Tudor Women: Queens and Commoners (23 page)

In 1593 Elizabeth celebrated her sixtieth birthday, a considerable age for those times, but the Queen, who had already lived longer than any member of the Tudor family, was still amazingly fit and active, still dancing, riding and hunting tirelessly. Andre de Maisse, a French diplomat who came to England on a special mission in 1597, commented on the liveliness she displayed, both in body and mind, and apart from her face, which looked 'very aged', and her teeth, which were bad, he thought it would not be possible to find a woman 'of so fine and vigorous disposition'.

To outsiders the Queen was invariably charming, gracious and dignified; in the relative privacy of the household she could be exacting, difficult and sometimes downright impossible. Nor can it be said that her temper showed any signs of mellowing with age. She continued to rap out her 'wonted oaths' and was not above throwing things when in a tantrum, or boxing the ears of any unfortunate maid of honour who happened to annoy her. But her bark was usually worse than her bite, and when she smiled, wrote her godson John Harington, 'it was a pure sunshine that all could bask in'. Her charm and her fascination remained irresistible. As Christopher Hatton put it, 'the Queen did fish for men's souls, and had so sweet a bait that no one could escape her network'.

Elizabeth's last years brought little respite from her public burden. War with Spain and the troubles in Ireland were draining her carefully-hoarded reserves of cash at a frightening rate, and there was increasing faction within the Court between the young Turks, led by the Earl of Essex, and the more conservative element which followed sober Robert Cecil. Like many ageing people, the Queen suffered the recurrent grief of seeing old friends dying off and had to face problems of adjustment to a new generation which she did not always understand and found unsympathetic to work with. She stayed in harness to the end, but when death came for her in her seventieth year she scarcely bothered to put up a fight. She had ruled her people for nearly forty-five years, and she was handing over a nation strong, prosperous and united. The royal prerogative she had guarded so jealously was still intact, and the prestige of the monarchy had never been higher. Her task was done, and it seemed she was content to go.

England has never had another leader even remotely comparable to Elizabeth Tudor. She remains unique, the ultimate secret of her genius still unpenetrated, though perhaps Robert Cecil came nearest to it when he remarked that the Queen 'was more than a man and, in truth, sometimes less than a woman'.

It might be supposed that in a country governed by a spectacularly successful unmarried Queen, the status of women generally and of unmarried women in particular would have improved, but this does not seem to have been the case. No doubt there were other women who shared the Queen's peculiar aversion to matrimony, but the Queen was uniquely fortunate in being free to indulge her whim to stay single, and, in a society which continued to regard wife- and motherhood as woman's natural destiny, the ordinary spinster's lot continued to be an unhappy one. Branded as a failure or a freak or both, she could normally expect little more than a life of dependent drudgery under some charitable relation's roof.

As a career woman, the Queen was also unique, and yet for the resolute minority - whether married or single - who found themselves faced with the necessity of earning a living, opportunities, though limited, were by no means non-existent. Apart from domestic service - often a stepping-stone to marriage -wet and dry nursing, governessing or a position as 'waiting gentlewoman' in a great household, the commonest female occupations were tailoring, upholstery, millinery, embroidery and related trades. But innkeeping was also considered acceptable, and there were plenty of laundresses, fishwives and other street vendors, as well as a few wax-chandlers, brewers, bakers and confectioners, even some female ironmongers and shoemakers. Some enterprising women set up in business as herbalists, concocting cosmetics and perfumed washes, and, of more dubious respectability, there were astrologers, fortune-tellers and quack medical practitioners. Probably the most sought-after and popular career was that of midwife, for 'Many a good thing passes through the Midwife's hand, many a merry tale by her mouth, many a glad cup through her lips. She is a leader of wives, the lady of light hearts and the queen of Gossips.' Certain trade guilds were open to women, and marriage to a member of a guild conferred rights on a wife which she retained in widowhood and could pass on to a second husband - a privilege which made such ladies especially eligible. Although the professions remained closed, women were making undeniable progress in the business world, and their value as partners and helpmeets was becoming increasingly recognized by sensible, forward-looking husbands.

Nevertheless, for the vast majority of women, housewifery was still the career for which they prepared and which they looked forward to, and in an age when self-sufficiency was no fad but a stern, practical necessity, the proper care and management of a household offered a highly-skilled, challenging and responsible occupation. The average housewife was expected to brew the family's beer and bake its bread as a matter of course, to spin, weave and make up the wool and linen cloth for clothes and household use. She must know all the techniques for preserving food - how to cure bacon and hams, to salt the meat from the autumn slaughtering which must last through the winter, store apples and vegetables for the long months when no fresh produce would be available, make jellies, conserves and pickles to vary a monotonous diet and help to conceal the taste of anything that was going 'off. The housewife who failed to plan her winter stores adequately would know the ultimate shame of seeing her family go hungry. In most households the rush or wax lights which provided the only illumination were made at home, and so was soap - a laborious process involving mutton fat and lye, obtained from wood ash. Wash day itself was hard labour, steeping and then beating the heavy linen sheets with wooden bats, before bleaching, smoothing and folding. Not surprisingly, this immense effort was undertaken only every three months or so. The dairy was always a good housewife's special responsibility, and she had to know enough about animal husbandry to be a judge of a milch cow. She did her own milking, reared the calves, made her own butter and cheese. She looked after the poultry, carefully hoarding feathers for pillows and mattresses, grew her own vegetables, herbs and flowers, and all this on top of the daily chores of cooking, scrubbing, sweeping and caring for her children.

Any housewife worthy of the name would have a general knowledge of sick-nursing and rudimentary doctoring, and this in turn often meant a wide knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants and herbs. In many families, recipes for salves, cordials, poultices, possets and other sovereign remedies were handed down from mother to daughter, and some women with a special gift or interest in the subject would experiment on their own account. The really dedicated housewife also found time to embroider her linen and bed-hangings, distil perfume, make wines and syrups, potpourri and pastilles to be burned in a sickroom or to sweeten the air.

The larger the household, the greater the housewife's responsibilities. She had to watch over the physical and moral welfare of her maids, keep them from idleness, teach them their duties and often arrange their marriages and provide a dowry, in addition to instructing her own daughters and the daughters of friends entrusted to her care. No matter how large her staff, she still supervised all the main departments, the kitchen, pantry, buttery, stillroom, laundry and dairy, to ensure that the servants were doing their work and that waste and pilferage were kept to a minimum. She would doctor the family and household and often the surrounding neighbourhood as well. She would see to it that the 'broken meats' went down to the porter's lodge for the poor, always be prepared to offer hospitality to passing travellers or chance guests, and remember her Christian duty to care for the needs of her husband's tenants and poorer neighbours. She would be responsible for ordering supplies of anything which could not be made or grown on the estate, not unlike the quartermaster of a small army - and in her husband's absence or incapacity would cheerfully take on the management of the estate itself.

Few great ladies shirked their domestic responsibilities. Margaret Hoby, a wealthy and beautiful woman, conscientiously superintended the dyeing and winding of yarn, the making of wax candles, sweetmeats, preserves and perfumes, and would sit spinning with her maids or working at her embroidery while a devotional book was read aloud. Even the formidable Bess of Hardwick took an acute and detailed interest in the running of her numerous establishments. After the Queen, Bess was probably the richest and most influential woman in England, but unlike the Queen her career had been founded on marriage. From comparatively humble beginnings she had climbed, via a succession of fortunately-chosen husbands, to become Countess of Shrewsbury, an enormously successful business woman and inspired builder of houses. Hardwick Hall, proud, elegant and graceful on its Derbyshire ridge and the only one of her creations to survive, was built to her specifications, and she personally watched over the progress of the work, keeping a sharp eye on the accounts and tolerating no slackness or scamping.

As well as being a property tycoon, financier, farmer and dealer in lead, coal and timber, Lady Shrewsbury found plenty of time for more feminine pursuits and, like many of her contemporaries, was a skilled and enthusiastic needlewoman. The huge tapestries, usually depicting some biblical or classical theme, which covered the walls in most great houses and kept out some of the draughts, were woven in professional workrooms, but quantities of bed-curtains, counterpanes, hangings and cushions were required and needlework 'carpets' covered every available surface in houses like Hardwick. These, and the fashion for decorating caps, gloves, purses, baby clothes, shifts, smocks, men's shirts - everything, in fact, that was capable of being embroidered - offered plenty of scope for all those thousands of busy ladies and gentlewoman who 'wrought needlework'. Some ladies, such as the Queen of Scots who was a notable exponent of the art, employed a professional embroiderer to draw patterns and fill in the boring bits of background, but the artistically inclined would create their own designs and the quality of English work was deservedly famous.

William Harrison in his Description of England commended the older ladies of the Elizabethan Court for their industry in needlework, caulwork (a kind of ornamental netting) and spinning of silk. Others, it seemed, in their anxiety to 'shun and avoid idleness' spent their free time in 'continual reading either of the Holy Scriptures or histories of our own or foreign nations about us, and divers in writing volumes of their own, or translating of other men's into our English and Latin tongue'. Meanwhile, 'the youngest sort' applied themselves to their lutes, citterns, prick song and all kinds of music for their recreation.

Many young girls were now spending more and more of their lesson time on music, dancing and needlework and less on formal study, for as the century progressed the Renaissance dream was fading and ladies able to converse learnedly in Latin and Greek became fewer. Harrison speaks of the 'many gentlewomen and ladies there are that beside sound knowledge of the Greek and Latin tongues, are thereto no less skilful in the Spanish, Italian and French', but in general these were of the older generation - women like Mildred Burghley and Anne Bacon - and by the end of the Elizabethan period it was becoming fashionable to poke fun at female learning. This decline was partly due to the fact that there was no royal schoolroom to give a lead, no young princesses to be imitated and the Court, although it remained a brilliant social and political centre, was no longer a centre of higher thought. Nor was it ever in any sense a centre of feminism. The Queen had some women friends, the Marchioness of Northampton, Lady Norris and the Countess of Nottingham among them, but she did not welcome competition from her own sex and at Court it was the men who counted. The ladies of the household, never very many in number, were not encouraged to put themselves forward and Elizabeth, perhaps regrettably, showed no interest whatever in the liberation of women.

All the same, progress had been made. The Elizabethan woman certainly did not regard herself as a chattel and most middle- and upper-class girls now learnt to read and write as a matter of course, while some of the old rigid notions about the unquestioning obedience of daughters had begun to show signs of relaxation. In any case, the Queen's female subjects were not complaining. They painted their faces, curled, dyed and pomaded their hair, played cards, danced, were seen at the theatre and generally took a lively part in the social round untroubled by doubts or discontents about their place in society. The quality of life for both men and women had unquestionably improved during the Tudor century, and that was enough for most people.