Bastard Prince (4 page)

Yet all her connections would have come to nothing if she herself had not been able to create a good impression. Elizabeth Blount was clearly something out of the ordinary. When the Dean of Westbury, one of Anne Boleyn's supporters, was asked to compare Elizabeth to Anne in 1532, he thought Elizabeth was the most beautiful.
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Even twenty years later the king's cousin, Lord Leonard Grey, could still declare that he had ‘had very good cheer' when visiting with her in Lincolnshire. At twelve she would have been expected to be well schooled in needlework and in all those aspects of learning which were a desirable part of any ambitious girl's repertoire. Elizabeth's primary purpose in being at court was to attract a suitable husband and the queen's household was an ideal place to cultivate those skills and accomplishments which would do so, and the slightly different talents expected of the ideal Tudor wife.

A contemporary reported that Katherine of Aragon ‘set a high moral tone for her Household'. Although the queen's excessive piety belongs to a later date, no doubt a considerable part of Elizabeth's day would have been spent accompanying the queen in her devotions, hearing mass and divine offices. The young maid of honour would also have been required to attend the queen at meals and in the presence of visitors and foreign ambassadors. Katherine of Aragon prided herself on embroidering her husband's shirts herself, like any good wife, and the queen and her ladies would have spent many a companionable hour sewing together. Whatever proficiency Elizabeth had in Latin was perhaps a legacy from her time in Katherine's service. The queen herself may have encouraged her young attendant in her studies of the language, much as she did with her sister-in-law, Mary Tudor. Elizabeth would also have learnt by, arguably, the best example in the realm, the duties and responsibilities of a great noblewoman: not only to dispense care and succour through her charitable deeds, but to manage her own household and estates. This example must have stood Elizabeth in good stead in later life when she presided over her own interests.

In the meantime, while Elizabeth's duties required her to be both an asset and ornament to the court and her family saw her primary duty as making a good marriage, Elizabeth had plenty of opportunities to have a good time. Although Katherine did not choose to dance in public, in the privacy of her own apartments she would often dance with her ladies. Sometimes there would be music and singing, at other times there might be table games like cards or dice. Often the king and his attendants would join the queen and her ladies, on occasion putting on one of his elaborate disguises when everyone would pretend not to recognise the handsome stranger and his fellows until he was unmasked. Given that few men could match Henry's distinctive stature as he towered over his courtiers, these episodes may have been rather more amusing than the king intended to the queen's ladies, as they watched their mistress feign astonished surprise.

In the summer of 1513 this idyll was interrupted for a time when the pleasures of the court were put aside in favour of the splendour of martial deeds. So far, Henry's warlike exploits had been a disappointment. A previous military venture, under the command of Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset in 1512, had ended in disaster when the English armies at Fuentarrabia had waited in vain for the expected Spanish reinforcements. The English army disintegrated into disorder and disease ‘which caused the blood so to boil in their bellies that there fell sick three thousand of the flux'. When, on the point of mutiny, they fled for home, Ferdinand added insult to injury by blaming them for the lost opportunity. The true fault lay with Ferdinand who had concentrated on his own personal objectives of obtaining Navarre at the expense of Henry's ambitions. However, eager to prove himself in battle, Henry decided to lead his forces in person.

All who could be spared followed their king to France. Even Elizabeth's grandfather, Sir Thomas Blount, now in his fifty-seventh year, went as a captain in the retinue of the Earl of Shrewsbury. For a time Elizabeth was almost bereft of male relatives at court, her father and her uncles all being included in the party which sailed across the Channel, although Lord Mountjoy did remain behind until September as one of those appointed to advise Queen Katherine in her role as regent.

The threat of the Scots ensured that it was not entirely a quiet time at court, although it is doubtful that Elizabeth enjoyed being ‘horribly busy' in the making of standards, banners and badges against the hostilities (as Katherine proudly reported to her husband) quite as much as singing or dancing. The king's return in October was an occasion for both triumph and sadness. The victories at Flodden and Tournai were a marked success for the new reign, but, in the wake of the celebrations on 8 October 1513, it was reported that the queen had been delivered early of a son.
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This was Katherine's third pregnancy in four years of marriage. This time everyone must have hoped that the odds were in favour of a successful outcome. However, it was not to be. When God had already blessed England with such good fortune in battle, it must have seemed especially cruel to withhold the much-desired heir. That Henry and Katherine remained childless was a personal tragedy for them; however, as long as the realm was without a male heir their private grief was also a matter of public concern.

Henry VIII's relationship with Elizabeth Blount is often thought to have begun as early as the winter of 1513 upon Henry's return from France, perhaps in the wake of Katherine's latest miscarriage. Writing to the king from France in 1514, Charles Brandon, recently created Duke of Suffolk, had a special message for Elizabeth and her young associate Elizabeth Carew, another of the maids of honour:

and I beseech your Grace to [tell] Mistress Blount and Mistress Carew, the next time that I write unto them [or s] end them tokens, they shall either [wri]te to me or send me tokens again.
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The letter has caused some modern authors to speculate that Elizabeth may have been Suffolk's mistress before she was the king's. Suffolk was notoriously charming and handsome. He was also one of the few men whose marital history could rival the king's for scandal and complexity.
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Elizabeth herself is not traditionally cast as shy and retiring, but nor is there any hint of the kind of notoriety earned by Mary Boleyn, who was once described as ‘a very great wanton with a most infamous reputation'.
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The exchange of tokens was a conventional part of the elaborate game of courtly love and this may have been nothing more than what it appears, a piece of harmless flirtation.

Elizabeth could be charming and gracious, but when it came to matters of the heart she clearly knew her own mind. When the king's cousin Lord Leonard Grey, a younger son of the Marquess of Dorset, first expressed his interest in marrying her in May 1532, he wrote to Thomas Cromwell asking the secretary to approach Elizabeth on his behalf. During an obviously enjoyable visit to Elizabeth's house at Kyme he dashed off a note, hoping that Cromwell would also persuade the king and the Duke of Norfolk to back his suit, even sending blank paper for their letters and £5 in gold for Cromwell's cooperation. He was very keen, assuring Cromwell that he would ‘rather obtain that matter than to be made lord of as much goods and lands as any noble man hath within this realm', although, Elizabeth's substantial estates may also have had their own attraction. Cromwell was happy to oblige, but Elizabeth was not to be persuaded. In July 1532 Grey plaintively stressed the king's acquiescence to the match, even as he urged Cromwell to try harder to secure Elizabeth's agreement.
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Even though she succumbed to the king's attentions, it does not make her a loose woman. Putting aside the fact that Henry was rather difficult to refuse, Elizabeth may well have been attracted to him and she could also rest assured that their liaison would bring her some benefit. In the light of the way Suffolk had treated his wives, Elizabeth ought to have been more wary of risking her reputation by a casual sexual relationship with him, if she had any hopes of subsequently making a respectable marriage.

The assumption that Henry and Elizabeth were already romantically involved has been fuelled by Elizabeth's appearance in a masque during the Christmas celebrations in 1514. Dressed in blue velvet and cloth of gold, styled after the fashions of Savoy, she was one of four lords and four ladies who ‘came into the Queen's chamber with great light of torches and danced a great season'. When at last the dancing was over these mysterious revellers took off their masks and Elizabeth Blount's partner was revealed as Henry VIII.

If Katherine was worried, it was not at the spectacle of her husband dancing with a slip of a girl. Recent months had seen strained relations at court as Henry grew increasingly frustrated at a Spanish alliance that had not brought him the gains he had expected. The Spanish ambassador complained mournfully that he felt like ‘a bull at whom everyone throws darts'. Katherine's confessor, Fray Diego Fernandez, accused Henry of having treated the queen badly. Rumours circulated that Henry was planning to put aside his childless wife in order to marry a daughter of the Duke of Bourbon. Katherine no doubt bore the brunt of her husband's ire at her father, but their marriage was not in doubt. Not only had Henry considered avenging himself on Ferdinand by asserting Katherine's claim to her mother's kingdom of Castile, but also by the autumn of 1514 he had succeeded in making his twenty-eight-year-old wife pregnant for the fourth time.

Once Katherine was known to be with child Henry may well have felt at liberty to stray, but the object of his affections was probably not the fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Blount. A few nights after the entertainments in the queen's chamber at Christmas 1514, Henry took part in the Twelfth Night masque at Eltham. This time he had a different partner. Jane (or Jeanne) Poppingcourt was a Frenchwoman who had originally been employed by Henry VII as a companion to his daughters. By 1502 Jane was serving as one of Mary Tudor's maids of honour and by 1512 she was receiving 200
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per annum as a member of the queen's household. Jane continued to feature in the court revels until she returned to France in 1516.

During this period Katherine was twice indisposed. The pregnancy in 1514 would certainly have been reason enough for Henry to look for a suitable diversion. Several years older than Elizabeth Blount, Jane Poppingcourt seems a more likely candidate. This was a woman who was the known mistress of the duc de Longueville and was censured by Louis XII for her promiscuous behaviour.
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After the birth of a prince ‘which lived not long after', in the early part of 1515 it was only a short time before Katherine fell pregnant again. Henry may have resumed his attentions to a willing and apparently discreet companion from May of that year. Certainly, when Jane finally took her leave of the court the king gave her a substantial parting gift of £100. In the circumstances, it seems highly likely that Henry's generosity stemmed from something more than mere royal largess.
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As Elizabeth turned fifteen, she increasingly featured in the pleasures and pastimes of the court. In May 1515 she was one of twenty-five young ladies mounted on white palfreys, with ‘housings [harness] all of one fashion, most beautifully embroidered with gold' who accompanied the Queen to Shooters Hill near Greenwich as part of the traditional May Day celebrations. Dressed in an outfit ‘slashed with gold lama with very costly trim' and attended by a number of footmen, Elizabeth must have felt almost like royalty herself as she gracefully entertained the visiting ambassadors. In July 1515 her father was granted a two-year advance on his wages as a Spear, amounting to over £146. Since it was not unusual for the males of the family to reap the benefit of a daughter's success (as Mary Boleyn would discover), this certainly seems to indicate that Henry had come to appreciate Elizabeth's undoubted talents and was feeling generous towards her family. Was this the opening salvo of a hopeful suitor?

Any consideration of the king's courtship of Elizabeth Blount is hampered by the fact that the only firm references to the progress of their affair are retrospective. After the event it was recorded that:

The king in his fresh youth was in the chains of love with a fair damsel called Elizabeth Blount, daughter to Sir John Blount, knight, which damsel in singing, dancing, and in all goodly pastimes, exceeded all other, by the which goodly pastimes, she won the king's heart: and she again showed him such favour, that by him she bore a goodly man child, of beauty like to the father and mother.
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This in itself is the strongest argument that Henry did not yet look at Elizabeth with any serious intent. If episodes like Henry's supposed attraction to the Duke of Buckingham's sister Lady Anne Hastings could be seized on and blown out of all proportion, could a relationship of some four years' standing really escape all gossip and censure? A romantic dalliance, such as he may have enjoyed with Jane Poppingcourt, when the queen herself was pregnant was one thing; an enduring relationship, when a woman and her relatives might gain the ear of the king, was another thing entirely. Also, if this was the first indication of interest stirred, why is there no record in the years to follow to indicate where Henry's affections lay?

In fact, it is unlikely that Henry became involved with Elizabeth before 1518. Certainly the birth of Princess Mary, on 18 February 1516, gave Henry every incentive to remain faithful to his wife. The arrival of a healthy daughter did much to revive the king's hopes of an heir. After seven years of marriage, marred by miscarriage and infant mortality, Henry's confidence was restored. He rather optimistically declared to the Venetian ambassador ‘The Queen and I are both young and if it is a girl this time, by God's grace the boys will follow'. If he wanted to capitalise on this fortuitous omen he needed to make Katherine pregnant again as soon as possible.