The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor (28 page)

Catherine’s death left Sudeley swathed in a pall of grief heavier than any of the black hangings in the chapel. The household was in limbo while its future was decided. Not long afterwards, Thomas’s servant William Wightman sat down at Sudeley with the queen’s first cousin, Nicholas Throckmorton. It was a companionable meeting, in which they debated the ‘great loss’ Seymour had suffered in the death of ‘so notable a wife’. Throckmorton hoped that the death would bring about a reconciliation at court and ‘make him more humble in heart and stomach towards My Lord Protector’s Grace’. The gentleman, whose mother had been Catherine’s aunt, believed that the breach with the Protector’s wife could also be healed, now that the chief cause of their rivalry was gone. He dearly hoped that Seymour would ‘alter his manners, for the world beginneth to talk very evil... of him, both for his slothfulness to serve, and for his greediness to get’. Seymour was, he said, ‘one of the most covetous men living’.
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Throckmorton was not the only person to have noticed Seymour’s idleness. William Sharington once asked him why he ‘gave himself no better to serve, seeing that every other man did do willingly offer to serve’.
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‘Hold thy peace man!’ was Thomas’s response. Sharington had a point though – Seymour’s predecessors as Lord Admiral had known the names of every man on their ships, but Thomas shirked his duties.
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As they sat together at Sudeley, Throckmorton was pleased to see Wightman so closely in agreement with him. He continued, saying that Seymour ‘is thought to be a very ambitious man of honour’ and ‘it may so happen that, now the queen is gone, he will be desirous for the advancement to match with one of the king’s sisters’.
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Wightman agreed, assuring him that if Thomas seemed to court either princess, ‘I will do all that I can to break the dance otherwise; for although he is my lord and master, I had much rather he were in his grave, than ever he should make any such attempt. Which must needs every way be his utter ruin and destruction.’
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Wightman, being a lawyer, knew that to marry one of the princesses without royal consent was dangerous. Surprisingly, Throckmorton actually rather liked Thomas, considering him ‘hardy, wise, and liberal’, but it was ‘his climbing high, disdained by his peers’ that he believed would lead Seymour to his ruin.
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In the days following the funeral, however, Thomas appeared to have no plans. He remained directionless and ‘heavy’, thinking only that his ‘great loss’ would force him to break up his household and lead a bachelor’s life once more.
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He was not immediately thinking of his next marriage, while all thought of wedding Jane Grey to the king was abandoned. In his depression, he wrote to her father, telling him that he considered their agreement dissolved. He would send her home, he said, to those he ‘thought would be most tender on her’.

Thomas’s shock did not last for long though, and he quickly changed his mind. After being ‘better advised of myself, and having more deeply digested whereunto my power would extend’, he thought that he would keep his household together, allowing him to continue to live in regal splendour. He therefore began calling back those that he had sent away, and kept on the gentlewomen of Catherine’s privy chamber, as well as the maids who had waited on her and the other women who had lived with her. In addition, he re-employed the 120 gentlemen and yeomen who had previously served the queen. In order to bring many of them back, he offered favourable terms, promising some of them a month’s holiday to see their friends and family before they returned to him. Keeping Catherine’s queenly household together suggested only one thing: that he had decided to take a second royal bride.

Seymour now wanted to hold onto Jane Grey too, writing on 17 September 1548 to her father that ‘I mind now to keep her, until I shall next speak with your lordship’. Indeed, unless he heard Dorset’s ‘express mind to the contrary’ he would retain her. For a chaperone, he would bring his own mother, the elderly Margery Seymour, to become (he doubted not) ‘as dear unto her, as though she were her own daughter’. Whether Margery was a suitable guardian for Jane was an open question: she was past seventy, and only two years later would write that she was ‘both of ill mind and ill in body’.
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But, already living in Thomas’s house at Bromham in Wiltshire, where she had been since before the death of Henry VIII, she was conveniently close at hand – and available.
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It was a simple matter for her youngest son to persuade her, and for her few attendant gentlewomen to pack their bags for Sudeley. For his own part, Seymour intended to continue as Jane’s ‘half father and more’, assuring her actual father that all his household would care for her diligently.

Thomas’s letter was sent quickly to Bradgate in Leicestershire, where the marquess’s family were spending the summer. Jane’s father knew very well that the widowed Seymour was not now, either politically or socially, the man he had been only a few weeks before. After discussing the letter with his wife, Dorset replied on 19 September. He was full of superficial courtesy, noting the offer of a home for his daughter, as well as acknowledging Seymour’s ‘most friendly affection towards me and her’. Yet, all things considered, he felt that the best person to continue her upbringing was his own wife. Jane’s mother, with a combination of ‘fear and duty’, could ensure she was ‘framed towards virtue’. He assured the Admiral that he did not mean to withdraw any part of his earlier promise, confirming that Seymour would still be consulted in the arrangements for Jane’s marriage. Yet, he felt that she really should be back with her mother where she could address her mind ‘to humility, soberness and obedience’. He appealed to Seymour’s ‘fatherly affection’ to see the wisdom of this.

The Marchioness of Dorset – Henry VIII’s formidable niece, Frances Brandon – also wrote to Thomas that day, thanking him heartily for his offer to keep Jane with him.
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However, she also declined his offer, promising only that she would be ready at all times ‘to account for the ordering of your dear niece; but also to use your counsel and advice in the bestowing of her, whensoever it shall happen’. The couple must have wondered whether Seymour’s attempts to retain Jane, and the recall of Catherine’s household, were a prelude to his engagement to their daughter. Frances’s own father had taken a child ward as his final bride, and such practices were common. And they had bigger plans for Jane than marriage to Thomas Seymour; indeed, already the marquess was in discussion with the Protector about a match with Somerset’s heir.
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Dorset’s letter cannot have been a surprise to Thomas, who had already offered to visit Bradgate to discuss the matter further, hoping to arrive by 20 or 21 September. Unfortunately, as he prepared to set out he was forced to postpone the trip in order to journey to London instead. It was less than three weeks after his wife’s death, but his presence was urgently required at court with regard to his own affairs.
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He hoped that Jane’s living arrangements could wait for the moment.

Seymour arrived in London around 20 September. Still feeling the loss of his wife, he stayed at Chelsea.
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There, he found Catherine’s sister, the witty and charming Anne Herbert, who had moved to Chelsea following the queen’s death. She was beginning preparations for handing the house back to the Crown. The manor, as so much of Catherine’s property, had only been the queen’s for life; but, as the place where he wooed her only the year before, it was filled with memories for the widower. This was Thomas Seymour’s last visit to the house.

While at Chelsea, Seymour received a visit from Mary Cheke, wife of the king’s tutor. She had been sent by the Duchess of Somerset, who was staying at Syon. As Nicholas Throckmorton had predicted, it was the queen rather than Thomas who had been the focus of the duchess’s dislike, and she now sent a message to Seymour to ‘comfort him for the queen’s death’. The Protector’s wife was effectively putting out private feelers for a reconciliation – in public everyone insisted that Lady Cheke was coming to see Anne Herbert. Thomas, however, was in no mood to make friends again with his brother or his wife.

On his way to court, Seymour called on his brother-in-law, William Parr, Marquess of Northampton, who was as disenchanted with the regime as he was.
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The pair talked at length about the suits that Thomas had to pursue with the Protector, regarding the queen’s servants, her jewels and other objects that he was claiming had belonged to her. Thomas told Northampton that if these suits proceeded well, he would remain at court; but that if they did not, he would immediately return home to the countryside, ‘the which life he said he liked well’. Thomas was jovial and friendly with his brother-in-law, promising to lend him money or anything else if he ever needed it, as well as giving him a few valuable trinkets as gifts. Seymour showed Northampton ‘much friendship and kindness’.

As summer’s fruitfulness gave way to autumn, much of the court began to return to London. Even Princess Mary left her estates in East Anglia and headed towards her brother’s capital.
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The plague was still present, however, so many chose to stay on the outskirts of town, where the cleaner air was believed to protect against disease. The Protector travelled to Oatlands Palace to see the king later that month, bringing the French ambassador with him.
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Most of the time, he insisted that the Council meet at his house in the pleasant rural meadows of Syon, close to the village of Isleworth and the Thames. It was there that he met his brother in late September 1548, and – like his wife – he looked for a reconciliation. He had hoped that Catherine’s demise had removed the cause of their disagreements, and he spoke to his brother at length. Seymour was far from abandoning his ambitions, however, and he boldly stated that Princesses Mary and Elizabeth should be allowed to marry in order to settle the succession.
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Somerset would have been a fool not to understand that his brother was putting himself forward as bridegroom, and he angrily dismissed him. Nothing satisfactory was concluded, with Thomas walking away shaking his head. He later said that he would be very wary of trusting his brother.
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The rivalry remained as heated as ever. Thomas was still not offered the preference he was convinced was his due. He was heard to say, the next time he saw William Sharington, ‘that it will be strange to some when my daughter comes of age. She shall take place above My Lady of Somerset for then she shall be taken as a queen’s daughter, not as my daughter’.
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He was also still determined to secure Catherine’s jewels, writing to Princess Mary that autumn to request her assistance. His wife had always told him that Mary ‘knew and could right well testify’ that the jewels had been given as gifts. Would she now condescend to writing a few lines as a witness statement?
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She appears to have refused, no doubt wanting to stay well away from a dispute that was tearing apart the brothers’ relationship.

As Seymour had predicted to Northampton, he did not tarry following his heated meeting with the Protector. He was already formulating plans for the future. As he set out westwards, he decided to stop at Mortlake Park, which lay on the river a little further west than Chelsea. There, he found Sir Robert Tyrwhitt and his wife Elizabeth, who, like Anne Herbert, had left Sudeley following the queen’s death.
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Now Thomas hoped to win the support of these two close former friends of Catherine. After discussing Divinity with the upright Lady Tyrwhitt over dinner, Seymour informed Sir Robert that he had spoken to his brother on the subject of the princesses’ marriages. ‘That was divinity indeed,’ said Tyrwhitt, ‘for whosever married one of them, without the consent of the King’s Majesty, and them whom he put in trust for the same, I would not wish me in his place’. ‘Why so?’ queried Thomas icily, ‘I put case, I had married one of them, were it not surety for the king? Am not I made by the king? Have not I all that I have by the king? Am not I most bounded to serve him truly?’ His exasperation was clear, yet mystifying to Seymour. Surely they must see – as he did – that it was logical for him to marry one of the princesses?
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Sir Robert, who, like his wife, in reality hated Thomas, did not think it logical at all. He warned sharply that whoever married one of the princesses without consent, ‘let him be stronger than they [the Council] be, if they catch hold of him they will set him up’. Thomas said nothing, spending the night as an unwelcome guest with the Tyrwhitts before riding swiftly home for Sudeley. Although he knew he could not count on their backing, he took Sir Robert’s words to heart. If he wanted to marry Elizabeth he needed either his brother’s consent or strength enough to oppose him. And for the latter, he needed an army.

Thomas arrived back at Sudeley in the last week of September to find himself in the midst of a domestic drama. Undeterred by his written persuasions regarding Jane Grey, the Marquess of Dorset had made the journey south from Leicestershire to collect his daughter while Seymour was carrying out his business at court.
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Jane, who had thrived under Catherine’s care, was probably not best pleased to see her father, whom she would later accuse of cruelty towards her.
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But she was compelled to set out on the 80-mile journey to Bradgate, since Dorset was ‘fully determined’ that she should no longer live with Seymour.
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