“Good faith, Mistress,” answered Sir Thomas Seymour, the Lord High Admiral, gracefully swallowing his exclamation of surprise, “your ladyship hath fairly won, and, sure, hath no call to punish both myself and my good Selim here by such unwarranted chastisement. Will your grace dismount?”
And, vaulting from his seat, he gallantly extended his hand to help the young girl from her horse; while, on the same instant, another in her train, a handsome young fellow of the girl’s own age, knelt on the frozen ground and held her stirrup.
But this independent young maid would have none of their courtesies. Ignoring the outstretched hands of both the man and boy, she sprang lightly from her horse, and, as she did so, with a sly and sudden push of her dainty foot, she sent the kneeling lad sprawling backward, while her merry peal of laughter rang out as an accompaniment to his downfall.
“Without your help, my lords—without your help, so please you both,” she cried. “Why, Dudley,” she exclaimed, in mock surprise, as she threw a look over her shoulder at the prostrate boy, “are you there? Beshrew me, though, you do look like one, of goodman Roger’s Dorking cocks in the poultry yonder, so red and ruffled of feather do you seem. There, see now, I do repent me of my discourtesy. You, Sir Robert, shall squire me to the hall, and Lord Seymour must even content himself with playing the gallant to good Mistress Ashley”; and, leaning on the arm of the now pacified Dudley, the self-willed girl tripped lightly up the entrance-steps.
Self-willed and thoughtless—even rude and hoydenish—we may think her in these days of gentler manners and more guarded speech. But those were less refined and cultured times than these in which we live; and the rough, uncurbed nature of “Kinge Henrye the viii. of Most Famous Memorye,” as the old chronicles term the “bluff King Hal,” reappeared to a noticeable extent in the person of his second child, the daughter of ill-fated Anne Boleyn—“my ladye’s grace” the Princess Elizabeth of England.
And yet we should be readier to excuse this impetuous young princess of three hundred years ago than were even her associates and enemies. For enemies she had, poor child, envious and vindictive ones, who sought to work her harm. Varied and unhappy had her young life already been. Born amid splendid hopes, in the royal palace of Greenwich; called Elizabeth after that grandmother, the fair heiress of the House of York, whose marriage to a prince of the House of Lancaster had ended the long and cruel War or the Roses; she had been welcomed with the peal of bells and the boom of cannon, and christened with all the regal ceremonial of King Henry’s regal court. Then, when scarcely three years old, disgraced by the wicked murder of her mother, cast off and repudiated by her brutal father, and only received again to favor at the christening of her baby brother, passing her childish days in grim old castles and a wicked court,—she found herself, at thirteen, fatherless as well as motherless, and at fifteen cast on her own resources, the sport of men’s ambitions and of conspirators’ schemes. To-day the girl of fifteen, tenderly reared, shielded from trouble by a mother’s watchful love and a father’s loving care, can know but little of the dangers that compassed this princess of England, the Lady Elizabeth. Deliberately separated from her younger brother, the king, by his unwise and selfish counsellors, hated by her elder sister, the Lady Mary, as the daughter of the woman who had made HER mother’s life so miserable, she was, even in her manor-home of Hatfield, where she should have been most secure, in still greater jeopardy. For this same Lord Seymour of Sudleye, who was at once Lord High Admiral of England, uncle to the king, and brother of Somerset the Lord Protector, had by fair promises and lavish gifts bound to his purpose this defenceless girl’s only protectors, Master Parry, her cofferer, or steward, and Mistress Katherine Ashley, her governess. And that purpose was to force the young princess into a marriage with himself, so as to help his schemes of treason against the Lord Protector, and get into his own hands the care of the boy king and the government of the realm. It was a bold plot, and, if unsuccessful, meant attainder and death for high treason; but Seymour, ambitious, reckless, and unprincipled, thought only of his own desires, and cared little for the possible ruin into which he was dragging the unsuspecting and orphaned daughter of the king who had been his ready friend and patron.
So matters stood at the period of our store, on the eve of the Christmas festivities of 1548, as, on, the arm of her boy escort, Sir Robert Dudley, gentleman usher at King Edward’s court, and, years after, the famous Earl of Leicester of Queen Elizabeth’s day, the royal maiden entered the hall of Hatfield House. And, within the great hall, she was greeted by Master Parry, her cofferer, Master Runyon, her yeoman of the robes, and Master Mitchell, the feodary. Then, with a low obeisance, the feodary presented her the scroll which had been brought him, post-haste, by Launcelot Crue, the courser-man.
“What, good Master Avery,” exclaimed Elizabeth, as she ran her eye over the scroll, “you to be Lord of Misrule and Master of the Revels! And by my Lord of Somerset’s own appointing? I am right glad to learn it.”
And this is what she read:
Imprimis(1): I give leave to Avery Mitchell, feodary, gentleman, to be Lord of Misrule of all good orders, at the Manor of Hatfield, during the twelve days of Yule-tide. And, also, I give free leave to the said Avery Mitchell to command all and every person or persons whatsoever, as well servants as others, to be at his command whensoever be shall sound his trumpet or music, and to do him good service, as though I were present myself, at their perils. I give full power and authority to his lordship to break all locks, bolts, bars, doors, and latches to come at all those who presume to disobey his lordship’s commands. God save the King.