The perils of waiting on a Tudor queen

At 7 o’clock on a bleak February morning in 1542, King Henry VIII’s fifth wife Katherine Howard, so enfeebled by fear and misery that she could hardly stand, was half-led, half-carried from her cell in the Tower of London to the scaffold in a nearby courtyard. Watching as the axe fell on her mistress’s neck, and knowing it would be her turn next, was her lady in waiting Jane Rochford.

This grisly scene illustrates the horror that underlay the glamour and magnetism of a court where ambition, intrigue, plot and counter-plot swirled in a giddying maelstrom and where balancing on the slippery tightrope of Henry’s moods was essential. Threaded through with the stories of individual maids of honour, this is Tudor history from the perspective of the women who formed the households of Henry’s consorts. Then, says Nicola Clark, women were regarded merely as pawns in a family’s upward rise via a good marriage, or as reproductive vessels to ensure that family’s survival. Yet their influence has been hugely underestimated.

These female attendants were far more than the decorative accessories demanded by protocol and status. The maid of honour – young and single – or the more senior, married lady in waiting could be a close friend of the queen, her confidante, chaperone, a spy from the enemy’s camp or conduit from and to the queen. Maids of honour were constantly on display, expected to wear the latest fashions (here Anne Boleyn, with the style and allure of her teenage upbringing in the sophisticated French court, stood out) and converse elegantly with foreign envoys. For pretty, ambitious girls like Anne Basset, the 15-year-old daughter of Lady Lisle, a place at court offered what was then the goal of every aristocratic family: the chance of a brilliant marriage.