The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor (15 page)

Somerset had other matters to concern himself with, as his glorious Scottish campaign of 1547 began to fade into memory. He was faced with a mountain of hard work. The Protector’s government needed money and the surest way of raising this was through taxation, something that could only be agreed by the Lords and Commons in Parliament.
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Somerset also needed the consent of the realm for the significant changes planned in religion and to safeguard his own position as Protector. He carefully sent out summonses to the Lords to attend or send proxies, while ordering county sheriffs to organize elections.

That autumn, a wave of excitement swept the county towns and Parliamentary boroughs as all freeholders worth more than forty shillings assembled to choose their representative. Few had much choice in the matter, since most polls were uncontested. But some elections could be raucous, complete with threats and shouting as the matter proceeded to a vote. Once elected, a new representative could saddle his horse for London, secure in the knowledge that he would be paid a small allowance and expenses, and would enjoy immunity from prosecution until he returned home. For Thomas Seymour too, Parliament looked like an interesting prospect – potentially one in which he could advance his interests.

Interests of a different kind continued to be pursued at Hanworth when Thomas was there. They took a bizarre turn one autumn day, as Elizabeth walked through the neat, autumnal gardens, talking comfortably with her stepmother.

The weather was getting colder now, though Elizabeth could not feel it through the warm layers of her dress. The plump strawberries in their cages were all gone – plucked for the queen’s table before the frost came.
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The gardens had been a favourite of the old king’s, and Elizabeth could still hear his birds twittering in their aviaries as she walked through the ornate gardens, set close to the house and near the park. It was an idyllic spot. Catherine and Elizabeth often crossed a narrow bridge over the moat to the back of the house, taking their exercise. They could then stroll into the orchard if they chose, or even as far as the park, stocked full with deer and other game.

Passing the hedges that were still green, although other plants were beginning to die back in advance of winter, the princess and Catherine saw Thomas approaching them – with his dagger threateningly unsheathed from his belt.
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The air must have crackled with tension as the princess turned to clutch at her stepmother, who held her tightly. Slashing quickly, Thomas proceeded to cut Elizabeth’s dress into a hundred pieces, an action that must have left the princess struggling to preserve her modesty and hold the remains of her garments together amid the debris of cloth now littering the ground.
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Strangely, in clutching her tightly Catherine was effectively offering her up to Thomas’s attentions. Once released from the queen’s grip, the princess, with her dress ‘so trimmed’, rushed to her room, where an astonished Kate Ashley beheld her. Kate chided her on seeing her in such a bedraggled state, but Elizabeth pleaded that the queen had held her while ‘My Lord did so dress it’.

The incident was a shocking one, which Kate sought to conceal at the time.
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Perhaps it was all intended as a kind of practical joke. Yet, on the face of it, Thomas Seymour had tried to strip away the clothes from Henry VIII’s daughter, and with the acquiescence of his wife. If Kate was hoping that the queen would be an ally in reining in Seymour’s unwanted attentions towards Elizabeth, this incident seemed to suggest she was to be sadly disappointed. In the face of such authority, the powerless Kate could do nothing other than complain to Elizabeth that ‘I would My Lord would show more reverence to you although he be homely with the queen’.

Although she had participated in some of the romps in which the princess was tickled in bed, Catherine Parr was now becoming deeply troubled by them. Not long after the incident in the gardens, she called Kate Ashley to her.
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Elizabeth’s lady mistress was surprised by the summons, but came at once. Kate found the queen alone and furious. According to Catherine, Thomas Seymour himself had come to her to complain about Elizabeth’s conduct. He had been in the house, she reported, when he had happened to glance in at the gallery window just as Elizabeth ‘cast her arms about a man’s neck’ in an embrace. Such a sight was an outrage and the queen gave Kate a dressing-down for her negligence in chaperoning the girl. Chastened, Kate vowed to get to the bottom of the matter. She marched away from the room, going at once to seek out Elizabeth.

To her surprise, the princess, who usually confided in her, denied everything. Elizabeth burst into fits of weeping and, with tears running down her face, begged Kate to ask all her women whether it was true. She insisted that it was a lie. Resisting the urge to console her at once, Kate was perplexed. She prided herself on her close relationship to Elizabeth and accounted herself the person with her best interests at heart. She wanted to believe her. Summoning the women, Kate interrogated them. Everyone said the same thing: there was no man in the gallery; the princess had never gone there unchaperoned. By that time, Kate was having considerable doubts herself. It was a crowded household, it was true, but save for Seymour the only other gentleman who had private access to the princess was William Grindal.

For Kate, the idea that Elizabeth could have embraced her scholarly, unworldly schoolmaster in that fashion was so laughable that he could not even be considered a suspect. So, there was no one else – except Thomas Seymour. But Thomas was hardly likely to report
himself
or risk implicating himself to his wife. Instead, as she mused on the matter in the days that followed, Kate came to the disturbing conclusion that the story had been invented by the queen herself, jealous of the palpably deepening relationship between her stepdaughter and her husband. Watching them warily, Catherine must have resolved to act, making up a story in an attempt to get Kate to take better heed ‘and be as it were in watch betwixt her and the Lord Admiral’.

Kate resolved to do just that. It was widely believed that ‘girls hate their parents and relatives because they stand in the way of their love’. Perhaps Elizabeth was also jealous of her stepmother, who possessed Thomas.
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In an increasingly difficult situation, it was no surprise that Catherine leapt at the upcoming Parliament as a chance to separate her husband and stepdaughter.

After a brief visit to Chelsea in October 1547, Catherine returned to Hanworth in November to supervise the packing of her belongings for London.
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In time for the opening of Parliament, the queen, along with at least sixty cartloads of furniture and other goods, moved her household to Seymour Place.
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For the time being, she left Elizabeth behind at Hanworth.

In London, it was less Princess Elizabeth who now occupied Seymour’s thoughts than her half-brother. Although Somerset attempted to control access to Edward, Seymour was able, thanks to the friends he had made in the king’s household, to enter the royal chamber with relative ease.

The young king was in his apartments at Westminster early in November 1547 when Thomas came to him, looking more shifty than usual and carrying a piece of paper intended for the Parliamentary session in his own handwriting, which he asked his nephew to copy out for him.
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When Edward asked what it was, Thomas dismissed it, saying only that it was ‘none ill thing; it is for the Queen’s Majesty’. Edward, though young, was nobody’s fool and he replied sensibly that ‘if it were good, the Lords would allow it, if it were ill, I would not write in it’. Thomas shook his head, urging the boy to comply, saying (as Edward himself later related) that ‘they would take it in better part if I would write’. The king wanted no part of whatever the mysterious business was, desiring his uncle to leave him alone.

Seymour next went to John Cheke, whom he had paid to favour him with the king. He was carrying a piece of paper when he entered the room, declaring to the tutor that it was a bill that he meant to bring to the House of Lords. Disingenuously, he told Cheke that Edward had agreed to write in favour of this suit and he therefore required the scholar to pass it to his charge ‘and get it written of the king, as he had promised him to do’. The king’s schoolmaster scanned his eye over the paper quickly, committing the words to memory. They were written in Thomas’s hand, but as if from the king: ‘My Lords, I pray you favour My Lord Admiral mine uncle’s suit, which he will make unto you.’
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Cheke shook his head, declaring that Paget had already ordered him to ensure that Edward not be permitted to sign any papers. Although Seymour’s money was an incentive for the impecunious teacher, Sir William Paget was a force to be reckoned with and Cheke would not directly contravene his orders for anyone. Frowning, Thomas declared to Cheke that he ‘might do it well enough, seeing that the King’s Majesty had promised him: and although he was an ill speaker himself, yet, if he had that bill, he was sure the best speakers in that house would help him to prefer it’. Cheke refused vehemently to take the bill, and Seymour eventually retired, defeated.

Edward was also musing on the matter. He raised it with Cheke the next time he saw him. The tutor privately told him that he was ‘best not to write’. This was sage advice, since the king’s authority was absolute, even though he had only just passed his tenth birthday. A piece of his writing in the wrong hands could cause real damage. Cheke was therefore relieved when Edward declared ‘that the Lord Admiral should have no such bill signed nor written of him’.
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For Edward and Cheke, at least, it seemed the end of the matter.

Although Cheke could later recall some of the letter’s contents, it is likely that it also contained a request by Edward that Seymour be appointed as his governor – still the main focus of Thomas’s ambitions.
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Thomas intended to take the letter to the Commons himself. His friends were already planted in the Lower House to cause ‘a broil or tumult and uproar’ when the letter was read.
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He was furious to be thwarted; but he still had plans for the Parliament, as it prepared to assemble.

While lurking in the halls around Westminster, Seymour came across an acquaintance, George Blagge, who had previously been attached to the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt and then to the executed Earl of Surrey. He had hitherto led a life of great rises and falls, having narrowly escaped death on the pyre for heresy in the more conservative atmosphere of 1546. His religious beliefs and his desire to remain safely on the right side of the law had naturally drawn him to the Protector, with whom he had only recently served in Scotland.

Blagge owed his knighthood, and his seat in the Commons, to Somerset, so he was in no mood for plotting.
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He considered himself to be an intellectual, with literary ambitions, although he was a poor poet. He also bore a grudge, later gleefully recording that ‘this dog is dead’ when he heard of the demise of his former tormentor, Lord Chancellor Wriothesley. Blagge was an experienced Parliamentarian, and his voice carried weight – as Thomas well knew. When Thomas sidled up to him, waggling a paper and declaring that here was a matter that would come before the Houses, Blagge responded: ‘What is that, My Lord?’, his curiosity naturally piqued.
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‘Marry,’ answered Seymour, ‘requests to have the king better ordered, and not kept close that no man may see him’. He then launched into a rant on the Protector’s manner of raising the boy-king, considering that it would raise a fool rather than a monarch.

Blagge, keeping his expression neutral, asked Thomas who would dare present such a bill to the Commons? ‘Myself,’ answered Seymour.
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‘Why then,’ retorted his companion, ‘you make no longer reckoning of your brother’s friendship if you purpose to go this way to work.’ Thomas dismissed this, declaring that ‘I will do nothing but that I may abide by’. Blagge immediately tried to dissuade Seymour from this course, considering it to be madness and highly dangerous. His words seemed to have some effect. With Thomas’s mind wavering, Blagge pointed out that the Protector would certainly imprison him if he knew what was happening. But at this Seymour laughed. ‘No; by God’s precious soul, he will not commit me to ward. No, no, I warrant you.’ Blagge persisted, declaring that Somerset would send for his brother and lock him away, but Thomas merely shook his head: ‘If the Council send for me, I will go; he will not be so hasty to send me to prison.’ Blagge would not let up, however. He repeatedly questioned Thomas on how he hoped to be released if he
were
committed to prison, to which his companion became visibly discontented. They parted on bad terms; Blagge refused to speak to Seymour again.
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