Did Elizabeth I Really Hate Other Women?
There has long been an “urban rumor” that Elizabeth Tudor hated other women. She was a female monarch in a time that greatly preferred sovereign men. {Note the extent to which her father, Henry VIII, extended himself to get a male heir, as well as the contents of John Knox’s much-circulated pamphlet, “The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women,” which railed against sitting queens and regents of the era.} Elizabeth didn’t forestall imprisoning women for long periods, such as her Grey cousins and Mary Queen of Scots, when she felt they threatened her throne, which admittedly may have seemed unfeminine and harsh.
Because of her ruling position, Queen Elizabeth could never be an equal companion with anyone. William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, who dedicated his life to her service, once said the queen was “more than a man and, in truth, something less than a woman.” And yet, perhaps that was a man’s perspective or one man’s perspective of a woman with power. Elizabeth knew how to dress like a woman, flirt like a woman, fall in love like a woman, and there were certainly women who were in every sense her lifelong friends.
Katherine Carey, Lady Knollys
Take, for example, Katherine Carey Knollys, daughter of Mary Boleyn. Shortly after Elizabeth became queen, she installed this cousin as Chief Lady of the Bedchamber and kept her close at hand, perhaps to the detriment of the Knollys family, till the day Lady Knollys died.
Katherine “Kat” Ashley and Blanche Parry stayed with Elizabeth from her childhood until each woman died. Because Elizabeth was deprived of her mother as a young girl, Ashley and Parry became surrogate mothers. Ashley spoke bluntly to Elizabeth when no one else dared, and Parry continued in Elizabeth’s household in positions of honor and affection long past her abilities warranted them.
Anne Russell Dudley married Lord Ambrose Dudley, the brother of Elizabeth’s longtime love, Robert, and became the Countess of Warwick. But even before then, Anne served Elizabeth as a maid of honor. They became great friends, and Anne stayed by her mistress’ side until Elizabeth died in 1603. Catherine Carey, the Countess of Nottingham, was the eldest daughter of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, Mary Boleyn’s son and, therefore, a cousin to Elizabeth; she died shortly before Elizabeth did, and it was said that her death was the loss Elizabeth was unable to bear, eventually leading to the queen’s lack of will to live.
And then, in 1566, Elin von Snakenborg came from Sweden to England. The queen intervened, unusually, with another monarch to allow Elin to remain in England. Elizabeth, as famous for counting her pennies as her grandfather Henry VII, atypically awarded rooms, a servant, and a horse to Elin (later Helena) within months of her arrival. Throughout her service, Helena was known as someone who couldn’t be bribed. She became a great friend of the queen and the highest-ranking woman in England after Elizabeth, though that friendship was tested perhaps more than many of the queen’s confidantes.
Elin von Snakenborg
But what about all those women Elizabeth is supposed to have precluded from getting married, insisting that they remain virgins like herself? There is no doubt that from time to time, Elizabeth expressed, sometimes forcefully, her preference that her ladies do not marry. In her biography, Elizabeth I, Anne Somerset states, “The Queen’s opposition to her ladies marrying stemmed from more than mere jealousy that they should attain contentment of a sort that she would never know. Although she occasionally lamented her spinsterhood, simultaneously, she entertained an altogether contradictory conviction that matrimony was an undesirable condition for women, a view not altogether surprising when one recalls that her father had executed her mother and stepmother, and the marriage of her sister had been a fiasco. It may well have been her early experience that instilled in her that instinctive aversion to the married state.”
While the Queen enjoyed her power, she perhaps also keenly felt the loss of the social and emotional intimacy that all people, especially women, desire in a family. And yet she had no mother or father, no siblings, no husband, no children, and her (Tudor) cousins all had a claim to her throne. Historian and author Antonia Fraser said, “Her [Elizabeth’s] household resembled a large family, often on the move between residences, and as a family, it had its feuds when factions formed around strong personalities. Elizabeth opposed her maids of honors’ plans to marry, not out of malice, but because marriages broke up her own family circle.”
Thought to be Catherine Carey Howard, Countess of Nottingham
The queen did sometimes help them marry and marry well. But Somerset says, “She (Elizabeth) could point out in the course of her reign no less than 13 of her maids of honor contracted prestigious marriages within the peerage, and this might seem to justify her claim that it was only unsuitable matches of which she disapproved.” The trick, of course, is that one never knew if the queen would approve or not. The consequences of the latter could be severe and long-lasting.
Overall, it certainly cannot be proved that Elizabeth Tudor hated women; the handful of long-term, devoted friendships we know about prove otherwise. She gifted those women with rents, properties, perquisites, trust, affection, gowns and jewels, and emotional intimacy. Oxford University historian Susan Doran states in her book Queen Elizabeth I, “It should also not be forgotten how loyal and gracious she could be to her intimates and that the turnover of her household was very low. The majority of women served until death or severe illness intervened.”
{Main photo credit: Attributed to Isaac Oliver [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, By Attributed to Isaac Oliver, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3074044}
{Lady Knollys photo credit: Steven van der Meulen [Public domain or CC0], via Wikimedia Commons, By Steven van der Meulen - Yale Center for British Art B1974.3.22, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7803507}
{Elin von Snakenborg photo credit: Robert Peake the elder [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, By Robert Peake the elder - pinterest, claiming origin from flickr, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46367710}
{ Catherine Carey Howard photo credit: Attributed to Robert Peake the elder [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, By Attributed to Robert Peake the elder - Weiss Gallery, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16951003