The Young Elizabeth by Alison Plowden

Author:Alison Plowden
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752467207
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2011-08-06T04:00:00+00:00

This famous letter, polite but businesslike, written in a beautifully neat schoolgirl hand, is by any standards a masterpiece of its kind. Elizabeth had wasted no paper on protestations of innocence or outraged modesty. She had defended herself and her servants against unwarrantable accusations with courage and dignity, and more than hinted that she would expect an apology.

Unfortunately, however, not everyone possessed the qualities of Elizabeth Tudor. Parry and Mrs Ashley both made detailed confessions with which, on 5 February, Tyrwhit was able to confront the princess. ‘She was much abashed and half breathless,’ he reported, ‘and perused all their names particularly’, although, as Sir Robert added scornfully, she knew both Mrs Ashley’s hand and the cofferer’s ‘with half a sight’. Parry had been the first to break, he told her. Mrs Ashley would say nothing until she and Parry were brought face to face, when the steward stood fast to all he had written and ‘she seeing that, she called him false wretch and said that he had promised he would never confess it to death’. Then, commented Elizabeth simply, ‘it was a great matter for him to promise such a promise, and to break it’. Tyrwhit went on, ‘I will tomorrow travail all I can, to frame her for her own surety and to utter the truth.’27

But by the next day Elizabeth had had time to recover from her embarrassment and to think. It had been acutely humiliating to see the details of those merry romps at Chelsea and Hanworth set out in writing for all to read. They made her look more like a giggling servant girl than a princess. That was bad enough, but it was not remotely treasonable. Parry and Mrs Ashley did not show up in a particularly good light either, but that was all. There was nothing in their statements to implicate any of them in actual treason; no evidence that either they, or Elizabeth, had ever been involved in a secret matrimonial plot. When Robert Tyrwhit returned to the attack, the princess allowed him to take down her formal ‘confession’ but, apart from a few additional details, it contained absolutely nothing new. ‘They all sing the same song,’ wrote the exasperated Tyrwhit, ‘and so I think they would not do, unless they had set the note before.’28

In spite of Elizabeth’s spirited defence of Mrs Ashley, the Council had come to the conclusion that the governess had ‘shown herself far unmeet’ to occupy her position and appointed Elizabeth Tyrwhit, Sir Robert’s wife, instead, hoping that the princess would ‘accept her service willingly’. The princess did nothing of the kind. She was furious and showed it. ‘Mrs Ashley was her mistress,’ she said, ‘and she had not so demeaned herself that the Council should now need to put any more mistresses unto her.’ Lady Tyrwhit replied tartly that ‘seeing she did allow Mrs Ashley to be her mistress, she need not be ashamed to have any honest woman to be in that place’. But

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