As everyone knows, when the King died Northumberland put Jane on the throne, and, poor girl, she reigned for only nine days before Mary's Catholic supporters were triumphant.
My father did not join in the conflict. How could he? Mary's accession, whether legitimate or not, would be disastrous for him, but neither could he support Protestant Jane. She had no just claim in his eyes. There was one and one only whom he wanted to see on the throne. So he did what wise men do at such times. He removed himself from Court and did not take sides.
When it became clear that Jane's brief reign was over and she, with Guildford Dudley, his father and his brother Robert, were lodged in the Tower, we were summoned to the great hall and there our father told us that it was no longer safe for us to remain in England. These were not going to be good days for Protestants; the position of the Princess Elizabeth was very precarious indeed, and as it was known that we were her kinsfolk, he had come to the conclusion that the wisest steps to be taken were those which would lead us out of England.
Within a few days we were on our way to Germany.
We remained in Germany for five years, and as I grew from a child to a woman, I was aware of great restlessness and dissatisfaction with life. It is hard to be exiled from one's own country; we all felt it deeply, my parents most of all, but they seemed to take refuge in religion. If my father had previously leaned heavily towards Protestantism, he was, at the end of his sojourn in Germany, one of its strongest adherents. The news from England was one of the main reasons for his conviction. Queen Mary's marriage with King Philip of Spain had sent him into depths of despair.
"Now," he said, "we shall have the Inquisition in England."
Fortunately it did not get as far as that.
"There is one thing," he used to say to us, for naturally we saw more of him than we ever did in England when he was engaged on Court matters, "the people's dissatisfaction with the Queen will turn them to Elizabeth. But meanwhile the great fear is that Mary will have a child."
We prayed for her infertility, and I found it ironic to contemplate that she was praying equally fervently for the opposite.
"I wonder," I said flippantly to my sister Cecilia, "whose petition will be the more favorably received. They say Mary is very devout, but then so is our father. I wonder whose side God is on-Catholic or Protestant."
My sisters were shocked by my talk. So were my parents.
My father used to say: "Lettice, you will have to guard your tongue."
That was the last thing I wanted to do because my outspoken comments amused me and certainly had their effect on other people. They were a characteristic—like my smooth, delicately tinted complexion—which set me apart from other girls and made me more attractive.
My father never ceased to congratulate himself on his wisdom in escaping from the country while it was possible, though when she first came to the throne Mary showed signs of leniency. She freed Lady Jane's father, the Duke of Suffolk, and was reluctant even to sign the death warrant for Northumberland, who had been the puppet master pulling the strings he had attached to poor Jane and Guildford which had made them Queen and Queen's Consort for their brief nine days. If it had not been for the Wyatt Rebellion she might have spared Jane herself, for she was well aware that the young girl had clearly had no wish to take the crown.
When the news of Wyatt's ill-fated rebellion came to us in Germany, there was great gloom in the family because the Princess Elizabeth herself seemed to be involved.
"This will be the end," groaned my father. "So far she has had the good fortune to escape her ill wishers ... but how can she do so this time?"
He did not know her. She might be young but she was already skilled in the art of survival. Those frolics with Seymour which had ended in his journey to the scaffold had provided a lesson well learned. When they charged her with treason she had shown herself to be astute, and it was impossible for her judges to confute her. She parried their accusations with diplomatic dexterity so that none was able to prove the case against her.
Wyatt died by the ax, but Elizabeth escaped. She was imprisoned in the Tower of London for a while at the same time as Robert Dudley. What a bond that made between them I was to discover. We heard later that after many months she had been released from the menace of the Tower, whence she was taken to Richmond, and there confronted by her half sister the Queen and told of the latter's plan to marry her off to Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy.
"They want to get her out of England," cried my father. "That's clear enough, God knows."
Shrewd as ever, the young Princess declined the match and with great temerity told her sister that she could not marry. Elizabeth always knew just how far to go and in some way she succeeded in convincing Mary that marriage with any man would be distasteful to her.
When she was sent to Woodstock in the charge of Queen Mary's faithful Sir Henry Bedingfeld, the Knollys family breathed more easily, particularly as rumors of the Queen's bad state of health kept filtering in.
Terrible news came to us from England of the bitter persecution of Protestants. Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were all burned at the stake with three hundred other victims, and it was said that the smoke of the Smithfield Fires was like a black pall hanging over London.
How we applauded our father's wisdom! Who knew, had we stayed he might have been one of those destined for such a fate.
It could not continue, he told us. The people were weary of death and persecution. The whole country was ready to rise in revolt against the Queen and her Spanish adherents. However, when the news came that she was pregnant we were in despair. Her hopes—"God be praised," said my father—were soon proved to be without foundation. Poor sick Mary, she wanted a child so badly that she could delude herself into suffering all the signs of pregnancy when she was barren.
But we, who shamelessly longed for her death, had little sympathy to spare for her.
I remember well the misty November day when the messenger came with the news. It was the day we had been waiting for.
I was seventeen years old then, and I had never before seen my father so excited.
In the hall he cried: "Rejoice in this day. Queen Mary is dead. Elizabeth is proclaimed Queen of England by will of the people. Long live our Queen Elizabeth."
We knelt and gave thanks to God. Then we hastened to make our preparations for our return.
Royal Scandal
Much suspected—of me,
Nothing proved can be,
We arrived back in time to see her coronation. What a day that was with the people rejoicing and telling themselves that good times lay ahead. The smell of smoke from the Smithfield Fires still seemed to cling to the air but that only added to the jubilation. Bloody Mary was dead and Elizabeth the Good ruled our land.
I saw her leave for the Tower at two of the afternoon of that January day; she was dressed in the royal robes of a queen and she looked the part in her chariot, which was covered with crimson velvet over which was a canopy borne by her knights, one of whom was Sir John Perrot, a man of mighty girth who claimed to be the illegitimate son of Henry VIII and therefore brother to the Queen.
I could not take my eyes from her in her crimson velvet robe, ermine cape and cap to match her robe under which her fair hair showed, glinting red in the sparkling frosty air. Her tawny eyes were bright and eager, her complexion dazzlingly fair. I thought she was beautiful in that moment. She was all that our mother had told us. She was magnificent.