Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0007/00071.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 22KB | 333 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00071}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Makers Of History Queen Elizabeth
Chapter V. Elizabeth In The Tower.}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Abbott, Jacob}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{elizabeth
mary
tower
queen
time
london
princess
prisoner
too
day}
$Date{1876}
$Log{}
Title:       Makers Of History Queen Elizabeth
Book:        Queen Elizabeth
Author:      Abbott, Jacob
Date:        1876

Chapter V. Elizabeth In The Tower.

     The imprisonment of Queen Elizabeth in the Tower, which was briefly
alluded to in the last chapter, deserves a more full narration than was
possible to give to it there.  She had retired from court some time before the
difficulties about the Spanish match arose.  It is true that she took sides
with Mary in the contest with Northumberland and the friends of Jane Grey, and
she shared her royal sister's triumph in the pomp and parade of the
coronation; but, after all, she and Mary could not possibly be very good
friends.  The marriages of their respective mothers could not both have been
valid.  Henry the Eighth was so impatient that he could not wait for a divorce
from Catharine before he married Anne Boleyn.  The only way to make the latter
marriage legal, therefore, was to consider the former one null and void from
the beginning, and if the former one was not thus null and void, the latter
must be so.  If Henry had waited for a divorce, then both marriages might have
been valid, each for the time of its own continuance, and both the princesses
might have been lawful heirs; but as it was, neither of them could maintain
her own claims to be considered a lawful daughter, without denying, by
implication at least, those of the other.  They were therefore, as it were,
natural enemies.  Though they might be outwardly civil to each other, it was
not possible that there could be any true harmony or friendship between them.

     A circumstance occurred, too, soon after Mary's accession to the throne,
which resulted in openly alienating the feelings of the two ladies from each
other.  There was a certain prisoner in the Tower of London, a gentleman of
high rank and great consideration, named Courteney, now about twenty-six years
of age, who had been imprisoned in the Tower by King Henry the Eighth when he
was only twelve years old, on account of some political offenses of his
father!  He had thus been a close prisoner for fourteen years at Mary's
accession; but Mary released him.  It was found, when he returned to society
again, that he had employed his solitary hours in cultivating his mind,
acquiring knowledge, and availing himself of all the opportunities for
improvement which his situation afforded, and that he came forth an
intelligent, accomplished, and very agreeable man.  The interest which his
appearance and manners excited was increased by the sympathy naturally felt
for the sufferings that he had endured.  In a word, he became a general
favorite.  The rank of his family was high enough for Mary to think of him for
her husband, for this was before the Spanish match was thought of.  Mary
granted him a title, and large estates, and showed him many other favors, and,
as every body supposed, tried very hard to make an impression on his heart.
Her efforts were, however, vain.  Courteney gave an obvious preference to
Elizabeth, who was young then, at least, if not beautiful.  This successful
rivalry on the part of her sister filled the queen's heart with resentment and
envy, and she exhibited her chagrin by so many little marks of neglect and
incivility, that Elizabeth's resentment was roused in its turn, and she asked
permission to retire from court to her residence in the country.  Mary readily
gave the permission, and thus it happened that when Wyatt's rebellion first
broke out, as described in the last chapter, Elizabeth was living in
retirement and seclusion at Ashridge, an estate of hers at some distance west
of London.  As to Courteney, Mary found some pretext or other for sending him
back again to his prison in the Tower.

     Mary was immediately afraid that the malcontents would join with
Elizabeth and attempt to put forward her name and her claims to the crown,
which, if they were to do, it would make their movement very formidable.  She
was impressed immediately with the idea that it was of great importance to get
Elizabeth back again into her power.  The most probable way of succeeding in
doing this, she thought, was to write her a kind and friendly letter, inviting
her to return.  She accordingly wrote such a letter.  She said in it that
certain evil-disposed persons were plotting some disturbances in the kingdom,
and that she thought that Elizabeth was not safe where she was.  She urged
her, therefore, to return, saying that she should be truly welcome, and should
be protected against all danger if she would come.

     An invitation from a queen is a command, and Elizabeth would have felt
bound to obey this summons, but she was sick when it came.  At least she was
not well, and she was not much disposed to underrate her sickness for the sake
of being able to travel on this occasion.  The officers of her household made
out a formal certificate to the effect that Elizabeth was not able to
undertake such a journey.

     In the mean time Wyatt's rebellion broke out; he marched to London, was
entrapped there and taken prisoner, as is related at length in the last
chapter.  In his confessions he implicated the Princess Elizabeth, and also
Courteney, and Mary's government then determined that they must secure
Elizabeth's person at all events, sick or well.  They sent, therefore, three
gentlemen as commissioners, with a troop of horse to attend them, to bring her
to London.  They carried the queen's litter with them, to bring the princess
upon it in case she should be found unable to travel in any other way.

     This party arrived at Ashridge at ten o'clock at night.  They insisted on
being admitted at once into the chamber of Elizabeth, and there they made
known their errand.  Elizabeth was terrified; she begged not to be moved, as
she was really too sick to go.  They called in some physicians, who certified
that she could be moved without danger to her life.  The next morning they put
her upon the litter, a sort of covered bed, formed like a palanquin, and
borne, like a palanquin, by men.  It was twenty-nine miles to London, and it
took the party four days to reach the city, they moved so slowly.  This
circumstance is mentioned sometimes as showing how sick Elizabeth must have
been.  But the fact is, there was no reason whatever for any haste. Elizabeth
was now completely in Mary's power, and it could make no possible difference
how long she was upon the road.

     The litter passed along the roads in great state.  It was a princess that
they were bearing.  As they approached London, a hundred men in handsome
uniforms went before, and an equal number followed.  A great many people came
out from the city to meet the princess, as a token of respect.  This
displeased Mary, but it could not well be prevented or punished.  On their
arrival they took Elizabeth to one of the palaces at Westminster, called
Whitehall.  She was examined by Mary's privy council.  Nothing was proved
against her, and, as the rebellion seemed now wholly at an end, she was at
length released, and thus ended her first durance as a political prisoner.

     It happened, however, that other persons implicated in Wyatt's plot, when
examined, made charges against Elizabeth in respect to it, and Queen Mary sent
another force and arrested her again.  She was taken now to a famous royal
palace, called Hampton Court, which is situated on the Thames, a few miles
above the city.  She brought many of the officers of her household and of her
personal attendants with her; but one of the queen's ministers, accompanied by
two other officers, came soon after, and dismissed all her own attendants, and
placed persons in the service of the queen in their place.  They also set a
guard around the palace, and then left the princess, for the night, a close
prisoner, and yet without any visible signs of coercion, for all these guards
might be guards of honor.

     The next day some officers came again, and told her that it had been
decided to send her to the Tower, and that a barge was ready at the river to
convey her.  She was very much agitated and alarmed, and begged to be allowed
to send a letter to her sister before they took her away.  One of the officers
insisted that she should have the privilege, and the other that she should
not.  The former conquered in the contest, and Elizabeth wrote the letter and
sent it.  It contained an earnest and solemn disavowal of all participation in
the plots which she had been charged with encouraging, and begged Mary to
believe that she was innocent, and allow her to be released.

     The letter did no good.  Elizabeth was taken into the barge and conveyed
in a very private manner down the river.  Hampton Court is above London,
several miles, and the Tower is just below the city.  There are several
entrances to this vast castle, some of them by stairs from the river.  Among
these is one by which prisoners accused of great political crimes were usually
taken in, and which is called the Traitors' Gate.  There was another entrance,
also, from the river, by which a more honorable admission to the fortress
might be attained.  The Tower was not solely a prison.  It was often a place
of retreat for kings and queens from any sudden danger, and was frequently
occupied by them as a somewhat permanent residence.  There were a great number
of structures within the walls, in some of which royal apartments were fitted
up with great splendor.  Elizabeth had often been in the Tower as a resident
or a visitor, and thus far there was nothing in the circumstances of the case
to forbid the supposition that they might be taking her there as a guest or
resident now.  She was anxious and uneasy, it is true, but she was not certain
that she was regarded as a prisoner.

     In the mean time, the barge, with the other boats in attendance, passed
down the river in the rain, for it was a stormy day, a circumstance which
aided the authorities in their effort to convey their captive to her gloomy
prison without attracting the attention of the populace.  Besides, it was the
day of some great religious festival, when the people were generally in the
churches.  This day had been chosen on that very account.  The barge and the
boats came down the river, therefore, without attracting much attention; they
approached the landing-place at last, and stopped at the flight of steps
leading up from the water to the Traitors' Gate.

     Elizabeth declared that she was no traitor, and that she would not be
landed there.  The nobleman who had charge of her told her simply, in reply,
that she could not have her choice of a place to land.  At the same time, he
offered her his cloak to protect her from the rain in passing from the barge
to the castle gate.  Umbrellas had not been invented in those days. Elizabeth
threw the cloak away from her in vexation and anger.  She found, however, that
it was of no use to resist.  She could not choose.  She stepped from the barge
out upon the stairs in the rain, saying, as she did so, "Here lands as true
and faithful a subject as ever landed a prisoner at these stairs.  Before
thee, O God, I speak it, having now no friends but thee alone."

     A large company of the warders and keepers of the castle had been drawn
up at the Traitors' Gate to receive her, as was customary on occasions when
prisoners of high rank were to enter the Tower.  As these men were always
dressed in uniform of a peculiar antique character, such a parade of them made
quite an imposing appearance.  Elizabeth asked what it meant.  They told her
that that was the customary mode of receiving a prisoner.  She said that if it
was, she hoped that they would dispense with the ceremony in her case, and
asked that, for her sake, the men might be dismissed from such attendance in
so inclement a season.  The men blessed her for her goodness, and kneeled down
and prayed that God would preserve her.

     She was extremely unwilling to go into the prison.  As they approached
the part of the edifice where she was to be confined, through the court-yard
of the Tower, she stopped and sat down upon a stone, perhaps a step, or the
curb stone of a walk.  The lieutenant urged her to go in out of the cold and
wet.  "Better sitting here than in a worse place," she replied, "for God
knoweth whither you are bringing me." However, she rose and went on.  She
entered the prison, was conducted to her room, and the doors were locked and
bolted upon her.

     Elizabeth was kept closely imprisoned for a month; after that, some
little relaxation in the strictness of her seclusion was allowed.  Permission
was very reluctantly granted to her to walk every day in the royal apartments,
which were now unoccupied, so that there was no society to be found there, but
it afforded her a sort of pleasure to range through them for recreation and
exercise.  But this privilege could not be accorded without very strict
limitations and conditions.  Two officers of the Tower and three women had to
attend her; the windows, too, were shut, and she was not permitted to go and
look out at them.  This was rather melancholy recreation, it must be allowed,
but it was better than being shut up all day in a single apartment, bolted and
barred.

     There was a small garden within the castle not far from the prison, and
after some time Elizabeth was permitted to walk there.  The gates and doors,
however, were kept carefully closed, and all the prisoners, whose rooms looked
into it from the surrounding buildings, were closely watched by their
respective keepers, while Elizabeth was in the garden, to prevent their having
any communication with her by looks or signs.  There were a great many persons
confined at this time, who had been arrested on charges connected with Wyatt's
rebellion, and the authorities seem to have been very specially vigilant to
prevent the possibility of Elizabeth's having communication with any of them.
There was a little child of five years of age who used to come and visit
Elizabeth in her room, and bring her flowers.  He was the son of one of the
subordinate officers of the Tower.  It was, however, at last suspected that he
was acting as a messenger between Elizabeth and Courteney. Courteney, it will
be recollected, had been sent by Mary back to the Tower again, so that he and
Elizabeth were now suffering the same hard fate in neighboring cells.  When
the boy was suspected of bearing communications between these friends and
companions in suffering, he was called before an officer and closely examined.
His answers were all open and childlike, and gave no confirmation to the idea
which had been entertained.  The child, however, was forbidden to go to
Elizabeth's apartment any more.  He was very much grieved at this, and he
watched for the next time that Elizabeth was to walk in the garden, and
putting his mouth to a hole in the gate, he called out, "Lady, I can not bring
you any more flowers."

     After Elizabeth had been thus confined about three months, she was one
day terribly alarmed by the sounds of martial parade within the Tower,
produced by the entrance of an officer from Queen Mary, named Sir Thomas
Beddingfield, at the head of three hundred men.  Elizabeth supposed that they
were come to execute sentence of death upon her.  She asked immediately if the
platform on which Lady Jane Grey was beheaded had been taken away.  They told
her that it had been removed.  She was then somewhat relieved.  They afterward
told her that Sir Thomas had come to take her away from the Tower, but that it
was not known where she was to go.  This alarmed her again, and she sent for
the constable of the Tower, whose name was Lord Chandos, and questioned him
very closely to learn what they were going to do with her.  He said that it
had been decided to remove her from the Tower, and send her to a place called
Woodstock, where she was to remain under Sir Thomas Beddingfield's custody, at
a royal palace which was situated there. Woodstock is forty of fifty miles to
the westward of London, and not far from the city of Oxford.

     Elizabeth was very much alarmed at this intelligence.  Her mind was
filled with vague and uncertain fears and forebodings, which were none the
less oppressive for being uncertain and vague.  She had, however, no immediate
cause for apprehension.  Mary found that there was no decisive evidence
against her, and did not dare to keep her a prisoner in the Tower too long.
There was a large and influential part of the kingdom who were Protestants.
They were jealous of the progress Mary was making toward bringing the Catholic
religion in again.  They abhorred the Spanish match. They naturally looked to
Elizabeth as their leader and head, and Mary thought that by too great or too
long-continued harshness in her treatment of Elizabeth, she would only
exasperate them, and perhaps provoke a new outbreak against her authority.
She determined, therefore, to remove the princess from the Tower to some less
odious place of confinement.

     She was taken first to Queen Mary's court which was then held at
Richmond, just above London; but she was surrounded here by soldiers and
guards, and confined almost as strictly as before.  She was destined, however,
here to another surprise.  It was a proposition of marriage.  Mary had been
arranging a plan for making her the wife of a certain personage styled the
Duke of Savoy.  His dominions were on the confines of Switzerland and France,
and Mary thought that if her rival were once married and removed there, all
the troubles which she, Mary, had experienced on her account would be ended
forever.  She thought, too, that her sister would be glad to accept this
offer, which opened such an immediate escape from the embarrassments and
sufferings of her situation in England.  But Elizabeth was prompt, decided,
and firm in the rejection of this plan.  England was her home, and to be Queen
of England the end and aim of all her wishes and plans.  She had rather
continue a captive for the present in her native land, than to live in
splendor as the consort of a sovereign duke beyond the Rhone.

     Mary then ordered Sir Thomas Beddingfield to take her to Woodstock.  She
traveled on horseback, and was several days on the journey.  Her passage
through the country attracted great attention.  The people assembled by the
wayside, expressing their kind wishes, and offering her gifts.  The bells were
rung in the villages through which she passed.  She arrived finally at
Woodstock, and was shut up in the palace there.

     This was in July, and she remained in Woodstock more than a year, not,
however, always very closely confined.  At Christmas she was taken to court,
and allowed to share in the festivities and rejoicings.  On this occasion - it
was the first Christmas after the marriage of Mary and Philip - the great hall
of the palace was illuminated with a thousand lamps.  The princess sat at
table next to the king and queen.  She was on other occasions, too, taken away
for a time, and then returned again to her seclusion at Woodstock. These
changes, perhaps, only served to make her feel more than ever the hardships of
her lot.  They say that one day, as she sat at her window, she heard a
milk-maid singing in the fields, in a blithe and merry strain, and said, with
a sign, that she wished she was a milk-maid too.

     King Philip, after his marriage, gradually interested himself in her
behalf, and exerted his influence to have her released; and Mary's ministers
had frequent interviews with her, and endeavored to induce her to make some
confession of guilt, and to petition Mary for release as a matter of mercy.
They could not, they said, release her while she persisted in her innocence,
without admitting that they and Mary had been in the wrong, and had imprisoned
her unjustly.  But the princess was immovable.  She declared that she was
perfectly innocent, and that she would never, therefore, say that she was
guilty.  She would rather remain in prison for the truth, than be at liberty
and have it believed that she had been guilty of disloyalty and treason.

     At length, one evening in May, Elizabeth received a summons to go to the
palace and visit Mary in her chamber.  She was conducted there by torch-light.
She had a long interview with the queen, the conversation being partly in
English and partly in Spanish.  It was not very satisfactory on either side.
Elizabeth persisted in asserting her innocence, but in other respects she
spoke in a kind and conciliatory manner to the queen.  The interview ended in
a sort of reconciliation.  Mary put a valuable ring upon Elizabeth's finger in
token of the renewal of friendship, and soon afterward the long period of
restraint and confinement was ended, and the princess returned to her own
estate at Hatfield in Hertfordshire, where she lived some time in seclusion,
devoting herself, in a great measure, to the study of Latin and Greek, under
the instructions of Roger Ascham.