Queen Elizabeth I

King Henry VIII was a monarch with a problem. He had no son to succeed him. He had a daughter, Princess Mary, and he had an illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, but he had no prince to one day wear his crown. The King, like many men of his time, did not believe that a woman was capable of governing so he was desperate to father a prince to succeed him. Sadly, the childbearing days of his wife, Katherine of Aragon, who had been his queen for two decades, had come to an end, so the King knew he was not going to have a prince from her. The King therefore wanted a new wife and had settled his heart on the young and dazzling Anne Boleyn.

Anne Boleyn
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To marry Anne, however, Henry had to have his marriage to Katherine annulled, and annulling a marriage in the sixteenth century was very difficult. Only the Pope could annul a marriage and only on the grounds that it was not a true marriage in God's eyes. King Henry argued that his marriage was not a true marriage because Katherine had first been married to his brother, Prince Arthur. A case could be made that it was against scripture for a man to marry his brother's widow. Had Katherine been a woman of no great consequence, then it is likely that the Pope would have granted Henry his divorce, but as Katherine was against the divorce, and was aunt to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, a man of great power in Europe, the Pope was in a dilemma. He could not afford to offend Emperor Charles by granting the divorce but he also did not want to offend King Henry by refusing it. So the Pope sat on the decision and strung 'the King's great matter' out for years.

Queen Katherine Pleads
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It eventually became clear to Henry that the Pope was never going to make a decision and he would have to find another way of obtaining his divorce. This 'way' was to break with the Catholic Church and establishing an independent Church of England. This would give Henry complete power over matters ecclesiastical. This revolutionary step was made possible by the recent emergence in Europe of a new branch of Christianity called Protestantism. The 'new religion' had very important doctrinal differences to Catholicism but all Henry really cared about was ending the power of the Pope in his country. When this was done, he divorced himself from Katherine and married Anne Boleyn, first secretly in the winter of 1532, and then officially in the January of 1533.

By the time of her coronation in the summer of that year Anne Boleyn was heavily pregnant. She and Henry believed with all their heart that the baby would be a boy, especially as all the seers, philosophers and astronomers assured them that the baby was going to be a great ruler. But the baby born on 7 September 1533 was not a boy. Instead of a prince, Queen Anne gave birth to a princess. The King was absolutely devastated and felt deeply humiliated. He had not caused a religious revolution in the land, executed friends and endangered his soul, only to father another daughter. In his grief he cancelled all court celebrations planned for the baby's birth, and although he tried to put a brave face on things, giving his new baby daughter a magnificent christening three days later, he was bitterly disappointed in his new wife and his affection for her started to cool.

Read a contemporary account of Elizabeth's christening

Elizabeth spent the first three months of her life in the royal nursery at Greenwich Palace. Although she saw her mother often, her main carer was her Lady Mistress, Margaret Bourchier, Baroness Bryan, who headed her nursery. Lady Bryan was Anne Boleyn's aunt and she had also been Lady Mistress to Princess Mary. When she was three months old, Elizabeth was given her own household and sent to live in Hatfield Palace in Hertfordshire. Princess Mary soon joined her there, for the teenage princess was deprived of her own household for refusing, like her mother, to accept the divorce, and was placed in the care of Lady Shelton, Anne Boleyn's aunt whose husband was steward of the household. Her own governess, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, had been dismissed. The King hoped that Mary could be bullied into submission, that she could be made to see that Elizabeth was now the country's rightful heir, not herself, but Mary was made of sterner stuff and fought on bravely for what she considered her birthright.

If Elizabeth had been a boy, or if her mother had given her a brother during Katherine of Aragon's lifetime, then the history of England would be very different. The King would never have allowed any scandal to touch Anne Boleyn and she would not have ended her days on the scaffold accused of adultery and treason. But Elizabeth was not a boy, and although her mother was pregnant when Katherine of Aragon died, Anne suffered a miscarriage not long after. The fetus was said to be male and the King was once again devastated. The same doubts that had plagued his marriage to Katherine now plagued his marriage to Anne and he concluded once again that he needed a new wife. Within weeks Anne was accused of adultery, a crime that carried a death sentence for a queen, and was imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Anne Boleyn
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Although Anne protested her innocence, as did those accused with her, one of the men being her own brother, George, Anne was found guilty of betraying the King and sentenced to death. The choice between death by burning or death by beheading was put to the King and he chose beheading. Anne asked if she could be executed by a sword rather than an axe, as this was said to be a kinder death, and the King agreed, sending to France for a special swordsman. Up until the end Anne hoped that the King would change his mind, that he would remember the love he had once felt for her. The King, however, was now in love with Jane Seymour and determined to make her his bride. Anne was willing to accept an annulment and live a quiet life in the country, but the King wanted rid of her completely. That was the only way of removing any doubt about the legitimacy of any son he had with his new wife. So Anne was left to her cruel fate and beheaded at the Tower of London on 19 May 1536. Not even provided with a coffin, Anne's ladies had to place her broken body in an old arrow chest, and it was in this chest that she was buried in the Tower's Chapel. Elizabeth was now motherless, illegitmate, and just two and a half years old.

DIFFICULT CHILDHOOD

EARLY YEARS