Elizabeth and Mary Page 19

  As she proceeded further into the Tower, Elizabeth asked why there were so many men in full armour, adding, ‘yt needed not for me, being, alas! But a weak woman’. She asked that they be dismissed from duty and the chronicle related that the men knelt down before her ‘and with one voice, desired GOD to preserve Her Grace’.34 At this point her strength and bravado gave out and she sank down on the cold wet step. Chided to stand up and come out of the rain, Elizabeth replied, ‘Better sitting here, than in a worse place! For, GOD knoweth! I know not whither you will bring me!’35

  The Tower was a terrifying leveller. Everyone who entered as a prisoner knew it was the antechamber to death which few escaped. Elizabeth was as aware as anyone what efforts were being made to find enough evidence to incriminate her. Within those walls men were being tortured; who could blame them for what they said to save their racked bodies from further pain? A contemporary wrote: ‘It would make a pitiful and strange story … to touch and recite what examinations and rackings of poor men there were, to find out the knife that should cut her throat!’36 But Elizabeth was not entirely alone in her troubles. Many of the council were uneasy at her treatment; she was popular with the government and increasingly loved by the people. The remarkable William Cecil, an able administrator in her brother’s government, was already a friend with good connections, working clandestinely on her behalf, eager that she should live to inherit the throne.

  As Elizabeth was ushered into her quarters in the Tower, in ‘an insignificant but wide turret’37 from which she would not emerge for more than a month, her spirit again failed her. She asked one of her gentlewomen for her Bible and prayed that God might help her build her foundation upon the rocks ‘whereby all blasts of blustering weather should have no power against her’.38 As the great bolts were shot on the door to her prison, it all became too much for the Earl of Sussex who, with tears in his eyes, remonstrated with his fellow lords: ‘She was a kinges daughter, and is the quenes syster … therefore go no further than your comyssyon, which I knowe what yt is.’39

  Just as Elizabeth had been initially taken aback when first cross-examined during the Seymour incident, only to recover her composure and acquit herself admirably, so too when some of the council arrived to question her over a conversation she was alleged to have had, prior to the Wyatt Rebellion, about moving from Ashridge to Donnington Castle, she at first denied knowledge of such a place. This gained her time to marshall her defence in her own mind. Suddenly her memory improved, she did in fact remember Donnington, not surprisingly, as it was actually one of her own properties. But she added quickly that she had never stayed there.

  They then confronted her with Sir James Croft, the man with whom she was said to have had this conversation. He had been tortured, ‘marvellously tossed and examined’, but apparently had revealed nothing incriminating. Restored to confidence, Elizabeth rolled out her debating skills and the ever ready righteous indignation which seldom failed to shame her interlocutors: ‘But my Lords! … you do examine every mean prisoner of me! Wherein, methinks, you do me great injury! If they have done evil, and offended the Queen’s Majesty, let them answer to it accordingly. I beseech you, my Lords! Join not me in this sort with any of these offenders! And as concerning my going unto Donnington Castle, I do remember Master HOBY and mine Officers, and you Sir JAMES A CROFT! Had such talk: but what is that to the purpose, my Lords! But that I may go to my own houses at all times?’

  So abashed were some of the council members present that Lord Arundel fell to his knees and expressed his sorrow at troubling her so. With magisterial grace Elizabeth replied, ‘My Lords, you did sift me very narrowly! But well I am assured, you shall do no more to me, than God hath appointed: and so, GOD forgive you all!’40

  The court was electric with every piece of news and rumour in this dangerous and rapidly changing situation. From reported conversations like these, the Venetian ambassador made this judgement on Elizabeth’s abilities, which he dispatched to the senate: ‘Her intellect and understanding are wonderful, as she showed very plainly by her conduct when in danger and under suspicion.’41

  She may have appeared to be calmly in control of the situation but neither the danger surrounding her nor her fearfulness diminished. Her servants were bringing in her food daily, desperate to protect her from any attempt at poisoning. But they had to fight for the chance to deliver the food to her directly and not leave it with ‘the common rascal soldiers’42 at the outer gate of the Tower. The Tower was filled to the roof with prisoners and during March and April 1554, while Elizabeth was incarcerated, there were frequent executions and new arrivals. Suffering was everywhere. Fear and rumour were rampant and as the examinations of prisoners continued Elizabeth’s life remained in the balance.

  Behind the scenes, the Spanish ambassador was discussing with the queen a further strategy to get rid of Elizabeth. If they were unable to collect enough evidence to ‘bring her to death’ then they had better marry her to a stranger and in that way banish her from the kingdom for good. The gallant young Emmanuel Philibert, Prince of Piedmont and Duke of Savoy, was a cousin to Philip of Spain. Marriage to him would not only remove Elizabeth to his impoverished and French-occupied lands, it would also put her firmly in the control of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

  Eventually on 11 April the prime rebel, Sir Thomas Wyatt the younger, was taken to Tower Hill. There, in his speech from the scaffold, he clearly exonerated ‘my lady Elizabeth’ of any foreknowledge of his uprising; ‘And this is most true.’43 The gruesome punishment of the traitor was then enacted on his body. Beheaded, his body was immediately quartered and each part hung from different landmarks of the city. His head was put upon a spike on the gallows beyond Saint James’s.*

  After a month of close confinement, Elizabeth requested permission to walk outside her quarters in order to try and improve her failing health. She was allowed to walk in a corridor as long as she did not look out of any windows. When she was later allowed a turn around the gardens all the prisoners whose windows overlooked the garden were commanded neither to talk to Elizabeth, nor even to glance at her. So anxious were the council to keep Elizabeth isolated that guards were positioned in the adjacent cells to prevent these other prisoners having any contact or communication with her.

  In this atmosphere of menace and almost daily executions of prisoners, any unexpected change in routine unnerved Elizabeth. When in May the new Constable of the Tower was appointed, Elizabeth was suddenly afraid. Sir Henry Bedingfield, a bluff knight from Norfolk, arrived with one hundred soldiers and she grew very agitated, asking of anyone she could, ‘“Whether the Lady JANE’s scaffold were taken away or not?” fearing, by reason of [the soldiers] coming, lest she should have played her part’.44 Even when told she was to be moved at last from the Tower and taken by Bedingfield and his blue-coated soldiers to another destination she was so dismayed at being in the charge of a stranger, whose orders were unknown to her, and guarded by his ‘company of rakehells’, that she argued to be allowed to stay in the Tower.

  Elizabeth was taken from the Tower by river. The people had grown increasingly resentful of her long imprisonment and despite the government’s careful plans word was soon spreading through the streets, and she was greeted with spontaneous expressions of support and celebration. As her barge passed the steelyard, she was given an impromptu salute of three rounds of artillery fire, which displeased the queen and her council. On her progress west the bells in parish churches rang out. Bedingfield attempted to suppress such effusions by having the bellringers put in the stocks, but to little avail.

  If Foxe, that famous contemporary, is to be believed, Elizabeth still feared greatly for her life. The first night on her journey to Oxford was spent in Richmond and the months of fear and uncertainty suddenly overwhelmed her with a terrible foreboding. She was certain that there was some secret and malevolent plan afoot. Elizabeth called her gentleman usher and asked him and all her retainers to pray for her ‘“for this night�
�� quoth she, “I think to die”’.45

  Not that she could have known it, but at this point she was in less danger of dying than she had been in the previous two or three months. The idea of marriage as a way of securing her freedom was to be put to her at Richmond and if she refused the suggested suitor, the Duke of Savoy, then she would be conveyed to her palace of Woodstock to continue her imprisonment there. Philip of Spain was due to arrive to fulfil his marriage contract with the queen and the country was being made ready. The gallows in and around London were removed, and any focus of public disquiet was neutralized or obscured as best as possible. Philip’s father, Charles V, wanted both Mary and Elizabeth in his power, in the event that Philip’s coming marriage did not produce any heirs. His main fear was the accession to the throne of Mary Queen of Scots and the inevitable ascendancy of his implacable enemy, France.

  Although Elizabeth was near to prostration with nervous exhaustion at the months of imprisonment and intimidation, she still had the strength and conviction to maintain her stand on marriage. In the first year of her reign she recalled this fearful period of her life: ‘There certainly was a time when a very honourable and worthy marriage would have liberated us from certain great distress and tribulation … but neither the peril of the moment, nor the desire for liberty could induce us to take this matter into consideration.’46

  Having refused the marriage alternative as a more subtle form of imprisonment and exile, she travelled on by water from Richmond to Windsor on the next leg of her rustication. On the banks of the Thames she saw a group of her servants hoping to catch a glimpse of her as she passed. Elizabeth was obviously still full of anxiety about what fate awaited her for she turned to one of her men standing within earshot and said, ‘Yonder, I see certain of my men; go to them! And say these words from me, Tanquam ovis! (like a sheep to slaughter!)’47 She may not have been led to slaughter but when she arrived at Woodstock she was certainly closely penned, confined to four rooms, guarded day and night by armed men. Her visitors and letters were restricted, her movement limited, her horizons deliberately closed in and obscured.

  For a young woman with a vigorous mind and body, to have her energies so blocked and frustrated was inevitably debilitating. Elizabeth still half expected to be hurried to her death. That summer she was unwell again and had to be bled by the doctors sent to tend her. Powerlessness, uncertainty and fear took their toll on her nervous system and she suffered physically and psychologically. During her imprisonment, and in the dark days of isolation and uncertainty that followed, she was reduced to sharing more closely the hopes and the fears of an ordinary Tudor citizen.

  From this terrifying experience came understanding. Out of this humbling came something of the real affection, loyalty and respect she expressed for her servants, and her genuine concern for the common men and women who flocked to laud her – but also to banter with her – as if she was one of their own. When she was finally queen, Elizabeth was to be criticized by some of her foreign ambassadors for treating her common subjects with more respect than she offered august members of her court, like them. The fiery Count de Feria writing to Philip II of Spain in the immediate aftermath of ‘that woman’s’ accession complained, ‘She is very much wedded to the people and thinks as they do, and therefore treats foreigners slightingly.’48

  A large measure of this was pragmatic. Tudor monarchs did not keep large standing armies and so were much more dependent for their continuing rule on their people’s good will. But what was so rare and explained some of Elizabeth’s extraordinary popularity was the fact that her relationship with her people was a two-way affair. They loved and admired her but equally she made them believe she felt the same way about them. Her imagery in speeches was full of this reciprocity. She was promised to her people, they were the only spouse she needed or desired. To a virgin and solitary queen, without close relations, they were her family. In her first speech to Parliament, Elizabeth could not have made the nature of this relationship more plain: ‘I am already bound unto a husband, which is the kingdom of England … everyone of you, and as many as are English, are my children and kinsfolks.’49

  For nearly a year, Elizabeth was closely confined at Woodstock under the authority of the worthy Bedingfield. He would allow her no concessions without permission from the council, even where she walked and what books she read came under his punctilious rule. Paper and pens were banned, and in the event of her being allowed to write to someone then the necessary materials were doled out and reclaimed afterwards. No-one was allowed to visit without express permission and constant chaperoning. The loyal Parry, her treasurer, lodging in an inn nearby in the village of Woodstock, was suspected of being a go-between but managed to continue to see the princess despite threatened banishment.

  There was no doubt a great deal of gossip and intrigue amongst her servants to which Elizabeth must have been privy. She bridled under the restrictions on her movements, friendships and study and was particularly bereft when one of her waiting women was dismissed, on orders of the queen who felt this was ‘a person of evil opinion, and not fit to remain about our said sister’s person’.50 That ‘said sister’ refused to speak to Bedingfield for quite some while afterwards, which might have been a relief for the man was harrassed by Elizabeth’s forceful requests that he write to the council for various concessions in her treatment. When she herself was given permission to write to the queen, the insistence of her protestations of innocence and her circumlocutory style further alienated her sister who banned any further direct communication in future. ‘We shall not be hereafter molested any more with her disguised and colourable letters.’51

  Thus, as the queen’s plans for marriage to Philip of Spain proceeded in the summer of 1554 amid growing opposition, Elizabeth was effectively isolated, silenced and disabled. Two poems composed by her during her captivity at Woodstock show both her despondency and defiance. Denied pen and paper, she scrawled in charcoal on a wall (some say a shutter). These lines were found and copied by subsequent visitors to the house:

  O Fortune, thy wrestling, wavering state

  Hath fraught with cares my troubled wit,

  Whose witness this present prison late

  Could bear, where once was joy flown quite.

  Thou causedst the guilty to be loosed

  From lands where innocents were enclosed,

  And caused the guiltless to be reserved,

  And freed those that death had well deserved.

  But all herein can be naught wrought,

  So God grant to my foes as they have thought.

  Finis. Elizabetha a prisoner, 1555

  Much suspected by me, but nothing proved can be.52

  The famous last line also was found inscribed into a glass window pane, most probably etched by Elizabeth using one of her diamonds:

  Much suspected by me,

  Nothing proved can be.

  Quod Elizabeth the prisoner.53

  With the description ‘prisoner’ appended to her name, both verses revealed a sense of outrage at the loss of freedom, even some self-pity for a life frustratingly stalled by the interests of others.

  But more fiercely engraved into her spirit was the protracted fear that at any hour on any day she might be summoned and duly executed, ‘condemned without answer and due truth’.54 This fear did not diminish on her release from house arrest at Woodstock. At the end of April 1555, Elizabeth was summoned to Hampton Court to arrive by the back entrance and live in seclusion, seeing no one apart from a modest retinue of servants. The profound anxiety of these days was graphically illustrated (perhaps with some poetic licence) by John Foxe who related how when Elizabeth was summoned unexpectedly to her sister’s presence at ten o’clock at night she truly believed her hour had come. She called her servants and asked them to pray for her ‘for that she could not tell whether ever she should see them again’.55

  Her previous defiance of Bishop Gardiner, the promoter of the burning of heretics and an implacable
enemy of Elizabeth’s, when she had refused to admit her fault and beg forgiveness from the queen, dissolved in the face of her terror. Shown by torchlight into the presence of her sister, Elizabeth fell on her knees and in tears protested ‘her truth and loyalty to her sovereign Majesty’. The queen remained unmoved, certain of Elizabeth’s duplicity but afraid that to act against her would antagonize her council. The ensuing interview was apparently witnessed by King Philip, lurking behind a curtain in the chamber, and from this time Foxe believed ‘he showed himself a very friend in the matter’.56

  Elizabeth remained the unwitting focus for any half-baked rebellion and when another was uncovered in the summer of 1556, during her retirement at Hatfield, she wrote in alarm to Queen Mary, her quickened anxiety inflating her style into convoluted hyperbole. She wished ‘that there were as good surgeons for making anatomies of hearts that might show my thoughts to your majesty as there are expert physicians of the bodies, able to express the inward griefs of their maladies to their patient. For then I doubt not but know well that what other should suggest by malice, yet your majesty should be sure by knowledge, so that the more such misty clouds obfuscates the clear light of my truth, the more my tried thoughts should glister to the dimming of their hidden malice.’57 This can only have added substance to her sister’s bitter disbelief.

  Elizabeth’s experience of imprisonment in the Tower and the grim aftermath was the most strenuous kind of apprenticeship for a queen. Powerless, afraid, treated no better than a criminal and in real danger of dying a traitor’s death, it was the ordeal of her life. With her unerring sense of the theatrical and her training in classical rhetoric, she was to use the experience to great dramatic effect throughout her reign, summoning it frequently thereafter in speeches, prayers and letters. The horror of her incarceration in the Tower was a defining event Elizabeth could never forget. It made a passionate heart more circumspect, a complex nature more contradictory, and a fine intelligence sharp as a blade.