_The Tradition_ is that the little Princess Elizabeth, during her
childhood, was sent away with her governess for change of air to Bisley
where the strong sweet air of the Cotswold Hills would brace her up.
The healthy qualities of the place were known to her father and many
others of those around her. Whilst she was at Overcourt, word was sent
to her governess that the King was coming to see his little daughter;
but shortly before the time fixed, and whilst his arrival was expected
at any hour, a frightful catastrophe happened. The child, who had been
ailing in a new way, developed acute fever, and before steps could be
taken even to arrange for her proper attendance and nursing, she died.
The governess feared to tell her father--Henry VIII had the sort of
temper which did not make for the happiness of those around him. In her
despair she, having hidden the body, rushed off to the village to try
to find some other child whose body could be substituted for that of
the dead princess so that the evil moment of disclosure of the sad fact
might be delayed till after His Majesty’s departure. But the population
was small and no girl child of any kind was available. The distracted
woman then tried to find a living girl child who could be passed off
for the princess, whose body could be hidden away for the time.
Throughout the little village and its surroundings was to be found no
girl child of an age reasonably suitable for the purpose required. More
than ever distracted, for time was flying by, she determined to take
the greater risk of a boy substitute--if a boy could be found. Happily
for the poor woman’s safety, for her very life now hung in the balance,
this venture was easy enough to begin. There _was_ a boy available,
and just such a boy as would suit the special purpose for which he was
required--a boy well known to the governess, for the little Princess
had taken a fancy to him and had lately been accustomed to play with
him. Moreover, he was a pretty boy as might have been expected from
the circumstance of the little Lady Elizabeth having chosen him as her
playmate. He was close at hand and available. So he was clothed in the
dress of the dead child, they being of about equal stature; and when
the King’s fore-rider appeared the poor overwrought governess was able
to breathe freely.
The visit passed off successfully. Henry suspected nothing; as the
whole thing had happened so swiftly, there had been no antecedent
anxiety. Elizabeth had been brought up in such dread of her father that
he had not, at the rare intervals of his seeing her, been accustomed to
any affectionate effusiveness on her part; and in his hurried visit he
had no time for baseless conjecture.
Then came the natural nemesis of such a deception. As the dead could
not be brought back to life, and as the imperious monarch, who bore
no thwarting of his wishes, was under the impression that he could
count on his younger daughter as a pawn in the great game of political
chess which he had entered on so deeply, those who by now must have
been in the secret did not and could not dare to make disclosure.
Moreover the difficulties and dangers to one and all involved would
of necessity grow with each day that passed. Willy nilly they must go
on. Fortunately for the safety of their heads circumstances favoured
them. The secret was, up to now, hidden in a remote village high up
on the side of the Cotswold hills. Steep declivities guarded it from
casual intrusion, and there was no trade beyond that occasional traffic
necessary for a small agricultural community. The whole country as far
as the eye could see was either royal domain or individual property
owned or held by persons attached to the dynasty by blood or interest.
Facilities of intercommunication were few and slow; and above all
uncertain and therefore not to be relied on.
This then was the beginning of the tradition which has existed locally
ever since. In such districts change is slow, and what has been may
well be taken, unless there be something to the contrary, for what
is. The isolation of the hamlet in the Cotswolds where the little
princess lived for a time--and is supposed to have died--is almost best
exemplified by the fact that though the momentous secret has existed
for between three and four centuries, no whisper of it has reached the
great world without its confines. Not though the original subject of it
was the very centre of the wildest and longest battle which has ever
taken place since the world began--polemical, dynastic, educational,
international, commercial. Anyone living in any town in our own age,
where advance and expansiveness are matters of degree, not of fact, may
find it hard to believe that any such story, nebulous though it may be,
could exist unknown and unrecorded outside a place so tiny that its
most important details will not be found even on the ordnance map of an
inch to the mile. But a visit to Bisley will set aside any such doubts.
The place itself has hardly changed, in any measure to be apparent as
a change, in the three centuries and more. The same buildings stand as
of yore; the same estate wall, though more picturesque with lichen, and
with individual stones corrugated by weather and dislocated by arboreal
growths, speak of an epoch ending with the Tudor age. The doors of
the great tithe-barns which remain as souvenirs of extinct feudalism,
still yawn wide on their festered hinges. Nay, even the very trees show
amongst their ranks an extraordinary percentage of giants which have
withstood unimpaired all the changes that have been.
Leaving busy and thriving Stroud, one climbs the long hill past Lipiat
and emerges in the village, where time has suddenly ceased, and we
find ourselves in the age and the surroundings which saw the House of
York fade into the Tudor dynasty. Such a journey is almost a necessity
for a proper understanding of the story of the Bisley Boy, which has
by the effluxion of time attained to almost the grace and strength
of a legend. It is quite possible that though the place has stood
still, the tradition has not, for it is in the nature of intellectual
growth to advance. One must not look on the Gloucestershire people
as sleepy--sleepiness is no characteristic of that breezy upland;
but dreaming, whether its results be true or false, does not depend
on sleep. In cases like the present, sleep is not to be looked on as
a blood relation of death but rather as a preservative against the
ravages of time--like the mysterious slumber of King Arthur and others
who are destined for renewal.
It may be taken for granted that in course of time and under the
process of purely oral communication, the story told in whispers lost
nothing in the way of romance or credibility; that flaws or lacunæ
were made good by inquiry; and that recollections of overlooked or
forgotten facts were recalled or even supplemented by facile invention.
But it may also be taken for granted that no statement devoid of a
solid foundation could become permanently accepted. There were too
many critics around, with memories unimpaired by overwork, to allow
incorrect statements to pass unchallenged. There is always this in
tradition, that the collective mind which rules in small communities is
a child’s mind, which must ever hold grimly on to fact. And that behind
the child’s mind is the child’s nature which most delights in the
recountal of what it knows, and is jealous of any addition to the story
which is a part of its being.
Major Martin Hume writes in his _Courtships of Queen Elizabeth_:
“Elizabeth was only three when her mother’s fall removed her from
the line of the succession.... In 1542, however, the death of
James V of Scotland and the simultaneous birth of his daughter
Mary seemed to bring nearer Henry’s idea of a union between the
two crowns. He proposed to marry the baby Queen of Scots to his
infant son and at the same time he offered the hand of Elizabeth
(then nine) to a son of Arran--head of House of Hamilton, next
heir to the Scottish crown.... Mary and Elizabeth were restored
to their places in the line of succession.... In January 1547
Henry VIII died, leaving the succession to his two daughters
in tail after Edward VI and his heirs. Queen Catherine (Parr)
immediately married Sir Thomas Seymour, brother of Protector
Somerset and uncle of the little king (Edward VI). To them was
confided Princess Elizabeth then a girl of 14.”
Elizabeth was three in 1536. The story of the Bisley Boy dates probably
to 1543-4. So that if the story have any foundation at all in fact,
signs of a complete change of identity in the person of Princess
Elizabeth must be looked for in the period of some seven or eight years
which intervened.