Elizabeth Tudor was born into one of history's most notorious dysfunctional families and survived searing childhood experiences that, in modern times, would be considered emotionally crippling. The irony of her reign in English history is that the very terrors she survived forged the qualities that made her a great ruler. In the first twenty years of her life, born into the whirlwind of the English Reformation, her father's execution of her mother, and his multiple remarriages, Elizabeth's survival seems stranger than any fiction. The traumas of her young life made her cautious, utterly self-contained, dissembling, suspicious, and emotionally distant. These may have been sad qualities for the woman, but turned out to be marvelously effective ones for a Renaissance prince.

Seldom in history was there a more disappointing birth. Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, had, in middle age, bodily wrenched his kingdom away from the Catholic Church so that he could marry an intellectual, difficult second wife while his first wife yet lived. He said that he did so only because his first wife, in spite of numerous pregnancies in a 20-year marriage, could not bear him a living male heir. To die without a son able to defend his throne meant a potential return to the chaos of the Wars of the Roses, in which English nobles supported first one royal claimant, then another, in decades of lawless civil unrest. The marriage with Katherine of Aragon - who had briefly married his older brother - was cursed by God himself. For this reason all his children had died at birth; so Henry said and, perhaps, believed.

The Queen, Katherine of Aragon, was the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. As a teenager in November, 1501, she was first married to Henry's elder brother Arthur, Prince of Wales. Then Arthur died, possibly of consumption. Henry VIII, aged ten, was now the Prince of Wales. However the king, Henry VII, still had use for Katherine's dowry and the alliance with Spain. Katherine stayed on at the English court until, in 1509 the Pope granted a dispensation for the 18-year-old Henry to marry his brother's widow. The grounds for divorce were that her first marriage with Arthur had never been consummated. Henry succeeded to the throne in April, 1509, and in June married Katherine. The question of whether Katherine had, indeed, slept with her young prince lay dormant for 20 years in which she underwent six pregnancies which produced only one surviving daughter, Mary, born in 1516. A daughter was useless in terms of the succession, although helpful as a tool in forging foreign political alliances through marriage.

The question of Katherine's virginity awoke in 1526 when Henry became infatuated with Anne Bullen (or Boleyn). one of Queen Katherine's ladies-in-waiting. Anne was roughly 25; Henry ten or more years older. The king had actually had an affair with Anne's older sister Mary and discarded her. Anne apparently understood the basic principle that, if something was withheld from the King, his desire for it grew. She would not become his mistress.

Henry managed to persuade himself that he could have it all; the Pope would annul his first marriage and his second wife would give him healthy sons. In a Catholic age, the annulment was difficult but by no means impossible. Popes had granted royal divorces many times in the past for less significant reasons than marrying a brother's widow.

Unfortunately for Henry, Pope Clement refused to grant him a divorce; he was enmeshed as he was in political battles with Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, who happened to be Queen Katherine's nephew. Charles was outraged at Henry's insult to his aunt and the Pope dared not offend him by ruling for Henry. The question was battled out between Rome and London for six years from 1527 to 1532. Queen Katherine refused to recant her sworn testimony that she was a virgin when she married Henry; to agree would tell the world she had not only been living in sin for 25 years, but that her daughter, Mary, was a bastard.

It is likely that the idea for breaking the deadlock by snapping England's religious links with the Pope and Catholic Rome came from Henry himself. Once considered one of the best minds on any throne, Henry could argue all the theological possibilities. He may also have been influenced by Thomas Cromwell, an ambitious public servant now serving the king's Council, who had notably reforming sympathies. The King considered obtaining his divorce by simply dissolving England's obligations to the papacy and declaring himself supreme head of an English Church, which could then grant his divorce and approve his remarriage. It is hard, now, to understand how unique and terrifying this simple solution was, how it shattered a thousand years of English social and religious history, or how many men and women would die in the years ahead because of this Sophoclean choice.

THE GREAT WHORE

In 1532, in the face of the endless impasse with Rome, Anne finally yielded to the king and became pregnant. The question of obtaining a divorce - so that the anticipated male child could be born legitimately - acquired singular urgency. As Elizabeth was born in September, it is likely Anne was pregnant by December, 1532. In the same year, the Archbishop ruled that the King's marriage to Katherine had never been valid and the King's ministers were forcing laws through Parliament which began to dismantle the authority of the Catholic Church in England.

As soon as Pope Clement learned of Henry's remarriage, he declared it null and void and any children born of it, illegitimate. He threatened to excommunicate Henry. When Anne was crowned as Queen, the hostile populace of London gave her the unpopular title of the King's whore. Henry was quite willing to defy world opinion while he awaited the birth of his son. In spite of the horrified condemnation of Europe and the stunned anathemas of the Pope, all would be justified, all would be well, when his healthy son was born and the royal succession assured.

17-th Century Print of Greenwich Palace

THE ROYAL BASTARD

In the mid-afternoon of September 7, 1533, at Greenwich Palace, Anne Boleyn gave birth to - a girl. In Dame Edith Sitwell's phrase, it was like the birth of fate. The great gamble had failed. For Anne and Henry, the disappointment was too bitter; the marriage, already subjected to years of indescribable strain, began to disintegrate. Although Anne became pregnant twice more, in 1534 and 1535, both pregnancies resulted in miscarriages, the last in January, 1536, with a stillborn son. Henry now hated the woman for whom he had destroyed his reputation and damned his soul. Now infatuated with Jane Seymour, one of Anne's ladies-in-waiting, in 1534, he was created Supreme Head of the Church in England. He was also on the road to his next four wives and to those actions which would turn him into a ludicrous caricature of the promising young ruler he had once been in the eyes of Europe. The break with Catholicism and creation of the Anglican Church would forever change British - and European - history.

One of the first memories the Queen may have had of her father, whom she unreservedly adored throughout her life, was on January 27, 1536. The day Katherine of Aragon died at last, the King and Anne Boleyn (pregnant, it was thought, with a male heir) dressed in yellow satin, and ambassadors noted that the king took the infant Elizabeth in his arms and showed her to all with exuberant affection. Within a month, Anne miscarried. Shrewish and hated, Anne would be executed in May, 1536, conveniently accused of multiple adulteries with many men including her own brother. As soon as Anne was dead, Henry married Jane Seymour. Elizabeth was not yet three years old but had already been declared a bastard by the Pope. By the Act of Succession (July, 1536), having ruled that he had never been married to her mother, the King also declared Elizabeth a bastard. The way had to be made smooth for the birth of his son.

Raised at the precarious edges of royal favor amidst her father's multiple marriages, in all her life Elizabeth was only ever heard to refer to her mother on a handful of occasions. No one knows when the news of Anne's death was broken to her daughter. During Anne's lifetime, however, Elizabeth hardly ever saw her mother. True to Tudor policy, the Princess had been established at three months old in a separate household in the London countryside, far from unhealthy London. It was her nurse, the noble Lady Margaret Bryan (who had helped Henry raise Princess Mary), who saw the child every day, organized her upbringing, and worried about her teething and diet. Anne Boleyn only saw her daughter when she and the King visited, or when the child was brought to Court, as she often was at Christmas. Instead, she often ordered rich clothes for her daughter. Elizabeth herself always stated that the most traumatic event of her life occurred much later in her life than the death of a mother she hardly knew, although no one can judge the impact when Elizabeth finally learned how Anne Boleyn died. The word "whore" could have meant nothing to a child.

MY LADY ELIZABETH

Immediately after her mother's execution there were wrenching dislocations in the household. Elizabeth and her older sister, Mary, were now living with Lady Bryan at Hunsdon. She is said to have asked angrily, in the weeks after her mother's arrest and death, why one day she was called "Princess Elizabeth" and the next merely "my Lady Elizabeth." In the ensuing chaos, funds for the child apparently dried up and she was shuffled away from Court. Jane Seymour, Henry's new wife, helped arrange a reconciliation between Henry and Princess Mary, who returned to Court. Elizabeth did not. However, Lady Bryan was a sensible and well-bred woman who managed to shield the infant princess from the worst currents of her changed circumstances. A pathetic letter survives in which Lady Bryan wrote Secretary Cromwell stating that the child was outgrowing her infant clothes and there was no household money to properly clothe her, no direction on how the year's earthshaking events should affect her upbringing or social status.

Although Elizabeth did not see her father in the immediate months after the execution, she was taken to Court in October, 1536, where French observers noted that king appeared to treat her affectionately. Later, when she infrequently visited his court, and under the softening influences of Jane Seymour and later stepmothers, she was treated with appropriate dignity and apparent affection. She continued to spend most of her time away from Court with her household, as did the Lady Mary and their infant half-brother.

The remaining Tudor wing of Hatfield House, one of many homes
of Elizabeth's youth.

When Jane Seymour finally bore Henry the longed-for male heir, Edward, on October 12, 1537, Elizabeth was only four but attended the prince's christening on October 15, holding the hand of Princess Mary. Jane Seymour died nine days later from puerperal (childbed) fever. Within eighteen months, while Elizabeth remained in various country estates, Henry was again persuaded that he must remarry for political reasons, and selected Anne of Cleves, daughter of one of the Protestant German kingdoms, in a sea of hostile Catholicism. Henry's minister, Thomas Cromwell, had promoted and arranged the match. When Henry took an instant dislike to the plain, poorly-educated princess, Cromwell paid for his error with his head. The king was so repelled by Anne's lack of personal charms that the marriage was never consummated and was shortly thereafter annulled. Anne, who was essentially bought off with English estates, settled quite happily in England and Elizabeth came to know her in later years.

Soon after Edward's birth, Elizabeth lost her nurse, Lady Bryan, who was transferred to the young Prince's household. In her place, one of the most important people in Elizabeth's life joined hers. Katherine Champernowne came from Devonshire gentry and remained in Elizabeth's service until her death in the 1560s, sharing all of her youthful traumas. Unusually well educated for the time, Kat (who married John Ashley in 1545 and is generally known as Kat Ashley) became Elizabeth's first governess. She taught mathematics, history, astronomy, and geography as well as feminine pursuits such as needlework, embroidery, dancing, riding, and deportment. By the age of six, Elizabeth was able to sew a beautiful cambric shirt as a gift for Edward. Ashley was utterly devoted to the young Princess although, as time would tell, her love could exceed her political judgment and good sense.

The royal children were peripatetic. Standard Tudor practice for fragile royal heirs in an age of high infant mortality was to provide an country establishment outside of congested cities. The mini-courts moved continually. When a Tudor house became too filthy (an easy event in homes with no indoor plumbing), the household simply moved on to the next palace while the old one was thoroughly cleaned. Elizabeth spent most of her childhood moving about southern England, coming only rarely to Court. Her favorite childhood residences included Hatfield House (just north of London), Ashridge House near Berkhamsted, and Enfield Palace and Elsynge Place in Enfield. She also lived at Hampton Court, Westminster, Whitehall Palace, Richmond Palace, St. James, Oaklands, Windsor, and other locations. Sometimes all three royal children spent Christmas or other visits together at Court.

On July 28, 1540, the king married wife number five, the teenage Catherine Howard, kinswoman to Elizabeth through Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth attended the wedding celebrations. Catherine, young and empty-headed, was apparently kind to the seven-year-old old princess, seating her at the Queen's own table and treating her with signal affection. Statements made long afterwards suggest the child was deeply affected when Catherine was accused of adultery and executed eighteen months later, in February, 1542. Robert Dudley, who knew Elizabeth since he was one of Prince Edward's schoolfellows, told the Spanish ambassador decades later that Elizabeth first told him when she was eight years old that she would never marry. She was eight when Catherine Howard died.

NEXT: DANGEROUS YOUTH

SOURCES:

_Portrait of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn courtesy of Tudor and Elizabethan Portraits. Painting of Greenwich Palace from Elizabeth i: The Word of a Prince.