(_a_) _The time at which the change was or could have been effected._
For several valid reasons I have come to the conclusion that the
crucial period by which the Bisley story must be tested is the year
ending with July 1544. No other time either earlier or later would, so
far as we know, have fulfilled the necessary conditions.
First of all the question of sex has to be considered; and it is herein
that, lacking suitable and full opportunity, discovery of such an
imposture must have been at once detected--certainly had it commenced
at an early age. In babyhood the whole of the discipline of child-life
begins. The ordinary cleanliness of life has to be taught, and to this
end there is no portion of the infantile body which is not subject to
at least occasional inspection. This disciplinary inspection lasts
by force of habit until another stage on the journey towards puberty
has been reached. Commercial use in America fixes stages of incipient
womanhood--by dry goods’ advertisement--as “children’s, misses’ and
girls’ clothing,” and the illustration will sufficiently serve. It
seems at first glance an almost unnecessary intrusion into purely
domestic life; but the present is just one of those cases where the
experience of women is not only useful but necessary. In a question
of identity of sex the nursemaid and the washerwoman play useful
parts in the witness box. Regarding Elizabeth’s childhood no question
need ever or can ever arise. For at least the first ten years of her
life, a woman’s sex _need_ not be known outside the nursery and the
sick room; but then this is the very time when her attendants have
direct and ample knowledge. Moreover in the case of the child of Queen
Anne (Boleyn) there was every reason why the sex should have been
unreservedly known. Henry VIII divorced Katherine of Aragon and married
Anne in the hope of having legitimate male issue to sit on the throne
of England. Later, when both Katherine and Anne had failed to satisfy
him as to male issue, he divorced Anne and married Jane Seymour for
the same purpose. In the interval either his views had enlarged or
his patience had extended; for, when Jane’s life hung in the balance,
owing to an operation which the surgeons considered necessary, and the
husband was consulted as to which life they should, in case of needful
choice, try to save, his reply was peculiar--though, taken in the light
of historical perspective, not at variance with his dominating idea.
Gregorio Leti thus describes the incident (the quotation is made from
the translation of the Italian into French and published in Amsterdam
in 1694):--
“Quand les médécins demandèrent au Roi qui l’on sauverait de
la mère ou de l’enfant, il répondit, qu’il auroit extremement
souhait de pouvoir sauver la mère et l’enfant, mais que cel
n’étant possible, il vouloit que l’on sauvat l’enfant plutôt que
la mère parce qu’il trouveroit assez d’autres femmes.”
It had become a monomania with Henry that he should be father of a
lawful son; and when the child of his second union was expected, he
so took the consummation of his wishes for granted that those in
attendance on his wife were actually afraid to tell him the truth. It
would have been fortune and social honour to whosoever should bear
him the glad tidings. We may be sure then that news so welcome would
never have been perverted by those who had so much to gain. As it was,
the “lady-mistress”--as she called herself--of the little Princess,
Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Bryan, wrote in her letter to Lord Cromwell in
1536--Elizabeth being then in her third year:--
“She is as toward a child and as gentle of conditions, as ever I
knew any in my life.”
The writer could have had no ignorance as to the sex of the child, for
in the same letter she gives Cromwell a list of her wants in the way
of clothing; which list is of the most intimate kind, including gown,
kirtle, petticoat, “no manner of linen nor smocks,” kerchiefs, rails,
body stitchets, handkerchiefs, sleeves, mufflers, biggens. As in the
same letter it is mentioned that the women attending the child were
under the rule of Lady Bryan--an accomplished nurse who had brought up
Princess Mary and had been “governess to the children his Grace have
had ever since”--it can be easily understood she was well acquainted
with even the smallest detail of the royal nursery. Had the trouble of
the lady-mistress been with regard to superabundance of underclothing,
one might have understood ignorance on the part of the responsible
controller; but in the plentiful lack of almost every garment necessary
for the child’s wear by day or by night there could be no question as
to her ostensible sex at this age.
Thence on, there were experienced and devoted persons round the little
Princess, whose value in her father’s eyes was largely enhanced since
he had secured, for the time, her legitimacy by an Act of Parliament.
After Elizabeth had been legitimised, she became one of the pieces in
the gigantic game of chess on which Henry had embarked. Despite the
fact that the son for whom he had craved was now a boy of six, it was
only wise to consider and be prepared for whatever might happen in case
Prince Edward should not live, and if, in such a case, Mary should die
without issue. The case was one of amazing complexity, and as the time
wore on the religious question became structurally involved. England
had declared in no uncertain voice in favour of Protestantism, and the
whole forces of Rome were arrayed against her. Mary was altogether in
favour of the religion of her injured mother, and behind her stood the
power of Catholicism which, even in that unscrupulous age, was well
ahead in the race of unscrupulousness. And as Elizabeth stood next
to the young Prince Edward in the forces of Reformation, on her was
focussed much of the suspicion of polemic intrigue. The papacy was all
powerful in matters of secret inquiry. Indeed in such an inquest its
powers were unique, for unscrupulous spies were everywhere--even, it
was alleged, in the confessional. How then could such a secret as the
sex of a little girl of not a dozen years of age, who was constantly
surrounded by women necessarily conversant with every detail of her
life, be kept from all who wished to solve it. In such a state of
affairs suspicion was equivalent to discovery. And discovery meant ruin
to all concerned, death to abettors of the fraud, woe and destruction
to England and a general upheaval of the fundamental ideas of
Christendom. It may, I presume, be taken for granted without flaw or
mitigation of any kind that up to July, 1543, the “Princess Elizabeth”
was what she appeared to be--a girl.
At the time of her first letter to the new Queen, Catherine (Parr), she
was just a trifle under ten years of age and a well-grown child, quick,
clever, rather precocious, and well grounded in the learning of her
time. The exact date of this letter is not given by Leti--of which more
anon--but it must have been somewhere between July 12 and 31, 1543.
Henry VIII married Catherine Parr on 12 July, and in her letter of 1543
Elizabeth calls Catherine “your Majesty.” In her letter of 31 July,
1544 she writes to the same correspondent:
“... has deprived me for a whole year of your most illustrious
presence.”
The whereabouts of Elizabeth during this last year appears to be the
centre of the mystery; and if any letter or proof is ever found of
Elizabeth’s being anywhere but in her own house of Overcourt in Bisley
Parish, it will go far to settle the vexed question now brought before
the world for the first time.
(_b_) _The opportunity_
The year 1542 was a busy time for Henry VIII. He had on hand, either
pending or going on, two momentous wars, one with Scotland the other
with France. The causes of either of these were too complicated for
mention here; suffice it to say that they were chiefly dynastic and
polemic. In addition he was busy with matrimonial matters, chiefly
killing off his fifth wife Catherine Howard, and casting eyes on the
newmade widow of Lord Latimer. In 1543 he married the lady, as his
sixth wife. She herself can hardly be said to have lacked matrimonial
experience, as this was her third union. Her first venture was with
the elderly Lord Borough, who, like Lord Latimer, left her wealthy.
Henry had by now got what might be called in the slang of the time “the
marriage habit,” and honeymoon dalliance had hardly the same charm
for him as it usually is supposed to have with those blessed with a
lesser succession of spouses. The consequence was that he was able to
give more attention to the necessary clearing up of the Scottish war,
which finished at Solway Moss on December 14th, with the consequent
death from chagrin of the Scottish King James V. The cause of the war,
however, continued in the shape of a war with France which went on till
1546 when peace was declared to the pecuniary benefit of the English
King. For the last two years of this time Henry carried on the war
singlehanded, as the Emperor Charles V, who had begun it as his ally,
withdrew.
There is a paragraph in Grafton’s _Chronicle_ published in 1569 which
throws a flood of light on Elizabeth’s absence at this time, 1543:
“This yeare was in London a great death of the pestilence, and
therefore Mighelmas terme was adjourned to Saint Albones, and there it
was kept to the ende.”
In his _Girlhood of Queen Elizabeth_, Mr. Mumby says: “For some obscure
reason Elizabeth seems to have fallen out of her father’s favour again
very soon after Catherine Parr had obtained his consent to her return
to Court” (1543). No such cause for the removal of the Princess from
London was necessary. It was probably to the presence of the pestilence
in London that her removal to a remote and healthy place was due.
Failing Prince Edward, then only five years of age and a weakly child,
the crown must--unless some constitutional revolution be effected in
the meantime or some future son be born to him--devolve on his female
heirs, a matter pregnant with strife of unknown dimensions. Mary was
now twenty-seven years old and of a type that did not promise much for
maternity. At the same time, Mary, though his eldest living daughter,
was the hope of the Catholic party, to which he was in violent
opposition; whereas in Elizabeth lay the hope of the whole of the party
of the Reformation. Her life was to her father far beyond the calls of
parental affection or dynastic ambition, and she had to be saved at all
costs from risk of health. Henry’s own experience of child-life was a
bitter one. Of his five children by Catherine of Aragon only one, Mary,
survived childhood. Elizabeth was the only survivor of Anne Boleyn;
Edward, of Jane Seymour. Anne of Cleves had no children, and if report
spoke truly no chance of having any. Catherine Howard was executed
childless. And he had only just married Catherine Parr, who had already
had two husbands.
On July 12, 1543, Henry married Catherine and in due course devoted
himself to the war. On the 14 July, 1544, he crossed from Dover to
Calais to look after the conduct of affairs for himself, and on the
26th began the siege of Boulogne. This lasted for two months when
having reduced the city he returned home. On the 8 September he wrote
to his wife to that effect. During his absence Queen Catherine was
vicegerent and had manifestly as much public work on hand as she
could cope with. Bisley was a long way from London, and there were no
organised posts in the sixteenth century. Moreover, ever since his
last marriage, Henry had been an invalid. He was now fifty-two years
of age, of unhealthy body, and so heavy that he had to be lifted
by machinery. Catherine was a devoted wife; and as Henry was both
violent and irritable she had little time at command to give to the
affairs of other people. There was small opportunity for any one then
who was sufficiently in the focus of affairs to be cognisant of such
an imposture as the tradition points out. Doubtless hereafter, when
a story so fascinating and at first glance so incredible begins to
be examined and its details thoroughly threshed out, more items of
evidence or surmise than are at present available will be found for
the settlement of the question, one way or the other. In the meantime,
be it remembered, that we are only examining offhand a tradition made
known for the first time after three centuries. Our present business is
to consider _possibilities_. Later on the time may come--as it surely
will; if the story can in the least be accepted--for the consideration
of _probabilities_. Both of these tentative examinations will lead to
the final examination of possibility, of probability, and of proof
_pro_ or _contra_.
At this stage we must admit that neither time nor opportunity present
any difficulty in itself insuperable.