The House of Tudor (33 page)

The New Year came in and the Lord Admiral’s career approached its predestined climax. Tales of his various ‘disloyal practices’ had become too numerous and too circumstantial to be ignored any longer and in January 1549 the faction headed by John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, which had been waiting patiently for the Seymour brothers to destroy one another, decided that the time had come to start applying pressure on the Duke of Somerset. The Protector seems to have made a last minute effort to avert disaster by trying to send Thomas abroad, but it was too late - Lord Seymour of Sudeley had already tied a noose round his neck with the rope so generously paid out to him. He was arrested on 17 January and the Council started on the business of rounding up his associates. John Fowler of the Privy Chamber, Katherine Ashley and Thomas Parry were all taken away for questioning, while Sir Robert Tyrwhit was sent down to Hatfield to extract a confession from the Princess Elizabeth.

When Elizabeth was told that her governess and her steward had been arrested ‘she was marvellous abashed and did weep very tenderly a long time’, demanding to know whether they had confessed anything or not. This sounded promising and Robert Tyrwhit did not anticipate any difficulty in getting a useful statement out of her. All the same, their first interview was disappointing. The princess, it seemed, had nothing to tell him and Tyrwhit felt obliged to warn her ‘to consider her honour and the peril that might ensue, for she was but a subject’. Having allowed Anne Boleyn’s daughter to digest this scarcely veiled threat. Sir Robert went on to advise her to be frank with him. If she would ‘open all things herself, then her youth would be taken into consideration by the Protector and the Council and the ‘evil and shame’ ascribed to Mrs. Ashley and to Parry, who should have taken better care of her. But this was not the way to approach Elizabeth Tudor, always fiercely loyal to her friends. ‘And yet’, wrote Tyrwhit, ‘I do see it in her face that she is guilty, and do perceive as yet she will abide more storms ere she accuse Mistress Ashley’.

At their next interview Elizabeth told Sir Robert how the Admiral had kindly offered her the use of Seymour Place when she came up to London to sec the King (Durham House, where she usually stayed, being temporarily unavailable); how she had once written him a note asking some small favour for her chaplain; how there had been a suggestion that the Admiral might pay her a visit but Mrs. Ashley had thought perhaps better not, knowing how people gossiped. It was all very innocent, very trivial and quite beside the point -just the ordinary friendly intercourse between two members of the same family. Still, it was a start and Tyrwhit hoped that more would follow now that he had begun ‘to grow in credit’ with the princess. At the same time, he told the Protector, ‘I do assure your Grace she hath a very good wit, and nothing is gotten of her but by great policy.’

42 Katherine Parr, a portrait attributed to William Scrots.

43 Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and brother of Jane Seymour. On Henry’s death he became Lord Protector for his nephew, Edward. A miniature by Nicholas Milliard.

44 The Lord Protector’s brother, Thomas Seymour, who married Henry VIII’s widow, Katherine Parr.

45 Edward VI, a portrait by an unknown artist.

46 The coronation procession of Edward VI. The procession is seen leaving the Tower, moving along East Cheap and down the Strand to Charing Cross and Westminster.

47 Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, father of Jane, Katherine and Mary Grey; an engraving after a contemporary portrait.

48 Frances Brandon, Dowager Duchess of Suffolk, with her second husband, Adrian Stokes, her Master of Horse and sixteen years her junior, painted by Hans Eworth, 1559.

49 John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. Having successfully deposed Somerset, Dudley married his own son to Lady Jane Grey intending to make her queen on Edward’s death.

50 Lady Jane Grey, the unfortunate victim of Northumberland’s plotting.