My Enemy the Queen

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I never go to Court now. I stay in my house at Drayton Basset. I am getting old, and it is permissible for old women to sit and dream. They say: "My lady goes on. How old is she? Few have reached her age. It seems my lady will live forever."

I sometimes think that too. How many people now alive can remember that November day in the year 1558 when Queen Mary —whom people had begun to call Bloody Mary—died, causing no great sorrow to her people except to those supporters who had feared what her passing would mean to them? How many can remember when my kinswoman, Elizabeth, was proclaimed Queen throughout the land? Yet I remember it well. We were in Germany then. My father had thought fit to flee the country when Mary came to the throne, for life could be dangerous to those who by nature of their birth and religion looked to the young Elizabeth.

We were all summoned together and made to kneel and thank God, for my father was a very religious man. Moreover my mother was Elizabeth's cousin—so the new reign should bring good to our family.

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