Elizabeth was not just frightened for her life, at this point her reputation was almost as precious to her. If she wished to safeguard her place in the succession, or even continue to be considered eligible for a good marriage, she had to remain virtuous and be seen to be virtuous. This was of particular sensitivity in her case because of the traumatic history of her mother’s downfall. These rumours of lascivious relations with a stepfather were too close an echo of the accusations of incest brought against Anne Boleyn and her own brother.
Elizabeth had been caught unawares. The Lord Protector and the council had their suspicions that Elizabeth herself, aided and abetted by her servants, had been complicit in some of Seymour’s plans, not least the one secretly to marry. Elizabeth needed time to collect herself and edit the story that would best protect her from these serious allegations. At this first interview she was unprepared and alarmed and could not hide her agitation. Tyrwhit reported back to the Lord Protector: ‘in no Way she will not confess any Practice by Mistress Ashley or the Cofferer [treasurer], concerning my Lord Admiral; and yet I do see it in her Face that she is guilty’.21
Catherine Ashley and treasurer Parry were even more afraid. On facing arrest, Parry had rushed into his wife’s room and said to her in great distress that he wished he had never been born ‘for I am undone, and wrung his Hands, and cast away his Chain from his Neck, and his Rings from his Fingers’,22 as if he expected then and there to be beheaded.
The following day, Tyrwhit interrogated Elizabeth again, but by now she had composed herself. She appeared to be wholly cooperative but gave only careful, anodyne answers: she could not be certain what Parry or Catherine Ashley had been induced to reveal but she kept her own hand as close as possible to her chest. Tyrwhit thought her calmness and reason meant he was getting round her with his subtle questioning but he did have the intelligence to realize that he was up against a fifteen-year-old girl who was already a formidable advocate: ‘I do assure your Grace’, he wrote to Somerset, ‘she hath a very good Wit, and nothing is gotten off her, but by great policy.’23
Although Elizabeth’s servants talked more fully as Tyrwhit’s tactics frightened or tricked them, they never revealed anything that could be construed as a conspiracy between their mistress and Seymour. Any marriage involving the princess, they declared, was always dependent on the knowledge and approval of the king, the Lord Protector and the Council. Tyrwhit was suspicious that there was much more to be confessed, but he was frustrated in his investigations by the consistency of their blameless story: ‘They all sing one Song, and so I think they would not do, unless they had set the Note before.’24
The fear of torture and the discomfort of the conditions in which Elizabeth’s servants were held cannot be underestimated. It was winter and Mrs Ashley had been moved into a windowless dungeon to induce her further to talk. Here during freezing February she could neither sleep at night, the cold was so intense, nor see by day where no light could penetrate. Always too was the ever present threat of death. In fact it was remarkable that everyone managed to keep that one song in tune, despite the threats, cajolery, forged letters and invented confessions which were flung at them during that chilling start to 1549. Eventually Tyrwhit gave up disgruntled. As far as he was concerned Elizabeth was the architect of this resistance: ‘I do believe that there hath been some secret Promise, between my Lady, Mistress Ashley, and the Cofferer, never to confess to Death; and if it be so, it will never be gotten out of her.’25
After her initial discomposure, Elizabeth’s confidence had grown as the interrogations proceeded. Indeed, she was able to summon a tone of remarkable self-righteousness, an attitude which was to become one of her favourite and most effective stances in negotiations throughout her life when she felt she was on dubious ground. In a letter to the all-powerful Lord Protector Somerset she alternated her tone between imperiousness and submission to achieve her effect: ‘Master Tyrwit and others have told me that there goeth rumours Abroad, which be greatly both against my Honour, and Honesty, (which above all things I esteem) which be these; that I am in the Tower; and with Child by my Lord Admiral. My Lord these are shameful Slanders.’ She then requested urgent permission to come to court and show herself ‘as I am’, distinctly signing herself with the poignant reminder of her youth, her vulnerability and his responsibility, as protector of the realm, towards her, ‘Your assured Friend to my little Power, Elizabeth’.26
Here was a girl, just turned fifteen, without any powerful guardian to protect her interests, or even her life, reminded in her interrogation that ‘she was but a subject’,27 and how perilous her situation had become. She was bullied, threatened and lied to but had managed to keep her wits about her to such an extent that she was able to get the better of her inquisitor and make demands of him and his master, the Lord Protector. When the council decided they would replace Catherine Ashley with Robert Tyrwhit’s wife, who would keep a closer eye on the young princess, Elizabeth threw a fit: ‘She took the Matter so heavily, that she wept all that Night, and loured all the next Day.’28 Tyrwhit was no match for such a dramatic display of grief. He did allow her to write to Somerset and argue her case (although he grumbled that she would take none of his advice). Through sheer force of will, emotion and logic, Elizabeth got her way. Eventually Tyrwhit’s wife was withdrawn and Mrs Ashley reinstated. Tyrwhit was nonplussed by many things about Elizabeth, not least her devotion to her governess. ‘The Love yet she beareth her is to be wondered at,’ he wrote.29 His own job as interrogator was done and he himself withdrew from the fray, relieved no doubt and uneasy at the thought that somehow he had been forestalled by a mere girl.
It is impossible to know just how far Elizabeth compromised herself with Seymour, although there is plenty of evidence that she found him attractive, as well as how troubling she found that attraction. But Tyrwit may well have been right that her servants’ loyalty and courage and her own intelligence and coolness under fire prevented something more damaging to Elizabeth’s prospects, even her life, from emerging. Elizabeth was distressed by the fact that even by March, Catherine Ashley was still imprisoned in the Tower and, despite her fears that this might implicate her in any of her governess’s perceived guilt, she wrote another impassioned letter to the Lord Protector:
My lord:
I have a request to make unto your grace which fear has made me omit till this time … I will speak for … Katherine Ashley, that it would please your grace and the rest of the Council to be good unto her … First, because she hath been with me a long time and many years, and hath taken great labour and pain in bringing of me up in learning and honesty. And therefore I ought of very duty speak for her, for Saint Gregory sayeth that we are more bound to them that bringeth us up well than to our parents, for our parents do that which is natural for them – that is, bringeth us into this world – but our bringers-up are a cause to make us live well in it.30
Elizabeth never forgot the sacrifices of these partners in her first ordeal. On her accession and throughout their lives she