ELIZABETH MOVED TO her London property, Somerset House, and waited for the arrival of her sister Mary. On 31 July 1553, she rode out to meet Mary at Wanstead, dressed in the Tudor colours of white and green, attended by a huge retinue – some said 2,000 horsemen. The queen and the princess returned to London to adoring crowds on 3 August and Elizabeth rode beside her sister in the coronation procession. To the people, the new order was clear: the Tudor queens were back.
But Elizabeth’s position was shaky. She had no husband to protect her and she refused to countenance Mary’s religious reforms. Mary promptly repealed all the religious acts of the previous reign – and refuted the annulment of her mother’s marriage. She was the lawful queen, and hers was the lawful religion. She was crowned in a blaze of glory – and put on the coronation ring, which married her to the nation.
Mary was gratified by her sister’s support but she wished even more proof of sisterly affection. She demanded Elizabeth attend Mass. Elizabeth did finally agree, but said she had a stomach ache and did the whole thing with a ‘suffering air’. Mary then declared the marriage between Henry and Catherine of Aragon valid once more, reiterating her sister’s reduced status. Elizabeth knew she was better off out of Mary’s sight – and left in December to live in the country. There was some discussion of Elizabeth’s marriage prospects. Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon, a Catholic descended from Edward IV, had been released from the Tower when Mary came to the throne. Perhaps, the councillors thought, he might marry Elizabeth? But for Mary, the risk that Elizabeth might bear a son who would be a focus of plots attempting to dethrone her for him – even a baby boy was worth more, in royal terms, than a woman – was too great.
Mary was determined to secure the succession. Parliament wished her to marry an Englishman for they feared giving too much influence to a foreign country. Mary was convinced God had ordained her to marry Philip of Spain – and indeed his father, the Holy Roman Emperor, had pressed the suit almost immediately after Mary’s accession. He happily informed Mary that she needed a husband ‘to be supported in the labour of governing … and assisted in matters that are not of ladies’ capacity’.1 Mary believed him and thought in similar fashion – as would her much younger cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, many years later. The new queen desired nothing more than a Catholic union that would bolster her project of returning the country to Catholicism. But the marriage question threw into relief the unique problems of a female monarch. If a woman was always subject to her husband, then a queen would be subordinate to her husband – and so would her country. Even marrying an Englishman would have plunged Mary into difficulties, for she would seem to be favouring one family over another. Moreover, royals traditionally married each other rather than break the line with ordinary blood, even that of an aristocrat. Mary had resented her father’s own marriage to a commoner and was hardly likely to do the same. She wanted Philip. The news was received badly, and when the imperial ambassadors arrived in London, school-boys threw snowballs at them.
By the first weeks of 1554, there were plans for what became known as the Wyatt Rebellion, prompted by various reasons but notably anger against the match between Mary and Philip: four uprisings – Kent, Devon, Leicestershire and the Welsh Marches – which would then join together and head to London, throw Mary from the throne and crown Elizabeth, with the Earl of Devon installed as a consort. Mary got wind of the plot – and moved to quash it. She summoned Elizabeth to court but the order was refused, with Elizabeth saying she was unwell. Mary rallied her troops in the City, telling them she loved them ‘as the mother doth the child’.2
But, unaware, Thomas Wyatt set off from Kent and took his men to London to unseat Mary. He was swiftly captured and sent to the Tower – and was there interrogated about Elizabeth’s part in the matter. Thomas Wyatt did admit that he’d written to Elizabeth, but only advising her to get away for the sake of safety – and she had replied via a servant that she would proceed as she thought best. That was almost enough for the investigators – Elizabeth had been seen in conversation with some conspirators, she had refused an invitation to court when the rebellion was imminent, and her name was simply recurring too often. Mary ordered her to court – and this time, Elizabeth knew better than to resist. Unwell with swellings and pain, she entered London on 23 February, declaring that the curtains of her litter should be open so that all saw how ill she was.
After the Wyatt Rebellion, Mary toughened her stance on all the rebels in the Tower. Jane Grey was executed on the day Elizabeth set out for London, and Robert Dudley was put on trial and sentenced to death. It was clear to the investigators that the rebels had dropped hints to the princess and that her household had been in contact with the rebels. But if she had known specifically about the rebellion and assented to it, the evidence was proving hard to find. The conspirators would not condemn her, and Wyatt denied he had told her about the conspiracy. Elizabeth was essentially put under house arrest – and then on 17 March, she was told she was being charged with conspiracy and would be sent to the Tower. The Earl of Sussex and Marquis of Winchester arrived to escort her, and she begged them for the time to write to her sister. She was persuasive and desperate – and they allowed it. But she wrote slowly, and they missed the tide that would carry them by boat – gaining herself another night. She shaded in the rest of the paper, so that no one could add any extra words on what became known as the ‘Tide Letter’. She begged her innocence, but Mary would not change her mind. Elizabeth was to be taken to the Tower.
Had Elizabeth wished for her sister to be deposed? She does seem to have known about the rebellion, but not assented to it. She probably heard what was said and did nothing with the information. Life in Tudor England was full of people whispering in corners and plots that came to nothing – and why should this be any different? But the very fact that she might have known something and did nothing was evidence enough, for a truly loyal sister would have gone to Mary with all that she knew.
Elizabeth arrived in the old royal palace of the Tower on Palm Sunday. Mary gave her the royal apartments – those that Anne Boleyn had occupied on the eve of her coronation and then before her execution.
Elizabeth had to save herself from the same fate and she had nothing but her wit. It might well be the case that Mary would have not executed her, at the final stage, for it would have created much anger: it was one thing chopping off the heads of insubordinate nobles, for that was all about power, but Elizabeth was royal, her own sister, and very popular. Moreover, she was a woman – and thus could be excused as not having a true understanding of what was going on. For a woman to execute another of her gender was viewed with disapproval, as Elizabeth later found. After the execution of Lady Jane Grey, Mary might have felt that one woman was enough, and in that case she had obvious proof of an attempt to take the crown. But even if the queen had not had Elizabeth executed, she could have condemned her to a perpetual prison in the Tower or miserable house arrest for the rest of her life.
On Good Friday, Elizabeth’s interrogation began. The questioners were insistent on the point that the French ambassador had recorded that the castle at Donnington was being fortified, and Elizabeth was being sent there to await victory. They argued that she had been told to go to Donnington and so she must have known about the plot – and used the evidence that Elizabeth’s property there had been loaded with arms and provisions. Elizabeth resisted and although she admitted she had been told to go, and that she had a house in Donnington, she was adamant that she had never slept there. Wyatt went to the scaffold on 11 April declaring that Elizabeth had had no knowledge of the uprising ‘before I began’,3 and the interrogators couldn’t gain hard evidence. Mary and her council knew that they could not execute Elizabeth without proper proof. And her own feelings were also turning against the deed. To execute a young fellow princess, the other daughter of Henry VIII, was going too far. Moreover, Mary was preparing for her marriage to Philip of Spain. It would look better for her to have her sister by her side, smiling and cheering at the happy news.
In early May, Sir Henry Bedingfield arrived with a hundred guards for Elizabeth. In shock, she asked about the scaffold that had been used for Lady Jane Grey, fearing she too was due to be executed. Instead she was free – but she would have to live in the custody of Sir Henry at Woodstock. On the journey to her new home, she was surrounded by enthusiastic crowds who threw cakes and presents into her litter. Her two months in the Tower had been terrifying and the crowds cheering her freedom were almost overwhelming.
At Woodstock, Elizabeth was constantly watched and not allowed to correspond with the outside world. She chafed under her restraint, complaining to Sir Henry about the lack of everything from an English Bible to a pen. But she felt it was only a matter of time. As she scored onto a window in the house, ‘Much suspected by me / Nothing proved can be’. And her servants were still allowed to move as they pleased. Thomas Parry set up offices at the nearby Bull Inn.
In July, Philip and Mary married, and by the end of the month, the Lords and Commons had agreed to return England to Catholicism. Philip was a reluctant husband, unenthusiastic about Mary and angry that Parliament had refused to grant him the crown matrimonial. By autumn, the queen was convinced she was pregnant – and she was utterly thrilled. God was smiling upon her; a Catholic succession would be secured and Elizabeth would be a minor and irrelevant royal for ever.
The queen wanted heretics arrested and executed by burning. John Rogers, vicar of St Sepulchre’s and prebendary of St Paul’s, was arrested and sent to Newgate, and on 4 February 1555 he was taken to Smithfield to be burned. On the way, he was allowed to briefly see his wife and ten children, one a baby at the breast. On the stage, he was offered a pardon if he would recant. He refused and was executed ‘washing his hands in the flame as he was burning’.4 Thomas Cranmer, who had been Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VIII, Edward VI and briefly under Mary, was arrested and recanted from Protestantism, brokenly and desperately expressing his eagerness to be a Catholic once more. But even though heretics who recanted should, by canon law, have been pardoned, Mary denied him that grace and he was burned at the stake in Oxford in 1556. She was as hard on those she saw as traitors as her father and brother had been.
The queen’s pregnancy continued apace. With her reforms underway and a child in her womb – the ultimate proof that she had been correct – she could afford to be magnanimous, and she wished Elizabeth to be at court when the baby was born. Philip also encouraged her to be lenient on the princess, for if Mary was to die in childbirth and lose the child too, then Elizabeth would be queen and he needed to be on good terms with her. And if Mary died childless and Elizabeth had been executed then the new monarch would be Mary, Queen of Scots, with all of France behind her, and Philip would do anything to resist the growth of French power.
Elizabeth set off for court diplomatically carrying a present of baby linen, embroidered to commemorate the next Tudor heir. She was called to the queen at night and Mary told her off for her refusal to confess. Elizabeth was resolute and said only that she would not say she had been wrongfully punished. She was willing to tell Mary she was her true subject, but no more.
Mary withdrew to her birthing chamber at Hampton Court as was customary, surrounded by her ladies in a shut-up room, hung with the most ornate tapestries and furnished lavishly for the birth of a royal baby. The court waited with bated breath at the end of April – but no child was born. Swollen and in pain, shut up with her ladies, Mary waited for her baby through May, June and July. No baby came and finally, in August, Mary quit the birthing chamber in dreadful humiliation, accepting that no child would come. She found that Philip was not there to give her solace, for he had long since left for Spain, and her misery was compounded. The charitable among her subjects and overseas courts said she had miscarried. Others, as the French ambassador reported, said that it had never been a pregnancy, merely a ‘woeful malady’ of swelling and sickness.5 Elizabeth attempted to keep a low profile at court, afraid that Mary would lash out at her. She knew her sister still suspected her of collusion with the Wyatt Rebellion and she dreaded her every move being watched, any common greeting with a courtier or diplomat fodder for misinterpretation.
Finally, in October, Elizabeth was permitted to leave court and return to her own estates at Hatfield, where she could live freely. There, she made the wise resolve to give the impression of passing her days as quietly as possible. She took back Kat Ashley and Thomas Parry, and Roger Ascham arrived to engage in her scholarly studies. Behind it all, however, she was gathering her political allies and considering what she would do if her sister died childless. For she had an unlikely ally in Philip of Spain. He was less interested in religion than politics and he had plans of marrying Elizabeth after her sister’s death. As he was a keen Catholic, one might think that he would prefer the throne to go to Mary, Queen of Scots, to ensure religious unity. But, for Philip, Mary was utterly allied with France and if France controlled England, then Spanish ships would not be able to pass through the Channel to the territories of the Spanish Netherlands. Mary of Guise had sent her daughter abroad to marry to ensure her safety, to create a French alliance and ensure French support for her own efforts to keep the Scottish nobles in check. But by doing so, she had ensured that Mary was forever allied with France – and so Philip plumped for Elizabeth, as the lesser evil.
Elizabeth was keeping up a good pretence of living quietly but in 1556 another plot began, with her at the nub. Once more, powerful men with overseas assistance aimed to overthrow the queen and put Elizabeth in her place. When the plotters were rounded up, Elizabeth wrote to the queen protesting her innocence – but her London home, Somerset House, was searched and libellous pamphlets and drawings of Mary and Philip were found. At Hatfield, Kat Ashley, Elizabeth’s Italian tutor and two of her servants were arrested. It seemed as if there was some truth in the allegations – the pamphlets did not appear to be have been planted. And, as the Venetian ambassador reported, it looked as though her friends were involved in all the plots. But once more, Elizabeth escaped interrogation. Philip had intervened on her behalf. Indeed, although Mary was confident that she would one day have her own child, the mere possibility that Mary, Queen of Scots would rule the country was almost as awful to her as it was to Philip. Elizabeth might be difficult, rebellious and open in her refusal to bow to the Catholic faith – but at least she was English.
By 1558, poor Mary was growing very ill. Her health had never been strong and two supposed pregnancies that never came to be anything but ghosts had naturally plunged her into distress. A failed campaign against the French, in an attempt to support Philip, had the dreadful outcome of losing Calais, the last continental port that England possessed. Mary never forgave herself and she knew that her people were incensed that she had lost an English possession in an attempt to support a Spanish war. Philip was dismissive and cruel, refusing to spend time with her, even though she wrote to him begging and offering him his favourite cakes. He had long since given up on an heir from his wife and he was turning his attentions to Elizabeth. Mary had believed she was pregnant once more in the spring of 1558, but no one except her had thought it possible.
The young princess, meanwhile, was beginning to sustain and create her networks – with her trusted William Cecil at the helm. London’s Somerset House had become the place where she assembled her loyal men and her court-in-waiting – and possibly saw those pamphlets against the queen. The Venetian ambassador had noted that gentlemen in the kingdom were seeking employment in her train and that all eyes were turned to her as successor. She was ready.6
On 17 November, Elizabeth received the news. Mary had died, and she was queen. She did not legitimise the marriage of her parents and thus herself. The country had loved the former queen, Catherine of Aragon. But they did not feel the same about Anne Boleyn and so for now, Elizabeth refrained from restoring her mother’s status. Being a queen was surely enough, and yet retaining her illegitimacy opened her up to challenge. Particularly from the next in line to the throne – Mary, Queen of Scots.