B. THE QUEEN’S SECRET

There are quite sufficient indications throughout the early life of Queen Elizabeth that there was some secret which she kept religiously guarded. Various historians of the time have referred to it, and now and again in a way which is enlightening.

In a letter to the Protector Somerset in 1549, when the Princess Elizabeth was 15, Sir Robert Tyrwhitt says:

“I do verily believe that there hath been some secret promise between my Lady, Mistress Ashley, and the Cofferer” [Sir Thomas Parry] “never to confess to death, and if it be so, it will never be gotten of her, unless by the King’s Majesty or else by your Grace.”

In his Girlhood of Queen Elizabeth Mr. Frank A. Mumby writes of this:—

“Elizabeth was as loyal to Parry as to Mrs. Ashley; she reinstated him after a year’s interval, in his office as Cofferer, and on her accession to the throne she appointed him Controller of the royal household. She continued to confer preferment upon both Parry and his daughter to the end of their lives—“conduct,” remarks Miss Strickland, “which naturally induces a suspicion that secrets of great moment had been confided to him—secrets that probably would have touched not only the maiden name of his royal Mistress, but placed her life in jeopardy, and that he had preserved these inviolate. The same may be supposed with respect to Mrs. Ashley, to whom Elizabeth clung with unshaken tenacity through every storm.”

Major Martin Hume in his Courtships of Queen Elizabeth says of the favourable treatment of the Governess and the Cofferer:—

“The confessions of Ashley and Parry are bad enough; but they probably kept back more than they told, for on Elizabeth’s accession and for the rest of their lives, they were treated with marked favour. Parry was knighted and made Treasurer of the Household, and on Mrs. Ashley’s death in July 1565 the Queen visited her in person and mourned her with great grief.”

The same writer says elsewhere in the book:

“Lady Harrington and Mrs. Ashley were, in fact, the only ladies about the Queen who were absolutely in her confidence.”

In a letter to the Doge of Venice in 1556 Giovanni Michiel wrote:

“She” [Elizabeth] “I understand, having plainly said that she will not marry, even were they to give her the King’s” [Philip of Spain] “son” [Don Carlos, Philip’s son by his first wife] “or find any other great prince, I again respectfully remind your serenity to enjoin secrecy about this.”

Count de Feria wrote in April, 1559:

“If my spies do not lie, which I believe they do not, for a certain reason which they have recently given me, I understand that she [Elizabeth] will not bear children.”

At this time Elizabeth was only 26 years of age.

The following extract is taken from Mr. Mumby’s Girlhood of Queen Elizabeth in which is given the translation taken from Leti’s La Vie d’Elizabeth. The letter is from Princess Elizabeth to Lord Admiral Seymour, 1548 (apropos of his intentions regarding her):—

“It has also been said that I have only refused you because I was thinking of some one else. I therefore entreat you, my lord, to set your mind at rest on this subject, and to be persuaded by this declaration that up to this time I have not the slightest intention of being married, and, that if ever I should think of it (which I do not believe is possible) you would be the first to whom I should make known my resolution.”