(a) Documents

The next matter with which we have to deal is regarding the identity of Elizabeth. This needs (if necessary) a consideration of the facts of her life, and so far as we can realise them, from external appearance, mental and moral attitudes, and intentions. On account of space we must confine this branch of the subject to the smallest portion of time necessary to form any sort of just conclusion and accepting the available records up to 1543, take the next period from that time to anywhere within the first few years of her reign—by which time her character was finally fixed and the policy on which her place in history is to be judged had been formulated and tested.

This implies in the first instance a brief (very brief) study of her physique with a corollary in the shape of a few remarks on her heredity:

Grafton’s Chronicle states, under the date of 7 September 1533, “the Queene was delivered of a fayre Lady” which was his Courtly way of announcing the birth of a female princess, blond in colour. In all chronicles “fayre” means of light colour. In Wintown the reputed father of Macbeth—the Devil—is spoken of as a “fayre” man; evil qualities were in that age attributed to blondes.

In a letter dated from Greenwich Palace, 18 April, 1534, Sir William Kingston said to Lord Lisle: “To-day, the King and Queen were at Eltham” (where the royal nursery then was) “and saw my Lady Princess—as goodly a child as hath been seen. Her Grace is much in the King’s favour as a goodly child should be—God save her!”

In 1536, when Elizabeth was but three years old, Lady Bryan, the “Lady-mistress” of both Mary and her half-sister, wrote from Hunsdon to Lord Cromwell regarding the baby princess. “For she is as toward a child and as gentle of conditions, as ever I knew any in my life. Jesus preserve her Grace!” In the same letter she says “Mr. Shelton would have my Lady Elizabeth to dine and sup every day at the board of estate. Alas! my Lord it is not meet for a child of her age to keep such rule yet. I promise you, my lord, I dare not take it upon me to keep her Grace in health an’ she keep that rule. For there she shall see divers meats, and fruits, and wines, which it would be hard for me to restrain her Grace from. Ye know, my lord, there is no place of correction there; and she is yet too young to correct greatly.”

Testimony is borne according to Leti to the good qualities of the Princess Elizabeth in these early years, by the affectionate regard in which she was held by two of Henry’s queens, the wronged and unhappy Anne of Cleves and the happy-natured Catherine Parr. Anne, he says, though she had only seen her twice loved her much; she thought her beautiful and full of spirit (“pleine d’esprit.”) Catherine, according to the same writer who had seen her often before her marriage to Henry, admired her “esprit et ses manières.”

If Leti could only have spoken at first hand, his record of her would be very valuable. But unhappily he was only born nearly thirty years after her death. His history was manifestly written from records and as Elizabeth’s fame was already made before he began to treat of her his work is largely a panegyric of hearsay. There is, regarding the youth of the Princess, such an overdone flood of adulation that it is out of place in a serious history of a human life. In his account of the time which we are considering, we find the child compared in both matters of body and mind to an angel. She is credited at the age of ten with an amount of knowledge in all branches of learning sufficient to equip the illustrious men of a century. The fact is the Italian has accepted the queen’s great position, and then reconstructed her youth to accord with it, in such a way as to show that whatever remarkable abilities she possessed were the direct outcome of her own natural qualities.2

2 Amongst other branches of knowledge he credits her with knowing well “Geography, Cosmography, Mathematics, Architecture, Painting, Arithmetic, History, Mechanics.” She had a special facility in learning languages; spoke and wrote French, Italian, Spanish, Flemish. She loved poetry and wrote it, but regarded it as a useless amusement and, as it was distasteful to her, turned to history and politics. Finally he adds: “She was naturally ambitious and always knew how to hide her defects.”

The details above given are not merely meagre but are only explicable by the fact that during the earlier years of her life the child was not considered of any importance. The circumstances of Anne’s marriage—which in any case was delayed till it became a necessary preliminary to the legitimacy on which any future claim to the throne must rest—did not make for a belief in the public mind for its permanency. Things were fluctuating in the religious world and few were inclined to the belief that the Pope (with whom lay the last word and whose political leanings in favour of Catherine of Aragon and the validity of her marriage to Henry were well known) would be overthrown by the English King. And in any case, were Henry to be the final judge of appeal in his own case no great continuity of purpose could be expected from him. The first important event which we have to consider with reference to the question before us is Elizabeth’s first letter to Queen Catherine (Parr) in 1543. In this the girl then ten years old writes to her new step-mother, at whose marriage she together with her half-sister Mary had been present. It is in form a dutiful letter, not entirely without an apparent compulsion or at least intelligent supervision. As it stands, it is impossible to believe that it emanated from a child of ten quite free to follow out its inclinations. The dutifulness is altogether, or largely, due to the training and self-suppression of the royal child of an arbitrary father with absolute power. But it remains for each reader to consider it impartially. The points which we should do well to note here are its plain form of expression, and its entire absence of personal affection. The latter is all the more marked in that it was a letter of thanks for a kindness conferred. Elizabeth was very anxious to come to her father, and Catherine had furthered her wish and secured its fulfilment. After the marriage, the child, as is shown (or rather inferred), had been sent away for more than a year, which absence had been prolonged for at least six months—as already shown.

There is little evidence of Elizabeth’s inner nature in these early days; but we have every right to think that she was of a peaceable, kindly and affectionate nature. Lady Bryan her first nurse or governess (after Lady Boleyn, Anne’s mother) thought highly of her. Catherine Ashley, who had charge of her next, loved her and was her devoted servant, friend and confidant till her death.

Thomas Parry her life-long friend was devoted to her, and when the circumstances of their respective lives and the happenings of the time kept them apart, she restored him at the first opportunity and made his fortune her special care.

There is little base here on which to build an inverted pyramid; our only safety is in taking things as they seem to be and using common sense.