Happy Friday! I hope you’ve had a wonderful week.
It’s time for the fourteenth treat from our Anne Boleyn Files Advent Calendar and today it’s from historical novelist Nancy Bilyeau. Thank you so much, Nancy, for contributing to our calendar.
To enjoy Day 14’s treat – and the other 13! – all you have to do is click on the picture of the number 14 here in this post, or scroll up to the top of this page and click on the link in the cover image. You can click on that link on a daily basis as each treat goes live first thing in the morning.
Have a lovely weekend!
Indeed this would have been a happy time for Elizabeth. Although I’m sure she missed her father and brother and maybe even her sister this would have been the first time in her life that someone else was not controlling her or telling her what her status in society was. She was also no longer in danger of being imprisoned or executed by the state. She would now face new dangers and attempts on her life but as Queen she was now in charge and actually safer than she had been since a young child. It would be interesting to have witnessed her first Christmas as Queen. I’m sure she was in better spirits than she had been in some time.
I agree completely!
Interesting times for Elizabeth because of the changes she had experienced, always having luxury but restrictions because after the age of three she was no longer the King’s darling and the heiress to the throne, but the illegitimate King’s daughter, on a legal footing with his true heiress, Princess Mary. Both ladies had spent time in regal limbo until they were eventually reconciled to their father and merged back into the luxury of Court life. Everything changed again in 1544 with the highly novel Third Act of Succession which placed both sisters back into the succession behind their “legitimate” half brother, Prince Edward, but which didn’t restore them to the legal status of legitimate Princess. The Act allowed Henry basically to name who he wanted as his successor and to change it as well. Elizabeth and Mary became very wealthy after Henry’s death, especially in landed estates and they were left very well off. Elizabeth and Mary thrived during their brother’s reign, if Mary did find the time difficult.
When Mary came to the throne at first Elizabeth did alright but after her alleged involvement with the Wyatt plot to kill and replace her sister, she was under a lot of suspicion and after her imprisonment she spent most of the rest of Mary’s reign in semi house arrest in one or other of her homes. She was at her own establishment at Hatfield when she was greeted as Queen. Now she celebrated her first Christmas as Queen and although how she would rule and change things was still uncertain, she could relax with some friendly entertainment, arranged by Sweet Robin, who would arrange many of her fine entertainment and she could look forward shortly to her grand coronation. I think she was disrespectful of the Host, however, because she hadn’t the legal authority to stop the Mass. She hadn’t opened her first Parliament so the new Religious Settlements had not been made and Elizabeth was being presumptive. Well, she was a Tudor and they all displayed similar tantrums, walking out or refusing to attend. Mary had refused to go give up the private Mass she had at her own household or to attend a Protestant service at Court and Elizabeth had pretended to go but feigned illness to avoid it. Mary had allowed Edward to have a Protestant funeral and Elizabeth must have done the same for Mary because she had to respect the current religious laws. It must have irked her that she couldn’t tell the priest what to do.
An uncertain future still awaited, for Parliament would not be easy to crack and her status as a single woman would always be questioned. She was also to be a Protestant Monarch in a mostly Catholic country and a Catholic world. Many questions must have danced around the air, but for now she could put that aside in the midst of dancing, song and music and feasting and she was very much at home with her new status and adoration.
I agree also with Michael that mingled with her very real relief that she was now a free woman being the queen, and therefore the most powerful in the kingdom, were feelings of sadness and maybe regret for the sister whom she knew had never truly loved her, once long ago when she was a little girl maybe, as they were both the two discarded daughters of Henry V111 and thus had much in common, Mary was said to have been fond of her baby sister but as the years past and Elizabeth grew into a forceful personality with more than a passing resemblance to her mother, Marys old sentimental feelings left her and she began to be irked by this young woman who must have reminded her so much of Anne Boleyn and the suffering done to her own much loved mother, they found they had not much in common, the biggest fly in the ointment was religion and this was another reason why Mary began to resent her, she despaired that she was her heir, but Mary was practical and could not risk another coup like the one done in the ill fated Jane Grey’s name, she left England to her younger sister and pleaded with her to keep the catholic cause, however Elizabeth now was queen and through those dark chilly days her heart must have sung like the songs in her banqueting hall, how did she really feel once a suspected traitor incarcerated in the forbidding Tower, to be released only to swop one prison with another, ever being watched like the animal in the hunt, then finally that eventful day in the solitude of Hatfield House when she learnt she was queen, that first Christmas I agree must have been special to her, she must have felt reborn, I can just see her making her procession along the streets of her city and the curious looks that were cast in her way, this was the daughter of the old King Henry V111 whom despite what terror he inflicted on his people, they never lost their adoration for him, she was said to be so like him that grown men wept in her presence, it was a feeling that delighted her, she was also the daughter of that dark eyed witch Anne Boleyn who had seduced him away from good Queen Catherine, the true Queen of England, with her father’s colouring and long aquiline nose and her mothers face with the high sculptured cheekbones and large heavy lidded dark eyes, she must have appeared ethereal and very striking, as the article says gloomy politics would soon rear their ugly head and there were many who said Elizabeth was but a bastard and a heretic queen, but it was now December and a joyous time of year, the court was decorated with the greenery that would banish the evil spirits from the palace walls, it was a time of merriment, regarding the dancing that she loved to take part in there is a famous painting of her being held high by her dancing partner, she loved the flamboyant dances and on one occasion when she questioned the Scottish ambassador about Queen Marys dancing, he replied that his mistress did not dance as high as she, it is hard to imagine amongst all the gaiety of Christmas that the actual day was very sombre and spent in prayer, but it was a very important religious day and earlier times took their festivals most seriously, henceforth religious observances on Easter and Lent, the Bishop of Carlisle seems quite brave to me, to disobey his sovereigns command not to consecrate the host, was that really the only difference between the Catholic and Protestant mind? The Catholics believed in the bread and wine being the body and blood of Christ as Jesus had said at the last supper, the Protestants did not however and Queen Elizabeth left the room, no doubt with a steely eyed glance at the erring Bishop, her eyes must have watched her, her Catholic subjects she found a problem all through her long reign but she was said to be more tolerant of them than her brother, it was the uprisings that made her hunt them down, done in the name of her cousin the Scottish queen, it was worse when she was a prisoner of Elizabeth, she was at last a free woman and had inherited a kingdom with all the trials that went with it, soon the onus was on her to marry and secure a son, but that was in the future, for now she must have laughed and danced and sung like the nightingale as the evenings wore on into the early hours, she surely did deserve those euphoric first weeks of December and Christmas.