On the 19th May 1554, the future Elizabeth I was released from the Tower of London and escorted to Woodstock, where she was put under house-arrest.
As Elizabeth walked out of the royal lodgings of the Tower, she must have thought of her mother, Queen Anne Boleyn, who had been beheaded exactly 18 years ago, on the 19th May 1536. Anne never left the Tower after her arrest, but her daughter lived and became Queen Elizabeth I.
You can read more about Elizabeth’s imprisonment in my article The Imprisonment of Elizabeth.
Related posts:
19 May 1554 – Elizabeth Released from the Tower of London
Elizabeth Taken to the Tower – 18 March 1554
The Tower of London
Elizabeth the Prisoner
The Fall of Anne Boleyn
Wyatt’s Rebellion 1554
The Imprisonment of Elizabeth
Elizabeth and Mary Part 3
Sir Walter Raleigh Released – 20 March 1616
Mary I Enters London as Queen
Elizabeth I and Mother Figures
Elizabeth Returns to Hatfield
I would have thought it was highly probable that she thought of her mother on a daily basis at this time. It may have given her some comfort knowing that she was in the same rooms as her mother had been in happy times and sad, treading the same boards, looking through the same windows, a closeness returned that she had been deprived of from the age of three. What a strange coinsidense that she was released on the anniversary of her mother’s execution….or was it? Mind games perhaps!!
It had to have been tough when she was in the Tower. She spent all of her time there in the same rooms her mother spent before her execution, staring at the same walls and corridors and looking out of the same widow her mother looked out of on the day of her execution if I’m not mistaken where she was kept. During her walks she saw the places Anne saw in her last days and no doubt the spot of the scaffold where she was beheaded (imagine the mental image she had when she saw it) I bet it was quite unsettling. Also you can’t forget the guards who didn’t like Elizabeth, I’m sure she was taunted daily being told about her mother’s fate and her being soon to follow. It’s a good thing for her mental toughness because most people would break in situations like that.