In 1512, a young woman entered the household of Queen Katherine of Aragon, wife of the tall and handsome English king, Henry VIII. Arriving at the court of the royal newlyweds her name would later become associated with mystery, scandal and power.
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| Unknown woman, by Bartolozzi, after Hans Holbein Albertina, Vienna, Public Domain |
Elizabeth (or Bessie) Blount is not spoken of much today, other than a passing mention in history books. Her earliest biographer, William S. Child-Pemberton, published his story of Elizabeth in 1913. Elizabeth Norton has also since written about her, in a book named Bessie Blount: Mistress to Henry VIII, published in 2011. I love Elizabeth Norton, but haven't yet read her biography of the woman around whom so much emotion swirled during the early sixteenth century.
Elizabeth Blount was born to John Blount and Katherine Peshall, who were married in August 1491 at Kinlet Church in Shropshire. It's believed that Elizabeth was born in around 1500. The Blounts had a history of service to the crown, loyal to Edward IV during the Wars of the Roses and Henry VII, the co-founder of the Tudor dynasty.
Historians think that Elizabeth came to court in around 1512 to serve in the household of Queen Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife, who he had married in 1509. Although he would later have a wobble of conscience over his marriage to the Spanish princess, there was no trace of this in the year that Elizabeth joined the court. As she settled into her lodgings, she would have eyed a court sparkling with old-fashioned medieval chivalry and courtly love. Childe-Pemberton's dating of her arrival at court also makes her very young - aged twelve when she first arrived. This is based on a payment order for her wages for 100 shillings for the year, dated 8 May 1513. She wouldn't have been alone, however, as her father is believed to have worked as one of the king's guards at this time, and she was also related to Katherine of Aragon's chamberlain, Sir William Blount.
Dutifully, Elizabeth carried out her duties, organising and providing anything the queen needed, as well as providing companionship and company. Katherine was around 26 years old, and may have taken the young Elizabeth under her wing. Elizabeth would have viewed the glittering ceremonies, court masques and performances, along with the extravagant displays of courtly love that Henry publicly engaged his queen in whenever they were together. In Katherine's service during the Battle of Flodden, when James IV's armies were defeated near the Scottish-English border on Katherine's orders while Henry was out of the country, she would have had an intimate view of the queen as she sent orders, wrote letters and ordered flags to be delivered to the battlefield with Spanish and English arms.
The ladies of the queen moved in the same circles as the king and his own close servants, appearing with their monarchs when the royal couple appeared together, and we know that Henry was aware of Elizabeth by the end of October 1514. A letter written by his long-time friend and advisor Charles Brandon mentions her and another lady, Mistress Carew, and asks the king to remember him to them in his absence. At the end of the year she was recorded as present at the Palace of Greenwich, taking part in the Christmas celebrations of that year.
In around 1518, when Elizabeth was around 18 years of age, it's likely that some romantic or sexual relationship between her and the king had begun. Her father was made Esquire of the Body in this year, a startlingly close position of trust given to very few members of the court. He would have helped the king dress and waited on him for any of his personal needs. It was in this year, that Edward Hall, a Tudor historian, claimed that Henry was in 'the chains of love' with Elizabeth Blount. She was recorded at court in October 1518, but would have already been around 4 weeks' pregnant with the king's illegitimate child. Although the baby's bump would not yet have shown through her clothing, it's likely that by now she was experiencing some of the first signs of pregnancy, such as morning sickness, nausea, headaches or tiredness. It must have been an odd atmosphere serving Katherine of Aragon, knowing that she was pregnant with her husband's child.
In June 1519 she gave birth to a boy, named Henry Fitzroy, at the Priory of Blackmore in Essex. Rather than case the boy or Elizabeth aside, Henry publicly recognised him as his own child. Ambassadors and eyewitnesses recorded the ardent love the king bore his son, giving him the Fitzroy surname in recognition of his royal blood, and creating him Earl of Nottingham and Duke of Richmond and Somerset. At the age of six, Henry Fitzroy was given his own arms, carved into St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle and created a Knight of the Garter. In fact, all evidence points to Henry grooming his son as a fully-fledged future adult member of the royal family. He was given a household of almost 250 people to look after him at Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire, which was overseen by the canny politician Cardinal Wolsey. As he grew up, European leaders entered negotiations for the young duke's marriage to their own influential brides, such as Catherine de Medici, who would later become Queen of France. In the end, Henry Fitzroy married an Englishwoman, Mary Howard, a fellow member of the Tudor aristocracy. Fitzroy was also taught Latin, the language of diplomacy, showing that he was being earmarked as a future statesman by his father.
All this time, Elizabeth Blount was also being taken care of by Henry. Despite Hall's claim that Henry was in love with her, he did not consider taking her as a bride, as he later did with Anne Boleyn. She married the Gilbert Tailboys, a Lincolnshire man, in 1522 and the king granted them a generous wedding gift of cash and property. In November 1529 he was raised to the status of Lord Tailboys of Kyme, but died the following year on 15 April 1530. Now a widow, Elizabeth seems to have dipped her toe back into the court, receiving a New Year's gift, a golden goblet, from Henry in 1532. By this year, Katherine of Aragon had been rejected as Henry's wife, the king believing that their marriage was being punished by God through lack of male issue, and he was in the process of seeking an annulment from the queen. Katherine had provided the nation with a daughter, Mary, but their other children had not survived their first few months or were stillborn. No doubt Henry saw the birth of Fitzroy as 'proof' that the problem did not lie with him. As Elizabeth thanked the king for his generous New Year's gift, he was already in the throes of love with a Norfolk woman named Anne Boleyn, another lady in waiting to Katherine of Aragon.
We might wonder why Henry did not simply marry Elizabeth Blount after he had divorced Katherine of Aragon. She had already proven herself fertile and able to birth a prince, after all. However, their relationship had ended by 1522, when she was then married to Tailboys. At this time, as opposed to 1530, Henry was not looking for a new queen. There was probably still hope that the 37-year old Katherine would birth an heir, and Elizabeth's humble origins could not compete with the queen's illustrious bloodline as daughter of the famous Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. By the time Anne Boleyn arrived at court in the mid-1520s, she had attracted Henry's eye at exactly the moment he grew despondent over his wife's childbearing. Katherine was older - 45 years old - with no sign of a son, and Elizabeth was now married. We have to wonder whether Henry ever later wished he had married Elizabeth, although his swift arrangement of her marriage to Tailboys shows that in 1522, Henry believed there was no future for them together.
No authenticated portrait of Elizabeth Blount survives, although there is a convincing argument that one often identified as Anne Boleyn is in fact her. The image, in the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum, shows a woman with a strong nose and dark eyes, wearing a gable headdress. It's dated to 1525-1527, around the time that her son was receiving his Knight of the Garter title.
Widowed for two years, in May 1532, Elizabeth received an offer of marriage from Lord Leonard Grey, a grandson of Elizabeth Woodville and a relative of the king. Elizabeth seems to have decided against this match and soon afterwards we see her married to Edward, Lord Clinton. While her first marriage seems to have been an organised one, her second seems to have been motivated by love. Wealthy enough to support herself, she did not need to marry a husband for financial support, and also Clinton was 12-13 years younger than her. In 1533 Anne Boleyn was crowned and in the September of that year, the Princess Elizabeth was born. During his marriage to Anne Boleyn, Henry showed he was still amicable with his ex-mistress and her husband, gifting the couple three tuns of Gascon wine annually, in February 1535.
Events at court and at Elizabeth's home ticked along routinely, but, in the following year there was a tragedy for both Elizabeth and Henry's households. In the spring of 1536 Henry Fitzroy's health visibly declined, and he died on 23 July of that year at St James' Palace, aged just seventeen. Henry was said to have been mortified by his son's death. Elizabeth too, must have grieved for the loss of her son, and is recorded at her Lincolnshire home in the autumn of that year with her husband. More adversity was to follow, when Clinton became tangled up in the rebellion named The Pilgrimage of Grace, their home surrounded by rebels. Henry VIII married two more queens - Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves. In 1540, aged around forty, Elizabeth decided to return to court to serve in the household of the king's latest wife, Queen Anne of Cleves. She served alongside some of the more well-known women of the Tudor court such as Katherine Willoughby Duchess of Suffolk, Lady Margaret Douglas and her own former daughter-in-law, Mary Howard. As she carried out errands in the corridors and chambers of Tudor red-bricked palaces, Elizabeth must have looked back to her earlier years of service to the Crown. Her return would have brought back memories of her early years with the royal family, and she would have noticed the vast differences that were now apparent in Henry VIII's personality and physical appearance, contrasting with the young, athletic and generous man she had known in her late teens.
Elizabeth served for just four months to Anne of Cleves, before she died in May 1540. She left six children, two sons and a daughter with Gilbert Tailboys, and three daughters with her second husband Lord Clinton. Clinton remarried twice, continuing to serve later Tudor monarchs, and was especially rewarded by Elizabeth I who created him Earl of Lincoln. He died in 1585.
I really feel for Elizabeth Blount. Chosen as a mistress of the king's, who she had known since she was twelve or thirteen years old, she was presented to his bed and conceived the much-needed son that Henry was so intent on inheriting his realm. The son was illegitimate, but was deliberately groomed to take on a public role as an adult, and perhaps, even as the heir to the throne itself. With Henry having no intention of marrying Elizabeth as he would Anne Boleyn, she was handed over to a husband to help provide for her. She later grieved for his loss, along with that of her son. She probably found love in her second marriage, and returned to court just a few months before her death. She would be a perfect 'historical dinner party' candidate. She had first-hand experience observing Katherine of Aragon as a young queen and in the midst of military organisation. She also had a number of influential women she counted as friends, such as Margaret Douglas and Katherine Willoughby. In the winter of 1518, as she suppressed nausea and the first signs of pregnancy at the age of 18, she would have been the gossip of the court and probably felt uncomfortable around the queen, especially later, when the birth of her son was considered 'proof' of Katherine's 'cursed' marriage to the king. It's also possible, in May 1536, at her Lincolnshire home with Lord Clinton, that she shuddered on learning of the fate of Anne Boleyn, imagining that it could so easily have been her facing the crowds on that hazy morning on the scaffold.
What do you know about Bessie Blount? Is there anything else to add here? Let me know in the comments.
Also, you might also like these posts: Richard and Elizabeth Cholmely of the Tower of London, Exploring Tudor Power Couple's Contributions to History and Why was Henry VIII Obsessed with Producing a Male Heir?
Sources:
William S. Childe-Pemberton, Elizabeth Blount and Henry VIII, Eveleigh Nash, London, 1913
Suspected portrait of Elizabeth Blount: https://conorbyrnex.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/a-portrait-of-bessie-blount-c-1500-1539/
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