Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr (47 page)

And, so it appears, he was true to his word. His morning visits continued in his own house. ‘At Seymour Place, when the Queen lay there, he did use a while to come up every morning in his night-gown, barelegged in his slippers, where he found the Lady Elizabeth commonly at her book: and then he would look in at the gallery door, and bid my Lady Elizabeth good morrow, and so go his way.’ Again, said Kat Ashley, she complained. She told him ‘it was an unseemly sight to come so bare-legged to a maiden’s chamber; with which he was angry, but he left it’. Perhaps, at last, he began to feel the weight of Katherine Ashley’s concern for her mistress. But by then, he might also have sensed his wife’s dismay. Ashley recounted a strange incident in which Katherine reproved her, claiming that Seymour had seen Elizabeth ‘cast her arms about a man’s neck’. This accusation the girl tearfully denied, and, as her governess pointed out, ‘there came no man but Grindal, the Lady Elizabeth’s schoolmaster’. There was, thought Ashley, an all together different slant. She suspected ‘that the Queen was jealous betwixt them, and did but feign this, to the intent that . . . [I] should take more heed, and be, as it were, in watch between her and my Lord Admiral’.
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The most obvious explanation for these events, as remembered by Elizabeth’s governess, is that there was an underlying attraction between Thomas Seymour and the princess that neither
openly acknowledged nor, on the other hand, wished to curtail, or even conceal. Seymour’s behaviour cannot be explained away as that of a surrogate parent who lacked experience in judging what was appropriate behaviour towards a teenage girl. The concept of adolescence did not exist in Tudor England. Elizabeth was a young woman of marriageable age and, as the famous portrait of her painted probably in the last year of her father’s reign shows, she was regal but attractive. Lady Browne, the Irish beauty admired by both the earl of Surrey and Thomas Seymour, had joined Elizabeth’s entourage at the age of about eleven. By the time she was fifteen, she was married to Sir Anthony Browne, a man nearly thirty years her senior. The age gap of twenty-four years between Elizabeth and Thomas Seymour was rather less than that. Elizabeth was a strong-willed and sometimes imperious young lady, very conscious that she was a king’s daughter, who passed her fourteenth birthday in September 1547. Though secure in the affection of her household and her stepmother, she had never encountered the kind of attention she received from Seymour. Perhaps she was a little intimidated, but the excitement of it seems to have outweighed any real fear. At any point, she could have made it very plain that his approaches were repugnant to her, complained to Katherine, the Privy Council, her sister Mary, even the Lord Protector himself, if she had chosen. She was young but not defenceless. No doubt she was confused and later she seems to have been genuinely contrite, but at the time it was probably the most thrilling encounter of her life.

Thomas, for his part, could not desist. His behaviour was not connected with his wife’s pregnancy, or part of some devious, sinister plan to provide himself with marital insurance for the future; it was merely a feature of who he was. He liked the admiration and the company of women. Elizabeth and her giggling maids were the perfect audience for his exuberance and his ego. Still smarting at his relative political insignificance, this half-play, half-serious pursuit of Henry VIII’s younger daughter
was an amusing diversion. Her reactions, and the occasional scolding of Katherine Ashley (who was more than a little sweet on him herself) doubtless encouraged him still more. He might swear his great oaths, but he knew that what he was doing might cause tittle-tattle. Quite simply, he did not care. But in indulging himself with Elizabeth Tudor he risked ruining her reputation and greatly hurting his wife. Yet these considerations were pushed aside, as was the even more serious possibility that all this might yet come back to haunt him if his quarrel with his brother escalated. But between June 1547 and May 1548, when Elizabeth left Katherine Parr’s household, though there may have been rumour and innuendo, there was no public scandal. Katherine Ashley was herself partly to blame for indulging her charge too freely. In the summer of 1547 it was not the fact that Elizabeth was tickled in bed by Thomas Seymour that amazed the duchess of Somerset (who had daughters of her own) but that she was allowed unchaperoned on a barge on the Thames in the evening. And nothing improper reached the ears of Henry and Frances Dorset, the parents of Lady Jane Grey. Thomas Seymour’s plans for their daughter were extremely ambitious, but he seems to have been a kind and responsible guardian to her.

So there remain questions unanswered and unknowable about the ‘romance’ of Thomas and Elizabeth. Its long-term impact on the princess at an impressionable time of her life can only be guessed. In the short term, however, matters reached a point where Katherine Parr felt it necessary to send Elizabeth away. Thomas Parry, while under arrest at the beginning of 1549, gave his version of what had happened. His account was, admittedly, second-hand and based on a confidence from Katherine Ashley. Parry had been questioned on Seymour’s intentions towards Elizabeth in the autumn of 1548, and recalled Mrs Ashley saying ‘that the Admiral loved her [Elizabeth] but too well, and had done so a good while; and that the Queen was jealous of her and him, in so much that, one time the Queen, suspecting the often access of the Admiral to the Lady Elizabeth, came
suddenly upon them, where they were all alone [he having her in his arms]: wherefor the Queen fell out, both with the Lord Admiral and with her Grace also’. Shaken and angry, though perhaps not entirely surprised by what she had witnessed, Katherine sent for Elizabeth’s governess ‘and told her fancy in that matter; and of this was much displeasure. And it was not long, before they parted asunder their families [households]; and, as I remember, this was the cause why she was sent from the Queen; or else that her Grace parted from the Queen: I do not perfectly remember . . . whether she went of herself, or was sent away.’
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Perhaps Parry was being disingenuous here, to try to salvage something of Elizabeth’s reputation, torn to shreds by the admissions of himself and Katherine Ashley. The truth is that Katherine, six months into an uncomfortable pregnancy, could no longer condone the relationship between her stepdaughter and husband. Her physical and mental well-being was too fragile to endure further stress and she knew, much more than Thomas or Elizabeth’s servants, or even the princess herself, how the world would view this behaviour if word spread. So, in May 1548, Elizabeth moved into Hertfordshire to take up residence with Sir Anthony Denny and his wife, Joan, who was Katherine Ashley’s sister. There, after some time for reflection, she wrote to the queen, expressing concern for her health and alluding to the interview that had taken place between them before she left:

Although I could not be plentiful in giving thanks for the manifold kindness received at your highness’ hand at my departure, yet I am something to be borne withal, for truly I was replete with sorrow to depart from your highness, especially leaving you undoubtful of health. And albeit I answered little, I weighed it more deeper when you said you would warn me of all evils that you should hear of me; for if your grace had not a good opinion of me, you would not have offered friendship to me that way that all men judge the contrary. But what may I more say than thank God for providing such friends to me, desiring God to enrich me with their long life and give me grace to be in heart no less thankful to receive it than I now am glad in writing to show it. And although I have plenty of matter, here will I stay, for I know you are not quiet to read. From Cheshunt, this present Saturday.

Your highness’ humble daughter, Elizabeth.
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Elizabeth had evidently heard Katherine out in chastened silence, unable, at that point, to defend herself or give much of an explanation of her behaviour. The queen was the only mother she had ever known, a figure of enormous influence in her young life. And now she realized that she had parted from her with scarcely a word.

Yet she remained in contact with Thomas, apparently with his wife’s knowledge. She held no grudge against him; in fact, quite the reverse. She was keen to remind him of her constancy. Later in the summer, before Katherine’s baby was born, she replied to a message or a letter from him in which he had apparently apologized for not fulfilling a promise. It is not clear exactly what this promise was, and Elizabeth made light of it, assuring him:

My lord,

You needed not to send an excuse to me, for I could not mistrust the not fulfilling of your promise to proceed for want of goodwill, but only the opportunity serveth not; wherefore I shall desire you to think that a greater matter than this could not make me impute any unkindness in you. For I am a friend not won with trifles, nor lost with the like. Thus I commit you and all your affairs in God’s hand, who keep you from all evil. I pray you make my humble commendations to the queen’s highness.

Your assured friend to my power, Elizabeth.
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This is not the language of someone who feared the person she was addressing. The letter has a dignity and gravity that
counterbalance the lurid tales told later about Elizabeth and Thomas Seymour. Nothing else of any correspondence between them survives. Elizabeth continued to exchange letters with the queen as the date for the baby’s arrival drew ever closer. Their peace, it seems, was made. But Elizabeth never saw Katherine or Thomas again.

O
NCE SHE HAD LEFT
their household, the queen and her husband set about repairing their fractured relationship. The preceding months had not all been difficult, and Katherine’s pregnancy was a source of great joy and hope. She must have conceived in November and might have suspected, but not been entirely sure, that she was carrying a child when she and Thomas spent Christmas at Hampton Court with Edward VI. Whatever their domestic tensions, the couple had by no means lost sight of their ultimate goal of an official role in the king’s upbringing. Thomas continued to pay out sums of money for the boy’s personal use, telling him ‘ye are a beggarly king’ because he had little direct resource to reward friends, servants or entertainers at court. This embarrassing gap in Edward’s finances was soon being filled by his uncle via the helpful Fowler. Thomas failed, however, to get the king to sign a bill naming him as Governor of the king’s person. Feeling that he was being pushed into putting his signature to something he did not fully understand, Edward told Thomas that he must follow the proper parliamentary procedures. He also asked John Cheke, his tutor, for advice and was assured that his response was the correct one. Thwarted and angry, Thomas retreated.
¹⁰
Yet still he and his wife did not give up their quest.

But in the early summer of 1548, Thomas Seymour’s primary concern was to ensure that Katherine gave birth to his heir (he was convinced the baby would be a boy) in the most comfortable and pleasant surroundings, with all the state that befitted a queen. So, in mid-June, Katherine set out for Sudeley Castle, her
husband’s property in Gloucestershire, to prepare for the birth of her child. She was often unwell at this time, her only known pregnancy, and she was old by Tudor standards to be having a first child. Her cousin Nicholas Throckmorton described her in his poem as ‘past middle age’ and said she ‘barren was before’. Morning sickness and tiredness caused her much discomfort and even late in the pregnancy she was still suffering – and by now she was very large. Elizabeth wrote to Katherine on 31 July, thanking her for thinking of her and acknowledging ‘what pain it is to you to write, your grace being so great with child and so sickly’. She was clearly pleased to read that Katherine ‘wished me with you till I were weary of that country’ and assured her that ‘although I were in the worst soil in the world, your presence would make it pleasant’.
¹¹

This letter shows that, despite the circumstances of their parting, the queen and her stepdaughter missed one another greatly. However, Katherine had taken Lady Jane Grey with her to Sudeley and the younger girl was a source of comfort as well as providing a focus for the queen’s maternal skills while she awaited the birth of her own child. A large retinue of ladies and gentlemen accompanied the queen and Jane, turning Sudeley into a court of its own. Thomas undertook some hasty building work so that the castle could accommodate his wife and her servants, but he did not have time to make the extensive changes with which he has often been credited.

It was a lovely, tranquil spot on the edge of the Cotswolds, a complete contrast to the bustle and noise of London. Sudeley is just outside the ancient town of Winchcombe, whose origins went back to Saxon times. The castle itself also had a long history, being mentioned in the Domesday Book, though its past was chequered. An earlier owner, William de Tracy, was one of the knights who murdered Thomas Becket; and Richard III, as duke of Gloucester, had used the castle as his campaign headquarters before the battle of Tewkesbury, in which Katherine Parr’s grandfather had fought. Much of its current appearance
and appointments in the mid-sixteenth century it owed to improvements made by Richard when he became king. He added the banqueting hall and the state rooms and might have spent more time there if he had reigned longer. Henry VII gave the castle to his uncle, Jasper Tudor, but after Jasper’s death it reverted to the Crown. Sudeley remained in royal ownership, though it was not much used. Henry VIII made one visit with Anne Boleyn in 1535 and when Edward VI gave it to Thomas Seymour it was in need of refurbishment. Thomas spent
£
1,000 (about
£
340,000 today) getting it ready for Katherine, but pressure of time did not allow him to make any major structural changes.