What were Elizabeth I’s relationships like? There are so many stereotypes of her being jealous of her women, for example. Was that true? What about her relationship with her father? What did her mother mean to her? In Episode 129 Tudorcon Speaker Tammy Shovelton examines it all. Listen, or check out the rough transcript below:
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VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:
Heather: Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network. I’m your host, Heather Teysko. I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and being much more deeply connected to our own humanity. So this is Episode 129 and it’s another interview with a Tudorcon speaker. So Tudorcon is getting so close guys, we’re less than two months away. And I wanted to give you a little quick update because a couple of people had written to me and asked me if they could do like a payment plan for Tudorcon. And I hadn’t really thought about that because I just thought people could put it on their credit cards. But I understand a lot of people don’t have credit cards. So I did some research and I signed up with a company called Partial.ly and it’s a company that handles doing partial payments for stuff online. So if you want to come to Tudorcon and you can’t afford the whole amount right away, you can do it in three payments. And so you can check that out. I have a link at englandcast.com/Tudorcon2019 oryou can look at the show notes for this episode on englandcast.com or just in the notes in your podcast player. There’s always that little description and I’ll put a link in there as well so you can come to Tudorcon and pay for it in three monthly installments. I feel like an infomercial person doing that, like I should be on the home shopping channel and saying, “Well wait, there’s more!” But you know, a couple of people had asked me about it and so I wanted to do a little bit of research and make that available if it allows more people to come. So that’s the Tudorcon note. It’s going to be amazing. I hope to see you there in October, less than two months from now.
So I want to introduce you to this week’s interview. Tammy Shovelton is going to talk about Elizabeth I’s relationships. That’s also what she’s going to talk about at Tudorcon and go much more in-depth, but I want to introduce you to her right now. So she is currently an adjunct professor at Wake Technical Community College and Meredith college. She received her Master’s degree from the University of North Carolina. Her specialty is in European History, specifically the monarchical history of Great Britain between the times of the Tudors and Stuarts. And her main research interest is queen Elizabeth, her life, and her reign as the monarch of England. She and her husband and their children live in Wendell, North Carolina. So we’re going to get right in and start talking about Elizabeth I and her relationshi.
So we’re going to talk about Elizabeth’s relationships today and I’m so thrilled that you came by and are here to chat about that with me. I thought we could talk a little bit about her early relationships and her relationships with her family and then kind of just a little bit on the romantic stuff, and stuff with other women, ’cause there’s like some stereotypes that fly around.
Tammy: Sounds good to me.
Heather: Okay, perfect. So who were her most important relationships when she was younger? And can you tell me a little bit about who she was interacting with, who she was, who were her closest relationships when she was younger, and a little bit about maybe how that might’ve shaped the woman she became?
Tammy: Yeah, so I think the most important relationships that she had when she was younger would be the relationship with her father Henry VIII, weirdly enough, I would say the relationship with the memory of her mother because obviously her mother passed away when she was very young. But still, the things that she learned from the people who knew her mother really stuck with her. I think the relationships with both her sister Mary, and her brother Edward. And then I would say Catherine Parr would have been an important relationship. And I would definitely say Thomas Seymour was her first real important romantic relationship. I think those are some of the most important ones.
Heather: What was her relationship like with Mary? Because that was really complicated in some respects with Mary kind of being like a surrogate mother some of the time. But then once Mary became queen, it was really dicey. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Tammy: Yeah, so the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth until Mary became queen, was actually a very good, like this relationship is really one in which Mary was very much like a surrogate mother to Elizabeth. Everything I’ve researched and read, there was no animosity between the two. And Mary felt very protective of Elizabeth when she was younger, helped to teach her how to read and write and things like that. And I think it really, once she became queen that that relationship became really tense. And I think really that just had to do with all of the different plots of people trying to usurp the throne from the Catholic Mary in hopes that they would get the Protestant Elizabeth. And so I think that’s where their relationship becomes sort of tumultuous in that period. But prior to that, I would say they had a very good relationship.
Heather: I have such a soft spot in my heart for Mary because she never had children and always seem to have wanted to have children and she was able to kind of have that role with Elizabeth for the early years, which I think is really sweet given that their mothers didn’t have the best relationship, that they were able to be close.
Tammy: Yeah. I think part of it too is, Mary realized that the same thing that happened to her happened to Elizabeth and it happened to Elizabeth at a much younger age. And so she understood what it was like to really be a princess and then have everything taken away. And so here she’s got this small little person who has all of this stuff and then all of a sudden nobody knows what to do with her. So I think she felt a real bond simply because of the way that Henry treated them.
Heather: So then what can you tell me about her relationship with Henry?
Tammy: So Henry didn’t have a very close relationship with any of his children and that is totally normal or normal for the 16th century, right? He’s busy going off, going to France and fighting wars and doing this, and the children are really taken away when they’re very young and set up in their own households, away from their parents, that’s totally normal. So it’s not like he had a very close relationship, like he and Elizabeth got together and had dinner every month or anything like that. I think what she saw her father do, and how she realized some of the things that he did, and it’s the things that she saw him do in the way that he acted that really influenced her when she became queen. I think especially with the marriages, I think that the amount of marriages that he had really influenced her when it came time for the idea of herself to become a wife, and seeing all of the stress and the drama and everything that was involved in getting married and especially Henry killing a few of his wives to include her mother, I think that really played a big part in how she reacted as an adult.
But aside from that, I think she saw her father as basically a decent king. She saw what he did, how he tried to keep things together. She saw how he used the different marriage negotiations with his, her sister and with her throughout the years to get things that he wanted. And I think we can see when Elizabeth becomes queen, she uses marriage negotiations for everything to get everything she wants. She leads a person on, “Oh yes, I’m absolutely gonna marry you.” And then, “Oh no, I’m not.” She uses it to her full advantage because she knows how important it is. The importance of the marriage negotiation, the importance of using that as a tool to get what you want or to hold an alliance together until you don’t need it anymore. She saw the way he was in his own kingship and she was able to take some of the things from him and put them into herself being queen, because at the end of the day, Elizabeth was never meant to be queen.
She was never taught how to be queen. She was raised to be someone’s wife. And so she had to figure all of these things out on her own. And the thing for me is no one expected her to be queen. And then she becomes queen and she’s like the longest-reigning Tudor queen and it’s appropriate that she would be the one, the one who wasn’t supposed to be queen as the one who becomes like what we consider the antithesis of the queen.
Heather: So then you talked a little bit about Catherine Parr, and that also then eventually leads into Thomas Seymour. So what can you tell me about their relationship, her relationship with Catherine and then with Thomas and just that whole period in her life?
Tammy: I hate, it’s like my biggest pet peeve when I read things that say, “Oh, Elizabeth looked up to Catherine Parr, She was a mother she never had.” No, she was not. I disagree with that. With every fiber in my being. She accepted Catherine Parr as the queen, as her father’s wife, but they never spent the amount of time together that some historians like to showcase. They never lived together. They have never had a really significant relationship. Yes, she helped in some things, but there’s this thing where it says, “Oh, Elizabeth was banished and we don’t know why she was banished, but had it not been for Catherine Parr she would’ve never come back.” And that’s just not true. She was never banished. Henry VIII never banished her. He went away to fight in France and she went to live somewhere else because Catherine was the regent at the time. I think their relationship was friendly. Like she definitely was significant in her life in terms of the fact that she did help to make sure she was taken care of. And certainly, when Henry died, she did take it upon herself to become essentially the custodial parent of Elizabeth. But I don’t think that their relationship was that of mother and daughter. I think it was more of a friendly relationship. And for Elizabeth’s part, I think she maintained that relationship and goodwill in that relationship for the benefit of her father because she knew that’s what would make him happy. And that was what Elizabeth was always trying to do was to make Henry happy. Not necessarily Catherine Parr. I don’t see their relationship as like a true mother-daughter, especially when you take into account the Seymour affair, which becomes more of sort of a pickle because if she really did look at Catherine as a mother figure, would she have fallen in love with her stepfather and had an affair with him? Uh, probably not.
Heather: Okay. Well, I mean, so then tell me the truth about what happened between her and Thomas Seymour.
Tammy: So from the research and everything I’ve done is his intention was to marry not Catherine Parr because she was already married to Henry VIII, that’s not to say, because they did have a previous relationship before she married Henry VIII, but his intention was really to either marry either Mary or Elizabeth. Because marrying one of the king’s daughters was a much better situation. And then of course when Henry died, and Edward became the king and then his brother became the Protector of the realm, he was hoping to still marry one of the sisters. And there are some letters that have been produced that we can’t 100% say these are true, or they’re not true, because it’s very difficult to find the originals. But there is a historic sort of line that there were these letters that Gregorio Leti had that Thomas Seymour had written back and forth between him and Elizabeth about being in love with her and wanting to marry her. And she was like, “My dad just died. This is inappropriate. I need to be in mourning. We can’t be talking about this. This is not okay.” And Henry’s will was very, very specific in that Elizabeth could not marry without the express written permission of the council and the King. So she knew she couldn’t get into any legitimate marriage offering unless it went through the proper channels anyways. Otherwise, she would be completely cut out of everything.
So Thomas eventually marries Catherine Parr, which makes sense because as the dowager queen, she is one of the top females in the country. So that gives him a little bit of power considering his brother got Protectorate over their nephew, the new king.
And then when Elizabeth moved in, that’s when he started to, I would say that’s when their affair started. Now I would not say that there was a completely consensual sexual relationship between two people, but I do believe that there was an affair in terms of the way that they acted, things that they did. I would say this is Elizabeth’s first love and her first real romantic relationship. There is plenty of historical evidence to support that and the different things that he did coming into her room before she was dressed, go into her bed, you know, patting her on her bottom, being caught with her in precarious situations, so I would definitely say this was her first romantic relationship.
And I don’t believe she felt, this is just my personal feeling based on everything I’ve researched. I don’t believe she felt at all guilty about having this sort of relationship behind Catherine Parr’s back because she felt that Catherine Parr had gotten married too quickly, that she didn’t wait for the proper mourning period. She just married Thomas Seymour. And so she really didn’t feel that their relationship was legitimate. So to her, it was not a problem. Of course, ultimately Catherine Parr will send Elizabeth away and it’s because she walks in on them in a precarious situation. And then of course she dies in childbirth. It’s after that point that Tom is against up, trying to woo Elizabeth, and getting permission to marry her, and do all of these things. I mean, obviously, that didn’t work because he tried to kidnap the king, and he got killed, and he got his head chopped off. But I think this relationship for Elizabeth really solidified how she looks at love, especially as she gets older and becomes queen because she sees, this relationship was very difficult for her.
She was essentially shunned by Catherine Parr, and then once Thomas Seymour tried to kidnap the king and got caught, she’s put on house arrest, her staff was taken and put in the Tower. Every day she’s interrogated about what she did, and what she didn’t do, and people are writing terrible things about her, and she really sees how important it is to maintain a certain type of decorum when you’re in a relationship, really learned how letting yourself go and really falling in love can affect you. She’s about what, 13, 14 when this affair begins, which for the modern 21st-century person, we’ll look at this and say that is disgusting. “She was abused and he was a pedophile.” However, we’re talking about the 16th century, and in the 16th century she was at the proper age to really be gay. She could’ve been married and having children actually, she probably should have been. So it wouldn’t have been considered like a weird elicit thing except for the fact that she was the King’s daughter. Right. The previous King’s daughter and the current King sister. And that’s where the real problem comes from. But I think it’s interesting when you mirror it, if you look at how old she was and the relationship with Thomas Seymour and ultimately he loses his head because he clearly lost his mind at some point. But then if you look at her final relationship with ethics and Essex is Dudley’s stepson who she watched grow up as a young person, right? And he becomes her final kind of, um, relationship in her life and ultimately he meets the same fate as the first real relationship in her life with having his head cut off.
Tammy: He too thought I will kidnap the queen, I will make her marry me. Right? So I think it’s very interesting to see how that comes to a full head. That’s interesting. I never thought about that before. So you talked about Dudley just briefly and then his stepson. Um, what can you tell it? And I also thought it was interesting the way you talked about how she would have justified their relationship with Thomas Seymore and not felt guilty about it. And I was thinking about the ways she might have justified a relationship with Dudley, even though he was married. And so what I guess what can you tell me about that relationship and how that played out? I think Dudley was probably the, what would be, what, what we would consider the level Elizabeth’s life. Right. She had known him for a long time. She did not, under any circumstances meet him when she was being held in the tower by her sister, the queen.
Tammy: They did not meet there. That there’s a lot of writings, you see. Oh, they met and they had this secret relationship in the tower. No, that’s not true. That’s not true at all. But Dudley was part of her brother Edward’s school. Um, like where, where he was schooled and stuff. So she knew him. She knew that he was married. She was very aware of all of these things. But again, right, she’s becoming the queen and a queen can do what she wants. Right. Um, Henry did, she saw Henry wanted a woman. He took a woman. It didn’t matter if she was married or not married, you know, he, he took what he wanted and that’s one of the things like I think that she learned from him was as queen, I can take what I want. Right. So the relationship with Dudley was kind of like that.
Tammy: I think that she, she found him interesting to be around. He was fun. Um, you know, she made a master of the horse. He spent all of his time at court while his wife was in the country. Um, she knew that he was married. It’s funny cause there’s several different, you know, movies about Elizabeth and one of them, it’s like the whole, her whole court comes together and like, Oh, didn’t you know, he was married and she’s like shocked. And she knew he was married. So that was like not a thing. It wasn’t an issue for her. Um, and it wasn’t an issue at the time either. It didn’t matter. Right. She was the queen, but you know, he was thinking about trying to get out of that marriage so that he could be with Elizabeth and a real relationship kind of way when his wife dies.
Tammy: That becomes very problematic because she falls down the stairs. And did he do it? Did Elizabeth do it? Did they plan it? And he has to leave court for a while and Elizabeth had many favorites even when Dudley was her favorite. She had other favorites too. And she was also constantly in marriage negotiations. I mean she did try to marry Dudley off to Mary queen of that. Like that. That’s a whole nother thing. But that would have been really weird. Yeah. But she figured, but in her mind she trusted him, she loved him and she knew he could go there, become the King, right. Become an H and H then she would essentially be the one in charge. Right. It makes sense. Like, like when you break it down, it totally, the whole idea made sense. It did not make sense to Dudley, but you know, he worked with it.
Tammy: So that relationship was deadly. Goes up and down in terms of, you know, he really thought that they were going to get married and there was a point when she was going to raise him in peerage so that she could marry him. But then she taught, she tore up the papers in front of him because I think she realized, right one, most of her counsel did not want her marrying Dudley so that she knew that, you know, would be going against them. But at the same time, a lot of the people didn’t want her marrying Dudley. And she knew at the end of the day she had to do what the people wanted in order to keep them to be loyal to her and, and also the idea of marriage, right, of surrendering to someone else. She knew the minute she got married, it wouldn’t be her in charge as quaint, it would be her husband in charge.
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Tammy: And so she never did raise him in peerage. That was very upsetting for him. And then he ultimately, he marries one of her ladies in waiting in secret and Elizabeth does give exceptionally upset about that. And the, and I think there’s a couple of reasons for that. I don’t think Elizabeth was jealous of any of her ladies in waiting. I think when you get down to it on, and this goes back to what she learned from her mother and Anne Boleyn was a very, very, very staunch proper lady. She grew up in the lowlands and she understood that when you were at court you had to be a proper lady and keep your legs crossed and not, you know, Philander with other people, um, that you needed to wait until you got married and she understood that you wanted to have those same type of people around you.
Tammy: So when Anne became the queen and she had her own ladies and waiting and she was very much like, we are going to be proper, we are going to read the Bible, we are going to do this, we’re going to do that. There will be no like mingling with the King’s men. And the, I think that’s something that Elizabeth really took with her was that you really needed to, to give that, you know, the people surrounding you. Even if you weren’t going to be proper, they needed to be proper and there was a certain way to do everything. And if you were a lady in waiting, you needed the permission of the queen to get married and Dudley needed the permission of the queen to get married. So when you do that behind her back, yes, of course she’s going to lose her mind, but not, not so much because she was jealous because I don’t think she ever intended to marry Dudley, but the fact was he did it behind her back. He didn’t ask her, she didn’t get to say, no, I don’t want you to marry this person. I want you to marry this person instead. Right. But she really kept her house in order and she expected her ladies in waiting to not be married, to be chased. And they knew that from day one. And that is something that she brought from how she learned that her mother kept her own accord.
Heather: And so then she was never able to marry Dudley and all of that. And um, and he married secretly. And then you kind of touched on the relationships with the women in there. Oh, and I wanted to ask you, there’s that story about, uh, her wearing a portrait of Amblin for her whole life. And you talked a little bit about kind of that Anne was a very real presence in her life, even though she wasn’t, even though she likely didn’t even remember her very much. Um, just can you touch a little bit more on her relationship with Anne and what Anne kind of meant to her? Oh, absolutely. So the portrait is in a ring and the ring is still in existence. It’s that the prime minister’s country home, I guess in England. I’ve looked at it online many, many times. I don’t know that, that, I don’t know that that picture
Tammy: portrait inside it is an, but it would not surprise me if it was, it’s hard, you know, it’s quite old at this juncture, so it’s kind of hard to tell like, is that her mother or not? But I do believe it wouldn’t surprise me if it was, but you know, Anne Boleyn knew, right. She knew that she was going to die. She knew she was gonna lose her head. And so she made sure prior to this that she set up people around Elizabeth, right, who were like-minded like Anne, who believed in the things that Ann did. And so I think that Elizabeth was able to, even though she didn’t have a direct relationship with her mother, she was able to, to understand her mother because of the relationships that her mother had with other people and those people surrounding her. So I think she understood like that her, that her mother was not this whore that everyone said she was.
Tammy: This idea that, and, and a lot of this comes from, you know, 20th and 21st century movies and books, you know, this idea that, and had a relationship with the King of France or had this like elicit relationship with Henry before they got married. No. Yes, there was a relationship. It was a completely non-sexual relationship to like right before the divorce went through. And, um, because it, because Anne knew that if she, she knew she was very smart woman, she knew that if she gave away the cookie, right, there was no, there was no guarantee what she was going to get in the end. And she didn’t want to be like Henry’s other dalliances where she gets pregnant and she gets married off to someone and that’s it. You never see her again. And Henry really and truly loved. And really, I mean, you can see that when you read the love letters between the two of them, right there was, there was real love and for him to wait that whole time, you know what I mean?
Tammy: That’s a long time. Henry was a little, you know, here’s a little something. So I think that she saw like the strength that her mother had, she saw the type of rules that her mother had in setting up her household and making sure that the people that surrounded her were honorable and that and that nothing they did what could come back on her. And so I think Elizabeth really took that with her when she became a queen. Right? And so people look at that and they look at how Elizabeth acted towards her maids and insisting that they not get married and insisting that they maintain their virginity and they think, Oh, she was just jealous of them. It wasn’t that. It was about her maintaining, for a lack of better words, an honorable household thing. That was really, really, really important to her. And those are things that she learned from her mother at the same time in seeing how her mother fell so quickly and not, you know, all of these things were written down.
Tammy: It’s not like she couldn’t read them. It’s not like she couldn’t talk to someone about them. She was very much reminded of what happened to her mother. That was really important when she was going through all the stuff with Seymour was the fate of Anne because Elizabeth was very, very close to losing her neck. And so I think we can see that also Elizabeth chaplain was William Latimer who was also an chaplain and I think we can see Elizabeth religiosity and Protestantism. Right. Is very much comes from her mother. Yeah. Because I think we can all agree that Henry the eighth was never really Protestant. He was Catholic until the day he died. He broke with the church because they wouldn’t do what he wanted. And to be fair, he made a lot of money out of breaking with the church, taking the church lands, becoming the head of, but he was never really what I would say practicing in Protestantism. You don’t really see like the buildup of the church of England until you get Edward and then ultimately Elizabeth. So I think she inherited many of her, like her interested in music, her interest in education and her religion and also her grace and dignity. I think those are all qualities that she got from her mother.
Heather: Interesting. So we could go on for a long time here and talk about, we haven’t even touched on her. Um, um, like the foreign relationships with her or her, her little, what does she call him? Her little frog or something like that. Frog and all of that. So there’s so much to dig into, but I guess, yeah, I don’t want to go on for too long more because you’re also going to talk about a lot of this stuff at Tudorcon too, which is super exciting. I’m so excited to, I guess just kind of like what would be an overarching kind of theme of Elizabeths relationships? If you could kind of sum it up into like the way she was in relationships with or like what her relationships meant to her.
Tammy: I think particularly the relationships of her youth, those relationships. I really believe those relationships meant the most to her and those are the ones that taught her how to be a queen. Taught her the lessons that she needed to protect herself so that she could remain queen for as long as she did. I think it was those relationships of her youth that really, really formed who she became as queen and how she directed herself.
Heather: Well, thank you so much for sharing so much of her relationships and her life and seeing her life through this prism of the other people around her and how she handled herself in those spaces. I really, I learned a lot and I appreciate you being so generous with your time. So you don’t have a book out now, but you might soon. Is that the story?
Tammy: Yes, I’m working. I’m currently working on it. And what’s it about? What’s it called? What’s it about right now? If it was just going to be Elizabeth princess Elizabeth and the familial relationships of a queen and I was just going concentrate on the relationships of her youth, but I am going to expand that and go from her youth all the, all the way through her reign.
Heather: So if people are listening to this in the future because there’s always the back catalog. So when people are listening to this in like two or three years, they should definitely check for your book. I would hope so. Yes. Awesome. Thank you so much for um, for taking the time and we’ll see you at Tudorcon. Oh, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Heather: thank you so much to Tamra for coming on the show and for being so generous with your knowledge and sharing so much about Elizabeth and how her relationships shaped who she was and the queen that she became. Remember she’s going to be in Tudorcon and you can sign up to come to Tudorcon at englandcast.com/tudorcon2019. There’s going to be so many awesome speakers, so much awesome entertainment. So check it out again, England cast.com/Tudorcon2019 and I will be back in about two weeks talking about specifically the birth of Queen Elizabeth because we’re coming up on her birthday and I want to talk about the circumstances around her birth and a little bit more information about that. So stay tuned for that. I will be back again soon. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful holiday weekend, if you’re in the US and celebrating Labor Day,and I will talk to you again soon. Bye, bye.
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.
She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
