And all the while there was little said of Anne, and little left of her but her child, the young Elizabeth, who had been declared a bastard but who was nevertheless acknowledged as the king’s daughter. Despite her youth and her mother’s shame, she was a valuable card in the diplomatic marriage game and in 1544 she was restored to the succession. A ‘very pretty’, bright and intelligent girl, prematurely cautious. When her elder sister Mary came to the throne in 1553, the 20-year-old Elizabeth found she needed that caution as never before. On Palm Sunday 1554 Anne Boleyn’s daughter was brought by river to the Tower of London, just as her mother had been almost eighteen years earlier. Suspected of plotting rebellion, she spent the next two months in the Bell Tower, followed by almost a year under house arrest in Oxfordshire. In 1558, however, the miracle happened. On Monday, 28 November, to the cheers of the London crowd and the roar of the Tower artillery, Elizabeth came through the gates to take possession of the fortress as queen. The bastardized daughter of the disgraced Anne Boleyn, with her father’s complexion but her mother’s face, splendidly dressed in purple velvet: Elizabeth, by the grace of God, queen of England, France and Ireland, defender of the faith. Is it fanciful to feel that after twenty years, the mother in the nearby grave in the chapel of St Peter was at last vindicated?
“…eyes always most attractive Which she knew well how to use with effect, Sometimes leaving them at rest, And at others, sending a message To carry the secret witness of the heart. And truth to tell, such was their power That many surrendered to their obedience.” -Lancelot de Carles
“Those eyes of yours are like dark hooks for the soul.” -Thomas Boleyn, The Tudors season 1, episode 2