The Sisters of Lady Jane Grey and Their Wicked Grandfather / Being the True Stories of the Strange Lives of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey, sisters
Date: 2015-06-23T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Suffolk; Charles Brandon; Duke of; approximately 1484-1545; Hertford; Katherine Seymour; Countess of; 1540-1568; Keys; Mary Grey; 1545?-1578; Cumberland; Eleanor Brandon Clifford; 1519-1547

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Title: The Sisters of Lady Jane Grey and Their Wicked Grandfather

Author: Richard Davey

Release date: June 23, 2015 [eBook #49265]

Language: English

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THE SISTERS OF LADY JANE GREY

[Frontispiece

LADY KATHERINE GREY

(From the original painting, by an unknown artist, in the possession of Mrs. Wright-Biddulph, bearing the following inscription:)

“Now thus but like to change
And fade as dothe the flowre
Which springe and bloom full gay,
And wythrethe in one hour.”

THE SISTERS OF
LADY JANE GREY

AND THEIR WICKED GRANDFATHER

BEING THE TRUE STORIES
OF THE STRANGE LIVES OF CHARLES BRANDON, DUKE OF
SUFFOLK, AND OF THE LADIES KATHERINE AND
MARY GREY, SISTERS OF LADY JANE GREY,
“THE NINE-DAYS’ QUEEN”

BY

RICHARD DAVEY

AUTHOR OF
“THE SULTAN AND HIS SUBJECTS,” “THE PAGEANT OF LONDON,”
AND “THE NINE-DAYS’ QUEEN”

WITH 14 ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON

CHAPMAN AND HALL, Ltd.

1911

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E.
AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

TO
THE MEMORY OF THE LATE
MAJOR MARTIN HUME
A GREAT HISTORIAN OF TUDOR TIMES
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY A STUDENT OF
THE SAME PERIOD OF OUR
NATIONAL HISTORY

PREFACE

The strange adventures of the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey, although they excited great interest at the time of their happening, and were of immense contemporary political importance, are now almost unknown, even to professed students of Elizabethan history. The sad fate of these unfortunate princesses has paled before that of their more famous sister, Lady Jane Grey, who, although the heroine of an appalling tragedy, was rather the victim of others than of her own actions. In a sense, she was merely a lay-figure, whereas her sisters, especially Lady Katherine, who played an active part on the stage of history at a later period of life, and possessed an unusually strong personality, were entirely swayed by the most interesting of human passions—love. Lady Katherine was literally “done to death” by her infatuation for the young Earl of Hertford, the eldest son of that Protector Somerset who suffered death under Edward VI. The feline cruelty with which Queen Elizabeth tormented Lady Katherine, after the clandestine marriage with her lover was revealed, called forth the freely expressed condemnation of Chief Secretary Cecil, who denounced his royal mistress’s harshness in no measured terms.

It is said that Lady Willoughby d’Eresby, one of the faithful attendants on Katherine of Aragon, was so infuriated by Henry VIII’s courtship and marriage with Anne Boleyn, that she pronounced a terrible curse upon that wretched queen and the infant Elizabeth. If, through her intercession or incantations, she contrived to induce some evil spirit to inspire Henry VIII to make his famous but ill-considered Will, she certainly succeeded in adding very considerably to the discomfort of his celebrated daughter, who, during all her life, had to experience the consequences of an ill-judged testament, whereby Henry VIII, by passing over the legitimate claim to the succession, of his grandniece, Mary Queen of Scots, the descendant of his eldest sister, Margaret Tudor, widow of James IV of Scotland, in favour of the heirs of his youngest sister, Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Duchess of Suffolk, opened a very Pandora’s box, full of more or less genuine claimants, after Elizabeth’s death, to the English Throne. The Spanish Ambassador enumerates a round dozen of these, all of whom, with the exception of Mary Stuart and Lady Katherine Grey, he describes as more or less incompetent place-seekers, not worth the butter on their bread, but who clamoured to obtain the queen’s recognition of what they believed to be their legal rights, and thereby added greatly to the general confusion. Of these claimants, Lady Katherine Grey was by far the most important, her right to the Crown being not only based on two Royal Wills—those of Henry VIII and Edward VI[1]—but, moreover, ratified by a special Act of Parliament. She therefore played a more conspicuous part in the politics of the early years of Elizabeth’s reign than is generally known, and, as a matter of fact, was rarely out of the queen’s calculations. In the first year of her reign, Elizabeth, wishing to be on the best of terms with her young cousins, not only admitted them to her privy chamber, but went so far as to recognize Lady Katherine as her legitimate successor, and even proposed to adopt her, calling her, in public, her “daughter.” For all this, there was no love lost between the queen and the princess. Lady Katherine, who had been intimate with the Countess of Feria, an Englishwoman by birth, and a close friend of Queen Mary, was strongly prejudiced against the Princess Elizabeth, who, she had been assured, was no daughter of Henry VIII, but a mere result of Anne Boleyn’s intimacy with Smeaton the musician. Notwithstanding, therefore, the queen’s advances, on more than one occasion Lady Katherine Grey, according to Quadra, the Spanish Ambassador, answered Elizabeth disrespectfully. It was not, however, until after the news of the clandestine marriage between Lady Katherine Grey and the Earl of Hertford reached her majesty, that she began to persecute the wretched girl and her husband, by sending them to the Tower—not, indeed, to “dungeons damp and low,” but to fairly comfortable apartments, worthy of their high station, for which the earl, at least, had to pay handsomely. When, thanks to the carelessness or connivance of Sir Edward Warner, the lieutenant, the offending couple were allowed occasionally to meet, and Lady Katherine eventually gave birth to two sons, Elizabeth’s fury knew no bounds, and the young mother had to undergo an awful and lifelong penance as the result of her imprudence. That Elizabeth had good cause to object to the introduction into this world of a male successor, became unpleasantly apparent some ten years later, when the two boys were put forward as claimants to her Throne, and thereby came very near involving England in an ugly civil war.

The misfortunes of her elder sister do not seem to have impressed Lady Mary Grey, on whom the Crown devolved, according to the Wills of Henry VIII and Edward VI, in the event of Lady Katherine dying without issue. She was a dwarf, and married secretly Mr. Thomas Keyes, the “giant” Sergeant-Porter of Whitehall Palace, who “stood seven feet without his shoes.” When Elizabeth received the news of this “outrage” on the part of the youngest of the sisters Grey, her resentment was truly dreadful, though her indignation, in this instance, was almost justifiable, since there is nothing a great sovereign dislikes more than that any members of the royal family should expose themselves to ridicule. Lady Mary, by her unequal marriage, had dragged the great name of Tudor into the mire, and had rendered herself the laughing-stock of Europe! Elizabeth adopted in this case the same unpleasant treatment which she had administered to the recalcitrant Lady Katherine; but, fortunately for the little Lady Mary, Mr. Keyes died “of his torments,” at an early stage of proceedings, and his widow, having promised never to repeat her offence, by re-marrying with an ordinary mortal, let alone with a dwarf or a “giant,” was permitted to spend the rest of her short life in peace and plenty.

The character of Elizabeth does not shine for its wisdom or kindliness in these pages; and some incidental information concerning the mysterious fate of Amy Robsart, Leicester’s first wife, tends to prove that “our Eliza” was perfectly well aware of what was going on at Cumnor Hall, where, it will be remembered, the fair heroine of Scott’s magnificent novel, Kenilworth, died “of a fall downstairs,” which, at the time, was not generally considered accidental. The callous manner in which the queen announced this accident—if accident it was—to the Spanish Ambassador, is full of significance. Meeting him one day in a corridor at Hampton Court, she said to him very lightly, and in Italian: “The Lady Amy, the Lord Robert’s wife, has fallen downstairs and broken her neck.” A few days earlier the queen had asked the ambassador whether he thought there would be any harm in her marrying her servant, meaning Dudley. He ventured to remind her that there was an impediment to this scheme, as the Lord Robert’s wife was then still living. This impediment was soon removed!

Elizabeth’s openly expressed passion for the future Earl of Leicester, who was Lady Katherine Grey’s brother-in-law, damaged her reputation throughout Europe, and even jeopardized her Throne. The French Ambassador informs his sovereign that “the Queen of England is mad on the subject of the Lord Robert,” “she cannot live without him,” “their rooms communicate.” “I could tell your Majesty,” says the Spanish representative at our Court, in a letter to Philip II, “things about the Queen and the Lord Robert which baffle belief, but I dare not do so in a letter.” Strange to relate, however, no sooner was Amy Robsart dead, than Elizabeth’s behaviour to the Lord Robert, as he was generally called, underwent a considerable change. She was willing to retain him as a lover, but, after what had happened, she was too frightened of possible consequences, to accept him as a husband. It was only the beauty of his person that captivated the queen: otherwise, she recognized him to be what he really was—a fool. “You cannot trust the Lord Robert,”[2] she once complained to the French Ambassador, “any further than you see him. Il est si bête.” She was perfectly right, for, although she was perhaps never aware of the fact, the Spanish State Papers reveal that at one time Robert Dudley[3] was actually in correspondence, through the Spanish Ambassador, with Philip II, to obtain his approval of the following astounding scheme, which, in abbreviated form, stands thus: “The Lord Robert is to marry the Queen, and, with Philip’s aid, they are to become Catholics, and work for the reconciliation of England to the Church, and the interests of Spain.” Comment is needless!

The biographies of the two princesses, Katherine and Mary Grey, are preceded by a few chapters dealing with Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and Mary Tudor, their grandfather and grandmother. I have published these chapters, because they seem to me to complete the history of this strange family, and enable me to place before my readers a subject never before, I believe, treated in detail: that of the remarkable series of marriages of Charles Brandon, who, at the time that he was courting his king’s sister, had two wives living, one of whom, the Lady Mortimer, was destined to give him considerable trouble, and to vex his spirit and that of his consort not a little. I think I may claim to be the first writer on Tudor topics and times who has been able to determine who was this Lady Mortimer, Brandon’s first wife, and to trace her very interesting pedigree to a singular source. The story of Charles Brandon and of his clandestine marriage with Mary Tudor has been frequently related, and, indeed, it forms the subject of one of the last essays ever written by Major Martin Hume. Brandon’s earlier adventures, however, have entirely escaped the attention of historians, and are only alluded to in a casual manner in most volumes on this subject. Brandon had a very interesting and complex personality, and the strange resemblance which existed between him and his master, King Henry VIII, forms not the least singular feature in his romantic career. This resemblance was not only physical, but moral. So great was it, from the physical point of view, that certain of his portraits are often mistaken for those of King Henry, to whom, however, he was not even remotely connected by birth. As to his moral character; his marriages—he had four wives, whilst a fifth lady, Baroness Lisle, was “contracted to him”—tend to prove that either Henry VIII influenced his favourite, or the favourite influenced his master, especially in matters matrimonial.

A brief account of Lady Eleanor Brandon and her heirs closes this volume, which I hope will receive from the public as indulgent and kindly a reception as did the story of Lady Jane Grey (The Nine-days’ Queen), of which the celebrated M. T. de Wyzewa, in a lengthy review in the Revue des Deux Mondes, did me the honour of saying that “Jamais encore, je crois, aucun historien n’a reconstitué avec autant de relief et de couleur pittoresque le tableau des intrigues ourdies autour du trône du vieil Henri VIII et de son pitoyable successeur, Edouard VI.”

It is my duty to state that I submitted the manuscript of this book for the consideration of the late Major Martin Hume, who had already done me the honour of editing my previous work, on Lady Jane Grey, for which he supplied an Introduction on the foreign policy of England during the reign of Edward VI and the “nine-days’ reign,” possibly one of the most brilliant essays on Tudor times he ever wrote. He was so much interested in the present volume, that he promised to write for it a similar introductory chapter; but, unfortunately, a few weeks after this kind offer of assistance was made, I received the sad news of his sudden death. Major Martin Hume, was, therefore, unable to carry his promise into effect; but in a letter which he wrote to me at an earlier period of our agreeable correspondence, he indicated to me several sources of information, of which I have gratefully availed myself.

The loss that historical literature sustained by the death of Major Hume was far greater than the general public, I think, realizes. He was a past-master in Tudor lore and history, and the future will, I trust, accord him that high position amongst our historians to which his work on the Spanish or Simancas State Papers should alone entitle him. In paying this, my poor tribute, to his memory as an historian, I can only add my sincere expression of profound regret at his loss as a personal friend.

In this volume—as well as in the previous one on Lady Jane Grey—I received considerable assistance, in the earlier stages of its compilation, from the celebrated Dr. Gairdner, and from my deeply regretted friend, the late Dr. Garnett. I wish to acknowledge my debt of gratitude to these gentlemen; and to renew my thanks to the authorities of the Record Office, the Bodleian Library, and other libraries, public and private, for their unvarying courtesy.

In conclusion, I desire to express my appreciation of Mrs. Wright-Biddulph’s kindness in allowing me to publish in this work a reproduction of her unique portrait of Lady Katherine Grey. Lord Leconfield, likewise, gave me permission to reproduce several of the portraits in his magnificent collection at Petworth, but, unfortunately, his courteous offer came too late. None the less it merits acknowledgment in these pages.

Richard Davey.

Palazzo Vendramin Calergi, Venice.

August 1911.

Note.—The following brief account of Henry VIII’s Will may aid the reader in understanding the complications to which it gave rise. By this famous testament (dated 26th of December 1546 and revoking all his previous Wills), King Henry VIII provided that, in case he himself had no other children by his “beloved wife Katherine [Parr] or any other wives he might have thereafter,” and in the event of his only son, Edward [afterwards King Edward VI], who was to be his immediate successor, dying childless, that prince was to be succeeded by his eldest sister, Princess Mary; and if she, in turn, proved without offspring, she was to be succeeded by her sister, King Henry’s younger daughter, Elizabeth. Failing heirs to that princess, the Crown was to pass to the Lady Jane Grey and her sisters, Katherine and Mary Grey, successively, these being the daughters of Henry’s eldest niece, the Lady Frances Brandon, Marchioness of Dorset. In the event of the three sisters Grey dying without issue, the Throne was to be occupied successively by the children of the Lady Frances’s sister, the King’s other niece, the Lady Eleanor Brandon, Countess of Cumberland. The Scotch succession, through Henry’s eldest sister, Margaret Tudor, Dowager Queen of Scotland, was set aside, and the name of the young Queen of Scots [Mary Stuart] omitted from the Will, preference being given to the Ladies Grey, the daughters of Henry’s niece, because he hoped that the betrothal of Mary Stuart, then only six years of age, to his son Edward, might be arranged, and the desired union of England and Scotland brought about in a natural manner. It is curious that Henry’s nieces, the Ladies Frances and Eleanor, are not named in the Will as possible successors to the Crown, although their children are. Probably the King thought that, considering the number of claimants in the field, both ladies would be dead, in the course of nature, long before they could be called upon to occupy the Throne.

In 1553 the Duke of Northumberland, then all powerful, induced Edward VI, in the last weeks of his reign, to make a Will, in which he set aside the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, his sisters, even stigmatizing them as bastards, and thus reversing his father’s testament; and named Lady Jane Grey, his cousin, and in default of her, her sisters Katherine and Mary Grey, as his immediate and legitimate successors. The consequences of this unfortunate “Devise,” as it is called, were, as all the world knows, fatal to the Lady Jane and her family.

As the result of these two Royal Wills, the principal claimants to the Crown on Elizabeth’s death were, therefore, at the beginning of her reign, the following: firstly, Mary Queen of Scots, and her son, afterwards James I, who may be described as the legitimate pretenders; secondly, the Lady Margaret Lennox, step-sister to the Queen of Scots, and her two sons Darnley and Charles Lennox, and, eventually, the latter’s daughter, Arabella Stuart; thirdly, the Lady Katherine Grey and her two sons, and finally, in the event of their deaths, their aunt, the Lady Mary Grey. In case of all these princes and princesses leaving no issue, there remained the children and grandchildren of the Lady Frances’s sister, the Lady Eleanor Brandon, Countess of Cumberland, one of whom, at least, Fernando Strange, rendered himself and his claims distinctly troublesome to Elizabeth.

The queen had, moreover, to contend with the heirs of the Plantagenets, the members of the royal house of Pole, who, in the person of the Earl of Huntingdon, hoped, at one time, to dethrone the queen, and, with the assistance of the ultra-Protestant party, reign in her stead.

Table showing the heirs female, in remainder to the Crown, named in the Will of Henry VIII and the “Devise” of Edward VI:—

CONTENTS

CHAP. | | PAGE
| PREFACE | vii
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOUSE OF TUDOR | xxiii
CHARLES BRANDON, DUKE OF SUFFOLK
I | CLOTH OF FRIEZE | 3
II | THE FRENCH MARRIAGE | 23
III | CLOTH OF FRIEZE WEDS CLOTH OF GOLD | 49
IV | THE LAST DAYS OF SUFFOLK AND OF THE QUEEN-DUCHESS | 67
LADY KATHERINE GREY
I | BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD | 83
II | LADY KATHERINE GREY AT THE COURT OF QUEEN MARY | 107
III | THE PROGRESS OF LADY KATHERINE’S LOVE AFFAIRS | 128
IV | QUEEN ELIZABETH AND HER SUCCESSION | 146
V | THE CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE | 165
VI | LADY KATHERINE AND HER HUSBAND IN THE TOWER | 181
VII | LADY KATHERINE AT PIRGO | 199
VIII | LADY KATHERINE AGAIN THE CENTRE OF INTRIGUES | 212
IX | LADY KATHERINE’S LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH | 231
LADY MARY GREY
I | EARLY YEARS | 255
II | A STRANGE WEDDING | 262
III | THE LAST YEARS OF LADY MARY | 282
LADY ELEANOR BRANDON AND HER HEIRS | 293
| INDEX | 305

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Lady Katherine Grey | Frontispiece

From the original painting, by an unknown artist, in the possession of Mrs. Wright-Biddulph, bearing the following inscription—

“Now thus but like to change
And fade as dothe the flowre
Which springe and bloom full gay,
And wythrethe in one hour.”

| Facing page
Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond | xxviii
From the original portrait in the National Portrait Gallery.
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk | 4
From an engraving, after the original in the collection of His Grace the Duke of Bedford.
Henry VIII (at the age of fifty-three) | 20
From the original portrait in the National Portrait Gallery.
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and Mary Tudor Taken Together | 50
From an engraving, by Vertue, of the original portrait by Mabuse.
Lady Monteagle (younger daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk) | 62
From an engraving after Holbein.
Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk | 74
From an engraving by Bartolozzi, of the original drawing, attributed to Holbein, in the King’s collection.
Frances Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, and Her Second Husband, Adrian Stokes | 104
From an engraving by Vertue, after the original portrait by Lucas de Heere.
Mary Tudor, Queen of England | 110
From a little-known portrait by Antonio Moro, in the Escurial.
Philip II, King of Spain | 122
From a contemporary Spanish print.
Queen Elizabeth | 134
From the original portrait, by F. Zucchero, at Hatfield.
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester | 156
From the original portrait, by Zuccaro, in the National Portrait Gallery.
William Cecil, Lord Burleigh | 214
Sir Thomas Gresham | 278
From a contemporary engraving.

THE ORIGIN OF THE HOUSE OF TUDOR

The amazing marriage of Katherine of Valois, widow of Henry V, with Owen Tudor, possibly accounts for much that was abnormal in the character of their royal descendants of the redoubted House of Tudor. The queen dowager was the daughter of the mad King Charles VI of France and of his licentious consort, Isabeau of Bavaria—bad blood, indeed; and Owen was a mere soldier of fortune. In his grandson Henry VII’s day, a goodly pedigree was discovered for him, which set forth that far from being a “mean born pup,” as was popularly reported, Owen was descended from Kenan, son of Coel, who was king of Britain, and brother of Helen, the mother of Constantine the Great. As to Owen ap Merideth ap Twydder or Tudor, good old Sandford affirms that “the Meanness of his Estate was recompensated by the Delicacy of his Person, so absolute in all the Lineaments of his Body, that the only Contemplation of it might make a Queen forget all other Circumstances”—which it did! Stowe, who lived near enough to those times to receive direct tradition concerning this brave soldier, says, in his Annals,[4] that he was “as ignorant as any savage.” Tall beyond the average, the founder of the House of Tudor carried himself with “a perfect grace.” He was well featured, with hair that was curly and “yellow as gold.” At an entertainment given in 1423, and attended, notwithstanding her recent bereavement, by the widowed queen, this Adonis, while in the act of executing an intricate pirouette, fell at the royal lady’s feet. Whether the passion kindled by this ludicrous accident was reciprocated, we are not told; but so ardent was it, on Katherine’s part, at least, that she soon afterwards clandestinely married the handsome Welshman.[5]

The enemies of the House of Tudor averred that this secret marriage never really took place, and it is a singular fact that no allusion whatever is made to it in the hearse verse originally placed over the tomb of Queen Katherine in Westminster Abbey, and quoted in full in the contemporary Chronicle of William of Worcester. But when Henry VII became king, this inscription was removed and another hearse verse, containing the following significant lines, was substituted and hung over his grandmother’s monument:—

“Of Owen Tudor after this,
The next son Edmund was,

O Katherine, a renowned Prince,
That did in Glory pass.

Henry the Seventh, a Britain Pearl,
A Gem of England’s Joy,

A peerless Prince was Edmund’s Son,
A good and gracious Roy.

Therefore a happy Wife this was,
A happy Mother pure,

Thrice happy Child, but Grandam she,
More than Thrice happy sure.”

For more than seven years, during which time she gave birth to four children, the queen’s household observed profound secrecy with respect to her marriage—a fact which honours the fidelity and discretion of its members.

Notwithstanding all these precautions, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, who was regent during the minority of Henry VI, suspected the existence of something unusual, and, according to Sir Edward Coke,[6] forthwith framed a statute that “anyone who should dare to marry a queen dowager of these realms without the consent of king and council should be considered an outlaw and a traitor.” Spies were placed about the queen; but they either failed to discover anything unusual, or were bribed to secrecy: for the fact of the clandestine marriage was not really established until shortly before her death. When it became known, there must have been a terrible storm in the royal circle, for Owen was arrested and sent to Newgate, and the queen banished to Bermondsey Abbey,[7] where she died, six months later, on January 1, 1447, of a lingering illness and a broken heart. Katherine de la Pole, Abbess of Barking, took charge of the children, but she did not reveal their existence to Henry VI till some months after the queen’s decease, and then “only because she needed money for their sustenance.”

Meanwhile the London Chronicle, a most valuable contemporary document, thus relates the subsequent misadventures of the unfortunate Owen: “This year [1447] one Owen Twyder, who had followed Henry V to France, broke out of Newgate at searching time, the which Owen had privately married Queen Katherine and had four children by her, unknown to the common people until she was dead and buried.” Owen Tudor was three times imprisoned for marrying the queen, but each time he contrived to baffle the vigilance of his gaolers, only, however, to be promptly recaptured. As years went by, he came to be received into a certain measure of favour by his stepson, the king; and he fought so valiantly for the Lancastrian cause at Northampton, in 1460, that the king made “his well beloved squire Owen Tudyer” [sic] keeper of his parks in Denbigh, Wales.[8]

Later on, at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross, he again unsheathed his Agincourt sword in the Lancastrian cause, but, being taken prisoner by Edward IV, he was beheaded in Hereford market place. Many years later, by a strange and romantic concatenation of events, Edward’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth, married the fallen Owen’s grandson, Henry VII, thereby becoming the first queen of England of the Tudor line, and the great-grandmother of the Ladies Jane, Katherine and Mary Grey.

There was, it seems, a rugged grandeur about Owen Tudor, which stood him in lieu of gentle accomplishments. The physical power, persistent obstinacy and bluff address of his royal descendants may indeed have been derived from this fine old warrior; and from him surely it was that they inherited the magnificent personal appearance, the lofty stature, the fair complexion and leonine locks, that distinguished them from the dark but equally splendid Plantagenets. May we not also justly conclude that their violent passions were an inheritance transmitted to them by the amorous Katherine and her vicious mother?—passions which played so fateful a part in the tragic stories of Lady Katherine and Lady Mary Grey—the two younger sisters of the unfortunate “Nine-days’ Queen,” Lady Jane Grey.

[To face p. xxviii

MARGARET BEAUFORT, COUNTESS OF RICHMOND

(From National Portrait Gallery)

Soon after Queen Katherine’s decease, Henry VI brought his Tudor brethren into the royal circle. When the eldest, Edmund of Hadham, grew to manhood, he created him Earl of Richmond (November 23, 1452), with precedence of all other earls. This stalwart nobleman married the dwarfish Princess Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Beaufort, great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt by his last wife Catherine Swynford, and daughter and heiress of the last Duke of Somerset of the first creation. He was one of the pillars of the Lancastrian party, lending great help at the temporary restoration of Henry VI; afterwards, under Edward IV, he was compelled, with other Lancastrians, to seek safety in Brittany. He died shortly after his return to England, within a year of his marriage, leaving a son, who succeeded to his father’s title of Earl of Richmond, and eventually became King Henry VII. Edmund’s next brother, Jasper of Hatfield, so called from the place of his birth, was raised at the same time to the rank of Earl of Pembroke. He was with his father at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross; but escaped, and later, at the accession of Henry VII, he was created Duke of Bedford in the place of George Nevill, elder brother of the famous “Kingmaker,” whose titles and lands were confirmed in his favour. He died young in 1456 and was buried in St. David’s Cathedral. He never married, but left an illegitimate daughter, who became the wife of William Gardiner, a citizen of London. Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, was reputed to be their son. Owen, third son of Katherine of Valois and Owen Tudor, embraced the religious life and lived a monk, at Westminster, into the first half of the sixteenth century. Their only daughter—who was blessed with the curious name of Tacina, and whose existence is ignored by most historians—married Lord Grey de Wilton, an ancestor of the ill-fated subjects of this book.

It is worthy of note that whereas most of the Tudor Princes were very tall, several of them, thanks to a well-known law of atavism, reverted to the tiny type of their ancestress, Margaret Plantagenet. Mary I was a small woman, and the three sisters Grey were not much above the height of average-sized dwarfs.

CHARLES BRANDON, DUKE OF SUFFOLK

CHAPTER I

CLOTH OF FRIEZE

It is a remarkable fact that, although Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, was, after Thomas More, Wolsey and the king himself, the most conspicuous personage at the court of Henry VIII, no authoritative biography of him exists, unless indeed it be a short, but very unimportant, monograph (written in Latin, at the end of the sixteenth century) now in the King’s Library at the British Museum. Suffolk outlived nearly all his principal contemporaries, except the king and the Duke of Norfolk, and his career, therefore, runs almost parallel with that of Henry VIII, whom he attended in nearly every event of importance, from boyhood to death. Brandon predeceased the king by only a few months. In person, he bore so striking a resemblance to Henry, that the French, when on bad terms with us, were wont to say that he was his master’s bastard brother. The two men were of the same towering height, but Charles was, perhaps, the more powerful; at any rate, King Henry had good cause, on one occasion, to admit the fact, for Brandon overthrew and slightly injured him in a wrestling match at Hampton Court. Both king and duke were exceedingly fair, and had the same curly, golden hair, the same steel-grey eyes, planted on either side of an aquiline nose, somewhat too small for the breadth of a very large face. In youth and early manhood, owing to the brilliancy of their pink-and-white complexions, they were universally considered extremely handsome, but with the advent of years they became abnormally stout, and vainly tried to conceal their fat, wide cheeks, and double chins, with beards and whiskers. A French chronicler, speaking of Charles Brandon at the time that he was in Paris for the marriage of Mary Tudor to Louis XII, says he had never seen so handsome a man, or one of such manly power who possessed so delicate a complexion—rose et blanc tout comme une fille. And yet he was not the least effeminate, for of all the men of his day, he was the most splendid sportsman, the most skilful in the tilt-yard, and the surest with the arrow. He danced so lightly and so gracefully that to see him was a sight in which even Henry VIII, himself an elegant dancer, delighted.

[To face p. 4

CHARLES BRANDON, DUKE OF SUFFOLK

(From an engraving, after the original in the collection of His Grace the Duke of Bedford)

Unfortunately, so many physical advantages were not allied to an equal number of virtues; and here again, the resemblance between King Henry and his bosom friend is extraordinary. Both were equally cruel, selfish and unscrupulous, and both entertained the same loose ideas as to the sanctity of marriage—with this difference, however, that whereas King Henry usually divorced one wife before he took another, Charles had two wives living at one and the same time, from neither of whom was he properly divorced! What is most singular, too, is that he ventured to marry the king’s sister whilst his first wife was still living, and not as yet legally separated from him, whereby he might easily have been hauled before a justice as a bigamist, and his offspring by a princess of the blood royal of England, and dowager queen of France to boot, been declared illegitimate.

In addition to his great strength and exceptional ability as a commander, both on land and sea, Suffolk possessed a luxuriant imagination, which delighted in magnificent pageantry. In the halcyon days of Henry’s reign, long before the fires of Smithfield had shed their lurid glow over the city, Suffolk and his master devised sports and pastimes, masques and dances, to please the ladies.[9] Once he entered the tilt-yard dressed as a penitent, in a confraternity robe and cowl of crimson velvet, his horse draped in cardinal-coloured satin. Assuming a humble attitude, he approached the pavilion in which sat the king and Queen Katherine, and in a penitential whine, implored her grace’s leave to break a lance in her honour. This favour being granted, he threw back his cloak, and appeared, a blaze of cloth of gold, of glittering damascened armour and sparkling jewels, to break sixteen lances in honour of the queen. Again, when Queen Mary was his bride, and the court went a-maying at Shooters Hill, he devised a sort of pastoral play, and with Jane Grey’s paternal grandfather, Thomas, Marquis of Dorset, disguised himself and his merry men as palmers, in gowns of grey satin with scallop-shells of pure gold and staves of silver. The royal guests having been duly greeted, the palmers doffed their sober raiment and appeared, garbed in green and gold, as so many Robin Hoods. They then conducted their Majesties to a glade where there were “pastimes and daunces,” and, doubtless, abundant wine and cakes. Much later yet, Brandon went, in the guise of a palmer, with Henry VIII, to that memorable ball given by Wolsey at Whitehall, at which Anne Boleyn won the heart of the most fickle of our kings.

The last half of the fourteenth century witnessed the beginning of the decline of feudalism in England. The advance of education, and consequently of civilization, had by this time largely developed the commercial and agricultural resources of the country, and the yeoman class, with that of the country gentry, had gradually come into being. At the Conquest, the majority of the lands owned by the Saxons—rebels to Norman force—were confiscated and handed over to the Conqueror’s greater generals: to such men as William, Earl of Warren, or Quarenne, who seated himself in East Anglia, having, as his principal Norfolk fortress, Castleacre Castle, on the coast, not far from East Dereham. Its picturesque ruins still tower above those of the magnificent priory that the great William de Warren raised, “to the honour of God and Our Lady,” for monks of the Cluniac branch of the Benedictine Order. This Earl of Warren, who was overlord of a prodigious number of manors and fiefs in East Anglia, numbered, among the bonny men who came out of Picardy and Normandy in his train, two stalwart troopers: one haled from Boulogne-on-the-Sea, so tradition says—and is not tradition unwritten history?—and was known as “Thomas of Boulogne”; he settled at Sale, near Aylsham, in Norfolk, and was the progenitor of the Boleyns or Bullens, whose surname is an evident corruption of de Boulogne; the other dropped his French patronym, whatever it was, and assumed the name of Brandon, after a little West Suffolk border town, in the immediate vicinity of the broad and fertile lands he had acquired.

These Brandons, then, had lived on their farm near Brandon for about four centuries, deriving, no doubt, a very considerable income from the produce of their fields and from their cattle. It is certain that they sent several members of their family to the Crusades; that one of them followed the Black Prince to Poitiers, and that yet another, a trooper, it is true, died on the field of Agincourt.[10] Somewhere in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, William, the then head of the family, apprenticed his son Geoffrey to a rich mercer of Norwich, a great commercial centre in those days, next to London and Bristol in importance, and doing what we should now call a “roaring trade” with Flanders, and through Flanders, with Venice and Florence, and even with the East. This Norwich Brandon having made a fortune, was seized with an ambition to attain still greater wealth and station for his son and heir William; and hence it came about, that near the time King Henry VI ascended the throne, young Brandon arrived in London, apprenticed to a firm of mercers established near Great St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate Street. He was a pushing, shrewd, energetic, and very unscrupulous knave, who soon acquired great influence in the city and amassed corresponding wealth. Finally, he became sheriff, and was knighted by Henry VI. He purchased a large property in Southwark, and built himself a mansion, later known as Suffolk Court. During the Wars of the Roses he allied himself at first with the Yorkists, and lent Edward IV considerable sums of money, which, according to Paston, that monarch dishonestly refused to repay. This drove William to cast his fortunes with the Lancastrians and largely assist Henry VII, then simply Earl of Richmond, both with money and men, and so was held in high esteem by that monarch till his death, in the twelfth year of Henry’s reign. William Brandon married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Robert Wingfield of Letheringham, whose mother was the daughter and co-heir of Sir Robert Goushall, the third husband of the dowager Duchess of Norfolk, widow of the first duke, who, dying in exile in Venice, was buried in the magnificent church of San Giovanni e Paolo. Even thus early, we see a Brandon, the great-grandson of a Suffolk farmer, connecting himself with the noble houses of Wingfield, Fitzalan and Howard.[11]

At one time this gentleman was on very intimate terms with the renowned Sir John Paston, whose Letters throw so much light on the manners and customs of the age in which he lived; but the cronies fell out over some matter of business connected with Paston’s claim to the possession of Caistairs Castle, in which transaction, Paston declares, Brandon behaved like a blackguard—indeed, King Edward, to whom appeal was made, listed him as a “lyre.” During their intimacy, Paston, possibly over a tankard of ale at a merry dinner or supper party, had made some irreverent and coarse remarks about her grace of Norfolk, in the presence of Lady Brandon, who was the duchess’s grand-daughter. He had poked fun at the poor lady’s appearance when on the eve of adding her tribute to the population. Paston has recorded what he said, and it must be confessed, that if Lady Brandon did repeat his vulgar jest to her august relation, that lady had every reason to feel indignant at such familiarity.

Whether it was repeated or not has never transpired, so perhaps we may suppose Lady Brandon was a prudent woman and kept her counsel. But Paston wrote to his brother to ask if he thought she might be trusted, or whether she was likely to have made mischief by repeating his ill-timed remarks to the duchess, her mother, adding a “lye or two of her own to help it out.”

Sir William Brandon, eldest son of the first William, and father of Charles Brandon, was never knighted, although usually styled by courtesy “Sir.” He married, when he was very young, Elizabeth, daughter and co-heir of Sir Henry Bruyn, or Brown,[12] by his wife, Elizabeth Darcy.[13] Sir William Brandon was standard-bearer to Henry VII at Bosworth Field, and there lost his life at the hand of Richard III, whilst gallantly defending his royal patron. Henry proved his gratitude by educating his only son, Charles, who, by his marriage with Mary Tudor, became the grandfather of Lady Jane Grey and her sisters Katherine and Mary. Some historians have confused King Henry’s standard-bearer with a younger brother, Thomas Brandon, who married Anne Fiennes, daughter of Lord Dacre and widow of the Marquis of Berkeley, but had no children. He looms large (in every sense of the word, being of great height and bulk) in all the tournaments and jousts held in honour of the marriage of Katherine of Aragon with Prince Henry. He died, a very wealthy man, at his London house, Southwark Place, in 1502.

At four years of age the child Charles Brandon became playfellow to Arthur, Prince of Wales; but on the birth of the future Henry VIII, he was transferred to the younger prince as his companion. He may even have received his education with Henry, from Bernard André, historian and poet, or perhaps from Skelton, poet-laureate to Henry VII, who, with Dr. Ewes, had a considerable share in the instruction of the young prince. But there is reason to believe that Brandon, as a lad, did not spend so much time at court as has been generally stated, for his letters, phonetically spelt, in accordance with the fashion of his time, prove him to have spoken with a broad Suffolk accent; he must, therefore, have passed a good deal of his youth at Brandon, on the borders of Suffolk and Norfolk, where, according to tradition, he was born. His letters, although the worst written and spelt of his day, are full, too, of East Anglianisms, which could only have been picked up by a man in his position through contact, in boyhood, with yokels and country-folk in general.

Charles, who grew up to be a remarkably fine youth, tall and “wondrous powerful,” began life virtually as an attendant in the royal household, though, as already stated, in due time he became Henry’s principal favourite and confidant. When little over twenty, he distinguished himself in a sea-fight off Brest, and was sent by Wolsey to join Henry VIII in his adventurous campaign to Therouanne. At the famous battle of the Spurs, he proved himself as brave a soldier as he had already shown himself to be a doughty sailor; but for all this merit he can scarcely be described as an honest gentleman, especially where ladies are concerned, and his matrimonial adventures were not only strange and complicated, but also exceedingly characteristic of the times in which he lived. In 1505/6, Charles Brandon became betrothed,[14] per verba de præsenti, to a young lady of good family, Anne Browne, third daughter of Sir Anthony Binyon Browne, K.G., governor of Calais, and of his wife, the Lady Lucy Nevill, daughter and co-heiress of John Nevill, Marquis of Montagu, brother of the “Kingmaker,” Richard, Earl of Warwick. In 1506/7 this contract was set aside and the young gentleman married Margaret, the mature widow of Sir John Mortimer of Essex[15] (will proved, 1505). And now came trouble. The Lady Mortimer, née Nevill (probably rather a tedious companion for so youthful a husband), was none other than the aunt of his first fiancée, Anne Browne, her sister being the Lady Lucy Nevill, who, as stated above, was the wife of Sir Anthony Browne and mother of Anne. Brandon, therefore, probably with the aid of Henry VIII, about 1507, after having squandered a good deal of her fortune, induced the Archdeacon of London (in compliance with a papal bull) to declare his marriage with Lady Mortimer null and void, on the grounds that: Firstly, he and his wife were within the second and third degrees of affinity; secondly, that his wife and the lady to whom he was first betrothed (Anne Browne) were within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity—i.e. aunt and niece; thirdly, that he was cousin once removed to his wife’s former husband. After these proceedings, he married, or rather re-married, in 1508/11, in “full court,” and in the presence of a great gathering of relations and friends—and not secretly, as usually stated—the aforesaid Anne Browne, by whom he had two daughters, the eldest being born so soon after wedlock as to give rise to unpleasant gossip, probably started by Lady Mortimer. Anne, Lady Brandon, did not long survive her marriage, for she died in 1511/12; and in the following year (1513) her widower made a third attempt at matrimony, by a contract with his ward, the Lady Elizabeth Grey, suo jure Baroness Lisle, who, born in 1503/4, was only ten years of age; but the negotiations failed, though Brandon had been granted the viscounty of Lisle, which title he assumed (May 15, 1513). As this lady absolutely refused him, he surrendered the patent of the title of Lisle in favour of Arthur Plantagenet, illegitimate son of Edward IV and husband of Lady Elizabeth Lisle, the aunt and co-heiress of the young lady he had wished to make his bride, and who, being free, gave her hand to Courtenay, Earl of Devon, who presently became Marquis of Exeter. This above-mentioned aunt, the other Lady Elizabeth, had married, in 1495, Edmund Dudley, the notorious minister of Henry VII, and became, about 1502, mother of that John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who proved so fatal to Lady Jane Grey and her family.

Whilst he was still plodding through the labyrinth of his matrimonial difficulties, early in 1513, Charles Brandon was entrusted with a diplomatic mission to Flanders, to negotiate a marriage between Mary Tudor, the king’s youngest sister, and the young Archduke Charles of Austria, Infante of Spain, the most powerful and richest prince in Europe. On this occasion he displayed his majestic and graceful figure to such advantage in the tilt-yard, that the demonstrative expressions of admiration which escaped the proposed bridegroom’s aunt, Drayton’s “blooming duchess,” the most high and mighty Princess Margaret, Archduchess of Austria, dowager Duchess of Savoy, and daughter of the Emperor Maximilian, evoked sarcastic comment from the illustrious company.

On Brandon’s return, Henry VIII, probably with a view to facilitating a possible alliance between his favourite and the dowager of Savoy, to universal surprise and some indignation, created his “well-beloved Charles Brandon,” Duke of Suffolk, a title until quite recently held by the semi-regal, but dispossessed house of de la Pole,[16] and further presented him with the vast territorial apanage of that family, which included Westhorpe Hall, near Bury St. Edmunds; Donnington Castle, the inheritance of Chaucer’s granddaughter, the first Duchess of Suffolk; Wingfield Castle, in Suffolk; Rising Castle in Norfolk; and Lethering Butley in Herefordshire.[17]

In the summer of 1513, while the king was sojourning at Tournay, he received a visit from the Archduke Charles of Castile and Austria, and his aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Savoy, Regent of the Netherlands. These august personages came to congratulate the English monarch on the capture of Tournay from their mutual enemy, Louis XI of France. At this time the Austro-Spanish archduke still hoped to secure the hand of the King of England’s handsome sister, Mary Tudor, who had accompanied her brother to France. Henry did his best to ingratiate himself with the regent, a handsome lady with a foolish whimpering expression, who, if we may judge her by her portrait in the Museum at Brussels, was most apt to credit anything and everything that flattered her fancy. The king and his favourites, indeed, to amuse her, behaved less like gentlemen than mountebanks. Henry danced grotesquely before her and played on the giltrone, the lute and the cornet for her diversion, and his boon companions followed their master’s example and exhibited their accomplishments as dancers and musicians. The contemporary Chronicle of Calais contains a most amusing account of the way Henry and Charles made game of the poor dowager, who betrayed her too evident partiality for the latter. Brandon actually went so far on one occasion as to steal a ring from her finger; “and I took him to laugh,” says Margaret of Savoy, describing this incident,[18] “and said to him that he was un larron—a thief—and that I thought the king had with him led thieves out of his country. This word larron he could not understand.” So Henry had to be called in to explain it to him. His Majesty next contrived a sort of love-scene between the pair, in which he made Duchess Margaret a very laughing-stock, by inducing her to repeat after him in her broken English the most appalling improprieties, the princess being utterly ignorant of the meaning of the words she was parroting. To lead her on, Suffolk, who was not a good French scholar, made answer, at the king’s prompting, to the princess’s extraordinary declarations, in fairly respectable French. At last, however, the good lady realized the situation, and, rising in dudgeon, declared Brandon to be “no gentleman and no match for her,”[19] and thus he lost his chance, though he never lost, as we shall presently see, the great lady’s friendship.

[To face p. 20

HENRY VIII AT THE AGE OF 53

(From National Portrait Gallery)

This silly prank on the English king’s part was, no doubt, the final cause of the rupture of the proposed alliance between Mary Tudor and the Archduke Charles of Castile. Be this as it may, it was at Tournay that Mary was reported to have first fallen a victim to the blandishments of Suffolk, who, while fooling the regent, was covertly courting his dread patron’s sister. He flattered himself that the king, loving him so tenderly as a friend, would readily accept him as a brother-in-law. In this he was mistaken. Henry had other views for Princess Mary’s future; and no sooner was the Austro-Spanish match broken off,[20] thanks to certain political intrigues too lengthy and intricate to recapitulate here, than he set to work to arrange a marriage between Mary and King Louis XII,[21] who, although generally described as “old,” was at this time not more than fifty-three years of age. His appearance, however, was most forbidding; he suffered from the deformity of elephantiasis, and was scarred by some scorbutic disease, “as if with small-pox.”[22]

CHAPTER II

THE FRENCH MARRIAGE

The negotiations for this incongruous marriage, which united, for the first time since the Norman Conquest, a British princess to a French king, proceeded very slowly, for Henry knew well that his sister would reluctantly sacrifice her youth to so ugly and sickly a bridegroom: thus, according to the late Major Martin Hume, the first intimation of the proposal Mary received was not until after a tournament held at Westminster on May 14, 1514.

This tournament, in the open space between the ancient Palace and the Abbey, was magnificent in the extreme. Never before had there been seen in England so many silken banners, canopies, and tents of cloth of silver and gold. Queen Katherine of Aragon watched the tilting from a pavilion of crimson damask, embroidered with golden pomegranates, the emblems of her native country. Beside her sat Princess Mary, a pink-and-white beauty, with hair of amazing length shimmering down her back, and held in position by a band of jewels that encircled her graceful head. Behind the princess many great ladies occupied the roomy chairs of state—the Countess of Westmorland and her lovely Nevill daughters, the Lady Paulet, the Lady of Exeter, the Lady de Mowbray, the Duchess of Norfolk, the Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, sister of the Duke of Norfolk and mother of the future Queen Anne, the “old Lady” of Oxford, and the Princess Margaret Plantagenet, that fated Countess of Salisbury who in after years was hacked to death by order of her most affectionate nephew, King Henry VIII, now in the full bloom of early manhood. There was a great nodding of glittering hoods and rustling of silken gowns, and whispering and tittering amongst this bevy of high and mighty dames, unto whom many a gallant knight and lordly sire conveyed his homage and the latest gossip of the day. Over the multi-coloured crowd fell the golden haze of a lovely October afternoon. Farther away from the throng of lords and ladies, the hearty citizens of London pressed against the barriers, whilst rich burghers, and British and foreign merchants, with their wives and daughters, filled the special seats allotted to them, that commanded a finer view of the towers of Westminster than did the richer canopies of the court folk. Itinerant vendors of sweetmeats, apples, nuts and cakes, hawked their wares up and down the free spaces, whilst ballad-mongers sang—or rather shouted—their ditties, just as their descendants do, whenever there is a show of sport or pastime in our own day. Men and maidens cheered lustily as knight after knight, armed cap-à-pie, pranced his steed before the delighted spectators, even as we parade our horses before the race at Epsom, Sandown or Ascot.

The expressed hope was, of course, that the English knights should vanquish the French noble prisoners who had been set at liberty shortly before the tilt, so that they might join in the sport. The champions among them were the Duc de Longueville and the Sire de Clermont. The trumpets sounded, a hush fell upon the noisy gathering, all eyes were turned in one direction, as two stalwart champions entered the lists. They were garbed as hermits, the one in a black satin cloak with a hood, the other in a white one. With all the punctilious observance demanded by established rule and etiquette, these hermits, who rode mighty chargers caparisoned in silver mail, advanced towards the royal pavilion and made obeisance. On a sudden, off fell their cloaks and hoods, to reveal the two handsomest men in Europe, to boot, Henry, King of England, and Charles, Duke of Suffolk, clad from head to foot in silver armour, damascened in gold by Venetian armourers. Long white plumes flowed from the crests of their gilded helmets. Behind the British champions rode two other fine fellows, bearing standards on which figured in golden letters the motto: “Who can hold that will away?” On reading this motto, the fair bent, the one to the other, to discuss its meaning. Did it refer to the young King of Castile and Flanders; or to the fact that Charles Brandon, as it was whispered about, was venturing to raise his eyes so high as to meet those of the Emperor Maximilian’s daughter, Margaret of Austria? It was said, too, that the Lady Mary, the king’s sister, liked not the motto; for even then she had conceived a wild though secret passion for the splendid son of a Suffolk squire.

The English (God and St. George be praised!) won the day; the Duc de Longueville was defeated “right honourably,” and so, too, was the Sire de Clermont. The silken kerchief, the gilded cup and the wreath of laurel were for Charles Brandon; and the princess, the Beauty Queen of the day, presented them to him as he knelt before her. Katherine of Aragon bestowed the second prize, a cup of gold, on her husband, who had vanquished Clermont.

Immediately after the jousts, Mary Tudor learnt, to her exasperation, that her hand was destined, not for the Spanish prince, the future Emperor Charles V, nor for the Suffolk gentleman, but for the decrepit and doomed King of France. She was too much of a Tudor to accept her fate with meekness, and King Henry soon found he had set himself a difficult task to conciliate his sister, and obtain her consent to what was even then considered a monstrous match. She swore she would not marry his French majesty, unless her brother gave her his solemn promise that she should marry whom she listed when she became a widow. The king answered that, by God! she might do as she listed, if only she pleased him this time. He urged that King Louis was prematurely aged, and not likely, so he had been told, to live many months. Besides, he was passing rich, and the princess would have more diamonds, pearls and rubies than she had hairs on her head. Henry even appealed to her patriotism. England needed peace; the prolonged wars between France and England had exhausted both, and it was deemed advisable that the French should be made to understand, by this happy event, that the enmity which had existed so long had ceased at last. It was to be a thorough entente cordiale on both sides. None the less, when they got to know of it, both the English and the French cracked many an indelicate jest over this unnatural alliance. The bride, it will be remembered, was still in her teens, and beautiful: the bridegroom-elect was fifty-three and looked twenty years older, the most disfiguring of his complication of loathsome diseases being, as we have seen, elephantiasis, which had swollen his face and head so enormously that when, on her arrival in France, Mary first beheld her future consort, she drew back, with an unconcealed cry of horror. For some days Mary seemed obdurate, despite Henry’s promise that, on the death of the French king, she might marry whom she listed. But at last she allowed her brother’s persuasive arguments to prevail, so that, dazzled by the prospect of becoming the richest and grandest princess in Europe, she finally, but reluctantly, consented to marry King Louis.

The “treaty of marriage” between Louis XII and Mary Tudor was signed at London by the representatives of both parties on August 7 (1514); and the marriage by proxy, according to the custom of the time, took place in the Grey Friars’ Church at Greenwich, before Henry VIII, Katherine of Aragon, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Bishops of Winchester and Durham, and others, on August 13. The recently liberated Duc de Longueville represented the French king, whereas the Duke of Orleans gave the bride the ring; afterwards the primate pronounced a brief panegyric of the young queen’s virtues, and those of her august spouse, whom he described as the best and greatest prince in Europe.

The bride left England’s shores on October 2, after a tearful leave-taking of her brother and sister-in-law, King Henry and Queen Katherine. The chronicles of those far-off times, ever delighting in giving the minutest details, inform us that she was “terrible sea-sick” before she arrived at Boulogne, where a pious pageant had been prepared to greet her. Above the drawbridge of the port, suspended in mid-air, was a ship, painted with garlands of the roses of England mingled with the fleur-de-lys of France, and bearing the inscription, Un Dieu, Un Roy, Une Foy, Une Loy: “One God, One King, One Faith, One Law.” In this ship stood a young girl—“dressed like the Virgin Mary,” as the chronicler tells us—together with two winged children, supposed to be angels. The young lady represented Notre Dame de Boulogne, the patroness of the city, and bore the civic gift, destined for the princess, consisting of a silver swan, whose neck opened, to disclose a golden heart weighing sixty écus. So violently raged the storm, that the heavy vessel, instead of riding gracefully into the harbour, stuck on a sandbank, and the future Queen of France, dripping with sea-water, had to be carried ashore by Sir Christopher Gervase. On reaching land, she was met by the Heir Presumptive of her new dominions, François, Duc de Valois, the Dukes of Alençon and Bourbon, and the Counts de Vendôme, de Saint-Pol, and de Guise, supported by the Abbots of Notre Dame and of St. Wulmer, accompanied by their monks wearing copes, and bearing, enclosed in gold and silver shrines, all the relics from their respective churches. In the presence of this goodly company, the ship containing the aforesaid representative of Our Lady of Boulogne was lowered to the ground, and the young lady addressed the princess “en rhétoricque,” otherwise French verse, welcoming her to Boulogne, and presenting her with the city’s gift. Mary then proceeded to the Church of Notre Dame, and after praying there awhile, she was, so says our chronicler, “agreeably occupied in admiring all the rich and royal offerings that formed the principal attraction of the Church.” And gorgeous and wonderful indeed must it have been, before the vandal greed of King Henry’s troops had sacked the shrine. The Treasury contained nearly a hundred gold and silver reliquaries, eighteen great silver images, most of them containing relics, “eleven hearts and a great number of arms and legs, both in gold and silver” (votive offerings), twenty dresses and twelve mantles of very precious stuffs, “for the use of the holy Image.” The altar of the Blessed Virgin was especially magnificent. Seven lamps, four in silver and the rest of gold, burnt incessantly before the Madonna, who held in one hand a golden heart, whilst the other supported a figure of the Infant Jesus, who clasped in His chubby hand a bouquet of “golden flowers,” amongst which was “a carbuncle of a prodigious bigness”; the pillars and columns round this altar were sheathed in “blades of silver”: “in short,” says the chronicler, “everything which was in this chapel could challenge comparison with the richest and most renowned objects that antiquity ever had.” Such was the splendour that enchanted and bewildered our Princess Mary, who after offering to Our Lady of Boulogne a gift consisting of “a great arm of silver, enamelled with the arms of France and England, and weighing eight marcs,” proceeded on her way to Abbeville, near which city she was met, in the forest of Ardres, by King Louis, mounted on a charger and attended by a glittering train of lords and attendants.

To the young and beautiful Mary, who had only just recovered from a violent sea-sickness, this first meeting with her future lord and master must indeed have been painful. As she afterwards admitted, she had never before seen a human being so horribly ugly. It is not therefore to be wondered at that she should have uttered the exclamation of horror above mentioned. King Louis, for his part, was in the best of humours; never merrier. He was very plainly dressed, and was evidently bent on correcting, by his munificence and good temper, whatever unfavourable impression might be created by his unfortunate appearance. Before arriving at the place of meeting, Princess Mary had changed her travelling gown for a weighty robe covered with goldsmith’s work “like unto a suit of armour.” So awkward and stiff was this costume, that when the princess, in accordance with etiquette, attempted to descend from her litter to bend the knee before her royal spouse, she found she was unable to do so, and was in great distress until the deformed king gallantly begged her not to attempt so complicated a manœuvre, and won a grateful smile from his embarrassed bride.

The marriage took place on Monday, October 9 (1514), at Abbeville, in the fine old Church of St. Wolfran, and is one of the most gorgeous functions recorded of those pageant-loving times. Something mysterious must have happened at Abbeville, for, according to the Bishop of Asti, the marriage was consummated by proxy—a weird ceremony in which the Marquis de Rothelin (representing King Louis), fully dressed in a red suit, except for one stocking, hopped into the bride’s bed and touched her with his naked leg; and the “marriage was then declared consummated.” Possibly, considering the rickety state of his health, this was all the married life, in its more intimate form, that, fortunately, Mary Tudor ever knew so long as Louis XII lived. As an earnest of his affection, however, the sickly king presented his spouse with a collection of jewels a few days after the marriage, amongst these being “a ruby almost two inches long and valued at ten thousand marks.”

In the meantime, there had been some unpleasantness between the French monarch and the Earl of Worcester, the English ambassador, about the presence in France of one of the queen’s maids, Mistress Joan Popincourt. The question of her fitness to accompany the princess was first raised before Mary left our shores, to reach its culminating point whilst the new queen was resting at Boulogne, at which time King Louis (then at Abbeville) had an interview with Worcester on the subject. The trouble is said to have originated in the fact that Mistress Popincourt had behaved herself with considerable impropriety,—at least that was the accusation the English envoy laid before his majesty of France; but if we read between the lines of the letters and documents connected with this side-plot, we learn that it was Mistress Popincourt who had first attempted to negotiate the marriage of her mistress with King Louis by means of the Duc de Longueville, whilst that nobleman was still imprisoned in the Tower of London. As the negotiations had succeeded, even through another medium, she considered herself entitled to some recompense for her share in the affair, and probably attempted to blackmail the king; at any rate, for one reason or another, he was so furious with her, that on the occasion in question, he told Worcester never to “name her any more unto me.” “I would she were burnt,” he added; “if King Henry make her to be burnt, he shall do but well and a good deed!” Mary, however, held the recalcitrant Popincourt in the highest esteem. None the less, King Louis decided that she should be there and then sent back to England, but whether with a goodly recompense to soothe her disappointment is not recorded. Maybe she, who had done so much to further the royal match, found herself better off than the other unfortunate attendants on Princess Mary, who, being dismissed after her arrival at Abbeville, were stranded, penniless. Some of these misguided ladies had, says Hall, “been at much expense to wait on her [Princess Mary] to France, and now returned destitute, which many took to heart, insomuch some died by the way returning, and some fell mad.”[23]

Evidently King Louis was determined not to have too many Englishwomen in attendance upon his wife, or, as he put it, “to spy upon his actions,” for fresh difficulties arose, even after the Popincourt incident was closed, and he and the princess had been united in matrimony. According to arrangement, certain of the queen’s ladies were to return to England forthwith, but King Louis and his English monitor, the Duke of Norfolk, settled the matter by ordering that all Mary’s train of young English gentlewomen and maidens, with the exception of the Lady Anne Boleyn[24] and of three others, were to return home. This was bad enough, but Mary was still more distressed to find that her confidential attendant and nurse, Mother Guildford, was very unceremoniously packed off with the rest. “Moder” or “Mowder” Guildford, as the queen was pleased to call her, was the wife of Sir William Guildford, controller of the royal household, who eventually stood godfather to that unfortunate Guildford Dudley who became the husband of Lady Jane Grey. If we may believe King Louis, he had certainly some justification for wishing Lady Guildford out of his sight, since she exasperated him to such an extent that he told Worcester that “rather than have such a woman about my wife, I would liever be without a wife.... Also, “he continued, “I am a sickly body, and not at all times that I would be merry with my wife like I to have any strange woman with her, but one that I am well acquainted with, afore whom I durst be merry.” The king went on to pathetically relate the story of his own and his wife’s sufferings under Lady Guildford’s iron rule. “For as soon as she came on land,” says he, “and also when I was married, Lady Guildford began to take upon her not only to rule the queen, but also that she should not come to me, but she should remain with her, nor that no lady or lord should speak with the queen but she [Lady Guildford] hear it. Withal she began to set a murmur and banding among the ladies of the French court.” The “Moder” Guildford episode induced Mary to write several letters home, one to Henry VIII and another to Wolsey, complaining of the treatment she had received with respect to the dismissal of her attendants. In these she speaks in no measured terms of the Duke of Norfolk, who, as we have seen, had the matter in hand: “I would to God,” she exclaims in the letter to Henry VIII, “that my Lord of York [Wolsey] had come with me instead of Norfolk, for then I am sure I should not have been left as I am now!” In fact, she cast the whole blame of the incident on the shoulders of the Duke of Norfolk, whom she ever afterwards disliked for his share in it. Nevertheless, “Mowder” Guildford was sent back to England, to the great distress and grief of her royal mistress, who was preparing to have a violent scene on the subject with her rickety husband, when the latter came into her chamber, accompanied by two attendants bearing a tray so heaped with rubies, diamonds and pearls, that the cloud of anger instantly passed from the queen’s brow, and her sunny smiles beamed afresh, when she heard the politic and courteous monarch say, “I have deprived you of one treasure, let me now present you with another.” And then he placed a collar of immense pearls round her neck, and taking a heap of jewels in his big hands, dropped them into her lap. “I will have no Guildfords, Popincourts, or other jades to mar my cheer or to stand betwixt me and my wife,” he continued laughingly; “but I intend to be paid for my jewels, and each kiss my wife gives me shall cost me a gem.” On this the covetous Mary kissed him several times, to the number of eight, which he counted, and punctually repaid by giving her eight enamelled buttons surrounded by large pearls. By this amorous playfulness, the astute Louis succeeded in making his queen so contented with her lot, that she presently told Worcester that “finding she was now able to do as she liked in all things,” she thought she was better without Lady Guildford, and would decline to have her back again in France. Mary not only forgave King Louis his share in the business, but personally nursed him through an attack of gout, which beset him at Abbeville, and delayed the royal departure from that town until October 31, when the quaint cavalcade resumed its journey towards St. Denis.

It was one continuous pageant in every village and town through which the royal cortège passed, between Abbeville and St. Denis. Even in villages and hamlets, children dressed as angels, with golden wings, met the fair queen, to present to her pretty gifts of fruit and flowers. It took the king and queen and their escort six days to reach St. Denis, spending the nights either in episcopal palaces or in the splendid abbeys which lined the way. Although the French greeted the queen heartily, it was noticed that they “became overcast and sour” as they looked on the magnificent but defiant figure of the Duke of Suffolk, as he rode, in his silver armour, on the right side of the queen’s litter, whilst on the left cantered that stalwart nobleman, Thomas Grey, first Marquis of Dorset, who was destined by a curious and unexpected event to become the grandfather of Her Majesty’s ill-fated grandchildren, the Ladies Jane, Katherine and Mary Grey. At last, early in the morning of Sunday, November 5, the English princess passed up the splendid nave of St. Denis, escorted by all that was highest and mightiest in French chivalry. The Duc de Longueville, the Duc d’Alençon, the Duke of Albany, Regent of Scotland, the Duke of Bourbon, and the Count de Vendôme, preceded her, bearing between them the regalia. Mary followed, escorted by the Duke of Valois, and clothed in a mantle of cloth of gold. She wore such a prodigious quantity of jewels that a number of them had to be removed in the sacristy before she was able to proceed with the innumerable ceremonies of the day. The new queen was anointed by the Cardinal de Pré, who also presented her with the sceptre and “verge of justice.” When, after more ceremony than prayer, the cardinal had placed the crown of France upon her brow, Prince Francis of Valois led Her Majesty to a throne raised high above the choir, whence in solitary state she glanced down upon the throng of prelates, priests and noblemen and noblewomen who crowded the chancel and the altar-steps, and overflowed into the nave and transepts. There she sat alone, for weak and sickly King Louis could do no more than witness the coronation, contenting himself by obtaining a view of it from a small closet window above the high altar.

The following day, at noon, Queen Mary passed on to Paris, whither King Louis had preceded her earlier in the morning. On this occasion she did not occupy a litter, but rode by herself in a species of carriage designated “a chaise or chair,” embellished with cloth of gold, and drawn by two milk-white horses with silver reins and harness. Her Majesty, all in white and gold, did not wear the crown of France, but merely a diadem of pearls, from beneath which streamed her luxuriant tresses. Pressing round the queen’s chariot, rode the pick of the nobility of France, followed by the Scotch Guard and a detachment of German mercenaries. Pageants and allegories greeted the royal progress at every turn. When close to Paris, the queen’s train was met by three thousand Parisian students, law officers and representatives of the city council, who chanted in chorus a quaint song, still extant, in which Mary is likened to the Queen of Sheba and Louis XII to King Solomon. Over the portcullis of the Porte St. Denis was erected a ship, containing “mountebanks” representing Henry VIII in the character of Honour, and Princess Mary as Ceres, whilst an actor, wearing King Louis’s own gorgeous robes, offered “Ceres” a bunch of grapes, and was popularly held to personate Bacchus!

In the midst of what we should now consider a circus-like cavalcade, the queen, escorted by a thousand horsemen bearing flaring torches, passed round the quays of Paris, brilliantly illuminated for the occasion, to her resting-place at the Conciergerie, where, we are informed, she was so dead tired that, after the official reception by King Louis and subsequent banquet, she fell asleep and had to be carried to her nuptial chamber. Here, so it is stated, King Louis did not receive her, since he was fast asleep already in his own bedchamber at the Louvre, whither he had retired many hours earlier. He was awake pretty early the next day, for at nine o’clock he breakfasted with the queen, having previously presented her with a bouquet of gems, the flowers being made of coloured stones and the leaves of emeralds. The king never left his bride the whole of that day, and it was observed that whenever he gazed upon her, he would put his hand to his heart and heave a deep sigh. Nothing can be imagined more ludicrous, and at the same time more pathetic, than the ardour of this poor, hopelessly love-sick monarch for his beautiful wife, who, thorough Tudor as she was, never missed an opportunity of fleecing him of jewels and trinkets, to such an extent as at last to excite the indignation of the court.

The coronation festivities closed with jousts in which “my lorde à Sofehoke,” as the Marquis of Dorset calls him in a letter,[25] got “a little hurt in the hand.” In this same epistle the marquis adds that King Louis considered that Suffolk and his English company “dyd shame aule (all) Franse.” They did such execution indeed that, as the chroniclers complacently remark, “at every course many dead were carried off without notice taken.” The exasperation of the French against Suffolk grew so great—or was it due, as tradition suggests, to Francis of Valois’s personal jealousy of the British duke?—that they commissioned, contrary to all etiquette of tourney, an abnormally powerful German trooper to kill him by treachery in the lists. Suffolk, however, saw through the mean trick, and refusing to treat such a ruffian according to chivalric rules, gripped him by the scruff of the neck, and punched his head with much heartiness, to the ill-concealed satisfaction of the spectators.

It does not require much imagination to divine what were the thoughts of the lusty young queen, as she watched the prowess of her triumphant lover in the tilt-yard, and mentally contrasted his manly beauty with the wreck that was her husband, who lay on a couch at her side, “grunting and groaning.” He, poor man, was ever graciously courteous, and expressed his delight whenever, in her enthusiasm, the lovely queen, regardless of etiquette, rose to her feet and leant over to applaud the British champions as they rode by her canopy of state. “Ma mie,” cried old Louis, “your eyes brighten like stars when the English succeed. I shall be jealous.” “Fie!” returned the queen with an arch smile, “surely there is no chance for the French today, since, fortunately for my countrymen, your majesty is too unwell to join in the fray?”

When the queen rose to return to the palace, the whole crowd burst into a storm of cheering, crying: “Vive la Reine anglaise!” Mary’s beauty was not the beauty of regularity of feature so often found in France, but of that rarer sort, peculiar to northerly regions, the beauty of the glorious colouring of the blended Tudor and Lancaster roses; so that when the queen pressed forward to the gorgeously decorated balustrade and kissed her hands to the people, the enthusiasm of ses bons Parisiens passed all bounds; and Mary Tudor’s tact and grace won all hearts, when she insisted that the king should lean upon her arm to descend the stairway. Louise of Savoy, jealously noting all these things, said to herself: “Elle ira loin, celle-là”; and forthwith endeavoured to set her son, Francis of Valois, against the young queen, whereby she only fanned his rising passion for her. If Queen Mary Tudor had managed in a few hours to captivate the Parisians, she failed to make a favourable impression upon the court of France. Her free and easy manner, her good nature, her pleasant smiles, and, above all, her astounding love of jewelry, were well calculated to stimulate jealousy and hatred. The game against her now began in earnest. Its object was to abstract the king from her influence. But Mary was a Tudor, and went ahead steadfastly, regardless of intrigues, quips and frowns; and by a sheer display of good nature and the firm obstinacy peculiar to her race, succeeded in defeating her enemies, and having all things her own way. Possibly, in her heart of hearts, she rejoiced to think that she had an opportunity of amassing great wealth by very easy means, and was buoyed up by her secret passion for the Duke of Suffolk, and the knowledge that, with a little patience, she would be able to claim him from her brother as a pledge of her good behaviour whilst occupying the difficult position of Queen of France.

Mary, notwithstanding her overwhelming passion for Suffolk, was by far the most amiable and respectable member of the Tudor family; she behaved with the utmost propriety while Queen of France, and her kindness to her infirm husband filled him with a hopeless but chivalrous passion, of which he gave practical expression by a boundless generosity[26] that excited the jealousy of the rest of the French royal family and imperilled the safety of his greedy queen.

King Louis XII died on New Year’s Day 1515, less than four months after his marriage, and his widow immediately retired to the Hôtel de Cluny[27] to spend the first weeks of her widowhood in the rigorous seclusion imposed by the etiquette of the French court. She was obliged, according to custom, to dress herself entirely in white, and to remain the whole day long in a bed of state, draped with black velvet. The room was darkened, and only lighted with tapers of unbleached wax, whilst all the queen’s meals were served on silver platters covered with black silk cloths and serviettes.

In the meantime, Louise of Savoy, mother of the new king, Francis I, a most intriguing princess, began to agitate for the return of the youthful dowager to England. She had made up her mind that Mary should not wed the Archduke Charles of Austria-Spain, who again came forward as a suitor, nor yet encourage the attentions of her own son, who had practically deserted his consort, Claude, daughter of the late king by his second wife, Anne of Brittany. The court astrologers had persuaded Francis that before many weeks were over, good Queen Claude, of greengage fame,[28] stout, short, and very plain, would die, and that, as he was soon to become a widower, he might just as well begin his courtship at once. The duchess-mother, well versed in the laxity of the age in which she lived, was terribly afraid Francis might attempt to set aside his wife, in order to marry the English widow, in which event Claude’s rich heritage, the duchy of Brittany, would pass from the French Crown. She therefore resolved to get rid of Mary Tudor, a resolution strengthened by her well-founded conviction that even in the early days of her mourning, Francis I had intruded into the widow’s presence. At her first secret interview with the new king, Mary told him plainly that her heart already belonged to Suffolk, and that she “was resolved to marry none other.” She even reminded Francis of his own neglected consort, and he, instead of resenting this rebuff, promised to exert his influence to obtain Henry VIII’s consent to Mary’s union with her lover.

CHAPTER III

CLOTH OF FRIEZE WEDS CLOTH OF GOLD

Henry VIII was accused, at the time, of having sent Suffolk as special ambassador, on the death of King Louis, in order to lure his sister back to England, with the object, as soon as he had her in his power, of re-opening negotiations for her marriage with the Archduke Charles of Castile.[29] If this was the case, he little understood his sister’s character, for in her first interview with Suffolk she gave him to understand that she “would not land in her brother’s dominions except as his [Suffolk’s] bride.” According to the French contemporary historian Daniel,[30] she even declared: “If you do not court and wed me within four days I will not hold you for much of a man, and will stay abroad.” The duke, much alarmed, remonstrated with her, objecting that so exalted an alliance might lead to his ruin both in France and England, seeing he was but “base born”; and, he might have added, already married to no less than two wives, both still living. The young dowager of France, however, reminded him that “when she married King Louis she had made it a condition that on becoming a widow she was to have full liberty to marry whom she chose, and she chose to marry none other than himself.” Whereupon Suffolk, as he subsequently informed his master, “could but obey”; and, to use his homely expression, “she and I were married.”[31]

[To face p. 50

CHARLES BRANDON, DUKE OF SUFFOLK, AND MARY TUDOR, TAKEN TOGETHER

(From an engraving, by Vertue, of the original portrait by Mabuse)

Louise of Savoy’s spies soon informed her that Mary and Suffolk were in constant communication with each other, and she was even informed that the duke had been seen leaving her apartment at questionable hours. Seizing a favourable opportunity when she knew the lovers to be together, the duchess threw open the door of the queen’s closet and, it seems, discovered Her Majesty and her lover in so compromising a situation, that “she ordered the startled couple into the chapel and then and there had them married by a priest who chanced to be saying Mass.” When Francis heard the wedding was well over, he did all in his power to propitiate his “dearly beloved brother Henry VIII.” He was not very successful, however, and Mary and her husband had to spend some weeks of terrible suspense, during which an astounding correspondence was kept up between them, Henry VIII, and Wolsey,[32] one of Mary’s staunchest friends, who consistently took her part. Most of Suffolk’s letters are undated, and written in an almost illegible hand. Their tone is honest enough, but he takes good care not to allude to the fact that he had two wives living. In one missive, of a particularly confidential sort, he expresses fear that this royal marriage may ruin him; and adds: “My Lord, as the reverence of God, help that I may be married as I go out of France openly for many things of which I will advertise you.” The queen’s handwriting in her numerous letters to her brother and to the cardinal varies much, apparently according to the state of her nerves. In some of them her hand has evidently trembled, so as to render her calligraphy almost illegible, and this is notably the case in a document which settled her business to her own satisfaction and most certainly to that of her greedy brother. As we have seen, King Louis had been very lavish with gifts of gold and silver plate, and above all jewelry, including even the celebrated “Star of Naples” (Stella di Napoli),[33] a diamond of abnormal size and brilliance, which Charles VIII had filched from Ferrante of Naples, when he paid his unwelcome visit to Italy in 1498. These glittering baubles, valued in those days at the enormous sum of £200,000, equal to over £1,000,000 of present currency, together with her rich dower, Mary freely handed over to Henry VIII, on condition that he recognized her marriage with her worthless, though handsome, husband and forgave them both. The deed of gift[34] whereby the queen yields up all her treasures to Henry VIII, is preserved in the Cottonían Collection in the King’s Library of the British Museum. When Francis I learnt that she had parted with the “Star of Naples” he waxed exceeding wroth and attempted to repossess himself of it. If Duchess Louise, who at this time ruled her son, had not been in such a hurry to get rid of the queen dowager, this affair of the Neapolitan diamond might have cost Mary dear. Out of France, however, it was necessary that she should go, and the sooner the better; so she was allowed to depart in peace, with all her valuables, which, shortly after her arrival in England, were duly handed over to the king, her brother.[35]

Henry was so well pleased with the treasure she brought him that he received his sister at Greenwich Palace with effusion, and was ostentatiously civil to Suffolk. On May 13, 1515, the Queen Dowager of France and Charles Brandon were re-married publicly in Grey Friars’ Church, Greenwich, the ceremony being performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and graced by the presence of King Henry and Katherine of Aragon. The wedding was followed by a magnificent banquet, the plan for the arrangement of the table for which still exists. This plan proves that in those days ladies and gentlemen were seated alternately, according to their precedence, precisely as at a modern dinner-party. In honour of these unequal nuptials, elaborate jousts and tournaments were held, in which the bridegroom, and Thomas, Marquis of Dorset, Lady Jane’s other grandfather, won great applause and many prizes. A number of bridal portraits, intended as gifts to friends, were painted on this occasion. These depict Mary Tudor as a broad-faced woman, with an evidently dazzling complexion, small eyes, golden hair, and a firm but rather sensual mouth. At the Historical Exhibition held in the New Gallery in 1902, the writer was particularly struck by the remarkable resemblance between the disputed likeness of Jane Grey, preserved at Althorp, and the small portrait of her grandmother, Mary Tudor, attributed to Holbein, now in His Majesty’s collection at Windsor Castle. Mary has the same broad face with small features as Jane Grey. Her expression is pleasing[36] and bears a strong resemblance to the earlier likenesses of Henry VIII. In the Windsor picture the queen-duchess holds a globe in the shape of an artichoke, above which, in the left corner of the portrait, appear some lines, said to have been composed by the Duke of Suffolk for the occasion:—

“Cloth of gold, do not despise,
Though thou hast wedded cloth of frieze.
Cloth of frieze, be not too bold,
Though thou hast wedded cloth of gold.”

The attitude assumed by Cardinal Wolsey in the affair of Charles Brandon’s royal marriage was friendly enough both to bride and bridegroom, although in the course of the correspondence which preceded the wedding, he reminded Suffolk, in very straightforward fashion, of his “cloth-of-frieze” origin. There was some mysterious connection between the cardinal and Charles Brandon: it seems, indeed, that Henry VIII had conceived the sinister project of ridding himself of his brother-in-law on some trumped-up charge of treason, once he had possessed himself of her treasure. Apparently Wolsey saved Brandon’s life at that time, of which fact he reminded him some years later. Suffolk was one of the judges at Queen Katherine’s trial (1529), and, being exasperated one day by the way in which Wolsey constantly impeded the king’s desire to close the matter at once without appealing to Rome, he struck the table, exclaiming loudly that “they had never been merry in England since a cardinal came amongst them.” Rising to his feet, Wolsey replied with the utmost dignity: “Sir, of all men within this realm, ye have the least cause to dispraise or be offended with cardinals, for, but for me, simple cardinal as I am, you at this moment would have had no head upon your shoulders, and therefore no tongue to make so rude a report against me. You know what friendship ye have received at my hand, and which never before this time have I revealed to any one alive, either to my own glory or to your dishonour.” Suffolk, who well knew the circumstance to which the cardinal alluded, rose abruptly,[37] and, abashed, left the council chamber.

Wolsey evidently hinted at some matter connected with Brandon’s weird matrimonial adventures already related; or else to the fact that he had saved him from the clutches of his brother-in-law for some imprudence history has not revealed.

After her return to England, Mary Tudor regained her royal position, and for a brief time she lived in considerable state at Suffolk’s house on his Southwark estate. A year or two ago, a fair Tudor archway and a few other remains of this fine mansion were discovered during the erection of some model school-houses. Suffolk Court, as it was called, had two parks, one of which stretched down to the bank of the Thames; and in the extensive gardens there was a maze, or labyrinth, similar to the one at Hampton Court. A street in the neighbourhood is still known as Suffolk Street, though probably not one of its inhabitants is aware that it marks the site of a princely residence. The Duke of Suffolk had yet another dwelling in London, situated at the top of the Strand: it was built in 1539 on a site occupied in our day by Northumberland Avenue. He and his royal consort frequently lived here, and probably used it as their winter residence. They occasionally rented Stepney Palace from the bishops of London, and some of Mary’s letters are dated thence.

At Suffolk Court, about eighteen months after her marriage, Mary gave birth to a son, to whom Henry VIII stood godfather, the christening being attended by the king and queen. Some time after his birth, the infant was taken to Bridewell Palace, where Henry raised him to the rank of Earl of Lincoln. At Suffolk Court the queen-duchess received and entertained the Emperor Charles V, when he visited England to be betrothed to the young Princess Mary. Notwithstanding her mésalliance, the Duchess of Suffolk was treated as the second lady in the realm, precedence immediately after the queen being accorded to her at all State functions, notably during the great reception given to Charles V at Canterbury (1518), and, later, at that unparalleled pageant, the Field of the Cloth of Gold, at which she figured both as dowager Queen of France and as a princess of the blood royal and a duchess.

In March 1517 Mary and her husband accompanied Katherine of Aragon on a pilgrimage to Walsingham Priory. Three months later, the duchess returned to London to entertain her sister, Margaret of Scotland, whom she had not seen since childhood; on this occasion Suffolk won splendid success in a tournament before the king and the then queen. Later in the same month, Brandon and his wife were at Bishops Hatfield, where, on July 16, was born the Lady Frances, “who was mother to the Lady Jane Grey.”[38] The queen-duchess, it appears, was suddenly taken ill on her way from London to Suffolk, and had perforce to ask the hospitality of the Bishop of Ely, to whom Hatfield Palace in those days belonged. Some years later it was confiscated by Henry VIII and converted into a royal residence.

A very elaborate account of the manner in which the parish church at Hatfield was decorated “with cloth of gold and garlands of evergreen,” on the occasion of the baptism of the said Lady Frances, is still extant. The sponsors were Queen Katherine and the young Princess Mary, who were represented by proxy, the queen by the Lady Anne Boleyn[39] and the princess by the Lady Elizabeth Grey. The Abbot of St. Albans was godfather, and there was an abundant distribution of viands, cakes, and wine, to the parishioners, rich and poor alike.

In 1524 the queen-duchess gave birth to her second daughter, the Lady Eleanor, who in due time became Countess of Cumberland.

All this long while, Brandon’s discarded wife, the Lady Mortimer, nursed her grievance (which she held to be supported by an ecclesiastical dispensation in her possession) against the Duke of Suffolk, so that, justly incensed as she was at his marriage with the ex-queen of France, she endeavoured to force him to recognize her as his legitimate wife; which he steadfastly refused to do. Possibly, in a sense, she blackmailed him, knowing full well the parlous position in which he had placed himself. Some time in 1524, therefore, just before the birth of the Lady Eleanor, Lady Mortimer must have clamoured so loudly for the return of her recalcitrant husband to his conjugal duties, as to make herself very unpleasant, for Brandon was once more fain to have recourse to the law to obtain an official absolute dissolution of his connection with her. He appealed to the ecclesiastical and to the civil courts, and received a favourable verdict from both, the marriage between himself and the Lady Mortimer being declared null and void. This decision, however, did not satisfy Wolsey as a sufficient protection for the queen and her children against the humiliating aspersions persistently cast on them by Lady Mortimer and her friends. In 1528 a mission, headed by Stephen Gardiner and Edward Fox, was sent to Orvieto, where Clement VII was then residing,[40] with the object of inducing His Holiness to despatch Cardinal Campeggio to England to represent the pope on the Commission for the matter of the divorce of Queen Katherine of Aragon. Wolsey availed himself of this mission to forward an account, written by Suffolk and endorsed by himself, of the reasons why the duke petitioned the Pontiff for the dissolution of his marriage with the Lady Mortimer. In this document Suffolk declared that, “although a lapse of time had passed, instead of diminishing, it only increased his crime, and hence his seeking this divorce from a woman with whom he was too closely allied.” Clement, after due investigation, and on the strength of Wolsey’s assurance, issued a bull dissolving the marriage with Lady Mortimer, and declaring the children of Anne Browne, alias Brandon, the second wife, legitimate. This bull, dated Orvieto, May 12, 1528, was not, however, published in England until August of the following year, when Bishop Nix of Norwich read it from the pulpit of his cathedral, to a no doubt highly interested and gossiping congregation. This successful appeal to Rome apparently settled the matter, even in the eyes of Lady Mortimer herself, for she presently took a third husband,[41] Robert Horn, Esq., with whom she lived in peace for the rest of her life, which, however, was not long, for the invaluable Baronagium informs us that she died before the marriage of Suffolk’s second daughter, the Lady Eleanor Brandon, which took place in 1537.

[To face p. 62

LADY MONTEAGLE
(Younger daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk)

(From an engraving after Holbein)

Anne and Mary, the two daughters of Brandon by his second wife, Anne Browne, became respectively Baroness Powis and Viscountess Monteagle. After her mother’s death, the first-named lady, in accordance with the custom of those days, was sent abroad for her education and placed in the household of Suffolk’s faithful friend, Margaret of Savoy, Governess of the Netherlands. Among the State Papers is a letter written by Suffolk, and dated May 13, 1515, in which he thanks the duchess for her kindness to his daughter Anne, and begs she will allow her to return to England “at the request of the queen dowager, my wife.” He sent Sir E. Guildford and Mr. William Woodale to escort the young lady home. Both Miss Strickland and Miss Green, in their respective lives of Mary Tudor, and Mr. Howard, in his Life of Jane Grey, state that Lady Powis, in the thirteenth year of Elizabeth, charged Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, and her sister Eleanor, Countess of Cumberland, with bastardy. This is an error, since an entry in Machyn’s Diary proves that Lady Powis died in 1557,[42] during the reign of Mary. That the affaire Mortimer was revived in the thirteenth year of Elizabeth is true, for among the State Papers we find documents relative to the matter; but it was probably put forward at the instigation of Elizabeth herself, merely as a test case, to settle, once and for all, the validity of the claims of the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey and their heirs to the succession. The verdict then given confirmed the decision arrived at, forty-two years previously, and the document containing it is endorsed in Burleigh’s own hand.

Lady Monteagle,[43] Brandon’s second daughter, enjoyed the rare distinction of being limned by Holbein, and her portrait is one of the most magnificent in all the collection of drawings of the nobility of the court of Henry VIII, now in the possession of His Majesty the King. She is represented as an exceedingly handsome woman, and wears some fine pearl ornaments, one of them being a medallion in the shape of the letter “M,” composed of very large gems. There was some doubt, at one time, as to whether this particular portrait represented the first or second Lady Monteagle, but the fashion of the gown and the coif, in conjunction with the discovery of the exact date of Holbein’s death, settles the question beyond dispute, and in this drawing we have an undoubted presentment of Brandon’s younger daughter by his second wife.

In addition to his wives, Brandon had a notorious mistress, who bore him several children, one of whom, Sir Charles Brandon, had a son who was a celebrated jeweller in the reign of Elizabeth,[44] and who, some say, was the father of that Richard Brandon who is alleged to have beheaded Charles I.[45] These scandals and many others, of which we know little or nothing, though some are hinted at in the correspondence of the various ambassadors, no doubt affected the happiness of the queen-duchess, and account for the infrequency of her visits to London and her rare appearances at court functions.

CHAPTER IV

THE LAST DAYS OF SUFFOLK AND OF THE QUEEN-DUCHESS

Notwithstanding Mary Tudor’s exalted rank, her husband neglected her. The Chronicles and State Papers of the period frequently allude to this sad fact. The death of her only son, the young Earl of Lincoln, of the “sweating sickness,” which occurred in 1527, when he was only twelve years old, affected her health, so that she retired from London, and spent nearly all her time at Westhorpe Hall, a grand Tudor mansion near Bury St. Edmunds, which remained intact until the beginning of the last century, when it was pulled down to make room for the present ugly and uninteresting structure. The ancient furniture, some of which had evidently belonged to the queen-duchess, was sold in 1805, and amongst the other miscellaneous lots put up to auction was a lock of Mary Tudor’s fair hair, which was purchased by a Suffolk antiquary for seven shillings.

Mary espoused, as far as she dared, the cause of her unhappy sister-in-law, Katherine of Aragon, and it is not surprising, therefore, that though in London at the time, she did not attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn, where her husband figured so conspicuously as Lord High Constable of England. He behaved abominably to Queen Katherine, and even insulted her grossly when he was sent by Henry to Bugden to visit her, just before her removal to Kimbolton; so coarsely, indeed, that the queen ordered him out of her presence, reminding him, at the same time, of the many favours she had heaped upon him when she was in power.

The royal grandmother of the unfortunate sisters of the House of Grey seems never to have enjoyed good health. As far back as 1518, Suffolk wrote to Wolsey to inform him that the queen-duchess, his wife, was ill of a “anagu” [an ague], the cure of which gave the king’s “fuesesune” plenty of good occupation. The word “physician” was apparently an orthographic stumbling-block to both the duke and his consort. Early in February 1533, Mary Tudor wrote from Westhorpe Hall to the king, informing him that she intended coming to London to consult “Master Peter, her fesysyon”; as her health was failing, she felt it wise to seek other advice. Accordingly, towards the middle of April, she arrived, with her two daughters, at Suffolk Court; here preparations were at once made for the marriage of the elder of these young ladies with the youthful Marquis of Dorset, and for the betrothal of the younger, the Lady Eleanor, to Lord Henry Clifford, eldest son of the Earl of Cumberland. These combined ceremonies were solemnized in the first week of May, most likely in that stately parish church which is now Southwark Cathedral. Henry VIII attended the function, but whether he was accompanied by Anne Boleyn, who was already queen, though not as yet crowned, we know not.[46]

A few days later, on May 19, Queen Anne Boleyn passed in triumph through the streets of London from the Tower to Westminster Abbey, to be crowned. On either side of her open litter, sumptuously hung with silver tissue, and borne by two milk-white palfreys draped in white brocade, rode the Duke of Suffolk and Henry, Marquis of Dorset, who bore the sceptre. Cecily, dowager Marchioness of Dorset, was with the old Duchess of Norfolk in a chariot that followed the litter conveying the queen, who in glittering robes of cloth of gold and with a circlet of magnificent rubies crowning her raven tresses, “freely exposed the beauty of her person to the gaze of the people.” But the populace, even as it gazed upon her loveliness, did not forget the good “old queen” it had worshipped, who was even then lying sick unto death at Bugden Hall in Huntingdonshire. Anne was received in dead silence, throughout the whole line of the procession: not a cap was raised in her honour.

On June 26, of this same year (1533), the queen-duchess—who had returned with Lady Dorset, the bride, and her younger daughter, the Lady Eleanor, to Westhorpe, none the better for consulting the Court “fesysyon”—died somewhat suddenly, in the presence of her two children; her husband and son-in-law being still in London. Her body was embalmed and carried to Bury Abbey on July 20, nearly a month after her decease. Garter King at Arms and other heralds preceded the hearse, which was followed by a procession of lords and ladies on horseback, among whom, as chief mourners, the Ladies Frances and Eleanor rode pillion on the same black steed, caparisoned with violet cloth. They were supported on either side by the Marquis of Dorset and the young Lord Clifford, who had been summoned from London to attend the funeral. A strange incident occurred during the ceremony, at which the Duke of Suffolk was not present. The Ladies Powis and Monteagle, the duke’s daughters by his second wife, appeared uninvited, and assisted at the Mass, on perceiving which intrusion, the Lady Frances and the Lady Eleanor rose, and left the church, without waiting for the conclusion of the office. The unbidden guests had evidently determined to assert their position in the family by appearing at their step-mother’s obsequies, an act which was openly resented by the rest of the family,[47] since it was intended to prove the Ladies Powis and Monteagle’s legitimacy, and, moreover, insinuate that the queen-duchess’s daughters were bastards.

Mary Tudor’s death[48] may well have been hastened by anxiety about the calamities that had overwhelmed her sister-in-law, Queen Katherine, and by the certainty that her own husband had been Henry’s most active confederate in maligning the luckless queen. Suffolk’s behaviour to Katherine of Aragon was, in fact, infamous and ungrateful in the extreme. In the early stages of his career she had given him a helping hand, she had accepted entertainment at his house, and had stood godmother to his elder daughter; yet, in the hour of misfortune, he turned against her, and became her “unjust judge” and bitterest foe. He treated Anne Boleyn in the same fashion. When that ill-fated woman’s star reached its zenith, the craven duke was one of her most obsequious courtiers, but no sooner did the shadow of her impending doom darken the horizon, than Suffolk deserted her, went over to her enemies, urged his master to hasten her destruction, and outraged decency—even the decency of those callous times—by appearing at her execution. He was also present as one of the Privy Council when, some hours before her death, she was compelled to hear the sentence: That her marriage with the king was “invalid, frustrate, and of none effect.” So, too, when poor Anne of Cleves displeased the king by her Dutch homeliness, Suffolk was overheard offering his advice as to the best means of getting rid of her. Katherine Howard fared no better at his hands. He was her flatterer in her brief hour of success, but it was he who escorted her as a prisoner from Sion House to the Tower, who judged her, and who, but for sudden indisposition, would have feasted his eyes on her mangled form when her head was struck off at one blow by the skilful Calais headsman who had already proved his dexterity at the execution of Anne Boleyn.

In November 1534 the duke took a fourth wife, his deceased consort’s ward, the Lady Katherine Willoughby d’Eresby, a child of fifteen, whose rich dower had evidently excited his rapacity; for, notwithstanding his vast landed possessions, he was in constant want of ready money, Mary Tudor’s income having been very scanty, and most irregularly paid. Katherine was the only child of the lately deceased William, Lord Willoughby d’Eresby by his second wife, Doña Maria de Sarmiento y Salinas, a Spanish noblewoman and a faithful and tried attendant upon Queen Katherine. It seems incredible that such a pious woman should have approved of so unnatural an alliance, but in Tudor times the voice of Nature herself was often hushed, and that of personal and political interest alone heard. Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, of whom we shall see more anon, developed into a very handsome and cultured woman, and was the authoress of quite the most brilliant and witty letters in the English epistolary literature of the period. She had the distinction of being sketched by Holbein, and her portrait is one of the most beautiful in the king’s collection. By this lady, Suffolk had two sons, who survived him and became successively Dukes of Suffolk. They were reputed to be exceedingly clever lads, and were educated with Prince Edward. Both died at an early age, on July 6th, 1551, of the “sweating sickness,” at Bugden, in Huntingdonshire, within a few hours of each other and in the same bed.[49]

Shortly after his fourth marriage, Suffolk wrote to his mother-in-law, the dowager Lady Willoughby, that he had been ordered to proceed to Bugden Hall to reduce the household of the “Princess Dowager,” as the divorced queen was now called, and to induce her to remove to Fotheringhay Castle. He adds that he wishes “an accident might befall him” to prevent his undertaking so unpleasant an expedition. Notwithstanding this heroic desire, Suffolk arrived at Bugden Hall late in December[50] 1534/5, and behaved so abominably that the poor queen, stung to the quick by the repeated humiliations and insults heaped upon her and her handful of faithful retainers, rose and swept haughtily from his presence. She resolutely refused to go to Fotheringhay, which, she had heard, was “damp,” but after much more trouble she submitted to being sent to Kimbolton, where she arrived early in the following January.

[To face p. 74

KATHERINE WILLOUGHBY, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

(From an engraving, by Bartolozzi, after Holbein)

On January 7, 1535/6, the sorely tried and persecuted queen passed quietly away at Kimbolton Castle, in the arms of Lady Willoughby, and in the presence of Eustache Chapuys, the imperial ambassador; being “done to death by cruelty,” as her Spanish chronicler quaintly and faithfully puts it.[51]

The public career of Jane Grey’s maternal grandfather was far more creditable than his private life. In early manhood, as we have seen, he distinguished himself as a naval commander, and he later became a skilful general, affording his master most efficient help against the popular rising known as the “Pilgrimage of Grace.” During that otherwise futile expedition into Picardy which resulted in King Henry’s only substantial French victory, the capture of Boulogne, Suffolk proved himself both bold and sagacious, and was able to present the keys of that city to the king. He was also of great service all through the intricate operations against the Scots, which occupied English diplomacy and arms from 1543 to 1544, and formed the first link in the chain of misfortunes marking the untoward career of Mary Stuart—since these certainly arose out of the attempt made by Henry VIII to affiance his son Edward to the infant Queen of Scots, and so secure the custody of her person. This effort, had it been crowned with success, would have united the Crowns of England and Scotland some fifty years before the union of the two kingdoms was finally accomplished, under James I.

In 1532-33, when Henry VIII and Francis I held a conference in the Church of Our Lady at Boulogne, such was the piety of bluff King Hal that he was well pleased to attend as many as three and four Masses every day before St. Mary’s shrine, whilst round him knelt the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk; the Marquises of Dorset and Exeter; the Lords of Surrey, Essex, Derby, Rutland, Huntingdon and Sussex; and a legion of other noblemen and knights. Boulogne was greatly edified at beholding the French and English Kings, the King of Navarre, the Dauphin, and the Princes of Orleans, Angoulême, Vendôme, and Guise, together with a glittering train of French and English peers, devoutly telling their rosaries, and following the cherished image in solemn procession through the streets. But in July 1544 all this was changed. Suffolk ordered the Church of Notre Dame to be desecrated and occupied by the English artillery. The sacred image, however, was carefully packed and sent over to England, where Henry, who had burnt the Lady of Walsingham and “her old syster of Ipswich,” preserved it in high veneration in his own bedroom. Edward VI, at the time of the restitution of Boulogne, consented to restore the treasure, and Louis de la Tremeuil, Prince of Talmont, was deputed to fetch it back to its time-honoured shrine.[52]

In August 1545 Suffolk died, after a long illness, at Guildford Castle, which had evidently been lent to him by Sir William Parr, who had it from the king. The duke’s illness seems to have been, in every phase, identical with that of the king, who died of a similar complication of diseases not two years later: Charles suffered from gout, heart failure, rheumatism, and dropsy. Henry VIII expressed great interest and anxiety concerning him, and sent constantly to Guildford to obtain news of his old friend and life-long companion. One of Suffolk’s portraits, painted in the last year of his life, represents him looking much older than he really was, and extremely like Henry VIII. He wears a dressing-gown and a silk skull cap, and his feet, much swollen with gout, are resting on a stool. During his last illness, the duke was attended by his wife and his two daughters, the Ladies Frances and Eleanor. He expired in their presence and in that of his grand-children, including Katherine Grey. Suffolk left instructions in his will that he was to be buried in an obscure Lincolnshire parish, without pomp, but Henry VIII ordered otherwise, and gave his accommodating brother-in-law and friend splendid obsequies at Windsor, where his tomb may still be seen, on the right-hand entrance to St. George’s Chapel. Requiem Masses for the repose of the soul of “the most High and Puissant Prince,” Charles, Duke of Suffolk, were said at St. Paul’s and at Westminster Abbey.

Suffolk left all his property to his widow and her children, with reversion to his daughters Frances and Eleanor Brandon, respectively Marchioness of Dorset and Countess of Cumberland, and to their heirs and successors, who are named. His widow retired to her lodging at the Barbican, where she was several times visited by the Lady Frances and her daughters, and by the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, the latter being her sincere friend, whereas the former disliked her exceedingly, on account of her change of religion. When the duchess, some short time after the death of her first husband, took unto herself a second, in the person of her young secretary, Mr. Bertie, an aggressive Protestant, Queen Mary was exceedingly wroth at what she considered to be a mésalliance. Mr. Bertie and the Duchess fled from England, and after staying awhile in Germany and visiting Venice, succeeded, despite many romantic adventures, in reaching Poland. The duchess and her “unequal match” did not return to England until after Mary’s death.

LADY KATHERINE GREY

CHAPTER I

BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD

The Lady Katherine Grey, two years younger than her unfortunate sister, the Lady Jane, was born in August 1540, and, according to tradition, not at Bradgate Hall in Leicestershire, but in London, at Dorset Place, Westminster, a mansion which the Duke of Suffolk, her father, then Marquis of Dorset, had purchased and rebuilt in the finest Tudor architecture of the period, having a very long gallery and terrace, overlooking the Thames. It was considerably altered towards the close of the sixteenth century, when it was divided into three separate houses, and in one of these Locke the philosopher lived and died. A relic of the existence of this palace was extant only a few years ago, in the name of a little street called Dorset Place, which was pulled down for modern improvements when the new War Office and its adjacent edifices were built.

There is, needless to say, no registered record of Lady Katherine’s birth, and we know very little of how her childhood was spent. The hygienic and more humane methods of rearing children, which are now in vogue, were then unknown. Lady Katherine’s little limbs must have been swathed in swaddling clothes, precisely as were those of all her infant contemporaries. She was certainly not nursed by her mother—which would have been against all precedent in royal circles of society—but by some country foster-mother, possibly the Mrs. Helen who performed the same office for Lady Jane, and who attended that unfortunate princess on the scaffold. A foster-mother in the family of the great position of the Dorsets was in many ways a personage. Her costume was rich; her board and lodging expensive, even luxurious; and the children she nursed were taught to consider her almost in the light of a mother, and this, many years after the very necessary functions which she had performed for their benefit had ceased.

The child’s costume as she grew up was cut on absolutely the same pattern as that of her mother, of which it was a miniature reproduction, without, however, the train or manteau de cour, which the Lady Frances only wore on state occasions. At five years of age, Lady Katherine wore long petticoats and a dress of brocade reaching to the feet, a ruff, and a little white cap, tied in a bow under the chin. There is still in existence a list or inventory of the toys which were in the possession of Princess Elizabeth when she was an infant at Hunsdon. They included a number of dolls of all sizes, one or two mechanical, “that could speke” and even walk (evidently imported from Italy), a wooden horse on rockers, a set of marionettes, some little cooking utensils, and no doubt most popular of all, a kind of Noah’s Ark, containing “beesties and Noah with hys familie.” With similar toys, doubtless, the little Lady Katherine and her sister Jane frequently did play.

As she grew older she was placed, to learn her letters, under the care of a certain Mrs. Ashley or Astley (sister or sister-in-law of the lady who figures so largely in history as the governess of Queen Elizabeth), who remained in the quality of governess-companion to the children of the Marquis of Dorset until the death of Lady Jane, when we lose sight of her, unless indeed the little Lady Mary was placed in her charge and remained at Bradgate during the tragic events that decimated her family.

Lady Katherine’s entry into what we should now call society, took place on the 20th August, 1547, when that renowned, not to say redoubted, lady, Bess of Hardwick, married her second husband, Sir William Cavendish. For some reason or other which has escaped record, this wedding took place at Bradgate Hall, in Leicestershire, evidently placed at the disposal of the bride and bridegroom by the Dorsets. The nuptial knot was tied at two o’clock in the morning, according to a curious custom of nocturnal marriages which holds good to this day in certain parts of America, Italy, and Spain. There was a house-party assembled for this festive occasion, and among the guests were the Earl of Shrewsbury, who in due time became the fourth husband of the bride of that day—or better, night—and the Marchioness of Northampton, the discarded wife of Katherine Parr’s brother, a lady who had had a very curious and adventurous history, which excluded her from court, although, at the time of her death, she was staying at Sudeley Castle, as the guest of Henry VIII’s sixth wife, Katherine Parr. The Marchioness was evidently a very great friend of the Dorset family, with whom, for all her rather scandalous reputation, she was a frequent visitor. The wedding must have taken place in the private chapel (which is still standing) of the now ruined hall, and amongst those present were the Marquis and Marchioness of Dorset, with their three daughters, the Ladies Jane, Katherine and Mary, who acted as bridesmaids. Immediately after the wedding ceremony, a sort of breakfast was served, after which, with much music and noise, the bride and bridegroom were led in procession to the bridal chamber. This marriage taking place at Bradgate, shows how early was the connection that existed between Bess of Hardwick and the Greys—a connection which, some twenty years later, proved a very uncomfortable one for the said Bess, since it sent her to the Tower.

As Bess of Hardwick will be mentioned again in these pages, it may be well to remind the reader here, that she was the daughter of a certain Mr. John Hardwick, a small Derbyshire yeoman farmer or squire, and one of seven or eight brothers and sisters. She had acquired, under her paternal roof, an excellent knowledge of brewing, baking, starching, making of elder and cowslip wine, preserves and cordials; but she grew tired of the country, early in life, and on one occasion, without warning any of her relatives, put herself in communication with Lady Zouch,[53] a distant cousin, who was then residing in London, in a prominent position at the court of Henry VIII. To Lady Zouch, therefore, Bess addressed herself, begging of her not to think it impertinent that she should write to her, but to remember her forlorn condition and take compassion on it. It would seem that Derbyshire, and especially that part of it in which she lived, was not conducive to matrimony, and the enterprising Bess thought that if she could come to London as companion to Lady Zouch, she might succeed in extricating herself from the narrow circumstances in which she had hitherto lived. Lady Zouch replied favourably, and invited Mistress Elizabeth Hardwick to come and stay with her. She had not been very long under her noble cousin’s roof, ere she formed the acquaintance of old Mr. John Barlow. He was seventy, and Bess was considerably under twenty. The gentleman, who was a great invalid, was very rich; the young lady was active and healthy, but poor. She became his nurse, and rubbed his legs and applied his leeches and poultices with such admirable skill, avoiding giving him unnecessary pain, that he proposed to her and was accepted. Mr. Barlow did not long survive his wedding, and when he died, Bess inherited every penny of his fortune. Having now secured wealth, she was determined to acquire rank. Her next choice fell upon Sir William Cavendish, a son of that Thomas Cavendish who assisted Henry VIII in suppressing the monasteries, and who wrote an excellent life of Cardinal Wolsey. Sir William was not a very young man when he first made the acquaintance of Mistress Barlow, and he was already the father of six sons and daughters. Bess, who wished to be a “lady,” forgave him this numerous progeny, even going so far as to declare she would be a mother unto them all. It is at this period of her existence that she begins to loom largely in the social history of her time. During the ten years that she was Cavendish’s wife, she filled his quiver with not less than eight children, four sons and four daughters, one of whom, Elizabeth, had by way of godmother Queen Elizabeth, the Lady Katherine Grey representing “Our Eliza” by proxy. This Elizabeth Cavendish in due time married Darnley’s youngest brother (there were seventeen years between them), and became, eventually, the mother of the unfortunate Arabella Stuart, whose life-story runs on almost parallel lines with that of Lady Katherine Grey, her godmother by proxy. Both were the victims of their unfortunate love affairs and of the vindictiveness of Elizabeth, who was determined to have as few heirs to her Throne as possible. Bess, after the death of Sir William, married again, for the third time, Mr. William Saintlow or St. Lo, a rich gentleman, captain in Queen Elizabeth’s bodyguard, and considered to be the handsomest man in Europe.

In the case of the Cavendish children, Bess behaved admirably, but she evidently took a fierce dislike to the Saintlow progeny, whom she treated so abominably that they never set foot inside their father’s house until his death, when they attended his funeral, to learn that he had left them all his available property. The ambitious Mrs. Saintlow, wishing to still further increase her rank, next married George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. This marriage was not a very happy one, mainly through the strange circumstances in which the earl and countess were placed. They were obliged by Queen Elizabeth to take into their charge the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots; and Bess, by marrying her daughter, Elizabeth, to young Charles Lennox, Darnley’s brother, became the grandmother of Arabella Stuart, which, to use her own words, was “the greatest trouble that ever God inflicted upon her.” Bess of Hardwick built Hardwick Hall, near Chatsworth, one of the most beautiful Elizabethan mansions in England, and possibly the only one which still contains intact the furniture, tapestries and works of art which its builder installed there.

After the wedding of Mrs. Barlow with Sir William Cavendish, the name of Lady Katherine Grey becomes more conspicuous in the memorials of her family. We know, for instance, that, together with her parents and her sisters, Jane and Mary, she spent the Christmas of 1551 with her cousin, Princess Mary, afterwards queen, at Hunsdon. The princess had provided a good deal of amusement for the children, in the shape of singers and conjurers obtained from London. In the following year (1552/3), the Marquis of Dorset—now become Duke of Suffolk, thanks to the Lord Protector Somerset, and consequently to Edward VI—helped Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk,[54] to entertain a large party at Tilsey, the seat of the young Willoughbys, who were her grace’s wards. There still exists, in the archives of the Willoughby family, a note-book of household expenses drawn up by “old Mr. Medley,” a connection of the family who acted as a sort of majordomo. Mr. Medley informs us that for the forty guests and servants who were being entertained, as much as £200 a week was spent for meat, fowls, fish, fruit, sweetmeats, etc. He likewise says that a sum of six pounds, equivalent to about sixty of our money, was given to the manager of Lord Oxford’s players, who brought his troupe to Tilsey, with the permission of the earl, to perform before the company on three separate days, when they gave, no doubt to the huge delight of the children, some of those horse-play comedies and farces which amused our Tudor ancestors, and which included amongst their attractions such items as “four hobby-horses, two dragons, four men as monkeys, a giraffe, and a man that swallowed fire.” Such wonders as these, probably, greatly pleased Lady Katherine and her little sisters, for children are the same in all ages. Then there were “romps, games and dances” in the great hall; and altogether, to use our familiar expression, the young people had “a real good time” at Tilsey—which doubtless contrasted rather unpleasantly with the formal hospitality offered them a fortnight later by the duke’s sister, the Lady Audley, at Saffron Walden, where there was a preacher engaged to improve their manners and their morals. Bullinger, who got wind of the very secular form of entertainment ordered by the Duke of Suffolk for the amusement of his young guests at Tilsey, took umbrage, and wrote one or two bitter letters about it, which, let us hope, never fell into the hands of his grace, else the cause of the Reformation might have suffered considerably thereby. Probably the duke was not at this time as completely converted to Puritanism as he was a couple of years later. After their visit to Walden, the whole family rode up to London, the little Ladies Katherine and Jane perched on pillions in front of their father and their uncle John. Here they were again entertained by Princess Mary, at the Priory, Clerkenwell. When the Suffolks returned to Bradgate, they stayed in Leicester, and were entertained with wine and hippocras and more solid refreshments by the mayoress and her sister. After partaking of these, they proceeded to Bradgate, three miles farther on.

So many cross-country journeys on horseback, to and fro, from Bradgate to Hunsdon, Hunsdon to Tilsey, Tilsey to Saffron Walden, from Saffron Walden to London, and then a three-days’ journey back to Leicestershire, either in a litter or on horseback, told unfortunately on the health of the little Ladies Jane and Katherine, and both of them—and no wonder!—were laid up for a week or so with serious illnesses. Indeed, Lady Katherine’s health, like that of her sister Jane, seems, throughout her life, to have been very fragile, for later we shall hear of her being frequently ill with fever, headaches, and rheumatic pains.

The Lady Frances and her husband, the Duke of Suffolk,[55] never seem to have destined Lady Katherine, as they did her sister Jane, to play any very conspicuous part in history. Jane they set aside and educated, coached—or better, “crammed”—to be the head of the Protestant party in England, and, as such, either to share the Throne with her cousin, Edward VI, or else to occupy it alone, instead of the Catholic Princess Mary, or of Elizabeth, whose religious opinions were not at this time clearly defined. Lady Jane, very skilfully surrounded by the most able and learned Reformers of her time, was veritably moulded for the dizzy but unfortunate station for which she was destined, and her parents, in their eagerness to fit her to occupy the Throne on the death of the sickly Edward VI, did not even allow her the time to take necessary recreation. The memorable interview between Lady Jane and Roger Ascham proves that the poor child was tortured into learning. If by chance, worn out by study, she turned to lighter things than Greek or Latin grammar, she got so many “bobs and pinches” from her charming mother, “that for pain she was fain to weep”; or find relief from so much cruelty and trouble in the unusual recreation, for a young girl, of reading Plato’s Dialogues or the Orations of Demosthenes. Ascham found Lady Katherine otherwise engaged, enjoying herself with the rest of the company at hunting and archery and those sports in which her mother, the Lady Frances, excelled. It is not surprising, then, to find that Bullinger, Œcolampadius, Conrad Pellican, Ulmer and the many other Reformers who flocked to England during the reign of Edward VI, and who were specially welcome at Bradgate, had very little or nothing to do with Lady Katherine. Under the shade of the beautiful trees of Bradgate, therefore, and in the sunlight of its broad and flower-covered meadows; in the stately avenues of its gardens and by the running brooks and broad pools of its park, the girlhood of Lady Katherine Grey was passed, we may presume, far more pleasantly and naturally than that of her sister Jane. She was at least allowed to indulge in sports and pastimes suitable to her age, to try her skill at archery and possibly to leap a fence on a favourite pony, to dance in the hall, and may be to sing a ballad to the accompaniment of a lute, aye, even to practise on the virginals, without incurring, as her elder sister had done, the displeasure of good Master Bullinger, who in one of his most remarkable letters, written at the request of Aylmer, cautioned the Lady Jane against the vanities of this world and urged her to dress soberly, as becomes a Christian maiden, by taking as her model the Princess Elizabeth!—above all, not to lose time in practising music and in other like frivolities.[56]

In his history of Lady Jane Grey (The Nine-days’ Queen), the author pointed out that the legends as to any intimacy or love-making having ever existed between Lady Jane and her cousin King Edward VI, are absolutely apocryphal. Although at one time the Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour actually suggested that, in the event of the engagement between Edward and the Queen of Scots failing, the Lady Jane Grey should be proposed as queen consort, the young people do not seem to have come much in contact; and despite that the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk and the Lady Katherine were in London very frequently during the reign of Edward VI, there is no record of the Lady Katherine having been to her cousin’s court, not even on the occasion when her sister Jane figured rather prominently at the revels given in honour of the queen dowager of Scotland, when she passed through London on her way northwards. Katherine was probably too young; but there is a touching record extant, proving that, notwithstanding a slight disparity in age (only two years, however), a great affection existed between Lady Jane Grey and her sister.

On Whit-Sunday (probably May 21) 1553, the day on which Lady Jane became the bride of Lord Guildford Dudley, Katherine was married, or rather, contracted—she was only thirteen years old at the time—to Henry, Lord Herbert, eldest son of the Earl of Pembroke, who was just a little over nineteen. After the ceremony (it was no more than a ceremony), the very youthful “bride” lived, according to custom, under her father-in-law’s roof at Baynard’s Castle, the ancient palace on the Thames, within the walls of which Pembroke proclaimed his allegiance to Mary on the last day of Queen Jane’s reign. Lady Katherine, unlike her sister Jane, was not blessed (or cursed) with a mother-in-law, for Anne Parr, only sister of Queen Katherine Parr and mother of Lord Herbert, had died some months before her son’s marriage and her husband’s accession to the rank of earl. The young “bride’s” father-in-law, however, must have been the reverse of a pleasant companion—his selfishness, craft, and brutality, like his enormous wealth, were common talk. When he expelled the abbess and nuns from the royal abbey of Wilton, which had been bestowed upon him by Henry VIII, he is said to have struck some of them with his whip, exclaiming, “Go spin, ye jades, go spin!” Like the majority of his peers, indeed, he was a staunch Protestant under Edward VI, a “Janeite” for something near nine days, and, when Mary came to the Throne, so fervent a Catholic that he actually invited the nuns of Wilton to return to their old home, and stood bareheaded as they filed into it in his presence.

Lady Katherine Grey was still at Baynard’s Castle during the whole of the last days of the tragic existence of her unfortunate sister, and was not, as usually stated, at Sheen. The more minute details of what had befallen Lady Jane may have been spared her; but surely she must have been acquainted with the general outline of what was happening to her father and mother and to the victim of their ambition, the “Nine-days’ Queen.” There is no evidence, however, that during the time Lady Jane was on the Throne, Lady Katherine Grey ever entered the Tower, and she certainly never saw her sister again; but she was remembered by her in one of the most exquisite letters of the period.[57] The letter runs as follows:—

“I have sent you, good sister Katherine, a book [i.e. the Testament], which, though it be not outwardly trimmed with gold, yet inwardly it is of more worth than precious stones. It is the book, dear sister, of the laws of the Lord; it is His Testament and last Will, which He bequeathed to us poor wretches, which shall lead us to the path of eternal joy; and if you, with good mind and an earnest desire, follow it, it will bring you to immortal and everlasting life. It will teach you to live—it will teach you to die—it will win you more than you would have gained by the possession of your woeful father’s lands, for if God had prospered him ye would have inherited his lands.

“If ye apply diligently to this book, trying to direct your life by it, you shall be inheritor of those riches as neither the covetous shall withdraw from you, neither the thief shall steal, nor the moth corrupt. Desire, dear sister, to understand the law of the Lord your God. Live still to die, that you by death may purchase eternal life, or, after your death, enjoy the life purchased for you by Christ’s death. Trust not that the tenderness of your age shall lengthen your life, for as soon as God will, goeth the young as the old. Labour alway and learn to die. Deny the world, defy the devil, and despise the flesh. Delight only in the Lord. Be penitent for your sins, but despair not. Be steady in your faith, yet presume not, and desire, with St. Paul, to be dissolved, to be with Christ, with Whom, even in death, there is life. Be like the good servant, and even in midnight be waking, lest when death cometh, he steal upon you like a thief in the night, and you be, with the evil servant, found sleeping, and lest for lack of oil ye be found like the first foolish wench,[58] and like him that had not the wedding garment, ye be cast out from the marriage. Persist ye (as I trust ye do, seeing ye have the name of a Christian), as near as ye can, to follow the steps of your Master, Christ, and take up your cross, lay your sins on His back, and always embrace Him!

“As touching my death, rejoice as I do, and adsist [i.e. consider] that I shall be delivered from corruption and put on incorruption, for I am assured that I shall, for losing a mortal life, find an immortal felicity. Pray God grant that ye live in His fear and die in His love....[59] neither for love of life nor fear of death. For if ye deny His truth to lengthen your life, God will deny you and shorten your days, and if ye will cleave to Him, He will prolong your days, to your comfort, and for His glory, to the which glory God bring mine and you hereafter, when it shall please Him to call you.

“Farewell, dear sister; put your only trust in God, Who only must uphold you.

“Your loving sister,

“Jane Duddely.”

Shortly after the “Nine-days’ Queen’s” execution, the Earl of Pembroke, true to his callous nature, and so as to avoid any suspicion of having supported the fallen cause, forced his son to annul his engagement with Lady Katherine, on the plea that it had been a mere formality, and that the bride had been at the time betrothed to the young Earl of Hertford—a curious statement, certainly, when considered in the light of subsequent events. Camden says that she was officially “divorced,” but this is not probable, there having been no marriage beyond a mere ceremony of contract. It was therefore simply annulled, and the bride, who, according to the custom of the period, had gone to live with her husband’s parents, in order the better to form her future husband’s acquaintance, was sent back to her mother. Strange to say, five years later (March 24, 1559), the Count de Feria wrote to King Philip of Spain stating that “Lady Katherine has been hitherto very willing to marry the Earl of Pembroke’s son, but she has ceased to talk about it as she used to. The Bishop will have told Your Majesty what passed between the Earl of Pembroke and me on this matter.” It is easy to understand that Pembroke, recognizing Katherine’s position in respect to the succession, may have eventually regretted the over-hasty dissolution of his son’s betrothal, and desired that so advantageous a marriage should take place; but why Katherine, at that time engaged to the Earl of Hertford, should have favoured Pembroke’s son, is hard to say, unless she was suddenly temporarily jealous or annoyed with her fiancé, or was simply pretending to approve of Pembroke’s plan, in order to distract attention from her real engagement to the earl, which it was advisable to keep secret.

Scarcely had Lady Katherine returned to the maternal roof from Baynard’s Castle than she had to undergo the trying ordeal of hearing of the executions of her father and uncle, and of witnessing the callous manner in which these tragedies were treated by her mother. The Lady Frances’s mourning for her husband or her daughter could not have been of long duration, for well within the first three weeks of her widowhood, regardless of the tragic fate of her daughter, her husband, and her brother-in-law, this heartless woman put aside her mourning robes, and, gaily attired, allowed herself to be led to the hymeneal altar by a ginger-headed lad of twenty-one, young enough to be her son and of such inferior rank that the Princess Elizabeth, in her indignation at so unequal a match, cried out: “What? Has the woman so far forgotten herself as to mate with a common groom!” “A common groom,” however, Mr. Stokes was not. He was a member of a fairly good yeoman family and had been appointed secretary and groom of the chambers to the princess some two years earlier, during which time he must not only have won her confidence, but been on terms of so unusually intimate a kind, that had his first child been born alive, which fortunately it was not, it might have claimed the paternity of the Duke of Suffolk, and have added another complication to the many as to the succession, the result of the irregular wills[60] made by Henry VIII and Edward VI, who both appointed the Lady Frances and her daughters the immediate heiresses to the Throne, in the event of the deaths without issue of the former king’s daughters, Elizabeth and Mary. Perhaps the real reason why Lady Jane Grey never wrote to her mother in the last months of her life and never mentioned her in the letters to her sister Katherine and to her father, nor even on the margin of the Prayer Book (still in the possession of the nation) in which she has recorded her last thoughts, was that she was well aware of some scandal attaching to the Lady Frances in connection with the “base-born” Mr. Adrian Stokes. There are portraits, both in one canvas, facing each other, of Mr. Adrian Stokes and the Lady Frances, at Chatsworth. The gentleman is distinctly plain and common looking—he might indeed be a groom, with his ginger hair, his colourless eyes and rather silly expression. He wears a very rich doublet of black velvet, furred with ermine; whereas the Lady Frances, a buxom, but sour and ill-tempered looking lady, bearing a strange resemblance to her uncle, Henry VIII, is attired in a dress of black satin, with a jewelled pattern. She wears the well-known Mary Stuart coif and some fine jewels. In the corner of the picture figures the date “1555” and the words, “Adrian Stokes, aged twenty-one, and Lady Frances Duchess of Suffolk, aged thirty-six”—she looks fully ten years older.

[To face p. 104

FRANCES BRANDON, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK, AND HER SECOND HUSBAND, ADRIAN STOKES

(From an engraving, by Vertue, after the original portrait by Lucas de Heere)

The question arises, Why did Lady Frances marry Mr. Stokes? The match appeared, even at that time, an incredible breach of common decency. Was it a love-passion; or was it not rather the result of well pondered policy? The Lady Frances might easily have been selected as the head of one or other of the numerous parties then existing in England, in order that she should become a possible successor or even rival to Queen Mary. The fact that she was the wife of a “base-born knave” made it almost an impossibility that she could be used as a tool against the queen. The people would never have accepted her as a ruler, nor would they have allowed her offspring, notwithstanding the example of Katherine of Valois and Owen Tudor, to have succeeded to the Throne. This was the view of the case taken, even at the time, at court; for the French ambassador speaks of it as simply a move on the part of the Lady Frances to get herself tacitly excluded from the succession, and thereby enable her to lead a peaceful existence. It may be remarked here that nearly all the greatest court ladies of the late King Edward’s reign, including the Duchess of Somerset and Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, married men who were their inferiors by birth and station. Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, married her youthful secretary, Mr. Bertie; and Mr. Newdigate, Anne Stanhope, Duchess of Somerset’s secretary, became, in due course, that haughty lady’s husband.

CHAPTER II

LADY KATHERINE GREY AT THE COURT OF QUEEN MARY

Miss Agnes Strickland and other historians have fallen into the error of stating that Mary Tudor appointed the Lady Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, to be one of her women of the bedchamber, and her two daughters, the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey, maids of honour. A little reflection will show that such appointments were as impossible in Mary’s time, as it would be, in our day, for Her present Majesty, to name the Duchess of Fife and her children, or the Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, to similar positions in her household. The Ladies Grey were royal princesses and possible successors to the reigning sovereign. Mary, therefore, simply restored to the royal Duchess of Suffolk her rights of precedence and entrée at court, which had been withdrawn on account of her share in the conspiracy to place her daughter, the Lady Jane Grey, upon the Throne. A note among the Willoughby Papers (1556) probably gave rise to the error in question, by stating that “Mrs. Margaret Willoughby has been to Court with the Lady Frances’ Grace, who has her place in the Privy-chamber. Young Mistress Willoughby was much commended, and the Lady Frances’ Grace did not doubt but, in a short time, to place her about the Queen’s highness, so as to content all her friends.” This, however, merely confirms what we have said above. Throughout her reign, owing to ill-health, Queen Mary received not only her intimate friends, but even ambassadors and other official persons, in her bed-chamber, whilst she lay, propped up with cushions, in the bed.

The Lady Frances, after her ill-assorted marriage, lived with her young husband at Sheen, but came up to London to her house in the Strand (which she had not as yet sold, and on the site of which Northumberland House was subsequently built) whenever it suited her purpose to visit the queen or her other royal relatives. Though the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey were not exactly “received” into the queen’s household—their rank forbade it—they accompanied the queen wherever she went, and lodged in the royal palaces. Mary did not wish the sisters of Lady Jane Grey to be far out of her sight and reach, lest they might be involved in some attempt to place either of them, and especially the Lady Katherine, at the head of the Protestant party, in the position left vacant in so tragic a manner by their sister Jane. Mary, and after Mary’s death, Elizabeth in her turn, paid each sister a pension of eighty pounds a year; but this was a bounty, not a salary. After the deaths of their father, uncle, and sister, the estates of the Greys, at Bradgate and elsewhere, were confiscated, and eventually passed by entail to the next male heir, Lord Grey of Pirgo; and therefore the inheritance of the two sisters from their father was lost to them and never restored. It was otherwise with the Lady Frances, whose property, although considerably diminished by mortgages and loans, was never confiscated; but the rents only sufficed for her own maintenance and that of her young husband. As to her daughters, this sinister lady does not seem to have troubled much about them. She apparently left their interests to Providence—and the queen. Lady Katherine Grey and her little sister were treated with consideration at the court of Queen Mary, and granted the state and precedence due to princesses of the blood, as is clearly indicated in the records of the time, by an apparently trivial mention, that “their trains were upheld by a gentlewoman” on all great occasions, a privilege only accorded to members of the royal family.

The contrast between the secluded life which she had led at Baynard’s Castle, and the court of Queen Mary, must have been great, and afforded, to a very young girl of Katherine’s age, sufficient amusement to make her forget the sorrows through which she had recently passed. The Duke of Somerset, when protector, had reduced the household expenses of Edward VI to about half what they had been in the reign of his father, Henry VIII. Queen Mary, being economically inclined, although aware that she must make a great figure if she wished to captivate Philip of Spain, did not restore things to the splendid state in which they had been in her father’s time. She reduced the number of her servants and attendants, but in a measure increased the splendour of their costumes. Like her sister Elizabeth, she was inordinately fond of dress, with this difference, however, that she had perfect taste; and fortunately for her, fashion was not then as grotesque as it became later on, when good Queen Elizabeth wore farthingales four yards in circumference, and a ruff that gave her head the appearance of being in the centre of her body. Mary’s household was ordered almost on monastic lines. Mass every morning, saying the rosary, evening and night prayers, and pious readings took up much of the ladies’ time. They were, moreover, expected to accompany the queen to hear innumerable sermons, and to follow her in the countless religious processions which were now revived with exaggerated zeal. The queen, it is true, occasionally indulged in a stately measure, was fond of music and not a little, also, of cards; but until the advent of Philip, her court was as decorous as it was dull.

[To face p.110

MARY TUDOR, QUEEN OF ENGLAND

(From a little known portrait by Antonio Moro, in the Escurial)

Lady Katherine Grey’s first appearance at the court of the queen, her cousin, was on the occasion of Mary’s marriage to Philip of Spain in July 1554, when she is mentioned as being among the ladies who rode in that startling red-lacquered chariot, lined with crimson velvet and specially constructed for the purpose, that so delighted contemporaries, and conveyed Her Majesty and her ladies over the very rough roads between London and Winchester, rendered still more dreadful by an almost incessant downpour of rain which had lasted for some weeks. The queen and her suite reached Winchester on Monday, July 23, on the same day that Prince Philip left Southampton, where he had landed, after seven days’ rough voyage from Corunna, on Thursday, July 19. At Southampton he had been lodged in the palace, specially adorned with tapestries sent down from London. The decorations of his bedroom puzzled and displeased him not a little, for it was hung with crimson velvet embroidered “in many places” with the arms of England, bordered with scrolls on which figured the words, “Defender of the Faith and Head of the Church,” in raised letters of gold and silver, interlaced with the roses of York and Lancaster. Philip, a belligerent Catholic, did not like himself in the character of “Defender of the [Protestant] Faith” or as “Head” of the Protestant or any other church. The people of Southampton seem to have been delighted with the personal appearance of the Spanish prince; contemporary documents describe him as possessing a “bright complexion,” which he certainly had not in ordinary life, and we may therefore conclude that he rouged for the occasion—a by no means unusual practice, even with men, in those days. Titian and Coelho have depicted Philip, and it would be hard to find a more unpleasing countenance than that of this Prince of Naples, soon (1556) to be King Philip II of Spain and emperor of half the known world; a strangely shaped conical head, a prematurely wrinkled forehead, a chubby nose with large nostrils, and a protruding underlip, made up a most unprepossessing face, not even relieved by fine eyes, but merely by a pair of grey ones that rather emphasized than otherwise the sodden complexion of a gentleman who was, however, nothing like so unpleasant in his manners as we have been led to fancy him. He was, at least at this period of his life, neither mean nor morose, but exceedingly alert, liberal, and courteous, even to menials. He arrived in England in the best of tempers, which was, however, sorely tried during his short journey from Southampton to Winchester, performed, with a very numerous escort, on horseback. The roads were wretched, the rain and wind incessant, and at a given point, some three miles before reaching Winchester, the prince’s horse shied, and Philip, Infante of Spain, Viceroy of Naples, Sicily, Austria, Flanders and the Indies, East and West, was sent sprawling, like an ordinary mortal, into a mud-heap, whence he emerged in such a filthy condition, that he had to be conveyed into a hut, washed, cleaned and furbished up generally for the rest of his ride. He reached Winchester towards evening, where he dined alone. He was then dressed afresh, the better to make a favourable impression upon the royal bride, who awaited him with the utmost impatience at the Bishop’s palace. When he entered the great hall, the queen, gorgeously robed in white satin embroidered in silver, with a train of blue velvet, greeted him with every demonstration of affection. Philip himself was in white velvet, slashed with cloth of silver. He moreover wore a short cloak of black velvet, embroidered in gold with a design of pomegranates. A little before reaching Winchester, His Highness had been met at the wayside by a gentleman on horseback, bearing a ring from the queen, as a token of her regard, which ring Philip took great care to wear, and even to point to, when he first beheld Her Majesty. There had, however, been some trouble over the matter of the ring, for Lord Pembroke, who had been selected to convey it to the prince, spoke neither French, Italian, nor Spanish. Pembroke’s speech on delivering the said ring was either misunderstood or wrongly translated, and Philip came to the conclusion that it was intended to warn him of some plot or other against him, for he was well aware of the intense dislike to the marriage entertained by the majority of the English; and he even prepared to turn back. He, however, called the Duke of Alva and Count Egmont to him, and passing for shelter under the dripping boughs of a tree, consulted with them. Pembroke was now called also, and after a good deal of pantomiming, it was made clear that the ring was simply a matter of compliment, and not a warning; and thus, greatly relieved, the brilliant company galloped on, through the blinding wind and rain, as fast as their horses could speed. As the queen spoke Spanish fluently, no doubt Philip described this incident to her, and maybe it explains why, shortly after the prince had entered her presence, Mary was observed to be laughing heartily as she conversed with him.

The marriage of the Queen of England to the Prince of Naples and Spain took place in Winchester Cathedral on July 25, being the Feast of St. James. Mary walked from the episcopal palace to the church, her cousin, the Lady Margaret Douglas (Lennox), carrying her train, assisted by Sir John Gage, the chamberlain. Behind her walked Lady Katherine Grey, “her train upheld by a gentlewoman.” Then came the queen’s favourite women: the Lady Browne, Mrs. Jane Dormer, Mrs. Clarencieux, the Lady Bacon, Mrs. Sands, the beautiful Lady Magdalen Dacre, Mrs. Mary Finch, Jane Russell, Mrs. Shirley, and many others. In the chancel were assembled the distinguished Spanish noblemen and women who had accompanied the prince from Spain. The tall, majestic, but sinister-looking Duke of Alva, with his fine features, steely grey eyes, and long forked grey beard, must have been the observed of all observers, for he was already renowned and dreaded as a formidable opponent of the Reform. The handsome Count Egmont was also a conspicuous personage in the prince’s foreign escort. Within a few short years, together with his friend, Count Horne, he was to be amongst Alva’s most famous victims, and eventually to be immortalized in a tragedy by Schiller and an overture by Beethoven. After the wedding ceremony, performed by Dr. Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, the illustrious company walked processionally to the episcopal palace, where a copious banquet was served, the royal table being furnished with plate of solid gold. A cupboard of nine stages, full of gold vases and silver dishes, was placed well in sight, for ornament rather than for use. In a gallery opposite was stationed a band of musicians, who played a selection of English and Spanish tunes; after which, four heralds, attired in their official tabards, entered, and between the first and the second courses, one of them, after much trumpeting, pronounced a congratulatory Latin panegyric in the queen’s honour and in that of the Prince of Naples, which was received with tumultuous applause, though we may take it for granted that nine-tenths of the audience did not understand a word of what had been said! At what we should call the dessert, a group of Winchester boys pressed forward and grouped themselves round their head-boy, who read a Latin epithalium[61] of his own composition. The queen then most graciously introduced the lads to the prince, and they were all of them rewarded by Her Majesty and His Highness with gold and silver coins, tied up in little red bags. At the close of the banquet, Prince Philip rose and returned thanks to the Lords of the Privy Council and to the other English nobility present. At six o’clock the tables were cleared and taken up, and a little later the queen, who had retired for about an hour, returned to the hall, accompanied by her women, and spoke very graciously to the Spanish ladies. Among these were the Duchess of Alva, the Countess Egmont, the Countess Horne, the Countess of Villhermosa, the Duquesa de las Neves, and many others, whose costumes were deemed so extraordinary and ludicrous by the English ladies that they had the greatest difficulty to conceal their merriment. We can imagine how the little Lady Katherine Grey must have been diverted by the comical spectacle presented by the towering form of the Duchess of Alva, a very large and tall woman, attired in one of those gigantic farthingales with which Velazquez has made us familiar. It seems that the Duchess of Alva’s huge petticoat was embroidered in a design of parrots and squirrels pecking at cherries and oranges and other fruits, and even nuts: the whole on a ground of gold thread. No doubt it was a marvellous specimen of needlework, but when taken in conjunction with a formidable ruff of gold lace and a headdress so peculiar as to baffle description, the presence of the august lady was well calculated to astonish and divert her English hosts, who were attired in the tasteful costume of the period. The Spanish ladies, who did not dance the English dances, after much ado consented to execute a Spanish fandango, to the amused delight of the queen and the court of England.

What became of Lady Katherine Grey immediately after the marriage of the queen is not recorded. From Winchester the royal couple went to Basing Hall for their honeymoon, where they were splendidly entertained by the Marquis of Winchester; but as the suites of the queen and her consort were, to use Dominie Sampson’s expression, “prodeegious,” both in quality and quantity, a large contingent of them rode on to London to await their majesties’ arrival. After a week at Basing Hall, the royal couple, with their courts, proceeded, in mended weather, to Windsor. The cavalcade consisted of fifty-two of the lumbering but vividly painted coaches then in vogue, containing about a dozen persons each: that occupied by the prince and the queen, who sat opposite each other precisely as they would have done in an omnibus, was the only one painted scarlet. The passage of the royal party and their suite through the hamlets, villages, and small towns on the way, created, we may be sure, a delightful impression upon the country-folks, unaccustomed to seeing so many gay coaches, litters, cavaliers, and horsemen. Long before the interminable cortège reached Windsor, the sun shone out gloriously, as the noble silhouette of the incomparable castle, with its round and square towers rising majestically from the midst of its delicious surroundings of every tint of verdure, burst upon the delighted English and the surprised Spaniards, who had no conception that England—which, according to their letters home, they considered a land of barbarians—contained any palace so superb: one that coul until August 27, in that fair riverside palace, of which, unfortunately, so little has survived. On the morning of that day, Philip and Mary, in their state barges, escorted by nearly a hundred other craft, some of them manned by as many as forty oarsmen, rowed down the river to Suffolk Place, Southwark, where they spent the night before making their state entry into London. In those days, Suffolk Place, of which only a memory remains in the name of a mean court, was one of the most magnificent Tudor residences in England. It had been inherited by the queen’s uncle, Charles Brandon, from his uncle Thomas, and sumptuously furnished for the reception of the queen-dowager, Mary Tudor. In the reign of Edward VI it was converted into a mint, but was now refurnished for the reception of Prince Philip. It is not likely that either the Lady Frances, or her daughters Katherine and Mary, were included in the state procession that started for Westminster from Suffolk Place early in the morning of the 28th of August. The tragedy of Lady Jane was too fresh in the minds of the people for it to be prudent to recall it too forcibly by the presence in a public function of the mother and sisters of the numerous victims. The state entry of Philip and Mary into the metropolis must have been very curious, if only on account of the number of giants which, for some unexplained reason, formed part of the usual pageants along the road: their towering height contrasted sharply with the very diminutive stature of the queen. Of greater interest probably to the people of London than this state entry was another procession which passed through the streets some months later, bearing to the Tower no less than ninety-seven iron chests, each a yard and a quarter in length, and reported to contain a quantity of Spanish silver, which, says Machyn, “will mak by estymacyon 1 thousand pounds.” These chests were carried in carts specially constructed for the purpose, and guarded by Spaniards in rich liveries, and were greeted, so it was noted, with greater enthusiasm than was shown for either the prince or the queen. Naturally the people were well pleased to see so tangible a proof that the national exchequer, which had been emptied by Henry VIII and by the protector, under Edward VI, was being thus replenished by the otherwise intolerable Spaniards.

Unhappily, in the midst of the coronation festivities, the old Duke of Norfolk died; and in deference to his memory, the queen, who was probably very tired herself of these rejoicings, ordered that they should be suspended for some time. The court therefore proceeded to Hampton Court, where it arrived on August 23 (1554), and was met, we know, by Lady Katherine Grey, because a few days after their highnesses’ arrival, an important incident in the life of this young lady occurred—i.e. her meeting, after some years’ separation, with young Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, the late Duke of Somerset’s eldest son, who at one time had been much attached to Lady Jane Grey. He was not a very desirable suitor, it may be, for so great a lady as Katherine, since, besides being not very well off—having been deprived of his father’s lands and titles—he was so undersized that he was generally called “little Hertford”; whilst, as we shall see later on, he seems to have possessed a timorous and vacillating character.

[To face p. 122

PHILIP II, KING OF SPAIN

(From a contemporary Spanish print)

Meanwhile, the king and queen retired to a suite of beautiful Gothic chambers, known as “Paradise,” which were destroyed in the seventeenth century, when this part of the palace was rebuilt by William and Mary. Philip and Mary shut themselves up for nearly a week, much to the annoyance of the public, no one being admitted, except such ladies-in-waiting and gentlemen as were absolutely necessary for the service of the royal table and bedchamber. These days of peaceful seclusion were possibly the happiest of Mary’s life: for she firmly believed Philip to be in love with her, and he played up to her fancy as deceitfully and skilfully as only he knew how. The royal pair would sit for hours together hand in hand, and even disappear down a private staircase, to meander, with their arms round each other’s waists, like the commonest of lovers, across the lawns and the flower-bordered avenues of that charming and still delightful garden. The queen was infatuated, and firmly believed that in due course she would give birth to a son and heir—had not the fact been lately prophesied to her by a famous soothsayer? Unfortunately, even thus early in his married life, Philip exhibited his fickle nature, in an amusing incident that moved the court to merriment. Among the ladies in attendance on Mary at this time was the beautiful Lady Magdalen Dacre, a friend of Lady Katherine Grey and of about her age. Her beaming face and her bright eyes soon attracted the attention of Philip, who watched an opportunity to pounce upon his fair prey and kiss her, whereupon the fiery young Englishwoman, breaking away from him, gave him a resounding box on the ears. Philip took his punishment prettily enough and made no complaint; but the story of his defeat, spreading like wildfire through the court, created much amusement, and no doubt eventually reached Her Majesty’s ears.

Mr. Martin Hume published, some years ago, a very curious letter he found among the Spanish archives, giving a description of the few happy days Mary enjoyed with Philip, from which we learn that the over numerous Spaniards who accompanied the prince were as much disgusted with the English as the English were with them. Left somewhat to themselves, thanks to the love-making of their sovereign, they made themselves masters of Hampton Court. They could not endure the cooking; it was, they said, coarse, raw, and horrible. The famous “roast-beef of old England” was unsuited to their palates, and their stomachs revolted at the quantity of strong beer which the attendants upon Mary imbibed so copiously that, according to the correspondent in question, by the time evening drew on, the majority of them were drunk. Further, this correspondent says: “There is not a single Spanish gentleman here who would give a farthing for any of their women; and, to speak plainly, they care equally little for us Spaniards. The English, in fact, hate us as they do the devil, and in that spirit they treat us. If we go up to town to make purchases, we are sure to be cheated, and it is quite dangerous for us to venture into the country. As to their women, with few exceptions, they are most plain, very fat, and red in the face. They dress extremely badly, and shuffle rather than walk. There are eighteen kitchens in this royal palace, and every day there are consumed not less than one hundred sheep, twelve oxen, eighteen calves, and beer in such abundance, that the winter flow of the river at Valladolid is not greater in quantity.” The amusing writer then proceeds to describe the queen. “Bless you,” says he, “she is a very plain little lady, small, lean, with a pink-and-white complexion and no eyebrows; very pious and very badly dressed.” In this matter of the queen’s dress our Spanish critic probably preferred the Spanish fashion for ladies, with its “vastie” farthingales and impossible head-dress, to the rich but sober costume which Queen Mary affected.

Whilst Philip and Mary were spending an idyllic existence in the pleasant seclusion and surroundings of their sequestered apartments, the ladies of the court no doubt availed themselves of the opportunity to enjoy a greater amount of freedom than court etiquette usually allows; and thus it came to pass than young Hertford and Lady Katherine met almost daily, either in the garden or in the palace itself, thereby adding fuel to the fire of that attachment between them which was eventually to prove so disastrous to both. That the Duchess of Somerset, the lad’s mother, was aware of their love-making appears pretty certain, and probably Mary herself was cognizant of it, and by no means disapproved. She felt sure she would become the mother of an heir to the Throne, and it mattered very little to her whom the Lady Katherine married, provided he was of sufficient rank. Notwithstanding that his mother, the duchess, was a very outspoken Protestant, Queen Mary always entertained a great affection for her, addressing her, in her numerous letters, as her “Dearest Nan.” Indeed the early courting of Lady Katherine and Hertford was spent under the most auspicious circumstances, smiled upon by the queen and amidst the most charming and romantic surroundings.

On the 28th of September the court removed from Hampton Court and went to Westminster Palace, and with it went Lady Katherine and all the ladies, young and old; and there is a record that, on the 30th of the month, the Lady Frances came up to town and paid her respects to the queen and her consort. She probably attended their highnesses to St. Paul’s, where the whole court listened to a sermon preached by Gardiner.

Meanwhile the Spaniards, who had flocked to London in great numbers, were the cause of perpetual trouble to the citizens and to themselves. Street fights between them and the English were of constant occurrence, and all sorts of brawls, as picturesque, no doubt, as they were unpleasant, between the English gentlemen and the Spanish cavaliers, and Spanish valets and London apprentices, occurred almost daily—and especially nightly. Probably London felt itself well quit of this foreign invasion when the greater part of it followed Philip, on his return to Spain in August 1555, leaving the queen at Greenwich in the deepest despondency. Before this, the Lady Katherine Grey had formed an intimacy with the two daughters of the late Duke of Somerset, the Ladies Margaret and Jane Seymour, who had been appointed maids of honour to the queen. They are described as very good-looking young women, and Jane was even considered to be one of the most learned of her time. Shortly after the departure of Prince Philip, Lady Jane Seymour, who was very delicate, fell ill, and the queen allowed Lady Katherine to go with her to her mother, the Duchess of Somerset’s house at Hanworth, which Mary had recently restored to her, and where the young Earl of Hertford was staying. As may be imagined, the courting which had begun at Hampton Court was continued, with renewed vigour, at Hanworth, Lady Jane Seymour being Lady Katherine’s confidante.

CHAPTER III

THE PROGRESS OF LADY KATHERINE’S LOVE AFFAIRS

The happiest years of Lady Katherine’s life were, according to her own account, those spent at the court of Queen Mary. She was too well versed in the politics of the time not to recognize that the queen’s action with respect to her sister Jane was not a matter of private revenge but of public policy, approved and indeed endorsed by her Parliament. She bore witness, in after years, to the kindness and consideration she had received from Queen Mary, and the precedence accorded to her on all state occasions as a princess of the blood, allowing her to walk before any of the other great ladies of the court, excepting the Princess Elizabeth, the Lady Frances, and Henry VIII’s fourth wife and only surviving widow, Anne of Cleves. Queen Mary, unlike her successor Elizabeth, insisted upon her ladies and maids of honour paying the utmost attention to their religious duties, and was, moreover, very vigilant as to their manners and their morals. So long as her health permitted, together with all her court, she heard Mass every morning in the palace chapel, or in her bedroom, when she was ill. Very frequently she attended Vespers, together with all her court, besides taking her part in those numerous religious processions—which had been suppressed since her father’s reign—round the cloisters of Westminster Abbey and the courtyards of her palaces, on saints’ days and holy days. Of an evening, when at needlework with her ladies, hymns and litanies were sung; so that King Philip, notwithstanding his zeal for the Church, was somewhat depressed by so much piety, when he returned to England in 1556, and observed that “his wife’s court was now become like that of some abbess, there was so much praying and psalm-singing.” No doubt, Lady Katherine Grey joined in all these pious exercises, and it was even reported that, at this period, she followed her mother’s example, and reverted to the Church of Rome. She was certainly not a very staunch Protestant, since she told Feria that she was “as good a Catholic as any.”

At the court of Queen Mary, Lady Katherine Grey formed one or two interesting friendships. She kept up her connection with Mrs. Saintlow, who, however, does not seem to have troubled Queen Mary overmuch with her presence; and she became intimate with Jane Dormer, Countess de Feria, an extremely beautiful young woman, belonging to a very ancient Catholic family, for whom the queen entertained a great affection. This lady has left a book of memoirs, printed some fifty years ago, which contains many interesting details of life at the court of England under the rule of Mary Tudor. This friendship between Katherine Grey and the Countess of Feria proved dangerous, since it placed the former in immediate communication with the Spanish ambassador, and led to her being compromised in one of the most remarkable plots of the many connected with the succession that rendered Elizabeth’s life a misery to her. So great was the influence of the Ferias over Lady Katherine that, in March 1559, the count could write to King Philip triumphantly stating that she had actually given him her solemn promise that she would not marry without his consent, nor change her religion, which points to the fact that, as we have said above, she had become a Catholic. Another of Lady Katherine’s intimates at this time was Surrey’s “Fair Geraldine,” the beautiful Lady Clinton, who, although a professed Protestant, was beloved by Queen Mary, who retained her in her privy-chamber, together with Lady Bacon and one or two other ladies who approved of the Reformation. She had married, when very young, the elderly Sir Anthony Browne, who was master of the horse to Henry VIII, and had been left by him a rich widow. Her second husband was Lord Clinton, who in due time became Earl of Lincoln. Lady Katherine held her in such high esteem that she bequeathed her a legacy in her will.

Of Katherine’s mode of life at Mary’s court in the last years of that unhappy queen’s reign, we know very little, beyond the fact that she is occasionally mentioned as attending Her Majesty on various state occasions; but we may rest assured that she knew the cause of all the many sorrows and troubles—the unrequited love, the failing health of mind and body—that rendered those last years of Mary’s life so gloomy and yet so pathetic, during that fearful time when London was lighted by the lurid flames of Smithfield. Lady Katherine saw Queen Mary neglected by her husband; she knew of the tragic story of the dropsy mistaken for pregnancy, and as she was with Mary during the last weeks of her life, she must often have seen her sitting on the floor, her hands clasping her knees and her forehead resting upon them, her long grey hair streaming round her. She would sit for hours thus, silently nursing her knees; or lifting up her face, would stare vacantly, her mind far away in dreams, her eyes not recognizing even those who stood nearest to her. When at last death released this queen of woes from her suffering, and her sister, who had been hastily summoned from Hatfield, rode triumphantly to London to succeed her and attend her obsequies, Lady Katherine Grey and her sister Lady Mary walked from St. James’s Palace to Westminster Abbey in the solemn funeral procession of a queen who ought to have been beloved, but who, owing to circumstances beyond her control, died hated and defamed as “Bloody Mary.”

During the last two years of Mary’s life, young Hertford’s courtship of Lady Katherine Grey progressed smoothly enough, approved by the queen, by the Lady Frances and her husband, and also, in a certain degree, by that shrewd virago, his mother the Duchess of Somerset, who, however, expressed some anxiety lest such an alliance might eventually lead to “the undoing of her son.” Had Mary lived, there is no doubt but that the marriage would have taken place with state in the presence of the queen and the whole court, without the least let or hindrance.

After the funeral of Queen Mary, Lady Katherine went to the Charterhouse, Sheen, to stay for a few weeks with her mother, who was very ill at this time—like unto death. Here the matter of her betrothal to young Hertford was resumed with renewed energy. The young gentleman was invited to Sheen, where every opportunity was afforded him, under the auspices of the Lady Frances and her husband, Mr. Adrian Stokes, to meet his fiancée and her little sister Lady Mary; but nothing was concluded, the marriage being left an open question, as the Lady Frances recovered soon afterwards. Both the sisters were then summoned back to the palace at Whitehall, where Elizabeth gave them apartments, which they were “to retain as their own, even when absent.” Her Majesty received her young cousins with some display of an affection which she certainly never really felt for either of them. Katherine, on the other hand, took the queen’s advances coldly; she was annoyed, so she told Feria, that Elizabeth refused to accept her as her successor, and her dignity was hurt at the fact that the queen had only made her one of her ladies of the presence, “whereas she was in the privy-chamber of the late queen, who showed her much favour. The present queen,” he adds, “probably bears her no goodwill.” Elizabeth thought it good policy, however, to keep Lady Katherine, of whom she was seriously afraid, near her, because, so far as England was concerned, she was an even greater danger to the safety of the Throne than was Mary Stuart, since Lady Katherine’s position, in the matter of the succession, was defined by two royal wills, and by a special Act of Parliament; whereas the Scotch queen’s was never confirmed, either in the wills of Henry VIII or Edward VI, nor by any Act of Parliament.

Queen Elizabeth’s court formed a striking contrast to that of her sister Mary. “Gloriana” had restored all the extravagant magnificence of Henry VIII’s time: all, save the supreme artistic taste that distinguished the best period of the Renaissance, but which had almost entirely died away by the time of the accession of Elizabeth, whose egregious farthingales, ridiculous ruffs and towering head-dresses, disfigured herself and her courtiers, and rendered them a laughing-stock to foreigners. “This queen,” says the Venetian envoy, “exaggerates everything in a manner so preposterous that instead of inspiring awe, she excites laughter. Her ruff is sometimes so high, that her face appears to be in the middle of her body. She wears more jewels than any other princess, but as she has no discernment, they look tawdry and valueless. She is a handsome woman, of dignified carriage and fairly tall. Her face is oval, her features aquiline; her eyes very black and piercing; and her hair changes its colour, but is generally red—to match her clothes.” Surrounded by courtiers and ladies attired after a similar grotesque fashion, “Gloriana” must indeed have presented a marvellous spectacle, especially when she was carried in a sort of palanquin borne by six noblemen, that made her look for all the world like a Hindu idol.

[To face p. 134

QUEEN ELIZABETH

(From the original portrait by F. Zucchero, at Hatfield)

Absorbed, therefore, in her political intrigues and her private amusements, Elizabeth, who was the strangest mixture of wisdom and folly that ever occupied a throne, cared very little about her ladies’ morals. Provided they were punctually on hand whenever she wanted them, she was content to allow them to go their own ways, always, however, on the condition they created no public scandal. Under these circumstances, Lady Katherine Grey may have even preferred the greater freedom allowed under the Elizabethan régime, to the rigorous round of pious exercises that made up the routine of court life under Queen Mary.

Meanwhile, in March 1559, the Lady Frances being still very sick, her daughters were once more sent for, and, with the queen’s permission, arrived at the Charterhouse at Sheen one windy day towards evening. The scheme for the marriage of Lady Katherine with young Hertford was now revived with greater vigour than ever.

The Lady Frances was in such very bad health that she evidently wished, before leaving this world, to provide her eldest surviving daughter with a husband. The Lady Frances had recently given birth to a child, which, notwithstanding the attention and skill of Dr. Wendy, had died almost as soon as it was born; but although its mother failed to gain strength, her mind continued very clear. Calling one day the Lady Katherine and young Hertford to her, she declared it was her opinion that he (Hertford) “would make a very suitable husband for her daughter Katherine, if the queen would only see it in the same light; but she (the Lady Frances) would have nothing to do with the matter unless with the queen’s knowledge and consent, and that of her honourable council.” Mr. Stokes then drew Hertford aside, and taking him into an inner room, held a consultation with him. He thought, as the Lady Frances was so near a kinswoman of the queen, it would be well if she wrote Her Majesty a letter on the subject. This advice pleased Hertford, and the two gentlemen set to work to frame what they deemed a suitable letter. They, however, considered it wise, before obtaining the Lady Frances’s signature, to consult Mr. Bertie, the husband of the other dowager Duchess of Suffolk, Katherine Willoughby, who had returned from his exile in Poland, and who apparently expressed considerable sympathy with the lovers. They therefore rode to London, to the Barbican, where Duchess Katherine had her house, and not only saw Mr. Bertie, but a Mr. Gilgate and a Mr. Strikely, who were apparently in the employ of the duchess and Mr. Bertie. Whatever may have been their exact social position, they were taken into the secret, as they were probably necessary as witnesses to documents that might have to be signed. The duchess and her husband and all concerned considered it imperative that, before any further steps were taken, Elizabeth should be made aware of all that was going on, and, if possible, conciliated and induced to countenance the match. If these worthy people thought that Elizabeth was likely to be “conciliated,” they knew evidently very little about her, for of all the happenings of this world, the one she dreaded most was precisely the marriage of Lady Katherine and her having children, for, as she observed later on, “it was bad enough to have Lady Katherine to deal with, let alone to endure her brats.” She was determined, she added, “to keep the sisters Grey, spinsters.” She bore no personal dislike to either of them, if they would only do as she wished, but if they were rebellious, she would be obliged to act, in her own defence and in that of the realm.

On their return to Sheen, Hertford and Mr. Stokes found the Lady Frances much worse. Greatly alarmed, they conceived it to be their duty to act as promptly as possible. They were terribly afraid of Elizabeth, and did not hesitate to say so, even in the presence of the dying woman. They advised the duchess to send at once for her daughters, who had returned to court a few days earlier. On informing Elizabeth that their mother was not expected to live, the queen gave them permission to go back immediately, sending them in one of her own palanquins or litters. They arrived to find the duchess propped up with cushions, and looking very ill indeed. The Lady Frances, taking Katherine’s hand in hers, and stretching out her other hand to Hertford, said: “Daughter Kate, I have found a husband for you, if you like well to frame your fancy and good-will in his direction.” On this the Lady Katherine replied that she was very willing so to do, as she loved Hertford very dearly. The Lady Frances, thinking that a message from one who was so near her end might influence the queen, called her husband, Mr. Adrian Stokes, to her, and asked him to frame a letter for her which should be delivered to the queen, and he, bending over her, declared that “he would be right glad to do so.” He then, with the assistance of Hertford, wrote a draft of the letter which was to be addressed to Elizabeth, and which ran much as follows: “That such a nobleman did bear good-will to her daughter the Lady Katherine, and that she did humbly require the Queen’s Highness to be good and gracious lady unto her, and that it would please Her Majesty to assent to the marriage of her to the said Earl, which was the only thing she desired before her death, and should be the occasion for her to die the more quietly.” This draft of the letter, which was never sent, was read out at the subsequent trial which took place after the clandestine marriage of the Lady Katherine with the Earl of Hertford. Mr. Stokes on that occasion said: “My Lord of Hertford would not let me send the letter, for he took fright at the boldness of it and said he would not care to meddle any more in the matter.” Mr. Stokes did not seem to think this was a very manly thing on Hertford’s part; but Hertford was not manly, only a very small, delicate, frail-looking young gentleman, who, however, like so many other frail and sickly looking youths, contrived to live to a very advanced age. These occurrences took place somewhere in March: throughout the spring and summer the Lady Frances lingered on, a very sick woman, rarely if ever rising from her bed or her couch, but frequently visited by her daughters, who brought her kind messages and gifts from Elizabeth, still in complete ignorance of the matrimonial project. Hertford seems to have been a good deal at Sheen, though nothing was determined as to the marriage. It was apparently, under advice, deemed safest to leave the whole concern in abeyance until after the Lady Frances’s death; which took place, in the fifty-fifth year of her age, in the presence of her husband and children, on the 20th November 1559. Elizabeth gave her “beloved” cousin a right royal burial, worthy of a princess of the blood. She was represented by her chamberlain, and the court put on the mourning usual for a member of the royal family. The Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey attended their mother’s funeral, “having their trains upheld by gentlewomen.” Clarencieux stood at the head of the coffin, and cried out, at a given moment, in a loud voice: “Laud and praise be to Almighty God, that it hath pleased Him to call out of this transitory life into His eternal glory, the most noble and excellent Princess, the Lady Frances, late Duchess of Suffolk, daughter to the right high and mighty Prince, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and of the most noble and excellent Princess, Mary the French Queen, daughter to the most illustrious King Henry VII.” The Communion Service was then read in English, and a carpet laid before the high altar for the chief mourners to kneel upon. At the Communion, the Ladies Katherine and Mary, kneeling upon this carpet, received the Holy Communion, Dr. Jewel having previously preached the usual panegyric. When the service was over, Mr. Adrian Stokes, who had been chief mourner, went back to the Charterhouse, with his step-daughters, in the very chariot that had borne the Lady Frances’s coffin to the abbey: they literally returned on the hearse! The Lady Frances is buried in St. Edmund’s Chapel, on the south side of the abbey. Her tomb is a handsome specimen of the art of the period, and although considerably damaged, the likeness between the face of the effigy and that in the famous portrait is remarkable. Quite close to the Lady Frances’s tomb is an upright figure of a small girl, kneeling. Is this the tomb of her child by Adrian Stokes, which died in infancy; or is it, as Stow seems to imply, that of her daughter, the dwarfish Lady Mary Grey? By her will, the Lady Frances left all her possessions to her husband for life, with reversion to her two daughters. As Mr. Stokes outlived them both, they never inherited much of their mother’s property, except the proceeds of the sale of some land near Oxford and of several other manors which were in her possession at the time of her last illness, and concerning the disposal of which she wrote to Cecil some eight or ten days before her death.

The Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey, on their return to Westminster, found themselves in pecuniary straits, although their embarrassment was, it seems, relieved by Mr. Stokes, out of the money he had received from his late wife’s executors. Elizabeth welcomed her bereaved cousins with much apparent sympathy. She was, or pretended to be, most affectionate to them, and even called Lady Katherine “her daughter,” although, as Quadra, the Spanish ambassador, says, “the feeling between them could hardly have been that of mother and child.” “But,” he goes on to say, “the Queen has thought best to put her [Lady Katherine] in her chamber and makes much of her in order to keep her quiet. She even talks about formally adopting her.”

Whilst still in the early weeks of her mourning for her mother, the Lady Katherine received information that greatly distressed her. Young Hertford, so she was told, had been paying his addresses to the daughter of Sir Peter Mewtas,[62] a piece of news that made her very jealous and unhappy. Seeing the state of nervous prostration into which Lady Katherine was thrown by Hertford’s alleged infidelity, Lady Jane Seymour insisted upon knowing what was the matter, whereupon Katherine confessed to her tearfully that she had heard there was love-making between Mistress Mewtas and Lord Hertford. On the following day, the Lady Jane obtained leave to go to Hanworth, where Hertford was staying with his mother, the Duchess of Somerset. She taxed her brother, in no measured terms, with his lack of fidelity to the Lady Katherine, to which he replied that he knew nothing of the matter of the daughter of Sir Peter Mewtas, that the whole story was a falsehood, and that he was willing to live or die for the sake of Lady Katherine. He added that if she would but consent to marry him, he was willing to defy Elizabeth, and he thought that the sooner the marriage took place the better; and so saying, he drew from his finger a ring with a pointed diamond in it, and gave it to his sister to carry to the Lady Katherine. Armed with this bond of peace, Lady Jane Seymour returned to London and found Lady Katherine, to whom she gave the ring and her brother’s message. “My little love, my little love,” said Katherine, “well pleased am I that he should thus treat me,” and drying her eyes, she became once more her cheerful self.

Amongst Lady Katherine Grey’s friends at the court of Elizabeth was a certain Mrs. Blanche Parry,[63] widow of Sir Thomas Parry, and a pupil, in the occult arts, of the famous Dr. Dee.[64] Elizabeth entertained for Blanche not only a great affection, but also held her in a sort of awe. She believed implicitly in her favourite’s powers, and never a week passed that Blanche Parry was not admitted to confidential interviews with her august mistress, whose innermost secrets she possessed, and, through her knowledge of palmistry, not only shared, but even guided.

Blanche was a handsome and amiable woman, who used her influence over her mistress to the advantage of others as well as of herself. One day, Lady Katherine asked her to “do” her hand for her, and Blanche, who was probably well aware of all that was going on between young Hertford and her royal client, told her: “The lines say, madam, that if you ever marry without the queen’s consent in writing, you and your husband will be undone, and your fate worse than that of my Lady Jane.” Katherine paid very little attention to the admonition, but went her way to perdition blindly. In after years she probably remembered Blanche Parry’s sagacious advice, for she left her a legacy in her will, as also did her sister, Lady Mary Grey, another of Blanche’s clients and friends.

CHAPTER IV

QUEEN ELIZABETH AND HER SUCCESSION

In the year 1560, Elizabeth’s position became very precarious; her popularity was rapidly diminishing, owing to the evil reports spread abroad by her enemies, with respect to the nature of her intimacy with the Lord Robert Dudley. The Spanish ambassador wrote to King Philip, early in the year, that he was amazed by “the new queen’s flightiness,” and remarks that “there is no understanding this woman. She will surely come to trouble of her own making.” Elizabeth was at her wits’ end to know exactly what to do.

Her equanimity was greatly disturbed by the question of the succession, and she was advised on all hands to marry, and by having an heir of her own, so to speak, succeed herself. It was freely bruited about—and the foreign envoys frequently allude to the slander—that she was already a mother, and many strange stories were current concerning a daughter she had had by Dudley, which was being brought up secretly.

Others said that the queen could never know maternity, although she herself, like her sister Mary, seems to have believed that sooner or later she would have offspring to succeed her, and it was stated that this was the reason she steadfastly refused, to the end, to nominate an heir. When, in 1563, a deputation from the lords waited upon her, to urge her to come to some definite decision in the matter, Elizabeth rounded on them fiercely, crying out that the marks on her face were not wrinkles, but the pits of small-pox, and that “although she might be old, God could send her children as He did to Saint Elizabeth.” She warned them to consider well what they did in this affair of the succession, “as if she declared a successor, it would cost much blood to England.”

Yet for all her desire to have an heir of her own body, Elizabeth was at heart loath to marry; Philip of Spain had courted her, through his ambassadors (she was already personally well acquainted with him), but, remembering how miserable her sister had been as his wife, she consistently rejected his suit, saying that she “did not think it was right before God for a woman to marry her brother-in-law.” The rejected Philip was none the less determined to secure paramount Spanish influence in England, and wrote to Feria proposing that the queen should be brought to favour the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, his very Catholic brother. Elizabeth had lately thrown over the Earl of Arundel, with whom she had been flirting, and had repulsed the Italian, Guido Cavalcanti, Catherine of Medici’s secret agent, in his vicarious wooing on behalf of a French prince, the Duc d’Alençon. Therefore there was a fair chance that Elizabeth might at last have yielded to persuasion and favoured the archduke’s suit. Had Philip played his game firmly at this juncture, most probably she would have fallen an easy victim to his intrigues and have married Ferdinand, whereby England would have lost, for some time at least, her independence. At the bottom of all the queen’s hesitation and perplexity about her marriage was less the interests of country than the violence of her headstrong passion for Robert Dudley, still the husband of that Amy Robsart who has been immortalized by Sir Walter Scott in Kenilworth. On April 18, 1559, Feria wrote to Philip that he had heard dreadful news concerning the queen’s conduct with Dudley; it was all over the court, that they slept in contiguous rooms—that she never let him out of her sight. “Indeed,” the ambassador continues, “I have heard such things of the queen’s conduct with respect to the Lord Robert that I dare not repeat them. Meanwhile, a rumour is circulating to the effect that Robert Dudley’s wife, who is in the country, is sick of a malady of the breasts and like to die.” On a close examination of the documents connected with the singular death of Amy Robsart,[65] who by the way was never Countess of Leicester, her husband not being elevated to that rank for some considerable time after her demise, we find no mention whatever of this malady. The rumour was, therefore, merely a feeler put forward to prepare public opinion for coming events. Elizabeth had made up her mind that, should the Lady Robert Dudley conveniently depart this life at an early date, she would marry the widower. All these and many other open and covert attacks on the queen’s character were damaging her good name with the people, to such an extent, indeed, that it was actually proposed to dethrone her and to replace her by some more suitable successor. The English Catholics naturally favoured the Queen of Scots, but Katherine Grey was preferred by Spain. King Philip, as we have said, all his life certainly regretted the loss of Spanish influence in English politics which came to an end on the death of Queen Mary, and he determined to regain it at any cost. That Lady Katherine Grey, on account of her supposed leaning towards Catholicism and her friendship for the Ferias, was regarded by the Spanish King as the most likely medium for realizing his hopes, was well known.

As will be seen in the course of this biography, many and curious were the intrigues, of which Lady Katherine was the centre, for retrieving Spanish ascendancy in the British Isles; but by far the most astonishing and fantastic (and the earliest) was a plot—evolved in 1558 or early in 1559—for secretly abducting Katherine to Spain.[66] There she was to be married to Don Carlos, the king’s son, or to the Archduke Ferdinand, or some other Spanish prince, and put forward by Philip as Elizabeth’s immediate successor or even rival, her claims to the Throne being supported by all the might of Spain, in opposition to those of Mary Queen of Scots, the candidate favoured by France. Apparently Philip, misled by his ambassadors, who miscalculated the extent of Elizabeth’s unpopularity, failed to realize how strong was the anti-Spanish feeling which existed in England, and did not perceive the enormous difficulties which would have to be surmounted before Katherine could be placed on the Throne. Nor does he appear to have known that she had also, strange to say, been selected by the Evangelical, or Swiss, faction of the Protestants, as their special champion. The Spaniards thought Lady Katherine would not be unwilling to accept the proposal to leave England, since she was said to be very unhappy at home; Elizabeth, whatever may have been her outward demonstrations of affection, at heart disliked her, and Katherine reciprocated this dislike, whilst it was thought that “neither her mother[67] nor her step-father loved her, and her uncle (Lord John Grey) could not abide her.” There was probably less grounds for this latter statement; Katherine was not on bad terms with her mother, who, as we have seen, had done her best to further the marriage with Hertford; there is no evidence that she ever quarrelled with Mr. Stokes; and her uncle, Lord John Grey, is known to have treated her kindly when, some years later, she became a prisoner in his house, although there had indeed been coldness between them.

The Countess of Feria was considered the most suitable person to approach Katherine with reference to her leaving England; but meanwhile, whether, as subsequent events indicate, Queen Elizabeth knew of the plot and was determined secretly to frustrate it, or whatever else the cause, the bellicose Feria’s existence at the English court was presently rendered so untenable, by reason of the queen’s open hostility to him and above all, to the countess, that by May 1559 he could stand it no longer, and, inventing an excuse for relinquishing his mission, forthwith returned to Flanders; departing from London in such haste that he left Durham House, Strand, then the Spanish Embassy, in the hands of his wife, who seems to have had some sort of charge upon it.[68] Thus, the plot for Katherine’s abduction, of which, it may be, that princess was entirely ignorant, came to an abrupt conclusion, and was never, so far as we know, revived during the embassy of Feria’s successor, although Philip continued, by less complicated means, to try to get Katherine into his power. Elizabeth, however, could not be brought to believe, as late as 1566, that the original scheme had been abandoned. As there is no mention of the matter in the Simancas Papers, and we only hear of it through the English ambassador at Madrid, it is probable that the plot fell through immediately upon the departure of Feria.

Notwithstanding the open enmity of Queen Elizabeth towards her, the Countess de Feria remained at Durham House some months later than her husband, packing up her own effects and preparing the house for the new ambassador, who was a Roman Catholic Bishop—to wit, the Neapolitan, Don Alvaro de la Quadra, created Bishop of Venosa in 1542, and two years later translated to the bishopric of Aquila in the Kingdom of Naples, which see he resigned on his appointment to the court of England. He was a shrewd, clever man, and so broad-minded that he actually wrote, during the debate upon the Act for Conformity in Faith and Doctrine, the following remarks—which might be endorsed by a Liberal in our time: “It was,” he thought, “natural that the Queen should wish to see uniformity of belief throughout her Kingdom; but,” he adds, “I see that she no longer wishes to style herself Head of the Church, but simply Governor. It is, however, unjust, but still possible, to force a man to act as you will, but that he should be obliged to see things in the same light as his King is simply absurd. Yet they are so ignorant here they pass such a thing as this, for religion in this country is simply, believe me, a matter of policy.” Indeed, religion in the sixteenth century was not only in England, but elsewhere, “merely a matter of policy,” a fact which may explain why Lady Katherine Grey, who was a good Catholic under Mary, had become an equally good Protestant under Elizabeth. After the arrival of Quadra and the departure of the count, and finally, of the Countess of Feria, it is not probable that Katherine ever came again into immediate contact with the Spanish Embassy, although Quadra kept a close watch upon her movements and was well informed as to what was happening with respect to her connection with the succession. Quadra evidently thought that the people might yet favour Lady Katherine over Elizabeth, who in the first year of his embassy he believed to be more unpopular than she really was. He seemed disgusted at the queen’s levity and indecision: “It is ruining her popularity,” he says; “she is in danger of losing her Crown.” One day she tells him she will never marry any one, and the next she asks him if he thinks there would be much opposition if she married one of her servants [meaning Dudley], as the duchesses of Somerset and Suffolk had done. Knowing well what she meant by this, and remembering that Dudley’s wife was living, he made no direct answer—he could not give her any advice; but it was evident that the only man she would ever marry was Robert Dudley. Until he was free, she would remain free. Presently a fresh rumour was started concerning Dudley’s neglected wife, Amy Robsart, now residing, separated from her husband, at Cumnor Hall, near Oxford, a fair old mansion, still in existence, which in those days was rented from the heirs of George Owen, physician to Henry VIII, by a certain Mr. Anthony Forster. In November 1559, Quadra wrote to the king that there is “a rumour in London to the effect that Robert Dudley thinks of poisoning his wife.” So at least he has been told by “a person who is in the habit of giving him veracious news.” “Certainly,” he adds, “all the queen has done with us, and will do with the rest in the matter of her marriage, is only keeping the Lord Robert’s enemies and the country engaged with words, until this wicked deed of killing his wife is consummated.” The matter had become so serious that Lady Sidney, Dudley’s sister Mary, who had been in the habit of visiting Quadra, “thought it best to abstain from doing so.” Sinister rumours were, therefore, circulating as early as November 1559, concerning the relations between the queen and Robert Dudley, and his intention of getting rid of his wife, by foul means, if necessary.

[To face p. 156

ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER

(From National Portrait Gallery)

On Sunday, the 8th September of the following year (1560), Lady Dudley (Amy Robsart) fell down a back staircase at Cumnor Hall, and was found dead at the bottom. The following day, a messenger was sent to Dudley, who was in attendance on the queen at Windsor, informing him that his wife had been killed by falling downstairs, whilst all the servants were absent from the house at Abingdon Fair. Dudley, who manifested neither surprise nor much concern, stated that he did not believe his wife’s death had been the result of accident, but was an act of premeditated violence, and added that he feared he would be implicated in the matter. He immediately sent the news of the Lady Dudley’s death to her relations, and invited them to be present at the coroner’s inquest, which was held at Cumnor a few days later. Early in September, Quadra, in a letter to the Duchess of Parma, informed her that it was rumoured in London that the Lord Robert was “thinking of killing his wife, although she was quite well (and would take good care they did not poison her).” “The next day,” which would be about the 9th of September, the queen returning from hunting, meeting him, said that my Lord Robert’s wife was dead, or nearly so, and asked him not to say anything about it. “Certainly,” he continues, “this business is most shameful and scandalous.” Cecil also, earlier in the year, had told him that he thought and believed that Robert Dudley was planning the murder of his wife. Elizabeth must have been informed of the unfortunate Amy’s death almost as soon as Dudley himself, for in the same letter, dated September 11, Quadra adds a postscript: “Since writing the above the queen has published the news of the death of Robert’s wife, and has said to me, in Italian, ‘She broke her neck. She must have fallen downstairs.’”

It is difficult, after reading the above extracts from the Spanish Papers, not to feel fairly certain that, notwithstanding Robert Dudley’s persistent declarations of innocence, he was guilty; and that Amy Robsart was foully murdered by his orders, and with Elizabeth’s knowledge and consent. If this be the case, the “Wizard of the North,” Sir Walter Scott, was, in the main, right, and his explanation of the mystery of Cumnor Hall fairly correct. It was generally believed in London that Dudley had pre-arranged the murder of his wife, with the intention of marrying the queen as soon as possible.[69] Cecil evidently believed this version of the story, and, greatly disgusted thereat, turned his attention in the direction of Lady Katherine. The supporters of the Earl of Huntingdon, the representative of the house of Pole, availing themselves of the queen’s unpopularity, now began agitating in his favour, and Quadra informed the King of Spain that he had just heard that “they are forming an important plan for the maintenance of their heresies, namely, to make the Earl of Huntingdon king, in case the queen should die without issue.” He added that Cecil had told him that the succession belonged of right to the earl, because he was descended from the House of York. Huntingdon, however, was not really a very formidable claimant, for although married, he had no children. Quadra’s letter is dated the 15th of October, and contains, moreover, the following curious reference to Lady Katherine: “They fear here that if the Queen were to die, Your Majesty [the King of Spain] would get the Kingdom into your family by means of the Lady Katherine. Cecil has sounded me on the subject, saying it would be well if a marriage should take place between her and one of Your Majesty’s relations ... [Here there is a piece torn out of the letter].... She [Lady Katherine] should succeed by virtue of the will of King Henry. He [Quadra] asked Cecil if he thought the Queen would declare her [Lady Katherine] heiress to the Crown; whereupon Cecil answered, ‘Certainly not, because as the saying is, the English run after the heir to the Crown more than after the present wearer of it.’” In all probability, the relative alluded to was the Archduke Ferdinand; or may be, the Infante Don Carlos, whose health, however, was very precarious, so that he, on the other hand, may have been at this time already out of the running. Certainly the Archduke was considered by Quadra as a suitable candidate for Lady Katherine’s hand, and it was hoped that if such a marriage could be arranged, Lady Katherine might eventually ascend the Throne, with Ferdinand as her consort, and England would thus be brought again under Spanish influence, if not actually annexed to that country. With such high interests at stake, therefore, Quadra had already been for some time extremely anxious to marry the Archduke either to Elizabeth or, failing her, to Lady Katherine; and hence he wrote to the Spanish king, in November 1559, in the following terms: “This hatred of the Lord Robert will continue, as the Duke [of Norfolk] and the rest of them cannot put up with his being King. I am of opinion that if the Archduke [Ferdinand] comes and makes the acquaintance and obtains the goodwill of these people, even if this marriage—of which I have now no hope except by force—should fall through, and any disaster were to befall the Queen, such as may be feared from her bad government, the Archduke might be summoned to marry Lady Katherine, to whom the Kingdom falls if this woman dies. If the Archduke sees her [Katherine] he should so bear himself that she should understand this design, which in my opinion may be beneficial and even necessary.”

Unfortunately for this scheme, the Archduke never saw Lady Katherine, and the proposed match fell through. Elizabeth found out this intrigue, and resented it, and it was one of the many reasons for her hatred of Katherine, who, however, was probably totally unaware of the numerous plots which were rife concerning her position as Elizabeth’s heiress; but Hertford, never very courageous, was growing alarmed. He knew that the queen, who at one time had called Lady Katherine her “daughter,” now expressed her contempt for her, and also kept her as far removed from her person as possible, “frowning upon her whenever they passed each other.” He therefore despaired of ever obtaining Elizabeth’s consent to their marriage; and was, moreover, reminded by Cecil (who one day questioned him very sharply about the matter of his courtship) of the existence of a law passed by Henry VIII’s Privy Council and ratified by Parliament, at the time the Lady Margaret Douglas, the king’s niece, married her first husband, Lord Thomas Howard, without the royal consent, to wit, inflicting the severest punishment—imprisonment for life and a fine so enormous as to absorb an earl’s income—upon any man who should marry a kinswoman of the crown without the king’s leave. The details of this interview, between the earl and “Mr. Sekrettory,” came out during the subsequent examination of Hertford touching the marriage. Cecil, who was probably actuated much more by political motives than by any personal desire to save Hertford from the fate which awaited him if he married Lady Katherine, came upon the young man one day, and asked him point-blank, whether there was not “good-will” between him and the lady in question. “There is no such thing,” was Hertford’s prompt but untruthful reply. When on his trial, the earl, tormented by scruples, stated publicly that “he desired it to be noted that there was no truth in his reply to Mr. Secretary Cecil.” A little later on—but, it seems, after the marriage had actually taken place—Cecil tried to find out from Katherine herself how matters stood. Always haunted by the idea that one day she might succeed Elizabeth as queen, he was anxious to try to prevent a marriage which, he wisely foresaw, would but injure her cause yet further in the queen’s eyes. Cecil, a cunning diplomat, commenced by questioning Katherine over some extraneous matter concerning her property, but eventually insinuated a few words, warning her “of her too great familiarity with the Earl of Hertford”; and considerately added, that he “would not make the Queen’s Majesty privy thereto.” Katherine, later on, said that the warning, if it had been given before the marriage, might have been heeded. What reply she made at the time is not on record. Prompted by Cecil, the Marquis of Northampton and the “Fair Geraldine” also approached the princess on the subject, advising her “to beware of the company and familiarity of the said earl,” of whom, one fancies, none of these worthy interferes had a very high opinion. Their advice, however, if indeed it did not really come too late, was disregarded.

Love, like Justice, is reputed blind; and between All Hallows and Christmas, 1560, a year after the death of the Lady Frances, Hertford solemnly pledged his troth to Katherine and presented her with a plain gold ring, which opened with a secret spring in several linked compartments, on each of which he had engraved different Latin distichs of his own composition. They ran as follows:—

As circles five, by art compressed, show but one ring to sight,

So trust uniteth faithful minds, with knot of secret might,

Whose force to break (but greedy Death) no wight possesseth power,

As time and sequels well shall prove. My ring can say no more.

And so, in the presence of Lady Jane Seymour only, and in that lady’s chamber in Westminster Palace, the two lovers were formally betrothed, with, however, “no ceremonies,” as he afterwards admitted, beyond kissing and embracing each other and joining their hands together, before his sister, the Lady Jane Seymour. A little later in December, whilst the Lady Jane Seymour was in her private sitting-room, a large apartment which no one was allowed to enter without her leave, she received “a letter” from her brother, saying he was very ill, “love-sick,” and must see the Lady Katherine at once: would she receive him in her chamber, as he wished to open his heart to her? Whereupon the Lady Jane sent one of the little maids to him, saying that he was to follow her. Half-an-hour later, the two lovers were reunited by Lady Jane’s fireside. Poor Lady Katherine, apparently ignorant of the probable results of her foolish act, after embracing her lover many times, said: “Weighing your long suit and great good-will towards me, I am well content, be the consequences what they may, to marry you the next time the Queen’s Highness shall go abroad and leave the Lady Jane alone with me.”

CHAPTER V

THE CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE

Some five or six days after the betrothal of Lady Katherine to the Earl of Hertford, Queen Elizabeth elected to go with her train to Greenwich on a hunting expedition; and, summoning her ladies and maids, ordered them to make immediate preparations to follow her. Lady Katherine excused herself on the plea that she was sore afflicted with toothache, and as an evidence of the fact, exhibited her swollen face, tied up in a kerchief: whilst Lady Jane Seymour declared that she could “not go a-hunting, for she was sick with a bad headache.” The unsuspecting queen accepted these excuses and left the girls to their own devices. Scarcely had Her Majesty and her train left Westminster Palace, than the young ladies stole out and repaired to the Earl of Hertford’s house in Cannon Row, Westminster. His Lordship had previously despatched all his servants on various errands; some he sent into the city, others to the country, but his confidential valet was told to wait for him at a goldsmith’s shop in Fleet Street. Powell, the cook, however, afterwards deposed before the council that he had seen the Lady Katherine and the Lady Jane steal out of the water-gate stairs, and enter the earl’s chamber, to reach which they had to pass the kitchen door. In the earl’s bedroom was a priest, who performed the marriage service, Lady Jane Seymour being the only witness. The earl gave his bride a wedding ring, apparently the one already mentioned. Hertford afterwards asserted that the clergyman was brought to the house by Lady Jane, and described him as a fair-complexioned man of middle stature, with an auburn beard; he had no surplice, but wore a garb resembling that of the foreign Reformers who returned to England after Queen Mary’s death—a long furred black cloth gown, with a turn-down collar of white linen. Neither the earl nor Katherine seem to have known this reverend worthy’s name; but Lady Jane paid him a fee of ten pounds, out of the pocket money which her brother gave her for her clothes—he himself seems to have been short of cash at the time. A sort of informal wedding repast had been prepared in the earl’s chamber, but the Lady Katherine, we learn, was too much unnerved to eat or drink. About two hours after the brief ceremony was over, the earl escorted the young ladies down the stairs and “kissed Lady Katherine good-bye.” The tide had risen during the interval, and the maids of honour were obliged to take boat back to the palace, the pathway by which they had come being under water. They must have reached Westminster very early—the wedding took place in the morning[70]—for they dined at noon as usual at the table of the comptroller of the household. Nobody seems to have noticed their absence, nor, except the cook, to have paid attention to their movements, and for a time the queen remained in ignorance of the event. But Katherine had the temerity, at least so Hertford afterwards alleged, to wear the coif known as a “froze-paste,” under her hood: it may be remarked here that her sister, Lady Jane Grey, had worn a similar coif—not unlike a nun’s—at her execution. This close-fitting cap, which entirely concealed the hair, was worn by all married women, even if young, and is said to have been one of the reasons why Elizabeth refused to marry. She wished her subjects always to enjoy the privilege of admiring her magnificent hair. Under the circumstances, Lady Katherine would have been wiser to have disregarded this traditional custom.[71]

The course of true love did not flow smoothly for long, for on March 20, 1561, the learned, though youthful, Lady Jane Seymour died suddenly in her apartment at Westminster Palace. Elizabeth, who was much attached to her, and unaware of her share in Lady Katherine’s affairs, ordered a state funeral of great splendour, and six days after her death, Lady Jane was buried in St. Edmund’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey, where her monument is still to be seen, with an inscription to the effect that it was erected by “her dear brother,” the Earl of Hertford. All the queen’s ladies attended the funeral, among them being the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey. Machyn gives a quaint account of what he calls the funeral of “my lade Jane Semer, the wyche was one of the Quen’s mayds and in grett favor.” Her death must have deeply grieved Lady Katherine, who was not only very fond of Lady Jane, but had found in her a sympathetic confidante.

Throughout the year 1561, the young couple exchanged regular, though secret, visits either at Westminster Palace or at Cannon Row. Lady Katherine, in her examination, said that, from the time of the marriage onwards to the death of Lady Jane Seymour, “considering herself as the earl’s wife, in her own heart, she was often in his company at sundry times by means of Lady Jane Seymour and a woman, her own maid, Mrs. Leigh, who was now gone from her. This woman never was bade to do it, but she would, of herself, if she saw my Lord and her [Katherine] whisper together, go out of the way.” Indeed, the discretion of Hertford and his wife was so great that no one appears to have realized the truth for a considerable time after the clandestine wedding had taken place, although, as already observed, Cecil and some of Katherine’s friends certainly suspected that a love intrigue was afoot.

About April 1561, the queen—possibly on the advice of Cecil, who, suspecting something untoward, wanted him out of the way—ordered Hertford to accompany Mr. Thomas Cecil, son of the above-named statesman, into France, where the young gentlemen were to take up certain legal studies. The Duchess of Somerset, evidently in total ignorance of what had occurred, addressed a letter to Cecil, on April 19, 1561, in which she says she is content to submit to her son’s going abroad; but adds: “I would wish him matched at home in some noble house to the Queen’s liking.” Whether there had been some disagreement between the mother and son it is now impossible to say, but the Duchess goes on to express her sorrow for “hys wylfulness,” and somewhat spitefully begs Cecil “not to spare him, but to overrule him.” Hertford was apparently not at all distressed by this sudden separation from his bride, from whom he seems to have taken leave at Greenwich, where the court was then staying. A few months later, the studious Mr. Cecil writes complaining that his “studies and meditations” are considerably disturbed and interrupted by “the gaieties and jaunts” organized by his youthful monitor, the earl.

Whilst her husband was thus gaily disporting himself in the French capital, Lady Katherine was left alone, to realize that soon she would no longer be able to conceal her condition. So great was her terror when she became certain of this, that she mislaid the deed of jointure assigning her £1000, which her husband had made in her favour before he left England; and in her terror, the forlorn little woman, on receiving orders to attend the queen during Her Majesty’s progress through Suffolk, rushed, one Sunday afternoon late in July or in August, to her old friend Mistress Saintlow, and confessed, with bitter tears, that in a few weeks she was sure to become a mother; “but,” added she, “I am an honest woman and am married to Lord Hertford.” The recipient of this astonishing information, instead of offering consolation, burst into an hysterical rage, and violently upbraided the wretched Katherine for selecting her as the confidante of her folly. How the poor girl spent the rest of that day we know not, but she must have worked herself into a perfect frenzy, for towards midnight she suddenly appeared, in her night-gown, at the bedside of her all-powerful brother-in-law, Lord Robert Dudley, who was fast asleep. His unexpected visitor’s lamentations soon roused him, and, to his amazement, he beheld her kneeling by his bed, shaking with sobs, and “in a most awesome state of mind.” With streaming eyes she confessed everything, and besought him to induce the queen to be merciful to her. She reminded him that he was the brother of young Guildford Dudley, the husband of her unhappy sister, Lady Jane, and entreated him, in the name of this slaughtered brother, whom he had fondly loved, to go to the queen and obtain her pardon. The nocturnal visit placed Lord Robert in a very difficult position, for if the dispatches of La Motte, Fénelon and Quadra are reliable, Elizabeth invariably slept, as already said, in a chamber adjacent to his, and moreover communicating with it. Dudley was frightened out of his wits, lest the “Lioness of England” should suddenly rush in, to pounce upon the weeping Katherine in her night-gear. We are not told how he managed to rid himself of the distracted suppliant, but we do know that on the following morning he told Elizabeth the whole story, whereupon that royal virago burst into a whirlwind of rage, the immediate result of which was that the Lady Katherine was sent to the Tower that afternoon, and lodged in the part of it known as the Belfry. Cecil communicated Lady Katherine Grey’s situation to Archbishop Parker, in a letter dated August 12, 1561, in the following terms: “She is committed to the Tower, and he sent for [to come] home. She says she is married.” He doubted, or pretended to doubt, that a marriage had really taken place. Cecil, who was essentially self-seeking, had, in the days of Elizabeth’s greatest unpopularity, espoused her rival’s cause, and now, according to Quadra, he was anxious, at any cost, to avoid being implicated in unpleasant consequences. “What I understand by it all, is,” remarks the Spanish ambassador, “that Lady Katherine’s marriage ... [was] arranged a year ago, after the death of Robert’s wife, and that Cecil (who was then in great disgrace with the Queen and at enmity with Robert) was at the bottom of it, in the fear that, in accord with common belief, the Queen would marry Robert and restore religion to obtain Your Majesty’s favour. Since Cecil has returned to the good graces of the Queen, and has satisfied himself that there will be no change of religion, he has gradually and cautiously separated himself from these negotiations, and is now endeavouring to hush up and amend the past.” Nevertheless, Cecil did not entirely abandon Lady Katherine. The news of the marriage must, however, have come as rather a blow to Philip of Spain, since it scattered his own schemes for Katherine’s bestowal; whilst the inevitable imprisonment which followed, put her effectually out of his reach. From this time forth, Spanish interest in Katherine was considerably diminished.

Immediately after the queen was made aware of the marriage, the news was conveyed to Hertford’s mother, the old Duchess of Somerset, who forthwith, on August 22, wrote a monstrous letter to Cecil, casting all the blame of the affair on poor Katherine, and beseeching him to believe that she [the duchess] had no hand in the matter, declaring that “neither for child nor friend” would she willingly neglect the duty of a faithful subject. Hence she begs “good Master Secretary” to “stand her friend, that the wildness of mine unruly child do not minish [sic] Her Majesty’s favour towards me.”[72] But Her Majesty’s anger knew no bounds, and even poor Lady Saintlow was committed to the Tower, for the fell crime of having been Katherine’s involuntary confidante! A letter in Her Majesty’s own hand commanded Sir Edward Warner, Lieutenant of the Tower, to “examine the Lady Katherine, very straitly, how many hath been privy to the love between her and the Earl of Hertford from the beginning; and let her understand that she shall have no manner of favour except she will show the truth—not only what ladies and gentlewomen were thereto privy, but also what lords and gentlewomen of this court; for it doth now appear that sundry personages have dealt therein. When that shall appear more manifestly it shall increase our indignation against her, if she now forbears to utter it.” Apparently the queen, aware of the existence of the Spanish plot, hoped that, if one or other of the “sundry personages” was intimidated, they would reveal the whole truth. Very likely, too, she had a shrewd idea that Cecil was involved. Katherine was, however, obstinate—nothing would make her confess; so that on August 22, Warner informed the queen by letter that he had questioned Lady Katherine as to “the love practices between her and the earl” and that “she will confess nothing.”

Soon afterwards, Sir Edward received orders to furnish the Lady Katherine’s apartment with some of the cast-off splendour which lingered in the forsaken state apartments of the Tower. This furniture had very likely been used by the Lady Jane during the “nine-days’ reign,” or even by Elizabeth herself when a prisoner; and though described as “much worn, torn, and defaced”—so little value is set on historical objects in the days to which they belong—would doubtless now fetch its weight in gold at Christie’s. The unkindly office of critic of these relics of vanished grandeur assigned for the Lady Katherine’s use, was later on discharged by Sir Edward Warner, whose scathing comments on the “owld” stools and cushions are, as we shall see, most quaint and amusing. It may have been as well that the furniture of the Lady Katherine’s prison-dwelling was not in its primal magnificence, for before she had been two days in the Tower, her very extensive collection of parrots, monkeys,[73] and lap-dogs followed her from Westminster—and a nice smell and a pretty mess they must have made! However, the creatures were company of a kind, and no doubt heartily welcome to the captive.

Meanwhile the miserable bridegroom, recalled—apparently without warning of the fate which awaited him—from Paris, had arrived at Dover, and was promptly lodged in “Her Majesty’s house”—i.e. the castle. Whilst he was at breakfast with a certain Mr. Thomas Sackville and a Mr. Strange, Mr. Crispe, the “captain” of the castle, entered, and showed Hertford his commission for the latter’s arrest. This read, the “captain” formally arrested the young earl, who was deprived of his servants and of the society of his friends, taken up to London, and immediately lodged in the Tower (September 5). On the following day he was ordered to appear before the Marquis of Winchester, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Grindal Bishop of London, Sir William Petre, and a host of divines and seculars, and ordered to answer their questions regarding what they were pleased to call “his infamous proceedings with the Lady Katherine Grey.” Hertford behaved like a gentleman, and all the brow-beating and hectoring of his inquisitors failed to intimidate him. He swore he had been lawfully married, by a priest fetched by his sister, and described him in the terms already quoted. Search was forthwith made for this priest, whom people rightly imagined to be a Roman Catholic, but it was not until forty-six years later, in the reign of James I, that he was discovered, and the validity of the marriage proved. The report that he was a Catholic priest was then found to be correct; and the fact tends to prove that Lady Katherine was still a Catholic, with whom marriage is a Sacrament. The officiating clergyman being undiscoverable, Lady Jane Seymour, the principal witness of the wedding, lately dead, and the only tangible proofs of the ceremony the bridegroom’s own word and the wedding-ring, the legitimacy of the expected infant might easily have been then and there invalidated. But this course was not followed. It was deemed bad policy “to charge a princess of the blood with harlotry.”

The Lady Katherine was next examined. She shed floods of tears throughout the whole proceeding; and confirmed everything her husband had said. Exhibiting the curious five-pieced ring already mentioned, she added that before Lady Jane Seymour’s death she had told her she feared she was enceinte, and that she (Lady Jane) and Hertford had suggested an appeal to the queen’s mercy. She stated that some days before he left for France, she told her husband she thought she was about to become a mother, and that he replied, if this was indeed the case, he would return shortly to her. She admitted she had written to him during his absence, but had not received any answer to her letters; though, to her distress, he had sent various “tokens” to other ladies about the queen—which indicates a certain lack, on the earl’s part, of enthusiasm for his young bride, quite in accordance, however, with the festive existence he had been leading in Paris. She also mentioned the loss of the deed of settlement. She had written her husband a letter about this matter, to inform him of her condition, and had entrusted it to a man named Glynne, lately a servant in the employ of Lady Jane Seymour, and now apparently used as a spy by the queen. In this letter she advised her husband to return at once, and confess the whole affair. It only reached him one month before his official recall. Glynne lyingly pretended to the earl that his business in Paris was to find a relative of his who had “stolen his master’s money.” He had remained a considerable time in Paris, and when asked by the earl why he did so, gave an evasive answer. Hertford admitted the receipt of the letter brought by Glynne; and said he had sent his wife several letters from France, incidentally giving us a curious insight into the postal arrangements of the period. He despatched one note from Rouen by “the common letter-bag which went by packet.” From this it may be inferred that even in those days, some sort of regular postal service existed between this country and the Continent. Whether this service was hopelessly inefficient, or whether Hertford was not telling the truth when he said he had written Lady Katherine several letters, we are not able to affirm, but she swore, as we have said, that she never received a single line, although admitting that Lord Henry Seymour, Hertford’s brother, when she was at Havering in Essex, gave her a pair of bracelets from the earl. Hertford deposed that he entrusted one of his epistles to Monsieur “Jehan Renate, a merchant who lived on the bridge at Paris,” to whom he gave particular instructions “to deliver his letter into the very hands of Lady Katherine”; M. Renate, however, seems to have been unable to fulfil his mission, for she never even received this note. Lord Henry Seymour was also called, and deposed that he had carried presents from his brother to Katherine, even before the former went abroad; but though he thought some of these were rings, he denied handing Lady Katherine any letters from Hertford, either before or during his brother’s trip to the Continent. “Some of the earl’s letters,” he went on to say, “came by the common post, and some by Frannces the Post.” He also swore he knew nothing of the marriage, though it would appear from the above that he was aware of the existence of the missing correspondence. Elizabeth could possibly have thrown considerable light on the subject and even have produced the letters, had it suited her purpose so to do—for without doubt they were in her possession.

CHAPTER VI

LADY KATHERINE AND HER HUSBAND IN THE TOWER

Before the inquiry, which dragged on for some weeks, had come to a close, Lady Katherine, on September 21, 1561, was delivered in the Tower of a male child, whose birth Machyn records in a delightfully complicated phrase: “The xxj day of September was browth [brought] to bed of a sune my lade Katheryn Gray, the dowther of the Duke that was heded on the Towre hylle, and ys brodur Lord Thomas Gray the sam tyme.” Five days later the boy was baptized in the church of St. Peter ad Vincula within the Tower, his father declaring he was indeed his son and heir, and giving him the name of Edward. The witnesses of this christening must have stood on the flagstones covering the remains of no less than six of this infant’s immediate forbears, all of whom had lately perished by the axe.[74] According to Henry VIII’s will, the unconscious babe, thus baptized above the remains of his slaughtered relatives, was the legitimate heir to the English Throne; and, as such, in after years, added yet another complication to the tangle of the succession.

Meanwhile, the young mother’s health broke down, and for some months she had to keep her bed, in her room in the Belfry or Bell Tower. In spite of her suffering condition, Elizabeth’s relentless persecution continued. She put spies about the Tower, who informed her of any attempt at communication between the two young prisoners: and the “Virgin Queen” was violently excited on learning that the earl had been inquiring after his wife’s health, through a third person (a Tower official), and that he had on one occasion actually sent her a “posy.” According to Lady Katherine’s statement (for she was interrogated even about this simple incident), being “a close prisoner in the Tower,” she never saw the person who brought her messages and “posies” from the earl.

In May 1562, Sir Edward Warner received orders to conduct the two prisoners before the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth, to be further examined as to what Elizabeth was pleased to describe in the warrant as “the infamose conversation and pretended marriage betwixt the Lady Katherine Grey and the Earl of Hertford.” Despite the ecclesiastical nature of this court, it would seem that the prisoners were not taken to Lambeth, but that whatever trial ever took place occurred in the Tower. On May 12, 1562, the commission, composed, it may be, of the officers who had examined Hertford on his first entering the Tower, passed sentence, at the Bishop of London’s palace near to St. Paul’s Cathedral, to the effect that “there had been no marriage between the Earl of Hertford and the Lady Katherine Grey.” It is probable that neither Hertford nor Lady Katherine was present during this adjudication.

Five months later, in October 1562, Lady Katherine, still confined in the Belfry of the Tower, came nearer being placed on the Throne than at any time in her life. On the 10th of that month, Queen Elizabeth went with her train to Hampton Court, and there fell seriously ill. After several days of high fever, and a fit of syncope lasting two hours, during which her life was despaired of, Her Majesty was found to be suffering from small-pox, aggravated by a bad chill. Quadra’s dispatches, written at this time, show how precarious was her condition. “Last night,” he writes, in a letter dated the 17th October, “the palace people were all mourning for her as if she were already dead ... She was all but gone.” Naturally, the chief effect of the queen’s sudden illness was to raise the hopes of the various pretenders to her succession and of those who, from interest or conviction, supported them. There was such diversity of opinion, however, even amongst the members of the privy council,[75] as to who was the rightful or most suitable future sovereign, that it is not improbable, that had the queen died at this juncture, England, between the ambitions of one party and of another, would have been plunged into a civil war, since some of the pretenders seem to have been prepared to assert their rights by an appeal to arms; “Lord Robert [Dudley],” says the Spanish Ambassador, “has a large armed force under his control, and will probably pronounce for his brother-in-law, the Earl of Huntingdon.” Lady Katherine Grey’s partisans did not miss this opportunity to agitate in her favour; and in the event of the queen’s death, a determined attempt would undoubtedly have been made to seat her on the Throne of her oppressor. The news of Elizabeth’s precarious condition produced a profound feeling of anxiety in the political world both at home and abroad; and Quadra writes to King Philip, that “if her improvement had not come soon, some hidden thoughts would have become manifest. The council discussed the succession twice, and I am told there were three different opinions. Some wished King Henry’s will to be followed and Lady Katherine declared heiress. Others, who found flaws in the will, were in favour of the Earl of Huntingdon. Lord Robert, the Earl of Bedford, the Earl of Pembroke, and the Duke of Norfolk ... were in favour of this.”[76] A few members of the council wished the others not to be in such “a furious hurry,” and advised them to wait until the claims of the various pretenders had been examined by “the greatest jurists in the country”; a suggestion regarded, however, as simply an expedient, to give the King of Spain time to place a Catholic Sovereign on the English Throne. Fortunately for England, Elizabeth made a rapid recovery. To the consternation of the council her first act, after the prolonged syncope into which she had fallen, was to ask the said council to appoint the Lord Robert Dudley protector of the realm during her convalescence, at an income of £20,000. “Everything she asked was promised,” Quadra adds, “but will not be fulfilled.” And he proved a true prophet!

In November 1562 the question of the succession was again discussed, at a meeting attended by the Duke of Norfolk and others, which was held in the Earl of Arundel’s house. The object of this gathering seems to have been to endorse Lady Katherine’s pretensions, now greatly favoured by Norfolk, who in the course of the preceding month, had developed a shadowy notion that, at some future time, one of his daughters (as yet mere infants) “might marry the Countess of Hertford’s lately born son.” The council discussed these grave matters all one evening and till two o’clock the next morning, when they parted, unanimously in favour of Lady Katherine’s right to the Throne after the queen’s death. When Elizabeth heard of the affair, she actually “wept for rage,” and summoning Arundel, upbraided him in no measured terms for allowing such a meeting to take place under his roof. The earl, in an off-hand manner, told the queen that “if she wanted to govern the country by passion, he could assure her the nobles would not allow her to do so”; whereupon Her Majesty, abashed, hastily changed the subject.

During the winter of 1562-63, the partisans of Lady Katherine seem to have directed their attention to Hertford, and at one time, led by Cecil, seriously proposed setting him up as a claimant to the Throne,[77] faute de míeux. Needless to say, the earl, except for his position as Lady Katherine’s husband, had no more to do with the succession than any other nobleman. Cecil, however, was still anxious to aid Lady Katherine and her husband, and had it depended on him, doubtless they would have been forthwith set at liberty. He was hostile to Lord Robert Dudley, and moreover jealous of his influence; and being out of favour with the queen in consequence, was quite prepared to aid her rival. Not improbably, the queen’s persistent refusal to be merciful to her captives, was to some extent caused by a desire to annoy and embarrass her chief secretary. Elizabeth’s health being still unsatisfactory, early in 1563, the question of the succession was again brought before Parliament, and Cecil, as a solution to the difficulty, proposed that a committee should be formed of twenty-four members of the privy council, who, in the event of the queen’s death, would conduct the affairs of the nation for the first three weeks after the sovereign’s demise, until a successor had been approved of by them. The gentlemen nominated for this high office, however, one and all begged to be excused, pleading that they felt safer on their country estates than if they were all gathered together in London: though, at the same time, they refused to appoint others to take their places on this commission. The fact is, it was well known that Cecil had determined to try to include amongst these councillors as many of the male claimants to the Throne or their chief supporters as he conveniently could; his real object being, it was suspected, to attempt, when the queen died, a coup d’état similar to that which followed on the death of Edward VI. Hertford and Lady Katherine would, it was feared, be released; and, supported by the Londoners—“the City being so much in favour of the Earl of Hertford on the ground of religion,” according to Quadra—the Lady Katherine would be crowned queen, as her sister Jane had been.[78] Meanwhile, as many of the other claimants and their partisans as could be laid hands on, especially such of them as the wily Cecil had got together in London on the pretext of the above-mentioned committee, would be thrust into prison, and, possibly, executed. The opposition being too strong, the scheme was forthwith dropped, and the vexed question of the succession was again left in abeyance for a few months.

Whilst her name was thus being bandied about by various political factions, Lady Katherine remained a peaceful and probably fairly contented prisoner in the Tower. The old Italian proverb, that neither walls nor waters can separate lovers, once more proved true, when, on February 10, 1563, notwithstanding Elizabeth’s vigilance, and the strict orders issued to Sir Edward Warner, the Lady Katherine became the mother of a second boy, who was baptized in St. Peter’s in the Tower, two warders acting as godfathers. He received the name of Thomas, after his great-uncle, the lord high admiral. Elizabeth when she heard of this second child’s birth, raged less like Medea than one of her dragons, and vented her spleen on the young earl, who was haled before Star Chamber to justify himself of the further “offence” of having visited his wife in prison. Hertford, attacked in the coarsest terms, replied like a man, that “being lawfully married to the Lady Katherine Grey, who hath borne me a fair son during the time of our imprisonment in the Tower, and finding her prison door unbarred, I came in to comfort her in her sadness, of which I cannot repent.” The lieutenant, Warner, who was likewise examined, gave a different account of the meeting, since he admitted without hesitation that he had allowed the earl and countess “to visit one another once on being over persuaded, and afterwards thought it was of no use keeping them apart.” Nevertheless, the earl was heavily fined—15,000 marks in all; 5000 for “seducing a virgin of the blood royal”; 5000 for breaking prison—i.e. when he left his own apartments to visit Lady Katherine; and 5000 for the birth of the second child, described by the Chamber as “a bastard.” The earl not having sufficient money to pay this sum off-hand, his estates were, as usual in such cases, confiscated instead.

Star Chamber was certainly influenced, in passing this sentence, by one of its most servile members, Sir John Mason,[79] with whom Hertford was eventually condemned to live for a time. On January 28, 1562 (a year before the date of the birth of the second child), this worthy, in a letter to Secretary Cecil, declares:—

“There be abroad in the city, and in sundry other places in the realm, broad speeches of the case of the Lady Katherine and the Earl of Hertford. Some of ignorance make such talks thereof as liketh them, not letting to say [meaning, ‘not scrupling to say’] they be man and wife. And why should man and wife be lett (‘hindered’] from coming together? These speeches and others are very common. And, to tell my foolish judgment thereof, methinketh it will be no ill way to call him [Hertford] to the Star Chamber, and there, after a good declaration of the queen’s proceedings for the trial of the truth of the supposed marriage, and what was found adjudged, then to charge him with his presumptuous, contemptuous, and outrageous behaviour in using the said Lady Katherine as he hath done, before the sentence and since. And in the end to set upon his head a fine of XM [10,000] marks: if they be made pounds it is little enough. There is not a more oultreayed youth—I speak French for lack of apt English [perhaps the curious word ‘oultreayed’ was Mason’s version of the ‘French’ adjective outré]—neither one that better liketh himself, nor that promiseth himself greater things. He should be made to learn himself [i.e. ‘discipline himself’] to see his own faults. His imprisonment fatteneth him, and he hath rather thereby commodity than hindrance [meaning, ‘He rather enjoys his imprisonment than otherwise’]. If a good part of his living (‘income’] might answer some part of his offence, and the imprisonment therewithal continue, it would make him to know what it is to have so arrogantly and contemptuously offended his prince [i.e. the queen], and would make him hereafter to know his duty to the state and to Almighty God. I beseech you pardon my rude scribbling and my boldness showed in the same, and to weigh my good meaning in this matter, and nothing else. And thus Almighty God have you in His Most blessed keeping, and assist you alway with His present grace.”

Star Chamber therefore not only treated Hertford in a manner that must have been most pleasing to the spiteful Sir John Mason, but even exceeded his suggestion in the matter of the fine. Maybe Mason had had some quarrel or words with the earl, that led him to write so bitterly; although even his mother, the duchess, can have had no very high opinion of him, since she speaks of his “wylfulness.” Elizabeth now ordered Sir Edward Warner, Lieutenant of the Tower, to be arrested and forthwith confined in that fortress over which he had lately ruled supreme. He had indeed been imprisoned there once before, for alleged complicity in the Wyatt rebellion, and had only been reinstated as lieutenant at Elizabeth’s accession. Through the influence of Cecil, his close friend, Warner contrived to regain his freedom, after his second imprisonment, in 1563; but he lost his post, this time for good, and retired into the country.

Meanwhile the House of Commons had been holding lengthy debates about the troubles of the two young victims of Elizabeth’s persecution, and many of the Puritan, or extreme Low Church, party, who favoured Katherine’s right to the Throne, were very much inclined to believe in the validity of the marriage, and consequently, in the legitimacy of the two children. In the meantime, Elizabeth released Lady Margaret Lennox, whom she had confined in the Tower on an obscure charge—a liberation on which the Reformers looked askance, for though Margaret stood nearer the Throne than Katherine, being a daughter of Henry VIII’s eldest sister, Margaret Queen of Scots, she, as a Roman Catholic, was regarded by the Protestants as a danger to their cause. Her husband, the Earl of Lennox, had also been imprisoned some months earlier, but was set free about November 1562. Quadra, in mentioning this fact, states that it took place “by the favour of the Earl of Pembroke and Lord Robert [Dudley], who are much against Lady Katherine.” He also confirms what we have said above. “I think,” he adds, “that the liberation of Lennox has two objects: first, to hinder Lady Katherine by providing a competitor; and secondly, to give a little satisfaction to the Catholics, who are desperate at Lady Margaret’s misery, and place all their hopes in the Queen of Scots and the husband she may choose. By giving them some hope that the succession may fall to Lady Margaret and her son, they may cool somewhat towards the Queen of Scots. All this is convenient for the queen, who wants to have the power to declare her own successor when she likes.”[80]

In the summer of 1563, the plague broke out in London with such violence, and made so many victims within the precincts of the Tower, that Lady Katherine, greatly alarmed, begged Cecil to intercede with the queen for her removal from the infected fortress. Elizabeth at once consented, signing (August 21, 1563) an order[81] expressing her “contentation” that the Lady “Catharyne” should be sent to her uncle, Lord John Grey,[82] at his seat at Pirgo, near Havering-atte-Bower and Hainault Forest in Essex. This nobleman, be it said, was not very friendly to his niece. Still—“any port in the storm”; and it was certainly better to go to Pirgo with an unpleasant relation, than to stay in London with a chance of dying of the plague. With the Lady Katherine went her baby son and a goodly number of nurses and attendants. Hertford, as the warrant shows, was also removed from the Tower, and sent, with the eldest child, Edward, to Hanworth, to the house of the old Duchess of Somerset, his mother. Shortly after her husband’s execution, this handsome—but haughty and ill-tempered dame—had married, as already stated, Sergeant Newdigate,[83] who was now entrusted with the duty of conducting Lady Katherine to Pirgo. He led the caravan which escorted her and her baby, with their attendants and baggage, from the Tower; and on their arrival at Pirgo, which was before the end of August, made himself very disagreeable both to Lady Katherine and to Lord John.

Meanwhile, a little comedy occurred with respect to the tattered furniture in the Tower of London. Sir Edward Warner, after his dismissal from the lieutenancy, had retired to Plumstead, near Norwich, where he had a country house. As soon as he heard Katherine had been transferred from the Tower to Pirgo, he wrote to Cecil, demanding compensation for furniture and hangings which he had lent to the imprisoned lady, when under his care. “Sir,” he writes, “my Lady Katherine is, as ye know, delivered [from the Tower], and the stuff that she had—I would it were seen. It was delivered to her by the queen’s commandment, and she hath worn, now two years full, most of it so torn and tattered with her monks [i.e. monkeys] and dogs as will serve to small purpose.... Besides,” he continues, “my Lady Katherine had one other chamber, furnished with stuff of mine, the which is all marred also.” He goes on to suggest that it would not be unreasonable, considering its dilapidated condition, if he were granted the furniture allotted to Lady Katherine out of the royal Wardrobe, as well as his own. “It was,” he says, “delivered by the queen’s pleasure.... If I have it not, some of it is fitter to be given away than to be stored into the Wardrobe again, and that I justify with my hand. If he [the Lord Chamberlain] like not that I have the bed of down, I shall be content to forbear it. I send you here enclosed the bill of parcels,[84] with some notes in the margent truly written.” He concludes his appeal—from “my poor house at Plumsted”—by rather ambiguously wishing Cecil “prosperous felicity, with increase of godliness.” Whether Sir Edward Warner ever got his coveted goods and chattels or not we are unable to ascertain. Neither are we informed whether Katherine conveyed her “monks,” her dogs, and her other pets to Pirgo; it is probable enough that she did, for one of her pet dogs was with her when she died a few years later.

The journey to Pirgo, notwithstanding that it was performed in one of Elizabeth’s own travelling coaches—a ponderous vehicle, that required four Flemish cart-horses to drag it along the ill-kept roads—must have been very fatiguing for a woman in Lady Katherine’s delicate condition. Pirgo, too, though a fine old mansion, dating far back into Edward III’s time, and surrounded by a moat, did not present many of the “modern improvements,” even of those days: it is described as “very draughty, damp, and cold.” The Lord John had lately made some alterations, but they do not seem to have been very important. The gardens of Pirgo—and this may have been some consolation to the prisoner—were exceedingly fine; and the park was one of the grandest in Essex.

CHAPTER VII

LADY KATHERINE AT PIRGO

The prisoner’s life at Pirgo seems to have been tolerably peaceful and comfortable. Although her uncle continued to treat her coldly, nevertheless, before the end of August (1563), the month in which she reached his house, Lord John Grey wrote to thank Cecil for obtaining “this indulgence from the queen for his niece.” She herself also addressed a similar letter to Cecil dated the “thred” of September;[85] but very soon after, she seems to have been overcome by an attack of profound melancholy, and even the kindness of her aunt—this lady was a daughter of Sir Anthony Browne, and therefore a stepdaughter of Katherine’s friend, the “Fair Geraldine”—failed to cheer her drooping spirits.

“I assure you, good cowsigne [cousin] Cecil,” writes my Lord John to “Mister Chief Secretary,” on September 20,1563, “as I have written unto my Lord Robert—i.e. Dudley—the thought and care she [Katherine] taketh for the want of Her Highness’s favour pines her away; before God I speak it, if it come not the sooner she will not long live thus; she eateth not above six morsels in the meal. If I say unto her, ‘Good Madam, eat somewhat to comfort yourself,’ she falls a-weeping and goeth up to her chamber; if I ask her what the cause is she useth herself in that sort, she answers me: ‘Alas! Uncle, what a life this is to me, thus to live in the Queen’s displeasure; but for my lord and my children, I would to God I were buried.’ Good cousin Cecil, as time, places, and occasion may serve, ease her of this woful grief and sorrow, and rid me of this life which, I assure you, grieveth me at the heart’s roots.”

It is much more likely that Lady Katherine’s distress was due to her enforced separation from her husband and her eldest child, than to the fact that she had lost the queen’s favour; though, indeed, the consequences rendered Elizabeth’s friendships invaluable and her enmities equally dangerous. Nearly two months elapsed without bringing any answer to the above-quoted letter; and then Lady Katherine, very likely on her uncle’s advice, addressed a formal petition to the queen, which Lord John enclosed in another letter to Cecil, begging him to have it presented to Her Majesty on some appropriate occasion, and signing himself—

“Your loving cousin and assured friend to my smaule power,

“John Grey.”

This petition, like most of the letters to and from both Lord John and Lady Katherine at this period, will be found among the Lansdowne MSS. It runs as follows:—

“I dare not presume, Most Gracious Sovereign, to crave pardon for my disobedient and rash matching of myself without Your Highness’s consent; I only most humbly sue unto Your Highness to continue your merciful nature towards me. I [ac]knowledge myself a most unworthy creature to feel so much of your gracious favour as I have done. My just[ly] felt misery and continual grief doth teach me daily more and more the greatness of my fault, and your princely pity increaseth my sorrow that [I] have so forgotten my duty towards Your Majesty. This is my great torment of mind. May it therefore please Your Excellent Majesty to licence me to be a most lowly suitor unto Your Highness to extend towards my miserable state Your Majesty’s further favour and accustomed mercy, which upon my knees in all humble wise I crave, with my daily prayers to God to long continue and preserve Your Majesty’s reign over us. From Pirgo the vi of November 1563. Your Majesty’s most humble, bounden, and obedient servant.”

Either Cecil dared not present the petition to Her Majesty—Lord John, in enclosing it, asks him to deliver it to Lord Robert Dudley—or else the queen was more hardened than ever; for this appeal also remained unanswered. A little later, Lady Katherine, according to a letter from Lord John to Cecil, dated December 12, “has been in bed for three or four days,” and so ill that he thought of sending for one of the queen’s doctors. She was weeping all the time, and “assuredly, she never went to bed all this time of her sickness, but they that watched with her much doubted how to find her in the morning. She is so fraughted with phlegm, by reason of thought, weeping and sitting still, that many hours she is like to be overcome therewith.” “Indeed,” he continues, “if it were not that the women attending her were ‘painful’ [he means painstaking] he could not sleep in quiet” for worrying about her condition. He therefore begs Cecil to make a fresh appeal on her behalf. The following day, Katherine herself addressed a letter to Cecil, beseeching the great man to intercede for her; wishing to God she were buried rather than continue to languish in her sorrow and misery, and moreover intimating that she had also written to Lord Robert Dudley, who had been created Earl of Leicester on the previous 29th of September.[86] Apparently no answer from any one was ever vouchsafed to these appeals.

During the winter of 1563-64, Newdigate, Hertford’s step-father—who must have been a most odious personality—began to interfere in the affairs of Lady Katherine and her husband. He spoke of Lord John Grey to Lady Clinton in the most insolent terms—“with no small bragging words”—and seems to have tried to persuade Hertford that Lord John was his worst enemy. He said that Lady Katherine ought not to be sending letters to the queen or council without his (Hertford’s) knowledge. Lord John Grey consequently wrote to Cecil on January 20, 1564, describing the language Newdigate had used about him to the Lady Clinton, and also pointing out that Lady Katherine was very badly off for furniture and house linen, etc., as she had scarcely anything but what he had lent her,[87] concluding with a mysterious statement that “of the cat there is no more to be had but the skin, which hitherto I have thought well bestowed.” In a postscript he begs that Lady Katherine may be allowed some wine, if possible out of the royal stores, and encloses an inventory of her effects.[88] A document among the Domestic State Papers of the reign of Elizabeth (vol. xxxiii. fol. 10) shows us what response was made to Lord John’s appeal. This is a receipt signed by the steward of Pirgo[89] for money paid him for the lady’s maintenance, and dated January 23, 1564. The feeding of Lady Katherine and her attendants cost £6 16s. 8d. a week. When we consider that her retinue only consisted of a nurse, two women (Mrs. Woodeforde and Mrs. Isham), two laundresses, a groom, a footman, a page, and a lacquey, besides Mr. William Hampton, who was a sort of secretary, and compare the purchasing value of money in those days with what it is in ours, it becomes evident that My Lord of Pirgo was making what we should consider a very good thing out of his niece’s maintenance. Be this as it may, in May 1564 Hertford received a communication from Lord Robert Dudley (who does not seem to have made use, at this time, of his title of Earl of Leicester) and Cecil, asking him to send some one with a sum of money to pay my Lord of Pirgo’s charge for the maintenance of his wife and infant. The amount was stated to be £114, which had to be paid at once, “because the said Lady Graye (as she complaineth) cannot longer endure from payment.” It will be remembered that in January of the same year the steward of Pirgo had acknowledged full payment of all moneys due to Lord Grey up to date; it is somewhat strange, therefore, that four months later, £114 should have been demanded for her Ladyship’s expenses, and it is not unreasonable to believe that Dudley and Cecil, when they named so large a sum, intended to help themselves liberally out of it. Whether Lord John or the other two worthies ever got this money or not, remains uncertain to this day.

Somewhere about Christmas 1563, the Duchess of Somerset had gone to court, and had been received in very friendly fashion by Robert Dudley. For once in her life, Anne Stanhope seems to have showed some feeling, and to have done her best for her unfortunate son and his persecuted wife. But so far as we can judge, she set to work the wrong way, as was her custom, insisting where she should have pleaded, and so made matters worse. On March 18, 1564, Hertford addressed a personal appeal to Leicester on behalf of himself and his wife, thanking him at the same time for his kindness to the Duchess.[90] Leicester replied, within a few days, that he had done everything that “speech and humble art” could do, but saw no sign of any more favourable feeling towards the captives on the queen’s part: although “he had moved the Queen’s Majesty in his [Hertford’s] behalf” it was all in vain. Then—with an hypocrisy worthy of Uriah Heep, considering he was universally suspected of having murdered his wife, Amy Robsart, and was jeered at as the queen’s paramour—he unctuously adds, “Love God and fear Him, and pray earnestly to Him, for it must be your chief work that He may further your help to obtain the favour and comfort you seek.” A week later, Hertford writes him another letter, enclosing a present of gloves for the queen, which he beseeches him to present to Her Majesty. Leicester, in answer to Hertford’s request that he should tell him if there was anything wrong with them, replied, two days later, that he had given the gloves to the queen, and that there was no fault, except that they were too thin, a defect he had taken care to point out to “Thurgans,” the servant who brought the gloves from Hanworth. He adds that it would be well if the next pair “you make a little stronger”; evidently the earl employed his leisure in manufacturing gloves, of which these were a specimen pair.[91] But neither Cecil, nor Leicester, nor the Duchess of Somerset—who continued to intercede for her son and her daughter-in-law—nor the gloves, sufficed to mollify the inflexible Elizabeth, who manifested no inclination whatever to grant the unfortunate prisoners what Hertford had termed “the countershine comfort” of their freedom.

At this time Lord John Grey, too, joined the chorus of appeals, addressing a letter[92] to Cecil on March 6 (1564), in which he mentions that he has not written for three months—probably his last letter was the one sent together with the inventory of Lady Katherine’s effects—points out that they are now in the season of Lent, “which of all others hath been counted a time of mercy and forgiveness,” and again begs the queen’s pardon for his charge and her husband. “In faith,” says he, “I would I were the Queen’s confessor this Lent, that I might enjoin her in penance to forgive and forget, or otherwise able to step into the pulpit to tell Her Highness that God will not forgive her, unless she freely forgive all the world.”

CHAPTER VIII

LADY KATHERINE AGAIN THE CENTRE OF INTRIGUES

In the year 1564, John Hales, Clerk of the Hanaper, secretly published a pamphlet or book, “wherein,” says Cecil, “he hath taken upon him to discuss no small matter, viz., the title [right] to the Crown after the Queen’s Majesty, having confuted and rejected the line of the Scottish Queen, and made the line of the Lady Frances, mother to Lady Katherine Grey, the only next and lawful.”[93] This, the most open declaration in favour of Katherine’s claim that had yet appeared, naturally incensed Elizabeth, all the more so as it eventually transpired that both the Chancellor (Sir Nicholas Bacon) and Secretary Cecil had had a share in the preparation of the book, though all the blame, when the queen learnt of it later on, was laid upon Hales, who, to add to his offence, had called in foreign lawyers to prove the legality of Hertford’s marriage. Hales was sent to the Fleet Prison for six months, Bacon was severely reprimanded, whilst Cecil, in a letter dated May 9, 1564, states that he was “not free from the Queen’s suspicions.” No doubt Elizabeth’s resentment against the authors or suspected authors of this attempt to favour Lady Katherine, was fanned by Lord Robert Dudley, who took advantage of this opportunity to strike a nasty blow at his arch-enemy, Cecil, whom he accused of being the author of the offensive pamphlet. The foreign State Papers throw considerable light on the events of this period, especially a letter from Don Diego Guzman de Silva, the Spanish ambassador ordinary, who came into office after the sudden death of Quadra, and who, writing to the King of Spain on June 27 (1564), says: “A great friend of Lord Robert Dudley has been to visit me on his behalf, and has informed me of the great enmity that exists between Cecil and Robert even before this book [i.e. Hales’s pamphlet] was published, but now very much more.... The Queen is extremely angry about it [the book], although she signifies that there are so many accomplices in the offence that they must overlook it, and has begun to slacken in the matter. This person has asked me from Robert with great secrecy to take an opportunity in speaking to the Queen to urge her not to fail in adopting strong measures in this business, as if Cecil were out of the way, the affairs of Your Majesty [the King of Spain] would be more favourably dealt with and religious questions as well, because this Cecil and his friends are those who persecute the Catholics and dislike Your Majesty, whereas the other man [Lord Robert] is looked upon as faithful.... If the Queen would disgrace Cecil, it would be a great good to them, and this man tried to persuade me to make use of Robert.... With regard to this particular business [of the pamphlet], also, I would be glad to do as Robert desired.... I have advice reaching me from all sides, and particularly from Catholics, that this punishment [i.e. the disgrace of Cecil] should be pressed upon the Queen.” Nevertheless, these sinister schemes do not seem to have come to anything, since Cecil did not receive so much as a reprimand; but, as already stated, he was well aware that he had aroused Her Majesty’s suspicions of him, and doubtless, with his characteristic acuteness, took good care to do nothing that might compromise him further. Lord John Grey was not so fortunate, though it is difficult to see what he had to do with the affair; but all the same he received a warning, and was kept under arrest at Pirgo until his death. It may be that, apart from the abortive Spanish plot for the abduction of Lady Katherine, some other conspiracy was on foot to place her on the Throne, and that Lord John Grey was cognizant of this scheme. Really the Greys’ motto might well have been “Save me from my friends,” for their worst enemies were their most eager supporters—Lady Jane’s execution was the immediate result of her father’s insurrection; and Hales’s attempt to vindicate Lady Katherine’s honour, only served to increase Elizabeth’s anger against her and hers.

[To face p. 214

WILLIAM CECIL, LORD BURLEIGH

The loss of the queen’s favour had a depressing effect on the health of Lord John Grey, who, on May 20, 1564, in a curious letter to Cecil, says it will no longer endure the strain of anxiety caused by the care of his niece, the Lady Katherine, adding that he has been very ill and fears he may not live much longer. Late in November 1564, Cecil wrote to Lord Robert Dudley to inform him that Lord John Grey had died at Pirgo five days previously [i.e. about November 21], “of whom his friends report that he died of thought, but his gout was sufficient to have ended his life.” By “thought” his Lordship no doubt meant “worry.” Whether Lady Katherine stayed at Pirgo for her uncle’s funeral, we know not: she may even have left before his death, for Cecil, in his letter, expressly states that at the time of writing she was in the charge of Sir William Petre at Ingatestone House in Essex. As this mansion is about ten miles from Pirgo, she would have had no great distance to travel—a mercy for her, in her weak state. For the next eighteen months we hear nothing of her; very likely she remained more or less closely confined at Ingatestone, until she was consigned, in 1566, to the care of Sir John Wentworth of Gosfield Hall, near Halstead in Essex.

Meanwhile, the Duchess of Somerset continued her agitation on behalf of her son and his wife; and in Lent 1565 (the letter is dated April 18), she writes to Cecil and Dudley, begging them “to take some occasion to do good in my son’s case.” The former she also beseeched to “provoke” [i.e. urge] Lord Robert; “trusting the occasion of this Holy Week and charitable time for forgiveness, earnestly set forth by his Lordship and you, will bring forth some comfortable fruit of relief to the long afflicted parties, wherein my Lord and you cannot go so far, but God’s cause and the Queen’s honour bid you go farther.”

The young Earl of Hertford had, as we have seen, been removed from the Tower to his mother’s house at Hanworth in August 1563. He soon had good cause to regret the change, for the duchess, who had always discountenanced his marriage, made him feel his error in a most unpleasant manner. She was, she said, “tired of the whole matter,” and wished she “had never heard of Lady Katherine or of her family”—no good had come of it. She did not, however, refuse to assist her son in his difficulties, but she did so in an “unfriendly way,” so that the first days at Hanworth must have been the reverse of pleasant; particularly as the duchess’s husband, Mr. Newdigate, made himself exceedingly disagreeable and interfering. In May 1564, Hertford was suddenly sent from Hanworth to the custody of Sir John Mason—that very subtle man who had desired he should be harshly dealt with—at his house in Clerkenwell. The wording of the royal warrant (dated May 26, 1564), which commits the Earl of Hertford to his [Mason’s] custody, “discharging him of Fr. Newdigate, who is to confine himself to his own house,” has given rise to the erroneous impression that Newdigate also had been imprisoned at Sir John’s mansion. It should probably read, “Discharging him [i.e. Hertford] from Francis Newdigate,” meaning that the earl’s step-father, who was in these terms ordered to hand his prisoner over to Mason, should have no further intercourse with him, and therefore “confine himself to his own house”—in other words, stay at home.

Misfortune seems to have attended most of the ladies and gentlemen whom Elizabeth obliged to act as jailers to her various obnoxious kinsmen. They nearly all came to some grief or other. In April 1566, Sir John Mason died somewhat suddenly. After his death, Hertford lodged, for a time, with his widow, from whose house, on June 24 of the same year, he writes to Cecil complaining that his brother, Henry Seymour, “bears part of the penalty of the Queen’s displeasure.” Was this young gentleman also involved in the Hales business? In 1567, Quadra tells us that the earl’s imprisonment had become more strict, but omits to say where he was at that time. On June 7 of the following year (1568), he, however, reappears, when he addresses a joint letter to Leicester, Mildmay and Cecil, in which he says he is “much bound to the Queen” for her “acceptation of his mother’s suit”—apparently the duchess had met with some success in her supplications on his behalf—and further thanks Her Majesty for “her intention to take £700 a year till the £10,000 be paid.” The meaning of this is not clear, unless it refers to the payment of his fine, which however was adjudged in marks, not pounds. Hertford was then living at “Sir John Spencer’s.”

In 1566, as we have stated, his unhappy countess, the Lady Katherine, had been sent to Sir John Wentworth’s very dreary mansion, Gosfield Hall, Essex.[94] The official order to receive her must have been a heavy blow to Sir John, for on May 14 of that year he wrote a letter[95] to the privy council, declaring himself a most “unmeet man to receive such a charge, being of years above threescore and sixteen, and of late much visited with sickness”; and, he adds, “my wife for this fortnight or three weeks hath been visited with an ague, and doubteth much (but) that it will breed to a quartain, who is above the years of threescore and ten and cannot go so much as unto her garden to take any air.”

Gosfield Hall must have at this juncture somewhat resembled a hospital, for in addition to the sick Wentworth and his wife, their daughter, the Lady Maltravers—or “Mattrevers,” as he spells it—lay there “so ill that she could not see anyone.” To crown all these objections, Sir John informs the council that his house is the last in which the Lady Katherine would be safe; “for all the times in the night they may come to the windows of every chamber in my house, or talk with her or deliver letters unto her, or if she were so disposed, she may either let them into her chamber, or go out to them at the loops of the windows, they are so great and wide.”[96] Indeed, he says, it would be better for him to be imprisoned himself than to take up a task like this, which he could not fulfil.

Unfortunately for the poor man, Elizabeth had visited Gosfield Hall on one of her progresses (in 1561), and remembered the house well enough not to place much faith in its being so very unsafe a residence for her afflicted prisoner. No notice accordingly seems to have been taken of Sir John’s letter; and to Gosfield Lady Katherine proceeded, with her retinue, her “monks,” her parrots, and her pet dogs.

Albeit Elizabeth had good cause to wish her to be kept very secure. On account of the agitation in her favour, Lady Katherine, though imprisoned, was almost as great a thorn in the queen’s side as if she had been free. The party which supported her claims to the Throne was now stronger than ever; although Spain kept aloof, for the Spanish ambassador did not hesitate to warn Elizabeth against allowing Katherine to be nominated her successor, and once more urged the queen to cut the question short by marrying. Had it merely depended on a vote in Parliament, Katherine would certainly have been nominated, for the Ambassador remarks that the Protestant party, who were greatly in the majority in the Commons, were “furiously in favour of her.” Doubtless this was precisely the reason why the Spaniards had lost the interest in her they had felt in past times, when she declared herself a Catholic. At the head of the movement was Cecil, whilst the Duke of Norfolk, who still cherished the idea of uniting his daughter to one of Katherine’s sons, gave him his hearty support. On the other hand, the lords were mostly in favour of the Queen of Scots, Catholic influence being strong in the Upper House. By the year 1566, the Protestant party in Parliament was waxing so irritable at the queen’s persistent refusal to name her successor, that during the autumn session of that year, they boldly threatened to refuse to vote Her Majesty further financial supplies, unless she consented to come to a decision in the matter. The tension was so great, that on one occasion, about this time, a regular hand-to-hand fight took place in full Parliament, between Katherine’s supporters and their opponents. Not daring, however, to “starve out” Elizabeth in the way proposed, the Protestant party next tried to bribe the queen into consenting to their proposals, by offering to vote her, without discussion, £250,000, on the sole condition that she allowed them to nominate her successor, in which case, it was thought, they would choose Katherine as her heir. Elizabeth, exasperated beyond endurance at such insolence, this time replied that “on no account would she allow this nomination to be discussed further,” that she refused to make any conditions whatever, and that they ought to have the decency to vote supplies from motives of pure patriotism, instead of from interest or party gain. The queen must have felt that her position was very insecure, else surely, with her characteristic vindictiveness, she would have taken more drastic—and in this case justifiable—measures against those who had dared to offer her such an obvious affront. On the other hand, what she told the Spanish ambassador may have been true that, “though she would concede nothing in this matter of the succession, she wished to dissemble, and let the Parliament talk, in order that she might know what were their opinions and thus discover the lady of each man’s choice,” meaning Mary Stuart or Lady Katherine. Nevertheless, “Gloriana” was considerably exercised in her mind, for, the Ambassador continues, “she fears that if the matter is carried further they will adopt Katherine, both she and her husband being strong Protestants, and most of the members of Parliament are heretics, and are going on that course to maintain their own party.” For all that, she severely reprimanded the Parliament in her prorogation speech, and had a violent quarrel with Norfolk, Leicester and other noblemen for daring to discuss the matter; finally, she issued an order to the effect that no allusion was to be made to it in Parliament under pain of punishment. This order was withdrawn soon after, but the question was dropped. The agitation in Katherine’s favour continued, however, in secret, and the Spanish State Papers clearly demonstrate that the accusations against Mary Stuart, of having connived at her husband Darnley’s murder, were brought forward by the Protestant party principally in order to benefit Lady Katherine by injuring the reputation of, and creating a prejudice against, the Catholic Queen of Scots, the rival claimant to the succession.[97] On the night that Darnley’s death became known in London (somewhere in February 1567), Leicester sent his brother, the Earl of Warwick, to Hertford, “to offer him his services in the matter of the succession, and Lord Robert himself went to see the Duchess of Somerset, the earl’s mother, with the same object, and has made friends with them both, contrary to his former action.” He had hitherto supported the Queen of Scots, and, as we have seen, had been extremely averse to Lady Katherine’s claim. It is strange, therefore, that he should have veered round so suddenly, unless he felt convinced that Katherine’s chances of succeeding Elizabeth were now better than ever, and deemed it good policy to be on the winning side. The result of these interviews, the details of which are lost, is unknown; probably Lord Robert’s suggestions fell through, owing to Hertford’s habitual pusillanimity; whilst the duchess is not likely to have been over enthusiastic for the advancement of her daughter-in-law, or desirous of seeing her son get himself into still worse trouble by taking any further ill-advised action. No doubt, moreover, Elizabeth was aware that her captives were likely to become dangerous again, for in December 1567 we learn from the Spanish State Papers that Hertford’s imprisonment became stricter than ever, “they are,” he says, “possibly afraid of some movement in his favour, as I am assured that certain negotiations are afoot respecting the succession to the Crown very different from the marriage business.” What these were, he does not say, but probably he alludes to the attempts to injure Mary Stuart’s good name, in order the better to forward Lady Katherine’s cause, or to Dudley’s visit to the Earl of Hertford, which, if he were still a prisoner at that time, must have been arranged secretly, and was doubtless the principal reason why he was treated with renewed severity.

Meanwhile, Lady Katherine remained, for some seventeen months, at Gosfield, until Sir John Wentworth’s death, in 1567,—he too, so to speak, died of Lady Katherine—obliged the queen to make a fresh disposal of her luckless cousin. Lady Wentworth still lived on, but “besides her great age, which is seventy-one years, is grieven by the sorrow of her late husband’s death so weak and sickly as it is to be feared she cannot long continue without she shortly amend.” It almost looks as though Elizabeth had sent her unhappy kinswoman to Gosfield with the deliberate intention of driving her melancholy mad! The poor soul stayed on for several weeks in the house of death and mourning, until Mr. Roke Green, Wentworth’s executor and agent, who was a relative of the family, received the queen’s orders to take charge of the prisoner, her child, and her train—a charge he politely, but firmly, declined to undertake, his house, he urged, being altogether too small, whilst he himself had no wife, and “by the occasion of the great charge of children I have, I am much enforced to be from my house,” which probably means that he was a sort of guardian to a numerous group of orphans. He might as well have spared himself the trouble of writing his letter,[98] which probably crossed one from the queen—dated Windsor, October 2, 1567—commanding him to convey the Lady Katherine and her train to Cockfield Hall, Yoxford, and commit them to the custody of Sir Owen Hopton (who, so far as we can discover, was not at this time, as some writers assert, Lieutenant of the Tower). On the same day (October 2), Her Majesty sent her commands to Sir Owen to receive Lady Katherine and such servants as were in attendance on her. The fear of a fresh plot concerning Katherine and the succession must have haunted Elizabeth, for in making this order, she enjoins on Hopton to take the following significant precautions: “Do not suffer her to have any conference with any stranger, nor that any resort be made unto her other than by yourself and of your household. And in case you shall be occasioned either for our service or for neighbourhood (‘companionship’] to have any repair to your table [i.e.—‘have any one to sup or dine with you’], that she be not permitted to be in company of them, but so to be secluded as yourself and your wife be not thereby restrained from the entertainment of any of your friends. And generally we require you and your wife to keep her as one committed to your charge from conference or sight of strangers, according to the trust we repose in you. And as occasion shall arise wherein you shall desire to know our pleasure, you may thereof advertise some of our privy council, of whom you shall receive answer. And for the charges of the debts of her and her necessary servants attending upon her, you shall be satisfied as by the foresaid Roke Greene you may at more length understand was answered for the same unto the said Sr. John Wentworthe.”[99] Sir Owen, who received the royal command on October 6, manifested even more than Mr. Roke Green, his reluctance to receive the princess, for in a letter to “Cissyll” [Cecil] dated the 11th of the same month, he pointed out that he was just about to start with his wife and domestics for a stay at a house he had bought at Ipswich, an outing which the queen’s orders compelled him to forego.[100] After conference with Mr. Roke Green, who appears to have gone to Cockfield Hall to consult with Hopton, it was agreed that Lady Katherine should remain where she was—apparently at Gosfield Hall—till the 20th of October. About that date, therefore, her Ladyship left Gosfield for Ipswich, a distance of some thirty miles. Owing to her delicate health, she performed the journey in a “coche,” a ponderous vehicle drawn by four strong Flemish horses, sent from London for the purpose of her removal. In this she sat with her nurse and child, deeming it, no doubt, a very comfortable mode of travelling; whilst her escort, forming a picturesque group, followed on horseback. The party spent a night at an inn in Ipswich; the landlord’s bill of charges for their entertainment is still extant, in the account sent to the Exchequer by Hopton after Lady Katherine’s death. It runs as follows:—

“The charges for the receipt of the Lady Katherine, and for the board of her and her ordinary servants, &c.

“Imprimis; expended at Ipswich upon the receipt of the Lady Katherine for one supper and one dinner, fire, lodging and horsemeat there, 7li. 15s.

“Item; for one bait at Snape when the Lady Katherine came from Ipswich to Cokfield (Cockfield), 20s.

“Item; for the hire of a cart for the carriage of the stuff and apparel of the same Lady Katherine from Ipswich to Cockfield, 20s.

“Item; given in reward for the coach, 10s.”[101]

CHAPTER IX

LADY KATHERINE’S LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH

VERY soon after her arrival at Cockfield,[102] Lady Katherine, who was already in a deep decline, fell dangerously ill. Sorrow, anxiety, and hope deferred had done their work, and by the close of 1567, Sir Owen Hopton decided to send for Dr. Symonds, the queen’s physician, who must have left for London somewhere in January 1568, since on the 11th of that month, Hopton wrote to Cecil[103] that his charge was much worse since Dr. Symonds’s departure.[104] He adds that he would like the queen to order her doctor to return at once; “he then shall show his cunning and God shall do the cure.” He did come back, but as soon as he beheld the evidently dying lady, he warned her weeping attendants that her end was near. Sir Owen seems to have done his best to alleviate Lady Katherine’s sufferings; and his household books mention the despatch of no less than three messengers to London with news concerning her illness.

A remarkably interesting document, entitled The Manner of Her Departing, is still extant among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum.[105] All the night of January 26, 1568, says the writer, Lady Katherine prayed incessantly, repeating the orisons in the Book of Common Prayer, the service for the Visitation of the Sick from the same, and the Psalms. Her attendants endeavoured to persuade her that she would live, but she, being entirely reconciled to the idea of death, would not listen to them. “Then said the Lady Hopton to her, ‘Madam, be of good comfort, for with God’s favour you shall live and escape this; for Mrs. Cousins saith you have escaped many dangers when you were as like to die as you be now.’ ‘No, no, my lady,’ answered the Lady Katherine, ‘my time is come, and it is not God’s will I should live longer. His will be done, and not mine.’ Then, looking on those about her, she added, ‘As I am, so you shall behold the picture of yourselves.’ About six or seven of the clock in the morning, she desired Sir Owen should be sent for, and upon his asking her how she did, replied, ‘Even going to God, Sir Owen, even as fast as I can.’ Then she added, ‘I beseech you promise me one thing, that you yourself, with your own mouth, will make this request unto the Queen’s Majesty, which shall be the last suit and request I ever shall make to Her Highness, even from the mouth of a dead woman, that she would forgive her displeasure towards me, as my hope is she hath done. I must needs confess I have greatly offended her, in that I made my choice without her knowledge, otherwise I take God to witness, I had never the heart to think any evil against Her Majesty; and that she would be good unto my children, and not impute my fault unto them, whom I give wholly to Her Majesty; for in my life they had few friends, and fewer shall they have when I am dead, except Her Majesty be gracious unto them; and I desire Her Highness to be good unto my Lord [Hertford], for I know this my death will be heavy news to him; that Her Grace will be so good as to send liberty to glad[den] his heart withal.’” She next asked for her jewel-box, and taking from it the ring with the pointed diamond in it, which her husband had given her when they plighted their troth, she desired Sir Owen to return it to him in her name, for “This is the ring that I received of him when I gave myself unto him and gave him my faith.” Sir Owen, evidently remembering what had been said by Hertford about the wedding-ring at the time of his examination by Grindal and the commission, inquired rather abruptly, “What say you, Madam, was this your wedding-ring?” “No, Sir Owen,” said the dying lady, “this was the ring of my assurance [betrothal] to Lord Hertford: there is my wedding-ring,” and she lifted another ring, the one with the inscription upon it, out of the box: “Deliver this also to my Lord, and pray him, even as I have been to him (as I take God to witness I have been) a true and faithful wife, that he will be a loving and natural father to our children, to whom I give the same blessing that God gave unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” And then she took out yet another ring, with a death’s head enamelled on it and the words, “While I lyve yours,” and said, “This shall be the last token to my Lord that ever I shall send him; it is the picture of myself.” “After which, noticing that her nails were turning purple, she said, with a joyful countenance, ‘Lo, He comes! Yea, even so come, Lord Jesus!’ Then, after ejaculating the words, ‘Welcome death!’ she, embracing herself, as it were, with her arms, and lifting up her eyes and hands to Heaven, and striking her breast with her hands, brake forth with these words: ‘O Lord! for Thy manifold mercies, blot out of Thy book all my offences!’ Whereby Sir Owen Hopton, perceiving her to draw towards her end, said to Mr. Bockeham, ‘Were it not best to send to the Church that the bell may be rung?’ And Lady Katherine, overhearing him, said, ‘Good Sir Owen, let it be so.’” Then, the parish-church of the neighbouring village of Yoxford tolled the passing bell. Some time—perhaps an hour—had elapsed, when Lady Katherine, awaking as if from a dream, and closing her eyes with her own hands, murmured—just as her sister, Lady Jane Grey, had done, when on the scaffold, fourteen years earlier: “Lord! into Thy hands I commend my spirit!” and “thus she yielded unto God her meek spirit at nine o’clock in the morning of the 27th of January 1568.” She was only twenty-seven years of age at the time of her death.

Elizabeth’s persecution of Lady Katherine and Hertford was very nearly, if not quite, as unrelenting as Mary’s treatment of Jane Grey and Guildford Dudley; but far less justifiable. Her methods were those of Julian and not of Nero; but quite as efficacious! Jane had been actually placed on the Throne by a powerful party, had been proclaimed queen, and had received the homage due to royalty; whereas the scheme in favour of Lady Katherine never took shape. Besides, Elizabeth, who had succeeded in making herself popular with a large section of the people, was far more firmly seated on the Throne in 1563 than Mary had been in 1554, when her proposed Spanish marriage had rendered her obnoxious to a great number of her subjects. On the other hand, Hertford had violated the law passed in Henry VIII’s reign, punishing with the utmost severity any subject who was so bold as to venture to marry a princess of the blood royal, especially if she was in the line of succession, without the sovereign’s consent, ratified by Act of Parliament. His fate might indeed have been even worse, had not the Duchess of Somerset represented Lady Katherine as the more blameworthy of the two.

Lady Katherine’s remains were evidently embalmed, for among the items in the list of expenses incurred by Sir Owen Hopton we find the following: “Itm’; for one Mr. Hannse S’geon, for the cering of the corpse of the Lady Katherine, 3 li. Itm’; for spice, flax, rosin, wax, and the coffin-making and for the serge clothes, 3 li.” The funeral took place on February 21, 1568, in Yoxford Church. There were seventy-seven mourners, but nobody of great note was present; and, needless to say, Hertford was not allowed to attend, even by proxy. According to Hopton’s account, there was but a meagre display of the banners, etc.,[106] usual at state and semi-state funerals; and it also indicates that the service was choral.[107] A sum of £4 17s. 8d. was dispensed to the poor after the funeral. There is no monument to Lady Katherine Grey in Yoxford Church; but a small black stone in the chancel was, according to local tradition, said to mark her resting-place. As the words Hic tandem qua vixere concordia requiescant simul (“At length they rest together here, in the concord in which they lived”) are inscribed on Hertford’s tomb in Salisbury Cathedral, it is believed that Lady Katherine’s remains were translated thither. There is no clear documentary evidence that this was the case, but the theory seems supported by a statement in an MS. in the College of Arms (Reyce’s MSS. relating to Suffolk), to the effect that, “There lie buried in the church and chancel of Yoxford, the bowels of Lady Katherine, wife of Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford,” implying that her body was interred elsewhere. Another MS. relating to Yoxford states that the banners and pennons, mentioned in Hopton’s accounts, continued to hang in the chancel of the parish church as late as 1594, and included, “for the Lady Katherine, a target [i.e. coat of arms] of England, and four standards of arms, two France and England quarterly, a bordure, goboné argent and azure.”

According to a pretty tradition still lingering through the ages at Yoxford, a little pet spaniel that had belonged to Lady Katherine, was, for weeks, seen to come daily to her grave, upon which it was one morning found dead. Much the same story is related of a spaniel belonging to Mary Queen of Scots, which followed her to the scaffold and died of grief a few days after her execution.

No trace is to be found in the State Papers of any letters addressed by Katherine, either to her sister Mary or to others, save Cecil, Leicester or the queen, during all the time of her imprisonment. Probably she was strictly prohibited from writing to any one except these last three, and to them only. Considering how actively Cecil supported her cause, it seems a little unwise to have allowed him to hold intercourse with her; but, no doubt, Elizabeth kept watch also over him, and therefore had nothing to fear from that quarter.

From 1568 onwards we hear nothing of Hertford until, in June 1571, he addresses a letter to Burleigh, “from my park of Tottenham,” in which he speaks of “the endeavour to bring in question great part of the title of my lands.” The details of this dispute are lost, nor is any mention of this Tottenham property to be found in the records of that place. A letter from Queen Elizabeth, the date and destination of which are uncertain, but which was probably written in 1570, alluding to “a suit long dependent between the Earl of Hertford and the Lord Wentworth for certain concealed lands,” doubtless refers to this matter. At that time, Hertford seems to have been still in disfavour with the queen; but soon after, matters mended, for, according to Doyle’s Official Baronage, on August 30, 1571, he was permitted to proceed to Cambridge to take his degree as Master of Arts.

The earl remarried some years after Lady Katherine’s death. His second wife was a sister of that Lady Sheffield who was at this time secretly married to Leicester, and was a daughter of Lord Howard of Effingham, and maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth. This marriage brought back to Hertford Elizabeth’s favour, to such an extent that he entertained her with great pomp at his estate of Elvetham in Hampshire, in September 1591.[108] He had no children by his second wife, who died some years after her marriage. Hertford had a fine monument erected over her remains; according to Dean Stanley, he was also instrumental in erecting his mother’s (the Duchess of Somerset) handsome tomb in St. Edmund’s Chapel, Westminster. The Earl of Hertford’s third wife was Lady Frances Howard, another cousin of the queen, and widow of a certain Mr. Prannel, a London wine merchant, who had left her an enormous fortune. She seems to have been a very haughty woman, who gave herself such prodigious airs, that her husband was fain to remind her, from time to time, of the fact that before he married her she had been a mere city dame: “Frank! Frank!” he would call out—the lady’s name was Frances—“how long is it since thou wert wedded to Prannel?”

Shortly after this marriage, Hertford once more incurred the queen’s displeasure by attempting to prove, before the Court of Arches, the legitimacy of his eldest son by Lady Katherine Grey. Elizabeth promptly lodged him in the Tower again (in 1596), and his wife came up to London to petition Her Majesty for his release. For nearly six months she came daily to the palace, without being received by Elizabeth, who seems, however, to have treated her not unkindly, sending her broths, meats, sweets and wine from the royal table. After a good deal of trouble, Hertford was released, and probably from sheer fear of angering Her Majesty anew, kept out of London till after her death. Under James I he returned to court, and in 1605 he was appointed ambassador to the archduke regent at Brussels. He died in 1621 in his eighty-third year, having survived his first wife fifty-three years: the third Countess of Hertford outlived him, and two months after his death, married Ludovic, Duke of Richmond and Lennox, being buried with him, in a fine tomb in Henry VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey. Hertford lived long enough to see the validity of his marriage to Katherine Grey proved by the reappearance (in 1608) of the priest who had performed the ceremony. He left no issue by his second and third marriages.

Lady Katherine’s husband was buried under a handsome but over-elaborate Jacobean monument of various marbles, which stands at the east end of the south aisle of Salisbury Cathedral.[109] The recumbent effigies of the earl and Lady Katherine praying, the former clothed in armour, are remarkably fine; so, too, are the figures of the two sons, also in armour, kneeling on either side. This monument is said to be the work of an Italian sculptor, and bears a strong resemblance to some of the tombs of the decadent period in Venice.

The question of the succession, in relation to the Grey family, did not close with the death of Lady Katherine. Henry VIII’s will, the cause of all the trouble, and Edward VI’s “Devise for the Succession,” its confirmation, both placed the children of the two Ladies Grey in the direct line of the succession, a fact not forgotten by Lady Katherine’s partisans, even in her lifetime. Death having removed that lady, a movement was started in favour of the claims of her sons, then aged six and four years respectively. Eight days after Lady Katherine’s funeral, Guzman de Silva informed the King of Spain, his master, that Leicester had obtained the queen’s leave to go and visit his estates and meet the Duke of Norfolk on the road, “and it is now said that he will leave here in five days, and that in Northampton the duke and earl will meet together with the earls of Warwick and Huntingdon and other nobles, in order to arrange a new friendship. Cecil and Leicester will also be reconciled, and they will discuss the succession in consequence of Katherine’s death.”[110] The result of this meeting, if it ever took place, is not on record; but it was rumoured in political circles at this time, that one of the sons of Lady Katherine might be eventually placed on the Scottish Throne, and thus the conversion of that country to Protestantism be absolutely assured, and probably its annexation to England effected at the same time. The greatest supporters of this scheme were Cecil and the chancellor (Sir Nicholas Bacon), who, as we have already seen, had all along consistently favoured Lady Katherine’s claim. More remarkable still, Elizabeth, although she abhorred the idea that these boys, “brats” as she called them, might one day occupy her Throne, endorsed the scheme for placing one of them on that of Scotland. Very likely she saw in this a chance of getting at least the eldest out of the way of the English succession. A letter written in June 1570 by one Antonio de Guaras, a Spanish merchant or banker who acted as a sort of spy in England, during a period when there was no regular ambassador, contains the following curious statement, which had no doubt considerable foundation in fact. The northern rebellion had only recently been crushed, and Elizabeth demanded of the Scotch, certain hostages, including Prince James of Scotland, afterwards James I of England, to be held as pledges of the future good behaviour of our northern neighbours. The Scotch, says De Guaras, would not accede to these demands, “which would be their ruin, as the object of the Queen of England, it is suspected, is to at once kill the prince [James], and place on the [Scotch] Throne the eldest son of Katherine, sister of Jane who was beheaded, he being a heretic.”[111] It was doubtless with some such object in view that Elizabeth, as another Spanish envoy informs us, was “bringing up with much more state than formerly the two children of Hertford and Katherine,”[112] from which we may suppose that poor Katherine’s dying request had been conveyed to the queen by Sir Owen Hopton, and that Elizabeth acceded to it, if only from interested motives.[113]

Meanwhile, the vexed question of the English succession was not left in abeyance. In 1572, Parliament met to discuss who should take Her Majesty’s place in the event of her death, and the claim of the young son of Katherine and Hertford was supported by many of the members, although others contested his legitimacy, and it was even thought that the second son had a better chance, because, according to the Spanish State Papers, “his parents were married, before he was born, with the consent of the queen and council.” It is puzzling to make out what is meant by this statement; either it is an error, or else indeed the ecclesiastical courts had, on some date now unknown to historians, reversed their previous decision, annulling the marriage. Certainly the legitimacy of the children of this marriage was still doubted as late as 1574, since a document in the British Museum,[114] states that in October of that year “the privy council were disputing warmly as to the legitimacy of the sons of the Earl of Hertford, and it was understood that they unanimously agreed that they were not legitimate; and that the legitimate heir (to the English Throne) was the Prince of Scotland (afterwards James I).”

In October 1572 Elizabeth had a recurrence of exactly the same sickness which had so alarmed her subjects ten years before—the physicians called it small-pox.[115] She was soon once more so near death that her life was despaired of: Sir Thomas Smith, in a letter to Cecil, tells us “My Lord Leicester sat up by her bed all night.” Again the question of the succession was actively discussed, and an unsigned letter addressed from London to the Duke of Alva,[116] dated the 26th of October 1572, informs us that before the precise nature of the queen’s complaint was known at court, “the Earl of Leicester, the Treasurer (the Marquis of Winchester), and the Earl of Bedford were closeted together several times to arrange, in case the queen died, to proclaim king one of the two sons of the Earl of Hertford by Lady Katherine; this being the intention of the three lords in question and all their party. The two boys,” the letter continues, “are being brought up by their paternal grandmother, the Duchess of Somerset.” Once more the vigorous queen rallied, but falling ill again in December of the same year, “the secret murmurs in court, and amongst people all over the country, as to what will become of the country in case of the queen’s death, were very remarkable.... The Catholics wish in such case to proclaim the Queen of Scots, and the heretics to take up arms against her and proclaim the son of the Earl of Hertford.... They have passed a law, making it treason to discuss the matter during the queen’s life.”[117] Her Majesty had at this time once more refused to allow a successor to be nominated.

By far the most curious allusion, in the Spanish State Papers, to the plot for putting Hertford’s son on the Scotch Throne is contained in a collection of extracts from letters written by Antonio de Guaras in December 1574. Mary Queen of Scots was then a prisoner in the Earl of Shrewsbury’s mansion at the Peak, whilst Lady Margaret Lennox had just been sent to the Tower afresh for marrying her son to Shrewsbury’s daughter. The marriage had greatly incensed “Gloriana,” who, probably with a deeper motive than appears at first sight, ordered the Scottish queen’s removal to the Tower of London. The earl, however, protested so vigorously against this, that Her Majesty changed her mind: but, says de Guaras, after recounting this incident, “The Queen of Scots was in great fear of such a change, which must imperil her, the more so as Killigrew[118] was leaving for Scotland, and three ships were ready to accompany him; the object being to obtain possession of the prince (James) if possible, and put an end to both him and his mother. They would then raise to power the son of the Earl of Hertford, whom they would marry to a daughter of Leicester and the Queen of England, who, it is said, is kept hidden, although there are Bishops to witness that she is legitimate. They think this will shut the door to all other claimants. This intrigue is said to be arranged very secretly.”[119]

This plot, like so many others in the tortuous labyrinth of the succession, came to naught; and beyond a brief mention of the eldest son, Edward, in connection with his father’s imprisonment in 1596, the sons of Lady Hertford henceforth disappear from the stage of history until the last moments of Elizabeth’s complicated existence. When, on March 23, 1603, the great queen lay on her deathbed at Richmond Palace, her once acute and clear mind wandering deliriously, the Lords of the Council begged admittance, and kneeling by the dying monarch, asked her whom she wished to succeed her on the Throne she had clung to so tenaciously in her active life. Her Majesty was suffering too much in her throat to reply, so they desired her to raise one finger when they named the person of her choice. When the King of France and the King of Scotland were named, she made no sign; but when Lady Katherine’s eldest son (now Lord Beauchamp) was mentioned, the dying queen, rousing herself, exclaimed fiercely: “I will have no rascal’s son in my seat, but one worthy to be a King.”

The following day the queen died, and King James I was proclaimed. The party that favoured Hertford or his sons deemed it wiser to drop the matter, and the union of the English and Scottish Thrones was effected, under “our Second Solomon,” without opposition. Cecil’s son, forgetting how his father had moved heaven and earth in order that, first, Lady Katherine, and then, her children, might succeed Elizabeth, and all the paternal schemes and plots for King James’s exclusion from the seat of power, became that monarch’s most servile courtier. As to the much-talked-of “sons,” they very wisely left the matter of the succession strictly alone, and settled down quietly as private noblemen. They both predeceased their father, but the elder married, and it was in the person of his son, William Seymour, Lady Katherine’s grandson and the husband of Arabella Stuart, that the family name was perpetuated, and the title of Duke of Somerset revived.

LADY MARY GREY

CHAPTER I

EARLY YEARS

The life-story of Lady Mary Grey followed almost precisely the same track as that of her elder sister, Lady Katherine, with this difference, however, that although Mary, too, made a clandestine marriage, her husband was as completely her inferior in rank as he was her superior in girth and stature. She was a dwarf; he was a giant!

Born in 1545, the Lady Mary was contracted to her kinsman, Arthur, Lord Grey de Wilton, on the day her sister Jane was married to Lord Guildford Dudley, and Katherine betrothed to Lord Pembroke’s son. Froude is not correct in stating that Lady Mary was married on that day “to Martin Keys, a Groom of the Chambers,” a statement which proves that he knew nothing whatever of Lady Mary’s history. She was then (1553) in her eighth year, and England was on the eve of the tragedy of which her eldest sister, Jane, was to be at once the heroine and the victim, a tragedy speedily followed by her mother, the Lady Frances, the widowed Duchess of Suffolk’s indecorous marriage with her groom of the chambers, Adrian Stokes.[120] Lady Mary’s early betrothal was, however, annulled, mainly on account of the terrible troubles that overwhelmed the Dudley family.

All we know of Lady Mary’s childhood and youth is an occasional mention of her name in the State Papers, in connection with those of her sisters, or in the correspondence, wills and bequests of her family, and in accounts of visits to royal and other illustrious persons, in which she accompanied her parents. She is also mentioned in a legal document, recently discovered in the Record Office, as co-heiress with her sisters, of certain landed estates in Warwickshire belonging to their mother, the Lady Frances. Long after that lady’s death, this document was submitted to Queen Elizabeth, who apparently desired to know the exact amount of her cousin’s fortune. It was not large, but the queen none the less confiscated the greater part. We know nothing of what became of Lady Mary during the catastrophe which overwhelmed her sister Jane.[121] We can only conclude she was either abandoned to her nurses at Sheen, or sheltered by some relative or friend of her parents. In the first months of Mary’s reign, and after some measure of order had been restored, that queen, as we have seen, took compassion on the two sisters, Katherine and Mary Grey, received them at court and admitted them to her privy chamber. Elizabeth also befriended the two sisters, but far less generously. Lady Mary received a pension of £80 a year from the queen, paid through the Lady Clinton, mistress of the royal household.

In 1559, Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, died, and the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey, who nursed her during her last sickness, attended her funeral in Westminster Abbey, their flowing trains “being upheld,” as was then the etiquette for ladies of the highest rank.

Lady Mary was in her sixteenth year, when, two years later (1561), Lady Katherine Grey was arrested for the unpardonable offence of choosing her husband without reference to Queen Elizabeth’s desires. Though dwarfish in stature (she was only four feet in height, and the Spanish ambassador describes her as being “little, crookbacked,—deformed—and very ugly,”) freckled and red-haired, like her sisters, Mary was a thorough Tudor; for she, too, not only fell in love, but resolved to marry the object of her passion on the earliest possible opportunity, and this in spite of the dreadful punishment that befell her sister for a similar misdemeanour.

There was, in those days, an official at court—the post did not fall into abeyance, indeed, until the middle of the seventeenth century—who bore the title of the “Porter of the Royal Water-gates.” Each of the palaces on the Thames possessed a river-gate and stairway, and as Westminster was in times gone by the most frequented of all the royal residences—the Tower being only used on occasions of extreme state, and very rarely at all by Queen Elizabeth—Master Thomas Keyes, the Sergeant-Porter at this particular gate,[122] was a personage of considerable importance; and even a remote connection of the queen’s, for he was descended from the Knollys family, into which Katherine Carey, daughter of Mary Boleyn, Queen Anne’s sister, had married. Master Thomas Keyes, therefore, was a notability of a kind, with his right to boast kinship with the great queen’s nearest and dearest relatives; and Elizabeth, whatever may have been her faults, never ceased to favour her mother’s tribe of connections, not a few of whom were in very humble positions indeed. When he first met Lady Mary Grey, Thomas was in his prime, a widower of some years’ standing, a good deal over forty, and moreover the father of six or seven children. He was the tallest and biggest man[123] about the court, being six feet eight inches without his shoes, but so stout, we are assured, that he “did not look near so tall as he really was.” How and when the Lady Mary formed this giant’s acquaintance is never likely to be known, but she must have seen him almost daily when her royal mistress was in residence at Westminster, for she had to attend upon the queen on her various water excursions up and down the Thames, in those times the chief thoroughfare of the city, teeming with boats and barges of all kinds, just as the Strand and Piccadilly now teem with motor-omnibuses and motor-cars. Almost every one of note, and many, indeed, who were of no note at all, kept a boat of some sort, and found it as useful as we find a wheeled conveyance. So numerous and gorgeous were the craft floating upon the Thames, especially of a summer afternoon, that foreigners averred there was nothing in the whole world to compare with it, except on the Grand Canal at Venice. Whenever that “imperial Votress, Gloriana,” and her attendants moved to and fro between Westminster and Greenwich, or Richmond, or Hampton Court, the royal train passed down the stairs of the Water-gate to the queen’s barge, into which sumptuous, if somewhat cumbrous, vessel Master Keyes, as in duty bound, handed Her Majesty and her ladies.[124]

Above this particular Water-gate there was a fair and comfortable apartment, consisting of several large rooms, overlooking the enchanting panorama of the Thames, a thousand times more picturesque at this epoch than at the present. Here Mr. Sergeant-Porter dwelt in solitary state, waited on by his cook and valet—for although, when on his trial, he himself mentioned the existence of his numerous progeny, no member of it was living with him at the period in question. Keyes, who seems to have been convivially disposed, was in the habit of giving what we should now call afternoon parties, to which he invited some of the young people about the court, and these gatherings, his own cousin, Lettice Knollys, one of the most beautiful young women of the day, and at this time greatly favoured by Queen Elizabeth, was wont to attend. With Lettice, we may rest assured, came the little Lady Mary, to enjoy the cool breezes that were wafted through the Gothic windows of Keyes’s water-mansion, whilst she munched his marchpanes and sipped his dainty coloured canary. Somewhere in the apartment, probably, there was a virginal, lute, or mandoline, out of which one of the fair girls would contrive to extract melody, either to accompany a ballad, or set nimble feet a-moving in some lively jig or stately pavan. Be this as it may, certain it is, that during the summer of the year 1565, the Lady Mary was in Keyes’s apartment more often than was either seemly for so young a maiden, or prudent for one so closely connected with the queen.

CHAPTER II

A STRANGE WEDDING

On the 10th (some say the 12th) of August 1565, there were gay doings at Mr. Sergeant-Porter’s lodgings. It was Mr. Henry Knollys’s[125] wedding-day, and after the ceremony, which was graced by Elizabeth’s presence, the wedding party, freed from the restraints of court etiquette, adjourned to Keyes’s apartment, and there feasted, danced, and romped till nine o’clock at night. Among the merry company were Mrs. Lettice Knollys and the Lady Mary Grey. One can only conclude Mr. Sergeant-Porter had drunk more wine than was good for him; otherwise he was surely the veriest fool that ever lived, for immediately the wedding guests had taken leave, he and Lady Mary Grey were married by candle-light, in the presence of a certain Mrs. Goldwell, an attendant on Lady Howard (who acted as a witness of the ceremony), the Sergeant-Porter’s brother, Mr. Edward Keyes, Mr. Martin Cawsley, a Cambridge student, and “Mr. Cheyney’s man.” A priest, described at the subsequent inquiry as “a little fat old man, who wore a very short gown,” was introduced upon the scene. No one knew his name, or seems to have cared to find it out. The persons present supposed he was a Swiss Reformer in exile, “but he said the marriage service in English, and according to the Book of Common Prayer.” Remembering the doubts cast upon the marriage of her sister Lady Katherine, the Lady Mary secured plenty of witnesses to assist at the ceremony; but it seems inconceivable, and seemed so even in those days, that any sane person should have ventured to mix themselves up in such a scandalous business. Of course these witnesses promised secrecy; and needless to say, every man and woman of them broke pledge.

Within the week, Queen Elizabeth was made aware of the whole matter. Lady Howard of Effingham, and her woman, Mrs. Goldwell, were among the first “to let the cat out of the bag,” for the earliest letters on the subject of the marriage are two which passed between Lord William Howard and Secretary Cecil, the first-named mentioning[126] that “the Queen’s Grace hath taken this matter of the Lady Mary Grey’s marriage very much to heart.” Cecil, in a letter to Sir Thomas Smith, clerk to the privy council, dated August 21, thus quaintly expressed his horror and indignation: “Here,” says he, “is the most unhappy chance and a monstrous. The Sergeant-Porter, being the biggest gentleman at this Court, hath secretly married the Lady Mary Grey, the least of all the Court.” It must be admitted that Queen Elizabeth had cause for anger this time. The Lady Mary, her near kinswoman, a mere girl, secretly married to a man of barely gentle birth, a widower to boot, with seven children, and entirely dependent for his livelihood on his menial position in the queen’s own service! Had her wrath exhausted itself in legitimate upbraiding of her servant, and temporary banishment of her indiscreet cousin, there would have been very little to say against it; but Elizabeth had other and more stringent views with regard to the disposal of the Lady Mary and her fortune. She was determined, she said, with one of her usual oaths, to “have no little bastard Keyes,” succeeding to her Throne, and she was evidently resolved to ignore Master Keyes’s distant kinship with herself, which was probably at the bottom of his audacious conduct, for he felt convinced that in consideration of this connection his august cousin would eventually pardon him. It was not to be; forthwith, like an eagle on its prey, Elizabeth swooped down on the luckless pair. On August 22, not a fortnight after the marriage, Master Sergeant-Porter Keyes was consigned to the tender mercies of the warden of the Fleet Prison. All the witnesses, including the loquacious Mrs. Goldwell, were arrested, and the wretched little bride herself made over to the fearsome functionary known as “The Mother of the Maids,” whose duty was to look after the more ill-conducted of the “Virgin Queen’s” juvenile attendants, and even, when necessary, to birch them soundly. Whether Lady Mary suffered under Mother Ansell’s rod we know not; but from the 19th to the 22nd of August, she was rigorously and continuously cross-examined by the privy council as to the facts about her marriage and the state of her fortune. Where she remained during these inquiries is not clear; Guzman de Silva, the Spanish ambassador, speaking of the matter in a letter from London, says “he [Keyes] is imprisoned in the jail here and she [Mary] is incarcerated at Windsor.” It is known that the queen and the court were at that castle about this time; and it is not unlikely that the Spaniard’s statement is correct; indeed it would seem to be confirmed by a command issued by Elizabeth to William Hawtrey, Esquire, of Buckinghamshire, that “he do forthwith repair to Court, and take into his charge and custody the Lady Mary Grey, and convey her forthwith to his house, ‘The Chequers,’ without permitting her to hold conference with any one, or to have liberty to go abroad, suffering only one waiting-woman to have access to her. For Mr. Hawtrey’s charges and expenses concerning the said Lady Mary, the Queen’s Majesty will see him satisfied in reason.”

The following is Lady Mary’s own account of the marriage, as elicited during the above-mentioned examination. Copies of her statement will be found in the Record Office (State Papers, Domestic Series, Elizabeth, vol. xxxvii., No. 71), together with other documents relating to the marriage of Lady Mary Grey with Mr. Keyes. The first paper, written in Cecil’s very clear hand, contains a list of questions put to the Lady Mary; and the second, in a secretary’s exceedingly illegible scrawl, gives her answers, more or less in her own words. Asked when the marriage took place, Lady Mary answered:

“The day of the marriage of Mr. Knollys—I was married about nine o’clock at night by candlelight.”

“Where?”

“In the Sergeant-Porter’s chamber.”

“Who were present?”

“The Sergeant’s brother, the Sergeant’s son, a gentlewoman, Mrs. Goldwell, and the priest, apparelled in a short gown.” She never knew his name.

“What was he like?”

“He was old and fat, and of low stature.”

“Did the Sergeant-Porter give you anything?”

“Yes, a ring.”

Continuing, she said she supped in her own chamber with Mrs. Arundell and two of Lady Stafford’s young daughters. Within a quarter of an hour after supper, she went to the privy-chamber with Mrs. Goldwell, and from thence to the council chamber—probably the most deserted part of the palace at that time of night—where she found Jones, his [Keyes’s] man, and sent him to the Sergeant to show him that her letter was ready.[127] On this, Keyes came up to the council chamber and thence they all went to his room over the Water-gate, where the marriage ceremony took place. Afterwards she returned to her own chamber, where she found Mrs. Arundell. The Sergeant gave her first two little rings, next a ring with four rubies, and a diamond and a chain, and a little hanging bottle of mother-of-pearl. Asked what her means were, the Lady Mary answered that she had £80 a year, paid out of the exchequer by the hands of my Lady Clinton, and £20 a year of her own, paid by the hand of one Artell.[128]

“Keyes, Sergeant-Porter,” was examined on August 19: he said the priest was one Thomas Withers. “Edward Keyes, Mr. Cheyney’s man, and Martin Cawsley, dwelling in Cambridge, did attend the wedding.

“The marriage was in the Sergeant’s chamber by the Water-gate at Westminster.

“The Lady Mary, being in the Council Chamber, sent him word by a messenger that her letter was ready. On this he came then and found her with one Mrs. Goldwell, a servant of the Lady Howard. He brought her to his chamber.

“He gave the Lady Mary at the marriage a little wedding-ring.

“The marriage was by candle-light.

“Mrs. Arundell was at the Water-gate, but was not let in before the marriage was over. The Sergeant had carried up the Lady Mary to his chamber before Mrs. Arundell came in.”

Then we have the examination of Frances Goldwell.[129] “She sayeth that one Robert Leonard, a servant of the L. Chamberlens, came from my Lady Mary, ‘to her coming from the cellar’ to ask her to come to her, and so she did finding her in a chamber next the Counsell Chamber, which was somewhat dark. Lady Mary told her that she must go with her to her own chamber, but instead she went by the gallery by the L. Chamberlain’s chamber, down by the winding stair, and so to a chamber which she knew not [this was evidently the room over the Water-gate], and there was eleven other people with the Sergeant Porter, one of them being in a black cloke read from a book, but what about she knoweth not. And they tarried not there past an quarter of an hower.

“She sayeth, moreover, the Sergeant Porter came with her as she remembered into the gallery before them and no further.

“The Lady Mary willed her to say that if she should be asked where she had been, she should say she had been with her in her chamber. She sayeth at her return to the Counsell Chamber that Lady Mary willed her to return to my Lady Howard’s chamber, but whither the Lady Mary herself went she knoweth not, unless it were into the Privy Chamber.” [She probably returned to Keyes’s room.]

As may be well imagined, the sagacious Mrs. Goldwell’s master and mistress, the Lord and Lady William Howard, were in a desperate state of mind when they discovered the nature of the business in which their “gentlewoman” had meddled. They therefore immediately addressed the following letter to Cecil:—[130]

“Mr. Secretary,

“This daie being the xxth of this present, I receaved your letter of the xixth whereby I understand of a very fond and lewde [i.e. ‘silly and ill-advised’] matter fallen out betwixt my Lady Mary and the Sergeante-Porter, mencionyng a marriage to be made between them that daye, in the evening that my Cousyn Knowles was married. I am not a little sory to here of hit, bothe for their sakes and moche more, that the Quenes Maty shuld have such occasion to troble her. And to you I write playnely. It greveth me to see (and hathe of longe tyme don) that men be in so little feare of the Prince [ss], that they dare think to enterprise so great a matter I dowt not hit wil be so ponished, as hit maie give suche a terror to all her Mates subjectes, that they maie ever hereafter beware howe to enter in any kinde of matter that maye in any case stounde against their bounde[n] dutye of allegiance. And where you signifie to me in your letter, that the Quenes Mates pleasure is, that I shoulde examine Ffrances my wyffes woman touching her knowledge in this matter: I have so don, and have sent you her confession hereinclosed, which is to small effect, and also the woman whom I thinke you shall find very symple, as one that hath ben allwaies brought upe in the countrey and of little knowledge, but synce she cam to my wief (being put to her by my Lady Mary) (and daughter as I here [hear] to my Ladie Maries Nurse) hath used her honestly and soberly, as my wief hath liked her for the tyme very well. And thus I bid you hartely farewell ffrom my house at Rigate the xxth of Auguste 1565.

“Yo^r most assured loving friend,

“W. Howard.”

(Addressed)

“To my loving friend Sir William Cycell, Knight.”

The enclosure runs as follows:—

“The Confesyon of francys Goodwell before me.

“The L. Wyllyam Howard the xxth of August.

“She being examyned of me wher she was all that day that my wyfe wayted on the Quenys Matie at the maryage of Mayster Knollys she sayeth she was in my chamber at the Court with her felowes tyll the evenyng after supper wher was also another gentyll woman callyd mystres Hewdney, who my wyfe dyd newly put out of her sarvyce, and they beyng mynded to walke owt my Lady Mary sent for Ffrancys to wayte on her to her chamber and she accordyng to her commandement dyd so, and when she came thyther my Lady Mary entered in to the Chamber and franncys with her and she sayeth as sone as she was within the doure stood still and there she saw the Sergeant Porter whom she sayeth she knew not with iij other in blacke clokys and ther talkyd together and (a) lyttyll whyll and then my Lady Mary came out agayne bot for any maryage that was mayd ther to her knowledge she denythe it to the dethe but what they sayd she knowythe not nor she knowythe not any of them that was ther with hym (more than thys I can not by any meanys gete of her).

“After the wrytyng of this muche she sayd further to me that they dyd together as she cowled [could] perseve open a boke bot she hard [heard] not the wordys for they spake softly.

“W. Howard.”[131]

On September 1, the Lady Mary was removed to her place of exile, Mr. William Hawtrey’s mansion, “The Chequers,” even then a very old house, in a beautiful situation among the Chiltern Hills. She was accompanied by the aforesaid Mr. William Hawtrey, his serving-man, and one of her own maids, the procession being closed by some pack-horses. Magnificent as was Mr. Hawtrey’s garden at “The Chequers,” and beautiful the surrounding country, it does not seem to have in the least impressed Lady Mary Grey, whose only thought was to regain her freedom. She wrote to Cecil towards the end of the year 1565, in the following rather pathetic terms: “I did trust to have wholly obtained Her Majesty’s favour before this time, the which having once obtained I trust never to lose again. But now I perceive that I am so unhappe a creature, as I must yet be without that great and long-desired jewel till it please God to put into Her Majesty’s harte to forgive and pardon me my great and heinous crime.” It seems that Mr. Hawtrey cheerfully joined in the chorus of appeals, for he was considerably bored by his aggrieved and unwilling guest, and earnestly wished to be rid of her. Lady Mary was persuaded that she might appease the queen’s wrath, if she could but have an interview with her, and when Elizabeth was paying a visit to Lord Windsor at Bradenham, not far distant from the little captive’s abode, she again wrote to Cecil, begging that she, “The Queen’s prisoner and most poore wretche, might have access to Her Majesty’s Grace, for the purpose of pleading for herself in person.” Elizabeth, to use an everyday expression, was not going to be bothered with her, whilst Cecil was more interested in her sister Lady Katherine than in “the most poore wretche,” who was therefore refused her much desired boon.

The Lady Mary Grey remained at her retreat in the Chilterns more than a year. At last, however, Mr. Hawtrey, to his great relief, received orders to bring his prisoner up to London. It had been at first intended to consign her to the tender mercies of the Duchess of Somerset, but that lady dying before the negotiations were completed, Mary was handed over to her step-grandmother, Katherine, dowager Duchess of Suffolk. This inhospitable relation was anything but pleased when, one summer’s evening in 1567, Mr. Hawtrey, the Lady Mary, and her servants, knocked unexpectedly at the doors of her house in the Minories. The duchess, it may be added, had no right whatever to this mansion, which had been carved out of the stately convent of the Holy Trinity, which was granted by Edward VI to the Duke of Suffolk, whose legitimate successor, failing Lady Katherine Grey, was the unfortunate young lady now conducted to its door as to a sort of prison.

The duchess received her unwelcome guest with “dure countenance,” but attributed her annoyance to the score of her unpreparedness, for a few days later she wrote to Cecil asking him, “Where is the Lady Mary’s stuff? For that, indeed, I have nothing wherewith to furnish or dress up her chamber, as the Minories is totally unfurnished. I do not usually reside there. My dwelling is in Leicestershire; and when I am in town I myself borrow stuff of the Lady Eleanore.” If she had to receive Lady Mary, she protested, she would be “forced to borrow furniture from her neighbours of the Tower.” Probably Cecil communicated the duchess’s grievance to Mr. Hawtrey, for by way of answer to her letter, he sent all the Lady Mary’s goods in his possession to the Minories, at the same time pointing out that they had not hitherto been used; he seems, at least, to have provided his charge with a comfortable lodging during her stay at “The Chequers.” No sooner was the parcel of “stuff” opened, than the sarcastic dowager duchess wrote a letter to “Mr. Sekrettory” Cecil, describing the contents in a manner which reflects less credit on her heart than on her powers of derision. “She hath nothing,” she says, “but an old livery feather bed, all to [too] torn and full of patches, without either bolster or counterpaine, but two old pillows, one longer than the other, an old quilt of silk, so tattered as the cotton of it comes out, such a piteous little canopy of red sarcenet as is scant good enough to cover some secret stool.[132] Then there are two little pieces of old hangings, both of them not seven yards broad.” This letter was written at Greenwich Palace,[133] whither the Lady Mary had been removed by her step-grandmother very shortly after her arrival in London, perhaps the very same day; and the real object of this exposure of the Lady Mary’s poverty was to induce Cecil to persuade the queen to assign the duchess some of the furniture in the Tower store-houses; for she concludes by asking that Mary may be allowed to have some “silver pots to fetch her drink in, and two little cups for her to drink out of, one for her beer, the other for her wine. A silver basin and ewer were, I fear, too much to ask.” The dowager duchess promises to return all borrowed articles in as good condition as she received them. She says the Lady Mary is “very glad to be with her”(!); although “all she hath eaten now these two days is not so much as a chicken’s leg.” Very likely, the duchess’s sarcasms and her own grievances were making the poor little lady absolutely ill. However, these first difficulties having been surmounted, she lived on fairly happily with her kinswoman at the Minories and elsewhere, until June 1569. During this period she became godmother to a little girl, Jane Merrick, who eventually inherited some of her property. She also struck up a great friendship with Lady Mary Bertie or Bartie, wife of Mr. Peregrine Bertie, Duchess Katherine’s son, and heir to the barony of Willoughby d’Eresby: Lady Mary Bertie was of the family of De Vere, a daughter of the Earl of Oxford. In the beginning of the year 1568, Lady Mary Grey’s position was complicated by the death of her sister Lady Katherine, which exposed her to the danger of being chosen the figure-head of any party that professed belief in the legitimacy of Henry VIII’s will and Edward VI’s “Devise for the Succession.” There is reason to believe that Mary, warned by her sister’s fate, had made up her mind formally to renounce her right to the Throne, lest unscrupulous persons might force her, as they had forced her sister Jane, into this false position. Elizabeth, however, harried by her continual fear of an usurper or even of a successor, gave orders, in June 1569, that Mary Grey should be removed to the care of Sir Thomas Gresham, whose magnificent mansion occupied the space between Bishopsgate Street and Winchester Street, and was surrounded by the pleasant gardens of Crosby Hall and Winchester House. The Greshams used Osterley House, towards Hounslow, now the seat of the Earl of Jersey, as a country retreat; and also lived for a time at Mayfield in Sussex.

[To face p. 278

SIR THOMAS GRESHAM

(From a contemporary engraving)

Meanwhile, Mr. Keyes was enduring a good deal of hardship in the Fleet, the foulest of the many foul prisons of those days. His grievances and annoyances were many and peculiar. He was apparently engaged in some suit, unconnected with his marriage, and his lawyers were allowed to visit him in the Fleet and talk to him in the presence of the warden. Moreover, there was some project for his being sent to Ireland, though whether as a prisoner we know not. There exists, however, a letter from Keyes, dated “Fleet Prison, July 16, 1566,” in which the imprisoned Sergeant-Porter begs Cecil to “give him instructions how to act, as to his going into Ireland.” The wording of this suggests that he was to have held some official position there. The scheme apparently came to nothing, for on July 25 of the same year, he prepared a petition to the effect that he would renounce his wife and have his marriage declared null and void, if only he might be allowed to leave the Fleet and retire into Kent, urging that, after all, “he had formerly done the Crown good service in suppressing insurrections”—a reference, no doubt, to some share he must have had in the defeat of the Wyatt rebellion. Dr. Grindal, then Bishop of London, refused, however, to annul the marriage, and referred the matter to the Court of Arches, which, so far as can be ascertained, also refused—at any rate Keyes was asking leave to cohabit with Lady Mary as late as in 1570. But his lordship’s Christian charity permitted him to suggest that the bulky captive might well be allowed to go into the country to take some open-air exercise, “for his bulk of body being such as I know it to be, his confinement in the Fleet putteth him to great inconvenience.” This suggestion was accepted, and for a few months Keyes was allowed to walk in the garden attached to the Fleet Prison; but a new warden was appointed in December 1566, and this slight solace was taken away; and further, instead of being allowed, as hitherto, to cook his own food, the ex-Sergeant-Porter was compelled to live on the horrible diet provided by the prison authorities. In this same December he complains to Cecil that “he had been given a piece of beef which had been dropped into some poison, prepared for a dog that had the mange!”

It did not kill him, if indeed that had been intended, but he fell so ill as to require the attentions of a certain Dr. Langford, who charged him a mark [i.e. 6s. 8d.] for his services. The prisoner lived on; to send another letter to Cecil, complaining that “they have taken away from me my stone-bowe wherewith I was wont to shoot at birds out of my prison-window, for the refreshment of myself sometimes; but even this little solace is denied me.” Probably the neighbours objected as much as the birds!

At last, when unkind wardens, poisonous food, and lack of fresh air had thrown the unfortunate Sergeant-Porter into a “languor,” he was relegated, in accordance with Dr. Grindal’s suggestion, to his native place, Lewisham, then a remote village, now a large town within half-an-hour’s journey of London—it probably took Mr. Keyes some hours’ hard riding to reach it on horseback. Thence he continued to appeal for the queen’s pardon, “if only for the sake of my poor children, who innocent as they are, suffer punishment with me for my offence.[134] If it were Her Majesty’s and your honour’s [Cecil’s] pleasure to fetter me with iron gyves, I could willingly endure it; but to bear the cruelty of this warden of the Fleet, without cause, is no small grief to my heart.” Evidently memories of the stern official haunted the poor fellow in his rural retreat. From Lewisham, Mr. Keyes went to Sandgate Castle on the Kentish coast. Thence, in May 1570, he addressed a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, beseeching his grace to intercede for him with the queen, “that according to the laws of God I may be permitted to live with my wife.” This is rather a change of feeling from the time, four years previously, when he expressed his willingness to have his conjugal fetters snapped, if only he might retire to Kent! The archbishop did not grant this prayer; and Mr. Thomas Keyes died—probably in September 1571, and very likely at Sandgate: his burial register is lost, and there is no proof that he returned to Lewisham—worn out by his manifold troubles and by the effect of his unhealthy existence in the Fleet Prison.

CHAPTER III

THE LAST YEARS OF LADY MARY

Lady Mary Grey’s life with the Greshams was more uncomfortable by several degrees than it had been with the dowager duchess. Sir Thomas seems to have disliked her heartily, and his wife, Lady Gresham—who, by the way, had been a milliner, and who still, notwithstanding her husband’s wealth, occasionally made caps for Queen Elizabeth—called the poor little woman the “heart sorrow of her life.” The couple therefore strained every nerve to get their unwelcome guest removed. Letter after letter did Gresham send to Cecil and to Leicester, not complaining of any particular ill-conduct on Lady Mary’s part, but merely putting forward reasons for her departure. First, his wife wants to ride into Norfolk to see her old mother, and the Lady Mary is some sort of hindrance to her journey; then, one of his servants at Osterley has the plague and they want to get into the country. In all these compositions the writer reckons up, to a day, the time Lady Mary has been in his house, to his wife’s “bondiage and harte sorrow.” Sometimes he even offers to pay well for her removal; but the powers that were, gave no heed to these agonized complaints and appeals. Hence Lady Mary was still at Gresham House when, early in September 1571, Dr. Smythe, her doctor, came to inform Sir Thomas that the obnoxious ex-Sergeant-Porter had passed out of the reach of “this warden of the Fleet” for all eternity. The poor little widow was deeply distressed; “his death she grievously taketh,” wrote her host-jailer to Cecil; “she hath requested me to write to you to be a mean to the Queen’s Majesty to be good to her, and that she may have Her Majesty’s leave to keep and bring up his poor children.” This care for her step-children is a pleasant side-light on Lady Mary’s kindness of heart. “As likewise,” continues Sir Thomas, “I desire to know Her Majesty’s pleasure, whether I shall suffer her to wear any black mourning apparel or not.” Then he recurs to his old bone of contention: “Trusting that now I shall be presently [soon] despatched of her by your good means.” Shortly after this, Mary, having retired to Osterley Park, wrote to Cecil that “as God had taken away the cause of Her Majesty’s displeasure [i.e. Mr. Keyes] she begged to be restored to her favour.” This letter was signed “Mary Keyes,” which apparently gave offence, for the next letter was from plain “Mary Grey,” and she never repeated the obnoxious appellation of Keyes. Still she was not removed, and still the Greshams importuned: at length, after a final appeal (for “the quietness of my poor wife”), Sir Thomas rode up to London to make a personal request. Mary would seem to have been as anxious to leave her unwilling host and hostess, as they were to get rid of her, and greatly desired to take up her residence with her step-father, Adrian Stokes, Esq., then living in the Charterhouse at Sheen, who had kindly offered to receive her. But Sir Thomas’s personal efforts were not crowned with success, and the young widow had to spend the winter of 1571-72 with her inhospitable hosts at Mayfield in Sussex, where they had a country seat.

In March 1572, a letter from Sir Thomas Gresham to Cecil, then Lord Burleigh—or as he calls him “Lord Bowerly”—indicates that his oft-expressed desire for the removal of his charge was now nearing accomplishment, and he proceeds to clinch the matter by an offer which is nothing less than bare-faced bribery. “And whereas,” says he, “I have allowed my lord of Oxford [Cecil’s son-in-law] for his money but after the rate of ten per centum, I shall [now] be content to allow him after twelve per centum with any other service I can do for him or you.” This offer of increased interest was too good to be neglected, and before June of the same year, Mary was free to go where she would—liberty had come at last. In a pathetic letter dated May 24, 1572, the released prisoner describes herself as “destitute of all friends—only God and Her Majesty,” and only possessing £80 allowed her by the queen, and £20 per annum of her own. Her “father-in-law”—meaning of course Adrian Stokes, her step-father—will give her nothing, for he has married again. She had expectations which would slightly better her actual income: by a reversion of the dowager Duchess of Suffolk she was to receive £333 6s. 8d. and the same sum at the death of Adrian Stokes.[135] By the summer of this year (1572), Lady Mary was settled with her step-father in the Charterhouse; and Sir Thomas Gresham wrote to express his heartfelt thanks to Cecil for his “delivery [i.e. deliverance] from the Lady Mary.”

After this, Master Keyes’s widow seems to have dwelt in peace till the end of her days. She addressed no further complaints to Cecil, and her will proves that her financial position was a fairly good one. Her name figures no more in the State Papers: she seems to have dropped completely out of sight and out of mind. We know, however, that she eventually either returned to the dowager duchess at the Minories, or occupied that lady’s house in the Barbican;[136] and that on New Year’s Day 1577 she presented the queen, then at Hampton Court, with “four dozen buttons of gold, in each of them a seed pearl, and two pairs of sweet [i.e. perfumed] gloves,” a gift acknowledged by Elizabeth, who gave her kinswoman a silver cup and cover, weighing eighteen ounces: apparently Mary occasionally went to court, and enjoyed the royal favour, at least to some extent.

An entry in the royal household books for 1576 states that Lady Mary Grey stood sufficiently well in the queen’s graces to be at Hampton Court during the great revels held there at Christmas time. The list of guests who presented gifts to Her Majesty opens with the names of her two cousins, the Lady Margaret Lennox and the Lady Mary Grey. The latter presented a gold cup; Leicester, a carcanet glittering with diamonds, emeralds and rubies; Burleigh, a purse of £30; and the Lady Derby, “a gown of satin broidered with peacocks’ feathers in silk.” Even the humblest servant gave some trifle to the greedy queen, who by this means generally obtained something like £10,000 per annum, as voluntary contributions—we will not vouch much, however, for the sincerity of the “voluntary.” The queen’s gifts generally amounted to less than £2000, and, with the exception of those given to members of the royal family, were the merest trifles in silver. She was, however, fairly generous, as a rule, to the poorer menials, giving them warm clothing and blankets.

Lady Mary died, of what complaint we do not know, on April 20, 1578, aged thirty-three, her death being hastened, no doubt, by her griefs and miseries. She may have been buried at St. Botolph’s-without-Aldersgate, but some authorities think otherwise, and even state that her place of burial is Bradgate Church. In Stowe’s Survey occurs an entry to the effect that the Lady Mary Grey shares her mother’s tomb in Westminster Abbey.

Lady Mary’s will is not only a fine specimen of sixteenth-century orthography, but proves that she possessed more property than is generally supposed. The document (which is in the Lansdowne MSS. at the British Museum, xxvii. 31) begins: “In the name of God Amen. The xvij daye of Aprill in the yeare of our lord god 1578. And in the xxth yeare of the Raigne of our Soveraigne Lady Elizabethe.” Lady Mary Grey describes herself as “of the p’ishe of St. Botolphe wthout Aldersgate,” a “widowe of wholl minde and of good and perfect remambraunce laude and praise be unto Almightie God.” She commits her “soull” to the care of its Maker, trusting in salvation through Christ “without any other waies or meanes.” Her body is “to be buried where the Quens Ma’tie should think most meete and convenient.” This seems to suggest that she was still under royal supervision. To the dowager Duchess of Suffolk, her step-grandmother, she bequeathes “one paere of hand Bracelettes of gould with a jacinte stonne in eatche Bracelette wh Bracelettes were my ladie grace my late mothers or els my Juell of unycornes horne wchsoever herr grace refusathe I geave and bequeathe to my verie good ladie ye lady Susanne Countesse of Kente.”[137] It is curious that she should “geave to my verie frend Mrs. Blaunche a Parr a little gilt bowlle wth a cover to it.”[138] It was possibly thanks to Blanche Parry that Lady Mary obtained some measure of favour and liberty in her last years. She leaves to the “Fair Geraldine,” now Countess of Lincoln, a girdle of goldsmith’s work and some gold buttons. To Lady Mary Bertie—she spells it “Bartye,” even as it is still pronounced—and to her husband, Mr. Bertie, she leaves her best gilt cup and the best silver and gilt salt-cellar. She bequeathes to Mary, Lady Stafford, a “tablet of gould with an aggett in it”; and to Anne, Lady Arundel, a “tankarde of sylver.” To a certain Lady Margaret Nevill, she leaves a number of gowns of velvet and satin; to Lady Throckmorton, a “boulle” of silver, with a cover; to her god-daughter, Jane Merrick, she leaves “one good fethered bedde and a boulstere to the same and the three peres of hangings which I have of myne owne and a cowple of covered stoolles.” Were these the identical objects that had excited the dowager duchess’s scorn? Lady Mary next disposes of the lease of “my house wherein I now dwell,” which she wishes to be sold, the purchase money being assigned to “Marrie Merrick my goddaughter” in trust of Edmund “Haull my cowsen.” This plainly indicates that at the time of her death she was in a house of her own, and not at the Duchess of Suffolk’s; and the will also proves her to have been rich enough to keep her coach. Mary Merrick must have been a sister of the testator’s godchild, Jane Merrick, since she is expressly stated to have been not yet twenty-one years of age. After various bequests to divers persons, she leaves to Anne Goldwell, evidently the witness of her unhappy wedding, “half a dozen silver spoones and twoe trenchers plattes of silver.” “Henrie Gouldwell,” very likely that lady’s husband, receives “my baie coatche geldings.” The residue “of all my goods and catteles [chattels] both moveable and immoveable,” are to be applied to the payment of her debts. Finally, Mr. Edmund Hall[139] and Mr. Thomas Duport—the latter her cousin by marriage—are appointed executors.

There is no authentic portrait of this poor little princess extant; she was possibly never in a position to have one taken. Nor do we know much of her personal appearance or character. There is no evidence of her having been accomplished in any particular way; still, Gresham, even at the height of his desire to be rid of her, brings against her no accusation of bad temper or undue haughtiness. Most likely she was merely peevish and melancholy, which is not surprising when we remember that she was separated from her husband of a week, and deprived of her freedom. Her very dismal library, which she possessed to the time of her death and had carted about with her wherever she went,[140] suggests that she was acquainted with French and Italian, and greatly interested in religious matters, being a strong Protestant. Her library includes Palgrave’s French Dictionary and Grammar, and an Italian Commentary on the Scriptures, as well as the following works of sombre old-world philosophy and theology: Mr. Knox, His Answer to the Adversary of God’s Predestination; Mr. Knewstubbe’s Readings; The Ship of Assured Safety, by Dr. Cradocke; Mr. Cartwright’s First and Second Reply; The Second Course of the Hunter and of the Romish Fox; Godly Mr. Whitgift’s Answer; Mr. Dearing’s Reply; Dr. Fulkes’ Answer to the Popish Demands; Dr. Fulkes’ Answer to Allen touching Purgatory; The First Admonition to the Parliament; The Image of God, by Hutchinson; The Duty of Perseverance; The Edict of Pacification; The Book of Martyrs, in two volumes; Latimer’s Sermons on the Four Evangelists; A Treatise of the Deeds of the True Successors of Christ; The Life of the Countie Baltazer Castiglione, and A Treatise of the Resurrection of the Dead; also three editions of the Bible—the Geneva Translation, the Bishops’ and the French—and a Common Prayer Book!

Poor little woman! When Gresham literally turned her out of his house, with one man and a cartload of her belongings, her sacred library was amongst her greatest treasures. “She hath taken all her bookes and rubbish,” writes the great man to the greater Cecil; but provided he and his wife were rid of Lady Mary, they did not much care where she and her “bookes and rubbish” went.

LADY ELEANOR BRANDON, AND HER HEIRS

The reader may be interested to know something of the story of the Lady Eleanor, Countess of Cumberland, younger sister of the Lady Frances Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, and another of the many claimants to Elizabeth’s succession, whose name has been frequently mentioned in these pages.

The queen-duchess, Mary Tudor, it will be remembered, had only two daughters who survived her, the Ladies Frances and Eleanor, by her second husband, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Many considered the Lady Eleanor’s claim to the Throne superior to that of her elder sister, because at the time of her birth, Lady Mortimer, Suffolk’s second wife,[141] was dead; whereas she was still living, and clamouring for her rights, when the Lady Frances came into this world. Henry VIII’s will, however, mentioned the Lady Frances and her children, for he had long since refused to question the validity of his sister’s marriage with Charles Brandon, or in any way to recognize the position of the Lady Mortimer, who, it should be remembered, remarried with a certain Mr. Hall—according to Dugdale—and thus placed herself out of court.

The Lady Eleanor Brandon was a better-looking woman than her sister Frances. When her tomb in Skipton Church was disturbed, in the seventeenth century, her skeleton, which was in perfect condition, proved her to have been “very tall and large boned,” whereas the Lady Frances was of medium stature. Lady Eleanor, if we may judge by her portrait, which hangs at Skipton Castle, was pretty, rather than beautiful. The writer confesses that the portrait at Skipton did not impress him as that of one who could have put forward the slightest pretensions to good looks; the cheeks are high, the forehead abnormally broad, the eyes, however, are fine, and the hair, fair; but the complexion, according to this venerable picture, must have been quite ghastly. The portrait is very badly painted—a poor thing, worth little as a work of art, but none the less interesting.

On the same day that her sister Lady Frances married Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, in March 1533, occurred the betrothal of the Lady Eleanor to Lord Henry Clifford, the eldest son of the Earl of Cumberland, who was remotely related to Henry VIII; his grandmother, Anne St. John of Bletsoe, being cousin once removed to Margaret, Countess of Richmond, the king’s grandmother. The marriage took place in the summer of 1537 at Suffolk Place, probably in the Church of St. Mary Overies—now incorporated in the recently created Cathedral of Southwark—and in the presence of Henry VIII and his court. In honour of the wedding, the Earl of Cumberland built two towers and a gallery at Skipton Castle; and we are told that these additions to the princely old mansion were completed in less than four months—a surprisingly short time, when the exceeding roughness of the implements and machinery then used for building purposes, is taken into consideration. This ancient mansion is still in existence and happily in excellent preservation.

The bride and bridegroom spent most of the early part of their married life at Skipton; but during the disturbances that accompanied the “Pilgrimage of Grace,” the Lady Eleanor, with her attendants and one of her children, a boy, were removed to Bolton Abbey, some ten miles distant from Skipton, a beautifully situated monastery, which had been presented to the young Earl of Cumberland shortly after its suppression. Here the Lady Eleanor was in sore danger, for the insurgents, having attacked the castle, informed the young earl that they would hold the Lady Eleanor and his child—who were entirely without defence at Bolton—as hostages if he did not surrender. They even threatened to place them in front of the storming party, and if the attacks on the castle were repelled, to hand them over to the lowest camp-followers. Luckily, however, assistance arrived in time, and the danger was thereby averted. Both Clifford and his wife owed their safety to young Christopher Aske, brother to Robert Aske, one of the leaders of the rebellion. This brave youth succeeded in passing, almost single-handed, through the rebel camp, and contrived, thanks to his knowledge of the country, to bring relief to the earl at the castle, and, going on to Bolton, carry the ladies out of the abbey and conduct them, in the dead of night, to a place of safety some miles off.

On the death of the old Earl of Cumberland, in 1542, his title passed to Eleanor’s husband, but very shortly after this accession of rank, he successively lost both his sons; the eldest, christened Henry after his father, died when he was two or three years of age, and was buried in the Clifford family vault in Skipton Church, near his brother Charles, who also died in infancy. The inconsolable young mother did not long survive her loss. She retired to Brougham Castle, and died there in November 1547, being buried at Skipton Church. The most interesting fact connected with her brief and (for those days) uneventful history, is that her husband took his bereavement so much to heart, that “on learning he was a widower, he swooned and lay as one dead.” His attendants, believing he had really passed away, stripped his body, and were preparing to embalm it, when, to their consternation, he suddenly revived and struggled into a sitting position in his coffin. Although the attendants were terribly frightened, they soon realized what had happened, and very sensibly placed him in a warm bed, gave him a strong cordial to drink, and fed him, for some days, on a diet of warm bread and milk. He recovered his health, and, a few years later, married a second time. He died in 1570 and is buried in Skipton Church, between his two wives, the Lady Eleanor Brandon and the Lady Anne Dacres.

The Lady Eleanor is mentioned as the frequent recipient of Henry VIII’s New Year and other holiday gifts, which leads one to presume that she was perhaps a greater favourite than her sister. She seems to have had little or nothing to do with the Greys, but there is mention in the Leicester archives of her visiting Bradgate in 1546; and, if we may credit Burke, there was an intimacy between her kinswoman, the Lady Philippa Clifford, and Lady Jane Grey.[142] With her step-mother, the wily Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, she was evidently on good terms.

The eldest daughter of Henry Clifford and the Lady Eleanor Brandon was the Lady Margaret Clifford, who survived her parents and had a very troubled career.

Of the childhood of this Lady Margaret little or nothing is known, but in all probability it was spent like that of her young cousins, the Greys. In the writer’s life of Lady Jane Grey, mention is made of a certain Mistress Huggins, who foolishly boasted that she had heard it repeated about London that the Duke of Northumberland intended to marry his son, Guildford Dudley, to the Lady Margaret Clifford. The publicity thus given to his schemes seems to have induced the duke to change them; and shortly afterwards, Northumberland made an effort to secure the heiress for his brother, Andrew Dudley, instead of Guildford, who, as all know, married Lady Jane Grey. Luckily for both parties, however, the project fell through; and the Lady Margaret thus escaped the fate that overwhelmed the Dudley family.

Lady Margaret is next heard of as one of the ladies of the bedchamber at the court of Queen Mary; and in 1555, with Her Majesty’s consent, she was married, in Westminster Palace, with great pomp, to Lord Strange, eldest son of the Earl of Derby. Mary was too ill to attend her cousin’s wedding, but the two Ladies Grey, and the queen’s unpopular consort, Philip of Spain, were present, and a great banquet was held in Westminster Hall in honour of the bride and bridegroom, after which the king displayed his prowess to much advantage in a tilt in the Spanish style.

Although the Lady Margaret very often and imprudently asserted her prior right to the Throne over her cousins, the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey, she does not seem to have given umbrage to Mary Tudor, and continued, until that queen’s death, to take precedence of all the great ladies of the court, her aunt, the Lady Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, and her cousin Margaret, Countess of Lennox, alone excepted. Nor was her position greatly altered after Elizabeth’s accession. Her husband, Lord Strange, enjoyed the “Great Eliza’s” favour until his death, but he seems to have entertained little affection or regard for his wife, whom he left to her own devices.

The death, in 1570, of the Earl of Cumberland, the Lady Margaret’s father, brought her a great accession of wealth; and the subsequent demise (in 1572) of her father-in-law, increased her rank, for her husband then became Earl of Derby and titular King in Man. After this event, Margaret’s husband, who had been living separated from her, seems to have become more friendly, and the illustrious couple removed to Latham House in Westmorland, where they kept up almost royal state. It was not until after Elizabeth’s systematic cruelty had broken the hearts of the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey that she seems to have conceived it possible that the Lady Margaret Clifford’s claims might, like those of Lady Katherine, threaten her sovereign security. She had received Lady Margaret’s eldest son, Fernando Strange, into her household, and had treated him with much kindness—he was, it is significantly asserted, very good looking—but at the same time the wily queen kept a strict watch on his movements, lest the male heir of Lady Eleanor should display the least inclination to encroach on her prerogatives. Fernando, however, never gave her the least cause for uneasiness. In 1594 he met with a singular and sudden death, wherein witchcraft was mixed up with a good deal of mystery of a very suspicious and purely political kind.

Towards the middle of the year 1578, Elizabeth—for some reason or other which has never transpired, but not improbably at the suggestion of Lord Derby, who was then high in her favour, and who heartily detested his wife—began to look upon Lady Margaret with disfavour. The poor lady had been suffering from a sort of low fever, and was recommended to try the skill of a certain Dr. Randall, a famous physician, who was also popularly held to be a wizard. Elizabeth sent spies to Latham, and was soon informed that the Lady Margaret and her soothsayer were conspiring by magic arts against her, and were also entertaining Jesuits, and other suspected persons.

Acting upon these evidently trumped-up charges, Elizabeth ordered both the doctor and his patient to be conveyed to London. In less than a week, the wizard was arraigned, tried, condemned, and hanged. The countess was handed over to the strict custody of one of her kinsmen, a Mr. Seckford, who resided in the then fashionable suburb of Clerkenwell and held the office of “Master of Requests”—a position which, if the duties at all fitted in with the title, must have entailed a great deal of hard work, in an age when about half the aristocracy spent their lives in petitioning or requesting mercy or other favours for their imprisoned relatives. For all this, the gentleman seems to have been interested in what we should call the building or house-property business, for the Lady Margaret’s numerous letters are full of references to the many houses, not only in Clerkenwell, but even at Hampstead and Hackney, which he desired to sell or to let. He seems to have treated the poor lady very kindly; and, so far as possible under such circumstances, she lived comfortably enough; but she was never allowed to go out unaccompanied, and then only within the precincts of the gardens or to make purchases in shops in the neighbourhood. In her correspondence she frequently mentions a court jeweller named Brandon, presumably an illegitimate son of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. This tradesman was in favour with Elizabeth, who employed him in mending and mounting her innumerable watches, jewels, and clocks, and he appears to have been on almost friendly terms with the queen, and with the Lady Margaret, who, if the above supposition is correct, was his cousin once removed. He may have interceded for her with the queen, as Walsingham, Cecil, and Hatton undoubtedly did, but without the slightest result. The Lady Margaret remained a close prisoner, precisely as the Ladies Grey had been, being quartered with Mr. Seckford until her death, though not always at his house in Clerkenwell, for she generally spent the summer months at Hampstead, in a mansion rented by her from the said Mr. Seckford. It seems she was never allowed to live with her very unfaithful husband, which was probably not considered a very great deprivation by him. Elizabeth, with whom he was in high favour, had appointed him Lord High Steward of England, Judge for the trial of the Earl of Arundel for treason, and Lord High Chamberlain of Chester. When he died, in 1593, Lady Margaret was given a sort of holiday, being allowed to attend his funeral at Ormskirk in Lancashire; their union had been blessed with four sons and a daughter. On the Earl of Derby’s death, his son, Fernando, assumed that title, as well as that of King in Man, but did not enjoy these honours long. In the spring of 1594, he was suddenly taken ill, and died in a few hours. As already hinted, a suggestive air of mystery hung over his end. Some time in that year, he was seized with fearful and sudden intestinal pains which were popularly attributed to the occult practices of one Dr. Hacket, in whose house was afterwards found a small waxen figure said to represent the young earl, and stuffed with hair of the same colour as that of the supposed victim. Accordingly as this wax image was maltreated, so, in the opinion of the credulous, did the person it resembled suffer, and since it was stuck as full of pins as any pincushion, there could be no doubt as to the cause of young Strange’s prolonged torments and terrible death! Hacket was, of course, after having been duly tortured, hanged as a wizard. The Lady Margaret survived her eldest son by two years, dying, in 1596, at the house in Clerkenwell, which she had rented from Mr. Seckford before his death. She is buried in St. Edmund’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, near her aunt, the Lady Frances. After the death of Earl Fernando, the title of Earl of Derby and King in Man passed to Lady Margaret’s youngest son, Lord William Stanley, who married a De Vere, youngest daughter of the Earl of Oxford, by his wife, Cecil’s second daughter. This William Stanley was the father of that loyal Earl of Derby who was beheaded by Cromwell after the battle of Worcester, and whose wife, Charlotte de la Tremoïlle, has been immortalized by Sir Walter Scott, who introduces her into a short but marvellously effective and impressive scene in Peveril of the Peak.

INDEX

Alva, Duke of, 114, 115, 249

Amy Robsart, 148, 149 and footnote, 155;
her death, 156, 157, 172, 210

Anne Boleyn, Lady, 36 and footnote, 60 and footnote

Anne Boleyn, Queen, 24, 36 f.n., 60 f.n., 65 f.n., 68;
her coronation procession, 69, 72, 258, 262 f.n.

Anne Brown (second wife of Charles Brandon), betrothed to Brandon, 13;
betrothal annulled, 14;
her relationship to Lady Mortimer, Brandon’s other wife, 15 and footnote;
married to Brandon, 16;
her children, her death, 16;
her children legitimized, 62;
their marriages, 63

Anne of Brittany, Queen of France, 22 f.n., 47

Anne of Cleves, Queen, 72

Ascham, 94

Aylmer, 95, 96 f.n.

Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 213, 246

Baynard’s Castle, 97, 98

Bertie, Mr., 19 f.n.;
marries Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, and flies from England, 79, 106;

Mr. Stokes and Hertford consult with him, 136-137

Bess of Hardwick (Mrs. Saintlow), her marriage, 85-86, her origin, etc., 87, 88, 89, 90, 129, 170, 174

Blanche Parry, 144 and footnote, 145, 288 and footnote

Boulogne, 7, 29;

Church of Notre Dame at, 30-31, 76, 77 and footnote, 33, 75

Bradgate Hall, 83, 93, 298

Brandon, origin of the family of, 7-8

Brandon, Charles, Duke of Suffolk, his extraordinary resemblance to Henry VIII, 3-5;
his appearance, 4;
his powerful imagination, 5-6;
his parentage, 11;
his education, 12-13;
goes to sea, 13;
is betrothed to Anne Browne, 13;
betrothal annulled, marries Lady Mortimer, 14, 14-15 f.n.;
his marriage with Lady Mortimer annulled, 16;
marries Anne Browne, 16;
tries to marry Elizabeth Grey, Lady Lisle, 16;
assumes title of Lisle, but relinquishes it, 17;
goes to Flanders, 17;
created Duke of Suffolk, 18;
list of lands bestowed on him, 18 and footnote;
makes game of Margaret of Savoy, 20-21;
courts Mary Tudor, 21, 22 f.n., 25, 26, 39;
fights in a tournament, 42-43;

Mary Tudor declares her affection for him, 48;
his interview with Mary Tudor, who wishes to marry him, 49-50, 50 f.n.;
his clandestine marriage with Mary Tudor, 50-51;
letter to Wolsey, 51-52;
received by Henry VIII, remarried to Mary Tudor, 54;
verses by, 56;
attitude of Wolsey towards, quarrels with Wolsey, 56-57;
his London residences, 58;
fights in a tournament, 59;

Lady Mortimer claims connubial rights, 61;
reaffirmation of the dissolution of his marriage with her, 61;

Pope Clement publishes a bull dissolving this marriage, and legitimizing Anne Browne’s children, 62, 63 f.n., 64, 65;

his mistress, and illegitimate offspring, 66 and footnotes;
neglects Mary Tudor, 67;
attends Anne Boleyn’s coronation, 68, 69;
behaves rudely to Katherine of Aragon, 68, 71, 72, 74, 75;
writes to Wolsey, 68;
not present at Mary Tudor’s funeral, 70;
his abominable behaviour to Anne Boleyn, Anne of Cleves, and Katherine Howard, 72;
marries a fourth time, 73;
his children by his fourth wife, Katherine Willoughby, 74 and footnote;
his public career, French campaigns, etc., 75-77;
his last illness and death, 77-78;
his last portrait, 78;
funeral, 78;
his tomb, 78;
his bequests, 78, 244 f.n., 293, 294

Brandon, Geoffrey, 8, 302

Brandon, Lady Eleanor, Countess of Cumberland, her birth, 60, 61, 64;
betrothed to Henry Clifford, 69, 295;
attends his mother’s deathbed and funeral, 70, 71;
attends her father’s death-bed, 78, 293;
her appearance, portraits of, 294;
marries Henry Clifford, 294-295;
in peril during the “Pilgrimage of Grace”, 295-296;
rescued, 296;
death of her sons, 296;
her death and burial, 297, 298

Brandon, Lady Frances, Marchioness of Dorset, Duchess of Suffolk (mother of the Ladies Jane, Katherine and Mary Grey), 15 f.n.;
her birth, 59;
her baptism, 60, 64;
her marriage, 69;
attends her mother’s death-bed and funeral, 70, 71;
attends her father’s death-bed, 78, 84, 86, 93, 96;
her marriage with Adrian Stokes, 103, 255-256;
portrait of her, 104;
reasons for her marriage, 105-106;
her rights of precedence restored, 107-108, 126;
approves of Lady Katherine’s proposed marriage, falls ill, 132;
is still ill, sends for her daughters, 135;
wishes Lady Katherine to marry Hertford, 136, 138;
her death and burial, 140, 257;
her tomb, 141;

her will, 141, 212, 244 f.n., 256, 293, 294, 299, 304

Brandon, Richard, 66 and footnote

Brandon, Sir William (father of Charles Brandon), 11;
his marriage, and death at Bosworth, 11

Brandon, son of Charles Brandon (jeweller to Queen Elizabeth), 66 and footnote, 302

Brandon, Thomas, 12

Brandon, William, 9, 10 and footnote

Browne, Sir Anthony, 131

Bruyn, Sir Henry, 11 and footnote

Cecil, William, Lord Burleigh (Queen Elizabeth’s Chief Secretary), 142, 157;
favours Lady Katherine Grey’s claims, 158-159, 221;
questions Hertford about his courtship of Lady Katherine, 161-162;
questions Lady Katherine, 162-163, 169;
his connection with Lady Katherine’s marriage, 172;
his enmity with Robert Dudley, 172, 187, 213-214;
letters to Cecil, 173 f.n., 190-192, 196-197, 199 f.n., 200, 201, 203 and f.n., 204 and  footnote, 211, 216, 218, 226 f.n., 228 f.n., 231, 249, 270-271, 273, 274, 275, 278, 279, 280, 281, 283, 284, 285, 292;
attempts a coup d’état, 187-188; 192, 194, 208;
is implicated in Hales’s book in favour of Lady Katherine’s claims, 213, 215, 240, 245;
supports her sons’ claims, 246, 247 f.n., 252, 263, 264, 266, 276, 282, 285, 286, 302, 304

Charles, Archduke of Castile and Austria, 17, 19, 21, 26, 47, 49

Claude, Queen of France, 36 f.n., 47 and footnote

Clement VII, Pope, 62 and footnote

Clifford, Henry, Earl of Cumberland (husband of Lady Eleanor Brandon), 69, 70, 295, 296, 297, 298

Clinton, Lady (the “Fair Geraldine”), 130, 131, 204, 257, 268, 288, 300

Cockfield Hall, 227, 229, 230, 231 and footnote

Dacre, Lady Magdalen, 115, 123

Darcy, Elizabeth, 11 and footnote

Dee, Dr., 144 and footnote

De Guaras, Antonio, 246, 247

Derby, Earl of, 286, 299, 303

Dorset, Henry Grey, Marquis of (father of the Ladies Jane, Katherine and Mary Grey), 15 f.n., 43, 69, 70, 76, 83, 86, 91, 93 and footnote, 96, 244 f.n., 294

Dorset Place, 83

Dudley, Edmund, 17

Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester, rumours about his relations with Queen Elizabeth, 146, 148, 156;
death of his wife, 156-157;
rumours of his desire to murder her, 156, 157, 158 and footnote, 160;

Lady Katherine’s nocturnal visit to, 171;
reveals her marriage to the Queen, 171, 172;
favours the Earl of Huntingdon’s claim, to the Throne, 184, 185, 187;
opposes Lady Katherine’s claim, 193, 203, 208, 209;
correspondence with Hertford about some gloves for the Queen, 210;
plots for Cecil’s downfall, 213-214, 215, 216, 218, 223;
offers to support Hertford, 224, 240, 245, 249, 251, 282, 286

Edward VI, 76, 77, 94, 95, 96, 98, 104, 188, 244 f.n.

See Will of Edward VI

Eleanor Brandon, Lady. See Brandon, Lady Eleanor

Elizabeth, Queen, 103, 104, 109, 110;
her reception of Lady Katherine Grey, and fear of her, 133;
her court, her dress, appearance, etc., 134, 137, 138;
pretends great affection for Lady Katherine, 142;
her loss of popularity, 146, 149;
rumours about her relations with Robert Dudley, 146, 148, 156;
believes she will have offspring, 146-147;
unwilling to marry, 147;
refuses King Philip and other Princes, 147-148;
her passion for Dudley, 148, 149;
her dislike of Lady Katherine, 151, 152, 153, 161;

speaks to the Spanish Ambassador about a marriage with Dudley, 155, 156;
hears of his wife’s death, 157-158;
her connivance at Amy Robsart’s murder, 158;
her rumoured marriage with Dudley, 158 f.n., 159, 160, 161;
goes on a progress, 165;
learns of Lady Katherine’s marriage, her anger thereat, 171;
her orders to Sir Edward Warner touching Lady Katherine, 174, 175, 182;
falls ill with smallpox, 183;
her recovery, and request to the Council, 185;
her orders for Lady Katherine’s removal from the Tower, 194 and footnote;

Lady Katherine’s petition to, 202;
her indignation at Hales’s pamphlet, 212-214, 220;

Parliament tries to coerce her into naming a successor, 221-223;
she refuses to do so, 221 et seq., 250;
her orders to Mr. Roke Green, 226-227;
her orders to Sir Owen Hopton, 227-228;

Lady Katherine’s dying request to, 233, 247;
her treatment of Lady Katherine and Hertford considered, 235-236, 240, 241;
entertained by Hertford, 241;
her kindness to his wife, 242;
wishes to kill Prince James, and place Lady Katherine’s son on the Scotch Throne, 246;
takes charge of her children, 247;
falls ill, 248;
mention of an alleged illegitimate daughter of, 251;
refuses to name Lady Katherine’s son her successor, 252;
seizes the Greys’ property, 256, 257, 258, 262 and footnote, 268 f.n.;
learns of Lady Mary Grey’s wedding, her anger thereat, 263-264;
her orders to William Hawtrey, 265-266, 273, 274, 276 and footnote, 277;
her gifts to Lady Mary and others, 286-287; 300, 301, 303, 304

Feria, Count de (Spanish Ambassador in England), 102, 129;
his influence over Lady Katherine Grey, 130, 133, 147, 148, 152, 153

Feria, Countess de (Jane Dormer), 115, 130, 152, 153, 195 f.n.

Francis I, King of France, 40;
falls in love with Mary Tudor, 44-45, 46;
tries to court her, and is refused, 47-48, 50;
tries to propitiate Henry VIII, 51, 53, 76

Gardiner, Stephen, Bishop of Winchester, xxix, 61, 116, 126

Goldwell, Mrs., 262, 263, 265, 267, 268-272, 290

Gosfield Hall, 216, 219 and footnote, 220, 225, 229

Green, Mr. Roke, 226, 228, 229

Gresham, Sir Thomas, 278, 282, 284, 285, 290, 292

Grey, Henry, Marquis of Dorset. See Dorset

Grey, Lady Jane, xxviii, 15 f.n., 39, 59, 83, 85, 86, 90, 94, 95, 96, 97;
her last letter, to Lady Katherine, 98-101, 98 f.n., 120, 122, 153 f.n., 175, 188, 235, 255, 256 f.n., 298 and footnote

Grey, Lady Katherine, Countess of Hertford, xxviii, 15 f.n., 39, 64, 78;
her birth, 83;
her childhood, infantile costume, toys, early education, 84-85;
entry into society, 85, 86, 89;
her travels in 1551, 1552 and 1553, 90-93;
falls ill, her health, 93;

Katherine is not trained to be Queen, contrast between her girlhood and Lady Jane’s, 94-95;
does not go to Edward VI’s court, 96, 96 f.n.;
is contracted to Lord Herbert, goes to Baynard’s Castle, 97;
letter to Katherine, from Lady Jane, 98-101;
her betrothal annulled, 101-102;
expresses her willingness to marry Lord Herbert, 102;
goes to court, 107;
accompanies Queen Mary on progresses, 108;
receives a royal pension, 109;
is well treated at Mary’s court, 109;
first public appearance, 111;
assists at marriage of Philip and Mary, 115, 117, 118, 120;
her meeting with the Earl of Hertford, 122;
her lovemaking with him, 125, 127;
goes to Hanworth, 127;
her life at Queen Mary’s court, 128, 129, 131;

declares herself a Catholic, 129; 154;
her friends and friendships, 129-131, 143;
attends Queen Mary’s funeral, 132;
goes to Sheen, progress of Hertford’s courtship, 132, 133;
her reception by Elizabeth, 133;

Elizabeth’s fear of her, 133;
her position as Elizabeth’s successor, 134;
life at Elizabeth’s court, 135;
goes again to Sheen, 135;
her mother desires her to marry Hertford, 136, 138;
negotiations for the marriage, 136-139;
attends her mother’s death and funeral, 140-141, 257;
returns to court, 142;

Elizabeth’s pretended affection for her, 142;
receives distressing news of Hertford, 142;
consults Blanche Parry, 145;

Spain supports her claim to the throne, 149-150;
extraordinary plot for her abduction to Spain, 150-151, 220;
her claims also supported by the Low Church party, 151;
is disliked by Elizabeth, 151;
the plot falls through, 153, 154;
gets out of touch with the Spanish embassy, 155;

Cecil supports her claims, 158;
proposal that she should marry a Spanish Prince, 159, 160, 161;
motives for this alliance, 160;
questioned by Cecil about her feelings for Hertford, 162-163;
pledges her troth to Hertford, 163-164;
has a meeting with Hertford, 164;
goes to his house, 165;
her clandestine marriage with Hertford, 166;
adopts the “froze paste,” or matron’s headdress, 167 and footnote;
attends Lady Jane Seymour’s funeral, 168;
secret visits to Hertford, 168-169;
mislays deed of jointure, and confesses her marriage to Mrs. Saintlow, 170;
her nocturnal visit and confession to Robert Dudley, 171;
her marriage revealed to Elizabeth, 171;
sent to the Tower, 172;

Duchess of Somerset blames her for the marriage, 173, 174 f.n., 236;
refuses to confess, 175;

furniture of her apartment in the Tower, 175, 196, 197 and footnote, 176;
her examination and evidence, 178;
gives birth to a son in the Tower, 181;
falls ill, 182;
sentence on her marriage, 183;
renewed agitation in favour of her claims, 184-185;
meeting to endorse her claims, 186;

Cecil’s scheme in favour of, 187-188;
gives birth to a second son, 189;
her case discussed in Parliament, 192-193;

Lord Pembroke and Robert Dudley opposed to her claims, 193;
begs to be removed from the Tower, 194;
removed to Pirgo, 195-196;
her life there, 199;
letter to Cecil, 199 f.n.;
her unhappiness and ill-health, 200, 201, 203;
petitions Elizabeth, 201;
text of petition, 202;
letter to Cecil, 203 and footnote, 204;
her state of poverty, 205 and footnote;
inventory of her effects and of her child’s clothing, 205-206 f.n.;
account of monies paid for her maintenance, and cost thereof, 206 and footnote, 207;
her attendants, 207;

Hales’s book in favour of her claims, 212 and footnote;
removes from Pirgo, consigned to Sir John Wentworth, 216, 219;
agitation in her favour renewed, 221;
her claims supported by the House of Commons, 221, 222, 223;
remains at Gosfield after Wentworth’s death, 225-226;

Elizabeth’s orders to Sir Owen Hopton respecting her, 227-228;
is conveyed to Ipswich, 229;
cost of her stay there and of journey to Cockfield, 229-230;
falls dangerously ill, the Queen’s doctor sent for, 231;
her last hours, last instructions to Hopton, etc., 232-235;
her death, 235;

Elizabeth’s treatment of her, considered, 235-236;
her remains embalmed, 236;
funeral, 236-238;
cost of same, 237-238 f.n.;
and of her keep, 237 f.n.;
her religion, 238 f.n.;
her burial place, 238-239;

tradition respecting her pet dog, 240, 244 f.n., 245, 246, 252, 255, 257, 263, 274, 277, 299, 300.

See also Hertford, Earl of, and Hertford, sons of the Earl of

Grey, Lady Mary, xxviii, 15 f.n., 39, 64, 86, 90, 107, 108, 109, 120, 132;
attends her mother’s funeral, 140, 141, 141, 142, 145, 168, 240, 257;
her birth, 255;
contracted to Lord Grey de Wilton, 255;
betrothal annulled, 256;
her childhood, etc., 256-257;
her small stature and appearance, 257-258;
forms the acquaintance of Thomas Keyes, 259;
her visits to him, 261;
her marriage with Keyes, 262-263;
arrested, examined by Privy Council, 265;
her evidence before the Council, 266-267;
removed to “The Chequers,” 273;
writes to Cecil, 273, 274;
arrival at the Minories, 274;
her goods, 275-276;
her stay at the Minories, etc., 277;
her friendship for Lady Bertie, 277;
goes to the Greshams, 278;
uncomfortable life there, 282;
receives news of Keyes’s death, its effect on her, 283;
her care for his children, 283;
letter to Cecil, 283;
is released, her poverty, 285;
her gifts to Elizabeth, 286;
her death and burial, 287;
her will and bequests, 287-290;
her character, 290;
her library, 290-292, 291 f.n., 299, 300.

See also Keyes, Thomas

Grey of Pirgo, Lord John (Lady Katherine’s uncle), 93, 109, 152, 194 f.n., 195 and footnote, 196, 198;
letter of, to Cecil, 199, 200-201, 202, 203, 204 and footnote, 211;
put under arrest, 215;
falls ill and dies, 215

Guildford Dudley, 97, 255

Guildford, Lady, 36, 37, 38

Guzman de Silva, Don Diego, Spanish Ambassador, 212 f.n., 213, 245

Hales, John, his book in favour of Lady Katherine’s claims, 212 and footnote;
sent to prison, 213, 218

Hampton Court Palace, 4, 121-127

Hanworth, 127, 195, 197, 217

Hawtrey, William, 265, 266, 273, 274, 275

Henry V, xxiii, xxiv f.n., xxvii

Henry VI, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, xxix, 9

Henry VII, xxiii, xxv, xxviii, xxix, 9

Henry VIII, his likeness to Charles Brandon, 3-5, 18, 19, 20;
arranges a marriage between Mary Tudor and Louis XII of France, 22, 24, 25;
urges Mary Tudor to marry Louis XII, 27, 28;
letter of Mary Tudor to, 37, 49, 51, 52, 53;
receives Mary at Greenwich, and assists at her marriage with Brandon, 54;
schemes to destroy Brandon, 56;
stands godfather to Mary’s child, and creates him Earl, 58-59, 60, 65, 68, 69;
his piety, 76, 77, 78, 104, 295, 297

Herbert, Lord, 97, 101, 102

Hertford, Edward Seymour, Earl of (husband of Lady Katherine Grey), 102;
his meeting with Lady Katherine, 122;
his courtship of her, 125, 127, 132, 133, 135;

Lady Frances Brandon wishes him to marry Lady Katherine, Mr. Stokes consults with him, 136, 137;
aids Mr. Stokes to prepare a letter for the Queen, but refuses to send it, 138-139;
his weak character, 139;
his alleged courtship of Sir Peter Mewtas’s daughter, 142;
sends Katherine a ring, 143;
gets alarmed about the marriage, is questioned by Cecil, 161-162;
pledges his troth to Lady Katherine, and gives her a ring, 163-164;
his verses on this ring, 163, 164;
sends away his servants, 165;
marries Lady Katherine clandestinely, 166;
is sent to France, 169;
his gay life in Paris, 170;
recalled from France, arrested, and sent to the Tower, 176-177;
his examination, and evidence, 177, 178;
proposal to place him on the Throne, 187;

Cecil’s scheme for a coup d’état in his favour, 188;

is brought before Star Chamber, and fined, 189-190;

Sir John Mason’s opinion of him, 191;
removed to Hanworth, 195;

Newdigate persuades him against Lord John Grey, 204-205;
is asked to pay for Lady Katherine’s maintenance, 208;
appeals to Dudley, 209 and footnote;
makes gloves for the Queen, 210;
his unhappy life at Hanworth, removed to Sir John Mason’s, 217;
writes to Cecil, 218;

Dudley offers him his support, in the matter of the succession, 224;
his imprisonment becomes more severe, 225, 233, 234, 236;
not present at Lady Katherine’s funeral, 237, 239, 240;
takes his M.A. degree, re-marries, is restored to favour, 241;
death of his second wife, 241;
erects monument to her, and to his mother, marries a third time, is sent to the Tower afresh, 242;
released, becomes James I’s ambassador, his death, 243;
his tomb, 243-245;
inscription on it, 243 f.n.

Hertford, sons of the Earl of (Edward and Thomas Seymour), their births, 181, 189, 242;
movement in favour of their claims to the English throne, 186, 221, 242, 245, 248, 249, 250;
attempts to place them on the Scotch throne, 246-248, 247 f.n., 250-251, 252

Hopton, Lady, 232

Hopton, Sir Owen, 227, 228 and footnote, 229, 231-236, 237-238 f.n., 239, 247

Howard, Lady Frances, 242, 243

Howard, Lord William and Lady, 263, 269, 270-271

Huntingdon, Earl of, 76;
agitation in favour of his claims to the throne, 158-159, 184, 185, 245

James, Prince (afterwards King James I), 59 f.n., 243, 244 f.n., 248;
attempt to kidnap him, and put an end to him, 247, 250 and footnote, 251, 252

Jane Grey, Lady. See Grey

Jane Seymour, Lady (sister of the Earl of Hertford), Lady

Katherine Grey’s friendship for, 127;
acts as her intermediary, 143, 164, 165;
witnesses Lady Katherine’s wedding, 166;
her death and funeral, 167-168, 177, 178

Katherine Grey, Lady. See Grey

Katherine Howard, Queen, 72

Katherine of Aragon, Queen, 6, 12, 23, 26, 28, 54, 57, 60, 62, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75 and footnote

Katherine of Valois, Queen, xxiii;
her meeting with Owen Tudor, xxiv and footnote;
her children by Owen, xxvi, xxvii;
banishment and death, xxvi-xxvii.

See Owen Tudor

Katherine Willoughby d’Eresby, Duchess of Suffolk (fourth wife of Charles Brandon), 19 f.n.;
her marriage with Brandon, her parentage, etc., 73;
her children, their early deaths, 74, 75;
attends Brandon’s death-bed, 78;
her visitors at the Barbican, 78-79;
re-marries and flies from England, 79, 91 and footnote, 106, 136, 137;

Lady Mary Grey lodged with, 274;
complains to Cecil, 275;
her letter to same about Lady Mary’s goods, 275-276, 285, 286, 288, 290 f.n., 298

Keyes, Thomas, Sergeant-Porter of the Watergate (husband of Lady Mary Grey), his antecedents, 258;
his family, extraordinary stature, etc., 259 and footnote;
his duties as Porter, 260 and footnote;
his private apartment, 260;
marries Lady Mary Grey, 262-263, 264;
sent to the Fleet Prison, 265, 266, 267;
his evidence before the Council, 268;
is to go to Ireland, 278;
is willing to renounce his wife, 279;
discomforts of his life in the Fleet, 278, 279, 280;
is nearly poisoned, 280;
removed to Lewisham, 280;
his last appeal to Cecil, 280-281;
his death 281;
news of same conveyed to Lady Mary, 283

Killigrew, Sir Henry, 250 and footnote

Knollys, Henry, 262 and footnote

Knollys, Lettice, 261, 262

Leicester, Robert Dudley, Earl of. See Dudley, Robert

Lennox, Countess of. See Margaret Douglas

Lisle, Lady Elizabeth, 16, 17

Lisle, Lady Elizabeth (aunt of above), 17

Louis XII of France, proposed as husband for Mary Tudor, state of his health, 22 and footnote, 27, 28;
his “treaty of marriage,” and marriage by proxy, 28-29;
his meeting with Mary Tudor, 31-32;
and marriage with her, 32-33;
his gifts to Mary Tudor, 33, 38, 42, 46, 52;
objects to her attendants, 33 et seq., 40;
his death, 46, 54 f.n.

Louise of Savoy, 44, 46, 50-51

Maltravers, Lady, 220

Margaret, Archduchess of Austria, Duchess of Savoy, 17, 18;
visits Henry VIII at Tournay, incidents there, 19-21, 26

Margaret Clifford, Lady, 298, 299-304

Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, 115, 184 f.n., 193, 250, 286, 299

Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Beaufort, xxix, 295

Margaret, Queen of Scotland, 59, 193

Mary Grey, Lady. See Grey, Lady Mary

Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, 76, 90, 96, 133-134, 149, 184 f.n., 193, 212 and footnote, 221, 223-224, 225, 250, 251

Mary Tudor, Queen of England, xxx, 60, 91, 93, 104, 107, 108, 109;
her court, 110; 111, 128, 129;
her marriage to Philip of Spain, 115-117;
proceeds to Windsor, 118-119;
goes to Suffolk Place, 120;
proceeds to Hampton Court, 121;
her life there, 122-123, 125, 127;
her death, 132, 257, 299

Mary Tudor, Queen of France, Duchess of Suffolk (Charles Brandon’s third wife), 17, 19-20, 21, 22 and footnote, 23;
is told she must marry Louis XII, her refusal, 26-27;
consents to the marriage, “treaty of marriage,” and marriage by proxy, 28-29;
leaves England, arrival at Boulogne, pageant there, 29, 30;
visits Church of Notre-Dame, 30, 31;
first meeting with Louis XII, 31, 32;
the marriage at Abbeville, 32-33;
trouble over her English attendants, 33-38;
her kindness to them, 35 f.n.;
makes complaint to Henry VIII and Wolsey, 37;
proceeds to St. Denis, 39;
her coronation as Queen of France, 40;
proceeds to Paris, her entry into, and progress round that city, 40-42;
assists at a tournament, her popularity, 43-44;
court intrigues against her, 45;
her respectability, 45-46;
her mourning for King Louis, 46;
repulses Francis I, 47-48;
tells Brandon she will not leave France without him, 49-50 and footnote;
her clandestine marriage with Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, 50-51;
her letters to Wolsey and Henry VIII, 52;
hands over her jewelry to Henry VIII, on condition that he recognizes her marriage with Brandon, 52, 53;
her deed of gift, 52 and footnote;
list of her property, 53 f.n.;
her public re-marriage with Brandon, 54-55;
bridal portraits of, her appearance, etc., 55 and footnote;
her residences in London, 58;
gives birth to a son, 58;
receives Charles V, is accorded queenly precedence, 59;
goes on pilgrimage, 59;
gives birth to Lady Frances Brandon, 59;
and to Lady Eleanor Brandon, 60, 61, 64;
is neglected by her husband, death of her son, 67;
lock of her hair sold, 67;
supports Katherine of Aragon, 67;
does not attend Anne Boleyn’s coronation, 68;
her ill health, 68;
death and funeral, 70;
incident at funeral, 71;

her monument, 71 f.n.; 244 f.n., 293

Mason, Sir John, 190 and footnote;
his letter to Cecil, 190-192, 217, 218

Merrick, Jane, 277, 289

Monteagle, Mary, Lady, 63;
her portrait, 65;
her husband, 65 f.n., 70

Mortimer, Lady Margaret (first wife of Charles Brandon), marries Brandon, 14;
her antecedents, parentage, pedigree, etc., 14-15 f.n.;
is aunt to Anne Browne (q. v.), 15;
her marriage declared null, 16;
claims connubial rights, 61;

Brandon obtains a re-affirmation of the dissolution of the marriage, 61;
appeal to Rome, and Papal bull declaring the marriage void, 62;
her third marriage, 63 and footnote;
further confirmation of sentence against the marriage, 64-65, 293, 294

Newdigate, Francis, 106, 195 and footnote, 204, 217, 218

Norfolk, Duke of, 3, 22 f.n., 28, 35, 160, 185;
favours Lady Katherine Grey’s claims, 186, 221, 223, 245

Northampton, Marchioness of, 86

Northampton, Marquis of, 163

Owen Tudor, supposed pedigree of, xxiii;
appearance of, xxiv, xxviii;
his meeting with Katherine of Valois, xxiv and footnote, xxv f.n.;
clandestine marriage with her, xxiv;
the marriage discovered, his arrest, xxvi;
his imprisonments and escapes, xxvii;
restored to favour, xxvii;
beheaded, xxviii;
his children, xxviii, xxix, xxx

Pembroke, Earl of, 97-98, 101-102, 114, 185, 193

Petre, Sir William, 216

Philip II of Spain (consort of Queen Mary Tudor I), 102;
arrival in England, 111;
his appearance and manners, 112-113;
his journey to Winchester, 113;
receives a ring from the Queen, 114;
his marriage to Mary Tudor, 115-117, 119;

his rude behaviour to Lady Dacre, 123;
returns to Spain, 127; 129;
courts Queen Elizabeth, 147;
supports Lady Katherine’s claims, 150 and footnote, 151;
proposes to abduct her, 150 f.n.

loses interest in Katherine after her marriage, 173, 214, 299.

See Mary Tudor, Queen of England

Pirgo, 195 and footnote, 198, 215, 216

Popincourt, Joan, 33, 34

Powis, Anne, Lady, 63, 64 and footnote, 70

Quadra, Don Alvaro de la, Spanish Ambassador, 142, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 172, 183, 184 and footnote, 188, 193, 213, 218

Richmond, Edmund of Hadham, Earl of, xxv, xxviii-xxix.

See Henry VII

Richmond Palace, 119-120

Robert, the Lord. See Dudley, Robert

Saintlow, Mrs. See Bess of Hardwick

Saintlow, William, 89

Seckford, Mr., 301, 302, 303, 304

Seymour, Edward. See Hertford, Earl of

Seymour, Lady Jane. See Jane Seymour, Lady

Seymour, Lord Henry, 179, 180, 218

Seymour, William, 252

Sheen, the Charterhouse at (residence of the Marquis of Dorset), 108, 132, 135, 137, 284

Shrewsbury, George Talbot, Earl of, 86, 250

Skipton Castle, 294, 295;

Skipton Church, 296, 297

Somerset, Anne Stanhope, Duchess of, 106, 125-126, 132;
letter to Cecil of, 169;
writes to Cecil, blaming Lady Katherine, 173 and footnote, 236;

appeals on behalf of Lady Katherine and Hertford, 208-209, 216; 224, 242, 244 f. n., 249, 274;

Somerset, Duke of, 110, 122, 127, 181 f. n.

Spaniards, the, their opinion of England and the English, 119, 124-125;
create disturbances, 126-127

Stanley, Lord William, 304

Stokes, Adrian (second husband of Lady Frances Brandon), 103, 104, 105, 136, 138, 139, 141, 256, 284, 285

Strange, Fernando, 300, 303-304

Suffolk, Duchess of. See Brandon, Lady Frances; Katherine Willoughby; Mary Tudor

Suffolk, Duke of. See Brandon, Charles

Suffolk Place, or Court, 19 f. n., 58, 59, 120, 295

Symonds, Dr., 231, 237 f. n.

“The Chequers,” 266, 273

Tudor, Owen. See Owen Tudor

Warner, Sir Edward (Lieutenant of the Tower), 174, 175, 182, 189, 192, 196, 197 and footnote

Wentworth, Lady, 219, 225

Wentworth, Sir John, 216, 219, 220, 225, 228, 241

Westhorpe Hall, 18, 19 f. n., 67, 68

Westminster Palace, 164

Westminster, tournament at, described, 23-26;
watergate at, 258 and footnote, 260;

Hall, 299

Will of Edward VI, touching the succession to the Throne, xvii, 104, 134, 245, 277

Will of Henry VIII, touching the succession to the Throne, xvi-xviii, 104 and footnote, 134, 159, 212 and footnote, 245, 277, 293

Willoughby, Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk. See Katherine Willoughby

Wolsey, Cardinal, 6, 37, 51, 56-57, 61, 62, 68

Zouch, Lady, 87 and footnote, 88

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] See the brief synopsis of Henry VIII’s Will in Note at the end of this Preface.

[2] Ambassades Françaises—Elizabeth: Archives Nationales.

[3] Simancas Papers (Spanish State Papers), edited by Major Martin Hume.

[4] See Stowe’s Annals; also, The History of the Twydyr Family.

[5] The acquaintance of Katherine the Fair with Owen Tudor must have begun a great deal earlier than 1423, the date usually stated. There exists in the British Museum, a picturesque old French novel, entitled Tidéric, Prince de Galles—founded, according to its anonymous author, on little-known documents amongst the French archives—which describes Katherine as having fallen in love with Owen during the negotiations for her marriage with Henry V. The handsome Welshman certainly distinguished himself at Agincourt, and subsequent to that momentous battle, was created Captain of the King’s Guard, in which position he became a confidential attendant on the Sovereign. In that quality, we gather, he was sent with a message to Princess Katherine, who then and there fell in love with him. He was next—and this is an historical fact—created Clerk of the Wardrobe to the queen, and was, therefore, constantly in her company. When both the king and queen returned to France, and Henry died, Owen escorted the young dowager back to England. In the Histoire de Boulogne, a “M. Tidder” is described as being in the queen’s procession, which followed “at a distance of two miles” that conveying the king’s body through northern France on its way to England. The queen’s procession entered Montreuil-sur-Mer one hour after the one which bore the royal corpse had left that town, “M. Tidder” leading the way, on a white horse. The queen and her party paused to partake of refreshments offered by the mayor, and it was late in the afternoon before they left Montreuil for Boulogne and Calais, where Katherine embarked for England at nightfall, but not on the vessel that carried the king’s body.

Thus Katherine may have had many a meeting with Owen long before her gallant husband’s death. The adventure at the dance, which history relates as a fact, very likely occurred, and kindled a passion that resulted in the secret and momentous union, the precise date of which is lost.

[6] Parliamentary History, vol. ii., p. 211.

[7] Among the statutes of the foundation of Bermondsey Abbey was one whereby certain apartments were to be reserved for members of the royal family in case of sickness, the monks having a great reputation as skilful leeches and doctors, a fact which accounts for this queen and for Elizabeth Woodville and other royal ladies being permitted to reside at times in a monastery inhabited by monks.

[8] Fosdi, vol. x., p. 354.

[9] See Holinshed’s Chronicles.

[10] These facts concerning the Brandons and the Bullens are derived from notes supplied me many years ago by the eminent Norfolk historian, my old and valued friend, A. Carthew, whose history of the hundred of Launditch is one of the most extraordinary volumes of its sort in existence.

[11] Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk, was the daughter and heiress of Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel and Surrey. Her first husband was Robert, Duke of Norfolk, who died in Venice; her second, Sir Gerald Ufflete. A year after his death she took, for a third husband, Sir Robert Goushall, by whom she had a daughter who became the wife of Sir Robert Wingfield of Letheringham; it is this lady’s second daughter, Elizabeth, who married Sir William Brandon, the grandfather of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk.

[12] Sir Henry Bruyn was a son of Sir Maurice Bruyn and of Elizabeth Radford.

[13] Elizabeth Darcy was the daughter of Sir Richard Darcy and Alice Fitzlangley, daughter and heiress of Henry Fitzlangley.

[14] Cott. Coll. Julius, vols. ii. and vi.

[15] The origin of this Lady Mortimer, who, for her sins and sorrows, yielded at a mature age to the blandishments of the very youthful Charles Brandon, has hitherto baffled the researches of historians. Quite by chance the writer discovered her identity. Happening one day to turn over the pages of Blomefield’s invaluable History of Norfolk, under the heading “Inglethorpe” in the Lynn district, he found, included in the pedigree of the ancient family which gives its name to this manor, that of the Lady Mortimer. It appears that Sir Edmond de Bellasis, Lord of Inglethorpe or Ingaldesthorpe, who died, seized of that manor, in the thirty-sixth year of Henry V’s reign, was the last of his line. He had, by his wife, the Lady Joan de Boase, a daughter and heiress, Isabel, who married John Nevill, Marquis Montagu or Montacute, brother to the famous “Kingmaker,” Richard Nevill, Earl of Warwick. This lady had two sons and five daughters. Her eldest son died in infancy, and the second, George, eventually followed the fortunes of his uncle, the Earl of Warwick, and rose, under Edward IV, to be Duke of Bedford, but was deprived of this title and of his estates by Richard III. He died without issue, bequeathing what remained of his fortune amongst his five sisters, one of whom, the Lady Margaret Nevill, married Sir John Mortimer, who, dying on the field of battle at Bosworth without issue, left her very richly dowered. Being considerably over forty when Charles Brandon was in his nineteenth year (it will be remembered that he was a mere child at the time of the battle of Bosworth), she fell a victim to the youth’s fascinations, and married him, to the amazement of the Venetian ambassador, who comments upon the affair in a note to his government, saying: “In this country [England] young men marry old ladies for their money, and here, for instance, is the Duke of Suffolk, who, at nineteen, married a lady, for her wealth, in whose house he dwelt, and who is old enough to be his grandmother.” This Lady Mortimer had a sister, the Lady Lucy Nevill, who married Sir Anthony Browne, governor of Calais, and who was the mother of that Anne Browne, to whom Brandon was betrothed at the time of his marriage with the Lady Mortimer. To add to the confusion, it seems that Brandon’s grandmother, Elizabeth Wingfield, had a youngest sister who married Robert Mortimer, brother to the above-named Sir John, and was therefore sister-in-law to the Lady Margaret Mortimer and Brandon’s great-aunt. These alliances, at a time when not only consanguinity, but spiritual affinity, was taken into consideration in matters matrimonial, rendered it exceedingly easy for certain thoughtlessly undertaken marriages to be annulled by the ecclesiastical tribunals.

There is in this pedigree another curious fact which tells indirectly upon the tragic history of the three sisters Grey, since it proves that there existed a connecting link between the Brandons and the Greys as far back as the beginning of the fifteenth century. The Lady Joan, widow of the last Lord Inglethorpe, married the first Lord Grey de Ruthen, and thereby became the immediate ancestress of that Henry Grey who married Brandon’s daughter by the French queen, the Lady Frances, and was the father of the three unfortunate sisters, Jane, Katherine and Mary Grey. This connection very probably led to the choice of Henry Grey as consort for the Lady Frances Brandon, Mary Tudor’s eldest daughter.

[16] Reginald de la Pole, head of this great house, was beheaded on June 30, 1513, for an alleged treasonable correspondence with his brother, then in the service of Louis XII, who, it was said, had threatened to assist in placing the “heir of the White Rose” (Perkin Warbeck) upon the English throne.

[17] Other lands and mansions assigned to Charles Brandon from time to time were: the manors of Austin’s and Gerard’s in the parish of Darsham (Suffolk), given at the Dissolution; Leiston Abbey (Suffolk), granted in 1536—it is said that the patronage of this abbey had been in the Brandon family for generations, but Charles exchanged it with the Crown for Henham Hall; properties at Laxfield and Middleton in Suffolk, attached to Leiston Abbey, granted to Brandon at the Dissolution; the Priory of St. Mary of Mendham (Suffolk), which came to Brandon through his fourth wife, Catherine, Lady Willoughby of Eresby, she being lineally descended from a sister of Sir William de Ufford, on whom it had been settled—Brandon conveyed it to one Richard Freston for an annual rent of forty pounds; the estate of Combs, which was an inheritance in the right of Catherine, Lady Willoughby, and eventually passed to her second husband, Richard Bertie, Esq.; Haughley Castle, manor and estate (Suffolk), an apanage of the de la Poles; and Cavenham, granted to Suffolk on the attainder of the Duke of Buckingham. Strange to say, Suffolk rarely visited any of his numerous castles and manor-houses. He lived in London. His favourite country house was Westhorpe Hall; but he died at Guildford Castle, which did not belong to him. The estate in Southwark came to him in 1502 on the death of his uncle Thomas, who had inherited it in his turn from his grandfather, who died in 1497. Charles so enlarged the house that it became a palace, second only in size and magnificence to the royal palace at Kennington. These facts prove—the majority of the historians of London to the contrary notwithstanding—that Suffolk Place was not a gift to Brandon from the king, but an inheritance from his forefathers.

[18] British Museum, Titus B.I. 142; also, the Chronique de Calais, 71.

[19] See the dowager’s own narrative in the Chronique de Calais.

[20] Mary openly renounced her contract with Prince Charles of Castile on July 30, 1514, at Wanstead, in the presence of Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, Brandon, and the Bishops of Lincoln, Winchester and Durham.

[21] Louis’s queen, Anne of Brittany, had died, “utterly lamented,” on January 9, 1514.

[22] Louis himself told the English ambassadors that “he was a sickly body, and not fond of having curious eyes about him.” Peter Martyr says he suffered from elephantiasis and bore signs of premature senility. See Fleming’s Chronicles; the Calendar of State Papers; and Peter Martyr’s Epistles, 541.

[23] Mary, however, with the kindness of heart which characterized her, saw that they eventually obtained some recognition of their services. According to documents in the French archives, her goldsmith, one William Verner, of Fleet Street, London, was ordered to prepare certain jewelry, to the value of six hundred gold crowns, to be disbursed as gifts to the impecunious gentlewomen dismissed in France. Amongst these valuable presents were a polished ruby and an emerald set in a gold cross, value two hundred écus de soleil; a diamond and sapphire set in a necklace, value three hundred crowns; and a table diamond worth one hundred crowns. The gems were to be worn at court, in order that all might see that the ladies had not been defrauded of their just dues.

[24] This Lady Boleyn is frequently described as the Lady Anne Boleyn who became Queen of England and died on the scaffold; but this is a popular error. Anne Boleyn was at this time in attendance on Queen Claude of France, and the Lady Anne Boleyn, her aunt, has been identified as the Lady Boleyn who was in attendance upon Mary at the time of her marriage with the French king. She was the wife of Sir William Boleyn and daughter of the Earl of Pembroke.

[25] British Museum, Caligula, D. vi. 192.

[26] On October 13, 1514, Louis presented his queen with the already mentioned ruby valued at 10,000 marks.

Mary was endowed by Letters Patent (Abbeville, October 8, 1514) with the town and castlery of Caynone and its appurtenances, the castles of Saintonge, de Pezenas, etc. (R.O. Rymer xiii. 459.)

[27] This beautiful specimen of a Gothic palace of the fourteenth century was the town residence of the abbots of Cluny, and was lent to the queen dowager by the abbot of that day. The noble old building is still standing, and converted into a museum of mediæval art.

[28] Queen Claude is said to have introduced greengages into northern France. They are still called prunes de la Reine Claude.

[29] State Papers, Domestic Series, Henry VIII, vols. i. and ii.

[30] Ambassades françaises (Angleterre) sous François I (Henri VIII). Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.

[31] “When,” says Suffolk, “I came to Paris, the queen was in hand with me the day after. She said ‘she must be short with me and show to me her pleasure and mind,’ and so she began, and showed how good a lady she was to me, and if I would be ordered by her, she verily would have none but me.” “An ever I come to England,” said the youthful dowager to Suffolk, “I never shall have you, and therefore plainly an you marry me not now, I will never have you nor never come into England.” Suffolk replied, “You say that but to prove me withal.” “I would but you knew well,” answered Mary, “at your coming to Paris how it was shown to me.” “I asked her,” continued Suffolk, “what that was?” “The best in France has been with me,” replied Mary. Here she clearly indicated Francis I, and from him she had intelligence which added to her excitement. “An I go to England,” continued she to Suffolk, “then I am sent to Flanders, and I would be torn to pieces rather than ever come there.” “And with that,” pursues Suffolk, “she weeped as never I saw woman so weep.”

[32] For this remarkable correspondence see Cott. Col. (British Museum), Caligula, D. vi.

[33] Some writers call it le Miroir de Naples, but in the list of gems taken by Charles VIII (Neapolitan archives), it figures as La Stella di Napoli. Where is it now? The “Mirror,” or “Star,” of Naples was valued at 30,000 crowns, and eighteen pearls at 10,000 crowns.

[34] The queen, in her deed of gift adds: “I give all my dote that was delivered with me, and also all such plate of gold and jewels as I shall have of my late husband’s. Over and besides this, I shall, rather than fail, give you as much yearly part of my dower as great a sum as shall stand with your will and pleasure.”

[35] The following are the headings to the lists of the property of Princess Mary Tudor, made at the time of her marriage with King Louis:—

“1. An inventory of date 12th October, 1514, of the jewelry, gold and silver plate, for the chapel, buffets and kitchen of the Princess Mary, delivered to Lewis XII, in presence of Thos. Bohier, Jacques de Beaume, and Henry Wyat, master of the jewel-house, made in the town of Abbeville, 10th and 11th Oct., 1514.” (Among the plate mentioned are several silver images of St. Thomas of Canterbury, St. Katharine, and other saints, and a silver-gilt mirror, garnished with H. & R. and red roses.)

“2. List of the furniture for the chapel, dresses, linen, tapestries, belonging to the Princess Mary, delivered to Lewis XII by Sir Andrew Windsor, master of the Wardrobe, before the same witnesses; made at Abbeville, 11th and 12th Oct., 1514.”

“3. Inventory of the horses, carriages, and their furniture, Abbeville, 12th Oct., 1514.”

There is also a minute of an agreement, in the Rolls Office, by which document Louis XII agrees to receive jewelry and furniture to the value of 200,000 crowns, as the dowry of Princess Mary, reserving certain conditions as to their restoration. What these conditions were we learn from letters of acquittance (R.O. Rymer xiii. 462) given on the delivery of Mary Queen of France, with her jewels, etc., of the 400,000 gold crowns promised as her dower by Henry VIII, provided that, in the case of restitution, the king and his heirs shall only be bound to restore what she brought with her into France, with the expenses of her passage. Subscribed, Abbeville, 13th August, 1514.

[36] An anonymous writer to Margaret of Savoy, in a letter dated April 9, 1514, says: “I think never man saw a more beautiful creature [than Mary], or one possessed of so much grace and sweetness.” Gerard de Pleine writes: “I assure you that she [Mary] is one of the most beautiful young women in the world. I think I never saw a more charming creature. She is very graceful. Her deportment in dancing and in conversation is as pleasing as you could desire. There is nothing gloomy or melancholy about her.... I assure you that she has been well educated.... I had imagined that she would have been very tall; but she is of middling height....” (Lettres de Louis XII, tome iv., p. 335; State Papers, 5203, p. 833.)

[37] Cavendish’s Life of Wolsey; also, a slightly different version, in Galt’s Life of Cardinal Wolsey, p. 164.

[38] In 1603, James I took a fancy to Theobalds Park at Cheshunt, the seat of the Cecils, where he stopped on his progress from Edinburgh to London to ascend the English throne, and exchanged Hatfield for Theobalds, where he died in 1625. Hatfield has ever since remained in the possession of the illustrious family of Cecil.

[39] The Lady Anne Boleyn above mentioned was not the lady who became famous as the second queen of Henry VIII, but her aunt, a daughter of the Earl of Pembroke and wife of Sir William Boleyn of Blickling Hall, Norfolk.

[40] Clement had been driven from Rome by the Spanish troops, and had taken refuge at Orvieto, in a ruinous palace. The envoys say “the furniture of his bed and all was not worth twenty nobles.”

[41] It is not at all improbable that this, the generally received version of what we should call the affaire Mortimer, is incorrect. Cokayne says she married, after her separation from Brandon, a gentleman named Downes—the Baronagium calls him Horn. In this case she was already out of court, and the action of Brandon and Wolsey for a papal absolute nullification of the former’s marriage was to make the position of the queen-duchess and her children entirely unassailable. (See the Baronagium Angl.; also, Brooke’s Catalogue, p. 141.) The third marriage of Lady Mortimer seems to have been overlooked by historians. Had Lady Mortimer’s marriage with Brandon been confirmed by the pope, both she and Brandon would have been liable to the charge of bigamy, and the succession to the throne claimed by the daughter of the queen-duchess by Brandon would have been ipso facto invalid.

[42] “The xiij day of January was bared at (Westminster) in sant Margerett parryche my lade Powes, (daughter) to the duke of Suffoke Charles Brandon, (with two) whytt branchys, xij torchys, and iij grett (tapers), with xij skochyons of armes.”

[43] Lady Monteagle, who bore her husband six children, died in 1544. Her husband, Thomas Stanley, succeeded his father as Viscount Monteagle, 1522, and was made K.B. at the Coronation of Anne Boleyn. His second wife was Helen Preston of Livens. (See Dugdale’s Baronagium, Machyn’s Diary, etc.) These dates prove conclusively that the lovely woman in the sketch by Holbein, inscribed “the Lady Monteagle,” is intended for the daughter of Charles Brandon, and is not the second Lady Monteagle, who was married long after Holbein’s death.

[44] Dugdale. Brandon was jeweller to Elizabeth, and there are numerous references to orders given him by the queen, for plate and jewelry.

[45] In the register of St. Mary Matfellon, Whitechapel, is the record of the burial of Richard Brandon, “a man out of Rosemary Lane.” The entry is dated June 2, 1649, and to it is appended a note to the effect that “this Richard Brandon is supposed to have cut off the head of Charles I.” This man is said to have confessed that he received thirty pounds for the job, which was paid him in half-crowns within an hour after the execution had taken place; he took an orange stuck with cloves, and a handkerchief, from the king’s pocket, and sold the former article to a gentleman for ten shillings. Richard Brandon was the son of Gregory Brandon, and claimed the office of headsman by inheritance. His first victim was the Earl of Strafford. In a very old MS. on armorial bearings, dated 1692, lately in the possession of the author, is the marginal note in an antique handwriting: “Charles Brandon, who was cousin to Queen Elizabeth, had an ill-begotten son Gregory, whose son Richard beheaded Charles I.”

[46] State Papers, Henry VIII, Domestic Series.

[47] Estby’s History of Bury St. Edmunds.

[48] Mary Tudor, Queen Dowager of France and Duchess of Suffolk, was buried in a magnificent alabaster monument in Bury St. Edmunds Abbey, which was destroyed at the Dissolution. Although the abbey church was blown up with gunpowder, the townspeople carried the coffin, containing the queen’s body, to the parish church, where it was reinterred near the high altar, and covered with some altar slabs brought from the desecrated abbey. The alabaster monument was destroyed. In 1734 the remains of Mary Tudor were unearthed and her coffin was opened. The body, that of a large woman, with a profusion of golden hair adhering to the skull, was found to be in a perfect state of preservation. It was re-buried close to the right of the altar, where a modern inscription on a marble tablet, let into the wall, may still be read.

[49] There is an interesting account of the death of these “noble imps,” as contemporary chroniclers call them, in the Gentleman’s Magazine for Nov. 1825, vol. xcv. ii. 200.

[50] For an account of this visit, see State Papers, p. 453, a dispatch from the Earl of Sussex dated December 31, 1534. Suffolk had been to Bugden earlier in the year, in May, and had behaved with much unnecessary brutality.

[51] A chandler, who also exercised the calling of surgeon, opened the body of Queen Katherine, and found the heart black and dry, as he informed the Bishop of Llandaff; proving, although he was unaware of the fact, that she died of what is called melanotic sarcoma, or cancer of the heart.

[52] The venerated image was again destroyed during the French Revolution, only the left hand being saved; this is still carried in procession through the streets of Boulogne on August 14.

[53] There is a fine drawing of this lady, by Holbein, at Windsor Castle.

[54] Katherine, Lady Willoughby d’Eresby, was the fourth wife of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and step-grandmother to Lady Katherine Grey.

[55] The Marquis of Dorset was created Duke of Suffolk early in the reign of Edward VI, and shortly after the death of his wife’s two step-brothers, both successively dukes of Suffolk, who died within a few hours of each other, as already stated, in 1551.

[56] Aylmer, however, knew Lady Katherine Grey well, for in one of his letters from Italy he desires to be remembered to her. We may, therefore, conclude that he had at least some share in her education; but whereas Jane Grey’s calligraphy is very fine, for the period, Katherine’s is nearly illegible, and her letters are not well expressed.

[57] It was written by Lady Jane, on the evening of Sunday, February 11 (the night before her execution), on the blank sheets in her favourite Greek Testament. This may now be seen in the British Museum.

[58] An allusion to the parable of the wise and foolish virgins.

[59] The next few lines are illegible, having evidently been blotted out by the writer’s tears.

[60] For a detailed account of Henry VIII’s will, see The Nine-days’ Queen, by Richard Davey, p. 109.

[61] The original copy is still preserved in the British Museum, bound up in a small volume of MSS., temp. Mary I. “On the outer cover is written, in red ink, ‘Mariæ Reginæ,’ showing this to be the copy presented to the Queen.”

[62] There is a very beautiful picture in the King’s collection, representing the mother of this young lady.

[63] Blanche Parry was the widow of Sir Thomas Parry, who succeeded Mr. Saintlow as comptroller of the queen’s household. She was a palmist of considerable skill; and an ancient black-letter volume on Palmistry, containing a great many very curious plates, is still in the library at Charlcote Hall. It is said by tradition to have belonged to Blanche Parry: if so, she “told the hand” exactly as it is “told” by the occult sisterhood of Bond Street and other fashionable parts of London in our time. Mrs. Parry was also a crystal-gazer.

[64] Dr. Dee, who was born in 1527, was a man of superior attainments, and a clever mathematician. He took his degree as Master of Arts in 1548 at Cambridge. Being suspected as a sorcerer, he left England in the same year, but returned in the reign of Edward VI, who took a great fancy to him. Under Mary, he was imprisoned for attempting the queen’s life by witchcraft. After Elizabeth ascended the throne, he became such a favourite with her that she sent her own doctors to him when he was ill; and she also despatched him to investigate the recently discovered American territory. In 1583 he went to live in Bohemia with a Polish nobleman, who was likewise suspected of necromancy, and the two succeeded in imposing on a great many people on the Continent. Dee eventually returned to England, was made Chancellor of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and died at Mortlake in 1608. He possessed a magic mirror in which Elizabeth placed great faith and which she frequently consulted.

[65] See for particulars of the life of Amy Robsart, Mr. George Adlard’s interesting volume, Amye Robsart and the Earl of Leycester, John Russell Smith, London, 1870. Mr. Adlard had not access to the Simancas Papers, and was therefore not aware of the rumours rife in London at the time of the unfortunate lady’s accident or murder. Amy Robsart did not, as Scott tells us, belong to a Devonshire family, but to a very ancient Norfolk house.

[66] The scheme is succinctly recounted in a letter from Sir Thomas Challoner, then English ambassador at Madrid, to Cecil, which will be found in the State Papers (Foreign Series) for the reign of Elizabeth. “King Philip II,” he says, “is so jealous of the anticipated power of France, by the alliance of young Francis the Dauphin with the Queen of Scotland, and her claims to the Crown of England, that he positively contemplates stealing Lady Katherine Grey out of the realm, and marrying her to his son, Don Carlos, or some other member of his family, and setting up her title against that of Mary Stuart, as the true heiress of England. Lady Katherine will probably be glad to go, being most uncomfortably situated in the English court with the queen, who cannot well abide the sight of her, and neither the duchess her mother nor her step-father love her, and her uncle cannot abide to hear of her, so that she lives, as it were, in great despair. She has spoken very arrogant and unseemly words in the hearing of the queen and others standing by. Hence it is thought that she could be enticed away if some trusty person speak with her.”

[67] It will be remembered that these events took place late in 1558, or early in 1559, before Lady Frances’s death.

[68] Durham House, Strand, at one time the town residence of the Bishops of Durham, was ceded to the famous Duke of Northumberland; and Lady Jane Grey was married, and Lady Katherine betrothed, in the private chapel. It afterwards passed into the possession of the Archbishops of York, under Mary, and was finally leased by Elizabeth to the Spanish Embassy. The name of Durham Place and Durham Court, Strand, until lately marked the site of this at one time magnificent mansion.

[69] It was even rumoured about the court that the marriage had actually taken place in secret. Quadra, writing to the King of Spain under date November 20, 1560, says: “They say [Robert Dudley] was married to the queen in the presence of his brother and two ladies of the chamber.”

[70] Hertford mentioned at his trial that he “got up at six o’clock” on this occasion.

[71] This fashion evidently came from Germany, “froze” being an anglicized version of “frau’s.”

[72] The full text of this letter, which will be found in the State Papers for the reign of Elizabeth, is as follows:—

“Good Master Secretary,

“Hearing a great bruit that my Lady Katherine Grey is in the Tower, and also that she should say she is married already to my son, I could not choose but trouble you with my cares and sorrows thereof. And although I might, upon my son’s earnest and often protesting to me the contrary, desire you to be an humble suitor on my behalf, that her tales might not be credited before my son did answer, yet, instead thereof, my first and chief suit is that the Queen’s Majesty will think and judge of me in this matter, according to my desert and meaning. And if my son have so much forgotten Her Highness calling him to honour, and so much overshot his bounden duty, and so far abused Her Majesty’s benignity, yet never was his mother privy or consenting thereunto. I will not fill my letter with how much I have schooled and persuaded him to the contrary, nor yet will I desire that youth and fear may help, excuse, or lessen his fault; but only that Her Highness will have that opinion of me as of one that, neither for child nor friend, shall willingly neglect the duty of a faithful subject. And to conserve my credit with Her Majesty, good Master Secretary, stand now my friend, that the wildness of mine unruly child do not minish Her Majesty’s favour towards me. And thus so perplexed with this discomfortable rumour I end, not knowing how to proceed nor what to do therein. Therefore, good Master Secretary, let me understand some comfort of my grief from the Queen’s Majesty, and some counsel from yourself, and so do leave you to God.

“Your assured friend to my power,

“Ann Somerset.”

[73] Parrots and monkeys were apparently favourite domestic pets at the end of the sixteenth century—the Duchess of Northumberland (the widow of John Dudley), for instance, left her grey parrot to the Duchess of Alva; in itself a slight “sign of the times,” indicating how ideas of travel were gradually spreading. The animals were probably brought from the north of Africa, Algeria, Morocco, etc.

[74] These were: Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector, the infant’s grandfather, beheaded in 1552; Henry, Duke of Suffolk, his maternal grandfather (1554); Lady Jane Grey, his aunt (1554); Lord Seymour of Sudeley, his grandfather’s brother (1549); the Duke of Northumberland, his great-uncle (1553); and finally, Lord Thomas Grey, another great-uncle (1554).

[75] “Out of the fifteen or sixteen of them (i.e. members of the council) that there are, there were nearly as many different opinions about the succession to the Crown. It would be impossible to please them all, but I am sure in the end they would form two or three parties and that the Catholic party would have on its side the majority of the country, although I do not know whether the Catholics themselves would be able to agree, as some would like the Queen of Scots and others Lady Margaret [Lennox].”—Quadra to the Duchess of Parma, October 25, 1562; see Calendar of Spanish State Papers, Elizabeth, vol. i.

[76] Quadra to the King of Spain, October 25, 1562.

[77] Spanish State Papers, vol. i. p. 311.

[78] Spanish State Papers, vol. i. p. 321.

[79] Sir John Mason, who had been at one time English Ambassador to the court of the Emperor Charles V, was one of Elizabeth’s privy councillors.

[80] Quadra to the King of Spain, November 30, 1562. Spanish State Papers, Elizabeth, vol. i.

[81] This order only exists in the State Papers as a draft in Cecil’s handwriting. The full text of it is as follows:—

“Rt. Trusty and Well-beloved, We greet you well. Whereas we be informed that the (plague) [the words in brackets are crossed out] places near that our Tower are much visited with the plague, and yourself not without great fear that the same may enter into our said Tower, we (have thought meet upon earnest suit made unto us to license) are contented the lady Catharyne and ye Earl of Hertford for ye time of this danger of the plague shall be placed in some other several and convenient places out of ye Tower. Wherefore (we will that you shall let either of them know of this our contentation that the lady Catharyn shall be removed to And for the places of their abode) we will that the lady Catharyne shall be removed to ye house of Ld. John Grey in Essex, there to remain (within his house) with him and his wife during our pleasure; and ye Earl of Hertford to be removed to his mother’s house in Middlesex, there also to remain during our pleasure; and for their behaviour our pleasure is that ye shall command them in our name under pain of our indignation and such fine as we shall please to assess, that neither of them shall depart from ye said places without our leave, (neither attempt to have any converse together) otherwise than to take ye air near to ye same and not without the company of his mother or Newdegate. (Endorsed) 21 Aug. 1563. From the Queen’s Majesty to the Lieutenant of the Tower for the removal of the Lady Katherine and the Earl of Hertford.”

[82] Lord John Grey, the Duke of Suffolk’s brother, had himself been imprisoned in the Tower for eight months in 1554, for his alleged share in Suffolk’s rebellion in favour of Lady Jane Grey. His was a courtesy title, and he was sometimes called “Sir” John. Pirgo was granted to him by the queen on April 24, 1559, but he evidently found some difficulty in keeping it up, for shortly afterwards he wrote to Cecil begging him “to acquaint the queen with his embarrassed circumstances, as they affect her former grant.”

[83] It is a curious fact that the grandmother of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria, whom we have had occasion to mention in these pages, was of the family of “Nudigate,” her brother being that Sebastian Newdigate, a monk of the Charterhouse, London, who was executed under Henry VIII for denying the royal supremacy. The Duchess of Somerset’s husband, Sergeant Francis Newdigate, was of this same family. These Newdigates had a fine house in Charterhouse Square, which they occasionally let, furnished, for the season to Lord Latimer, Katherine Parr’s third husband.

[84] This list runs as follows, the disparaging comments, here printed in brackets, being those written by Warner himself:—

“Stuff delivered in August, 1561, by the Queen’s commandments and the Lord Chamberlain’s warrants, by William Bentley, out of the Wardrobe in the Tower, to Sir Edward Warner, Knight, then levetenant of the Tower, for the necessary furniture of Lady Katherine Grey’s chamber.

“First: six pieces of tapestry to hang her chamber. (‘Very old and coarse.’) Item: a spavier (?) for a bed of changeable damask. (‘All to-broken and not worth tenpence.’) One silk quilt of red striped with gold. (‘Stark naught.’) Two carpets of Turkey matting. (‘The wool is all worn.’) Item: one chair of cloth of gold with crimson velvet, with two pommels of copper gilt, and the Queen’s arms in the back. (‘Nothing worth.’) Item: one cushion of purple velvet. (‘An owld cast thing.’) Item: two footstools covered with green velvet. (‘Owld stools for King Henry’s feet.’) One bed, one bolster, and a counterpane, for her women. (‘A mean bed.’)”

It is not improbable that the chair of cloth of gold, of which Warner speaks so scathingly, was the “Throne” used by Katherine’s sister, Lady Jane, during her nine-days’ reign.

[85] The text of this letter is as follows:—

“Good cousin Cecil, after my very hearty commendations to my good cousin, your wife and you, with like thanks for your great friendship showed me in this my lord’s deliverance and mine, with the obtaining of the Queen’s Majesty’s most gracious favour thus farforth extended towards us, I cannot but acknowledge myself bounden and beholding unto you therefor. And as I am sure you doubt not of mine own dear lord’s good-will for the requital thereof to the uttermost of his power, so I beseech you, good cousin Cecill, make the like account of me during life to the uttermost of my power; beseeching your farther friendship for the obtaining of the Queen’s Majesty’s most gracious pardon and favour towards me, which, with upstretched hands and downbent knees, from the bottom of my heart most humbly I crave. Thus resting in prayer for the Queen’s Majesty’s long reign over us, the forgiveness of mine offence, the short [speedy] enjoying of [the company of] my own dear lord and husband, with assured hope through God’s grace and your good help and my Lord Robert [Dudley] for the enjoying of the Queen’s Highness’s favour in that behalf, I bid you, my own good cousin, most heartily farewell. From Pyrgo the thred of September.

“Your assured friend and cousin to my small power,

“Katheryne Hartford.”

“To my very loving cousin Sir William Cicyll, Knight, Chief Secretary to the Queen’s Majesty, give these.”—[“Mine own dear lord,” of whom she makes mention, is, of course, her husband, Hertford.]

[86] The letter to Cecil is worded as follows:—

“What the long want of the Queen’s Majesty’s accustomed favour towards me hath bred in this miserable and wasted body of mine, God only knoweth, as I daily more and more, to the torment and wasting thereof, do otherwise feel than well able to express; which if it should any long time thus continue, I rather wish of God shortly to be buried in the faith and fear of Him, than in this continual agony to live. As I have written unto my Lord Robert, so, good cousin Ceycell, do I unto you. I must confess I never felt what the want of my Prince’s favour was before now, which by your good means and the rest of my very good lords, once obtained, I shall not require of any of you, if it fall, through my default, to be means for the restitution thereof, so mindful, God willing, shall I be, not to offend Her Highness. Thus desiring the continuance of your friendship, I most heartily bid you farewell, good cousin Cecil, praying you to make my hearty commendations to my cousin your wife. From Pirgo, the xiii of December.

“Your poor cousin and assured friend to my small power,

“Katheryne Hartford.”

[87] This part of the letter (which is in the Lansdowne MSS. No. 7, fol. 110) is as follows:—

“But because you shall truly know what charges my lord [Hertford] is at, and hath been at, with my lady [Katherine], since her coming hither, I have herein enclosed true inventory, besides my lady’s whole furniture of her and hers, with hangings, bedding, sheets, drapery and plate, for neither she nor her little boy hath one piece of plate to drink, eat, or keep anything, but of me; which, though it cannot be much, yet is as much as I have.... I learn from Hanworth that he [Hertford] hath been very plain with Newdigate, since which Lady Katherine hath received twenty pounds, and been promised to have beds and sheets sent to her, howbeit they have not yet come; she had nothing to send any friend at New Year’s tide, which induced Lady Clinton to give Lady Grey a pair of silk hose, to present to Lady Knowles in Lady Katherine’s name, as if from her.” Lord John goes on to say that he thinks Newdigate ought to have told Cecil how unprovided she was when she first arrived at Pirgo: “for the inventory of all she had when he left her here I could send to you, but I am ashamed, for that it was so bare.”

[88] The inventory includes the following items:—

“Two coats for Mr. Thomas [Katherine’s baby, then about eleven months], whereof the one is russet damask, the other of crimson velvet. Of white cloth to make him petticoats, two yards. Of red cloth to make him like petticoats, two yards. Velvet caps for him, two. A russet taffeta hat for him, laid on with silver cord.... Two pairs of fine sheets for my Lady Katherine, of two breadths. Black velvet to make a gown for my Lady Katherine, bound with sables, ten yards. Russet velvet to make a gown and a kirtle. Black and russet lace to the gown and kirtle. Damask to make a nightgown for my Lady. Crimson satin to make a petticoat. A petticoat of crimson velvet. A velvet hood for my Lady. Two pairs of black silk hose. Black cloth to make a cloak. Two yards of cambric to make ruffs, plattes, coverchiefs and handkerchiefs, six ells. Linen to make smocks, ten ells. Silver dishes and saucers for her use. The charge of weekly rate for her board, 46s. 8d.; for her child, 13s. 4d.; for his nurse, 6s. 8d.; her three ladies, each 6s. 8d.; for her two men-servants, 5s. each; the same for her laundress and the widow that washeth the child’s clothes.”

[89] The receipt in question runs as follows:—

“January 24, 1564. Received by me, John Woode, steward to the Right Honourable my L(ord) John Graie, at the hands of George Ireland, for fourteen weeks’ diet unto my Lady of Hartford and her train, after six pounds sixteen shillings and eight pence the week, in full payment of all her Ladyship’s said diet unto this day, the sum of four score fifteen pounds thirteen shillings four pence on, besides 57li 4s. 9d. which I received of Mr. Edward Stanhope in full satisfaction of her Ladyship’s diet until the 17th of October last. In witness whereof I have here under subscribed my name this 23rd of January 1563 (n.s. 1564) et Anno Regni Regine E. sext.

| li | s | d
95 | 13 | 4
by me John Woode
s. | d.
My Lady | 66 | 8
Her son | 13 | 4 | li
| —— | 4
William Hampton | 5 | 0
Her nurse | 6 | 8
Mrs. Woodeforde | 6 | 8
Mrs. Isham | 6 | 8
My Lady’s groom | 5 | 0
Nowell her man | 5 | 0
My Lady’s two launders | 10 | 0
Page | 6 | 8 | | s | d
Lackey | 5 | 0 | | 56 | 8 | li | s | d
| —— | | —— | 6 | 16 | 8

“Recd. of Mr. George Ireland the 23rd of January 1563 (1564) which I stand to account for at our next reckoning, 4li 11s. 8d. by me John Woode.

“(Endorsed) Copies of my Lady’s diet at Pirgo last paid for 14 weeks. 23 Jan. 1563 (1564).”

[90] The text of this letter is as follows:—

“I find myself not a little bound unto your Lordship for the friendly welcoming and honourable using of my Lady my mother since her now being at the Court, as also your well-tried and goodly noble furthering her long and troublesome suit for us, to our most gracious Queen. Wherein, as always, so now, I still crave your especial and most humble means of desire to Her Majesty, that we may be unburdened of Her Highness’s intolerable displeasure, the great weight whereof hath sufficiently taught us never again to offend so merciful a Princess. And so I beseech you, my good Lord, now on our behalf, who pray not for earthly things so much as the comfort of her too long wasted favour. My trust is God will bless your Lordship’s travails with the fruit thereof, and by your means, wherein, next Him, we only depend, turn the sorrowful mourning of us, Her Majesty’s poor captives, into a countershine comfort, for which I rest in continual prayer. And so I take my leave, beseeching Almighty God long to preserve her, and make me so happy as to enjoy the company of so dear a lord and friend as I have, and do find of your Lordship.

“From Hanworth, the xviii of March, 1563.”—State Papers, vol. xxxiii. fol. 27.

[91] State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. xxx. fol. 77.

[92] Lansdowne MSS. No. 7, article 55.

[93] Guzman de Silva, writing to the King of Spain, states that the book was written “in the interests of Katherine in the matter of the succession, and mainly consisted of two points: first, as to whether King Henry’s will was valid or not, as in it this Katherine is appointed amongst others as his successor; and secondly, the question of the Scotch Queen being an alien.”—Spanish State Papers, Elizabeth, vol. i. p. 427.

The validity of Henry VIII’s will was questioned on the ground that the king did not sign it with his own hand, but by means of a stamp. See The Nine-days’ Queen (R. Davey), pp. 109, 110.

[94] Gosfield Hall, a fortified brick building, encircling a quadrangular court, is two miles from Halstead in Essex and forty-four from London. It stood in the midst of a pleasant park of a hundred and seven acres, having a lake.

[95] State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. xxxix. fol. 70.

[96] This phrase would tempt one to think that the scheme for abducting the Lady Katherine to Spain may not, after all, have been altogether abandoned, even as late as this, or that some other plot for her sudden seizure was feared.

[97] Spanish State Papers, vol. i. pp. 618, 637.

[98] This letter runs as follows:—

“And, as I hear, the Lady Matravers her [Lady Wentworth’s] daughter does not mind to keep the house [Gosfield], but is better disposed to sojourn in some convenient place for her Ladyship, So that if I should be thought meet to have the charge of the said Lady Catherin, I must remove her from thence unto my house, which is nothing meet for many respects for such a personage. I have no wife to take the charge of my house, the want whereof hath occasioned me to lie most part at the said Mr. Wentworthe’s, whose kinsman I was. My house and provision is neither within or without furnished meet to receive such a charge, [and] my business is most times such, by the occasion of the great charge of children I have, that I am much enforced to be from my house. Sir, I do not deal thus plainly and truly with you for that I am loth to take the charge of her Ladyship (if I were meet for the same) for any misliking I have of her or hers, for I must for truth’s sake confess, as one that hath had good experience of her Ladyship’s behaviour here, that it hath been very honourable and quiet, and her Ladyship’s servants very orderly....” The letter, which is addressed to Cecil (here written “Cyssell”), is dated October 3, 1567; and, together with the next three warrants or letters above mentioned, will be found in vol. xliv. of the State Papers for the reign of Elizabeth.

[99] By a curious error this order is endorsed: “The Queen to Sr. Owen Hopton to receive the custody of Lady Mary Grey.”

[100] The text of the letter is as follows:—

“My duty most humbly remembered, may it like your Honour to be advertised, that the sixth of this month I received the Queen Her Highness’ letters touching the charges and custody of the Lady Katerine [sic], her Highness’ pleasure wherein I shall at all points endeavour myself to accomplish as one that dare not presume to make suit to the contrary, although I have great cause. For it may please you to understand that I was presently prepared with my wife and small household to lay at our little house in Ipswich and have disposed all things touching my provision in such sort as I must be now driven speedily to alter the same, and to rest at my poor head-house in Suffolk, for that this house and place in Ipswich is in all respects unfit for the charge now imposed upon me.”

[101] State Papers, Elizabeth, vol. xlvi., fol. 12.

[102] A room known as “Lady Katherine’s,” is still shown at Cockfield Hall. Yoxford, where the house is situated, is in Suffolk, about four miles north of Saxmundham, and five from the sea.

[103] State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. xlvi., fol. 1.

[104] “She is now come to such weakness that she hath kept her bed these three days, being not able to rise, and taketh little sustenance, and the worst is she standeth in fear of herself [i.e. fears that she will die].”

[105] British Museum, Harleian MSS., No. xxxix., fol. 380.

[106] The accounts sent in by Sir Owen Hopton to the Exchequer are divided into three bills, the first for the expenses of Lady Katherine’s keep before her death; the second for the funeral expenses; and the third for the heralds’ fees.

The first, endorsed “The charges of the Lady Catherine and of her servants until her funeral at Sir Owen Hopton’s,” begins with the cost of her transport from Gosfield, already detailed, and continues:—

“Itm’; for the diet of the Lady Katherine and the board of her ordinary servants, by the time and space of fourteen weeks, at 5 li. the week, 70 li.

“Itm’; for the board of the Lady Katherine’s ordinary servants sithens her departure [i.e. since her death], by the time of three weeks and three days at 33s. 4d. the week, 6 li.

“Itm’; for sending to London three times while the Lady Katherine was sick, 3 li.

“Itm’; for the charge of Doctor Simondes and his man and his horse at Cockfield twice (left blank).

“Itm’; for my own charge two times coming to London (also blank).”

The charges for the funeral, exclusive of the embalming, are as follows:—

“Imprimis; for four meals and two nights’ lodging of all the mourners, being to the number of 77, for their horsemeat during that time, 40 li. Besides a great number of comers to see the solemnity of that burial.

“Itm’; paid to the singing men at the same funeral, 20s.

“Itm’; paid for the watchers of the Lady Katherine, 40s.”

By a warrant of February 6 (1568) the Exchequer was ordered to pay Sir Owen £76 for the heralds’ expenses at “the interment and burial of our cousin the Lady Katheryne lately deceased, daughter of our entirely beloved cousin the Lady Frances Duchess of Suffolk.” The most interesting of these expenses are the following:—

“For the liveries of one herald, 5 yards at 16s. the yard, 4 li.

“For the herald’s fee, 3 li. 6s. 8d., & for his transportation hither and back again at 6d. a mile, 3 li. 7s.

“For Mr. Garter’s fee, 10 li.

“To the painter, for a great banner of arms, 50s.

“For 6 great scutcheons on paste paper, 3 li.

“For 2 dozen of scutcheons of paper in metal for garnishing of the house and the church, and 6 dozen of paper scutcheons in colours, 6 li. 8s.

“Itm’; paid to the tailors for working of the cloth & other things upon the hearse, 20s.”

In these expenses, Hopton expended the whole £76; and by a warrant to the Exchequer dated March 10, 1568, order was given to pay him £140 “for the board of our cousin the Lady Katheryne and of her servants while she was in his keeping, and for charges for her coming thither, as also for money laid out by him for household charges during her sickness and belonging thereunto.”

(These documents will be found in the State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. xlvi., fols. 23, 24, 48, 49.)

[107] It has been said by recent historians, and notably by Burke, that Lady Katherine reverted to the Catholic Church before her death. So far as the present writer has been able to ascertain, there exists no documentary nor any contemporary evidence to support this theory. The burial service cannot have been any but that of the Book of Common Prayer, seeing all Roman Catholic rites were prohibited in England at this time. The Manner of Her Departing, whilst it expressly states that she read, in her last hours, the Prayers for the Visitation of the Sick in the English Book of Common Prayer, curiously enough, does not say whether any minister of religion was present at her deathbed.

[108] Hertford was even made lord lieutenant of the counties of Somerset and Wilts, and of the cities of Bristol, Bath, Wells and Salisbury.

[109] Mr. W. L. Rutton’s translation of the very crude Latin inscription on this tomb runs as follows:—

“Sacred to the Memory of Edward, Earl of Hertford, Baron Beauchamp, Son and Heir of the most illustrious Prince, Edward, Duke of Somerset, Earl of Hertford, Viscount Beauchamp and Baron of St. Maur [Seymour], Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Uncle and Governor of King Edward VI, the most worthy Protector of his Kingdoms, Lordships and Dependencies, Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Lord Lieutenant, Lord Treasurer and Earl Marshal of England, Governor and Captain of the Islands of Guernsey and Jersey: by Anne his wife, of most illustrious and ancient descent.

“And also of his most dearly beloved wife, Catherine, Daughter and heiress of Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, by his Duchess, Frances, daughter and heiress of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, by Mary, sister of Henry VIII, Queen of France, and thus by descent the great-granddaughter of Henry VII. Incomparable consorts [Katherine and Hertford], who experienced in the vicissitudes of changing fortune, at length, in the concord which marked their lives, here rest together.

“She, a woman of exceptional quality, of honour, piety, beauty and constancy, the best and most illustrious, not only of her own, but every age. Piously and peacefully she expired, the 22nd of January 1563. [A complete error.]

“He, A man of perfect integrity, a pattern of nobility, a guardian of morals and early training, of eloquence, prudence, blamelessness and gravity, nor less distinguished by virtue and learning than by the lustre of noble birth, as one who was associated in his youthful studies with Prince Edward, son of King Henry VIII. An ardent champion of religion; the never-failing maintainer of right and justice; of consummate fidelity and influence in administration of the provinces committed to him. Plenipotentiary for James, King of Great Britain, in the legation to the Archduke and Duchess (of the Netherlands). Great in his munificence at home and abroad, and although of surpassing wealth, yet he did more largely abound in mental than in material opulence, nor ever did he exercise his power on the weakness of his dependants. Full of honours as of years, in his eighty-third year he yielded to Nature, the 6th of April 1621. By the heroine (of this epitaph) he had two sons.”

[110] Spanish State Papers, Elizabeth, vol. ii. Letter dated February 28, 1568.

[111] Spanish State Papers, Elizabeth, vol. ii., p. 249.

[112] Ibid. vol. ii., p. 229. Letter of Guerau de Spes to the King of Spain. He adds that “Cecil even proposed lately to call the eldest [son] the Duke of Somerset, which has not yet been decided upon.”

[113] It is remarkable that the official account of Katherine’s death makes no allusion to her final parting from her younger son, now five years old. He most certainly went with his mother to Cockfield Hall; but judging from the above quotation, was, on Lady Katherine’s death, handed over to the care of the queen’s attendants.

[114] British Museum, Additional MSS., 26, O 56b. Document entitled “Substance of Guaras’ Letters.”

[115] It is most unlikely that the queen had small-pox on both these occasions; probably this second malady was what would now be called chicken-pox.

[116] British Museum, Cottonian MSS., Galba, c. iv.

[117] Spanish State Papers, Elizabeth, vol. ii., p. 490.

[118] Sir Henry Killigrew, brother-in-law of the Marquis of Winchester. Needless to say, his attempt to obtain possession of Prince James, and moreover destroy him, came to nothing, despite that Killigrew was to offer heavy bribes to his guardians. These machinations were principally defeated by the astuteness of De Croc, the French Ambassador.

[119] British Museum, Additional MSS., 26, O 56b.

[120] See, for details of this marriage, the biography of Lady Katherine Grey.

[121] Probably the reason why Lady Jane, when she was despatching loving farewells to her father and Lady Katherine, her sister, did not send a message to Lady Mary, was that she deemed her too young to realize the situation. But it is strange that no mention of her should have been made in the letter to the Lady Katherine on the pages of Jane’s Greek Testament.

[122] The Water-gate was destroyed about 1808; it was very solidly built, and there was a great deal of difficulty in removing it.

[123] A picture of “Queen Elizabeth’s porter” at Hampton Court Palace probably represents Master Keyes.

[124] Amongst Keyes’s duties was the adjudication of all disputes and brawls amongst the palace servants, whom his attendants had the power of chastising, under his orders; but he had other offices of a more dignified nature. The State Papers contain a document, signed by the queen, and dated January 2, 1558, in which certain noblemen and gentlemen are urged to levy and arm their servants, to the number of fifty each, for the relief of Calais. These auxiliaries are to be sent to Dover, where they will be received by “Thomas Keyes, the Sergeant-Porter.”

[125] Mr. Knollys was the second son of Sir Francis Knollys and of Katherine Carey, Anne Boleyn’s niece, and therefore Elizabeth’s first cousin, as well as a relative of Mr. Keyes.

[126] In a letter of August 19, 1565; No. 102, fol. 62, in the Lansdowne MSS., British Museum.

[127] This is obscure; we do not know to what letter she alludes.

[128] This sum was derived from the estates of Ferrars-Groby and Bonville, of which, since they descended to the female heirs, she should have been co-heiress with her sister Katherine, had not Elizabeth, without the slightest justification (these lands did not come under the head of the Duke of Suffolk’s confiscated property), annexed the greater part of their income.

[129] State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. xxxvii., No. 11. Under date of August 20, 1565.

[130] State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. xxxvii., No. 13.

[131] State Papers, Elizabeth, Domestic Series, vol. xxxvii., No. 13, I.

[132] The fact that, as it would appear, Lady Mary had at some time or other used this identical piece of cloth as a cloth of state, to demonstrate her relationship to royalty, probably caused the dowager duchess to speak so disrespectfully of it.

[133] Queen Elizabeth was not then at Greenwich, being absent on one of her annual “progresses.”

[134] It is impossible to say whether this is a mere figure of speech, or if his family was actually imprisoned with him.

[135] As Mr. Stokes did not die until November 30, 1586, Lady Mary, who predeceased him, never received this legacy.

[136] At the time of her death in 1578, at all events, she was living in a house of her own, for she disposes of it without mention of any other claim upon it. This house was evidently somewhere near Aldersgate Street.

[137] This lady, a daughter of Katherine, dowager Duchess of Suffolk, by Mr. Bertie, married Reginald Grey, Earl of Kent.

[138] This is the same lady who is mentioned in the biography of Lady Katherine Grey as a palmist and great favourite of Queen Elizabeth.

[139] This gentleman married Anne Willoughby, who was a cousin of Katherine, dowager Duchess of Suffolk, so that he was really in a sense a “cowsine” or cousin of Lady Mary Grey and her sisters.

[140] The inventory of Lady Mary’s books is still extant among the State Papers (Charterhouse MSS.). It is dated June 1, 1578.

[141] See the biography of Charles Brandon in this volume, for fuller particulars of Lady Mortimer.

[142] See The Nine-days’ Queen, p. 342. Lady Philippa is said to have been the author of a long account of Lady Jane Grey’s execution, which is still in existence.

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Table of Contents

- THE SISTERS OF LADY JANE GREY
- PREFACE
- CONTENTS
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- THE ORIGIN OF THE HOUSE OF TUDOR
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- CHAPTER IV
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- CHAPTER IV
- CHAPTER V
- CHAPTER VI
- CHAPTER VII
- CHAPTER VIII
- CHAPTER IX
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- LADY ELEANOR BRANDON, AND HER HEIRS
- INDEX
- FOOTNOTES:
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE