Nor did the Queen care if she inconvenienced her ministers, for she expected them to be as hard-working, efficient and devoted to duty as she was herself. If they were not, she would demand to know why; she missed nothing, and was an exacting mistress. When Lord Hunsdon outstayed leave from his official duties, the Queen raged to his son, 'God's wounds! We will set him by the feet and set another in his place if he dallies with us thus, for we will not be thus dallied withal.'

Harington records that she would keep Cecil with her till late at night discoursing alone, and then call out another at his departure, and try the depth of all around her sometime. Each displayed his wit in private. If any dissembled with her, or stood not well to her advisings, she did not let it go unheeded, and sometimes not unpunished.

After these night-time consultations, the Queen would be ready to return to business before the next dawn had broken. She seems to have needed very little sleep, and it would be no exaggeration to state that she 227.

was, in modern terms, a workaholic. Harington attests that on one occasion she wrote one letter whilst dictating another and listening to a query to which she gave a lucid answer.

Each day she held successive private consultations with her ministers, read letters and dispatches, wrote or dictated others, checked accounts and received petitions. She kept letters, memos and notes in a 'great pouch' hung about her waist, or in her bedroom, and threw them away when they were not needed. She rarely attended the daily Council meetings, knowing that her councillors would try to impose their opinions on her - although she was perfectly capable of arguing the point with them. She preferred to keep a tight rein on affairs from behind the scenes. In the early days of her reign, Cecil tried to prevent her from dealing with matters too weighty, in his opinion, for a woman to cope with, but as the years passed he conceived a deep respect for and trust in her, both as his sovereign and as a shrewd and clever woman.

In day to day matters, Elizabeth delegated the decision-making to her Council, taking the credit herself when things turned out well. If disaster struck, the councillors got the blame. According to Harington, Cecil would 'shed a-plenty tears on any miscarriage, well knowing the difficult part was, not so much to mend the matter itself, as his mistress's humour'. Her temper was notorious: she was not above boxing the Secretary's ears, throwing her slipper at Walsingham's face, or punching others who displeased her, and after flouncing out of a Council meeting in a rage, she would retire to her Privy Chamber and read until she had calmed down, which she invariably did after these outbursts. Nor was she reluctant to admit she was in the wrong, for she would hasten to make amends. Leicester said of her, 'God be thanked, her blasts be not the storms of other princes, though they be very sharp sometimes to those she loves the best.'

'When she smiled', wrote Harington, 'it was a pure sunshine that everyone did choose to bask in if they could, but anon came a storm from a sudden gathering of clouds, and the thunder fell in wondrous manner on all alike.' One French ambassador, having witnessed the royal temper, confided, 'When I see her enraged against any person whatever, I wish myself in Calcutta, fearing her anger like death itself' As a young queen, in 1559, Elizabeth rebuked two of her servants so wrathfully that they claimed they would 'carry it to their graves'. A colleague ventured, on bended knees, to plead with his mistress 'to make them men again, who remain so amazed as nothing can breed any comfort in them'.

Cecil, as the adviser closest to the Queen, learned early on how to gauge her mood, as well as how to weather the storms of her anger. All her servants, he wrote, 'must sometimes bear the cross words, as I myself 228.

have had long experience'. For over thirty years he was her chief adviser and the greatest moderating influence on the Council. 'No prince in Europe', she once said, 'ever had such a councillor as I have had in him.'

The Queen favoured both the older aristocracy and the gentry, the 'new men' whose fortunes were founded on wealth, and picked her councillors for their abilities, as well as for their breeding. She expected the highest standards of personal service from them. Most of the men who served her were related to each other in some way, which gave the court a cohesive family atmosphere. Although Sir Robert Naunton accused her of fostering factions at court, the Sidney Papers make it clear that she 'used her wisdom in balancing the weights'.

Parliament, however, was less easily managed than the Council, to which it was subordinate. The Queen believed that, as sovereign, she had absolute authority over Parliament, but the Puritans in the Commons could be relied upon to oppose many measures, and both Houses were jealous of their powers and privileges, seeking constantly to extend them. Clashes between Queen and Parliament were therefore inevitable, and as we have seen, Elizabeth was on occasions forced to concede defeat. Whenever possible, she managed without Parliament. In the forty-five years of her reign, it sat for only ten sessions, which lasted in total just 140 weeks - less than three years. The Queen attended only the opening and closing state ceremonies, arriving by barge or on horseback and wearing her state robes and crown; she wrote her own speeches for these occasions. If the Commons or Lords wished to speak to her, they sent a delegation to wherever she was lodging. After they had addressed her on their knees, she would rise from the throne and bow or curtsey gracefully to them. Messengers brought her news of debates, and Cecil conveyed her wishes to both Houses.

'It is in me and my power to call Parliament', Elizabeth once reminded the Speaker; 'it is in my power to end and determine the same; it is in my power to dissent to any thing done in Parliaments.' Certain matters, such as the succession and her marriage, were considered by her to be inappropriate for discussion by Parliament, though Parliament increasingly thought otherwise.

In her foreign policy, Elizabeth sought to preserve England's stability and prosperity in a Europe dominated by the great Catholic powers of France and Spain. She achieved this by a policy of tortuous diplomacy that was not always understood by her own advisers. War was anathema to her because it threatened her kingdom's stability and her treasury. Unlike Philip II, she had no desire to found an empire, and in 1593 told Parliament, It may be thought simplicity in me that all this time of my reign I 229.

have not sought to advance my territories and enlarge my dominions; for opportunity hath served me to do it. My mind was never to invade my neighbours, or to usurp over any. I am contented to reign over mine own, and to rule as a just prince.

Queen Elizabeth was a complex personality. A studious intellectual who would spend three hours a day reading history books if she could ('I suppose few that be no professors have read more,' she boasted to Parliament), and who to the end of her life would for recreation translate works by Tacitus, Boethius, Plutarch, Horace and Cicero, she could also spit and swear 'round, mouth-filling oaths', as was the habit of most great ladies of the age. Cecil once spirited away a book presented to the Queen by a Puritan, Mr Fuller, in which 'Her Gracious Majesty' was censured for swearing 'sometimes by that abominable idol, the mass, and often and grievously by God and by Christ, and by many parts of His glorified body, or by saints, faith and other forbidden things, and by Your Majesty's evil example and sufferance, the most part of your subjects do commonly swear and blaspheme, to God's unspeakable dishonour.' Elizabeth demanded to see the book, but with the connivance of one of her ladies it had fortunately been 'lost'.

Like her mother, the Queen revelled in jests, practical jokes and 'outwitting the wittiest'. She would laugh uproariously at the antics of the comic actor Richard Tarleton, and her female dwarf. Yet her table manners were perfect, and she ate and drank moderately, her preferred beverage being beer.

She herself could be very witty. When a French ambassador complained about her having kept him waiting six days for an audience, she sweetly retorted, 'It is true that the world was made in six days, but it was by God, to whose power the infirmity of man is not to be compared.'

She charmed men by her undoubted sex appeal and self-confidence, although one courtier claimed that her 'affections are not carved out of flint, but wrought out of virgin wax'. As the years went by, she took more and more extreme measures to recapture her lost youth, but her chivalrous courtiers continued to reassure her that she was the fairest lady at court, a fiction her inordinate vanity allowed her to swallow. 'She is a lady whom time hath surprised,' observed Sir Walter Raleigh.

Her chief passions were riding, in which she bore herself'gallantly', hunting and dancing. A painting at Penshurst Place shows her dancing with a man thought to be Leicester; they are performing La Volta, a controversial dance in which the man lifts the woman and twirls her round with her feet swinging out, and which was universally condemned by preachers as the cause of much debauchery and even 230.

murders. Less controversial dances required a high degree of skill and grace, especially the galliards beloved by the Queen, in which dancers took five steps, leapt high in the air, then beat their feet together on landing. The Queen insisted on extra, more intricate steps being incorporated, which effectively prevented her less skilled courtiers from participating. As she grew older, she was more often than not a spectator at court dances, but her standards were rigorous. A French ambassador noted, 'When her maids dance, she follows the cadence with her head, hand and foot. She rebukes them if they do not dance to her liking, and without doubt she is mistress of the art.'

Elizabeth's preferred table games were cards and chess. She also enjoyed plays, jousts and the cruel sport of bear baiting, maintaining her own bear pit at Paris Garden on the south bank of the Thames.

The study of philosophy was another abiding interest. In 593, upset over the French King Henry IV's conversion to Catholicism, Elizabeth spent twenty-six hours translating Boethius's Consolations of Philosophy Consolations of Philosophy into English, to calm her anger. Being 'indefatigably given to the study of learning', she kept up her scholarly interests and maintained her gift for languages throughout her life. 'I am more afraid of making a fault in my Latin than of the kings of Spain, France, Scotland, the whole House . into English, to calm her anger. Being 'indefatigably given to the study of learning', she kept up her scholarly interests and maintained her gift for languages throughout her life. 'I am more afraid of making a fault in my Latin than of the kings of Spain, France, Scotland, the whole House .

of Guise, and all their confederates,' she once declared. On another Jl occasion she boasted that she was 'not afraid of a King of Spain who has been up to the age of twelve learning his alphabet'.

Elizabeth cared passionately about education, and involved herself in the life of both Eton College and Westminster School. In her desire for the middle and upper classes to become literate, she founded grammar schools, continuing the work begun by Edward VI. She also founded Jesus College, Oxford.

Music was another passion. As well as playing skilfully on the lute and virginals, the Queen 'composed ballets and music, and played and danced them'. She patronised Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, the greatest musicians of the age, and they both praised her singing voice. Her virginals, bearing the Boleyn arms, are preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Elizabeth's continued patronage of the astrologer and reputed wizard Dr John Dee certainly protected him from those who suspected him of forbidden practices and sought his rum. Dee wrote in 1564 how the Queen 'in most heroical and princely wise did comfort me and encourage me in my studies philosophical and mathematical'. She continued to visit him at Mortlake - 111 1575 he recorded that 'The Queen's Majesty with her most honourable Privy Council and other her lords and nobility visited my library.' She even offered Dee apartments at court, but he declined because he did not wish to interrupt his studies.

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The Queen was fascinated, not only by Dee's scientific and esoteric work, but also by his predictions; being the product of a superstitious age, she took them seriously. In 1577 Dee predicted the founding of'an incomparable British Empire', and it was his vision that inspired Elizabeth to encourage explorers such as Drake, Raleigh and Gilbert in their voyages of discovery and their attempts to establish English colonies in the New World. She consulted Dee on a wide variety of subjects: a new comet, toothache, some scientific puzzle, or the interpretation of a dream.

When moved to it, Elizabeth could be compassionate and kind. To her close friend, Lady Norris, 'mine own Crow', who had lost a beloved son in the Irish war, she sent this sensible advice: 'Harm not yourself for bootless [useless] help, but show a good example to comfort your dolorous yoke-fellow. Now that Nature's common work is done, and he that was born to die hath paid his tribute, let the Christian discretion stay the flux of your immoderate grieving, which hath instructed you that nothing of this kind hath happiness but by God's Divine Providence.' Two years later, after two more Norris sons had been killed in Ireland, the Queen wrote to the grieving parents, 'We couple you together from desire that all the comfort we wish you may reach you both in this bitter accident. We were loath to write at all, lest we should give you fresh occasion of sorrow, but could not forbear, knowing your religious obedience to Him whose strokes are unavoidable. We propose ourselves as an example, our loss being no less than yours.' When she heard of the death of the Earl of Huntingdon, she moved the whole court to Whitehall so that she herself could break the news to his widow.

Throughout her long life, Elizabeth enjoyed remarkably robust physical health, which permitted her to indulge in rigorous daily exercise. She ate abstemiously, lived to a good age and retained her faculties and her grip on the reins of government to the last. She expended a great deal of nervous energy, and displayed an extraordinary ability to remain standing for hours, much to the discomfiture of exhausted courtiers and foreign ambassadors.

The nervous ailments of her youth had probably resulted from stress, insecurity and the tragic events of her childhood. The traumatic shocks she suffered then, particularly on learning of the fate of her mother, may well have permanently damaged her nervous system. Some of these nervous problems abated on her accession, and only reappeared with the menopause. Thereafter, she was subject to anxiety states, hysterical episodes, obsessiveness and attacks of increasingly profound depression. She hated loud noise, and her intolerance of closed windows and people 232.

crowding her suggests she was also claustrophobic. She suffered intermittent panic attacks: once, whilst walking in procession to chapel, 'she was suddenly overcome with a shock of fear', according to the Spanish ambassador, and had to be helped back to her apartments.

These ailments were almost certainly neurotic. The stresses and strains of the responsibilities she carried, and her constant awareness of threats to her security would have overwhelmed a lesser person. Her contemporaries believed that by denying herself the fulfilment of marriage and children, she was living a life against nature. In Cecil's opinion, marriage and childbearing would have cured all her nervous complaints.

By the standards of her time, Elizabeth was a fastidious woman, and very fussy. She loathed certain smells, especially that of scented leather. When one courtier came into her presence in scented leather boots, she turned down the petition he submitted to her, wrinkling her nose, whereupon he quipped, 'Tut, tut, Madam, 'tis my suit that stinks!' The Queen at once relented. She was not so forbearing when it came to bad breath. After receiving one French envoy, she exclaimed, 'Good God! What shall I do if this man stay here, for I smell him an hour after he has gone!' Her words were reported back to the envoy, who at once betook himself back to France in shame.

Elizabeth also hated kitchen odours, which was unfortunate because her privy kitchen at Hampton Court was immediately beneath her apartments, and 'Her Majesty cannot sit quiet nor without ill savour.' Attempts to perfume the air with rosewater failed to disguise the smell, and in 1567 a new kitchen had to be built. It survives today, as a tearoom within the palace.

As she grew older, Elizabeth became plagued with headaches, which may have been migraines or caused by eye-strain, and rheumatism. 'An open ulcer, above the ankle' was first mentioned in July 1569 and on several occasions thereafter prevented her from walking: in 1570 she was obliged to travel in a litter whilst on progress. Although the ulcer had healed by 1571, the Queen was left with a slight limp, about which she was very sensitive. It did not, however, prevent her from taking the long, early morning walks in which she so delighted.

Although they were legion, her complaints were chronic rather than serious, and she refused on many occasions to give in to them. Like her father, she had an abhorrence of illness, and she could not bear people thinking she was ill. In 1 577, she commanded Leicester to ask Cecil to send her some of the spa water from Buxton, where he was staying. When he did so, however, she would not drink it, on the grounds that 'It will not be of the goodness here it is there.' The real reason for her reluctance was that people were saying - with truth - that she had a 'sore 233.

leg', and that she would never admit to; in fact, she gave Leicester a dressing down for having written to Cecil.

The following year she suffered the 'grievous pangs and pains' of toothache, but because she 'doth not or will not think' that the offending tooth needed to be extracted, her doctors dared not suggest it. Various methods of relief were essayed, but all failed, and still the Queen would not 'submit to chirurgical instruments', despite the remonstrances of her Council. A heroic Bishop Aylmer of London, to demonstrate that it was not such a terrible process, offered to have one of his own decayed teeth pulled out in her presence. In December 1578, he underwent the operation, whereupon Elizabeth, after nine months of agony, finally allowed the doctors to take out her own tooth. After that, the subject of teeth became a taboo one with her, and she resolved to keep hers and suffer, rather than have them out as they decayed, for she had heard that King Philip had done so and now had to live on slops. This decision condemned her to years of intermittent pain from toothache, gum disease and resultant neuralgia in the face and neck. Contemporary sources refer to swellings in her cheeks which may have been abscesses. Her increasing preference for sugary confections, custards and puddings did not help matters, but she nevertheless succeeded in keeping some of her teeth, although a foreign observer who saw her in old age noticed that they were 'very yellow and unequal, and many of them are missing'.

Even in old age, the Queen would never admit she was unwell. In 1 597, Cecil reported that she had 'a desperate ache in her right thumb, but will not be known of it, nor the gout it cannot cannot be, nor be, nor dare dare not be, but to sign [documents] will not be endured'. not be, but to sign [documents] will not be endured'.

Her physicians were the best that could be found in an age in which a doctor might well hasten a patient's end by employing dubious and often dangerous treatments, but Elizabeth had little time for them and avoided consulting them if she could. Nor could she easily be persuaded to take any medicine, although she was fond of pressing sick courtiers to take herbal 'cordial broths' prepared to her own recipes, which she was convinced were excellent restoratives. The Queen could sometimes even be found spoon-feeding these homely and ancient remedies to her friends, and would boast that there was not an ailment that they could not cure. The only one of her recipes to survive is a cure for deafness, which she prescribed for Lord North: 'Bake a little loaf of bean flour and, being hot, rive it in halves, and into each half pour 111 three or four spoonfuls of bitter almonds, then clap both halves to both ears before going to bed, keep them close, and keep your head warm.' History does not record whether it worked.

The Queen deplored the contemporary fashion for purgatives, mainly on the grounds that those who took them were likely to take time off 234.

work, and forbade her maids to take them. In 597, she banned two girls from her chamber for three days for disobeying her by 'taking of physic'. The reasons for Elizabeth's reluctance to admit that she was ill were not far to seek. 'In another body, [illness was) no great matter, but [it was] much in a great princess.' It meant that people would think she was, to a degree, out of control; it meant giving in to human weakness, and as we have seen, Elizabeth enjoyed being regarded as more than human. Illness also betokened advancing age, which she would never admit to, and it threatened the image of eternal youth so central to the cult of the Virgin Queen.

In Tudor times, the royal image was all-important, much more so than today, for magnificence was regarded as being synonymous with power and greatness. The Tudor monarchs were renowned for their splendour, no less than their personal charm, and this found its most evident expression in their public dress anci in the palaces they built and inhabited.

Elizabeth I's wardrobe, which was rumoured to contain more than three thousand gowns, became legendary during her lifetime, as her costumes grew ever more flamboyant and fantastic. The image of the godly Protestant virgin in sober black and white, so carefully cultivated by Elizabeth during her half-sister's reign, soon gave way to an altogether more colourful and showy image. The Queen's portraits invariably show her in dresses of silk, velvet, satin, taffeta or cloth of gold, encrusted with real gems, countless pearls and sumptuous embroidery in silver or gold thread whilst her starched ruffs and stiff gauze collars grew ever larger. Her favoured colours were black, white and silver, worn with transparent silver veils. Many gowns were embroidered with symbols and emblems such as roses, suns, rainbows, monsters, spiders, ears of wheat, mulberries, pomegranates or pansies, the flowers she loved best.

Some of Elizabeth's dresses and other items of clothing were presented to her as New Year gifts by her courtiers; some certainly remained unworn. These, with other discarded dresses and shoes, she gave away to her ladies. However, she certainly appreciated the many gifts of clothing from friends and courtiers: in 1575, having given the Queen a blue cloak embroidered with flowers and trimmed with carnation velvet, Bess of Hardwick was gratified to learn from a friend at court that 'Her Majesty never liked anything you gave her so well; the colour and strange trimming of the garment with the great cost bestowed upon it hath caused her to give out such good speeches of Your Ladyship as I never hear of better.'

As an unmarried woman, Elizabeth delighted in wearing low-cut necklines, right into old age, and on occasions wore her artificially 235.

curled hair loose, although it was usually coiled up at the back. As she grew older and greyer, she took to wearing red wigs, which were copied by the ladies of the court. Many of her clothes were made by her tailor, Walter Fish, whilst Adam Bland supplied her with furs.

It took her ladies about two hours each morning to get the Queen ready. She had bathrooms with piped water in at least four of her palaces, as well as a portable bath that she took with her from palace to palace and used twice a year for medicinal purposes. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that Elizabeth bathed more often than most people in those days, which could be as little as three times a year. She cleaned her teeth with toothpicks of gold and enamel, and then buffed them to a shine with a tooth-cloth. In old age, she chewed constantly on sweets in the mistaken belief that they would sweeten her breath.

Beneath her clothes she wore fine linen shifts to protect her unwashable gowns from the damage caused by perspiration. These gowns came in pieces - stomacher, kirtle, sleeves, underskirt and collar or ruff- which were tied or buttoned together over whalebone corsets and the ever-widening farthingale, a stiff, hooped petticoat. Elizabeth had worn this type of garment since girlhood, but sometimes required hers to be modified by the royal farthingale-maker, John Bate, since they could cause the same problems as those experienced by Victorian ladies in crinolines three centuries later. In 1579, Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, reported that he could not carry on a conversation with the Queen until she had moved her farthingale to one side and enabled him to 'get closer to her and speak without being overheard'. Yet Elizabeth never looked ridiculous: Sir John Hayward described her as having 'such state in her carriage as every motion of her seemed to bear majesty'.

Nearly every garment owned by Elizabeth was exquisitely made. Handkerchieves given her by Katherine Ashley were edged with gold and silver thread. At the beginning of her reign, the Queen had been presented with a pair of the new silk stockings from Italy, and had vowed that thereafter she would wear no other type. For much of her reign, her stockings were made by Henry Heme, or knitted by her ladies. A pair of silk stockings, reputedly Elizabeth's, are preserved at Hatfield House, along with a wide-brimmed straw hat and long- fingered gloves. The Queen's shoe-maker, Garrett Johnston, provided her with a new pair of shoes each week. In winter, her outdoor wear comprised cloaks or mantles, of which she had 198 in 1600.

In appearance, according to Sir John Hayward, Elizabeth was 'slender and straight; her hair was inclined to pale yellow, her forehead large and fair, her eyes lively and sweet, but short-sighted, her nose somewhat rising in the middle; her countenance was somewhat long, but yet of admirable beauty, in a most delightful composition of majesty and 236.

modesty'. Like many other women of her time, she used cosmetics to enhance her appearance, whitening her complexion with a lotion made from egg-whites, powdered egg-shell, alum, borax, poppy seeds and mill water, and scenting herself with marjoram or rose water. She would have her hair washed in lye, a mixture of wood-ash and water, which she kept in pots on her dressing table along with her looking glass and combs in jewelled cases.

Once dressed, she would deck herself with so many jewels that, when she stood in candlelight, they would glitter so much that they dazzled observers. In 1597, the French ambassador noted that she wore 'innumerable jewels, not only on her head, but also within her collar, about her arms and on her hands, with a very great quantity of pearls round her neck and on her bracelets. She had two bands, one on each arm, which were worth a great price.' Four years later, an Italian diplomat was impressed to see the Queen 'dressed all in white, with so many pearls, broideries and diamonds, that 1 am amazed how she could carry them'. A German visitor reported that everything she wore was >*

'studded with very large diamonds and other precious stones, and over her breast, which was bare, she wore a long filigree shawl, on which was set a hideous large black spider that looked as if it were natural and alive'.

Her collection of jewellery was extensive, arguably the best in Europe, and so renowned that even the Pope spoke covetously of it. By 1587, she had 628 pieces. Many had been inherited from her parents: she had Anne Boleyn's famous initial pendants, and an enormous sapphire encircled by rubies from Henry VIII, which was reset by her German jeweller, Master Spilman. Many other jewels were gifts, it being the custom for courtiers to present the Queen with costly trinkets or gifts of money each New Year and when she visited their houses. Sir Christopher Hatton gave her several beautiful sets of up to seven matched pieces. A considerable number of Elizabeth's other jewels had been looted from Spanish treasure ships. Yet more were probably designed and made for her by the goldsmith and miniaturist, Nicholas Hilliard. Several pieces were engraved with one of the Queen's mottoes, ' Semper Eadem Semper Eadem ('Always the same'). ('Always the same').

The Queen also owned nearly a dozen jewelled watches fashioned as crucifixes, flowers or pendants, as well as gem-encrusted bracelets, girdles, collars, pendants, earrings, armlets, buttons, pomanders and aglets (cord-tips). She had fans of ostrich feathers with jewelled handles, and several novelty pieces that held symbolic meanings, or were based on a pun, often a play on her name. Her favourite jewels were fashioned as ships or animals, while her pearls, the symbols of virginity, were magnificent, and included the long ropes formerly owned by Mary, Queen of Scots. Some of these pearls now rest in the Imperial State 237.

Crown; the rest are missing. One of Elizabeth's rings, containing tiny portraits of herself and Anne Boleyn, is in the collection at Chequers. The Queen often gave away jewels as gifts to her councillors - Sir Thomas Heneage was given the exquisite Armada Jewel, a medallic portrait locket designed by Nicholas Hilliard and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum - while her god-children received some of the numerous cameos showing her in profile. The Queen's Wardrobe Books list several jewels 'lost from Her Majesty's back' on progress or elsewhere; often these were gold or diamond buttons, or a brooch in the form of a monster, which she mislaid at Wanstead in 1584. Sadly, her jewellery collection was dispersed after her death, and only a few pieces survive. 'Oh, those jewels!' lamented one MP in 1626. 'The pride and glory of this realm!'

Elizabeth put on her extravagant costumes chiefly for state occasions, court festivals, personal appearances, the receiving of ambassadors and official portraits. Her everyday dress was rather simpler - she once wore 'the same plain black dress three days running', and she was fond of spending her mornings in loose gowns edged with fur. Her clothes and jewels were her working clothes, the outward symbols of majesty, and essential for the preservation of the mythology of the Virgin Queen. No one else might aspire to such magnificence, which was why Elizabeth's costumes were more exaggerated than anyone else's.

Naturally, this drew criticism from the more puritanically-minded. One bishop dared, in a sermon preached at court, to castigate the Queen for indulging in the vanity of decking the body too finely. Afterwards, fuming at his temerity, she declared to her ladies, 'If the bishop hold more discourse on such matters, we will fit him for heaven, but he should walk thither without a staff, and leave his mantle behind him!'

The portraits of Elizabeth I have been the subject of several weighty books. Although there was a great demand for her portrait in the years after her accession, she was - according to Cecil - 'very unwilling to have a natural representation', and there was therefore a proliferation of poor likenesses. The very earliest portraits are half-lengths showing the Queen full-faced, wearing a French hood; only a few examples survive. She is also depicted full-face in her coronation portrait, formerly at Warwick Castle and now in the National Portrait Gallery. This painting on a wooden panel has been tree-ring dated to about 1600, and is probably a copy of a lost original which may have been the work of Levina Teerlinc, a Flemish woman artist who painted many miniatures for the Queen during the early years of her reign. Teerlinc is known to have painted a miniature of the Queen in coronation robes, which was copied around 1600 by Nicholas Hilliard.

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By 1563, both Elizabeth and Cecil were becoming concerned about her being misrepresented: Sir Walter Raleigh later recorded that 'pictures of Queen Elizabeth made by unskilful and common painters were, by her own commandment, knocked in pieces and cast into the fire'. Cecil suggested that a good likeness of the Queen be made available for artists to copy, but Elizabeth did not like this idea, since there were, in her opinion, no artists good enough to produce such a prototype. It was not until later in the decade that Hans Eworth came into his own as a court painter, with his allegorical painting of the Queen triumphing over Juno, Minerva and Venus. Other portraits from the 1560s are rare, and in 1 567 the Earl of Sussex told the Regent of the Netherlands that most of them 'did nothing resemble' their subject.

Before 1572, Elizabeth discovered that her goldsmith, Nicholas Hilliard, was also a talented portrait painter and miniaturist, and it was he who at last produced the portrait that was to be the model for every portrait of the Queen thereafter, the famous Darnley Portrait. Later on, Hilliard painted the equally renowned Phoenix and Pelican Portraits. Elizabeth was fascinated by Hilliard's talent, officially designated him 'Queen's Limner', and spent many happy hours discussing 'divers questions in art' with him. By now, however, she was approaching forty and sensitive about the lines on her face. At her insistence, Hilliard was obliged to paint her, as he recorded, 'in the open alley of a goodly garden, where no tree was near, nor any shadow at all'. She had told him 'that best to show oneself needed no shadow, but rather the open light'. What he produced was not so much a likeness as an icon of royalty, an idealised image adorned with a glittering costume.

Thereafter, the Queen began to take an increasing interest in how she was represented, insisting upon the trappings and appearance of majesty taking precedence over any attempt at realism. In all of these later portraits, Elizabeth's face appears as a smooth, ageless, expressionless mask. It was doubtless comforting to her subjects to observe that their Queen was an unchanging institution in an insecure world, someone to whom the normal laws of humanity seemed not to apply.

During the 1580s, when there was an increased demand for portraits of the Queen, the prolific Hilliard painted miniatures of her, which her courtiers delighted in wearing, whilst her serjeant-painter, George Gower, executed larger portraits, of which the most famous is the Armada Portrait, of which several versions exist. Another favoured painter was John Bettes. The pictures by these artists, with their attention to symbols and clothes and status, set the trend for the peculiarly English costume portrait, a genre which remained popular well into the next century.

In 1592, an anonymous artist painted the magnificent Ditchley 239.

Portrait, the largest surviving full-length of Elizabeth, which shows her standing on a map of England, with her feet placed on Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire, the home of her Champion, Sir Henry Lee, who commissioned the work. The painting is full of symbolism, much of it yet to be fully understood, and it represents a high point in the portraiture of Queen Elizabeth. Although the face is similar to that in other state portraits, a discreet attempt has been made to convey an older woman.

Towards the end of the reign Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, William Segar and Robert Peake continued the tradition begun by Hilliard. In a painting now at Sherborne Castle in Dorset, Peake portrayed the ageing Queen as a young woman being carried in a litter by her courtiers to a wedding at Blackfriars. Hilliard was still working for Elizabeth, and no less than twenty of his miniatures survive from the six years before her death: all portray what is now known as the Mask of Youth. The anonymous Rainbow Portrait at Hatfield House, painted around t6oo and, again, laden with symbolism, depicts Elizabeth as a nubile and beautiful sun goddess.

There are therefore few realistic portraits of Elizabeth I. In 1575, the Italian Federico Zuccaro painted companion portraits of Elizabeth and Leicester which are, sadly, now lost; his preliminary sketches convey a degree of realism. Medals of the 1590s depict the Queen in profile with sagging chin and cheeks, and there existed - 'to her great offence' -similar portraits, for in 1596, on Elizabeth's orders, the Council seized and destroyed a number of pictures that showed her looking old, frail and ill. With the succession question still unresolved, the government could not risk disseminating amongst her subjects any image of an ageing monarch. A miniature of the Queen, almost certainly painted from life by Isaac Oliver, who attempted to portray what he saw, was never finished, and is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The famous painting of a melancholy Elizabeth with Time and Death was painted posthumously, and is therefore perhaps the most lifelike one of her to survive. The ageing face is in stark contrast to Gheeraerts' pretty icon.

In sum, virtually all we have to show us what Elizabeth I looked like are stylised images. Painters throughout history have flattered and idealised royalty, but in her case this was a deception that was deliberately maintained over a period of forty-five years. One only has to compare the early photographs of Queen Victoria with the seemingly realistic portraits of her of the same date to realise what a vast difference there can be between the painted image and the harsh reality of the camera. With Elizabeth I, this difference would without a doubt have been far more dramatic.

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Chapter 14.

'A Court at Once Gay, Decent and Superb'

Queen Elizabeth's pageant of royalty was played out against a backdrop of some of the most magnificent royal palaces in Europe, most of them situated near the River Thames for drainage purposes and also so that they could be reached by barge. Some were also connected to London by private roads reserved for the Queen's use, the most notable being the King's Road, which connected Chelsea, Richmond and Hampton Court, or the road which wound along the south bank of the Thames from Lambeth Palace to Greenwich and Eltham.

These palaces, no less than her clothing and the ceremonial that marked every aspect of her life, were the outward symbols of personal monarchy. In these palaces were displayed more than two thousand tapestries acquired by Henry VIII, of which only twenty-eight remain today at Hampton Court, and more acquired by his children, as well as a substantial collection of portraits and works of art.

The Tudor court was nomadic: around fifteen hundred persons might be in attendance at any one time, and sanitation facilities were primitive. Sir John Harington complained that 'Even in the goodliest and stateliest palaces of our realm, notwithstanding all our provisions of vaults, or sluices, or gates, or pains of poor folks in sweeping and scouring, yet still this same whoreson saucy stink!' The Queen herself used close stools with lids, which were emptied and cleaned by her maids, but a single large house of easement had to serve the needs of the rest of the court; it was hardly surprising that many people took to relieving themselves in the courtyard, or against the walls. Not until 1596 did Sir John Harington invent the water closet or 'Jakes'; within a year Elizabeth had had one installed at Richmond.

Another problem was that local provisions were limited, and the presence of the court imposed a severe strain on local food resources. After a time, each palace had to be vacated so that it could be cleaned 241.

and sweetened, and its supplies replenished. Thus Elizabeth was constantly on the move between residences. While she and her heavier baggage travelled by barge wherever possible, her household and lighter effects went by road.

Splendid and luxurious though they were, the Queen's palaces were run, at her order, with rigorous economy, and woe betide her Clerk Comptroller if he did not keep within the annual budget of , 40,000 for the maintenance of the royal household. The maintenance of all the Queen's houses came from the income generated from Crown rents. With the exception of Windsor, the Queen spent little on rebuilding or extending any of her houses - unlike her father. What funds were available went towards maintaining the outward trappings of her royal estate; the salaries of her household officials had not changed since Henry VIII's day.

As well as the royal palaces, the Queen had inherited sixty castles and fifty houses, many of which she sold or leased to her courtiers, such as the London Charterhouse, Durham House and Baynards Castle. Some she let fall into ruin, while others were maintained for use on progress. Somerset House on the Strand was regularly placed at the disposal of foreign visitors, although the Queen did stay there fourteen times during her reign. What was left ofjohn of Gaunt's Savoy Palace was turned into a hospital, and the Priory of St John at Clerkenwell was converted into the office of the Master of the Revels. The Queen's wardrobe was kept in the Royal Wardrobe on St Andrew's Hill. Her chief residences, however, were her 'houses of access', the great palaces of the Thames valley.

Westminster Palace, the London residence of English sovereigns and the principal seat of government since the eleventh century, had burned down in 1512, and only ruined towers and vaults remained. Whitehall Palace opposite was therefore Elizabeth's chief residence, and the place she stayed in more than any other. It was a vast, sprawling range of buildings that occupied a site of twenty-three acres, and with two thousand rooms, most of them small and poky, was probably the largest palace in Europe. Originally known as York Place, the palace was once the London residence of the Archbishops of York, and had been given by Cardinal Wolsey to Henry VIII in the 1520s. Henry had enlarged and beautified it, and by Elizabeth's time it was renowned for its superb decorations, which were in the medieval rather than the Renaissance style. In the older parts, vivid murals survived from the thirteenth century, whilst in the more recent Privy Chamber, visitors were overawed by Holbein's huge masterpiece of the Tudor monarchs, Henry VII and Henry VIII, with their queens: as one observer put it, 'The King, as he stood there, majestic in his splendour, was so lifelike 242.

that the spectator felt abashed, annihilated in his presence.' Elizabeth I was fond of standing in front of this painting to receive visitors, in order to emphasise whose daughter she was.

'Glorious' Whitehall's spacious state rooms followed a typical pattern: the Great Hall gave on to the Guard Chamber, which led to the Presence Chamber, beyond which was the Privy Chamber, guarded by an usher of Black Rod, who would permit only the favoured few to enter. Here the Queen spent most of her working day; in the evenings she would relax by playing cards or chatting to her intimates. The Privy Chamber gave on to the Queen's private apartments, the 'sanctum sanctorum', 'sanctum sanctorum', to which only the most privileged had access: these comprised her withdrawing chamber and bedchamber and numerous small closets. to which only the most privileged had access: these comprised her withdrawing chamber and bedchamber and numerous small closets.

Persons who were suitably attired could gain admittance to the Great Hall, Guard Chamber and Presence Chamber, and might therefore see the Queen at official functions or as she processed to and from the Chapel Royal. When she was not in residence, parties of visitors were taken on guided tours of all the rooms, even her bedchamber, although some grumbled that 'all the fine tapestries are removed, so that nothing but the bare walls are to be seen'. When the Queen was in residence, the Great Hall was used for banquets, pageants and plays, although it was too small, and in 1581, the Queen had a new banqueting hall built next to Sermon Court, where sermons were preached to throngs of courtiers in the open air.

Elizabeth's bedroom overlooked the river. A German visitor, Paul Hentzner, noted in 1598 that her bed was 'ingeniously composed of woods of different colours, with quilts of silk, velvet, gold, silver and embroidery', its draperies being of Indian painted silk. There was a silver-topped table, a chair padded with cushions, and 'two little silver cabinets of exquisite work' in which the Queen kept writing materials. A jewellery chest 'ornamented all over with pearls' housed some of her bracelets and earrings. There was a gilded ceiling and 'a fine bathroom' next door. Hentzner noted that the bedroom was stuffy and dark, having only one small window. A private way led from the royal bedroom to the river gatehouse, where Elizabeth would board her barge sometimes in the evening to be rowed along the Thames, playing her lute as she went.

Outside the palace there was an orchard and 'a most large and princely garden', which featured a series of thirty-four painted columns topped with heraldic beasts, all gilded, encircling a sundial capable of telling the time in thirty different ways. The Queen always took a keen interest in her gardens, and liked them to be in bloom throughout the year: some were a riot of colour even in winter. The great tiltyard at Whitehall 243.

occupied the site of the present Horse Guards and was connected to the palace by a gallery which passed through the Holbein Gate (which spanned the main road into London) and joined the long Privy Gallery, which led to the rabbit warren of state apartments, which were all well- guarded. There was also a tennis court and a cockpit.

Windsor was another favoured residence, although Elizabeth tended to stay there only in the summer months, as the old castle was difficult to heat in winter. Here she built a stone terrace that ran beneath the windows of her apartments on the northern side of the Upper Ward, and it was on this terrace that the Queen enjoyed taking the air in the evenings, or would stride along briskly each morning 'to get up a heat'. Below it nestled a pretty garden, 'full of meanders and labyrinths'. In 1583, Elizabeth also built an indoor gallery, more than ninety feet long, where she could exercise in wet weather; this now houses the Royal Library, and the original Elizabethan fireplace survives largely intact, although the low Tudor ceiling was replaced in 1832. There are tales that Elizabeth's ghost has been seen here. Her other building works - a private chapel, a bridge and an outdoor banqueting pavilion - have long since disappeared. In 1567, she was planning to erect a worthy tomb over her father's vault in St George's Chapel, but the plan came to nothing.

In the Great Park, the Queen could indulge her passion for hunting, dressed in all her finery and outdistancing most of her courtiers. Never a squeamish woman, she did not shrink from killing stags 'with her own hand', using a crossbow, and she would watch unflinching whilst the greyhounds savaged their prey. The suffering of animals did not concern her: she once spared the life of a stag, but ordered that its ears be cut off as trophies. In later life, she and her ladies would sometimes shoot game from specially built stands north-east of the castle, although the Queen preferred to ride with the men whenever possible.

Her apartments at Windsor were luxurious. She slept in a huge, ornate bed 'covered with curious hangings of tapestry work' and rested her head on a cushion 'most curiously wrought by Her Majesty's own hands'. Bathrooms with running water had been installed, with walls and ceilings comprised entirely of mirrors. The Great Hall was a favoured setting for plays, banquets and recitals by the Children of the Chapel Royal. Paul Hentzner, touring Windsor Castle in 1598, was shown rooms containing the gold- and silver-bedecked state beds of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, French tapestries, and curiosities such as a unicorn's horn - possibly a narwhal's tusk.

Greenwich Palace, where Elizabeth had been born, was built around three courtyards but was smaller than most of the Queen's other palaces, although it was just as sumptuous, and was used for state occasions and ambassadorial receptions; foreign envoys, arriving by barge, were 244.

welcomed at the imposing riverside gatehouse, from which the Queen would also watch naval exercises and displays on the Thames and military reviews in the park, as in July 1559, on her first visit as Queen. From here she would wave farewell as her ships set off on their voyages of exploration. Benches painted with the royal arms were set up 'for Her Majesty to sit on in the garden'. Most rooms in the palace overlooked the river, and there were eighty feet of glass in the Presence Chamber windows. The hangings in the chapel were of gold damask, and there was a gilded alcove in which the Queen received Holy Communion.

After nearly dying of smallpox there in 1562, Elizabeth avoided her father's vast red-brick palace of Hampton Court in Surrey for a time, but she came to use it 'with great and plentiful cheer' for the great feasts of Easter or Whitsun, and sometimes Christmas, and as a setting in which to receive ambassadors and foreign princes, who were lavishly entertained and in whose honour plays were performed in Henry VIII's Great Hall with its splendid hammerbeam roof. Equally famous in its day was the throne room off Cloister Green Court known as the Paradise Chamber (demolished in the late seventeenth century with most of the Tudor royal apartments), which was shown to 'the well-dressed public' for a fee when the Queen was not in residence. Hentzner recorded that the Persian 'tapestries are garnished with gold, pearls and precious stones, not to mention the royal throne', which was upholstered in brown velvet and studded with three great diamonds, rubies and sapphires. One table twenty-eight feet long was covered with a pearl- edged surnap of velvet, while another table, made from Brazilian wood, was inlaid with silver. On this was displayed a gilt mirror, a draughts- board of ebony, a chessboard of ivory, and seven ivory and gold flutes which, when blown, reproduced various animal sounds. Also on display was a backgammon board with dice of solid silver and an impressive collection of musical instruments. Visitors were shown the Horn Room, north of the Great Hall, where the antlers of deer killed in the royal hunts were displayed.

Hampton Court was perhaps the most elaborately decorated of the Queen's palaces: 'All the walls shine with gold and silver,' reported Hentzner. 'Many of the splendid large rooms are embellished with masterly paintings, writing tables of mother-of-pearl, and musical instruments, of which Her Majesty is very fond.' There were fretwork ceilings with intersecting ribs and pendants picked out in gold, and all the palace woodwork was either gilded or brightly painted in red, yellow, blue or green. Trompe I'oeil Trompe I'oeil decorations abounded. Despite such splendours, the Queen always maintained that Hampton Court was an uncomfortable and unhealthy place, and its chief use therefore was as a display piece. decorations abounded. Despite such splendours, the Queen always maintained that Hampton Court was an uncomfortable and unhealthy place, and its chief use therefore was as a display piece.

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The Queen took a personal interest in the gardens at Hampton Court, and gave orders for tobacco and potatoes, imported from the New World, to be planted there. In 1570, Henry VIII's stables were extended for her, with the addition of two barns and a coach house.