Life of Elizabeth I (42 page)

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 
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.

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 
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 
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',
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 
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.