Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Question from Mike - Elizabeth at Philip and Mary's wedding

Did Elizabeth play a role in the wedding of Mary and Phillip?

[editor's note -- great question! I've never thought about that before!]

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you mean was she a "bridesmaid" or something similar? From everything I have read, Elizabeth was very much out of favor at the time of the various ceremonies solemnizing the marriage between Mary and Philip. During early 1554, she was a prisoner in the Tower. Later, she was transferred to house arrest at a series of manor houses, lastly Hatfield House. It seems unlikely that a person held prisoner or under close guard would also be an honored participant in the wedding of the very person who placed her in prison in the first place.

Anonymous said...

Addendum to my earlier response: Upon double-checking some of the surviving descriptions of the wedding ceremonies found in the Calendar of State Papers-Foreign, Spain (nicely summarized in Carolly Erickson's "Bloody Mary," pp. 375-379), I find no mention of Elizabeth. She was, as I suspected, probably not present.

Anonymous said...

The wedding with philip occured (obviously) after Wyatt's and the other various rebellions against the negotiations. Elizabeth was jailed following the immediate aftermath of Wyatt's rebellion. She was either in the Tower or under house arrest at the time of the ceremony.