December 9, 2009 • 28 mins
As the only child of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I was born into a world of privilege and danger. Learn more about the tumultuous life of Elizabeth I before she became the Queen of England in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And Sarah, I
have a question for you today. What do Kate Blanchet,
(00:21):
Judy Dench and Helen Mirren have in common? I think
I know the answer to this one. They've all played
Queen Elizabeth the First. Actually, Helen Mirren has the distinction
of playing Elizabeth the First and Elizabeth the Second, right,
So you don't need to send us any correction emails
for that one. But it's not just Hollywood that has
a fascination with Elizabeth the First. She was a really
(00:41):
interesting person who had a very long reign during contentious times. Yeah,
she's brilliant, she's incredibly intelligent, she balances her country in
a very contentious time. And what she's probably most famous
for though, is being the virgin Queen. Right, but was
she really the virgin Queen? Well we're not going to
(01:04):
get too much into that today, but she does use
a kind of coquettish deflection that she probably inherits from
her mother to keep suitors on their toes well into
her old age. So you know, whether it's an English
lord or a foreign prince, they think that they might
have a chance with Elizabeth. She was the original game player,
(01:27):
and they did not have a chance. They didn't because
the same queen, as a young girl, vowed that she
would never marry. And that's what we're going to find
out about today. And that might make sense if you
know that Elizabeth the First was the daughter of Henry
the Eighth, who was notorious for cutting off his wife's
heads and or divorcing them. Henry had, of course, famously
(01:48):
defied the pope to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon,
with whom he had a daughter, Mary, to marry Anne Boleyn,
and in Boleyn was only the second commoner elevated to
the consort's throne. She was very um, very unpopular with
a lot of people, considered just a courtisan who had
worked her way to the throne um. But in fifteen
(02:10):
thirty three, Anne Boleyn is pregnant with her and Henry's
first child, and around the same time they're also the
first signs of trouble in the marriage between Henry and
and Blyn. Henry up until now has been completely infatuated
with his wife Um, but he's starting to stray, and
he's surprised that Anne is actually angry about this um
(02:32):
something well. Catherine, Catherine of Aragon was sort of the
quietly suffering queen, but Anne is upset and Henry wants
a son very badly, as does Anne, because this will
cement her place in Henry's life. He needs an air.
That's largely why he cast aside Catherine of Aragon in
the first place, because they didn't have a living son.
(02:54):
And everyone thinks it will be a boy. It's only
the famous astrologer William Glover who says that Anne will
have a woman child and a prince of the land.
But surprise, on September seven, fift thirty three, a daughter
is born in a bed chamber decorated with tapesters of
st Ursula and eleven thousand virgins, and Henry is not
(03:16):
the most supportive husband. After the birth of his daughter,
he tells Anne, you and I are both young, and
by God's grace, boys will follow um. But there's still
been all of these celebrations planned for the arrival of
a prince, and they go on with most of them.
They have to add an s to the birth announcements,
(03:38):
altering Prince to Princess um. Elizabeth does get a ta
damn for the celebration of a new air and a
really fancy christening. She's wrapped in purple and for um,
but she doesn't get the attendant ceremonies that would be
fit for an air Um. Henry cancels the tournaments that
have been planned the fire works. London doesn't celebrate the
(04:02):
birth with bonfire, so it's kind of played down, at
least from Henry's side. But Anne is just infatuated with
a new baby and she really wants to breastfeed, which
was considered a big not okay, a queen cannot breastfeed
in this time, and they treat Elizabeth very seriously and
very grown up. At three months, she's given her own household,
(04:25):
which is kind of funny, more than a play kitchen
um Hatfield Palace. And meanwhile, her older half sister, Princess Mary,
is being horribly degraded. She's deprived of her title, her
household is disbanded. Um Anne Boleyn is very jealous of
Henry and his older daughter and won't let them see
(04:48):
each other. And um Ethan tries to urge Henry to
put Catherine, his ex wife, and Mary to death or
have them dispatch some way. Um, but Henry's antagonizing his
old family, but he's not going to go as far
as actually killing them now. And unfortunately, Anne Boleyn doesn't
(05:09):
have a lot of luck after this. As far as
pregnancies go, she does not produce a male air. She
has a lot of still births and miscarriages, which some
people say she may have been RH negative, which now
we have things to help you with that, and that
would make sense, having the first birth of a healthy
baby followed by miscarriages and still births, and that would
(05:31):
mean that Anne never would have been able to give
birth to a boy. But Anne really knows that it's
getting down to the wire about delivering an air. When
Catherine dies in fifty six, she she's starting to realize
her power over the King is waning. He doesn't like
her as much anymore. He's realized that she's not a
very adept queen, and she knows that if she doesn't
(05:55):
deliver him an air, she could be put aside just
as easily and kind of the chief consolation during this
time of miscarriages and worry. For Anne is the little Elizabeth,
and she visits her a lot, and Henry is actually
really proud of his young daughter too. He shows her
off to ambassadors, sometimes all dressed up, but sometimes naked
(06:16):
to show how well made she is. Oh god, it's
kind of creepy. Imagine Henry the eighth on Facebook for
to be all over that place. Oh you have the
naked baby pictures. But it ends up not working out,
and to say the very very least, he accuses Anne
of adultery and treason, among other trumpet up charges, and
also has their marriage declared invalid, which makes no sense
(06:39):
because how could it be invalid and she could also
be committing adultery. Oh well, uh, he's slept with her
sister before they were married, that's and that's too too
close for comfort. So she is executed. Elizabeth isn't even
three yet, and because the marriage was declared invalid, Elizabeth
is also now illegitimate. This is obviously an incredibly traumatic
(07:03):
event in young Elizabeth's life, and she's precocious enough that
she probably realized pretty quickly what had happened. She asks
why she's gone from Lady Princess to Lady Elizabeth, and
we don't actually know how she was told of the death,
but it probably happened pretty soon, and I'm assuming it
wasn't in the most sensitive way. Henry gets remarried very quickly.
(07:26):
It's went like a week after the little to James Seymour,
and this new wife wants Henry and Mary, his daughter
from his first marriage, to make up who has been
so insulted and cast aside and neglected right, so their
relationship improves. And Mary is Catholic, which will become important
(07:48):
a little bit later, So she now has people looking
out for her, but no one is looking after a
little Elizabeth. Yeah, she's considered a bastard and the daughter
of a trader, so she doesn't have many supporters. But
fortunately her older sister Mary is fond of her and
visits her, and Um even persuades the king to invite
(08:10):
her to court because she's in the sent away and
not allowed to be around everybody. So there's there's this
really brief window of happy family time for the tutors
Um in the early part of Henry's marriage to Jane Um.
And finally Henry gets what he's been after for decades.
(08:30):
A male heir with Emma Edward's six Yeah, Edward is born. Unfortunately,
this little happy period does not last long because Jane
dies shortly after childbirth. Um, and Elizabeth goes into Mary's
care and Henry, of course marries again Anne of Cleaves,
and a little six year old Elizabeth writes a very
(08:50):
precious letter to her new stepmother asking if she can
come to court. And Anne is very charmed by this letter.
Elizabeth is so smart and it's very polite, and Henry
gives a very rude response, Um, you know, forbidding her
to come. Um. But we're kind of glossing over these
marriages here. But briefly Anne concedes a nulman to Henry
(09:12):
because Henry says that he can't sleep with her, he's
unattracted to her. Um. And Anne actually retires and lives
a pretty comfortable life. She's lucky she escapes the acts
because she's so um, she's so willing to given to
any of Henry's demands. Um. And she's really still fond
(09:33):
of Elizabeth and knows that um, she and probably won't
remarry and have kids of her own, and takes the
maternal interest in her and even asks if Elizabeth can
visit her sometimes, and Henry is actually okay with that.
But with his short marriage to Anne of Cleaves set aside,
Henry finds a new wife and she's a teenager, Catherine Howard,
(09:55):
and he's so happy with her for a little while,
and uh, they have so much fun together. He's he's
kind of the Henry you think of in portraits. By
this point. He's grossly overweight, and he has an abscess
on his leg that oozes and smells bad. So he's
not the dashing young man he used to be. So
we have to kind of wonder what things were like
for Catherine Howard. But they get along very nice, and um,
(10:19):
things are fine until it comes out that she's not
a virgin. She's been employing her former lovers in her household,
and she's accused of treason and executed. And this is
a very traumatic event in the young Elizabeth's life. Right
at this time, she's eight or nine, so she's old
(10:40):
enough to know what's really going on when you you
have to kind of think. She sees this happening and
she realizes, oh, this is what happened to my mother,
and so yeah, by this point she's lost several stepmothers,
seen several people beheaded. It's pretty traumatic, and she tells
(11:00):
her friend that she will never marry because to her
marriage equal staff. But Henry being Henry Mary's again and
this time it is the widow Katherine Parr, and she
really wants to be a good stepmother and let these
three children have a normal life, so she invites them
all to come to court, so Edward and Mary and
(11:21):
Elizabeth are all together again, and this is another sort
of short window of happiness for the tutors Um. They
all come in and out of court and spend time
together and Catherine Parr supervises their education. UM. And there's
also a new act of succession. It goes Prince Edward
(11:42):
the son and heir any new offspring. But by this
point it's extremely likely that UM Henry couldn't have children
UM and then Mary and then Elizabeth. But Henry doesn't
fix the issue of Elizabeth being illegitimate, which comes comes
up against her later and in early fifty four, Henry
(12:05):
banishes Elizabeth from court, and we're still not sure why
that happened. She's just a child, exactly what could she
have done? But Catherine convinces him to forgive her and
let her come back. And Catherine really has even more
than just that maternal interest in these poor, orphaned, abandoned
children who have gone in and out of their father's
(12:27):
favor and had really rough childhoods. She's also really interested
in their education. We mentioned earlier she was going to
supervise Elizabeth's education, but she makes her whole court of
center of feminine learning. To quote Alison Weir, who has
written a great biography and Elizabeth in a history of
all of Henry's wise, if you want to, if you
(12:48):
want to go from number one to six, um, And
Elizabeth and Edward both turned into these intellectual prodigies because
of this really strict education they have in really high
expectations that Henry has for them. Right. One of Elizabeth's
tutors said, her mind has no womanly weakness. Her perseverance
is equal to that of a man, and her memory
(13:09):
long keeps what it quickly picks up. She's really smart.
She knows Greek, Latin, French, Italian and what Welsh, Spanish,
and um, she plays music, she composes. She's you know,
good at more feminine pursuits like needlework. She's really good
at book binding. She's got a lovely hand in calligraphy,
(13:32):
and she is interested in riding and hunting and shooting crossbows.
Some of these are adult pursuits, but she's a very
talented woman, and she as a child, she spends almost
every waking hour with books or religious exercises. So Elizabeth
is prepared for a future that would require some diplomacy,
(13:53):
education and intelligence. And that's a good thing. Because Henry
dies and this makes Catherine the dowager queen, and it
makes little Edward, who's nine or ten at the time,
his heir. Yeah, and Elizabeth's actually with her younger brother
when they're told that their father has died, and when
the men of the court pay her brother homage, which
(14:14):
must have been um a pretty emotional sight for her. Um.
But Edward is no longer allowed by his counsel to
see his stepmother or his sister's And Edward is a
very quiet child. He's obviously had a difficult childhood as well,
and he misses these women who are the only people
(14:36):
who he really loves. Right he's only ten, Yeah, and
I have a lot of sympathy for a little Edwards.
He writes to them a lot and um, it's it's
generally kind of a sad time again and again. Since
Edward is so young, there are other people who are
taking positions of power, and a man named Edward Seymour
(14:56):
becomes Lord Protector of England, but his brother Thomas Seymour
doesn't have a place on the council and he's a
very ambitious man who doesn't like feeling left out. These
are both Edward's maternal uncle, so Jane Seymour's brothers, and
Thomas Seymour decides that perhaps the best way to finagle
his way into power is to propose to thirteen year
(15:19):
old Elizabeth. He knows Mary is Catholic, so she's not
going to be a good match, but Elizabeth seems pretty uh,
pretty good deal. So he starts flirting with her and
courting her, and she's only thirteen, but she knows that
it's about his ambition. Still, she's thirteen, so she's kind
(15:39):
of flattered. Um, but she still turns him down, says,
neither my age nor my inclination allows me to think
of marriage. Um. So he goes back to an earlier love,
Catherine Parr, who is the Dowager Queen, and Catherine had
loved Thomas before, but before marrying Henry the eighth Right.
But once the king decides he wants to marry you,
(16:01):
you marry the king, especially if the king is prone
to be heading people. So she ended up with Henry,
of course, but now she has her chance. The only
problem is that she marries him with what is called
indecent haste. At the time, it's just a few weeks
after Henry died, and something that quick would have to
be approved by the council because it's so soon, she
(16:22):
could potentially, let's say, have had a baby with Henry,
and then you would never know exactly the line of
succession is muddled once again, so she marries him. They're
in trouble, but they're forgiven because little Edward really likes her. Yeah,
so her her young stepson likes her. He likes his uncle,
so he's fine with the marriage. He doesn't see the
(16:44):
political implications of his very ambitious uncle getting a little
bit closer to him and to his affairs. And Elizabeth
goes to live in this household with Katherine Parr and
Thomas Seymour and people are a little bit scandalized, or
at least Mary is Mary is is scandalized that you
(17:05):
know that Catherine accepted the proposal only six weeks after
becoming a widow. But Elizabeth is basically just like, I'm
gonna do whatever I want, or I'm at least gonna
wait until this scandal dies down. Um. She says that
they don't want to offend the Seymours. They should play
it cool because the Seymours are are have so much
power now. And she also says that her stepmother has
(17:27):
been so kind to her. It's not really her place
to to offend her, right, but things at this household
get a little creepy would maybe be a good word,
because Thomas still has that interest in the very young Elizabeth,
and it's definitely of a sexual nature. Um. They start
(17:48):
romping together, and that's the word that's always used. They
they chase each other and have tickle fights, and um,
it's all pretty unseemly from our perspective, But to Catherine,
Elizabeth is just a child, and um, Thomas actually jokingly
kind of calls himself her stepfather, and it all seems okay.
(18:12):
It just seems like a family, family fun. Especially he
makes sure that he does it in front of other
people because there's the implication then that if it were inappropriate,
you know, surely he wouldn't want to do it in
front of the front of his wife or Elizabeth's governess.
But since he's tickling this young girl in her nightgown
(18:33):
in front of his wife, it must be fine. But
things get even more inappropriate when Catherine gets pregnant, and
so I assume they were no longer having relations with
each other, and Thomas focuses his sexual energy even more
strongly little Elizabeth. He would bust into Elizabeth's bed chamber,
um in his nightgown and slippers, and Um. He would
(18:55):
only stay though if she was in bed, where he
would tickle her, mess with her, and um once he
even tried to kiss her, and Missus Catherine Ashley Um,
Elizabeth's lady in waiting, cried for shame, you know, don't
be careful. And Um would even smack her on the
bottom too. So he's he's pretty pretty reckless. And she again,
(19:19):
is about fourteen, So for her, this is a little
bit of a youthful infatuation. She's flattered by this older
man's attentions, and she's a bit too naive, maybe an
innocent to understand what's really going on. He's a manipulative
predator and she's too young to see it. And Catherine
(19:40):
Parr is so oblivious he even joins in sometimes with
these romps um, you know, just everyone having a grand
old time apparently, But Thomas is worried because Elizabeth can't
quite conceal her infatuation, so he's worried he's going to
get into trouble, and so he tells Katherine that he
(20:02):
saw Elizabeth with her arms around a man's neck, and
of course the Dowager Queen is horrified by this and
asks Mrs Ashley about you know what, do you know
anything about this? And Mrs Ashley doesn't want to get involved,
so she refers her to Elizabeth. Has the book, yeah,
(20:22):
and um, Elizabeth, of course you know that's not true.
I don't even know any men outside of your household.
And that's when Catherine gets her first inkling that something
is amiss, because if Elizabeth isn't lying, why is her husband?
And so some accounts have her finding Elizabeth in Thomas's
(20:44):
arms in that April. They come apart, they're ashamed, and
no one thinks the relationship was consummated. But clearly that
was the track going in that direction. So Elizabeth leaves
the household. I believe she's asked to leave by Kat. Yeah,
And there's a really awkward meeting between Catherine and Elizabeth
right before she goes, when Catherine tells her God has
(21:06):
given you great qualities, cultivate them always, and labor to
improve them, for I believe you are destined by Heaven
to be Queen of England. And Elizabeth is so ashamed
she can't even look at her. No. And of course
at this time she realizes that she hurt Katherine, and
the ladies part maybe not in the best terms, but
(21:27):
they do make up later because Catherine realizes, you know,
she's only fourteen, she had no idea. Yeah, And Elizabeth
is never so foolish again about her her honor and
her place in the succession. She realizes that she jeopardized
it all. And Elizabeth takes care after this to appear
as the perfect Protestant woman. She's dressed very plainly, she's
(21:52):
modest and demeanor, she's very sober in general, and she
wants to give off this, you know, this image of
being not that kind of girl, and this essentially saves
her life later, but but we won't skip ahead to
their quite yet. Catherine and Thomas, do you have their child?
(22:12):
Katherine dies in childbirth, and it's sort of the beginning
of a riff between Elizabeth and her older sister Mary,
who had gotten along pretty well before then. Um. About
seven months after the baby is born, Thomas is executed
for treason. This is his ambitions really throw him to
the wind, don't they. You have to roll your eyes
a little bit. He's caught with a knife outside of
(22:34):
Edward's bed chamber, and some people think Elizabeth is involved too.
They're both questioned extremely thoroughly, but she holds out much
better than you would think of fourteen year old would
that kind of questioning. And she's perfectly calm, cool and composed. Yeah,
she acts like the ideal woman for her brother's court.
Um and her her little brother Edward likes her a lot,
(22:58):
but he wouldn't have had any power to save her
should she be implicated with Thomas's treason. And speaking of Edward,
about the same time, he comes down with either tuberculosis
or some other sort of respiratory infection. We're not sure,
but it's very clear that his health is in grave danger,
and he is about to die, and this is when
(23:19):
all the succession stuff just blows up. So back to
that line of succession we were talking about earlier, the
one that Henry decreed when he married Catherine Parr. It
made Edward, of course his air, followed by any other
babies that might be born, followed by Mary, followed by Elizabeth,
followed by the descendants of his youngest sister, not his
(23:41):
eldest sister, because we should say his eldest sister's descendants.
That's Mary, Queen of Scott's and Henry's great enemy in
Scotland of course, So his younger sister's airs are kind
of low down on this line of succession um, but
they jumped to the top right after Edward dies and
(24:02):
their interests put forth the teenage Lady Jane Gray, who
again as a descendant of Henry the eighth youngest sister Mary,
and Gilford Dudley marries Lady Jane, thinking that the political
power of his family, combined with her somewhat dubious blood
claim together will make them a stronger candidate than Mary.
(24:24):
And so she's this sad puppet queen for a few
days before she's executed as well, and kind of an
interesting connection. Lady Jane Gray is actually educated for a
time in the same household as Elizabeth, and the cousins
are very much alike. They look similar, they're both incredibly intelligent.
But Elizabeth takes no part in this coup, which is
(24:47):
pretty smart because it doesn't work right. And Mary gets
the crown, and she initially has a lot of support
people like her despite the fact that she's Catholic, but
she loses that very quickly when she marries the very
Catholic Philip of Spain, and then, of course she sanctions
the burning of three Protestants over her reign um, getting
(25:10):
the name Bloody Mary. So that doesn't really endear a
queen to her people know, and the people decide they
want their Protestant Elizabeth instead to get the Catholics out
of their country, and so they institute various uprisings, and
Elizabeth gets caught up in them a little bit, not
by her own doing, just because she's the figurehead. Yeah.
(25:31):
So one of these is Sir Thomas Wyatt's Rebellion in
fifteen fifty four, which began as a protest against Mary's
marriage to Philip and Elizabeth is accused of being involved
in this and spends three months in the tower in
fear of her life, but there's no strong evidence against her,
(25:51):
even though Mary is very suspicious and UM thinks that
she's secretly a Protestant and Um Elizabeth does get out
of the tower or though, because Mary is pregnant and
therefore Elizabeth is not as much of a threat to her,
you know, if Mary has her own air. But it
turns out that she wasn't really pregnant, and this happens
(26:12):
again in Mary's range. She has two false pregnancies and
no one knows if it was there was a a
physical cause for it, perhaps in a very insist or
some sort of cancer because she had all the symptoms
of pregnancy, or if it was pseudocyesis, which is a
hysterical pregnancy. That's you know, that's more of a psychological
issue because there was so much pressure on every TV
(26:34):
an air to use an air. But this stint in
the tower is another one of those really traumatic events
for Elizabeth's life, and she she's thankful for for her escape.
For her entire life is as late as fifteen seventy nine,
she's still composing private prayers to thank God from pulling
(26:55):
me from the prison to the palace. And Elizabeth plays
the game during Mary's rain very much again. She's doing
that outward obedience perhaps inner disobedience thing. Mary is positive
that Elizabeth is secretly Protestant, but in deference to her sister,
Elizabeth practices, you know, the Catholic rites and jewels and
where she goes to London for her coronation, and she's
(27:18):
she plays it cool during these years. So Mary's horrible
childhood growing up with Henry the eighth, and the dishonor
of her mother and her inability to have a child,
her horrible rain killing all these people, and Philip, her
husband's abandonment of her. He moves back to Spain, so
she's really not going to have a child now leaves
(27:40):
her a broken woman in middle age. And she dies
on November seif fifty eight. And when Elizabeth is told,
the story goes that she's outside at Hatfield the estate,
reading under a tree, and she's rendered speechless initially, and
she sinks to her knees and says in Latin, this
(28:02):
is the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes.
From the eighteenth Psalm, and I think she's provided us
with the perfect ending words to our podcast. Elizabeth goes
on to be a wonderful queen that that is a
story for another day. But if you'd like to learn
more about Elizabeth's father and her childhood, you should check
(28:23):
out the top ten heads that rolled during the reign
of Henry the Eighth on our homepage at www dot
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(28:44):
Blog on the how stuff works dot com home page
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And Sarah, I
have a question for you today. What do Kate Blanchet,
(00:21):
Judy Dench and Helen Mirren have in common? I think
I know the answer to this one. They've all played
Queen Elizabeth the First. Actually, Helen Mirren has the distinction
of playing Elizabeth the First and Elizabeth the Second, right,
So you don't need to send us any correction emails
for that one. But it's not just Hollywood that has
a fascination with Elizabeth the First. She was a really
(00:41):
interesting person who had a very long reign during contentious times. Yeah,
she's brilliant, she's incredibly intelligent, she balances her country in
a very contentious time. And what she's probably most famous
for though, is being the virgin Queen. Right, but was
she really the virgin Queen? Well we're not going to
(01:04):
get too much into that today, but she does use
a kind of coquettish deflection that she probably inherits from
her mother to keep suitors on their toes well into
her old age. So you know, whether it's an English
lord or a foreign prince, they think that they might
have a chance with Elizabeth. She was the original game player,
(01:27):
and they did not have a chance. They didn't because
the same queen, as a young girl, vowed that she
would never marry. And that's what we're going to find
out about today. And that might make sense if you
know that Elizabeth the First was the daughter of Henry
the Eighth, who was notorious for cutting off his wife's
heads and or divorcing them. Henry had, of course, famously
(01:48):
defied the pope to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon,
with whom he had a daughter, Mary, to marry Anne Boleyn,
and in Boleyn was only the second commoner elevated to
the consort's throne. She was very um, very unpopular with
a lot of people, considered just a courtisan who had
worked her way to the throne um. But in fifteen
(02:10):
thirty three, Anne Boleyn is pregnant with her and Henry's
first child, and around the same time they're also the
first signs of trouble in the marriage between Henry and
and Blyn. Henry up until now has been completely infatuated
with his wife Um, but he's starting to stray, and
he's surprised that Anne is actually angry about this um
(02:32):
something well. Catherine, Catherine of Aragon was sort of the
quietly suffering queen, but Anne is upset and Henry wants
a son very badly, as does Anne, because this will
cement her place in Henry's life. He needs an air.
That's largely why he cast aside Catherine of Aragon in
the first place, because they didn't have a living son.
(02:54):
And everyone thinks it will be a boy. It's only
the famous astrologer William Glover who says that Anne will
have a woman child and a prince of the land.
But surprise, on September seven, fift thirty three, a daughter
is born in a bed chamber decorated with tapesters of
st Ursula and eleven thousand virgins, and Henry is not
(03:16):
the most supportive husband. After the birth of his daughter,
he tells Anne, you and I are both young, and
by God's grace, boys will follow um. But there's still
been all of these celebrations planned for the arrival of
a prince, and they go on with most of them.
They have to add an s to the birth announcements,
(03:38):
altering Prince to Princess um. Elizabeth does get a ta
damn for the celebration of a new air and a
really fancy christening. She's wrapped in purple and for um,
but she doesn't get the attendant ceremonies that would be
fit for an air Um. Henry cancels the tournaments that
have been planned the fire works. London doesn't celebrate the
(04:02):
birth with bonfire, so it's kind of played down, at
least from Henry's side. But Anne is just infatuated with
a new baby and she really wants to breastfeed, which
was considered a big not okay, a queen cannot breastfeed
in this time, and they treat Elizabeth very seriously and
very grown up. At three months, she's given her own household,
(04:25):
which is kind of funny, more than a play kitchen
um Hatfield Palace. And meanwhile, her older half sister, Princess Mary,
is being horribly degraded. She's deprived of her title, her
household is disbanded. Um Anne Boleyn is very jealous of
Henry and his older daughter and won't let them see
(04:48):
each other. And um Ethan tries to urge Henry to
put Catherine, his ex wife, and Mary to death or
have them dispatch some way. Um, but Henry's antagonizing his
old family, but he's not going to go as far
as actually killing them now. And unfortunately, Anne Boleyn doesn't
(05:09):
have a lot of luck after this. As far as
pregnancies go, she does not produce a male air. She
has a lot of still births and miscarriages, which some
people say she may have been RH negative, which now
we have things to help you with that, and that
would make sense, having the first birth of a healthy
baby followed by miscarriages and still births, and that would
(05:31):
mean that Anne never would have been able to give
birth to a boy. But Anne really knows that it's
getting down to the wire about delivering an air. When
Catherine dies in fifty six, she she's starting to realize
her power over the King is waning. He doesn't like
her as much anymore. He's realized that she's not a
very adept queen, and she knows that if she doesn't
(05:55):
deliver him an air, she could be put aside just
as easily and kind of the chief consolation during this
time of miscarriages and worry. For Anne is the little Elizabeth,
and she visits her a lot, and Henry is actually
really proud of his young daughter too. He shows her
off to ambassadors, sometimes all dressed up, but sometimes naked
(06:16):
to show how well made she is. Oh god, it's
kind of creepy. Imagine Henry the eighth on Facebook for
to be all over that place. Oh you have the
naked baby pictures. But it ends up not working out,
and to say the very very least, he accuses Anne
of adultery and treason, among other trumpet up charges, and
also has their marriage declared invalid, which makes no sense
(06:39):
because how could it be invalid and she could also
be committing adultery. Oh well, uh, he's slept with her
sister before they were married, that's and that's too too
close for comfort. So she is executed. Elizabeth isn't even
three yet, and because the marriage was declared invalid, Elizabeth
is also now illegitimate. This is obviously an incredibly traumatic
(07:03):
event in young Elizabeth's life, and she's precocious enough that
she probably realized pretty quickly what had happened. She asks
why she's gone from Lady Princess to Lady Elizabeth, and
we don't actually know how she was told of the death,
but it probably happened pretty soon, and I'm assuming it
wasn't in the most sensitive way. Henry gets remarried very quickly.
(07:26):
It's went like a week after the little to James Seymour,
and this new wife wants Henry and Mary, his daughter
from his first marriage, to make up who has been
so insulted and cast aside and neglected right, so their
relationship improves. And Mary is Catholic, which will become important
(07:48):
a little bit later, So she now has people looking
out for her, but no one is looking after a
little Elizabeth. Yeah, she's considered a bastard and the daughter
of a trader, so she doesn't have many supporters. But
fortunately her older sister Mary is fond of her and
visits her, and Um even persuades the king to invite
(08:10):
her to court because she's in the sent away and
not allowed to be around everybody. So there's there's this
really brief window of happy family time for the tutors
Um in the early part of Henry's marriage to Jane Um.
And finally Henry gets what he's been after for decades.
(08:30):
A male heir with Emma Edward's six Yeah, Edward is born. Unfortunately,
this little happy period does not last long because Jane
dies shortly after childbirth. Um, and Elizabeth goes into Mary's
care and Henry, of course marries again Anne of Cleaves,
and a little six year old Elizabeth writes a very
(08:50):
precious letter to her new stepmother asking if she can
come to court. And Anne is very charmed by this letter.
Elizabeth is so smart and it's very polite, and Henry
gives a very rude response, Um, you know, forbidding her
to come. Um. But we're kind of glossing over these
marriages here. But briefly Anne concedes a nulman to Henry
(09:12):
because Henry says that he can't sleep with her, he's
unattracted to her. Um. And Anne actually retires and lives
a pretty comfortable life. She's lucky she escapes the acts
because she's so um, she's so willing to given to
any of Henry's demands. Um. And she's really still fond
(09:33):
of Elizabeth and knows that um, she and probably won't
remarry and have kids of her own, and takes the
maternal interest in her and even asks if Elizabeth can
visit her sometimes, and Henry is actually okay with that.
But with his short marriage to Anne of Cleaves set aside,
Henry finds a new wife and she's a teenager, Catherine Howard,
(09:55):
and he's so happy with her for a little while,
and uh, they have so much fun together. He's he's
kind of the Henry you think of in portraits. By
this point. He's grossly overweight, and he has an abscess
on his leg that oozes and smells bad. So he's
not the dashing young man he used to be. So
we have to kind of wonder what things were like
for Catherine Howard. But they get along very nice, and um,
(10:19):
things are fine until it comes out that she's not
a virgin. She's been employing her former lovers in her household,
and she's accused of treason and executed. And this is
a very traumatic event in the young Elizabeth's life. Right
at this time, she's eight or nine, so she's old
(10:40):
enough to know what's really going on when you you
have to kind of think. She sees this happening and
she realizes, oh, this is what happened to my mother,
and so yeah, by this point she's lost several stepmothers,
seen several people beheaded. It's pretty traumatic, and she tells
(11:00):
her friend that she will never marry because to her
marriage equal staff. But Henry being Henry Mary's again and
this time it is the widow Katherine Parr, and she
really wants to be a good stepmother and let these
three children have a normal life, so she invites them
all to come to court, so Edward and Mary and
(11:21):
Elizabeth are all together again, and this is another sort
of short window of happiness for the tutors Um. They
all come in and out of court and spend time
together and Catherine Parr supervises their education. UM. And there's
also a new act of succession. It goes Prince Edward
(11:42):
the son and heir any new offspring. But by this
point it's extremely likely that UM Henry couldn't have children
UM and then Mary and then Elizabeth. But Henry doesn't
fix the issue of Elizabeth being illegitimate, which comes comes
up against her later and in early fifty four, Henry
(12:05):
banishes Elizabeth from court, and we're still not sure why
that happened. She's just a child, exactly what could she
have done? But Catherine convinces him to forgive her and
let her come back. And Catherine really has even more
than just that maternal interest in these poor, orphaned, abandoned
children who have gone in and out of their father's
(12:27):
favor and had really rough childhoods. She's also really interested
in their education. We mentioned earlier she was going to
supervise Elizabeth's education, but she makes her whole court of
center of feminine learning. To quote Alison Weir, who has
written a great biography and Elizabeth in a history of
all of Henry's wise, if you want to, if you
(12:48):
want to go from number one to six, um, And
Elizabeth and Edward both turned into these intellectual prodigies because
of this really strict education they have in really high
expectations that Henry has for them. Right. One of Elizabeth's
tutors said, her mind has no womanly weakness. Her perseverance
is equal to that of a man, and her memory
(13:09):
long keeps what it quickly picks up. She's really smart.
She knows Greek, Latin, French, Italian and what Welsh, Spanish,
and um, she plays music, she composes. She's you know,
good at more feminine pursuits like needlework. She's really good
at book binding. She's got a lovely hand in calligraphy,
(13:32):
and she is interested in riding and hunting and shooting crossbows.
Some of these are adult pursuits, but she's a very
talented woman, and she as a child, she spends almost
every waking hour with books or religious exercises. So Elizabeth
is prepared for a future that would require some diplomacy,
(13:53):
education and intelligence. And that's a good thing. Because Henry
dies and this makes Catherine the dowager queen, and it
makes little Edward, who's nine or ten at the time,
his heir. Yeah, and Elizabeth's actually with her younger brother
when they're told that their father has died, and when
the men of the court pay her brother homage, which
(14:14):
must have been um a pretty emotional sight for her. Um.
But Edward is no longer allowed by his counsel to
see his stepmother or his sister's And Edward is a
very quiet child. He's obviously had a difficult childhood as well,
and he misses these women who are the only people
(14:36):
who he really loves. Right he's only ten, Yeah, and
I have a lot of sympathy for a little Edwards.
He writes to them a lot and um, it's it's
generally kind of a sad time again and again. Since
Edward is so young, there are other people who are
taking positions of power, and a man named Edward Seymour
(14:56):
becomes Lord Protector of England, but his brother Thomas Seymour
doesn't have a place on the council and he's a
very ambitious man who doesn't like feeling left out. These
are both Edward's maternal uncle, so Jane Seymour's brothers, and
Thomas Seymour decides that perhaps the best way to finagle
his way into power is to propose to thirteen year
(15:19):
old Elizabeth. He knows Mary is Catholic, so she's not
going to be a good match, but Elizabeth seems pretty uh,
pretty good deal. So he starts flirting with her and
courting her, and she's only thirteen, but she knows that
it's about his ambition. Still, she's thirteen, so she's kind
(15:39):
of flattered. Um, but she still turns him down, says,
neither my age nor my inclination allows me to think
of marriage. Um. So he goes back to an earlier love,
Catherine Parr, who is the Dowager Queen, and Catherine had
loved Thomas before, but before marrying Henry the eighth Right.
But once the king decides he wants to marry you,
(16:01):
you marry the king, especially if the king is prone
to be heading people. So she ended up with Henry,
of course, but now she has her chance. The only
problem is that she marries him with what is called
indecent haste. At the time, it's just a few weeks
after Henry died, and something that quick would have to
be approved by the council because it's so soon, she
(16:22):
could potentially, let's say, have had a baby with Henry,
and then you would never know exactly the line of
succession is muddled once again, so she marries him. They're
in trouble, but they're forgiven because little Edward really likes her. Yeah,
so her her young stepson likes her. He likes his uncle,
so he's fine with the marriage. He doesn't see the
(16:44):
political implications of his very ambitious uncle getting a little
bit closer to him and to his affairs. And Elizabeth
goes to live in this household with Katherine Parr and
Thomas Seymour and people are a little bit scandalized, or
at least Mary is Mary is is scandalized that you
(17:05):
know that Catherine accepted the proposal only six weeks after
becoming a widow. But Elizabeth is basically just like, I'm
gonna do whatever I want, or I'm at least gonna
wait until this scandal dies down. Um. She says that
they don't want to offend the Seymours. They should play
it cool because the Seymours are are have so much
power now. And she also says that her stepmother has
(17:27):
been so kind to her. It's not really her place
to to offend her, right, but things at this household
get a little creepy would maybe be a good word,
because Thomas still has that interest in the very young Elizabeth,
and it's definitely of a sexual nature. Um. They start
(17:48):
romping together, and that's the word that's always used. They
they chase each other and have tickle fights, and um,
it's all pretty unseemly from our perspective, But to Catherine,
Elizabeth is just a child, and um, Thomas actually jokingly
kind of calls himself her stepfather, and it all seems okay.
(18:12):
It just seems like a family, family fun. Especially he
makes sure that he does it in front of other
people because there's the implication then that if it were inappropriate,
you know, surely he wouldn't want to do it in
front of the front of his wife or Elizabeth's governess.
But since he's tickling this young girl in her nightgown
(18:33):
in front of his wife, it must be fine. But
things get even more inappropriate when Catherine gets pregnant, and
so I assume they were no longer having relations with
each other, and Thomas focuses his sexual energy even more
strongly little Elizabeth. He would bust into Elizabeth's bed chamber,
um in his nightgown and slippers, and Um. He would
(18:55):
only stay though if she was in bed, where he
would tickle her, mess with her, and um once he
even tried to kiss her, and Missus Catherine Ashley Um,
Elizabeth's lady in waiting, cried for shame, you know, don't
be careful. And Um would even smack her on the
bottom too. So he's he's pretty pretty reckless. And she again,
(19:19):
is about fourteen, So for her, this is a little
bit of a youthful infatuation. She's flattered by this older
man's attentions, and she's a bit too naive, maybe an
innocent to understand what's really going on. He's a manipulative
predator and she's too young to see it. And Catherine
(19:40):
Parr is so oblivious he even joins in sometimes with
these romps um, you know, just everyone having a grand
old time apparently, But Thomas is worried because Elizabeth can't
quite conceal her infatuation, so he's worried he's going to
get into trouble, and so he tells Katherine that he
(20:02):
saw Elizabeth with her arms around a man's neck, and
of course the Dowager Queen is horrified by this and
asks Mrs Ashley about you know what, do you know
anything about this? And Mrs Ashley doesn't want to get involved,
so she refers her to Elizabeth. Has the book, yeah,
(20:22):
and um, Elizabeth, of course you know that's not true.
I don't even know any men outside of your household.
And that's when Catherine gets her first inkling that something
is amiss, because if Elizabeth isn't lying, why is her husband?
And so some accounts have her finding Elizabeth in Thomas's
(20:44):
arms in that April. They come apart, they're ashamed, and
no one thinks the relationship was consummated. But clearly that
was the track going in that direction. So Elizabeth leaves
the household. I believe she's asked to leave by Kat. Yeah,
And there's a really awkward meeting between Catherine and Elizabeth
right before she goes, when Catherine tells her God has
(21:06):
given you great qualities, cultivate them always, and labor to
improve them, for I believe you are destined by Heaven
to be Queen of England. And Elizabeth is so ashamed
she can't even look at her. No. And of course
at this time she realizes that she hurt Katherine, and
the ladies part maybe not in the best terms, but
(21:27):
they do make up later because Catherine realizes, you know,
she's only fourteen, she had no idea. Yeah, And Elizabeth
is never so foolish again about her her honor and
her place in the succession. She realizes that she jeopardized
it all. And Elizabeth takes care after this to appear
as the perfect Protestant woman. She's dressed very plainly, she's
(21:52):
modest and demeanor, she's very sober in general, and she
wants to give off this, you know, this image of
being not that kind of girl, and this essentially saves
her life later, but but we won't skip ahead to
their quite yet. Catherine and Thomas, do you have their child?
(22:12):
Katherine dies in childbirth, and it's sort of the beginning
of a riff between Elizabeth and her older sister Mary,
who had gotten along pretty well before then. Um. About
seven months after the baby is born, Thomas is executed
for treason. This is his ambitions really throw him to
the wind, don't they. You have to roll your eyes
a little bit. He's caught with a knife outside of
(22:34):
Edward's bed chamber, and some people think Elizabeth is involved too.
They're both questioned extremely thoroughly, but she holds out much
better than you would think of fourteen year old would
that kind of questioning. And she's perfectly calm, cool and composed. Yeah,
she acts like the ideal woman for her brother's court.
Um and her her little brother Edward likes her a lot,
(22:58):
but he wouldn't have had any power to save her
should she be implicated with Thomas's treason. And speaking of Edward,
about the same time, he comes down with either tuberculosis
or some other sort of respiratory infection. We're not sure,
but it's very clear that his health is in grave danger,
and he is about to die, and this is when
(23:19):
all the succession stuff just blows up. So back to
that line of succession we were talking about earlier, the
one that Henry decreed when he married Catherine Parr. It
made Edward, of course his air, followed by any other
babies that might be born, followed by Mary, followed by Elizabeth,
followed by the descendants of his youngest sister, not his
(23:41):
eldest sister, because we should say his eldest sister's descendants.
That's Mary, Queen of Scott's and Henry's great enemy in
Scotland of course, So his younger sister's airs are kind
of low down on this line of succession um, but
they jumped to the top right after Edward dies and
(24:02):
their interests put forth the teenage Lady Jane Gray, who
again as a descendant of Henry the eighth youngest sister Mary,
and Gilford Dudley marries Lady Jane, thinking that the political
power of his family, combined with her somewhat dubious blood
claim together will make them a stronger candidate than Mary.
(24:24):
And so she's this sad puppet queen for a few
days before she's executed as well, and kind of an
interesting connection. Lady Jane Gray is actually educated for a
time in the same household as Elizabeth, and the cousins
are very much alike. They look similar, they're both incredibly intelligent.
But Elizabeth takes no part in this coup, which is
(24:47):
pretty smart because it doesn't work right. And Mary gets
the crown, and she initially has a lot of support
people like her despite the fact that she's Catholic, but
she loses that very quickly when she marries the very
Catholic Philip of Spain, and then, of course she sanctions
the burning of three Protestants over her reign um, getting
(25:10):
the name Bloody Mary. So that doesn't really endear a
queen to her people know, and the people decide they
want their Protestant Elizabeth instead to get the Catholics out
of their country, and so they institute various uprisings, and
Elizabeth gets caught up in them a little bit, not
by her own doing, just because she's the figurehead. Yeah.
(25:31):
So one of these is Sir Thomas Wyatt's Rebellion in
fifteen fifty four, which began as a protest against Mary's
marriage to Philip and Elizabeth is accused of being involved
in this and spends three months in the tower in
fear of her life, but there's no strong evidence against her,
(25:51):
even though Mary is very suspicious and UM thinks that
she's secretly a Protestant and Um Elizabeth does get out
of the tower or though, because Mary is pregnant and
therefore Elizabeth is not as much of a threat to her,
you know, if Mary has her own air. But it
turns out that she wasn't really pregnant, and this happens
(26:12):
again in Mary's range. She has two false pregnancies and
no one knows if it was there was a a
physical cause for it, perhaps in a very insist or
some sort of cancer because she had all the symptoms
of pregnancy, or if it was pseudocyesis, which is a
hysterical pregnancy. That's you know, that's more of a psychological
issue because there was so much pressure on every TV
(26:34):
an air to use an air. But this stint in
the tower is another one of those really traumatic events
for Elizabeth's life, and she she's thankful for for her escape.
For her entire life is as late as fifteen seventy nine,
she's still composing private prayers to thank God from pulling
(26:55):
me from the prison to the palace. And Elizabeth plays
the game during Mary's rain very much again. She's doing
that outward obedience perhaps inner disobedience thing. Mary is positive
that Elizabeth is secretly Protestant, but in deference to her sister,
Elizabeth practices, you know, the Catholic rites and jewels and
where she goes to London for her coronation, and she's
(27:18):
she plays it cool during these years. So Mary's horrible
childhood growing up with Henry the eighth, and the dishonor
of her mother and her inability to have a child,
her horrible rain killing all these people, and Philip, her
husband's abandonment of her. He moves back to Spain, so
she's really not going to have a child now leaves
(27:40):
her a broken woman in middle age. And she dies
on November seif fifty eight. And when Elizabeth is told,
the story goes that she's outside at Hatfield the estate,
reading under a tree, and she's rendered speechless initially, and
she sinks to her knees and says in Latin, this
(28:02):
is the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes.
From the eighteenth Psalm, and I think she's provided us
with the perfect ending words to our podcast. Elizabeth goes
on to be a wonderful queen that that is a
story for another day. But if you'd like to learn
more about Elizabeth's father and her childhood, you should check
(28:23):
out the top ten heads that rolled during the reign
of Henry the Eighth on our homepage at www dot
how stuff works dot com. For more on this and
thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
Let us know what you think, Send an email to
podcast at how stuff works dot com, and be sure
to check out the stuff you missed in History Glass
(28:44):
Blog on the how stuff works dot com home page
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