A Treasury of Royal Scandals: The Shocking True Stories History's Wickedest Weirdest Most Wanton Kings Queens (17 page)

 

 

T
he children of Henry VIII were never particularly close. Three different mothers and appalling emotional deprivation made it a bit tough for the kids to bond. Instead, they became dangerous rivals. The youngest, Henry’s longed-for son by third wife Jane Seymour, succeeded him as Edward VI in 1547. Though he was only nine at the time, Edward was a precocious lad, well-versed in the classics and a master of languages. He was also a cold-hearted prig who actively sought to have his two half sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, disinherited from the crown.

Despite his youth, the boy king was a seasoned fanatic on matters of religion. While Henry VIII had broken away from the Church of Rome after disagreeing with the pope over the validity of his first marriage, his English Church remained essentially Catholic in doctrine and ritual. The rigidly Protestant Edward and his like-minded advisers, however, sought to strip away all vestiges of the old religion in a revolution of reform. Only problem was the young king got sick.

Edward knew that when he died, his staunchly Catholic sister Mary—every bit the fanatic he was—would inherit and immediately destroy his reform efforts by returning the Church to Rome. No amount of threats, and there had been plenty, ever persuaded her to join the Protestant cause. In retaliation for his sister’s stubbornness, the king moved to bar her from ever sitting on the throne.

Dying of tuberculosis, Edward ordered a new “Devise for Succession” that declared Mary, and their sister Elizabeth, “illegitimate and not lawfully begotten.” The loving little brother was officially calling his older sisters bastards unfit to rule. In direct defiance of Henry VIII’s will, which provided that Mary, then Elizabeth should succeed, Edward left the crown to their cousin, Lady Jane Grey. He expected the two women stripped of their birthright to accept their fate politely and “live in quiet order, according to our appointment.”

Fat chance of that.

After Edward VI died in 1553 at age sixteen, cousin Jane ruled for only nine days before Mary reclaimed the throne that was rightfully hers. Poor Jane was eventually beheaded, but Queen Mary I spared most of her wrath for sister Elizabeth. Although the new queen, England’s first undisputed female monarch, had invited Elizabeth to ride with her in a triumphant parade into London, it didn’t take long for unresolved issues that had been festering for years to resurface. Mary had never forgotten the cruel treatment she and her mother, Katherine of Aragon, had endured at the vindictive whim of Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn.

Though Elizabeth was too young to have had anything to do with her mother’s behavior after she supplanted Katherine and became Henry VIII’s second wife, Mary saw flashes of Anne Boleyn in her half sister that deeply annoyed her. She would frequently remark that Elizabeth had “the face and countenance of Mark Smeaton, who was a very handsome man.” It was not a compliment. Smeaton had been executed as one of Anne Boleyn’s alleged lovers, and Mary’s clear implication was that she and Elizabeth—who actually looked a lot more like Henry VIII than did Mary—weren’t even related.

Beyond the bitchy paternity references, Mary mistrusted and feared Elizabeth’s magnetic popularity with the English people and, even more seriously, her avowed Protestantism. Her innate suspicions about her sister were deliberately stoked by the Spanish ambassador, who also feared Elizabeth because of her potential threat to Catholic Spain if she came to the throne. He warned the queen that her sister “might, out of ambition or being persuaded thereto, conceive some dangerous design and put it to execution by means which would be difficult to prevent.” Mary hardly needed to be reminded.

Elizabeth was shrewd enough to know that Mary’s fanatic Catholicism, which guided her entire public policy, could make her a fearsome adversary. The queen, after all, didn’t earn the name “Bloody” Mary for nothing. Hundreds of Protestants were burned at the stake during her reign. With her piercing eyes, manly voice, and uncompromising outlook, this was one scary lady. Wisely, Elizabeth decided to play the game and get herself to church.

Thrilled with the conversion—having no clue just how expedient it really was—Mary showered her sister with jewels of favor. But she wasn’t fooled for long. Elizabeth seemed unable or unwilling to play the pious churchgoer to the full, acting more like a fidgety four-year-old. At her first Mass, Elizabeth “complained loudly all the way to church that her stomach ached, wearing a suffering air,” according to one report. Mary’s animosity, compounded by her shock that someone could be so insincere in matters of salvation, soon came rushing back.

Because Elizabeth appeared to conform, however, the queen was unable to move against her sister. She did raise before Parliament an act invalidating Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, which would make Elizabeth illegitimate, but this was nothing new. Most of England, including her father and brother, had at one point or another called Anne Boleyn’s daughter a bastard. Mary needed something else to bring down her sister. She would spend the rest of her life trying to find it.

Around this time the queen made one of the most disastrous decisions of a five-year reign filled with them. She became engaged to the heir to the Spanish throne, her cousin, the future Philip II. Never crazy about foreigners to begin with, the notoriously isolated English balked at the idea of being ruled by one. Oblivious to the sensibilities of her xenophobic subjects, Mary was determined to return England to the pope, with Philip ruling right by her side. As agitation over the impending marriage spread, Mary was convinced her sister was at the center of it all. She sent an ominous message to Elizabeth, warning that her “present unwise conduct was known,” and if she continued to misbehave she “might have reason to regret it.” When national discontent turned to active rebellion, Mary made good on her threat.

Elizabeth, who had earlier received permission to leave Mary’s court and move to the country, was ordered back to London after a revolt led by Thomas Wyatt reached the capital. Though she was vigorously questioned about the rebellion, which had as its aim to place her on the throne, no evidence against Elizabeth could be found. But Mary wasn’t about to let something as trivial as apparent innocence get in her way. Elizabeth was ordered to the Tower of London, where her mother had lost her head years before.

Terrified by what might happen to her, Elizabeth begged for permission to write her sister before being sent away. The princess opened the letter on which she believed her life depended by affirming her innocence in any plot against the queen, swearing that she had “never practiced, counseled, nor consented to anything that might be prejudicial to your person in any way, or dangerous to the state by any means.”

Elizabeth knew these assurances would mean little to Mary, who was convinced her sister was a dissembling heretic filled with malice, so she appealed to the queen on another level. After reminding Mary of a promise she had made before Elizabeth left for the countryside never to punish her “without answer and due proof,” she alluded to an earlier tragedy to which they had both been witness.

During the reign of their brother Edward VI, the king’s uncle, Thomas Seymour, was beheaded without ever being allowed to plead in person to his brother, the Lord Protector, who was running the country in the young king’s name. “I have heard in my time of many cast away for want of coming to their prince,” Elizabeth wrote Mary, believing that the queen’s actions were in part being prompted by her ultraconservative Catholic counselors eager to see her forced out of the way. “I pray God that evil persuasions persuade not one sister against the other, and all for that they have heard false report.” Mary was unmoved by her sister’s plea. Instead, she was angry that Elizabeth had been given time to write the desperate letter rather than being conveyed immediately to the Tower as she had commanded.

The queen’s wishes were carried out the very next day when Elizabeth was taken away by barge in the pouring rain. At the entrance to the forbidding structure that had been witness to centuries of torture, murder, and execution, Elizabeth mustered the dramatic flair that would serve her so well when she became queen herself. She at first refused to leave the barge that carried her to the Tower, but then relented and proclaimed, “Here landeth as true a subject, being prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs.” With that, she plopped herself down on the steps and refused to budge. With the rain pelting her, she rebuffed pleas to move inside. “It is better sitting here than in a worse place,” she huffed.

The scene so moved some of those present that they wept for the proud Tudor princess rendered so vulnerable, but Elizabeth immediately made it clear that her actions were a protest against injustice, not symptoms of despair. “She knew her truth to be such that no man would have cause to weep for her,” a witness recorded. With that, Elizabeth, head raised high, swept grandly into the prison.

Much to Queen Mary’s chagrin, it became clear that Elizabeth could not be held forever without charges being brought against her. And the evidence just wasn’t there. Undeterred, the queen went out of her way to make her sister’s stay at the Tower as unpleasant as possible before reluctantly releasing her. When Mary heard that a five-year-old boy was in the habit of bringing Elizabeth flowers during her brief walks, she forbade the kindness, harmless though it was. “I can bring you no more flowers, Lady,” the boy sadly told the princess.

After her release, Elizabeth was put under house arrest at one of the queen’s manor houses. In some ways it was worse than the Tower. A zealous guard ensured Elizabeth would enjoy very little freedom and have her routine meticulously regimented. Exasperated, she wrote an angry letter to Mary, addressing her throughout as “You,” rather than the appropriate qualifier of Highness or Majesty. The letter did not enhance Elizabeth’s standing with her sister, who angrily responded by reiterating her reasons for suspecting Elizabeth of treason and reminding her that she had been treated with “more clemency and favor . . . than [those] in like matters had been accustomed.” The insulted queen concluded by stating that in the future she did not wish to be “molested” by such her “disguise and colorable letters.”

Despite her greatest efforts to bring Elizabeth down, though, Mary was losing the struggle. Her popularity was plummeting as she persecuted hundreds of Protestants by burning them at the stake. She had also been persuaded by her husband King Philip to join his fruitless war against France. In the process Calais, England’s last possession on the continent, was lost. It was a stunning psychological blow to the nation and to Mary, who also suffered the humiliation of a false pregnancy she had hoped would solve the problem of her sister ever succeeding to the throne.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, only gained more esteem among the people through her persecution. The queen was forced into the terrible realization that she could do nothing to stop her. Brokenhearted over her many failures, Queen Mary I grew increasingly ill, but she did live long enough to see all eyes turn to Elizabeth as it became obvious that her succession was inevitable. It was a cruel blow. The unhappy queen finally died in 1558 at age forty-two. Upon hearing the news, the new Queen Elizabeth I was overcome by emotion. Falling to her knees, she exclaimed in Latin, “This is the doing of the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” No tears at that funeral.

A century later, another set of sister queens were at each other’s throats.

 

 

A
lthough the feud between Mary II and her sister, the future Queen Anne, lacked the potential deadliness of the one between Mary I and Elizabeth I, it was every bit as bitter. Oddly enough, Mary and Anne got along famously as they sought to overthrow their father James II. In what became known as The Glorious Revolution, King James was forced to abandon his kingdom and flee to France in 1688. Neither his subjects nor his Protestant daughters would tolerate his autocratic Catholic tendencies. With the throne still warm, Mary and her invading Dutch husband William settled right in as coregents. This was fine with Anne, who even gave up her right to succeed immediately if Mary died before William.

But then things started to get nasty. Mary began bossing her sister around, acting like she was, well, queen of England. Anne was having none of it. The first fight of many was over Anne’s allowance. Mary was annoyed that her sister’s friends, led by Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough, had brought the matter of Anne’s finances to the attention of Parliament without ever telling the king and queen. When Mary approached her sister about it, Anne replied nonchalantly that she believed some of her friends simply wanted her to have a decent settlement. “Pray, what friends have you but the king and me?” the queen demanded imperiously.

With that, the claws emerged and a feud was born. Mary started by arbitrarily denying Anne her choice of residence, and at one point took away her guards. Anne ended up getting mugged. King William III joined in, too. Next to his lovely and complacent wife, the king found his hefty sister-in-law willful and obnoxious, and he treated her lazy husband, Prince George of Denmark, little better than a piss boy. In retaliation, and urged on by Sarah Churchill, Anne deliberately snubbed William and Mary. Among her friends she referred to the king as “the Dutch abortion” and slighted her sister at every available opportunity. It was all petty and ridiculous, but it would get much worse.

At the center of the growing breach was Anne’s friend Sarah, the Duchess of Marlborough. While Sarah had already made a habit of stirring things up between the royal sisters, as in the finance matter, her presence in Anne’s inner circle became intolerable to Queen Mary for another reason. Sarah’s husband, the Duke of Marlborough, (the couple were Winston Churchill’s ancestors) had been a leader in the Glorious Revolution that drove James II from the throne. There were indications, however, that the duke’s loyalty was turning back to the deposed king. Certainly he had corresponded with James in exile. For this reason, Marlborough was a threat to William and Mary, and the queen viewed Anne’s friendship with the wife of such a man as insulting, if not treasonous. She demanded her sister send Sarah away, but Anne, stubborn as always, refused.