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Home , Henry VIII

CHAPTER FIVE

“I AM RICHARD II, KNOW YE NOT THAT?”: QUEEN AND HER POLITICAL ROLE PLAYING

Elizabeth I began her reign in 1558, and on 15 January 1559 she was officially crowned as the English queen. Her life as the daughter of King Henry VIII heavily influenced her kingship. From childhood Elizabeth was struggling with uncertainty and fear about the future – , her mother and the second wife of Henry VIII, was decapitated for and adultery on 19 May 1536, when Elizabeth was approaching three years old. Her right to the throne had, seem- ingly, been regulated by the Act of Succession issued at a spring ses- sion of in 1534, which vested all hereditary titles in the offspring of Henry and Anne Boleyn and, at the same time, dissolved his first marriage with .1 However, after her mother’s death Elizabeth was declared a bastard with no right to the throne: now she shared the same fate with Mary, the daughter of Henry and his first wife Catherine. It is with the appearance of Henry’s third wife, , that Elizabeth was accepted anew as a to the throne after Mary Tudor. At the age of twenty-one Elizabeth was accused of treason and was suspected by her sister Mary of supporting the Protestant plot of Tho- mas Wyatt, popularly called the Wyatt Rebellion (1554). She was put under house arrest in and Woodstock for a couple of months. She was also placed in the Tower to await death at the block. Fortu- nately, she was released from prison as there was not enough convinc- ing evidence against her. “Much suspected by me, nothing proved can be” – Elizabeth as the prisoner of the Woodstock Manor in Oxfordshire is believed to have carved this poetry in the window with her diamond.2

1 S.T. Bindoff, Tudor , Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1950, 102. 2 See http://www.tudorswiki.sho.com/page/Queen+Elizabeth+I+-+Historical+profile (accessed 30 April 2010); Simon Pipe, “Woodstock’s Lost Royal Palace”, 2007: http: //www.bbc.co.uk/oxford/content/articles/2007/10/17/glyme_feature.shtml (accessed 20 May 2011). 114 The Pragmatics of Early Modern Politics

At the age of twenty-five she became queen, and her uneasy rule was marked by rebellions and plots against her life,3 by Elizabeth’s shun- ning the advances of the greatest monarchs of Europe, and by her diffi- cult decision to sign the death warrant of her cousin Mary Stuart. After the death of her father Elizabeth lived with her stepmother , who secretly married Thomas Seymour, the Ad- miral. When Catherine was months pregnant, Seymour was ru- moured to visit, many times, Elizabeth’s bed chamber in a short night- gown, when the young Princess herself was not fully dressed. As Elizabeth’s servant, Katherine Ashley, observed he “patt[ed] her ‘upon the back or on the buttocks familiarly’, snatch[ed] kisses, and even pocket[ed] the key of the room so she could not escape …. [and] flinging back Elizabeth’s bed curtains [he] bid her ‘good morning’”.4 These ambiguous situations not only caused Catherine to worry about her marriage but also cast suspicion on Elizabeth, who was exiled to to live with her guardians. When Catherine Parr died after suffering “paranoid ravings”, Seymour attempted to make further ad- vances to the fifteen-year-old Elizabeth (possibly intending to marry her), but he was soon arrested for and other illegal activities.5 Nevertheless, the young Elizabeth felt a need to account for the Sey- mour affair before the Tudor court. In her letter to the she explained her innocence thus:

I wolde not for al earthely Thinges offende in any Thinge; for I knowe I have a Soule to save, as wele as other Fokes have …. Master Tirwit and others have tolde me that ther goeth rumers Abrode, whiche be greatly bothe agenste my Honor, and Honestie (which above al others thinkes I estime) wiche be these; that I am in the Tower; and with Childe by my Lord Admiral. My Lord these ar shameful schandlers, for whiche, be- sides the great Desire I have to see the King’s Majestie, I shall most har- tely desire your Lordship that I may come to the Court after your first Determination; that I may shewe my selfe there as I am.6

3 For example, the Northern Rebellion (1569), the Ridolfi Plot (1570), the Babington Plot (1586), and the Earl of ’s Revolt (1599). 4 Neville Williams, Elizabeth, Queen of England, : Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1967, 13, as quoted in , The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992), London: Phoenix, 2002, 494. 5 Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 497-98. 6 A Collection of State Papers Relating to Affairs in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth from 1542 to 1596 left by William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, vol. 1, eds William Murdin