Elizabeth Somerset, Countess of Worcester: Anne Boleyn's Accuser and Her Will

In 1536 she was named among Anne Boleyn's first accusers. Anne, in the Tower, was worrying that the countess's unborn child did not stir.

On 23 October 1565, the will of Elizabeth Somerset, Countess of Worcester, was proved, the formal step that allowed her wishes to be carried out. She had made it on 20 April. Somewhere between those two dates she had died, in her early sixties, leaving a large family and instructions about what should happen to her possessions.

Among them was the gown she had worn at the coronation of Elizabeth I. She left it to her daughter Anne. The countess had served the new queen's mother, stood beside her at her coronation banquet, and lived through the accusations that ended with her death. Now clothing from the daughter's coronation was passing to another daughter, in another family.

Elizabeth had been born a Browne around 1502, the daughter of Sir Anthony Browne and Lucy Neville. Lucy's father, John Neville, Marquess of Montagu, had been the brother of Warwick the Kingmaker. By 1527 Elizabeth had married Henry Somerset, second Earl of Worcester, as his second wife. The earl was also Lord Herbert of Chepstow, Raglan and Gower, and his power lay along the Welsh border. She gave him at least nine children. At court, however, she belonged to the intimate company of women who attended Anne Boleyn.

At the coronation banquet in 1533, Elizabeth stood on the queen's left throughout dinner. The Countess of Oxford stood on the right. Elizabeth's duties included holding a fine cloth before Anne's face when she wished to spit. It was a small, bodily service in the middle of an enormous public occasion. Rank did not exempt a countess from standing through dinner. It gave her the right to stand close enough to perform the service.

There was money between them too. Anne lent Elizabeth £100. Elizabeth later, after Anne's death, asked Thomas Cromwell not to let her husband learn of her debts. A countess could have a place beside the queen and still have a financial difficulty she preferred not to discuss at home. When Anne went to the Tower, the money had not been repaid.

Then, in May 1536, Anne was taken to the Tower of London.

Elizabeth was pregnant. In the Tower, after anxious questions about her father and her brother, Anne lamented her lady of Worcester, "for by cause that her child did not stir in her body". When the constable's wife asked what should be the cause, Anne answered: "for the sorrow she took for me."

Anne was executed on 19 May 1536. Five days later, a report from court named Lady Worcester as the "first ground" of the case against her. The woman whose pregnancy had troubled Anne in the Tower was being spoken of as the starting point of the case that killed her.

Closeness to a queen could give an accusation weight. A woman who stood beside her chair and served within her household could be presumed to know what happened there. The same access that let Elizabeth borrow money from Anne made her a useful name to attach to reports of Anne's conduct. What she actually said, and why, the record does not say.

Elizabeth's life continued. By Michaelmas that year, the Worcester household accounts recorded the baptism of a daughter named Anne. There was another Anne in the countess's household now.

Henry Somerset died in 1549, leaving Elizabeth a widow. Nearly a decade later, she attended the coronation of Elizabeth I at Westminster Abbey on 15 January 1559. Anne Boleyn's daughter was queen, and a woman who had stood beside Anne at her coronation banquet was still there to witness it. At the first coronation, the countess had been a married woman serving a king's wife. At the second she was a widow attending a queen who ruled in her own right.

Six years later, the gown from that occasion appeared among the possessions she bequeathed. Her daughter Anne was to have something her mother had worn on a day of royal ceremony. A gown could be handed on in a will, to a named daughter, with no doubt about whose it was. What had passed between the countess and Anne Boleyn in 1536 came with no such instructions.

At Chepstow, Elizabeth and Henry share a painted monument under round arches, with the family's arms set above them. Both are carved in prayer. The hands that once held a cloth before a queen's face are joined, and beside her lies the husband from whom she had once asked Cromwell to keep her debts.