I was noted for saying the first thing which came into my mind, so I declared: "Elizabeth sounds dull. I dareswear that if she knows Latin and all those other languages she knows little else."

"I forbid you to speak of the Lady Elizabeth in that way again," cried my mother. "Do you know who she is?"

"She is the daughter of the King and Queen Anne Boleyn. You have told us often enough."

"Don't you understand what that means? She is of royal blood, and it is not impossible that she could be Queen one day."

We listened because our mother could easily be led to forget the purpose of our presence in the solarium and to talk of the days of her childhood; and of course that was more entertaining to us girls than a lecture on the need to apply ourselves to our lessons; and when she was thus enthralled she would not notice that our hands lay idle in our laps.

How young we were! How innocent of the world! I must have been six years old when I first began to take notice, and by then we were in the last stages of the old King's reign.

My mother talked not of the present time, which could have been dangerous, but of the past glories at Hever when as a child she had been taken to the castle to visit her grandparents. Those were the days of glory when the Boleyns' fortunes were rising fast, which was natural because they had a queen in the family.

"I saw her once or twice," said my mother. "I shall never forget her. There was a certain wildness in her then. It was after the birth of Elizabeth and Anne had been desperately hoping for a son. Only a male heir could have saved her then. My uncle George was there at Hever — one of the handsomest men I ever saw... ." There was sadness in her voice; we did not press her to tell us of Uncle George. We knew from experience that such a request might put an end to the narrative and remind her that she was talking to young children of matters beyond their understanding. In due course we discovered that handsome Uncle George was executed at the same time as his sister—accused of committing incest with her. Falsely accused, of course, because the King wished to be rid of Anne in order to marry Jane Seymour.

I often remarked to Cecilia that it was exciting belonging to a family like ours. Death was something we accepted in the nursery. Children—and particularly children of our station—thought lightly of it. When one looked at the family portraits it was said: "This one lost his head. He disagreed with the King." That heads were very precariously held on the place intended for them was a fact of life.

But in the solarium our mother made us see Hever again with its moat and portcullis and the courtyard and the hall where the King had often dined and the long gallery where he had courted our famous relative, the enchanting Anne. Our mother used to sing the songs which had been sung by the minstrels there—some composed by the King himself—and when she strummed on her lute, her eyes would grow glazed with the memories of the brief and dazzling glory of the Boleyns.

Now great-grandfather Thomas Boleyn lay buried in the church at Hever, but our grandmother Mary came to see us now and then. We were all fond of our grandmother. It was sometimes hard to imagine that she had once been the old King's mistress. She was not exactly beautiful, but she had that certain quality which I have mentioned before and which she had passed on to me. I very quickly learned that I possessed it and it delighted me, for I knew it would bring me much of what I wanted. It was indefinable—a certain appeal to the opposite sex which they found irresistible. In my grandmother Mary it had been a softness, a promise of easy yielding; not so with me. I would be calculating, watchful for advantage. Yet it was there in both of us.

In time we learned of that sad May day at the Greenwich joust when Anne had been taken to the Tower with her brother and her friends, and from which she had only emerged to be led to the scaffold. We knew of the King's immediate marriage thereafter to Jane Seymour and the birth of the King's only legitimate son, Edward, who became our King in the year 1547.

Poor Jane Seymour, dying in childbirth, had no chance to enjoy her triumph, but the little Prince lived and was the hope of the nation. Then had followed the King's brief marriage with Anne of Cleves, and after its abrupt dissolution the ill-fated union with Catherine Howard. Only his last wife, Katharine Parr, survived him and it was said she would have gone the same way as Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard if she had not been such a good nurse and the King's ulcerous leg so painful and he too far gone in years to care much for women.

So we entered a new reign—that of Edward VI. Our young King was only ten years old at the time of his accession—not much older than I; and the paragon, Elizabeth, was four years his senior. I remember my father's coming down to Rotherfield Greys, rather pleased with the turn of events. Edward Seymour, the young King's uncle, had been made Protector of the Realm, the title of Duke of Somerset having been bestowed on him; and this now all-important gentleman was a Protestant who would instill the new faith into his young nephew.

My father was leaning more and more towards Protestantism, and as he remarked to my mother the greatest calamity which could befall the country—and incidentally the Knollys family-would be the accession to the throne of Catholic Mary, the King's elder daughter by Catherine of Aragon.

"Then," prophesied my father, "the scaffolds would be stained with the blood of good Englishmen and women, and the dreaded Inquisition which flourishes in Spain would be introduced into this country. So let us thank God for the young King and ask that through His clemency and loving care, Edward VI may long reign over us."

So we knelt and prayed—a custom which I already felt was followed too zealously in our family—while our father thanked God for His goodness to England and asked Him to go on looking after that country, keeping a particular eye on the Knollys family.

Life went on as usual for a few years while we lived as country gentry do, continuing with our studies. It was a tradition in our family that even daughters of the household must be well educated; special attention was paid to music and dancing; we were taught to play lute and harpsichord, and whenever a new dance was introduced at Court we must try it. Our parents were determined to make us ready in case we should suddenly be called to Court. We used to sing madrigals in the gallery or play our instruments there.

We dined at eleven of the clock in the main hall, and when we had visitors we would sit over our meal until three in the afternoon, listening to the talk which enthralled me, for during young Edward's reign, I was growing up fast and taking a great interest in what was happening outside Rotherfield Greys. Then we would sup at six. There was always a good table and a certain amount of excitement because we could never be sure who would arrive to join us. Like most families of our standing we kept open house, for my father would not have had it thought that we could not afford hospitality. There would be great joints of beef and mutton and meat pies of all kind flavored with herbs from our gardens, venison and fish accompanied by sauces as well as conserves of fruit, marchpane, gingerbread and sugar bread. If anything was left the servants would finish it, and there were always beggars at the gates—that community, my mother was constantly remarking, had increased a thousandfold since King Henry had dissolved the monasteries.

There were celebrations at Christmas when we children amused ourselves by dressing up and performing plays. There was great excitement among us as to which one should find the silver penny in the big cake which was made for Twelfth Night and be King— or Queen—for the day; and innocently we believed it would go on like that forever.

Of course, had we been wise we should have seen the portents. Our parents did, and that was why my father often looked very grave. The King was delicate and if anything should happen to him, the heir to the throne was that Mary whom we feared—and we were not the only ones. The most powerful man in the country shared my father's apprehension. This was John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who had made himself virtual ruler of England. If Mary came to the throne it would be the end of Dudley, and as he did not relish spending the rest of his days in prison, nor yet surrendering his head to the ax, he was making plans.

I heard my parents discussing this and it was clear to me that they were very uneasy. My father was essentially a law-abiding man and, try as he might, he could not but accept the fact that the majority of the people would say that Mary was the true heir to the throne. It was an extraordinary situation because if Mary was legitimate, Elizabeth could not be. Mary's mother had been displaced when the King, eager to marry Anne Boleyn, decreed that his marriage of more than twenty years to Catherine of Aragon, was not legal. It was simple logic that if his marriage to Catherine was legal, then his marriage to Anne Boleyn was not, and Anne's child, Elizabeth, a bastard. My family—out of Boleyn loyalty and self-advancement—must of course believe that the King's first marriage was illegal; but because my father was a logical man in most matters, I guessed he had a certain difficulty in preserving his belief in Elizabeth's legitimacy.

He told my mother that he believed Northumberland was going to try to put the Lady Jane Grey on the throne. She had a certain claim, it was true, through her grandmother, Henry VIII's sister, but it was one which few people would accept. The strong Catholic factions throughout the land would stand firmly behind Mary. So it was small wonder that young King Edward's sickness gave my father great misgiving.