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"Near to a Queen" by sallybrice

Lettice Knollys was cousin to Eliz I. Her family was Puritan, so they had to flee Eng during reign of Bloody Mary. When Eliz became queen, Lettice was made lady in waiting. She married an earl, but cuckolded him w/ Eliz's lover, R. Dudley, whom she married after RD had husband killed. Lettice poisoned RD to marry friend of her son's. Husband & son led revolt against Eliz & were beheaded. Lettice's daughter was fav of Jas I. Her grandson led Parliament against Chas I . Lettice died at 94.

Category: Book Chapter

Tags: historical fiction about real people

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Chapter IV

Lord Thomas parted the bed curtains and leaned in with one bare knee on her bed. He was still clad only in his night dress. Princess Elizabeth sat up and reached for him, not caring that the bedclothes slipped to her waist revealing her breasts. Something was strange, though; rather than smiling his insolent grin and climbing in to join her, Thomas held back. It was she who kissed him, softly. His responding kiss was also soft, his lips slightly dry. She was terribly excited and frightened. She knew this was wrong and that Queen Katherine Paar, her late father’s widow, might discover them, but her longing for Thomas brought her lips to his again. Suddenly, a separate reality presented itself: a dim glimpse of another pair of bed curtains. This fused with a fainter image of Lord Thomas, and immediately Princess Elizabeth was jolted awake. Her heart was beating in terror. For an instant, it was the terror of a thirteen-year-old in bed with the young husband of her step-mother and guardian, Queen Katherine. In the next moment she remembered where she was and that Thomas Seymour would never be a threat to anyone, ever again. Princess Elizabeth was now nineteen and had been exiled by her half-sister, the new Catholic Queen Mary, to this palace-cum-prison of Woodstock Manor. The last Elizabeth had seen of Lord Thomas five years before was his head, bloody and pecked at by birds, on a pike outside the Tower of London. Queen Katherine Paar had also gone to her heavenly reward.

“Good morning, Your Highness. Lovely cold morning.” The princess’s serving woman Kat Ashley entered the bedchamber. As she was being dressed, Elizabeth pondered the meaning of her dream. To dream of the dead was always an ill omen, but the Thomas Seymour in her dream had been very much alive--and yet so different. What could it mean that this intimate of her youth, who had been a man of such wit and so little discretion, had appeared as a tender and even diffident lover? She mentally shrugged. Perhaps the dream was merely a foretelling of the visitor she was to receive today. For Sir Robert Dudley, dissimilar as he was to the gay Lord Thomas, was a handsome man in his own right.

Princess Elizabeth’s transformation from child to woman had been realized in those six years since she and her stepfather had played their dangerous games. The roundness of her cheeks had sharpened; her mouth increasingly took on the critical attitude of her mind; the wariness in her eyes was now more one of calculation. All in all, this lean young woman with her pale red hair and finely freckled complexion looked ready for the fight. She had no other choice; her survival depended on it. She also had few allies since her father had had her mother, Anne Boleyn, beheaded.

“Kat, at what o’clock do we expect Sir Robert Dudley?”

“Not til the afternoon, my lady. Are you anxious already” Mistress Ashley fussed with the princess’s collar with a smirk.

Princess Elizabeth angrily slapped the woman’s hand away. “Your humor is better suited to a bawdy house. You would do well to remember whom you serve.”

“Aye, my lady,” Kat Ashley said calmly. Having served the princess for more than ten years, she was used to her mistress’s sharp ways.

“And yet, Sir Robert is a comely gentleman, I will allow that.”

“Aye, my lady,” Mistress Ashley replied placidly.

Almost to herself she murmured, “I wonder at the purpose of his visit.”

That afternoon when Sir Robert Dudley rode up to Woodstock Manor, he himself wondered at his mission. He had just served in Queen Mary’s army fighting the French in Calais and had earned many gold sovereigns, which he carried with him now in a leather pouch concealed in his traveling cloak. This was money he and his wife could certainly use, for times were so uncertain that no amount of savings could go amiss. Yet here he was, ready to pledge his gold and who knew what more to a woman he had hardly considered before the death of her brother, King Edward VI.

Twenty years earlier King Henry VIII had broken with Catholicism and Rome and created the Church of England. One motive for his actions was to divorce his first wife, the Spanish Catholic princess Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry his Protestant mistress Anne Boleyn. When Anne produced only a daughter--Princess Elizabeth--King Henry had his wife beheaded. Their daughter was three years old at the time. King Henry then married Jane Seymour, by whom he had his longed-for male heir, Prince Edward. King Henry died, and Prince Edward became King Edward when he was eleven years old. He and his regents were staunch Protestants and continued what his father had started. King Edward lived only five more years, however, and the crown then fell to King Henry’s oldest child, the Catholic princess, Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon.

At that point Princess Elizabeth gained new importance in the royal hierarchy. She was an unmarried Protestant claimant to what was again, thanks to Queen Mary, a Catholic throne. This made her a lightening rod for disaffected Protestants. Such fact did not escape Sir Robert Dudley, one of the most powerful Protestants in England. The other fact that Dudley was already married hardly registered with him. He could not remember the heat that had made him so eager to marry Amy Robsart when they were both only seventeen. That Princess Elizabeth--the possible future queen--was not spoken-for spelled opportunity for Dudley. It was all this that brought him to Woodstock that winter afternoon in 1554.

Dudley was bidden into the great room, where he found the princess ready to greet him. Woodstock had been little used as a royal residence. Its remote location made it a convenient place for Queen Mary to hide Elizabeth, though. Dudley was appalled to see the conditions in which the princess was kept. The unadorned plaster walls and ceiling badly needed recoating. The furniture was sparse and plain. Princess Elizabeth herself was poorly dressed. Her dark gown was dusty, the embroidery on its bodice worn. She did not look well. Her cheekbones with their red, hectic spots stood out in sharp relief. Dudley had heard rumors the princess was often ill, and he now saw this must be true.

Dudley bowed low before her and murmured, “Your Highness.”

“Arise, Sir Robert,” the princess commanded. She observed him acutely. He was taller, and broader in the shoulder than she remembered. “May I offer you some refreshment?” She clapped her hands and bid her visitor sit.

The pair sat in silence, each waiting for the other to begin. Finally, Elizabeth broke into the awkwardness. “I remember as a child being very jealous of your exploits, Sir Robert. Are you aware you and I shared the same tutor, Roger Ascham? He described you as being a very unruly boy. I thought you lucky to be able to misbehave so.”

“And I in turn was made aware of Your Highness’s proficiency in subjects such as Greek and Latin that made my youth such a torment.”

This remark pleased the princess. Her scholastic accomplishments had often been overshadowed by those of her half-brother, Prince Edward. Yet she wished Sir Robert had been told of her beauty as well as her learning. As if reading her mind, Dudley added, “I hope you will not think ill of him if I tell you that Master Ascham’s chief reports were of your lovely countenance.”

Elizabeth smiled and leaned closer toward her guest. “Tell me, Sir Robert, what prompts you to visit me in this dreary out-of-the-way place? You must know that to visit the Princess Elizabeth is not a venture guaranteed to find favor at court.”

“Your Highness, I must be truthful and say that favor from the present court is not something I prize overmuch.”

“Yet you were not too proud to serve Her Majesty in Calais.”

“Ah, you touch on the purpose that has brought me here.” He retrieved his cloak and extracted from it the leather pouch. He approached the princess and went down on one knee.

“What is this, Sir Robert, an offer of marriage? I have it on good authority you have a wife living.”

“It is an offer, Your Highness,” Dudley replied, ignoring the princess’s sally. “It is an offer of loyalty. I would pledge my life, but I fear this sum of gold from my service at Calais has greater value.” His tone had returned to one of banter.

Elizabeth accepted the pouch and held it in her hand, feeling its weight. She regarded Dudley with an odd expression. “Do not be so quick to downplay your life or the value of your loyalty,” she said with suppressed emotion. “And do not think I am unmindful of the risks you take in coming to see me. I accept that and your gift with much thanks.” Dudley quietly took the princess’s hand and kissed it.

They spent the rest of the afternoon in pleasant reminiscences and awkward silence in equal measure. Elizabeth did not think she imagined the covert glances she received from her guest. Nor could she resist a more bold appraisal of him. When Sir Robert begged his leave, Elizabeth asked him, “And your lady wife, how does she?”

“In truth, Your Highness, I know but little. I am away from home so much, I sometimes wonder if I would recognize her should we meet by chance. To marry at seventeen was, perhaps, not the wisest course.”

“Indeed,” was all the princess said.

After Dudley had taken his leave, Elizabeth felt more alone than usual, as well as more confused. Her physical response to Dudley was much stronger than she had expected, which caused her to look for reasons to distrust him. Dudley’s loyalty was complicated, coming as he did from the family who had championed Queen Jane over either Princess Mary or Princess Elizabeth. All the other important members of that family had been executed, but Robert was spared. Elizabeth considered this, but the image of Dudley’s muscular frame kept interrupting her assessment of his motives.

Pragmatism prevailed, however, as she reflected that Sir Robert’s gold would be added to the reserves she was amassing against future need. There were any number of calls that might be made on those funds: bribery, an army, the means to flee. Queen Mary’s reign meant constant danger to Princess Elizabeth. To say the queen loathed her would not be an overstatement. All the time they were growing up, Mary had known that Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn, was the cause of her own mother, Catherine of Aragon’s misery. And Queen Mary could never forget the disgrace she had suffered at being forced to act as nursemaid to the infant Elizabeth while Queen Anne was still riding high.

Elizabeth longed to have someone with whom she could discuss Dudley’s visit. If only her father, Henry VIII, were still alive, he would know the right course of action. But her father was gone, and if she could but admit it to herself, her concerns had been of little interest to him while he was alive. She began to indulge in a fantasy she had kept completely secret, even from Kat Ashley. She imagined her mother, Anne Boleyn, was alive and had been all those years. Her mother, her own blood! Her mother would pet her and stroke her hair and call her her dove, her sweeting. She would comfort her and assure her all would be well.

In truth, Queen Anne Boleyn had left little behind to comfort Elizabeth. The closest relative was Elizabeth’s first cousin Lady Catherine Knollys. Lady Catherine was Anne Boleyn’s niece, her sister Mary’s daughter. To complicate matters, it was rumored that Lady Catherine’s father was actually Henry VIII. When Lady Catherine grew to adulthood, she married Sir Francis Knollys, a minister in King Henry’s court and a fanatical Protestant. Queen Mary’s recent marriage to the Spanish King Phillip had heightened the atmosphere of anti-Protestantism at court. Elizabeth wished for her own sake that Lady Catherine and her family would remain in England, but she knew it would be much wiser for them to establish a base on the Continent. She must contact William Cecil; he would know the best way for them all to proceed.



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1. Chapter IV

2. Lord Thomas parted the bed curtains and leaned in with one bare knee on her bed. He was still clad only in his night dress. Princess Elizabeth sat up and reached for him, not caring that the bedclothes slipped to her waist revealing her breasts. Something was strange, though; rather than smiling his insolent grin and climbing in to join her, Thomas held back. It was she who kissed him, softly. His responding kiss was also soft, his lips slightly dry. She was terribly excited and frightened. She knew this was wrong and that Queen Katherine Paar, her late father’s widow, might discover them, but her longing for Thomas brought her lips to his again. Suddenly, a separate reality presented itself: a dim glimpse of another pair of bed curtains. This fused with a fainter image of Lord Thomas, and immediately Princess Elizabeth was jolted awake. Her heart was beating in terror. For an instant, it was the terror of a thirteen-year-old in bed with the young husband of her step-mother and guardian, Queen Katherine. In the next moment she remembered where she was and that Thomas Seymour would never be a threat to anyone, ever again. Princess Elizabeth was now nineteen and had been exiled by her half-sister, the new Catholic Queen Mary, to this palace-cum-prison of Woodstock Manor. The last Elizabeth had seen of Lord Thomas five years before was his head, bloody and pecked at by birds, on a pike outside the Tower of London. Queen Katherine Paar had also gone to her heavenly reward.

3. “Good morning, Your Highness. Lovely cold morning.” The princess’s serving woman Kat Ashley entered the bedchamber. As she was being dressed, Elizabeth pondered the meaning of her dream. To dream of the dead was always an ill omen, but the Thomas Seymour in her dream had been very much alive--and yet so different. What could it mean that this intimate of her youth, who had been a man of such wit and so little discretion, had appeared as a tender and even diffident lover? She mentally shrugged. Perhaps the dream was merely a foretelling of the visitor she was to receive today. For Sir Robert Dudley, dissimilar as he was to the gay Lord Thomas, was a handsome man in his own right.

4. Princess Elizabeth’s transformation from child to woman had been realized in those six years since she and her stepfather had played their dangerous games. The roundness of her cheeks had sharpened; her mouth increasingly took on the critical attitude of her mind; the wariness in her eyes was now more one of calculation. All in all, this lean young woman with her pale red hair and finely freckled complexion looked ready for the fight. She had no other choice; her survival depended on it. She also had few allies since her father had had her mother, Anne Boleyn, beheaded.

5. “Kat, at what o’clock do we expect Sir Robert Dudley?”

6. “Not til the afternoon, my lady. Are you anxious already” Mistress Ashley fussed with the princess’s collar with a smirk.

7. Princess Elizabeth angrily slapped the woman’s hand away. “Your humor is better suited to a bawdy house. You would do well to remember whom you serve.”

8. “Aye, my lady,” Kat Ashley said calmly. Having served the princess for more than ten years, she was used to her mistress’s sharp ways.

9. “And yet, Sir Robert is a comely gentleman, I will allow that.”

10. “Aye, my lady,” Mistress Ashley replied placidly.

11. Almost to herself she murmured, “I wonder at the purpose of his visit.”

12. That afternoon when Sir Robert Dudley rode up to Woodstock Manor, he himself wondered at his mission. He had just served in Queen Mary’s army fighting the French in Calais and had earned many gold sovereigns, which he carried with him now in a leather pouch concealed in his traveling cloak. This was money he and his wife could certainly use, for times were so uncertain that no amount of savings could go amiss. Yet here he was, ready to pledge his gold and who knew what more to a woman he had hardly considered before the death of her brother, King Edward VI.

13. Twenty years earlier King Henry VIII had broken with Catholicism and Rome and created the Church of England. One motive for his actions was to divorce his first wife, the Spanish Catholic princess Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry his Protestant mistress Anne Boleyn. When Anne produced only a daughter--Princess Elizabeth--King Henry had his wife beheaded. Their daughter was three years old at the time. King Henry then married Jane Seymour, by whom he had his longed-for male heir, Prince Edward. King Henry died, and Prince Edward became King Edward when he was eleven years old. He and his regents were staunch Protestants and continued what his father had started. King Edward lived only five more years, however, and the crown then fell to King Henry’s oldest child, the Catholic princess, Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon.

14. At that point Princess Elizabeth gained new importance in the royal hierarchy. She was an unmarried Protestant claimant to what was again, thanks to Queen Mary, a Catholic throne. This made her a lightening rod for disaffected Protestants. Such fact did not escape Sir Robert Dudley, one of the most powerful Protestants in England. The other fact that Dudley was already married hardly registered with him. He could not remember the heat that had made him so eager to marry Amy Robsart when they were both only seventeen. That Princess Elizabeth--the possible future queen--was not spoken-for spelled opportunity for Dudley. It was all this that brought him to Woodstock that winter afternoon in 1554.

15. Dudley was bidden into the great room, where he found the princess ready to greet him. Woodstock had been little used as a royal residence. Its remote location made it a convenient place for Queen Mary to hide Elizabeth, though. Dudley was appalled to see the conditions in which the princess was kept. The unadorned plaster walls and ceiling badly needed recoating. The furniture was sparse and plain. Princess Elizabeth herself was poorly dressed. Her dark gown was dusty, the embroidery on its bodice worn. She did not look well. Her cheekbones with their red, hectic spots stood out in sharp relief. Dudley had heard rumors the princess was often ill, and he now saw this must be true.

16. Dudley bowed low before her and murmured, “Your Highness.”

17. “Arise, Sir Robert,” the princess commanded. She observed him acutely. He was taller, and broader in the shoulder than she remembered. “May I offer you some refreshment?” She clapped her hands and bid her visitor sit.

18. The pair sat in silence, each waiting for the other to begin. Finally, Elizabeth broke into the awkwardness. “I remember as a child being very jealous of your exploits, Sir Robert. Are you aware you and I shared the same tutor, Roger Ascham? He described you as being a very unruly boy. I thought you lucky to be able to misbehave so.”

19. “And I in turn was made aware of Your Highness’s proficiency in subjects such as Greek and Latin that made my youth such a torment.”

20. This remark pleased the princess. Her scholastic accomplishments had often been overshadowed by those of her half-brother, Prince Edward. Yet she wished Sir Robert had been told of her beauty as well as her learning. As if reading her mind, Dudley added, “I hope you will not think ill of him if I tell you that Master Ascham’s chief reports were of your lovely countenance.”

21. Elizabeth smiled and leaned closer toward her guest. “Tell me, Sir Robert, what prompts you to visit me in this dreary out-of-the-way place? You must know that to visit the Princess Elizabeth is not a venture guaranteed to find favor at court.”

22. “Your Highness, I must be truthful and say that favor from the present court is not something I prize overmuch.”

23. “Yet you were not too proud to serve Her Majesty in Calais.”

24. “Ah, you touch on the purpose that has brought me here.” He retrieved his cloak and extracted from it the leather pouch. He approached the princess and went down on one knee.

25. “What is this, Sir Robert, an offer of marriage? I have it on good authority you have a wife living.”

26. “It is an offer, Your Highness,” Dudley replied, ignoring the princess’s sally. “It is an offer of loyalty. I would pledge my life, but I fear this sum of gold from my service at Calais has greater value.” His tone had returned to one of banter.

27. Elizabeth accepted the pouch and held it in her hand, feeling its weight. She regarded Dudley with an odd expression. “Do not be so quick to downplay your life or the value of your loyalty,” she said with suppressed emotion. “And do not think I am unmindful of the risks you take in coming to see me. I accept that and your gift with much thanks.” Dudley quietly took the princess’s hand and kissed it.

28. They spent the rest of the afternoon in pleasant reminiscences and awkward silence in equal measure. Elizabeth did not think she imagined the covert glances she received from her guest. Nor could she resist a more bold appraisal of him. When Sir Robert begged his leave, Elizabeth asked him, “And your lady wife, how does she?”

29. “In truth, Your Highness, I know but little. I am away from home so much, I sometimes wonder if I would recognize her should we meet by chance. To marry at seventeen was, perhaps, not the wisest course.”

30. “Indeed,” was all the princess said.

31. After Dudley had taken his leave, Elizabeth felt more alone than usual, as well as more confused. Her physical response to Dudley was much stronger than she had expected, which caused her to look for reasons to distrust him. Dudley’s loyalty was complicated, coming as he did from the family who had championed Queen Jane over either Princess Mary or Princess Elizabeth. All the other important members of that family had been executed, but Robert was spared. Elizabeth considered this, but the image of Dudley’s muscular frame kept interrupting her assessment of his motives.

32. Pragmatism prevailed, however, as she reflected that Sir Robert’s gold would be added to the reserves she was amassing against future need. There were any number of calls that might be made on those funds: bribery, an army, the means to flee. Queen Mary’s reign meant constant danger to Princess Elizabeth. To say the queen loathed her would not be an overstatement. All the time they were growing up, Mary had known that Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn, was the cause of her own mother, Catherine of Aragon’s misery. And Queen Mary could never forget the disgrace she had suffered at being forced to act as nursemaid to the infant Elizabeth while Queen Anne was still riding high.

33. Elizabeth longed to have someone with whom she could discuss Dudley’s visit. If only her father, Henry VIII, were still alive, he would know the right course of action. But her father was gone, and if she could but admit it to herself, her concerns had been of little interest to him while he was alive. She began to indulge in a fantasy she had kept completely secret, even from Kat Ashley. She imagined her mother, Anne Boleyn, was alive and had been all those years. Her mother, her own blood! Her mother would pet her and stroke her hair and call her her dove, her sweeting. She would comfort her and assure her all would be well.

34. In truth, Queen Anne Boleyn had left little behind to comfort Elizabeth. The closest relative was Elizabeth’s first cousin Lady Catherine Knollys. Lady Catherine was Anne Boleyn’s niece, her sister Mary’s daughter. To complicate matters, it was rumored that Lady Catherine’s father was actually Henry VIII. When Lady Catherine grew to adulthood, she married Sir Francis Knollys, a minister in King Henry’s court and a fanatical Protestant. Queen Mary’s recent marriage to the Spanish King Phillip had heightened the atmosphere of anti-Protestantism at court. Elizabeth wished for her own sake that Lady Catherine and her family would remain in England, but she knew it would be much wiser for them to establish a base on the Continent. She must contact William Cecil; he would know the best way for them all to proceed.

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