[129] Anne Boleyn was very dark. Froude mentions her “blonde tresses”—but they were really raven black; her eyes were black and velvety. Elizabeth’s hair may have been black, but the habit of dyeing the hair golden and Venice red was universal, even for children, at this period. The magnificent portrait by Lucas de Heere at Hampton Court represents the young Queen with dark hair and eyes.
[130] “Considerable confusion exists as to the identity of some of these historical houses. Messrs. Wheatley and Cunningham, in their most useful London Past and Present, seem to think that Sir Thomas More resided in Chelsea Manor before Katherine Parr came to live there. After the execution of More his estate at Chelsea was confiscated by Henry VIII and given to the Marquess of Winchester. Chelsea New Manor, which was inhabited by Katherine Parr and others,—and, under the Commonwealth, by Bulstrode Whitelock,—came into the hands of the Duke of Buckingham, who sold it to the Duke of Beaufort (hence Beaufort Street). It was purchased in 1738 by Sir Hans Sloane, who pulled it down in 1740. There is, moreover, local tradition, and even historical evidence, that there were two distinct manors at Chelsea in the first half of the sixteenth century—Chelsea New Manor, and Chelsea Old Manor. Dr. King, in his MS. account of Chelsea, says that the ‘old manor-house stood near the church.’ This is the house associated with the deaths of Anne of Cleves and of the old Duchess of Northumberland. He mentions another house, Chelsea New Manor, standing on that part of Cheyne Walk which adjoins Winchester House, and extends as far as ‘Don Saltero’s coffee house.’ ‘This house was built by Henry VIII as a nursery for his children, and here Katherine Parr lived.’ A picture of it in Faulkner’s Chelsea shows it not unlike St. James’s Palace. Small turrets communicate with the chimneys; the windows are long and high, and one of them has a Tudor arch on top. On the site of the present Durham House, Durham Terrace, the town residence of Sir Bruce and Lady Seton, there stood, not so many years ago, an ancient wainscoted house with a fine staircase, rather mysteriously connected by report with Jane Grey, who, according to a local tradition, lived here before she was made queen. In the beginning of the century this house was made a fashionable school for young ladies, but was pulled down in 1860 to make room for the present mansion.”—Mr. Richard Davey’s Pageant of London, vol. i. p. 379.
[131] Deposition of Mrs. Ashley in the Hatfield State Papers.
[132] There are several versions of this story. For instance, Henry Clifford, a retainer of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria, says, in his MS. Life of that lady (London, Burns & Oates, 1887) that “In King Edward’s time what passed between the Lord Admiral, Sir Thomas Seymour, and her [Elizabeth] Dr. Latimer preached in a sermon, and was a chief cause that the Parliament condemned the Admiral. There was a bruit of a child born and miserably destroyed, but could not be discovered whose it was; only the report of the midwife, who was brought from her house blindfold thither, and so returned, saw nothing in the house while she was there, but candle light; only she said, it was the child of a very fair young lady. There was a muttering of the Admiral and this lady, who was then between fifteen and sixteen years of age.”
[133] Among the guests at Sudeley at this period, with whom Lady Jane must have come into contact, was the Marchioness of Northampton, wife of William Parr, the Queen’s only brother. This unfortunate lady, who was closely allied with the Crown, had been so indiscreet that when her marriage came to be dissolved her children were declared illegitimate. She was living apart from her husband at the time of this visit to Sudeley. The Tudor great ladies were distinctly “mixed” in their love affairs, and Lady Northampton has been saddled with perhaps the worst reputation of any woman of her time; yet the Spanish Chronicle, which, as already remarked, contains much personal “back-stair” gossip, reveals some curious facts about this lady’s behaviour, and shows that a great part of the blame rests on the Marquis her husband, who, on altogether insufficient evidence, accepted a story of her having misconducted herself with a man-servant. See the Chronicle of King Henry VIII of England, etc. (the Spanish Chronicle), chap. lxii. p. 137 et seq., translated by Major Martin Hume.
[134] Inventory of furniture and other goods at Sudeley Castle. Dated 1547–8.
[135] See Latimer’s Sermons in Strype’s Memorials.
[136] Haynes’ State Papers, p. 104.
[137] Robert Huycke, or Huicke, was an M.A. of Oxford. He was divorced from his wife in 1546, and later married again. In 1550 Edward VI made him his physician extraordinary at the munificent salary of £50 per annum. Huycke was greatly in favour with Elizabeth, and she gave him a house near Enfield. He died near Charing Cross in (it is believed) 1581.
[138] This interesting account shows how many Catholic customs still survived—the offering here mentioned is evidently a relic of the Offertory at the Requiem Mass, otherwise explained; and the candles also are distinctly a part of Roman Catholic ritual, though Coverdale’s account of their signification is not altogether that given by Catholics. The Te Deum is no longer sung or said at either Catholic or Anglican funerals. The fact that the writer of this account mentions that the whole service was done in one morning, shows that the brevity of the new form of worship was somewhat of a novelty to people accustomed to the long series of Dirges and Masses accompanying burials in Catholic times. Sir Walter Besant says, on p. 154 of his London in the Time of the Tudors, “Before the coming of the Puritans the funerals continued with much of the old (Catholic) ritual.”