The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor (19 page)

Yet the Protector’s brother was undaunted. Seymour’s early morning visits continued.

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Elizabeth would indeed later show him favour.

Longer days of sunshine brought the gardens at Hanworth back to life as spring 1548 approached, casting off the bitter, cold winter. Catherine’s household returned there in the early spring. Throwing off her furs, the queen could once again stroll through the manor’s leafy grounds. She had been married for more than a year, she was now pregnant and the child had already quickened, stirring in her womb. She should have been content, but her mind was troubled. Glancing over Bible verses, which she diligently copied, she prayed that she would ‘be swift to hear, and slow in giving answer’. She asked herself to ‘be not a privy accuser as long as thou livest, and use no slander with thy tongue’.
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She had to be certain before she accused those closest to her. That certainty soon came. At Hanworth, in the early summer, the scales finally fell from Catherine’s eyes.

The revelation came as the household servants busied themselves with preparations for the birth of what was hoped would be Catherine and Thomas’s ‘little man’.
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To Catherine, her pregnancy after so many years of barrenness seemed a reward for her piety. She firmly believed – as she wrote in a letter – that children were gifts from God, that ‘He’ had comforted her ‘with such a gift’ of a ‘jewel’.
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Just as she had once seen God’s silence as proof of his divine plan for her when she married Henry, she now saw the impending birth as her reward. As her pregnancy advanced, the queen joyfully added an extra panel to the front of her gowns, allowing room for her belly to expand. God’s providence did not, however, extend to easing the discomforts of pregnancy. The queen suffered with morning sickness into the later months of her pregnancy, appearing ‘so sickly’ to those around her.
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Catherine, as a first-time mother, was fascinated by the development of her baby. When Thomas was away, she called upon Mary Odell, who was one of her chamberers, to share her bed. As they lay together, Catherine would guide her friend’s hand to her stomach, so that she could feel the ‘little knave’ kick.
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Thomas, too, was excited at the prospect of an heir, particularly enjoying Catherine’s reports that the ‘baby doth shake his pole’.
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The child’s father hoped that this evidence of vigour would ensure that the baby was strong enough to continue his quarrel with the Protector into the next generation and (as he wrote to Catherine) ‘revenge such wrongs as neither you nor I can at present’.
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While for Catherine maternity was a new and mostly delightful experience, she was anxious to ensure her child’s health, seeking advice on diet and taking long walks in the fresh air.
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She stayed fit, hoping for an easier birth thereby, while Thomas joked that with all Catherine’s good efforts the baby ‘may be so small that he may creep out of a mousehole’. The couple had good reason to be anxious. After all, women of Catherine’s age were more usually first-time grandmothers than new mothers. They had both known many younger women die either during childbirth or shortly after it – as Thomas’s own sister had done. By becoming pregnant at all, Catherine was facing the greatest danger that she had ever known.

Keeping such thoughts out of her mind, she threw herself into preparations for a baby who would be an almost-prince. There was the nursery furniture to be purchased and staff to engage. In particular, the wet nurse would be supremely important. Although some women of Catherine’s class breastfed, it was considered unusual.
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Instead, a healthy and respectable local mother would be engaged to succour the newborn child, imparting – it was believed – something of her character in her milk.

With Catherine preoccupied by impending motherhood, Seymour continued to try to extend his influence over the king. That Easter, which fell on 4 April, Thomas was again at court attempting to gain access to Edward. As always, he could rely on John Fowler for assistance, and the pair talked together, finding a quiet corner while the court was at Greenwich. Thomas still keenly resented the influence of the Duchess of Somerset’s stepfather, Sir Richard Page, over Edward’s household. As he so often did, Thomas lamented his lack of official role with the king, telling Fowler that he would be glad to have the king in his custody in the manner that Page enjoyed.
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Fowler had heard this, or something similar, many times before, but this time there was something new.

Thomas lowered his voice, ensuring that no one else could hear. He whispered that he believed he could take the king. He could bring him through the gallery to his chamber, he thought, before anyone noticed and then spirit him away by horse to Seymour Place. For Thomas, this may have seemed the natural culmination of his ambitions: he wanted to be the king’s governor, so this was one means of obtaining physical possession of the boy. To Seymour’s surprise, Fowler was aghast. Backtracking, Seymour tried to laugh it off. He had spoken only merrily, he assured the attendant, and meant no harm; but a plot to kidnap the king was arguably treason, even if the king’s uncle did not intend to hurt him. Fowler accepted the comments as the joke that Seymour claimed they were. Thomas was prone to wild claims, and Fowler viewed him, as others did, as a man ‘fierce in courage, courtly in fashion, in personage stately, in voice magnificent, but somewhat empty of matter’.
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He put Thomas’s words out of his mind and forgot them. Seymour, however, had been deadly serious. He recalled this ‘merry speech’ nearly a year later, when pressed.

It was no surprise that Seymour began to consider more radical measures in spring 1548. Relations with his brother were getting worse. Catherine was still unable to secure the return of her jewellery and she was growing increasingly furious. As far as she was concerned, she had deposited the jewellery in the Tower for safekeeping and its detention was unlawful. This was also the view that Seymour took. That April, he acquired a new servant, who was immediately tasked with assisting in the recovery of the queen’s jewels.

Sir Anthony Browne, who had helped Somerset secure his protectorship back at Enfield in the cold January of 1547, died on 28 April 1548. He had been a leading conservative at court and one of the men courted by Thomas during the Parliament of 1547. At the same time, Seymour had noted William Wightman, a thirty-year-old Coventry man who had risen from his humble roots as the son of a capper.
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Wightman had been a particular favourite of Browne, owing his seat in Parliament to his patron’s good graces. In late April, though, he was a man thrown off kilter by Browne’s death – and grateful of an offer of employment by so great a figure as Thomas Seymour.

Seymour was determined to make use of the clever young gentleman. Two or three days after Wightman entered his employment, Seymour called for him, ordering him to write to potential witnesses to Henry VIII’s gifts to Catherine.
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Wightman made careful note of his instructions, anxious to please his new employer. He was specifically to ask whether the jewels had come to the queen by gift or loan, in the hope that the answers would support Catherine’s case. In particular, he should implore the witnesses ‘as near as they could to make him advertisement of the very words His Majesty spake at the sending of such jewels or household stuff unto her’. Wightman was assisted in his task by one of Thomas’s lawyers, Richard Weston, and the pair composed the letters together. William Wightman was not, however, to be privy to the replies. Weston took those secretly to his master.

All the lawyers that Thomas consulted said the same thing: that if he could show that Henry VIII had made a gift of the jewels to Catherine then they were hers. Yet, he struggled to prove it. Seymour also lamented the loss of the jewels to his friend Sir William Sharington, declaring that he disliked his brother for it and that he had obtained five legal opinions of learned counsel, all in his support.
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They did him little good. Catherine’s jewels just formed another front in Thomas’s war with his brother. Musing with his devoted servant John Harrington one day, he stated: ‘Some doth think, that there is something that I cannot bear at My Lord Protector’s hands; and indeed I have some occasion to think unkindness in him, if I would so take it; for he keepeth away the queen’s jewels, the which I might attempt to recover by the law, if I would; for the law hath power of him, as well upon other of the Council; but I had rather they were on fire, then I would attempt it.’
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A few weeks later though, at Catherine’s urging, he did attempt it, securing an interview with his brother. Thanks to his position on the Council, Seymour was regularly in London. He was at Westminster on 10 May 1548, from where he wrote a letter to his vice-admirals on navy business.
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He was also present in the Council chamber on 5 June, carefully adding his signature to a letter urging the county justices to prepare for war with France.
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He remained in London for the next few days, in order to find an opportunity to speak to his brother.

Thomas found Somerset calm but indecisive, giving him little hope of the jewels’ return while not leaving him entirely in despair.
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The matter of the jewels was a point of pride for Thomas, but also a highly personal matter for the queen. Among the confiscated items was jewellery bequeathed to her by her beloved mother. Thomas knew how much it meant to her, writing to Catherine after his meeting that he had broken with his brother ‘for your mother’s gift’. Catherine wanted her queenly jewels, as was her right, but she also wanted to possess, hold and wear the few sentimental trinkets that she had received from her mother. Somerset himself acknowledged this but gave no firm answers. As Seymour stood, attempting to cajole him, the Protector promised that once matters had been resolved, the queen would either receive those jewels that were found to belong to her, or be compensated. It was the best that Thomas could achieve, but it smarted. At Hanworth, the queen was livid, writing to her husband that she had become disillusioned, since she had ‘supposed My Lord Protector would have used no delay with his friend and natural brother in a matter which is upright and just, as I take it’. She firmly believed that Somerset retained her jewels out of greed.

She was far from being the only person to hold such an opinion of the Protector, whose lavish building projects were already causing comment. Somerset, who publicly bemoaned the king’s empty treasury, seemed to have unlimited funds for his own projects. From April 1548, while construction of his great Thames-side mansion of Somerset Place was in full swing, he paid out over £10,000 to craftsmen and labourers. The pace of building was relentless, and the palace was almost finished within three years. Its classical facade exuded wealth and power,
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outstripping other buildings in the area, including Seymour Place, which appeared insignificant in comparison. Although Seymour Place was an impressive house, Somerset Place, with its great gallery and withdrawing chamber, was a seat from which England could be governed.
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Vast sums passed through the hands of the Protector’s cofferer, John Pickarell, who would dutifully take his account books to be ‘subscribed with the hand’ of the duke’s auditor.
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(Even Elizabeth’s officers did business with him, receiving on 12 May a payment of £4 30s 16d for her own coffers.) Somerset and his family lived lavishly and ostentatiously, his banners resplendent in gold and silver. By 1548, he was appearing in fine velvet and silks, while his heir, the young Earl of Hertford, looked similarly magnificent. The Duchess of Somerset could purchase her own finery, helped in no small part by the allowance of £400 per year paid to her by her husband. It must have seemed petty, in the extreme, to his brother that Somerset insisted on retaining Catherine’s trinkets, particularly since – as Thomas himself complained – ‘one is her [royal] wedding ring’.
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