Book Review: The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queen by Nicola Clark

A most compelling and empathetic account of women for too long discounted, an exceptional book

Many books are written about the Tudors every year and it gets increasingly difficult to find fresh angles that enhance our understanding of the sixteenth century, and those that reigned. What is there to be said that hasn't been said before, only differently? 

Well, as Dr Nicola Clark consummately proves in her first trade narrative offering, a behind-the-scenes peek at the Tudor court that builds on years of research on women’s roles during the sixteenth century, there is much yet to be explored.

In her preface, Clark explains that ladies-in-waiting were, simply put, women selected to serve the queen in any way she required, though it should not be assumed they were mere servants in the traditionally understood sense. Yes, they performed menial tasks, but these carefully selected few, often well-raised themselves, were expected to be the queen’s ‘confidantes and her chaperones’, the only women permitted to enter the queen’s private chambers where they wiled away their days helping their mistress get dressed and undressed, looking after her clothes and her jewels, helping out with the sewing, and generally engaging in conversation, whether serious or light.

But Clark is at pains to show, rightfully so, that they also were so much more. They were spies, whistleblowers, therapists, political agents, religious reformers, they were women that were exceptional and sometimes not so exceptional. But they were, like all others regardless of rank, status or accomplishment, women who mattered. As Clark puts it, they were ‘intimate and underused witnesses to the one of the most tumultuous periods of pre-modern history’, women forced to make choices, between birth family, marital family, their children, their queen, and even their God. Clark sets out to follow, for the first time, how these women collectively navigated this tumultuous tight rope in an ever-changing and scary world, when so many were at the whims of one man’s changeable nature, and to ‘pay attention’ to those who seem to be no more than background figures. In this, she unquestionably, and triumphantly succeeds.

In most historical depictions of the period, ladies-in-waiting are in the background, visible but voiceless, fashionable but immaterial. If they merit any attention, if is for hushed gossiping, flirtatious glances, and theatrically shimmying their floor-length dresses. For this reason, they, collectively or individually, have escaped the attentions of historians and readers alike, dismissed as being of little interest. They are, after all, female servants in a man’s world – what stories do they, of all the people at the Tudor court, surrounded by magnates, courtiers, ambassadors and musicians, have to tell? Fortunately, Clark has been able to show how foolish this notion has been.

The book is constructed in three parts, covering the years 1501-1529, 1529-1536, and finally 1536-1547. In Part One, we are quickly introduced to Maria de Salinas, a Spaniard who accompanied Katherine of Aragon to England at the turn of the century, though interestingly she was not initially close with her mistress or enamoured with her new home, writing in a letter to Spain ‘I want my departure so much’. But circumstances would soon dictate that Maria would become close with Katherine, particularly when most of the other Spaniards that had accompanied them from Spain returned home. Maria would come to occupy a position of complete trust at Katherine’s side, prompting an envious Spanish ambassador to note the queen loved Maria ‘more than any other mortal’.

Their bond would be total, a sense of mere duty giving way to a personal connection that spanned decades. Through Clark’s research, effortlessly conveyed to the page, we encounter how Maria coped with the cultural, linguistical and political changes she was forced to confront, and how she never wavered in her utter devotion to her mistress. Through the years of penury that Katherine endured as a young teenager after the death of her first husband Arthur or the political and personal ostracism of her later life after Henry VIII repudiated their marriage, Maria never wavered.

When Katherine lay dying, outcast and alone, Maria rallied to be at the side of the woman she had first began serving three decades earlier. Knowing permission to see Katherine would not likely be granted, Maria rode 65 miles in the January cold to the ostracised former queen anyway, knowing it is perhaps better to ask for forgiveness after than permission before. Upon arriving, she was wet, cold and muddy, and pleaded with the guards for access to the indoors, claiming she had fallen off her horse. Whether she had fallen or was faking it, Maria was allowed in, and was soon at Katherine’s bedside for the late queen’s final moments. As Clark puts it, Maria had served Katherine ‘in better and worse times, both richer and poorer, in sickness and in health’, and maintained that until death parted them. The levels of dedication bring goosebumps to the reader five hundred years later, conveyed with great sensitivity by the author.

Elsewhere, we soon encounter other ladies-in-waiting and explore their equally dramatic experiences in and around the Tudor court, women like Elizabeth Blount, who famously became Henry VIII’s mistress and mothered his child, plus Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour, ladies who remarkably became queens. The life and curious intrigues of Jane Boleyn (nee Parker) are discussed in considerable detail, collusions which would lead her to the block, the first lady-in-waiting to be executed.

We also delve into the lives of Elizabeth Stafford, the duchess of Norfolk who as lady-in-waiting to Katherine of Aragon found herself religiously and politically at odds with her niece-by-marriage, Anne Boleyn, pulled in two directions and forced to levy her conscience against the reality of her situation. We also follow her daughter Mary Howard. How does the duchess and her daughter reconcile their sense of duty when it pertains to a new queen they believed was, in essence, no better than they? Others explored include Gertrude Blount and Anne Basset, the latter of whom was a maid of honour to no less than four of Henry VIII’s queens.

These ladies, then, were forced to deftly manoeuvre the political, religious and sexual chaos that existed in Henry VIII’s England. They had the fortune, or perhaps misfortune, to wield front-row seats in an increasingly unstable if transformative period where many great and not-so-great people were gambling with their lives with their every decision.

What we learn from Clark, then, are that these ladies, drawn from across the social ranks, are not silent women, but rather figures with ambitions, hopes, and desires of their own, and in some cases, even schemes that threaten to stifle the best-laid plans of the kingdom’s great men. Being a lady-in-waiting at the Tudor court need not have been toothless role. These are the women that dressed the queen, sat with her and talked, sewed with her, served as her secretary, plotted with her, danced with her, and played games with her. This went on for day after day, week after week, and in many cases, year after year. They saw, they watched, and in more cases than has been appreciated before this book, they acted. When their queen died or was removed, the knock-on effect could be devastating, even deadly, for her ladies.

Thanks to the ocean-like depth of Clark’s research, honed across many years, we encounter all facets of the human condition in her ladies. There are acts of touching devotion in death, like when Maria Salinas and her daughter Katherine Willoughby serve as chief mourners for the ostracised and outcast Katherine of Aragon, who in turn bequeathed money to her most dedicated ladies-in-waiting in her will, notably listed before anyone else. Some were given life-changing sums, women like the orphaned Elizabeth Darrell, Blanche Twyford who was given fifteen times her yearly salary, and others.

There are the schemes of the wily Gertrude Blount, loyal to the memory of Katherine of Aragon who in 1536 was implicated in a plot to bring down her former colleague Anne Boleyn, revealing sensitive information to the Spanish ambassador Eustace Chapuys. Gertrude, of course, could not bring this about herself, but could provide ammunition to others that could be weaponised when the time is right, which in itself reveals much about the soft power these ladies-in-waiting could possess. They might not be able to change their world, but they could help provide the sparks could light the fire that would bring change.

Such meddling could, of course, prove dangerous. Though Anne Boleyn was, technically, the first former lady-in-waiting executed, in 1541, her sister-in-law Jane Boleyn went to the block, found guilty of assisting in the adultery of Henry VIII’s fifth wife, Katherine Howard. First, she was forced to watch Katherine die, then with blood still on the scaffold, she was next. Though noblewomen had been killed in previous years by Henry VIII, Jane was the first serving lady-in-waiting to be executed.

The waiting game, always complex, had, under the tyrannical Tudor king, become an altogether more dangerous proposition. To survive, as Clark articulately puts it, ‘took courage, audacity, talent and a degree of luck’. Though some of the protagonists may be feted as exceptional women in a patriarchal world, Clark is also at pains to, rightfully, note that some were also ‘not so exceptional’, though no less deserving of respect or being illuminated. All have worth.

What I particularly appreciate about Clark’s research is that she hasn’t chosen to aggressively pursue every lady-in-waiting and insipidly regurgitate a long list of repetitive facts devoid of storytelling. A lesser author may have done this. As a result, the arching narrative is vibrant, immersive even, the weight of research conveyed concisely, and any observations delivered with rational thought devoid of personal prejudice, which is more difficult that it seems. When it comes to the Six Wives, too many accounts drift into playing Henry VIII’s consorts off against one another, which can distract from the overall work. Clark thankfully avoids this trap, and delivers excellence.

With everything considered, most notably the authoritative exploration of lesser regarded sources to deliver a most compelling and empathetic account of women for too long discounted, this is truly an exceptional book. As Clark posits, ‘we were never supposed to know stories like this. It is important that we do’.