The Boleyn Women: The Tudor Femmes Fatales Who Changed English History (34 page)

Elizabeth’s letter contained good advice and genuinely seems to have been full of concern and empathy for her fellow monarch. Mary failed to heed her English cousin’s words and, on 15 May 1567, she married the Earl of Bothwell, who was widely reputed to have been responsible for the murder.

Soon after her marriage, Mary was captured by rebel Scottish lords and imprisoned.
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Elizabeth was furious about this treatment of a fellow queen and sent ambassadors to try to secure Mary’s release. The Scottish lords were determined to remove Mary, and she was forced to abdicate in favour of her infant son, who was crowned as James VI of Scotland. Elizabeth refused to recognise the new king and raged at the Scottish lords, but she was not prepared to reinstate Mary by force. She was nonplussed when the Scottish queen, who had escaped from her imprisonment, arrived in England on 17 May 1568. Elizabeth promised her protection, but she refused to meet her while she was suspected of Darnley’s murder.
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Mary was immediately placed under house arrest, with Catherine Carey’s husband, Sir Francis Knollys, despatched north to Carlisle to take custody of her, very much against his wishes. The Scottish queen was evidently an irksome burden, with Francis writing to Elizabeth’s chief minister, William Cecil, on his arrival with Mary at Bolton that ‘since her departure from Carlisle hither unto she hath been very quiet, very tractable, and void of displeasant countenance’, something that suggests that this was not usually the case.
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He also later wrote to Catherine to confess that ‘I have been driven to many contentions’ with the Queen of Scots, although he considered her bark worse than her bite, uttering the first thing that came to her mind and often later seeking to make amends ‘in pleasant sort and manner’.
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Elizabeth was always suspicious of her royal relatives. For her, part of the continuing attraction of her maternal family must always have been that they were no threat to her throne, unlike her paternal cousins. She was therefore loath to dispense with Francis’s services in the North, with him writing plaintively to Catherine that ‘I pray you help that I may be revoked and return again, for I have little to do here and I may be spared hence very well’.
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Elizabeth remained close to Catherine Carey and Francis Knollys, making use of their services at court. For example, in November 1566 she sent Francis with her answer to parliament when they petitioned her to marry.
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The couple’s daughter, Lettice, in particular flourished at court, marrying Walter Devereux, Viscount Hereford, who would later become the Earl of Essex, when she was aged around nineteen.
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Lettice, who later married a second earl and survived into her nineties, was the most prominent member of the family until her brother, William, was created Earl of Banbury in 1626. As a result of this she was displayed prominently in ermine and a coronet on the family monument at Rotherfield Greys. Certainly, her mother would have been proud of the marriage her daughter made, although Devereux was not created earl until after his mother-in-law’s death.

Catherine was careless in relation to her health, with her friend (and later son-in-law) Robert Dudley writing in August 1568 that ‘I fear her diet and order’.
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Only the month before, Francis had addressed a similar complaint to his wife, worrying that she ‘do often forget to prevent sickness by due & precise order’. He felt that his presence was required to ensure that she did what the doctors commanded, declaring that ‘I am very sorry to hear that you are fallen into a fever, I would to God I were so dispatched hence that I might only attend and care for your good recovery’.
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It may be that Catherine was too taken up with her royal duties to take notice of her health, particularly since anyone who had successfully given birth to sixteen children must have been used to a robust constitution. Her husband stated in a letter written during one illness that ‘I trust you shall shortly overcome this fever and recover good health again’, suggesting usually strong health.
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She had recovered from her July 1568 fever by the following month, implying that it was of no great consequence, with Robert Dudley writing in August to assure Francis that ‘your wife is well again’.
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It has been suggested that she was someone who refused to listen to medical advice, instead seeking her own remedies, something which suggests that she was as strong-willed as her mother and other Boleyn family members.

The separation of Catherine and Francis that his absence in the North necessitated deeply grieved the couple. A letter survives from Francis to his wife dated 30 December 1568 in which he worried again about her health, having received news from William Cecil that she was again unwell.
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The relationship between Elizabeth and her favourite cousin had evidently been somewhat strained due to the queen’s refusal to allow Francis to return, with Francis complaining to Catherine of ‘her majesty’s ungrateful denial of my coming to the court this Christmas’, as well as her refusal to support the couple in a suit that they had. Francis was further concerned that there had been ‘other misconstruings of me and mine’ with the queen, something which again suggests that the couple and their royal kinswoman had quarrelled. That the source of this quarrel was their separation is clear from Francis’s last letter to Catherine, when he confided ‘that in my last letter to the queen’s majesty I was about (aft that I had written somewhat plainly to her majesty in her own matters) to have written these words following; that as touching mine own particularity, among all my griefs of mind, it was is not the least to understand that my wife is ready to die in discomfort and in miserable state towards her children even in your majesty’s court’. It was only a further letter from Cecil, stating that Catherine was beginning to recover, which stopped her husband writing to Elizabeth in such an accusatory tone. Francis was right to be concerned and he was never able to see his beloved wife again.

Catherine was deeply saddened by her separation from her husband, which did not help her health.
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While at court late in 1568 she developed a fever which, together with her sorrow, ‘did greatly further her end’. The queen was alarmed by Catherine’s sickness, ordering that she be well attended and visiting her regularly. Elizabeth stopped short of ordering Francis’s return, however, suggesting that she had not believed the sickness to be mortal. In his last letter, written at the end of December, this was also Francis’s opinion from the news he had received, ending his letter by saying, ‘I trust you have not forgotten to join my New Year’s gifts with yours and to deliver it accordingly’ – hardly something with which a dying woman would be expected the concern herself.
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Catherine died suddenly on 15 January 1569 while still at court, to the great grief of her royal kinswoman. There appear to have been some whisperings of blame directed at Elizabeth, with one royal agent, in conversation with Mary, Queen of Scots, mentioning that ‘although her Grace [Elizabeth] was not culpable of this accident, yet she was the cause without which their being asunder [Catherine and Francis] had happened’.
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Catherine was sincerely loved, being grieved for by her husband and children. Elizabeth also grieved deeply for her, arranging a splendid funeral in Westminster Abbey for the woman to whom she was closest. From her own pocket Elizabeth, who was notoriously parsimonious, paid over £640 to ensure that her cousin Catherine, the daughter of a Boleyn, was royally buried. The queen almost shut down for a time with her grief, with Mary, Queen of Scots, being informed that

the Queen’s Majesty [Elizabeth] (God be praised) did very well, saving that all her felicities gave place to some natural passions of grief, which she conceived for the death of her kinswoman, and good servant the Lady Knollys; and how by that occasion her Highness fell for a while, from a Prince wanting nothing in this world, to private mourning, in which solitary estate being forgetful of her own health, she took cold, wherewith she was much troubled, and whereof she was well delivered.
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Elizabeth’s grief at Catherine’s death was greater than that which she displayed for any other family member: a testament to the cousins’ closeness. It may also have been remorse that finally persuaded her to recall Francis Knollys from ‘his long and painful service’, sending the Earl of Shrewsbury instead to act as the Scottish queen’s gaoler on 26 January 1569.
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She did not entirely dispense with the family’s services, however, requesting that Catherine’s eldest son, Henry, remain with the Queen of Scots.

With Catherine Carey’s death the main Boleyn line was represented mainly by the queen herself. In addition to this, Catherine’s six daughters and, later, her granddaughters, could lay some claim to being Boleyn women, as could the daughters of her brother, Henry Carey, who made up some of his twelve children.

Although Sir Francis Knollys was allowed to return south following his wife’s death, the problem of Mary, Queen of Scots, remained a very real threat for Elizabeth. The Scottish queen, who was both young and very beautiful, was a romantic figure and attracted interest among the nobility, most notably from Elizabeth’s kinsman, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, the son of the executed Earl of Surrey. In late 1569 a rumour reached court that Norfolk wished to marry Mary in order to become king and return the English church to Catholicism.
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Elizabeth summoned Norfolk, whom she had always recognised as a kinsman, hoping to encourage him to confess.
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The peer denied everything, but, failing to heed the danger, became involved in 1571 in a plot to depose Elizabeth and replace her with Mary. While Elizabeth was prepared to sentence Norfolk to death, she could not bring herself to sign the death warrant. She was always squeamish about ordering the deaths of her kin and she spent several weeks wracked with uncertainty. According to a letter from John Lee to Lord Burghley, ‘they say on 26 February last, was a warrant directed to the lieutenant for the execution of Norfolk on the following morning, but the queen, after she had signed the warrant, was so greatly disquieted in mind and conscience that she could not rest until she had sent to the lieutenant to return it’.
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Finally, Elizabeth was prevailed upon to sign and Norfolk was executed on 2 June 1572.
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This decision caused Elizabeth a great deal of emotional turmoil and many people shared the view of the Earl of Sussex that she needed a husband to keep her safe.
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As time went by, Elizabeth came under increasing pressure to marry and settle the succession. In 1571, she received an offer of marriage from the Duke of Anjou, the brother of the King of France. Anjou was over twenty years younger than Elizabeth and a fervent Catholic but the queen, needing a French alliance, informed her council in March that she intended to marry him. Neither Anjou nor Elizabeth were enthusiastic and she employed her usual delaying tactics, insisting that the prince visit her before she would commit herself. Anjou disparagingly called Elizabeth an old woman with a sore leg, and by September negotiations had stalled. The French queen mother, Catherine de Medici, then offered her youngest son, Francis, Duke of Alençon.
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Elizabeth allowed her ambassadors to open negotiations and, as usual, insisted on meeting him.

Alençon proved a more ardent suitor than Elizabeth’s earlier admirers and, on 5 August 1579, he arrived in England. His arrival was a shock to Elizabeth and although she insisted on meeting her suitors she had never imagined that a foreign prince would actually arrive. Elizabeth was charmed by her guest and the couple spent two weeks together, giving every indication that they intended to marry.

That Elizabeth did have genuine feelings for Alençon is clear from the poem, ‘On Monsieur’s Departure’, which she composed when he returned to France:

I grieve and dare not show my discontent;
I love, and yet am forced to seem to hate;
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant;
I seem stark mute, but inwardly do prate
I am, and not, I freeze and yet am scorned,
Since from myself another self I turned

My care is like my shadow in the sun –
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands, and lies by me, doth what I have done;
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be suppressed.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft, and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, Love, and so be kind.
Let me float or sink, be high or low;
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die, and so forget what love e’er meant.
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Elizabeth and Alençon corresponded passionately and the attraction between them was genuine. In one letter, Elizabeth wrote, ‘For my part, I confess that there is no prince in the world to whom I would more willingly yield to be his, than to yourself.’
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Alençon’s courtship was the most intense that she experienced and he was the man she came closest to marrying. She may, at least in part, have attempted to make Robert Dudley, whom she had created Earl of Leicester, jealous as Alençon’s representative had earlier informed her that Dudley had secretly married her cousin, Catherine Carey’s daughter, the widowed Lettice Knollys. Elizabeth was devastated at the news and banished Lettice from court, although she was eventually able to forgive Dudley. She never forgave Lettice, who appears to have been as strong-willed as her royal cousin, her mother and their Boleyn women forebears. Lettice bore Dudley a son, who was named for his father, although he died in childhood. She was subject to the queen’s anger for the rest of her life, being forbidden from joining her husband in the Netherlands while he was serving there, among other slights.
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Her two daughters by her first husband, Dorothy and Penelope Devereux, were however welcome at court with their royal cousin.