Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth (17 page)

Since she had chosen not to marry, Elizabeth could emphasize her unmarried state on occasion by dressing in styles permitted to single women such as the low neckline, the open ruff, and wearing her hair loose.
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However, in spite of the promotion in her portraiture of the idea of a virgin queen supported by the mask of youth, for those who met her in person these styles became less suitable and provoked comment as she grew older. In 1598 Paul Hentzer saw Elizabeth on her way to chapel. Although she was 66 years old, “her bosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it, till they marry.”
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This style was recorded in a number of the queen’s portraits such as the Ditchley portrait (c. 1592, see Figure 5.2), the Hardwick portrait (1599), and the Rainbow portrait (c.1600–1602), but not universally, the Armada portrait (1588) being an exception. In other words, Elizabeth had the best of both worlds. Sartorially, she could draw on the benefits of being unmarried and also wear the clothes usually reserved for married women. As such she could use her appearance to vindicate her decision not to marry and shun the usual female life-cycle.

Figure 5.2 Queen Elizabeth I ("The Ditchley Portrait") by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (c. 1592), National Portrait Gallery, London

IV

Like the Tudor kings, the Tudor queens regnant could express their piety through their dress either during the cycle of events that marked the observance of the liturgical year or as part of their own religious devotion. The ways in which the liturgical year was observed changed markedly with the Reformation, introducing variations that highlight the differing religious views of Mary and Elizabeth.
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Mary followed a pattern similar to that followed by Henry VII and Henry VIII, who had observed the traditional religious feast days, the days for crown-wearing, and the days for wearing purple and crimson laid down in fifteenth-century royal household ordinances.
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Her siblings, Edward and Elizabeth, broke with these traditions and established a different ceremonial cycle, thereby demonstrating that religious belief rather than gender was more important in defining how the Tudor monarchs celebrated the liturgical year and weekly observance.

Elizabeth took a leading role in the collar-day processions that were held on the key days of the pre-Reformation calendar. On collar days, the knights of the Garter and the leading officers of the royal household wore their respective collars as a visual reminder of their service to the crown.
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It has been suggested that a painting attributed to Robert Peake (c. 1601) depicts Elizabeth crowned, dressed in white, and participating in a collar-day procession. She was surrounded by her leading courtiers and household officials including George Carey, her lord chamberlain, and Edward Somerset, fourth earl of Worcester and master of the horse. Collar days, which were a vehicle for sumptuous dress, were a way of converting the key days of the liturgical year into part of court ceremonial. Another significant date was November 17, the anniversary of Elizabeth’s accession. On this day in 1585, Wedel described her as being “dressed in white,” adding that she “appeared like a goddess such as painters are wont to depict.”
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Even so, certain days such as Maundy Thursday and certain practices, such as touching for the king’s or queen’s evil, were observed by all Tudor monarchs and their consorts. In c. 1560 Levina Teerlinc painted a miniature recording one of the Elizabethan Maundy ceremonies at which the queen was present dressed in a blue gown with a train.
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On one level the choice of blue was appropriate as this was the royal color of mourning for the early Tudors, and this was a day of mourning. However, the Great Wardrobe accounts show that Elizabeth did not order a special gown for the Maundy ceremonies as Henry VII, Henry VIII, and Mary had. Annually, all three wore gowns of violet wool, dyed in grain and trimmed with marten fur.
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Like Henry VIII’s other wives, Catherine of Aragon observed Maundy Thursday and she too wore a violet gown, but it was furred with gray, possibly in acknowledgment of her status as queen consort.
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So although the miniature and the accounts suggest that Elizabeth broke with tradition, it is not possible to establish whether the blue dress is an accurate record of what she wore in 1560 or artistic license.
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Moving to consider the queens’ more personal expressions of their religious beliefs, Mary often carried a rosary and wore a pendant cross, just as her mother had favored a brooch with the IHS monogram (representing the Greek word for Jesus). Catherine had also bequeathed to her daughter a collar with a cross that she had brought from Spain.
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Elizabeth made very little use of religious insignia, although, as a young girl, she occasionally carried (like Anne Boleyn) a girdle book. During her brother’s reign, Elizabeth chose to appear at court in a simple style and also to be painted thus, favoring black and white—an understated appearance that was intended to reflect her religious views. John Foxe noted that “she had so little pride of stomach, so little delight in glistering gazes of the world, in gay apparel, rich attire and precious jewels that …she never looked upon those that her father left her.”
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Lady Jane Grey took a similar stance when she rejected a gift of “goodly apparel of tinsel cloth of gold, and velvet laid on with parchment lace” from Mary. “What shall we do with it?” she asked. The reply was, “Marry, wear it.” To which Jane responded that that “were shame, to follow lady Mary against God’s word, and leave my lady Elizabeth, which followeth God’s word.”
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This was a style and a standpoint that Elizabeth continued to display during Mary’s reign, and her somber appearance contrasted with the bright colors of her sister’s Catholic court. However, once married, Mary did adopt the more somber style of dress favored in Spain and the two sisters would have looked more similar.

Sunday observance was important to both queens and they expressed this through the clothes that they selected. In 1537 Mary asked whether she should wear mourning for Jane Seymour on Easter Sunday. When given permission to wear what she liked, Mary sought her father’s approval to wear “her whiten taffaty edged with velvet, which used to be to his own liking, whenever he saw her grace, and suiteth to this joyful feast of our Lord’s holy rising from the dead.”
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In contrast, in the 1590s one foolhardy preacher criticized Elizabeth during a Sunday service for vanity expressed through her clothing choices:

One Sunday…my lord of London preached to the Queen’s Majesty and seemed to touch on the vanity of decking the body too finely. Her Majesty told the ladies that “if the bishop held more discourse on such matters, she would fit him for heaven—but he should walk thither without a staff and leave his mantle behind him.” Perchance the bishop hath never sought Her Highness’ wardrobe, or he would have chosen another text.
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However, perhaps the most poignant expression of Mary’s personal beliefs was her wish to be buried dressed in a nun’s habit.
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This was an expression of her piety and this type of request was not without precedent. Her mother was known to wear a habit of the order of St Francis, as did several male Habsburgs, her husband’s relatives.
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V

Both Mary and Elizabeth received numerous gifts of clothing from their mothers and the girls’ loss of a maternal influence was reflected in many ways, including a diminished wardrobe. They both would have learned young the link between dress and status. Evidence for the years prior to their accessions is fragmentary but reveals different facets of their attitudes to clothes. Mary’s privy purse accounts from the 1540s record how she used her limited resources to keep her appearance as sumptuous as possible and thus suited to her status as her father’s firstborn child.
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By contrast, Elizabeth’s household accounts for 1551–52 reveal a wardrobe of someone seeking to keep a low profile. The main purchase for the year was enough wrought velvet for a gown, black velvet for a kirtle, matching sleeves, two French hoods, and partlets, altogether costing £43 7
s
 2
d
. There were two other purchases of fabric: damask and crimson satin costing £8 15
s
 3
d
 and velvets and silks worth £79.
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It is quite possible that their limited access to suitable clothing prior to their accessions explains why both Mary and Elizabeth ensured that they had a sumptuous wardrobe once they became queen.

The Great Wardrobe and its staff worked during the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth to meet their clothing needs, just as they had done for Henry VII, Henry VIII, and Edward VI.
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However, the wardrobe of the robes had to have a female staff to serve a female monarch and so a mistress of the robes was appointed to work with the yeoman of the robes. This role often went to a confidante of the queen: Mary’s mistress of the robes was Susan Tonge, who was also referred to as Mistress Clarencieux, while Elizabeth’s chief lady-in-waiting and first mistress of the robes was Kat Astley. Prior to their accessions, Mary and Elizabeth maintained their own specialist craftsmen including a tailor, skinner, silk woman, and cord-wainer, but on a more ad hoc basis. These individuals were often organized and paid by the male officers of the wardrobe of the robes.

Clothes were intimately linked to theories about royal magnificence by the use of expensive, luxurious fabrics, by the number and variety of garments owned by an individual, and by the frequency with which new or different clothes were worn.
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This is evident in a comment made by Venetian ambassador Giacomo Soranzo who described Mary’s clothes in the following terms: “She seems to delight above all in arraying herself elegantly and magnificently,” adding that “she also wears much embroidery and gowns and mantles of cloth of gold and cloth of silver of great value and changes them every day.”
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Similar comments were made about the scale and quality of Elizabeth’s clothes. For instance, in 1599 Thomas Platter described the queen as being “most lavishly attired in a gown of pure white satin, gold-embroidered…in short she was most gorgeously apparelled.”
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The lavish nature of Elizabeth’s clothes is borne out by the 1600 inventory of her wardrobe that provides evidence of its scale, as well as an overview of the hierarchies of fabrics, colors, and garment types.
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Following the pattern established by Henry VIII, Mary and Elizabeth ordered their clothes from the Great Wardrobe twice a year, in the spring and autumn.
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The scale and quality of the royal wardrobe was intended to place it out of reach of the rest of society. As such, both women exploited ideas of royal magnificence to the full, just like their father.

While the gown was the staple item in the female wardrobe, the loose gown or nightgown could be worn in private when a less formal style was appropriate. Mary ordered a number of loose gowns or nightgowns and it is possible that these were more comfortable than the more tailored garments, especially during her phantom pregnancy and periods of ill health. However, there are almost no references to Mary’s appearance in private. But there are several hints about Elizabeth’s private attire. Dressing was a long and complex process and, from personal preference, Elizabeth quite often dressed late in the morning.
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On May 3, 1578, Gilbert Talbot happened to catch sight of the queen at her window, and she “shewed to be greatly ashamed thereof, for she was unreddy, and in her nyght stuffe.”
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More interestingly, in 1597 Elizabeth received the French ambassadors in her nightgown but was concerned and asked, “What will these gentlemen say to see me so attired? I am much disturbed that they should see me this way.”
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While it was not unheard of for Henry VIII to receive visitors, such as William Cavendish, in his nightgown, there were different codes of what was appropriate for men and women. When Essex rushed into Elizabeth’s bedchamber on the morning of September 28, 1599 to find her in her nightgown and with “her grey hairs about her ears,” she responded by stripping him of his offices.
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Foreign styles of clothing could be adopted in a number of ways. Spanish dress was worn by Catherine of Aragon on occasion to emphasize her heritage.
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These styles were also favored by her daughter, especially after her marriage to Philip of Spain. This is even more understandable in light of the Spanish criticizing her English wardrobe. One Spaniard described Mary as “a perfect saint” but added that she “dresses very badly.”
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Alternatively, although Anne of Cleves wore the styles favored in the Low Countries for her wedding she soon adopted English dress. These examples illustrate the ways in which clothes could be used by foreign queens to assert their identity or to indicate their adoption of another. However, foreign styles of dress were also fashionable in their own right. Mary and Elizabeth both wore gowns in the French, Spanish, Dutch, and Venetian styles, as did their father, suggesting that the proliferation of styles inspired by foreign dress was adopted first within the male wardrobe, and then the female.