In 1554 Mary the Bloody sent the twenty-year-old Princess Elizabeth to the Tower on a charge of crimes against the queen

In 1554 Mary the Bloody sent the twenty-year-old Princess Elizabeth to the Tower on a charge of crimes against the queen. The prisoner's fate was long in the balance, and the partisans of Charles V insisted on an execution. Fortunately, Mary decided otherwise. Two months later the princess was moved to the royal manor at Woodstock, Oxfordshire, far from the coast, so that the commander of the fleet, Elizabeth's great-uncle the Lord High Admiral William Howard, could not interfere in her fate. Mary ordered her sister to be sent by barge, which was not to put in anywhere between the Tower and Richmond, lest Elizabeth's supporters should greet her along the way. And indeed, when the convoy dismounted on the road to Woodstock, the people came out to meet Mary's captive. At Windsor Elizabeth was touchingly welcomed by her servants; the students of Eton College paid her their respects, standing by the road along which a hundred armed horsemen and the princess rode; at Aston the bells were rung in Elizabeth's honour, and at Thame she was received as the heir to the crown. On arriving at Woodstock she was cut off from the world: walks under escort, no visitors, no parcels, no letters. Even the Bible she had asked for was unstitched and examined for forbidden messages in the spine and between the leaves. After 11 months Elizabeth was returned to the royal residence of Hampton Court.