Tudor Women: Queens and Commoners (17 page)

Thomas Seymour never indulged his taste for horse-play with the other young girl living under his wife's roof, but he was taking a close interest in her future. The provisions of her great-uncle's Will had dramatically increased the political importance of Lady Jane Grey, and the Admiral, with his usual optimism, saw no reason why this should not be turned to his own advantage. He therefore opened negotiations with the Marquess of Dorset, and, as that gentleman later admitted, 'certain covenants' were entered into. Put rather more bluntly, Dorset agreed to sell his daughter's wardship and marriage for the sum of two thousand pounds. The Admiral, he was told, would arrange to marry the Lady Jane to the King, and on this understanding the bargain was struck and several hundred pounds handed over on account.

No one, naturally, thought it necessary to consult the Lady Jane about these interesting plans, nor would she have expected it. At nine years old, Jane Grey was absorbed in her lessons and, encouraged by the Queen, who had become very fond of her, was already beginning to develop into a notable scholar and paragon of Protestant piety. Had her opinion been asked, Jane would undoubtedly have chosen to remain with the Queen and the Lord Admiral. She didn't get on with her parents and was bullied at home, but.at Chelsea she was petted and praised, her diligence and 'towardness' were openly discussed and admired and her brilliant prospects whispered over by the ladies of the household. But for Jane, as for Katherine Parr, this happy time was destined to be tragically brief.

In the early spring of 1548, after three barren marriages, Katherine knew herself to be pregnant, and perhaps for that reason she was no longer quite so complaisant about her husband's playful attentions to her stepdaughter. Matters came to a head one day when she came upon the two of them locked in an embrace which was not in the least playful, and as a result Elizabeth was sent with her servants to pay a protracted visit to Sir Anthony and Lady Denny at their house at Cheshunt. Whatever her private feelings of hurt and betrayal, Katherine was very careful to avoid any appearance of an open breach. She knew that gossip, once started, would be unstoppable and would cause irreparable damage to them all, but especially to Elizabeth. So the Queen and the Princess parted affectionately, and a penitent Elizabeth showed that she appreciated the tact and generosity of the woman to whom she already owed so much. 'Although I could not be plentiful in giving thanks for the manifold kindness received at your Highness' hands,' she wrote from Cheshunt, '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.' Luckily everyone knew that the Queen, now in the sixth month of an uncomfortable pregnancy, and the Admiral were planning to spend the summer on their Gloucestershire estates, and in the general business of packing up it had been possible to contrive Elizabeth's move without arousing curiosity.

Any unpleasantness between husband and wife was quickly smoothed over. Katherine knew that, like any other wife, she must expect a man's fancy to stray from time to time, and probably she was a good deal more worried by her husband's ill-advised political activities. She supported him loyally in his personal quarrels with the Protector, but she was far too intelligent and politically experienced herself not to see the danger of his wild, whirling schemes for bringing down his brother's government and seizing control of the King. Very likely she was pinning her hopes on the coming child. If Thomas Seymour had a son to consider, it might steady him and help him to settle down and forget his various grievances. The baby had quickened now, and Katherine wrote from Hanworth in Middlesex, another of her dower houses, to her 'sweetheart and loving husband' who had been delayed in London on business: T have given your little knave your blessing, who like an honest man stirred apace after and before; for Mary Odell being abed with me had laid her hand upon my belly to feel it stir. It hath stirred these three days every morning and evening, so that I trust when you come, it will make you some pastime.'

Katherine's baby, a girl christened Mary, was born at Sudeley Castle on 30 August, and the long-suffering Lord Protector sent his brother a kind note of congratulation. 'We are right glad to understand by your letters', he wrote, 'that the Queen, your bedfellow, hath had a happy hour; and, escaping all danger, hath made you the father of so pretty a daughter.' But even as this letter was being written, Katherine had developed the dreaded symptoms of childbed fever, and within a week she was dead. She was buried in the chapel at Sudeley with all the pomp due to a Queen Dowager of England, with Jane Grey, a diminutive, lonely figure clad in deepest black, acting as chief mourner for the only person ever to show her disinterested kindness.

In the domestic confusion which followed Katherine's death, Jane was summoned home by her parents. She could scarcely remain in a bachelor household with no lady of rank to chaperone her, and the Dorsets were, in any case, growing restive. More than a year had gone by with no sign of any of Thomas Seymour's 'fair promises' being fulfilled, and the Marquess now showed every indication of trying to wriggle out of his undertaking. Jane, he wrote, was too young to rule herself without a guide and, for want of a bridle, might take too much head and forget all the good behaviour she had learned from the late Queen. He and his wife both felt strongly that she should remain under her mother's eye to be 'framed and ruled towards virtue' and her mind addressed to humility, soberness and obedience.

This sudden access of concern for their daughter's welfare imperfectly concealed a ruthless determination to sell her to the highest bidder, and the Dorsets were beginning to wonder if, after all, it might not be wiser to settle for a match with the Lord Protector's son which had already been tentatively discussed. But Thomas Seymour had no intention of giving up his claim to the Lady Jane. He told Dorset that he intended to retain the services of all the late Queen's ladies, 'the maids that waited at large and other women being about her Grace in her lifetime'. As well as this, his own mother was coming to take charge of the household and would be 'as dear unto her [Jane] as though she were her own daughter'. He repeated his promises that if he could once get the King at liberty, he would ensure that his Majesty married no other than Jane, and he agreed to pay over another five hundred of the agreed two thousand pounds purchase money. Lord Dorset was not proof against this form of persuasion, and sometime in October, round about her eleventh birthday, Jane was returned to the custody of the Lord Admiral.

The Lord Admiral was now actively considering his own marital future, and a rumour circulated briefly that he meant to marry Jane himself. Certainly he would not have been the first guardian to marry a wealthy or otherwise eligible ward - within two months of the death of his royal wife, the late Duke of Suffolk had married his ward, Katherine Willoughby, an heiress fully young enough to be his daughter- but the Admiral, it seemed, was setting his sights even higher. Gossip had already begun to link his name with the Princess Elizabeth, and it was being whispered that the real reason why he had kept Queen Katherine's maids together was to wait on the Princess once they were married.

In Elizabeth's household, now established at Hatfield in Hertfordshire, there was much excited speculation about the widower's intentions and how soon he might be expected to come courting. Mrs. Ashley for one was already hearing wedding bells. She knew that the Admiral loved her princess 'but too well', and was he not 'the noblest man unmarried in this land'? But during those autumn months, while the Admiral conferred with her steward about the state of her finances, the number of servants she kept and the whereabouts of her landed property; while her governess sang his praises, and my lord sent her friendly messages at every opportunity, Elizabeth remained unresponsive. King Henry VIII might have failed in a father's first duty by leaving his daughters unbetrothed and unprotected against predators like Thomas Seymour, but even at fifteen years old Elizabeth Tudor could look after herself. The Admiral's flamboyant facade was convincing enough to deceive her steward and her governess, but Elizabeth knew or guessed just how flimsy that facade really was. She knew it was in the highest degree unlikely that the Protector and the Council would ever consent to her marriage with an adventurous younger son, and she knew that any attempt to marry without their consent would inevitably lead straight to disaster. In the privacy of the household she could not always conceal the warmth of her feelings for the Admiral - he was exactly the kind of bold, handsome fellow who would attract her to the end of her life - but in public her discretion was absolute, and she avoided all suggestion of a clandestine understanding with almost obsessive care.

It was as well that she did, for in January 1549 Thomas Seymour was committed to the Tower, evidence of his numerous 'disloyal practices' having become too blatant to be condoned any longer. On the day after his arrest, the government's investigators arrived at Hatfield, and over the next few weeks the Princess was subjected to a gruelling ordeal by interrogation. She was told it was being said that she was with child by the Lord Admiral and was invited 'to consider her honour and the peril that might ensue'. Embarrassing details of those early morning romps round the bed-curtains at Chelsea were dragged into the open, even the shameful reason why Queen Katherine had had to send her away to Cheshunt, but Elizabeth denied and continued to deny that she had ever for a moment contemplated marrying the Admiral or anyone else against the wishes of the King and his Council. Katherine Parr's good sense and her own courage, self-control and inborn political acumen had saved her from a disgrace which would have ruined her good name for ever and perhaps cost her her place in the succession, but the episode had provided a salutary lesson. Elizabeth learned early that the world was a hard and unforgiving place, and that the way to survive was at all costs to keep one's mouth shut and one's feelings to oneself. It was a lesson she never forgot. 'Her mind has no womanly weakness,' Roger Ascham, the most famous of her tutors, wrote of her later that same year, 'her perseverance is equal to that of a man, and her memory long keeps what it quickly picks up.'

Thomas Seymour was attainted of high treason and executed on 20 March, leaving behind one innocent and often forgotten victim of his delusions of grandeur. Little Mary Seymour, stripped of her inheritance by her father's attainder, was dumped on the Duchess of Suffolk, once her mother's dear friend. But my lady of Suffolk, who always believed in speaking her mind, took a notably unsentimental view of the penniless infant and complained bitterly that she was being beggared by the cost of maintaining 'the Queen's child and her company'. Her ladyship made repeated efforts to extract an allowance for the baby's keep from the Lord Protector - the Queen's child was, after all, his niece - but whether or not she was successful is not recorded. Mary Seymour herself disappeared from the record before she was a year old and is generally believed to have died young, although there is a tradition, preserved by Agnes Strickland in her biography of Katherine Parr, that she survived to become the wife of Sir Edward Bushel, a gentleman of the household of James I's wife, Anne of Denmark.

During Edward VI's brief reign, his elder sister and heir presumptive played no part in public affairs. Neither Mary nor Elizabeth was involved in the
coup d'etat
which toppled the Lord Protector Somerset in the autumn of 1549 but, while Elizabeth paid regular visits to London to see the King, Mary avoided the Court. Under the new regent, John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, soon to become Duke of Northumberland, England was moving steadily to the left in religious matters. The Latin Mass had already been replaced by the new English communion service, and in 1552 a second and even more radical English Prayer Book came into use. To Mary, as to many others of her generation and temperament, the new ways were an abomination, and in the privacy of her household Mass continued to be celebrated. This led, inevitably, to confrontation. However much she tried to avoid the limelight, the Princess was a public figure and still a very popular one. Where she led, others would follow, and her conformity was therefore important.

For Mary the distress of being refused the consolations of her religion was equalled by her wretchedness over the widening rift between her brother and herself. Nevertheless, she resisted bravely. In the last resort, she told Edward at one of their rare meetings, 'there are two things only, soul and body. My soul I offer to God, and my body to your Majesty's service. May it please you to take away my life rather than the old religion.' Embarrassed, the boy made a 'gentle answer', and one of the standers-by tried to lower the temperature by pointing out that the King had no wish to constrain his sister's faith but merely willed her, as a subject, to obey his laws.

In the proceedings against the Princess, the Council, too, found themselves in a rather embarrassing position. Mary, like her mother, had powerful connections abroad, and already the Imperial ambassador was hinting at unpleasant consequences if his master's cousin were further molested in the private exercise of her religion. Since it was obvious that she could not be bullied into yielding and would positively welcome prosecution, John Dudley switched his attack. In April 1551 one of her chaplains was arrested for saying Mass, and in August her Comptroller and two other senior members of her household were also taken into custody for aiding and abetting their mistress in her defiance of the law. In a burst of temper, Mary told a government commission which visited her at the end of the month that, in the absence of her Comptroller, she was now obliged to do her own accounts and 'learn how many loaves of bread be made of a bushel of wheat'; but since her mother and father had not brought her up to baking and brewing, she would be glad to have him back. At the same time she flatly refused to accept the replacement offered by the Council. She would continue to appoint her own officers, and if anyone was forced upon her, she would go out of her gates, 'for they two should not dwell in one house'. When Nicholas Ridley, the new Bishop of London, reproached her for refusing to listen to God's word, she retorted: 'I cannot tell what ye call God's word; that is not God's word now, that was God's word in my father's days.' 'God's word', replied the Bishop unwisely, 'is one in all times; but hath been better understood and practised in some ages than others.' This was too much for Mary. 'You durst not, for your ears,' she cried, 'have avouched that for God's word in my father's days that now you do. And as for your new books, I thank God I never read any of them. I never did, nor ever will do.'