Lady Jane Grey Read online

  Katherine Parr may or may not have learnt to spin wool and flax, but she would certainly have been familiar with the mysteries of household management, and in the Lamentation of a Sinner had reminded her own sex to ‘learn of St Paul to be obedient to their husbands, to keep silence in the congregation and to learn of their husbands at home’. But this did not mean that she was not strongly in favour of education for her own sex. She had encouraged Princess Mary to exercise her mind and make use of her Latin by embarking on a translation of Erasmus’s paraphrase of the Gospel of St John and had taken steps to ensure that Elizabeth was not forgotten in the general reorganisation of the royal schoolrooms which took place in the summer of 1544. Her influence has been detected in the appointment of Richard Cox and John Cheke, both promising young Cambridge humanists, as tutors to the six-year-old Prince Edward, and she would most likely have been responsible for the appointment of William Grindal, also a Cambridge man, as tutor to the Princess Elizabeth.

  News of the queen’s marriage to Thomas Seymour soon leaked out and by mid-summer he had moved in with his wife, his boisterous loud-voiced personality blowing like a gale through the rather oppressively pious atmosphere of the Chelsea household. The Lord Admiral took no interest in the New Learning and not much in the advancement of the New Religion, his all-consuming interest in the advancement of his own career leaving very little room for anything else. The Admiral wanted to be liked – to be considered a good fellow, generous, open-handed, everybody’s friend, was an important part of his image – but his total self-absorption made him a dangerous friend, especially to the weak, the foolish, the young and inexperienced, whom he both fascinated and exploited.

  Of the three children in whom he was currently taking an interest, the king was, of course, the most important. Seymour wanted to get the Council to agree to divide the offices of Protector and Governor of the king’s person between his brother and himself and, with that end in view, was doing his best to ingratiate himself with his nephew by flattery and surreptitious gifts of pocket money. He had also now begun the questionable practice of bursting in on the Princess Elizabeth in the early morning, still in his nightgown and slippers, to ‘bid her good morrow’, to tickle her if she was still in bed, or smack her familiarly on the behind and play hide-and-seek around the bed-curtains with her and her maids amid much giggling and squealing. When Elizabeth’s governess attempted to remonstrate, he roared that by God’s precious soul he meant no evil and would not leave it, adding that the Lady Elizabeth was like a daughter to him. Unable to control either the Admiral or her charge, Mrs Ashley went to the queen for help. Katherine was inclined to ‘make a small matter of it’, but she promised to accompany her husband in future, and so she did – for a time at least.12 Just what, if anything, Tom Seymour had hoped to achieve by his teasing pursuit of Elizabeth is difficult to understand. Probably it had begun simply as his idea of a joke; it may well have given him a pleasant sense of power to be on slap-and-tickle terms with Henry VIII’s daughter, but he never attempted anything of the sort with Jane Grey who would in any case have been too undeveloped physically for such suggestive romps.

  With the approach of autumn relations between the Seymour brothers were showing signs of deterioration. The Lord Protector had not been pleased about Thomas and Katherine’s marriage, and now an acrimonious dispute had blown up over some pieces of the queen dowager’s jewellery held by the Protector. Katherine claimed these were her personal property, gifts from the late king, but Somerset refused to give them up, insisting they belonged to the Crown. As one of these items was her wedding ring, Katherine’s annoyance was understandable. The Protector had also installed a tenant, against her wishes, in one of her dower manors. The normally good-tempered Katherine was furious and threatened to ‘utter her choler’ to his grace. Nor were family relations improved by the attitude of the Protector’s wife. The duchess of Somerset, described as ‘a woman for many imperfections intolerable but for pride monstrous’,13 bitterly resented the fact that Katherine as queen dowager was entitled to take precedence over her on state occasions and made no secret of her feelings on the subject. The first parliament of the new reign was due to meet in November and the Admiral, imbued with a fresh sense of his wrongs, stamped about shouting that by God’s precious soul he would make this the blackest parliament that ever was in England. When his cronies tried to calm him down, he exclaimed defiantly that he could better live without the Protector than the Protector without him, adding that if anybody went about to speak evil of the queen, he would take his fist to their ears, from the highest to the lowest.14 Seymour had tried to persuade Edward to write a letter to be presented to the House of Lords requesting them to favour a suit which the Admiral meant to bring before them. This appears to have been connected with his pet scheme to gain custody of the king, but Edward took the advice of his tutor, John Cheke, who said he ‘were best not to write’, and wisely refused to become involved. Frustrated, the Admiral took to prowling the corridors of St James’s Palace, remarking wistfully that he wished the king were at home with him in his house and speculating on how easy it would be to steal the boy away.15

  In the spring of 1548 scandal threatened to erupt in the family of Katherine and Thomas Seymour. There had been an odd little episode at Hanworth, another of the queen’s dower houses a few miles away in Middlesex, when Katherine told Mrs Ashley how the Lord Admiral had looked through the gallery window and seen my Lady Elizabeth cast her arms about a man’s neck. The princess denied this accusation tearfully, but Mrs Ashley knew there could be no truth in it, ‘for there came no man but Grindal, the Lady Elizabeth’s schoolmaster’, who was evidently quite unembraceable. All the same the governess was worried and began to wonder if the queen had invented the story as a hint that she should take better care of the princess ‘and be, as it were, in watch betwixt her and my Lord Admiral’.16 Then, according to a hearsay account given nearly a year after the event, it seems that ‘the queen, suspecting the often access of the Admiral to the Lady Elizabeth’s grace, came suddenly upon them, when they were alone (he having her in his arms). Wherefore the queen fell out, both with the Lord Admiral and with Her grace also … and of this was much displeasure.’17

  Katherine’s initial reaction to this apparent betrayal of her trust by the husband she loved and the girl she had tried to befriend is entirely understandable, especially as she was now five months into a difficult first pregnancy. But although she found some relief in sending for Mrs Ashley and giving that lady a piece of her mind, she could not afford the luxury of giving way to her feelings for long. Gossip, once started, would be unstoppable and a public scandal would be appallingly damaging for everyone concerned. Clearly, though, Elizabeth must be put out of the Admiral’s reach as quickly as possible and in the week after Whitsun the princess and her entourage were sent off to pay an extended visit to Sir Anthony Denny and his wife, both old and trusted friends of the royal family, at their house at Cheshunt. The queen and her stepdaughter parted on affectionate terms and thanks to Katherine’s generosity and good sense no one, apart from those immediately concerned, was aware of the real reason for the move.

  Jane Grey stayed with Katherine and there is nothing to indicate that she was affected in any way by the tensions in her guardians’ marriage, or that she missed Elizabeth’s companionship. Although the two girls had spent the best part of a year together under the same roof, very likely sharing some of the same lessons and certainly seeing a good deal of one another at meals, at prayers and in general daily intercourse, there is no evidence of any particular friendship having developed between them; nor does there ever appear to have been any correspondence, any exchange of gifts, the loan of a servant with some special skill or indeed any of the small mutual courtesies usual between two young women so closely related. The four-year difference in their ages would, of course, have meant most at the time when they were most in each other’s company – the gulf between nine and thirteen can be a wide one – and m
any years later Henry Clifford, writing the biography of his mistress Jane Dormer, once a maid of honour to Queen Mary Tudor, remarked of Elizabeth that ‘a great lady who knew her well, being a girl of twelve or thirteen, told me that she was proud and disdainful, and related to me some particulars of her scornful behaviour, which much blemished the handsomeness and beauty of her person’.18 There may also have been some jealousy.

  Jane Grey might have been only King Henry’s great-niece, but no one could cast doubt on her legitimacy or on her mother’s virtue, while Elizabeth was still legally the bastard of a notorious adulteress and this fact may well have been mentioned from time to time in the privacy of the household.

  On 13 June the queen and the Admiral set out for Sudeley, their Gloucestershire estate, accompanied by a princely retinue and taking Lady Jane with them. Katherine was now more than six months pregnant and a sumptuous nursery had been prepared for the hoped-for son and heir, with enough crimson velvet and taffeta and plate to equip a royal birth. Katherine herself, though obviously aware of the dangers of her approaching childbed – all the more daunting for it being her first at the advanced age of thirty-six – seems to have been happily expectant. Her husband was with her, being unusually attentive, and she had received good wishes from both her royal stepdaughters. ‘I trust to hear good success of your grace’s great belly,’ wrote Princess Mary, ‘and in the meantime shall desire much to hear of your health, which I pray almighty God to continue.’ Elizabeth had written too, with humble thanks ‘that your Grace wished me with you, till I were weary of that country. Your Highness were like to be cumbered, if I should not depart till I were weary of being with you; although it were the worst soil in the world, your presence would make it pleasant.’19 Katherine also had the pleasure of little Jane Grey’s company, and during those quiet summer months in the idyllic surroundings of Sudeley Castle there seems every likelihood that they grew very close to one another.

  Katherine’s baby arrived on 30 August. It was a girl, christened Mary. The Admiral, who apparently felt no disappointment over the child’s sex, at once wrote enthusiastically to his brother with the good news and the Protector responded with a congratulatory note. ‘We are right glad to understand that the Queen, your bedfellow, hath had a happy hour; and, escaping all danger, hath made you the father of so pretty a daughter.’20 Sadly, though, the congratulations were premature, for Katherine developed the dreaded symptoms of puerperal sepsis and within a week she was dead. She was buried in the chapel at Sudeley, the first royal funeral conducted according to the rites of the new religion. Miles Coverdale, the biblical translator, preached the sermon and ten-year-old Jane Grey, a diminutive figure in deepest black, acted as chief mourner for the only person ever to show her disinterested kindness.

  As the fever mounted in the last hours of her life, the memory of past hurts came back to torment Katherine and in her delirium she cried out that those about her did not care for her but stood laughing at her grief. Her husband, distressed and embarrassed, tried unsuccessfully to soothe her, but Katherine would only answer ‘very roundly and shortly’, accusing him of having given her ‘many shrewd taunts’.21 For all his faults Thomas Seymour was not a bad-hearted man and for a while at least seems to have been genuinely stricken by his wife’s death. In fact he was ‘so amazed’ that he almost ceased to care about himself or his doings. He even contemplated breaking up his household and sending Jane Grey back to her parents, but this uncharacteristic loss of confidence soon passed and within a fortnight he was writing to Lord Dorset that, being better advised of himself, he felt that he would after all be able to continue his house together. He continued:

  And therefore, putting my whole affiance and trust in God, have begun of new to establish my household, where shall remain not only the gentlewomen of the queen’s highness privy chamber, but also the maids which waited at large, and other women being about her grace in her lifetime, with a hundred and twenty gentlemen and yeomen, continually abiding in the house together. … And, therefore, doubting lest your lordship might think any unkindness that I should take occasion to rid me of your daughter, the Lady Jane, so soon after the queen’s death, for the proof both of my hearty affection towards you, and my goodwill to her, I am minded to keep her until I next speak with your lordship.

  His own mother was coming to take charge of the household and would be ‘as dear unto her [Lady Jane] as though she were her own daughter’, while for his part the Admiral would ‘continue her half-father and more, and all that are in my house shall be as diligent about her as yourself would wish’.22

  This was all very well, but the Dorsets were growing restive. More than a year had gone by with no sign of any of Seymour’s ‘fair promises’ being fulfilled and, although Lord Dorset hastened to thank Lord Seymour for his ‘friendly affection’ and to assure him that he was still ready to be guided by him in the matter of his daughter’s ‘bestowing’, the marquess was plainly looking for an excuse to wriggle out of his previous undertakings. Jane, he wrote, was too young to be left to rule herself without a guide, and he feared ‘lest she should, for lack of a bridle, take too much head’ and forget all the good behaviour she had learned from Queen Katherine. His lordship therefore felt strongly that she should be returned to the governance of her mother, by whom she could most easily be ‘framed and ruled towards virtue’ and her mind, in these so important formative years, addressed to humility, soberness and obedience.23 Frances Dorset added her voice in a letter enclosed with her lord’s in which she, too, thanked her ‘good brother’ the Admiral for his gentleness but begged him to trust her and to believe that a mother must know what was best for her own child.

  This sudden display of concern for their daughter’s welfare imperfectly concealed the Dorsets’ determination to sell her to the highest bidder and they were, in fact, beginning to wonder whether it might not be wiser to settle for a match with the Protector’s son, which had already been tentatively discussed between the families. Jane did go home for a while some time towards the end of September, but John Harington, who was sent to escort her, was of the opinion that she would soon be back and told a colleague that all the maids in the house were hoping for her return.24

  Harington was quite right in his belief that Jane would be back. She was too valuable a property to be relinquished without a struggle and the Admiral sent another of his henchmen, William Sherington of Lacock Abbey, to work on Frances and himself paid a visit to the Dorsets when, according to the marquess, he was ‘so earnestly in hand with me and my wife, that in the end, because he would have no nay, we were contented she should again return to his house’, though not, it seems, without much ‘sticking of our sides’. During these negotiations, conducted by Lord and Lady Dorset on one side and Sherington and the Admiral on the other, the Admiral renewed his promise that if he might once get the king at liberty, he would make sure his majesty married none but Jane. He also agreed to advance another £500 of the 2,000 he was ‘lending’ Jane’s parents. There was no need for a bond, declared Thomas Seymour, as the Lady Jane’s presence in his house was more than adequate security.25 The Dorsets, greedy, foolish and chronically hard up, rose to the bait and in October 1548, round about the date of her eleventh birthday, Jane returned to live at Hanworth or Seymour Place in the Strand, under the indulgent chaperonage of old Lady Seymour.

  For Jane this was a reprieve. She had written to the Admiral from Bradgate promising that ‘like as you have become towards me a loving and kind father, so I shall be always most ready to obey your godly monitions and good instructions, as becometh one upon whom you have heaped so many benefits’,26 but the reprieve was destined to be short. Bereft of Queen Katherine’s steadying influence, Thomas Seymour was now openly canvassing support for his schemes to put an end to the Protectorate. He asked Lord Dorset what friends he could count on in his part of the world and advised him to make much of the leading yeomen and freeholders, ‘for they be men that be best able to persuade the multitude’. �
��Go to their houses’, urged the Admiral, ‘carrying with you a flagon or two of wine and a pasty of venison, and use a familiarity with them, for so shall you cause them to love you and be assured to have them at your commandment.’27 He repeated this ingenuous advice to his brother-in-law William Parr, marquess of Northampton, and the young earl of Rutland, telling the latter that he would like to see the king ‘have the honour and rule of his own doings’. His lordship did not appear to notice how lukewarm was the response, and when Rutland ventured to remark that he thought the Admiral’s power would be much diminished by the queen’s death, he brushed this aside impatiently, saying the Council never feared him so much as they did now.28

  Rutland was not the only one to express doubts about the real strength of the Admiral’s powerbase. William Parr was to remember a conversation they had had in the gallery at Seymour Place, when the subject of Jane Grey came up and the Admiral had said that there would be ‘much ado’ for her, and that the Protector and his wife were trying to get her for their son. But, he went on, ‘they should not prevail therein’ for her father had given her wholly over to him ‘upon certain Covenants that were between them two’. What would he do, asked Northampton, remembering Dorset’s reputation for shiftiness, ‘if my Lord Protector, handling my lord marquess Dorset gently, should obtain his good will?’ ‘I will never consent thereunto’ was the defiant reply.29