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number of Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber were replaced by four Ladies of the Bedchamber, eight Gentlewomen of the Privy Chamber and some half-dozen Maids of Honour. While the majority of these received their board and lodgings, not all of them were paid. A number of these posts were honorary and usually occupied by the wives or sisters of the members of Elizabeth’s Privy Council or those holding other important positions in the Court. Some were members of the nobility such as Margaret, Lady Howard of Effingham, wife of the Queen’s Lord High Admiral, and Mary, Lady Sidney, sister of Robert Dudley. Lady Frances Cobham, wife of Lord Henry Cobham, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, complained constantly of the amount of time she was separated from her husband, but nevertheless still managed to give him six children.
    The Maids of Honour were enticed into royal service by the delicious prospect of meeting and marrying a rich and famous member of the Court; however, husband-hunting could prove to be a perilous course of action unless conducted with the utmost discretion. These nubile young ladies were considered fair game for a temporary fling by any hot-blooded male of the Court, while Elizabeth was very possessive of her lady attendants and envious of sexual pursuits that she had denied herself. Thus, Beth Throckmorton, the homely-looking daughter of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, was permanently banished from Court after being discovered conducting a clandestine affair with Sir Walter Ralegh, even though she later became his wife. Lady Mary Fitton, a luscious brunette thought by some to be Shakespeare’s ‘Dark Lady of the Sonnets’, fell into disgrace after being made pregnant by the new Earl of Pembroke, the Queen’s godson. In this particular instance, noblesse declined to oblige and make an honest woman of her, so the unhappy Lady Mary, still heavily pregnant, was sent back to Cheshire from where she had originally come to Court with such high hopes. Lady Mary Grey, sister of the ill-fated Lady Jane, had been appointed one of Elizabeth’s Maids of Honour but had the temerity to marry Thomas Keys, the Queen’s portly Sergeant Porter, without royal permission. The angry Queen consigned Keys to prison and the distraught Mary was destined never to see her husband again. Nevertheless, she was more fortunate than Anne Vavasour, the luckless Maid of Honour who became pregnant by the lusty young Earl of Oxford. She was sent to the Tower. In many respects, the term ‘Maid of Honour’ in Elizabeth’s Court seems to have been somewhat of a misnomer.
    In the earlier days of the male-dominated royal private quarters, the Groom of the Stool was in charge of the bedchamber. This function was now fulfilled by the Chief Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber. The first person to hold this position after Elizabeth became Queen was her long-time servant Kat Ashley. When she died in 1565, her replacement was Elizabeth’s long-serving Welsh attendant, Blanche Parry. Blanche’s tomb in St Margaret’s, Westminster, carries the inscription ‘Chief Gentlewoman of Queen Elizabeth’s most honourable Privy Chamber and Keeper of Her Majesty’s jewels’.
    The other key position in the Privy Chamber was that of Mistress of the Robes, a post that was normally filled by a person of noble rank, such as Lady Frances Cobham who was responsible for all items of clothing within the Privy Chamber. The Queen was a dedicated follower of fashion, and her wardrobe grew continually throughout her reign, bulging with increasingly more exotic outfits that were said to total several thousand in number towards the end of her reign.
    A female monarch in command of the Court, destined never to bring a royal husband into the household, resulted in the King’s side of the Court being scaled back to purely ceremonial status; the important administrative and financial function which it previously fulfilled passed