By Simon Sebag Montefiore
This is the letter that saves a princess. It is the reign of Queen Mary, daughter of Henry the VIII and Queen Catherine of Aragon -a dangerous time for her semi-legitimate half-sister Elizabeth, daughter of Henry the VIII and his short-lived queen, Anne Boleyn, executed as an adulteress and regarded by Mary as a whorish Protestant heretic.
In 1553 when Henry´s successor Edward VI died young, powerful factions tried to impose a Protestant monarch with a tenuous claim, Lady Jane Grey. But Mary was a king´s daughter, even a Catholic one, and she was accepted as the rightful queen. Once she started to reimpose Catholicism and agreed to marry the Catholic King Philip of Spain, she faced a rebellion led by Thomas Wyatt, who planned to replace her with Elizabeth. To force him to implicate Elizabeth, Wyatt was tortured. He was then executed.
Elizabeth is arrested. but the intelligent and vigilant twenty-one-year-old shrewdly appeals directly to her sister. As she is about to be transferred to the sinister and looming Tower of London, where princes and princesses of royal blood have been executed or murdered, she writes this letter. She cites the recent case of the Duke of Somerset, Lord Protector under the young Edward VI, who allowed the execution of his own brother Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour for conspiracy and for trying to marry Elizabeth herself. It is known as the 'Tide letter' because Elizabeth deliberately writes it so slowly that the tide has turned before it is finished - delaying her remand to the Tower for a day. In its well-chosen words, we can hear one of Henry VIII's daughters begging for her life from another. Elizabeth was later taken to the Tower, but then released, On Mary's death, she succeeded to the throne becoming perhaps England's greatest monarch. Her survival would confirm the independent and Protestant path of English history.
If any ever did try this old saying, 'that a king's word was more than another man's oath, I most humbly beseech your majesty to verify it to me, and to remember you last promise and my last demand, that I will be not condemned without answer and due proof, which it seems that I now am; for without cause proved, I am by your council from you commanded to go to the Tower, a place more wonted for a false traitor than a true subject, which though I know I desire it not, yet in the face of all this realm it appears proved. I pray to God I may die the shamefullest death that any ever died, if I may mean any such thing; and to this present hour I protest before God (Who shall judge my truth, whatsoever malice shall devise), that I never practised counselled, nor consented to anything that might be prejudicial to your person any way or dangerous to the state by any means. And therefore I humbly beseech your Majesty to let me answer afore yourself, and not suffer me to trust to your Councillors, yea, and that afore I go it be possible; if not before I be further condemned. Howbeit, I trust assuredly your Highness will give me leave to do it afore I go that thus shamefully I may not be cried out on as I now shall be; yea, and that without cause. Let conscience move your HIghness to pardon this my boldness, which innocence procures me to do, together with the hope of your natural kindness, which I trust will not see me cast away without dessert, which what it is I would desire no more of God but that you truly knew, but which thing I think and believe you shall never by report know unless by yourself you hear. I have heard of many in my time cast away for want of coming to the presence of their Prince, and in late days I heard my Lord of Somerset say that if his brother had been suffered to speak with him he had never suffered, but persuasions were made to him so great that he was brought in the belief that he could not live safely if the Admiral lived, and that made him give consent to his death. Though these persons are not to be compared to your Majesty, yet I pray to God the like evil persuasions persuade not one sister against the other, and all for that they have heard the false report, and the truth not known. Therefore, once again kneeling with humbleness of heart, because I am not suffered to bow the knees of my body, I Humbly crave to speak with you Highness, which I would not be so bold as to desire If I knew not myself most clear, as I know myself most clear, as I know myself most true. And as fr for the traitor Wyatt, he might peradventure write me a letter, but on my faith, I never received any from him. And as for the copy of the letter sent to the French King, I pray God to confound me eternally if ever I sent him a word, message, token, or letter, by any means, and to this truth, I will stand in till my death.
Your Highness's most faithful subject, that hath been from the beginning and will be to my end.
ELIZABETH
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