and one hundred years apart. The most significant difference between Kelly’s Renaissance and mine is the context in which we as historians wrote and write. The accessibility of resources could be specially argued. Much of my doctoral research on Elisabeth Parr is drawn from the state papers, accessed digi- tally through the 2009 State Papers Online.16 Conducting my research this way has revealed the significant discrepancy between the impression of Tudor women’s activity given by the papers as calendared in the nineteenth century and the evidence in the state papers themselves. As an example, the

y siempre entremetiendo en platica algunos apuntamientos de casamiento pero leves; . . . un secretario del Thesorero, que es catholico con otro su amigo y uno Ingles que tambien lo es, que la Marquesa le avia dicho que me dixese que ella avia passado con la Reyna algunas platicas sobre materia de casamiento y que, si yo le apuntase a hablar a la Reyna del Archiduque Carlos, que la parescia que era buena sazon, pidiendole me lo avisase con persona de quien el se fiase mucho, dandome harta esperança, pero que era materia que se devia tratar con gran secreto.” De Silva to the Duchess, 23 September 1564, No. MCCCXXIII, Lettenhove, ed., Relations Politiques, vol. 4, 110–113; Archives de Simancas, Secreto de Estado, leg. 817, fol. 104. 16 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/catalogue.aspx?gid=126, University of London & History of Parliament Trust, accessed 20 July 2013. Renaissance at the Mid-Tudor Court 299

Calendar of State Papers Domestic Elizabeth 1562 contains three indexed references to Elisabeth Parr, Marchioness of Northampton, but a thorough search of the state papers themselves reveals seven more letters that make substantial mention of her from that year alone. To acknowledge this dis- crepancy necessitates a revision of the accepted and perpetuated misunder- standing of the lives and careers of female courtiers. As far as the English Renaissance is concerned, women such as Elisabeth Parr have become mere footnotes in history, and the extent of their influence has never been accu- rately realized. Historians in the 1960s relied on documents such as the Calendars to signpost where to conduct further research. The significance given to personal interaction by a revisionist historiographical definition of politics, which includes women, was not considered in the nineteenth century, so female agency of the kind practiced by women such as Elisabeth Parr has been neglected, lost, and subsequently ignored by generations of scholars reliant on the Calendars for direction to relevant material. My revision of the key events and circumstances of post-Reformation England from a female-centric perspective shows that through their activity and agency English aristocratic women did indeed have a Renaissance.