Elizabeth, The Queen by Weir Alison

Author:Weir, Alison [Weir, Alison]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781446449004
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

The Queen required all her female attendants to wear black and/or white, so that the vivid colours and embellishments of her own costume stood out dramatically. Woe betide the lady whose dress excelled the Queen’s, as did one of Lady Mary Howard’s gowns, which was so gorgeous that a jealous Elizabeth tried it on without its owner’s permission, only to find it too short. She thereupon told Mary it was ‘too fine’ for her, and the hapless girl was obliged to lay away the dress until after the Queen’s death.

Stabling was provided for the ladies’ horses, whilst the maids, who were paid so little that they could not afford horses of their own, were allowed to borrow horses from the royal stables. Often, the Queen’s women were the recipients of gifts from visiting dignitaries, and Elizabeth herself often passed on very costly and beautiful items of clothing to them.

Many of the Queen’s ladies are known to history: her former nurse and governess, Blanche Parry – the longest serving of the Queen’s women – and Katherine Ashley; Isabella Markham, who had attended Elizabeth during her imprisonment in the tower in 1554, and who would later marry John Harington and become the mother of the Queen’s famous godson of the same name. Mary Radcliffe served Elizabeth for forty years and turned down all suitors to remain with her beloved mistress. Lady Mary Sidney, although ravaged by smallpox, remained very close to Elizabeth until her own death in 1586: she was the mother of the famous soldier and poet, Sir Philip Sidney, and was herself a very erudite woman. Philip’s celebrated sister, another Mary, who was a poet herself and, according to Spenser, ‘in her sex more wonderful and rare’ than any riches, became a Lady of the Bedchamber on her marriage, aged fifteen, in 1576. It was not unusual for three generations of the same family to serve the Queen as maids of honour.

Anne Russell was the wife of Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick and before her lavish marriage at Whitehall in 1565 had been lauded by poets for her virgin grace, her genius and her charming voice. In later years, Elizabeth became close to the Swedish Helena Ulsdotter, third wife of William Parr, Marquess of Northampton, who was forty years her senior. Helena was much at court, and when she remarried after Parr’s death, the Queen allowed her to retain her title of Marchioness and the precedence it conferred, and granted her the old royal manor of Sheen in Surrey.

Although at the beginning of her reign Elizabeth had enjoined her ladies ‘never to speak to her on business affairs’, aspiring courtiers attempted – often successfully – to bribe them to carry petitions to their mistress, and this was often the ladies’ most lucrative source of money. ‘We worshipped no saints, but we prayed to ladies in the Queen’s time,’ quipped one court wit. According to Raleigh, these ladies were ‘like witches, capable of doing great harm, but no good’. Sir Robert

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.