Elizabeth

            
            
             Oh Fortune, thy wresting wavering state Hath fraught with cares my troubled wit, Whose witness this present prison late Could bear, where once was joy's loan quit. Thou causedst the guilty to be loosed From bands where innocents were inclosed, And caused the guiltless to be reserved, And freed those that death had well deserved. But all herein can be nothing wrought, So God send to my foes all they have thought.
             On September 7, 1533, at Greenwich Palace near London, a baby girl came into the world. The proud parents were the King and Queen of England, King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.(Starkey 10) The baby girl was named Elizabeth. The birth of Elizabeth had been that she would have been male, so that he could have been heir to King Henry the VIII. It wasn't until two years later that Henry realized he wasn't going to get a healthy male heir from Anne Boleyn. She had miscarried twice before delivering a stillborn son. When Elizabeth was two, her father had her mother arrested, sent to the Tower and beheaded for adultery and treason. (Weir 342) Elizabeth was declared illegitimate after her mother's execution. This was not Henry's first wife. Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII had annulled his marriage with Catherine of Aragon and had broken with Rome to marry Anne Boleyn. His first wife, Catherine had also born him a female child, which they named Mary. He had divorced Catherine in hopes that he would get a male heir from Anne.(Erickson 16) Between the time of Elizabeth's mother's death and 1537, Henry married yet again. The woman was named Jane Seymour and she cared greatly for Elizabeth. She forced Henry to take Elizabeth back into the house, as Elizabeth had been sent away for schooling. In 1537, Elizabeth's new stepmother, Jane Seymour and her father Henry, were eagerly awaiting the son he hoped Jane Seymour was carrying. As it turned out, she was indeed to bear Henry a son, Edward. The birth of this much awaited son however, brought about the death of his mother Jane.