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Title: The Nine Days' Queen, Lady Jane Grey, and Her Times

Author: Richard Davey

Editor: Martin A. S. Hume

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NINE
DAYS' QUEEN, LADY JANE GREY, AND HER TIMES ***

ROMANTIC HISTORY
General Editor: Martin Hume, M.A.

T H E N I N E D AY S ’
QUEEN

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Pageant of London
The Sultan and his Subjects

LADY JANE GREY
FROM THE PAINTING BY LUCAS DE HEERE AT ALTHORP

THE
NINE DAYS’ QUEEN
LADY JANE GREY
AND HER TIMES
BY

RICHARD DAVEY

EDITED, AND WITH INTRODUCTION, BY
MARTIN HUME, M.A.
WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS

METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON

First Published in 1909

TO
MY DEAR WIFE
ELEANORA DAVEY

AUTHOR’S NOTE

M
y object in writing this book has been to interest the reader in
the tragic story of Lady Jane Grey rather from the personal
than the political point of view. I have therefore employed,
more perhaps than is usual, what the French historians term
le document humain in my account of the extraordinary men and women
who surrounded Lady Jane, and who used her as a tool for their ambitious
ends. The reader may possibly wonder why in several of the earlier chapters
Lady Jane Grey plays so shadowy a part, but I deemed it impossible for any
one who is not very familiar with our History at this period to understand,
without having a complete idea of the chain of conspiracies that preceded
and rendered possible her proclamation, how a young Princess, not in the
immediate succession to the Crown, came to be placed, if only for nine
days, in the towering position of Queen of England. These conspiracies
were four in number. The first was that of the Howards and the Catholic
party against Queen Katherine Parr. The second, the conspiracy of the
Seymours against the Howards, which ended in the downfall of the great
House of Norfolk, whereby Edward Seymour was enabled to proclaim
himself Lord Protector of the Realm. The third plot was that of Thomas
Seymour to cast down his brother Edward from his high station, and, if
possible, to usurp the same for himself—a strange story of folly and
intrigue and overvaulting ambition which ended in one of the most terrible
fratricidal tragedies to be found in the history of the nations. Fourthly, the
removal of the brothers Seymour from the scene enabled John Dudley,
Duke of Northumberland, to work his own will and to prepare the way,
during the last days of Edward VI, for his daughter-in-law, much against her
will, to usurp the throne.

I have consulted every available document, as well in our national
archives and private libraries as in those of foreign countries, concerning

Lady Jane and her friends and foes, the better to paint as vivid a picture as
possible of the times in which they lived.
I need scarcely add how greatly I appreciate the honour Major Martin
Hume has conferred upon my work by his scholarly Introduction, which
gives so succinct and deeply interesting an account of our foreign politics at
a most momentous period of English history. To him, to Dr. Gairdner, to
Earl Spencer, to Earl Stamford and Warrington, and to many other
gentlemen and friends, including the officials at the State Paper Office and
the British Museum, I beg to tender my sincere thanks for their courtesy
and for the valuable information with which they have helped me to
complete my picture of one of the most interesting periods in our national
history.
I cannot, moreover, allow this opportunity to pass without recording,
with sincere gratitude and affection, the aid which I received, when I first
thought of writing this life of Lady Jane Grey, from the kindness of my old
valued and lamented friend, Dr. Richard Garnett.
RICHARD DAVEY
200 Ashley Gardens, London, S.W.
5th September 1909.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction xiii
CHAP.

I. Bradgate Hall and the Greys of Groby 1
II. Birth and Education 14
III. The Lady Latimer 28
IV. The King’s Household 42
V. Mrs. Anne Askew 58
VI. The Howards and the Seymours 73
VII. Henry viii 100
VIII. Concerning the Lady Jane and the Queen-
Dowager 115
IX. The Queen and the Lord High-Admiral 136
X. The Lady Jane goes to Seymour Place 147
XI. The Education of Lady Jane 168
XII. John Dudley, Earl of Warwick 190
XIII. The Fall of the House of Somerset 208
XIV. The Lady Jane marries the Lord
Guildford 221
XV. On the Way to the Tower 238
XVI. The Lady Jane is proclaimed Queen 249

XVII. The Nine Days’ Reign 256
XVIII. The Last Days of Northumberland 289
XIX. The Trial of Queen Jane 310
XX. The Supreme Hour! 328
XXI. The Fate of the Survivors 348
Appendix 359
Index 365

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Lady Jane Grey Frontispiece
From the Painting by Lucas de Heere at Althorp.
(Photograph by Hanfstaengl)
FACING PAGE

Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk 12
From the Painting by Joannes Corvus, in the
National Portrait Gallery

Queen Katherine Parr 30
After the Painting formerly in the possession of
Horace Walpole

Henry viii in 1547 48
From an old Engraving

Roger Ascham’s Visit to Lady Jane Grey 172
at Bradgate
After the Painting by J. C. Horsley, R.A.

John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland 192
From an Engraving by G. Vertue

Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset 208
From an Engraving after the Painting by Holbein

Supposed Portrait of Lady Jane Grey 224
Formerly in the Collection of Col. Elliott of
Nottingham, and now at Oxford University. From an
Engraving after the Painting by Holbein

Edward vi 246
From an Engraving by G. Vertue

Lady Jane Grey by Wyngaerde 270
The earliest engraved Portrait of her, from a Picture
said to be by Holbein, now lost

Queen Mary at the Period of her 322
Marriage
From the Painting by Antonio Mor, in the Prado
Museum. (Photograph by R. Anderson)

Portrait of the Lady Frances Brandon, 352
Duchess of Suffolk, and her Second
Husband, Adrian Stokes, Esq.
Probably by Corvinus, property of Col. Wynn Finch

INTRODUCTION

T
he tragedy of Lady Jane Grey is unquestionably one of the most
poignant episodes in English history, but its very dramatic
completeness and compactness have almost invariably caused its
wider significance to be obscured by the element of personal
pathos with which it abounds. The sympathetic figure of the studious,
saintly maiden, single-hearted in her attachment to the austere creed of
Geneva, stands forth alone in a score of books refulgent against the gloomy
background of the greed and ambition to which she was sacrificed. The
whole drama of her usurpation and its swift catastrophe is usually treated as
an isolated phenomenon, the result of one man’s unscrupulous self-seeking;
and with the fall of the fair head of the Nine Days’ Queen upon the blood-
stained scaffold within the Tower the curtain is rung down and the incident
looked upon as fittingly closed by the martyrdom of the gentlest champion
of the Protestant Reformation in England.

Such a treatment of the subject, however attractive and humanly
interesting it may be, is nevertheless unscientific as history and untrue in
fact. An adequate appreciation of the tendencies behind the unsuccessful
attempt to deprive Mary of her birthright can only be gained by a
consideration of the circumstances preceding and surrounding the main
incident. The reasons why Northumberland, a weak man as events proved,
was able to ride rough-shod over the nobles and people of England, the
explanation of his sudden and ignominious collapse and of the apparent
levity with which the nation at large changed its religious beliefs and
observance at the bidding of assumed authority are none of them on the
surface of events; and the story of Jane Grey as it is usually told, whilst
abounding in pathetic interest gives no key to the vast political issues of
which the fatal intrigue of Northumberland was but a by-product. To
represent the tragedy as a purely religious one, as is not infrequently done,
is doubly misleading. That one side happened to be Catholic and the other

Protestant was merely a matter of party politics, and probably not a single
active participator in the events, except Jane herself, and to some extent
Mary, was really moved by religious considerations at all, loud as the
professions of some of the leaders were.
Mr. Davey has given in the vivid pages of this book a striking picture
of the Society in which the drama was represented and of the persons who
surrounded Lady Jane Grey in the critical period of her unhappy fate; and
this of itself enables a wider view than is usual to be taken of the subject.
But, withal, I venture to think that an even more extended prospect of it
may be attained and the whole episode fitted into its proper place in the
history of England, if supplementary consideration be given to international
politics of the time, and especially to the part which England aspired to take
in the tremendous struggle for supremacy which was then approaching the
end of its first phase on the Continent of Europe; a struggle in which not
only the two most powerful nations in Christendom were engaged and the
two greatest monarchs in the world were the leaders, but one in which the
eternally antagonistic principles of expansion and repression were the
issues.
It is too often assumed that the system of political parties in English
Government dates only from the rise of Parliament as the predominant
power in the State in the seventeenth century, since, by the open opposition
and the public discussion of rival policies in the Legislature, the existence
of different groups of statesmen then became evident to the world. But at
least it may be asserted that, from the time when the two first Tudor kings
sought the aggrandisement of England by placing their power in the balance
between the great Continental rivals, two schools of English politicians
surrounded their sovereign, each intent upon forwarding the alliance which
seemed to them wisest in the interests of the country and their own. When,
however, the political rivalry of France and the Emperor was accentuated
by the introduction of religious schism in the contest, by the bold defiance
of Luther and the spread of the reformed doctrines, the political parties in
the English Court were divided more distinctly than ever by the new
element introduced; and, despotic as the Tudor sovereigns were, the
apparently personal and fickle character of their policy, which proves so
puzzling to students, really arose in nearly every case from the temporary
predominance in their counsels of one or the other school of thought

represented in their Court. It is only by recognising this fact that the strange
and sudden changes which took place in the reigns of Henry VIII and
Edward VI can be made comprehensible, and by it also the rise and fall of
Lady Jane Grey can be seen in its true light.
During the last twenty years of the reign of Henry VIII his bewildering
mutations of policy and of wives were the result of efforts on the part of
rival sets of politicians to utilise his brutal sensuality and inflated pride to
their respective ends. With him, as with the most of them, religion was a
mere stalking horse for other interests. The traditional and more
Conservative party, which usually leant towards the imperial alliance,
naturally took the Catholic side, the established nobility such as the
Howards backed by the Catholic bishops being contrasted with the more
recently ennobled men, aided by bureaucrats like Cromwell and by the
reforming churchmen. Thus it came to be understood before the end of
Henry’s reign that the men in the English Court most favourable to
emancipation from the Papacy were generally speaking the advocates of a
French alliance, whilst those who clung to the orthodox view of religion
favoured the traditional adherence to the house of Burgundy. It is true that
the men on both sides were equally eager to participate in the plunder of the
Church and in filching the commons from the people of England; and that
both parties included men who were ready to profess themselves faithful
Catholics or ardent reformers as their interests demanded at the time. But
the political aims of the respective parties were quite distinctly divided,
notwithstanding religious affinities, for the Emperor was just as desirous of
having Protestant friends in England as the King of France was willing to
accept Catholic support there. The object of the English sovereigns, it must
be recollected, was usually somewhat different from that of their bribed
councillors who had their own interests to serve. The aim of Henry VII and
Henry VIII, and especially of Elizabeth, who alone was successful in
attaining it, was so to distribute the weight of England’s influence as to
avert any coalition of the two great Continental powers against her, rather
than to become the permanent tool of either; the efforts of Charles V, and
his French rival being respectively directed towards preventing England
from throwing in her lot with their enemies.
Until religious bitterness infinitely complicated the question, and
finally led to the long state of war with Spain, the side which commanded

most sympathy amongst the English people at large was unquestionably that
which favoured a cordial understanding with the sovereign of Flanders and
Spain. The country had been in close antagonism with France on and off for
centuries, the proximity of the coasts and the aspirations of the French to
dominate the Channel represented a constant danger and source of anxiety,
and it was instinctively felt in England that the time-honoured policy which
bound her to the monarch who was able when he pleased to divert the
aggression of the French by threatening any of their land frontiers, was the
safest friend of this country. The English merchants who found their richest
markets in Flanders and Spain, and who were in chronic irritation at the
French piratical attacks upon their commerce, were equally anxious for a
friendship which they looked upon as the best assurance against a war
which they dreaded; so that the chief English advocates of the French
connection were usually those whose adherence to the reformed religious
doctrines overbore their political interests, and the newer nobility and
politicians who found themselves at enmity on social and other grounds
with the traditional conservatives.
It must not be forgotten that both France and the Emperor strove
ceaselessly to gain friends amongst the English councillors. Immense bribes
found their way into the pockets of ministers and secretaries of State, in
many cases regular yearly pensions being settled upon influential political
supporters, and by means of flattery, social attentions, and promises, the
ambassadors in England of the rival powers became centres of intrigue to
influence English policy in favour of one or the other. The goal to which
both the rivals directed their eyes was one in which, curiously enough,
England had no interest whatever, namely, the hegemony over Italy; but
England which by activity on the northern coasts of France or on the
Scottish border could weaken the French power for harm in other
directions, could enable the Emperor at any time to check his enemy’s
Italian ambitions; whilst with England as her friend France could brave the
imperialists, certain that she would not be taken in the rear, especially when,
as she usually managed to do, she had enlisted on her side the Turks on the
Hungarian frontier and the Lutheran princes and towns of Germany.
The marriage of Henry VIII with Jane Seymour was looked upon by the
Imperialist Conservative party in England as a victory for their cause. Her
brother, Sir Edward Seymour, had been in the Emperor’s service, and Jane

had supplanted the hated Anne Boleyn, whose sympathies were, of course,
entirely French. It is true that later Seymour, a parvenu noble, be it
recollected, was driven into the anti-papal camp mainly by the antagonism
of Norfolk and the older nobles who led the Conservative party, but,
notwithstanding his Protestantism, he never wavered in his attachment to
the imperial alliance and his opposition to French interests.
When the death of Henry VIII made Seymour, as Duke of Somerset and
Protector, virtually ruler of England with Paget as his principal minister,
both of them were almost servile in their professions of devotion to the
cause of the Emperor; and made no secret of their distrust of France with
which a hollow and temporary peace had only been recently patched up.
Somerset harried the Church and changed religious forms ruthlessly; his
greed was insatiable and the devotional endowments were looted without
compunction, the Catholic bishops were treated with stern severity, and
even the schismatic Catholicism of Henry VIII was cast aside in favour of an
entirely new creed and ritual. Norfolk was kept in the Tower, Wriothesley
was disgraced and the Catholic Conservative nobles were warned not to
stand in the Protector’s way. But through it all Somerset and Paget were
politically the sworn servants and friends of the Emperor, pledged to
discountenance any attempts of the French to injure him: whilst Charles V
on his side, much as he deprecated the religious changes, could no more
afford to quarrel with Somerset than he could with Henry VIII, twenty years
before when he contumeliously repudiated his blameless Spanish wife and
scornfully threw off the papal supremacy which was the keystone of the
imperial system.
Submissive as were the words of Somerset and Paget to their imperial
1
master not by words alone but by acts also they sought to serve him as
against France. The strong policy adopted by Somerset towards Scotland,
and his defiant attitude at Boulogne, then temporarily held by the English
against the payment of a great ransom, served the Emperor’s turn
excellently at a period when he was at grips with his Lutheran subjects, at
issue with the Pope and faced by a series of dangerous French intrigues in
Italy. That the French themselves understood this perfectly well is seen by
the desperate efforts they made to conciliate Somerset and win him to their
side. Early in July 1547, only five months after his accession to power,
Somerset told the imperial ambassador in strict confidence, when the latter

was complaining of his religious innovations, that the special French envoy,
Paulin—“immediately after the death of King Henry had striven to win
him, the Protector, to the side of France by means of a large annual pension,
which, as was only right, he had always declined. Notwithstanding this,
however, Paulin, the last time he came hither, was instructed to offer him
the assignment of the pension, which he had brought with him already
signed and sealed. But with all these offers and grand promises of the
French to divert the English Government from their alliance with your
Majesty (the Emperor), he said he would always remain constant and loyal
to you, knowing well that the strict preservation of the ancient alliance was
so important for both parties.” Even a month previous to this Somerset had
informed the ambassador that the French had greatly scandalised him by
offering him as an inducement to join France, in an offensive and defensive
alliance, the cession of the Emperor’s Flemish province to England when it
had been conquered by the allies, Boulogne at the same time to be restored
to France.
What wonder that the Emperor’s reply to this was to send flattering
autograph letters to Somerset, assuring him of his unalterable regard, but
saying not a word about his Protestant proceedings. “Of course,” continues
the Emperor, writing to his ambassador, “the Protector would naturally
refuse to accept the pension from the French, if only in the interests of duty
and decency. The goodwill he displays towards us must be encouraged to
the utmost by you on all occasions, and you must lose no opportunity of
confirming the Protector in these favourable sentiments.” Somerset and
Paget were therefore from first to last “Emperor’s men” and opponents of
French interests, that is to say advocates of the same policy as that
identified with the older nobles and Catholics, most of whom were now
under a cloud in consequence of their religion or in consequence of their
personal enmity to Somerset whom they regarded as a greedy, unscrupulous
interloper.
From the first days after the death of Henry VIII, it had been seen by
close observers that personal and not political rivalry alone was likely in the
future to bring about a split in Somerset’s Government. The imperial
ambassador, writing less than a fortnight after Henry’s death, says that
whilst Hertford (Somerset) and Warwick (Northumberland) would
apparently be supreme in authority, “it is likely that some jealousy or rivalry

may arise between them because, although they both belong to the same
sect, they are nevertheless widely different in character: the Lord-Admiral
being of high courage will not willingly submit to his colleague. He is in
higher favour with the people and with the nobles than is the Earl of
Hertford, owing to his liberality and splendour. The Protector, on the other
hand, is not so conspicuous in this respect, and is looked down upon by
everybody as a dry, sour, opinionated man”: the sequel to this being that
both these nobles with Paget and Wriothesley should, in the opinion of the
ambassador, be “entertained” by the Emperor “in the usual way.”
Before many months had passed, as we have seen, it was recognised by
the Imperialist party that Somerset and Paget were their fast friends and that
the rising personal opposition of Dudley had adopted, not unnaturally, as its
policy that of a rapprochement with France. It would, of course, be untrue
to say that Dudley’s attack upon Somerset had for its sole object the
substitution of one international policy for another. Dudley, like his rival,
was in the first place ambitious and self-seeking; but it was necessary for
both of them, in order to serve their ends, that they should obtain the
cooperation and support of one or other of the two main currents of public
opinion, the adhesion of both rivals to the advanced Protestant practices in
religion being dictated in the first place by their need for the money and
patronage that the religious confiscations provided, and, secondly, by the
great predominance of the reformed doctrines in and about London. But
Somerset having embraced the Conservative or Imperialistic policy, and
infused, under the influence of Catholic Paget, some consideration for the
professors of the old faith into his reforming zeal, it was incumbent upon
Dudley, who wished to overthrow him, to adopt in both respects an entirely
opposite policy.
It is the fate of most Governments to be judged by results, and it was a
comparatively easy matter for Dudley to pick holes in Somerset’s
management of affairs. The debasement of the coinage and the consequent
dislocation of business and the terrible distress it caused, the enclosures of
the commons and the process of turning customary copyholds into
tenancies at will, had reduced the people of England to a condition of
misery such as they had never seen before. The cruel confiscation of the
monastic properties had deprived the sick and the poor of their principal
source of relief, the drastic changes in religion had produced indignation in

the breasts of many citizens, whilst slackening the hold of authority
generally and promoting lawlessness. When to all this is added the grasping
selfishness of Somerset personally, and above all the success of the French
arms before Boulogne, attributed to the parsimony of the Protector, it will
be seen that Northumberland had a large area of discontent upon which to
work for support against his unpopular rival. But even so, it is improbable
that he would have ventured to take so bold an action against the Protector
as he did, but for the consciousness that he had behind him the support,
moral and financial if not military, of France and the Lutheran enemies of
the Emperor.
When the loss of the English forts protecting Boulogne made
negotiations for peace necessary, a French Embassy was sent to London,
2
and a keen observer present at the time thus records what was evidently the
public impression of events—“It was suspected that the principal object of
this embassy was to bribe them (i.e. the English Government) to make war
on the Emperor. Whilst these ambassadors were there they were greatly
feasted by the Earl of Warwick (Northumberland) and the Grand Master
(Paulet, Marquis of Winchester) much more than any other of the lords; for
it appears that the French ambassadors could not gain the ear of the others
—The King of France found out from his ambassadors which of the English
lords showed more leaning towards France and against the Emperor. These
were the Earl of Warwick and the Grand Master (of the Household), and it
is believed that the King (of France) wrote to them warning them against
the Protector and the Earl of Arundel who were plotting their destruction.”
If this contemporary belief was well founded, as it probably was, the
overthrow of Somerset is proved to a great extent to have been an
international intrigue promoted and probably well paid for by France.
As the observer already quoted remarks, the sequel of the Embassy
which thus ensured Northumberland’s neutrality in favour of France was
the almost immediate declaration of war by the French King against the
Emperor, and the wholesale plundering of the imperial subjects at sea. Seen
in this light, therefore, Northumberland’s complete change of England’s
policy, his truckling to France, his merciless measures against Catholics,
although, as events proved he was a Catholic at heart himself, his
imprisonment of Paget the Emperor’s humble servant, and his ostentatious
disregard for the imperial friendship, his whole attitude indeed, assumes a

new aspect. His ambition was boundless for himself and his house; but it
must have been evident to him that it could only be successfully carried into
effect if he had behind him a strong body of public opinion in England
itself, and the countenance of one of the great continental powers. Both
these desiderata he had in the earlier months of his domination; and if
Edward VI had died or had been despatched late in 1551, or in the earlier
weeks of 1552, it is quite possible that Northumberland might have carried
through his great conspiracy successfully.
But the eighteen months that elapsed between the execution of
Somerset and the death of Edward were fully sufficient to prove to the
people of England that they had cast off the yoke of a King Log to assume
that of a King Stork—Northumberland’s overbearing arrogance and
roughness had offended everyone with whom he came into contact: his
colleagues dreaded and hated him, especially after the marriage of his
young son Guildford to a lady of the Royal house in the direct line of
succession had to some extent opened the eyes of men to the magnitude of
his aspirations. The condition of the country, moreover, instead of
improving under his rule was considerably worse even than it had been
under Somerset. The coinage had now reached its lowest point of
debasement, the shilling containing only one quarter of silver to three
quarters of copper, and even was ordered by decree to be only valued at half
its face value. The gold had all left the country and foreign trade was killed
by the lack of a decent currency. Labour, driven from the land by the
wholesale conversion of the estates from tillage to pasture, crowded the
towns clamouring for food, and the disgraceful treatment of the Princess
Mary by the ruling minister had aroused a strong feeling against his
injustice and tyranny.
The Emperor was at war with France and the Lutherans, and was
obliged to speak softly to Northumberland. Again and again he tried to win
him over to his side, and the ruler of England knew full well that, whatever
he might do he was safe from any overt interference from the imperial
power. But for this fact it is certain that Northumberland would not have
attempted the bold stroke of disinheriting Mary and placing Jane Grey and
his own son upon the throne of England. When Edward VI was known by
him to be sick beyond recovery Northumberland, with an eye to the near
future, endeavoured to conciliate the Emperor somewhat and to bring about

peace upon the Continent. His object in doing so was twofold—first to
persuade Charles that he was still a potential friend; and, secondly, to set his
French friends free from their war with the Emperor, and so enable them at
the critical moment he foresaw to come to his aid in England if necessary.
The English trading classes were by this time in a fever of indignation
against the French for their piratical interference with English shipping, and
Northumberland must have known that with this and the fear aroused by the
French successes in the Emperor’s Flemish dominions—always the key of
English policy—even he could not for very long withstand the demand of
the English people to help the Emperor against his enemies. It was
Northumberland’s misfortune that he was obliged to deliver his blow
against the legitimate English succession in this state of public affairs. The
Emperor and his ministers were keenly alive to the situation, and although
they were of course not yet aware of the details of Northumberland’s
intended coup d’état, they feared that the Princess Mary might by his
influence be excluded from the throne. This of course would have been a
serious blow to the imperial cause; for it would in all probability mean the
permanent adhesion of England to the French alliance. But Charles had
swallowed so much humiliation to keep England friendly in the past that he
was not disposed now to be too squeamish. He did not know how far his
enemies the French had gone in their promises of support to
Northumberland when Edward should die, but if by blandishments and
conciliatory acquiescence he could win the friendship of England he was
willing to smile upon any occupant of the throne or any power behind it
who would keep to the old alliance and turn a cold shoulder to the French.
As soon as it was known in the imperial court that Edward was
approaching his end the Emperor’s ambassadors hurried over to England
with instructions to conciliate Northumberland at all costs, and to assure
him that the Emperor’s affection for England and its young King was much
greater than that of the King of France. “But,” continues the Emperor’s
instructions, “if you arrive too late and the King is dead, you must take
counsel together and act for the best for the safety of our cousin the
Princess Mary, and secure, if possible, her accession to the Crown, whilst
doing what you judge necessary to exclude the French and their intrigues.
You must endeavour also to maintain the confidence and good
neighbourship which it is so important that our States should enjoy with
England ... and especially to prevent the French from getting a footing in

the country, or of gaining the ear of the men who rule England, the more so
if it be for the purpose of embarrassing us.”
News had already reached Flanders of Northumberland’s intention to
exclude Mary from the throne on her brother’s death, and although the
Emperor saw that in such case the life of his cousin would be in grave peril,
especially if French aid, as was feared, were given to Northumberland, the
principal efforts of the imperial envoys were to be directed to assuring the
English government in any case that the Emperor was their friend and not
France; Northumberland was to be persuaded that the Emperor had no
thought of proposing a foreign husband for Mary; and that any match
chosen for her by the ruling powers in England would be willingly accepted
by her imperial kinsman. In short, the envoys were to promise anything and
everything to secure the throne for Mary, even to endorsing the religious
changes effected under Edward. But failing success in this it is made quite
clear that the Emperor was willing to accept Jane Grey or any other
sovereign who would consent to regard him as a friend and exclude French
influence from the country.
The French were just as much on the alert to serve their own interests,
and Northumberland, knowing how unpopular the French were at this
juncture, and how much his supposed dependence upon them was resented,
was extremely careful not to show ostensibly any leaning towards them.
But as soon as he heard, late in June, that the imperial envoys were coming
to London he came specially from Greenwich to the French ambassador’s
lodging at the Charterhouse to inform him that the Emperor was sending an
embassy. “I doubt not,” writes the French agent to his King, “that they will
do their best to interrupt the friendship that exists between your Majesty
and the King of England. I will keep my eye upon them and will leave no
effort untried to subvert them.”
Edward died on the very day that the imperial ambassadors arrived in
London, though the death was kept secret for some days afterwards, and it
soon became evident, both to the French and the Imperialists, that
Northumberland had prepared everything for the elevation of Jane Grey to
the throne. At this juncture, which called, if ever one did, for prompt and
bold action, only one of the several interests took a strong course, the
Princess Mary herself. It is quite evident that everyone else had deceived
himself and was paralysed in fear of action by another. Again and again the

French ambassador expressed a belief that the coming of the imperial
envoys portended an active interference on the part of the Emperor in
favour of Princess Mary; and Northumberland and his council,
notwithstanding all the protestations of the imperial envoys, were of the
same opinion; whereas we now see that the Emperor was quite willing to
throw over Mary, and even the Catholics, if only he could persuade Jane
Grey and her government to join him against France.
When Mary’s bold defiance of the usurper was announced, the
Emperor’s envoys, whom many believed to be forerunners of a strong
foreign armed force to aid her, had nothing but shocked condemnation for
her action. They considered her attitude “strange, difficult and dangerous”;
and predicted her prompt suppression and punishment. In reference to the
suggestion of her Catholic friends, that imperial aid should be sent to her,
the envoys, who were supposed to be in England for the purpose of forcing
her upon the throne, could only say to their master, “Considering your war
with the French, it seems unadvisable for your Majesty to arouse English
feeling against you, and the idea that the Lady will gain Englishmen on the
ground of religion is vain.” Serious remonstrances were sent to Mary
herself by the imperial envoys, pointing out the danger and the hopelessness
of her position in the face of Northumberland’s supposed strength, and they
laboured hard to dissuade the Duke from his idea that they had been sent to
England to sustain Mary’s cause.
Nor was the Emperor himself bolder than his envoys. He instructed the
latter to recommend Mary, “with all softness and kindness,” to the mercy of
Jane’s government, but they were to make it quite clear that he would strike
no blow in her favour, and would receive with open arms any sovereign of
England who would not serve French interests. Mr. Davey has indicated in
the present book the eagerness with which the great imperial minister, Don
Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, greeted Guildford Dudley as King of England.
That Mendoza, one of the most trusted and ablest of the Emperor’s
councillors, could take such a step without knowing that it would not, at
least, be against his master’s policy is inconceivable: and all through it is
clear that, if Mary had waited for effective help from her imperial cousin,
Jane Grey might have reigned for a long lifetime.
Just as the Emperor was paralysed in his action by the fear that he
might alienate England from his side, so France allowed discretion to wait

upon valour for fear of driving the English government irretrievably into the
arms of the Emperor. When the news of Mary’s rising came to London the
French ambassador bitterly deplored Northumberland’s want of foresight in
not having seized the person of the Princess in time to prevent it. He
confessed that Northumberland was excessively unpopular, but believed
that his possession of the national forces would enable him to crush Mary
and her malcontents. But he took care not to pledge himself too deeply to
Jane, and whilst full of sympathy and good wishes for Northumberland’s
success always kept in touch with some of Mary’s friends. Neither the
French ambassador nor the English council really understood the Emperor’s
attitude. When the council communicated to the imperial ambassadors
Jane’s succession, they haughtily told them that it was known they were
here to force Mary upon the throne, and that a new sovereign now having
been successfully proclaimed, the sooner they left England the better. The
French ambassador, writing to his king at the same time, remarked that the
imperial ambassadors had informed the English council, that rather than
submit to Jane’s wearing the crown to Mary’s deprivation his master would
make friends with the French on any terms and would deal with Jane in a
way which she would not like.
It is almost amusing, now that we have the correspondence of all
parties before us, to see how they all deceived themselves. The Emperor, as
has been said, would not lift a finger to help Mary, even when she was in
the field with a strong armed force, for fear of alienating hopelessly the
sovereign of England whoever he might be; the King of France, whilst
giving the same sort of hesitating implied support to Northumberland and
Jane as Charles held out to the Princess Mary, would give no effective help
for the same reason that tied the Emperor’s hands. Both sides, indeed, were
waiting to greet success without pledging themselves to a cause which
might fail.
But the person who miscalculated most fatally of all was
Northumberland himself. He had been during the whole time of his rule the
humble servant of France. He had violated the treaty of 1543, by which
England was bound to side with the Emperor in case his territory was
invaded by France, and he stood between the throne and Princess Mary who
it was known would serve the cause of the Emperor and her mother’s
country to the utmost. He was obliged, as has been shown, to cast his

hazard when the public opinion was strongly against him, the commercial
classes of England well nigh ruined, the labourers in a worse condition than
had ever been known before, and the nobility jealous and apprehensive.
Knowing this, as he did, it is difficult to believe that he would have dared to
take up the position he assumed unless he had persuaded himself that, as a
last resource, French armed aid would support him. That such a thing was
not remotely probable is now evident from the correspondence of the
French ambassadors. They were only full of sorrow for “this poor Queen
Jane” and feared for the fate of their unfortunate friend the Duke of
Northumberland. And yet London itself was in a panic, born of the
conviction that 6000 French troops were on their way to keep Jane upon the
throne; Northumberland, in fact, presumably believing that his past services
to France had deserved such aid, had actually sent and demanded it of the
King. If it had been afforded in effective time the whole history of England
might have been changed.
We know now, although none knew it then, that the Emperor would
have greeted with smooth assurances the victorious Jane and
Northumberland, and would have deserted his cousin Mary until a turn of
the wheel gave her hopes of success again. There was, indeed, nothing to
prevent Henry of France, but groundless fear of his rival, from sending to
England the small force necessary to keep Jane upon the throne and defeat
Mary. But time-serving cowardice ruled over all. The edifice of
Northumberland’s ambition crumbled like a house of cards under the
weight of his unpopularity alone, and when Mary the victorious entered into
the enjoyment of her birthright, the Frenchman who had plotted and
intrigued against her in secret, vied with the imperial ambassadors who had
stood by, unsympathetic in the hour of her trial, in their professions of
devotion to her and her cause. The people of London, overwhelmingly
Protestant as they were, greeted the Queen with effusion and had few words
of pity for poor Jane, not because they loved the old observance but because
they dreaded the French, and hated Northumberland the tyrannous and
unjust servant of France. In the country districts, too, where Catholicism
was strong, the enthusiasm for Mary was not so much religious, for all the
people wanted was quiet and some measure of prosperity, as expressive of
joy at the hope of a return to the national policy of cordial relations with the
sovereign of Flanders, which in past times had ensured English commerce
from French depredations and the English coast from French menaces, with

freedom from the arrogant minister who had harassed every English interest
and had reduced to ruin all classes in the country.
The unhappy Jane, a straw upon the rushing torrent, was not raised to
her sad eminence that the Protestant faith might prevail, though that might
have been one of the results of her rule, nor was she cast down because
Catholicism was triumphant, but because the policy which her dictator,
Northumberland, represented was unpopular at the time of Edward’s death,
and the English sense of justice rebelled at the usurpation and its contriver.
Mary, in addition to her inherent right to the succession, which was her
strong point, had only her own boldness and tenacity to thank for the
success which she achieved. The Emperor, notwithstanding all his
sympathy and the enormous importance to him of her success, did nothing
for her until she was independent of him, and only promised her armed aid
then in case the French should attempt to overthrow her by force.
Northumberland fell, not because the country at large and London
above all, was yearning for the re-submission of England to the Pope, but
because the eighteen months of his unchecked dictatorship had made him
detested, and because he overrated the boldness and magnanimity of the
King of France. The English public, by instinct perhaps more than by
reason, believed in the ideal policy of Henry VII: that of dexterously
balancing English friendship between the rival continental powers, making
the best market possible for her moral support, keeping at peace herself and
adhering mostly to the more prosperous side without fighting for either.
Such a policy required statesmanship of the highest order, and Elizabeth
alone was entirely successful in carrying it out. Somerset and
Northumberland both failed because they were unequal to it. Each of them
took the minister’s view rather than that of a monarch. They were party
leaders, both of them, and incapable of adopting the view above party
considerations which marks the successful sovereign. They pledged
themselves too deeply to the respective foreign alliances traditional with
their parties; and in both cases, as a penetrating statesman would have
foreseen, their allies failed them at the critical moment.
Mary’s tragical fate was the result of a similar short-sighted policy.
When she determined against the wishes of her people and the advice of her
wisest councillors, Catholics to a man, to hand herself and her country,
body and soul, over to Spanish interests, she ceased to be a true national

sovereign; the nice balance upon which England’s prosperity depended was
lost, the love and devotion of the people turned to cold distrust, and failure
and a broken heart were the result. Not until Elizabeth came with her keen
wit and her consummate mastery of the resources of chicanery was England
placed and kept firmly again upon the road to greatness which had been
traced for her by the first Tudor sovereign.
MARTIN HUME

THE NINE DAYS’ QUEEN

CHAPTER I

BRADGATE HALL AND THE GREYS OF
GROBY

T
here is no more picturesque spot in England than Bradgate Old
Manor, the birthplace of Lady Jane Grey. It stands in a
sequestered corner, about three miles from the town of Leicester,
amid arid slate hillocks, which slope down to the fertile valleys
at their feet. In Leland’s Perambulations through England, a survey of the
kingdom undertaken by command of Henry VIII, Bradgate is described as
possessing “a fair parke and a lodge lately built there by the Lorde Thomas
Grey, Marquise of Dorsete, father of Henry, that is now Marquise. There is
a faire and plentiful spring of water brought by Master Brok as a man
would judge agyne the hills through the lodge and thereby it driveth a
mylle.” He also informs us that “there remain few tokens of the old
castelle,” which leads us to believe that at the time of Lady Jane Grey’s
birth Bradgate was a comparatively new house. The ruins show that the
mansion was built of red brick and in that severe but elegant form of
architecture known as the “Tudor style.” Worthy old Leland goes on to say
that Jane’s paternal grandfather added “two lofty towers at the front of the
house, one on either side of the principal doorway.” These are still
remaining.

In Tudor times the park was very extensive and “marched with the
forest of Chartley, which was full twenty-five miles in circumference,
watered by the river Sore and teeming with game.” Another ancient writer
tells us, in the quaint language of his day, that “here a wren and squirrel
might hop from tree to tree for six miles, and in summer time a traveller
could journey from Beaumanoir to Burden, a good twelve miles, without

seeing the sun.” The wealth of luxuriant vegetation in the old park, the clear
and running brooks, that babble through the sequestered woods, and the
beautifully sloping open spaces, dotted with venerable and curiously
pollarded oaks, make up a scene of sylvan charm peculiarly English. Here
cultivation has not, as so often on the Continent, disfigured Nature, but the
park retains the wild beauty of its luxuriant elms and beeches that rise in
native grandeur from amidst a wilderness of bracken, fern, and flags, to cast
their shadows over heather-grown hillocks. On the summit of one of the
loftiest of these still stands the ruined palace that was the birthplace of Lady
Jane Grey. The approaches to Bradgate are beautiful indeed, especially the
pathway winding round by the old church along the banks of a trout-stream,
which rises in the neighbourhood of the Priory of Ulverscroft, famous for
the beauty of its lofty tower. When Jane Grey was born, this Priory had
been very recently suppressed, and the people were lamenting the departure
of the monks, who, during the hard winter of 1528, had fed six hundred
starving peasants.
Bradgate Manor House was standing as late as 1608, but after that date
it fell into gradual decay. Not much is now left of the original structure, but
its outlines can still be traced; and the walls of the great hall and the chapel
are nearly intact. A late Lord Stamford and Warrington roofed and restored
the old chapel, which contains a fine monument to that Henry Grey whose
signature may be seen on the warrant for the execution of Charles I.
A careful observation of the irregularities of the soil reveals traces of a
tilt-yard and of garden terraces; but all is now overgrown by Spanish
chestnut trees, wild flowers, nettles, and brambles. The gardens were once
considered amongst the finest in England, Lord Dorset taking great pride in
the cultivation of all the fruits, herbs, and flowers then grown in Northern
Europe. The parterres and terraces were formal, and there was a large fish-
pond full of golden carp and water lilies. Lady Jane Grey must often have
played in these stately avenues, and there is a legend that once, as a little
girl, she toppled into the tank and was nearly drowned—a less hideous fate
than that which was to befall her in her seventeenth year.

“This was thy home, then, gentle Jane!
This thy green solitude; and here
At evening, from thy gleaming pane,
Thine eyes oft watched the dappled deer
(Whilst the soft sun was in its wane)
Browsing beside the brooklet clear.
The brook yet runs, the sun sets now,
The deer still browseth—where art thou?”

These sentimental lines were written in the eighteenth century, when
deer still browsed in Bradgate Park, whence they have long since departed.
Many curious traditions concerning Lady Jane are even now current among
the local peasantry. Some believe that on St. Sylvester’s night (31st
December) a coach drawn by four black horses halts at the door of the old
mansion. It contains the headless form of the murdered Lady Jane. After a
3
brief halt it drives away again into the mist. Then again, certain strange
stunted oaks are shown, trees which the woodmen pollarded when they
heard that the fair girl had been beheaded. The pathetic memories of the
great tragedy, reaching down four slow centuries, prove how keenly its
awful reality was felt by the poorer folk at Bradgate, who, no doubt, had
good cause to love the “gentle Jane.”
The Manor of Bradgate was settled upon the Lady Frances Brandon,
Henry VIII’s niece, when she espoused Henry Grey. It had been inherited by
the Greys of Groby, Lady Jane’s paternal ancestors, from Rollo, or Fulbert,
said to have been chamberlain to Robert, Duke of Normandy, who gave him
the Castle of Croy in Picardy, the ruins of which are still to be seen not far
from Montreuil-sur-Mer. It was hence he derived the surname of de Croy,
afterwards anglicised to de Grey. This Rollo accompanied William the
Conqueror into England, and was settled, soon after the Conquest, at
Rotherfield, in Oxfordshire. The first of the family to be noticed by Dugdale
is Henry de Grey, to whom Richard I granted the Manor of Grey’s
Thurrock, in Essex, which grant was confirmed by King John in the first
year of his reign. The descendant of this nobleman, Edward de Grey, was
summoned to Parliament in 1488 in right of his wife’s barony of Ferrers of
Groby, and his son John, afterwards Earl Rivers, who was slain in the battle
of St. Albans, married the beautiful daughter of Sir John Woodville,

subsequently the Queen of Edward IV. Bradgate is thus associated with two
of the most unfortunate of England’s Queens: Elizabeth Woodville, who
passed much of her life in its leafy glades; and Lady Jane Grey, who first
saw the light in the stately red brick Manor House of which the crumbling
ruins are now so beautiful in their decay.
Jane Grey’s grandfather, Thomas, the eldest son of Elizabeth
Woodville, was summoned to Parliament on the 17th October 1509 as Lord
Ferrers of Groby, his mother’s barony, and to the second Parliament in 1511
as Marquess of Dorset. He was a man of great note. In the third year of
Henry VIII’s reign he had charge of the army of 10,000 men sent into Spain
to assist the forces invading Guyenne under the Emperor Ferdinand. This
force returned to England without doing service. We next hear of the
Marquess figuring at the jousts with Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk,
Lady Jane’s maternal grandfather, on the occasion of the latter’s
adventurous journey to France to bring back Mary Tudor, widow of Louis
XII of France, whom he subsequently married. The Marquess was also sent
to Calais to attend Charles V to England; indeed, he was very conspicuous
throughout the early years of Henry’s reign. King Hal paid him the
compliment of calling him “that honest and good man”—a title which he
thought he richly deserved, since he signed the celebrated letter to Pope
Clement VII touching the King’s divorce. He died in 1530, and was
succeeded by his eldest son, Henry, Lady Jane’s father. The inheritance of
this nobleman included the Marquisate of Dorset and the baronies of
4
Ferrers, Grey, Astley, Boneville, and Harrington, besides vast estates in
Leicestershire and other parts of England. Henry Grey, though his portraits
show him to have been a very good-looking man, did not enjoy a good
contemporary reputation for ability or strength of character. During the brief
reign of Edward VI he became the patron of the Swiss Reformers and was
adulated by Bullinger and Hill. His name will be found attached to many of
Henry VIII’s anti-papal decrees, and so long as that monarch lived, he was a
staunch “Henryite” or schismatic, professing belief in all the doctrines of
Rome save and except papal supremacy. In 1531, when the clergy were
threatened with præmunire and mulcted in a fine, as a punishment for their
too close attention to pontifical interests, young Henry of Dorset, who had
just come to his own, displayed great energy in carrying out the King’s
wishes and supporting his attempt to get himself acknowledged supreme

head of the English Church. He also evinced considerable courage in
connection with Henry VIII’s resistance to the excommunication of the Pope,
launched against him after his marriage with Anne Boleyn. Such zeal in his
sovereign’s service undoubtedly led to his advancement and paved the way
to his marriage with the King’s niece, the Lady Frances Brandon. He may
have owed much to the counsels and influence of Cromwell, to whom he
5
carried a letter of introduction from his mother, when he first went to
London as a lad of seventeen, immediately after his father’s decease. The
Dowager recommended her son very earnestly to “Master Cromwell,”
pleaded his youth, and besought that worthy, then all-powerful, not to take
heed of certain ill-natured reports concerning alleged wilful damage to the
5
priory buildings of Tylsey, where she was then residing.
The good lady couches her letter in very humble terms, but does not
enlighten us fully about the nature of the “damage” to which she refers, or
by whom it was done. She seems, at any rate, to be in a terrible fright lest
the tale should injure her son’s prospects with the all-powerful Chancellor.
Some little time afterwards the Marchioness wrote another letter to
Cromwell complaining of her son’s undutiful behaviour to her. It is dated
6
from the “House of Our Lady’s Passyon” (the Priory of Tylsey), and
begins:—

“My Lorde,—I beseeche you to be my good lorde, consyderyng
me a poor wydo, so unkyndly and extreymly escheated by my son.”

This curious epistle, now in the British Museum, is much defaced and
in parts illegible. The name of the person to whom it is addressed is
undecipherable, but, taken in conjunction with two other letters previously
addressed to Cromwell by the same correspondent, there can be little doubt
as to its destination. Her son had evidently withheld some property intended
for her under her husband’s will. Whether he mended his manners and paid
her the money, we know not; but as the Dowager is occasionally mentioned
as attending Court functions in company with her daughter-in-law, it seems
probable that the ultimate issue of the difficulty, whatever it was, was
satisfactory to her.

Margaret, Dowager Lady Dorset, became one of the greatest ladies of
the Court in the latter years of the reign of Henry VII and during a part of
that of Henry VIII. She was in much request, it seems, at royal christenings,
for not only was she specially invited to that of Mary Tudor, afterwards
Queen Mary I, but she enjoyed the signal honour of carrying the infant
Elizabeth to the font. She was invited to perform a like office at the baptism
of Edward VI, but this time she was unable to be present, and wrote to make
her loyal excuses, pleading that some of her household at Croydon had been
attacked by the “sweating sickness.” It is probable that she had no desire to
attend, for she had been the intimate friend of Anne Boleyn, and could
7
hardly have felt kindly towards Jane Seymour. Her place was filled by the
Marchioness of Exeter, who eventually, after the execution of her luckless
husband, was sent to the Tower on a flimsy charge of treason, and kept
8
there until Mary I’s time.
A singular point in the history of Jane Grey’s forbears is that her father,
in his hot haste to marry into the royal family, set aside, without the
slightest scruple, his legitimate wife, Lady Katherine Fitzalan, daughter of
the Earl of Arundel. Some writers say he was simply “contracted,” not
married, to this lady, who never demanded her marriage rights, but retired
into a dignified obscurity. None the less her family resented the affront
offered their kinswoman, and it was Thomas, Earl of Arundel, this
discarded lady’s brother, who acted as Dorset’s Nemesis, and at last
betrayed him into the hands of his enemies.
Lady Jane Grey’s maternal grandfather was, as he wrote himself in the
famous quatrain referring to his marriage with the King’s sister, descended
from “cloth of frieze.” He was the grandson of a London mercer who had
married a lady allied to the great houses of Nevill, Fitzalan and Howard,
and his father had fought and fallen at Bosworth Field in the cause of Henry
VII. In recognition of his services, Henry attached young Charles Brandon to
the person of his younger son, Prince Henry, who was of similar age to
himself. Thus began a friendship which was only severed by death. In
appearance the Prince and his comrade were singularly alike: both were tall
and stalwart, both with red hair and fair complexions, and they were equally
skilful and agile in sport and manly pastimes. Charles was more
intellectually gifted than Henry, but there was little to choose between them

as regards their execrable views of moral responsibilities and their laxity in
respect of their marriage vows.
As this last characteristic of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, touches
somewhat upon the legitimacy of Lady Jane Grey’s descent, a short
summary of his matrimonial vagaries may be pardoned here. He was
contracted in marriage early in life to Anne Browne, a daughter of Sir
Anthony Browne, Governor of Calais, by his wife Lady Lucy Nevill,
daughter of George Nevill, Duke of Bedford, brother of Richard, Earl of
Warwick, “the King maker.” In 1513 he was bold enough to flirt most
outrageously with, and seek in marriage, one of the greatest ladies in
Europe, Margaret of Austria, the widowed Duchess of Savoy, aunt of the
Emperor Charles V. But though Margaret fell in love with him, such a
match was soon seen to be impossible, even by the lady herself, and
Brandon came out of the affair most ungallantly. For this or some other
reason never clearly explained, Brandon set aside his contract with Anne
Browne, notwithstanding that by the laws of the period it was considered as
binding as the completed marriage ceremony. We next learn that a probable
reason for his unchivalrous conduct was a chance that suddenly offered
itself to him of marrying the Lady Margaret, the rich widow of Sir John
Mortimer of Essex. Charles and his mature consort—there was a difference
of nearly thirty years between them—did not abide long together, for he
presently endeavoured to annul this marriage on a plea of consanguinity, the
Lady Margaret being sister to the mother of his neglected bride, Anne
Browne, and consequently her aunt, a complication which surely ought to
have been discovered at an earlier stage of the proceedings. Having settled
this matter for the time being to his own, but certainly not to the lady’s,
satisfaction, he remarried his discarded wife, Anne Browne, in the presence
of a great concourse of relations and friends. By this lady he had two
daughters: Mary, who became the wife of Lord Mounteagle; and Anne, who
married a connection of the Greys, Viscount Powis. Their mother died in
1515, and Brandon soon afterwards contracted himself in matrimony with
the Lady Elizabeth Grey, daughter and heiress of Viscount de Lisle.
Whether through the interference of Lady Mortimer or not it is impossible
to say, but it is certain that Lady de Lisle refused to carry out her side of the
contract, and the match was broken off. Brandon, with the consent of Henry
VIII, filched from the poor lady her title of Lisle, which he forthwith
assumed. In due time the lady gave her hand to Edmund Dudley, father of

the fateful Duke of Northumberland. It was probably when in France, and
in attendance upon King Henry, at the time of the negotiations for the
marriage of the King’s youngest and most beautiful sister, Mary, to the
prematurely aged Louis XII, King of France, a hideous victim to
elephantiasis, that Charles made so strong an impression upon that ardent
Tudor princess that she swore by all the saints that she would not wed the
French King unless it was thoroughly understood she was to marry whom
she chose after his death, which took place within eighteen months of the
marriage. The romantic story of how Brandon, now created Duke of
Suffolk, wooed and married the royal widow within a fortnight of the
King’s death, and whilst she still wore the white widow’s weeds of a French
King’s Consort, is too well known to need recapitulation here, nor need we
enter into the details of the gorgeous ceremonies of remarriage that took
place at Greenwich, in the presence of King Henry, Queen Katherine of
Aragon, and their Court, soon after Mary and Suffolk had landed in
England. The Duke of Suffolk took his bride to spend their honeymoon in
his magnificent mansion in Southwark, known as Suffolk Place, which he
had recently inherited by the death of his uncle, Sir Thomas Brandon. It
must have been about this time that the friends of the Lady Mortimer, and
probably that lady herself, began to spread rumours abroad that made both
Charles and his consort anxious as to the validity of their marriage and the
legitimacy of their offspring. Indeed, even at the time of his clandestine
wedding in the Chapel of the Hôtel de Cluny (now incorporated in the
Museum of that name), he had felt very uneasy about the matter, and,
foreseeing his peril, wrote to Wolsey, beseeching his assistance and advice
on a matter of such vital importance, which, however, was not decided so
easily as Charles expected. It was not until 1528 that Wolsey dispatched a
somewhat garbled account of the matter to Pope Clement VII, then in exile
at Orvieto, where he received Cardinal Campeggio and the English envoys
who came to him with the first negotiations for the divorce of Henry VIII
from Katherine of Aragon. Trusting in the evidence which Wolsey sent him,
the Pope, by a special Bull (dated 12th May 1528), annulled the marriage of
Brandon with the Lady Mortimer, on the plea of consanguinity, and at the
same time declared valid that of her niece, Anne Browne, and legitimized
her two children. The Bull further stated that Lady Mortimer and her friends
were “liable to ecclesiastical censure if they made any attempt to invalidate
the decree” making valid Brandon’s marriage to Anne Browne and Mary

Tudor. The importance of this decree, which was first read out to the people
in Norwich Cathedral in 1529 by Bishop Nyx, can readily be imagined
when we remember that it was not delivered until after the Queen-Duchess
had given birth to two children. Her only son, the Earl of Lincoln, died in
infancy, and the Lady Frances became in due time the Marchioness of
Dorset and mother of Lady Jane Grey. On the other hand, the legitimacy of
the Lady Eleanor Brandon, the younger daughter, who was born after the
publication of the papal decree, was never disputed, and moreover, before
she entered upon her sorrowful career, the Lady Mortimer was dead. That
considerable doubt was entertained as to the validity of Brandon’s marriage
with the Queen-Dowager is proved by a variety of facts too numerous to be
detailed, but one of which is very significant. Late in the first half of Queen
Elizabeth’s reign, the validity of the claims of the Lady Mounteagle and her
sister, the children of Brandon and Anne Browne, to be considered
legitimate, was ventilated in the Court of Arches, and after much
deliberation confirmed. Although the legitimacy of these ladies, both of
whom were long since deceased at the time of this trial, had nothing to do
with the legal position of Mary Tudor as the wife of the Duke of Suffolk, it
was none the less an indirect test of the right to the throne of her
granddaughters, the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey.
From these briefly resumed facts it is not difficult to understand that
although King Henry VIII highly approved of his bosom friend’s conduct,
his subjects held Charles to be an arrant rascal. His treatment of his
beautiful royal wife was on a par with his low conception of his moral
obligations. He neglected her, spent her money, and lived openly with a
notorious woman known as Mrs. Eleanor Brandon, by whom he had an
illegitimate son, Charles, who is said to have been the well-known jeweller
to Queen Elizabeth, and whose son, or grandson, Gregory Brandon, was,
according to tradition, the headsman who executed Charles I.
Lady Jane’s grandmother, Mary Tudor, was a most amiable and long-
suffering princess, who after a somewhat secluded life in Southwark
withdrew to Westhorpe Hall. Here she died on 24th June 1533. Her two
daughters—the Lady Frances, who had recently married the Marquess of
Dorset; and the Lady Eleanor, soon to be the bride of Henry, Lord Clifford,
eldest son of the Earl of Cumberland—were with her at the time of her
death, but the Duke was absent in London, and so too was the Marquess of

Dorset, her son-in-law, attending at the coronation of Anne Boleyn. The
Queen-Duchess was interred in Bury St. Edmunds, Henry VIII and Suffolk
paying the expenses of a gorgeous alabaster monument to her memory, “full
of little saints and angels,” which was destroyed soon after, during the
wreck of the glorious Abbey Church at the time of the suppression of the
monasteries. The remains of the Queen were then removed to the parish
church, where they still rest, a marble tablet put up in the early nineteenth
century being the only memorial of Mary Tudor, Dowager Queen of France
and Duchess of Suffolk.
Within three months of the Queen’s death (September 1533) Suffolk
married a fifth wife, the Lady Katherine Willoughby d’Eresby, who, it
seems, was his ward and only fifteen years old. She was a great heiress, and
what made her marriage all the more singular was the fact that she was a
daughter of that Doña Maria de Sarmiento who, as Lady Willoughby, was
the friend and attendant of Queen Katherine of Aragon. It must also be
remembered that Queen Katherine had no more bitter enemy than Suffolk.
This Duchess developed into a very pretty woman, of great wit and
character, and a staunch supporter of the doctrines of the Reformation.
The Lady Frances Brandon was born at Hatfield, then a palace of the
Bishop of Salisbury, who had afforded her mother hospitality; for it seems
that the Queen-Duchess was obliged to halt here, for reasons easily
understood, on her way to Walsingham Priory, whither she was bound on a
pilgrimage. There is still extant a very curious account of the baptism of the
Lady Frances in the parish church of Hatfield, which was hung with
9
garlands for the occasion. The Lady Anne Boleyn, aunt of the ill-fated
Queen Anne of that ilk, stood proxy for Queen Katherine of Aragon as
sponsor.
In 1533–4 the Lady Frances was married, notwithstanding his afore-
mentioned “contract” to the Lady Fitzalan, to Henry Grey, Marquess of
Dorset. The wedding took place at Suffolk Place, Southwark, and the
religious ceremony in the Church of St. Saviour, now the cathedral of the
new diocese. No very great pains seem to have been taken with the lady’s
education, except in the matter of what we should call “sports,” in which, it
seems, she was very proficient.

The Lady Frances was a handsome woman, however, but somewhat
spiteful and wholly unscrupulous. In a well-known portrait, dated after her
second marriage, she is represented as a buxom, fair-haired, well-featured
matron, with a very sinister expression in her light grey eyes. Her eldest
child was a son who died of the plague when a baby, and the three children
who survived were all girls—the Ladies Jane, Katherine, and Mary Grey.
Lady Jane Grey, as we shall see, had little cause to feel deep affection for
either of her parents, but least of all for her mother. The Lady Frances
seems to have been cast, so far as her heart went, in a mould of iron. Even
the bloody deaths of her husband and her eldest daughter, and the
wretchedly precarious existence of her two remaining children, did not
affect her buoyant spirits, since she enjoyed her life to the end. It would be
difficult to define her religious opinions. She was a schismatic under Henry
VIII, and under Edward VI she appeared a zealous Protestant and so intimate
with the famous Reformer Bucer that when he died she petitioned Cranmer
to obtain a pension for his widow. She became a pious Papist in Queen
Mary’s time, and died a prominent member of the Church of England as by
law established, under Elizabeth.
The Lady Eleanor Brandon, Henry VIII’s niece and Lady Jane Grey’s
only maternal aunt, married, as we have said, Henry, Lord Clifford, to
whom she was united in 1537 at the Duke of Suffolk’s palace in Southwark.
The Lady Eleanor gave birth to two sons and a daughter. At the time of the
Pilgrimage of Grace (in 1536) she was staying at Bolton Abbey, which
Henry VIII, after confiscating it from the Church, had presented to Lord
Clifford; and had it not been for the chivalry and bravery of Christopher
Aske, the rebel leader’s brother, she would have suffered at the hands of the
infuriated “pilgrims.” By dint of a bold night ride, Aske aided Lady Eleanor
to fly from Bolton Abbey and reach a place of safety. In 1542 her husband
succeeded to the Earldom of Cumberland on the death of his father, and five
years later (November 1547) Lady Eleanor passed away at Brougham
Castle and was laid to rest in Skipton Church.

HENRY GREY, DUKE OF SUFFOLK
FROM THE PAINTING BY JOANNES CORVUS IN THE
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

It will be seen by this rapid sketch of her forbears on both sides that
Lady Jane Grey might, without exciting surprise, have developed a
character strongly sensual and unscrupulous. That she did not do so, apart
from the fact that her early death perhaps prevented the full development of

her character at all, was probably owing to the rigid and severe nature of the
education to which she was subjected. The influence of Erasmus and the
fashion of the newly revived classical learning had in the childhood of Jane
Grey firmly seized upon the higher classes of England; and the ladies of
royal and noble birth, schooled in the stern pietism of The Instruction of a
Christian Woman of Luis Vives, which they all studied in Latin or in
English, and, steeped in the classic moralities, they became prim and self-
suppressed in expression and behaviour. It is likely enough, indeed, that in
most cases this prudishness of attitude was but skin deep; but in the case of
the hapless Jane, who was little more than a child when she was sacrificed,
no other impression of her personality than this was left upon the world. We
may picture the tiny demure maiden pacing the green alleys and smooth
sward of Bradgate, with her Latin books and her exalted religious
meditations, a fervent mystic, with no knowledge of the great world of
greed, ambition, and lust, of which she, poor child, was doomed to be the
innocent victim.

CHAPTER II

BIRTH AND EDUCATION

L
10
ady Jane Grey was born at Bradgate Old Manor in October
1537, most probably in the first days of the month, for Prince
11
Edward, her cousin, came into the world on the 12th, St.
Edward’s Eve, and three days later Henry, Marquess of Dorset, attended the
royal christening, which he would scarcely have done if his own wife, a
member of the royal family, had not been safely delivered. His presence in
London can be traced in the State Papers from the date of Prince Edward’s
birth until the first week in November. Lady Jane’s christening took place,
as was then the custom, within forty-eight hours of her birth, in the parish
church, with all the ancient rites. Some writers state that the babe was
carried to the font by her grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness; but this
good lady, as we have already seen, was unable at the time to leave her sick
household at Croydon. She sent her new granddaughter a rich bowl with a
chiselled cover. It was the custom at that time, when a baptism took place,
for the whole family, godfathers and godmothers and guests, to walk in
procession from the mansion to the church. As is still the case in Catholic
countries, the number of sponsors in pre-Reformation times was unlimited.
All these worthy people brought gifts of more or less value, according to
the nearness of their kinship and the length of their purses. The Marquess, if
he was present, would certainly have worn his robes of state and “carried
the salt.” At the church door the christening company was met by the
12
clergy, and after a short prayer the child was named. The officiating priest
on this occasion was either Mr. Harding, then chaplain at Bradgate, or else
Mr. Cook, Rector of the parish. After being named, the child was carried to
the font, which stood in the middle of the church under an extinguisher-like

canopy, richly carved and painted, which pulled up and down, so as to keep
the holy water clean. In those days the back of the head and the heels of the
13
infant were immersed in the water, the present ceremony of sprinkling
having only been introduced into this country from Geneva by the
Reformers during Elizabeth’s reign. The infant was also anointed with
chrism on the back and breast, a very ancient ceremony, the abolition of
which caused considerable controversy and some persecution in the reign of
Henry VIII. This anointing, or unction, which was performed within the
sacred edifice, was followed by the presentation of the gifts of the various
14
sponsors. Abundant hospitality in the shape of sweet wafers, comfits,
spiced wine, or hippocras was dispensed in the porch, not only to the
invited company, but to the promiscuous village crowd that elected to
attend the function; and at last the procession, with the infant wrapped in a
sort of shawl of rich brocade, returned to the mansion, where a dinner was
served to the guests and to the members of the household.

The life of an English child in olden times, especially in the upper
classes, was by no means the ideal existence it has now become. A careful
study of contemporary records proves that the barbarous and filthy system
of swathing or “swaddling” an infant was almost universally practised. We
may take it for granted that the baby Jane Grey was swathed or “swaddled”
according to the prevailing English fashion, from her armpits to her knees,
and was thus able at all events to move her tiny hands and feet, a privilege
denied her infant contemporaries on the Continent. So late as 1684,
Madame de Maintenon, writing to Madame de Présné, who had just been
delivered of a son, beseeches her to “adopt the English method of allowing
her infant’s limbs free play,” and stigmatises the French custom of “tight
swaddling” as “abominably dirty and unhealthy.”
The Lady Frances certainly did not nurse her own baby; it would have
been considered most indecent for a woman of her rank to suckle her
offspring. A foster-mother was engaged, and it is likely enough that the
good woman who supplied little Jane Grey with the sustenance nature had
intended her to derive from her parent, was that Mrs. Ellen who, seventeen
years later, attended her beloved foster-child on the scaffold.

In her eighteenth month the child was weaned, and this was attended by
some considerable ceremony. In the morning Mass was said in the presence
of the whole family, including the foster-mother and the child, who was
blessed with holy water. This finished, the company returned in procession
to the hall and forthwith sat down to a copious banquet.
The archives of Sudeley Castle contain an interesting description of an
aristocratic nursery in the first half of the sixteenth century. Queen
Katherine Parr, having married Admiral Lord Thomas Seymour, lived at
Sudeley, where she died in September 1548, after giving birth to a child, for
whom was provided an apartment very elaborately furnished with tapestry,
and containing everything a modern infant of the highest rank could
possibly want, all in silver or pewter, and, moreover, a “chair of state” hung
with cloth of gold.
The Lady Frances’s nursery was, no doubt, fitted up quite as
luxuriously as that prepared for the infant of Queen Katherine Parr; but no
inventory of its contents has been handed down to us. Nearly all the toys
commonly used in England at this period were made either in France or
Holland, and closely resembled those grotesque playthings which were our
grandparents’ delight: wooden dolls with roughly painted heads and jointed
limbs, hobby horses, hoops, and even toy soldiers mounted on movable
slides. Jane must have had an abundance of these nursery treasures, besides
an oaken cradle with rockers and also a sort of little perambulator, wherein
she might be carried to take the air in the park and gardens. She had a
complete household, consisting of Mrs. Ellen, two under-nurses, a
governess, two waiting women, and two footmen. Sometimes, but very
rarely, the voice of nature may have prompted her mother and father to play
with her and enjoy those exquisite moments of purest love common alike to
prince and peasant. Her babyhood may have been fairly happy, but when
that ended, the stern training which prevailed in every aristocratic family of
the period began in all its severity: long prayers, tedious lessons, and that
terrible “cramming” system which as often as not engendered premature
physical decline and even imbecility. The tiny princess, from her third year
upwards, was dressed like a little old lady, in miniature reproduction of her
mother, coif and all complete, an exceedingly irksome garb for so very
small a child. Even when full-grown, Jane, like her sister Katherine, was of

very diminutive stature; and their youngest sister, Mary, was an actual
dwarf, “not bigger, when over thirty, than a child of ten.”
15
The greater part of the Lady Jane’s infancy was spent at Bradgate
with her little sisters—Katherine, two years her junior; and Mary, six years
younger than herself. A Mrs. Ashly, sister or sister-in-law to the Mrs. Ashly,
or Astley, who acted in the same capacity to Princess Elizabeth, was
appointed to attend as governess upon Jane and her sisters; but of this lady
little is known, whereas Elizabeth’s governess is, of course, frequently
mentioned as a woman of great importance. It was evidently not until the
Lady Jane had been named in Henry VIII’s will as a possible successor to his
throne that any particular attention was paid to her instruction, and then
only for purely political purposes. Her two sisters received but an ordinary
education, and Jane herself must have been between nine and ten years of
age when she was handed over to Queen Katherine Parr to begin her more
important studies. No doubt the Dorsets secretly intended their eldest
daughter to become Edward VI’s consort and to rule the kingdom through
her, and her education therefore became a matter of great importance to
them, as they wished her to be thoroughly equipped to hold the high station
they desired her to occupy. In religion she was to be exceedingly Protestant,
but in social matters her training was most varied, including music and
classical and modern languages, even Hebrew and, if we may credit some
of her enthusiastic eulogists, Chaldee!!
The royal birth of the Marchioness of Dorset and the great wealth of
her lord placed their family in a very exceptional position in the county.
Here, as also in London, they maintained semi-regal state. No one could
compete with them, and although they received much company, especially
at Christmas time, they rarely mixed with their neighbours, and when they
did so condescend, they were invariably received with all the ceremony due
to royalty. When, for instance, the Marquess of Dorset and his lady visited
Leicester, they were entertained with great ceremony. In the archives of that
city for 1540 there is a charge of “two shillings and sixpence for
strawberries and wine for my Lady Marchioness’s Grace, for Mistress
Mayoress and her sisters.” Also, on the occasion of another visit, “Four
16
shillings” were paid “to the pothicary for making a gallon of Ippocras,
that was given to my Lady’s Grace, Mistress Mayoress and her sisters, and

to the wives of the Aldermen of Leicester, who gave the said ladies,
moreover, wafers, apples, pears, and walnuts at the same time.” From
another record, of the city of Lincoln, we learn that the Dorset family when
on its way to London frequently put up at the White Hall Inn for the night,
their expenses being paid by the town. There is also an entry specifying the
expenses for entertaining the Lady Jane Grey when on her way to London
and on her return journeys through Leicester to Bradgate in 1548 and 1551.
There was much in the stately mode of life led by our great aristocracy
in the sixteenth century which has not even now passed altogether out of
fashion. At certain seasons of the year, it appears, the family resided in the
main building of the mansion and kept up a state almost equal in
magnificence to that of a royal Court. A great number of servants—as many
as eighty or a hundred—were maintained, and these, being very ignorant,
often formed a rather disorderly crew. They received very small wages; but
as they wore brilliant liveries, and served as an escort to their masters when
they went abroad, they made a highly picturesque appearance. Few people,
even in the upper circles of society, could read or write with ease; and as
there were no newspapers and scarcely any books, no correspondence, and
but few visits to fill up leisure time, the men’s sports were mainly those of
the field, so that large hunting and hawking parties were the general order
of the day. The ladies were frequently invited to share these pursuits; and
the Lady Frances was well known in Leicestershire in her day as a great
huntress and a skilful archeress.
Hospitality, if barbaric, was none the less sumptuous. Tablecloths and
napkins were already in use, and “damask” was pretty generally to be seen
in the houses of the wealthy; while the plate belonging to the great nobility
was not only very costly, but exceedingly artistic in design. Then as now, it
was the custom to pass the winter months in the country and the summer in
London. During the hunting season Bradgate was thrown open to a throng
of guests, and since the mistress of the house was niece to the reigning
sovereign, many of these were of princely rank, including Princess Mary,
who was on very friendly terms with her cousin Frances and her children. It
is not at all unlikely that when the family gathered in the great hall of an
evening, dances, masques, and other pastimes of a more boisterous kind,
described as “romps and jigs,” were indulged in. On occasion, players were
summoned from London, and displayed their skill in representing those

rough and unformed plays which delighted our ancestors until the more
17
shapely Elizabethan drama came into being.
People rose and retired to rest earlier in Tudor days than we do now,
especially in summer, when breakfast was served as early as six o’clock,
dinner at ten, and supper at five. Tea and coffee were as yet undiscovered,
and light home-brewed ale was the usual breakfast beverage. Such very
young ladies as Lady Jane Grey would be served at this meal with a cup of
hot milk and sometimes with a sort of mead, or barley water, heated and
spiced. During Lent breakfast consisted of bread, with salt fish, ling, turbot
and eels, fresh whitings, sprats, beer and wine. At other seasons there were
chines of beef, roast breast of mutton or boiled mutton, butter, cooked eggs,
custard, pies, jellies, etc., as well as chickens, ducks, swan, geese, and
18
game. Dinner came at noon, and it was customary in large country houses
to close the gates while the whole establishment sat down, according to
rank, in the great hall. Sometimes a slight alteration was made, two tables
being set in the dining-room, at the first of which sat the lord and his family,
with such titled guests as they might be entertaining, while the second was
occupied by “knights and honourable gentlemen.” In such a case the tables
in the great hall were generally three, the first for the steward, comptroller,
secretary, master of the house, master of the fish-ponds, the tutor—if one
was attached to the family—and such gentlemen as happened to be under
the degree of a knight. In a very large household it frequently happened that
as many as a hundred and fifty or two hundred people would sit down to eat
at one and the same time, but in most castles, halls, and manors the ladies of
the family, excepting on state occasions, ate apart from the men, a separate
table being laid for them, and for the chaplain, in the ladies’ chamber, while
two others were laid in the housekeeper’s room for the ladies’ women. The
Lady Frances usually partook of her dinner in solitary state, waited upon by
young gentlewomen and, when they were old enough to do so, by her two
elder daughters, who stood on either side of her until she had finished, when
they in their turn sat down and were served by gentlewomen. In their
infancy, the children, attended by their nurses and gentlemen and women,
dined with the housekeeper in her chamber.
All meals were somewhat disorderly, for, forks not being in general
use, it was the custom for the gentlemen to pick the daintiest scraps out of

the common dish with the tips of their fingers, and place them gallantly
upon the platters of the ladies seated nearest them. It was considered ill-
bred to lick one’s fingers after this act of courtesy. Proper behaviour was to
wipe them daintily upon a sort of napkin or serviette, sometimes, as in
Japan, made of tissue paper.
Grace was said both before and after meals, and as most large houses
had several chaplains and a choir for the service of the chapel, it was usual
for one of the priests, accompanied by three or four of the choristers
wearing their surplices, to enter the hall and solemnly chant the Benedicite
or Grace, which until Edward VI’s time invariably concluded with a petition
for the release of the souls in Purgatory. It was considered impolite to talk
during a repast unless addressed by the master or mistress of the feast. The
chaplain was employed to read aloud either the Gospel of the day or a
chapter from that enlivening work The Martyrology. Occasionally a
minstrel was invited to sing an interesting ballad or tell a story; otherwise
the clinking of the knives was the only sound heard during meals, which,
however copious, were invariably dispatched with the utmost speed. In
proportion to the amount of meat very little bread was consumed. “The
English bolt their food in dead silence,” remarked the Venetian Ambassador
Giustiniani, “and, bread being dear, eat very sparingly of it. They throw
their chicken bones under the table when they have sucked them clean.”
When supper, a meal which corresponds with our late dinner, was over,
evening prayers were said, and soon afterwards, on ordinary occasions,
everybody retired to rest. It should be remembered that artificial light was
exceedingly costly and inadequate, as indeed it remained until the
beginning of the later half of the nineteenth century. Many who are still in
the prime of life can remember the rush tallow dips made and used in old-
fashioned country houses and farms in their childhood. In the sixteenth
century these were the only lights to be had, except oil lamps and wax
candles imported at immense expense from France and Italy, and only
19
kindled on high days and holidays. Resin torches were burnt in the great
hall; but many complained of the stench and smoke, so that an early
departure to bed was not only wise but necessary.
It may perhaps be concluded that we who live at the beginning of the
twentieth century would have found life in an English manor in Tudor days

insufferably dull and monotonous. Yet there were compensations. Outdoor
exercises were many and various. There was the tennis-court, bowls and
quoits were much in vogue, and our forefathers practised many other
excellent sports, some of which we might well revive. There was hawking,
then in the zenith of its popularity; hunting, archery, slinging, mase or
“prisoner’s bars,” wrestling, tennis, of which game Henry VIII was
exceedingly fond; fivestool ball, football, and golf. Cricket does not seem to
have been known, at all events under its present name; but there were a
score or so of other popular games and sports, some of which, such as duck-
hunting, dog-fighting, and cock-fighting, were exceedingly barbarous. The
cruel sport of trying on horseback to pull off the greased head of a living
duck or goose suspended by the legs from a cross beam was exceedingly
20
popular at this time. Edward VI, in his Journal, mentions it in an entry
dated 4th June 1550: “Sir Robert Dudley, third surviving son of the Earl of
Warwick, was married this day to Sir John Robsart’s daughter, after which
marriage there were certain gentlemen on horseback that did strive who
should first carry away a goose’s head that was hanged alive on two cross-
posts.” Can we imagine the whole Court of England, King included,
assisting at this childish and cruel spectacle?
The Marquess of Dorset and his family did not spend the whole year at
Bradgate; political and social duties brought them a great deal to London,
especially in the early spring and summer months. In London they inhabited
a mansion at Westminster, not far from Whitehall Palace. The town
residence of the Marquess of Dorset was not, as usually stated, situated in
Grey’s Inn. At no time did his branch of the family of Grey possess property
in or near the Inn which bears their name; it belonged from a remote period
to the house of Grey de Wilton, who sold it, in Edward IV’s time, to the
Carthusians of Sheen, from whom it was confiscated at the Dissolution and
subsequently granted by the Crown for the purpose which it still serves.
Thus Grey’s Inn did not fall to Lady Frances, although she was presented
by her uncle the King with nearly all the other property owned by the
Carthusians in and around London. It has also been said that the Marquess
of Dorset had a house in Salisbury Place, Fleet Street, but this is another
popular error. This property passed to the Earls of Dorset in 1611 and is
connected, not with Lady Jane and her family, but with many worthies of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Henry, Marquess of Dorset, had

21
his town residence on the Thames above Whitehall, precisely where
stood, until quite recently, Dorset Place—the name by which the house was
known in Lady Jane’s time. After the execution of Suffolk it was seized by
the Crown and eventually, in the last days of the sixteenth century, cut up
into three separate houses, one of which was inhabited by John Locke the
philosopher, who died in it. By a curious coincidence, Locke had previously
lived at Salisbury Square. Dorset Place must have been a very large house;
we know from contemporary evidence that it had a fine garden and a broad
terrace overlooking the Thames. Here Lady Jane Grey certainly lived for a
good many months of her life, and here she formed the acquaintance of the
Reformers Bullinger and Ulmer, or ab Ulmis. She may also have lived for a
time in yet another house owned by the Marquess, near the Temple, of
which no trace now exists.
The Dorsets were in the habit, especially in the winter season, of
paying country visits to their numerous relatives—to Princess Mary at
Newhall; to the Lady Frances’ stepmother, Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk,
at Wollaton; to Dorset’s sister, the Lady Audley, at Walden; to his orphan
wards and cousins the Willoughbys, at Tylsey; and to Lady Jane’s paternal
grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness of Dorset, either at her house at
Croydon or at Tylsey, where at one time she presided over the household of
the young Willoughbys.
The entertainment of such important personages must often have been a
doubtful pleasure to hosts of limited means, for they never stirred abroad
without a numerous escort of male and female servants and a guard of thirty
or forty retainers mounted on horseback and armed to the teeth. Carriages
were but little used as yet, and people of quality had to journey from place
to place on horseback, the elderly ladies being provided with the quaintest
but most inconvenient and perilous of side saddles, while the young girls
and children rode pillion either in front of or behind their nearest male
relatives or some trusty yeoman. In cold or damp weather the ladies and
children and their female attendants travelled in a huge and very heavy
22
covered vehicle not unlike a Turkish araba or a modern omnibus in
shape. This was furnished with leathern curtains and lined with mattresses
and cushions, and could often contain as many as twelve persons, six on
either seat facing each other. To protect themselves from the cold the ladies

23
wore cloaks and vizors, or “safeguards.” The first genuine statute for
repairing roads dates only from 1668. Before that the roads were, like those
of modern Turkey, universally execrable, and over them this ponderous
vehicle, with its enormous wheels, moved at a snail’s pace: it is not
surprising that most people preferred the hackney, even in winter time. Yet
in spite of all its inconveniences, this old-world fashion of travel was not
without charm, especially in genial weather, when the passage of a lordly
cavalcade added much to the life of our highways and verdant lanes and
lent to the ever lovely English landscape a picturesqueness and a gaiety
which modern civilisation can never hope to restore. On the other hand,
delicate folk must have dreaded these excursions, and it is not surprising to
learn that on one occasion, in 1550, after a ten hours’ ride in very bad
weather to Newhall, on a visit to Princess Mary, the Lady Jane was taken
very ill, and kept her room for many days.
The Dissolution of the monasteries and the general troubles of the
Church had no doubt greatly attenuated the quaintness of English life on the
high roads by the time Jane had attained girlhood. No longer did the Lord
Abbot or Prior, with his princely train of ecclesiastics on their gaily
caparisoned horses and mules, pass through the leafy lanes on their way to
pay visits of duty or ceremony. Lady Jane can never have seen the Abbot of
Leicester, for instance, he who attended the death-bed of Wolsey, go forth
with all his monks to pay his respects to the Prior of the rich house of
Ulverston, for both abbeys were suppressed before she was a year old. She
was not familiar with the begging friars, with their sacks and their jokes;
and the pardoner, the palmer, and the pilgrim had also faded into the near
past long before she began to toddle on the green slopes of Bradgate. Still
she must have often witnessed the procession on Corpus Christi, when her
own native village was enlivened by garlands of flowers and on every
house front hung a linen sheet decked with bunches of bright flowers. She
may even have walked with the rest of the children of high and low degree
in the annual procession of Our Lady on Assumption Day, for throughout
the reign of Henry VIII this festival was observed.
The roads were still full of colour in the summer months, with packmen
and peddlers, troops of armed men—not unfrequently dragging along
between them some poor wretch, tied by the wrists, to his fiery doom at
Leicester or London—with travelling caravans, with itinerant mountebanks

and jugglers, and occasionally with a troop of showmen hastening to exhibit
dancing bears or learned dogs and pigs at some neighbouring village fair.
The suppression of the monasteries had a disastrous effect on travelling
in Henry VIII’s time, comparable only to what would happen nowadays if all
the first-class hotels in the country were suddenly closed. The Marquess and
Marchioness of Dorset, as they journeyed with their children from Bradgate
to London, must have heartily regretted the hospitality they had enjoyed in
their own young days at many a lordly abbey and wealthy priory now laid
in ruins. The inns were picturesque enough, but none too luxurious; still the
beds were generally comfortable, and the cooking, according to the taste of
the day, was excellent. Conti, an Italian traveller who visited England some
few years after Henry VIII’s death, was much struck by the cleanliness of the
parlours and the softness of the feather beds he met with in our country
hostelries. The fare, too, he found abundant, and the wines, “sack,” and
beers often of superlative quality—facts to which Shakespeare has not
failed to allude. The innkeepers were great gainers by the Dissolution, for
such rich travellers as did not care to trouble their peers looked to them for
board and lodging now that they were no longer able to put up at a religious
house. We may be sure that the Dorsets and their people were familiar and
welcome guests at all the chief inns along the roads they travelled.
Aylmer, who became Bishop of London in Elizabeth’s time, is usually
described as Lady Jane’s earliest tutor. This is a patent error, for Aylmer,
who was born in 1521, would have been far too young, in Jane’s infancy, to
be appointed tutor to the children of the Marquess of Dorset. It is more
likely that Dr. Harding, who was chaplain at Bradgate when Jane was born,
had the honour of teaching his patron’s daughters their alphabet. He was
reputed a learned man, and posed at one time as a staunch Protestant; but he
resembled his employers in having a chameleon-like facility for changing
the colour of his opinions according to the state of the religious barometer
in regal quarters. Under Henry VIII he was a schismatic and a firm believer
in transubstantiation and in the wisdom of invoking saints; when Edward
came to the throne he turned quasi-Calvinist. Very early in Mary’s reign he
became, much to the unspeakable horror of Lady Jane, a penitent Papist.
Aylmer, a far more estimable man and a greater scholar, appeared on the
scene at Bradgate as tutor after the accession of King Edward, when Jane

was in her twelfth year and ripe to receive his learned instruction in
theology and classic lore.

CHAPTER III

THE LADY LATIMER

N
o task is more congenial to the earnest student of history than
that of tracing the origin of some important event, and
following its gradual development from a trivial incident to its
culmination in a great matter destined to alter the fortunes, and
even change the faith, of an entire nation. If we would reach a thorough
comprehension of the chain of events which led up to the proclamation of
Jane Grey as Queen of England, we must now leave her to pursue her Greek
and Latin studies and broider her samplers at Bradgate, while we trace the
earlier fortunes of those who so ruled her destiny as to compel a simple-
hearted and naturally retiring girl to accept a station which, by the time she
was constrained to relinquish it, brought her to the lowest depths of
misfortune and transformed the regal diadem which she herself had never
coveted into a crown of martyrdom.

The Lady Latimer, better known in history as Queen Katherine Parr,
influenced the fortunes of Lady Jane Grey more than is usually imagined,
for it was to her care that the ten-year-old child was committed (after it had
been proposed by the Seymour faction that she should become Queen-
Consort of Edward VI and head of the Protestant party in England), in order
that her education might be directed and her mind bent towards “the new
learning” of which Katherine was secretly a supporter.
Born in 1513 at that lordly Kendal Castle whose ruins still command
one of the loveliest prospects in Westmoreland, Katherine Parr, though a
simple gentlewoman, could boast royal blood—that of our Anglo-Saxon
kings, inherited from her paternal ancestor Ivo de Talbois, who married
Lucy, the sister of the renowned Earls Morcar and Edwin. She was also of

Plantagenet descent through her great-great-grandmother Alice Nevill,
sister to Cicely Nevill, Duchess of York, a lineage that made her cousin four
times removed to King Henry VIII himself. We will not enter in detail into
the many alliances of the Parr family with the Nevills, Stricklands,
Throckmortons, and Boroughs, but we are safe in describing it as a wealthy
and honourable county stock, much looked up to in those days.
Katherine’s father, Sir Thomas Parr, married, when his bride was but
little over thirteen, Maud Green, daughter of the rich Sir Thomas Green of
Boughton and Greens-Norton in Northamptonshire. Lady Parr had a sister,
Mary, who, when a mere child, married Lord Vaux of Harrowden, and,
dying without issue, left her splendid fortune to her sister Maud. Lady
Parr’s eldest son, born before his mother was fifteen, was the celebrated Sir
William Parr, ultimately Earl of Essex and Marquess of Northampton. Her
next child mated with Mr. William Herbert, who was raised to the peerage
in 1551 by Edward VI as Earl of Pembroke six weeks before the death of his
wife. Katherine, the third and youngest child of Sir Thomas and Lady Parr,
was destined to occupy the perilous position of sixth Queen-Consort to
King Henry VIII. When she was a mere child, the proverbial gipsy-woman
predicted that “she should one day wear a crown, and not a cap; and wield a
24
sceptre, not a distaff.” Sir Thomas Parr died in London in 1517, leaving
very scant provision for his two daughters, the bulk of his fortune having
been settled upon his wife and son; but both young ladies married wealthy
men, and thus were not seriously affected by their lack of means. Anne
married at fifteen; and Katherine, long before she was fourteen, was led to
the hymeneal altar by Lord Borough of Cantley Hall, Gainsborough,
Yorkshire. The bridegroom had already been twice married, and so great
was the disparity of age between the couple that Lady Borough was wont to
call her eldest stepdaughter “little mother.” Two years after her marriage
Katherine became a widow with a very handsome dower. Much of her time
of mourning was spent at Sizergh Castle in Westmoreland, the seat of her
kinsfolk the Stricklands, where she left several fine specimens of her skill
as a needlewoman—notably a gorgeous white satin quilt embroidered with
gold—which are still preserved in an apartment known as Queen
Katherine’s Room.
We are fortunate in possessing a good many portraits of this lady, and
at least one wonderful miniature, formerly in the Strawberry Hill

Collection, and which now belongs to Mr. Brocklehurst-Dent of Sudeley
Castle. This contains a likeness of Henry VIII painted in a space not bigger
than a pin’s head, on a tiny medallion suspended round the Queen’s neck. A
strong magnifying glass is required to do justice to the beauty of this
microscopic miniature within a miniature, probably the smallest ever
executed. Judged by all these portraits and by contemporary descriptions,
Katherine Parr must have been a pretty little woman with delicate features,
an intellectual brow—too amply developed for beauty—fox-coloured eyes,
and a rather cunning expression about the thin yet flexible mouth. When her
25
body was disinterred in 1786 it was found not to be decomposed, and
measured exactly five feet and three inches. The hair, very long and curling
naturally, was of a fine golden auburn.

QUEEN KATHERINE PARR
AFTER THE PAINTING FORMERLY IN THE POSSESSION OF HORACE
WALPOLE

History does not record the names of the tutors who assisted Katherine
Parr to acquire her remarkable education and numerous accomplishments.
We may suppose that some priest or monk chaplain at Kendal or Sizergh
instructed her in Latin and Greek, in both of which languages she was

proficient. She may have learnt French from Mr. Bellemain, French tutor to
Prince Edward, a pronounced Huguenot, who, notwithstanding his
unorthodoxy, was in high favour at Henry’s Court, received a pension from
Edward after he ascended the throne, and walked in the young King’s
funeral procession. She mastered the language sufficiently to be able to
write it and speak it correctly, and even to record her sentimental
impressions in tolerable verse. Amongst the MSS at Hatfield there is a
curious French poem, partly written by Katherine and partly by another,
probably her teacher. It opens with the following verse in the Queen’s
handwriting:—
“Considerant ma vie miserable
Mon cœur marboin, obstine, intraitable,
Outrecuide tant, que non seullement,
Dieu n’estimoit ny son commandement.”

The concluding verse runs:—
“Qui prepare vous est devinement
Ainsi que le monde eust son commencement
Au Pere au Filz au Saint Esprit soit gloire
26
Loz et honneur d’eternelle memoire. Finis.”

Katherine’s handwriting, though clear and legible, is not to be
compared with that of Elizabeth, King Edward, and Jane Grey, who very
probably took lessons in the then much esteemed art of caligraphy from Dr.
Cheke, chief tutor to the Prince, or from Ascham, both famous for the
beauty of their penmanship.
Although very worldly, Katherine Parr was much preoccupied with
theological disputations, and a distinctly evangelical tone pervades her
literary remains; it is nevertheless certain that during the lifetime of her
second husband, Lord Latimer, she was, or pretended to be, a Catholic, and
that during the few years of her married life with Henry VIII she was a
schismatic or “Henryite.” Tact and prudence were her leading
characteristics, and she was both amiable and conciliatory, though she
could, when angered, be extremely vindictive. Thomas Cromwell’s
downfall, usually attributed to the machinations of Katherine Howard, was

in reality mainly due to those of Katherine Parr, for she it was, as we shall
presently see, who opened Henry VIII’s eyes to the prodigious rapacity and
unpopularity of his favourite chancellor.
Lord Latimer, the lady’s second spouse, like Lord Borough, had been
twice married, and when he took her to wife was already the father of
several children. The date of this marriage has not been handed down to us,
but as Latimer lost his second wife in 1526, it could not have taken place
earlier than 1527. He was a staunch Catholic of the belligerent sort, and a
prominent leader of the Pilgrimage of Grace, an insurrection that broke out
in the North of England in 1536 in consequence of the popular displeasure
at the suppression of the monasteries and sequestration of church property.
The peasants, suddenly deprived of the monks’ accustomed charity and
driven to desperation, began a local crusade, which soon assumed large
proportions, their ranks being joined by a great number of noblemen and
gentlemen belonging to the old faith, amongst them the Archbishop of York,
Lord Nevill, Lord Darcy, Lord Latimer, Sir Stephen Hamerton, Sir Robert
Constable, a certain mysterious individual who called himself the “Earl of
Poverty,” and Robert Aske, who though of mean extraction was
nevertheless considered by the rest of his party as their nominal general.
These motley pilgrims increased in numbers as they swept southwards in
picturesque confusion; but despite the enthusiasm of their members, they
seem to have been ill-disciplined and badly organised, and were presently
dispersed at Dunstable, thanks to the conciliatory attitude of the Duke of
Norfolk, whom the King had empowered to treat with these rebels and
disband them. Latimer, who had been elected their spokesman, withdrew
almost immediately and returned to London, where he soon afterwards
resumed his post as Comptroller of the King’s Household. After this
excursion into open revolt against his sovereign, Lord Latimer evidently
deemed it prudent to keep himself very much in the background: he did not
join the second Pilgrimage of Grace, which broke out in the following
February (1537) and terminated in the execution by sword and fire of some
seventy of its more prominent members, among them old Lord Derby, who
was over eighty-three years of age.
When in London, Lord Latimer inhabited a house situated in the
churchyard of the Charterhouse. The Chartreuse, as it was then called, was
rather a fashionable place of residence, being not far distant from

Clerkenwell, which in King Henry’s time was a sort of Court suburb, such
as Kensington became in the eighteenth century. From a letter still extant, it
would appear that Lord Latimer, like many a modern nobleman and
gentleman, was in the habit of letting his mansion furnished when he
himself was absent at Snape Hall, his country seat in Yorkshire. Sir John
27
Russell, Lord Privy Seal, who looked meek enough but was popularly
known as “Swearing Russell” on account of his profane language, wrote in
January 1537 requesting Latimer to allow a friend of his to have the loan of
his house in the “Chartreuse” during his absence. Latimer dared not refuse,
but his answer betrays his reluctant compliance with the request and some
temper at the favour having been asked:—

“Right Honourable and my especial good Lord,—After my
most hearty recommendations had to your good Lordship. Whereas
your Lordship doth desire ... [effaced] of your friends my house
within Chartreuse churchyard, beside so ... [effaced] I assure your
Lordship the getting of a lease of it costs me 100 marcs, besides
other pleasures [i.e. “improvements”] that I did to the house; for it
was much my desire to have it, because it stands in good air, out of
press of the city. And I do alway lie there when I come to London,
and I have no other house to lie at. And, also, I have granted it to
28
farm [i.e. “have let it”] to Mr. Nudygate, son and heir to serjeant
Nudygate, to lie in the said house in my absence; and he to void
whensoever I come up to London. Nevertheless I am contented if it
can do your Lordship any pleasure for your friend, that he lie there
forthwith. I seek my lodgings at this Michaelmas term myself. And
as touching my lease, I assure your Lordship it is not here; but I
shall bring it right to your Lordship at my coming up at this said
term, and then and alway I shall be at your Lordship’s
commandment, as knows our Lord, Who preserve your Lordship in
much honour to His pleasure. From Wyke, in Worcestershire, the
last day of September.—Your Lordship’s assuredly to command,
“John Latimer”
“To the right honourable and very especial good lord, my Lord
29
Privy Seal.”

Lord Latimer died in February 1543, a twelvemonth after the execution
of Queen Katherine Howard, leaving his widow the manors of Nunmonkton
and Hamerton for life, and his mansion in the Charterhouse for as long as
she should remain a widow. As soon as her husband was safely buried in St.
Paul’s Churchyard, Katherine began to indulge her leaning towards what
was then known as the “new learning”; and her house became the resort of
the leaders of a movement which was eventually to complete the
Reformation in England. These gentlemen were wont, it is said, to assemble
at regular intervals and hold conferences on religious subjects in the
presence, not only of Katherine and her household, but of a select circle of
great ladies, among them Katherine’s sister, Anne Herbert, and the
charming Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, the fourth wife of Lady Jane’s
singular grandfather, who were only too willing, notwithstanding the risk
they ran, to sit at the feet of a Coverdale, a Latimer, or a Parkhurst.
Religion, however, sat lightly on this clever Duchess, who—so brilliant,
witty, and amusing are her letters—might well claim to be the precursor in
the epistolary art of Madame de Sévigné. To these pious gatherings of the
widow Latimer came likewise the haughty and turbulent Anne Stanhope,
Countess of Hertford, who in due time, as wife of the Protector, was to be
30
Duchess of Somerset and Katherine Parr’s arch-enemy; Lady Denny, wife
of Sir Andrew Denny, Privy Councillor to Henry VIII; the Lady
31
Fitzwilliam, wife of Sir William Fitzwilliam, and acknowledged to be one
32
of the ablest women of her time; and the Lady Tyrwhitt, who came very
near martyrdom for her heretical opinions, in the last year of Henry’s life.
33
The Countess of Sussex, second wife of Henry Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex,
was likewise one of Lady Latimer’s intimes. This lady’s alleged familiarity
with the black art eventually led to her being charged with witchcraft, in
1552, and imprisoned in the Tower, from which durance she was delivered
six months later by order of the Duke of Northumberland. The Marchioness
of Dorset may also have assisted at Lady Latimer’s religious exercises,
which, although noticed by her contemporaries as matters of general
knowledge, seem to have temporarily escaped the unpleasant attention of
King Henry’s chief heretic-hunters. The Lady Frances was certainly on the
most friendly terms with Lady Latimer, and so too was Princess Mary.

Another guest there was at the Charterhouse who probably came when
the house was quiet, the voices of the preachers hushed, and the great ladies
returned to their respective domiciles. This was Sir Thomas Seymour, the
late Queen Jane’s second brother, who was considered the Adonis of the
Court. Lady Latimer seems to have been deeply enamoured of his good
looks and stalwart figure; but it is not unlikely that it was her rich dower,
rather than herself, that tempted Sir Thomas. Be this as it may, the intimacy
which began about this period, paved the way to the tragic close of the
handsome courtier’s chequered career. Seymour appears to have proposed
to the widow three months after Lord Latimer’s death, and she seems to
have rejected him “pleasantly,” saying “some one higher than he had asked
her to be his wife.” For all that, Sir Thomas had certainly made a deep
impression on her heart, a fact all the more remarkable since he was in
every way the opposite to herself: she was learned and sedate—he was gay
and profligate; the lady loved rich but sober attire—the gentleman blazed
with brilliant satins and silks and cloth of gold and silver, setting his brother
courtiers the fashion as to the wearing of their jewels and the number of
feathers they should sport in their caps. Still, the advantage of the alliance
was obvious, for though not a rich man, he was a great favourite with the
King, his potent brother-in-law, and further, he was the second member of
the rising house of Seymour, which many predicted—in the event of any
accident happening to His Majesty, whose health was fast declining—
would at once assume a preponderating position at his successor’s Court.
But although Lady Latimer must have been acquainted with every
detail of the conspiracy organised by the Seymours against the house of
Howard, of which the first fruit was the revelation of the unfortunate Queen
Katherine Howard’s misconduct, she does not seem to have hesitated for a
moment in her determination to become Queen of England, even at the
sacrifice of her passion for Thomas Seymour, which, all-absorbing as it
was, never diverted her from the two great objects of her ambition: her own
political influence, and the ultimate advancement of the Reformation. She
cannot be described as a Protestant, for in her time that word was not yet
coined. During her second husband’s lifetime she must have concealed her
“advanced views,” and when she became Queen she was—outwardly at
least—a schismatic, who attended as many as three and four Masses daily.
Henry VIII rarely heard less than three, and sometimes as many as five
Masses every day, and what is more, obliged every official of his Court and

household, high and low, to do the same. How she first attracted his
attention has never transpired; but as a great Court lady she must have been
in frequent and immediate relations with the sovereign. The first mention of
her personal dealings with King Henry is connected with trouble in the
Throckmorton family. Owing to some dispute over their respective country
seats, Coughton Court and Oursley, which were contiguous to one another,
her maternal aunt’s husband, Sir George Throckmorton, had incurred
Cromwell’s ill-will. Cromwell, with a view to ruining his opponent, went so
far as to accuse him of conspiring against the King’s supremacy in
ecclesiastical matters. According to an MS. ballad still preserved in the
Throckmorton archives, Lady Latimer interceded with His Majesty for her
uncle, and obtained full justice for him. At the same time she contrived the
overthrow of Cromwell, whose title of Essex was eventually conferred upon
her brother, Sir William Parr, who married Anne Bourchier, only daughter
of the last Earl of Essex of the original branch.
The divorce—based on the futile plea that the King did not find Anne
34
of Cleves physically attractive —which followed six months after Henry
VIII’s pompous marriage with that lady was accepted by the philosophical
Dutchwoman in a spirit that proved her practical sense to be stronger than
her sentiment. A noble mansion in the country, a dower of £4000 a year, and
precedence over all the great ladies of the Court, the Princesses Mary and
Elizabeth excepted, struck her as more desirable than an anxious and
uncertain struggle to retain the crown matrimonial which, under somewhat
similar circumstances, had proved so sorry a possession to Queen Katherine
of Aragon. None the less, the Reformers took Anne’s humiliation—she was
a Lutheran princess—in much the same spirit as that which possessed the
Catholics at the time of the momentous divorce of Queen Katherine. The
accommodating “daughter of Cleves,” as she now styled herself, continued
to receive friendly visits from the King even in the halcyon days of his brief
matrimonial alliance with Katherine Howard, and shortly after that
wretched woman’s execution an influential party appears to have been bent,
in Reformation interests, on reconciling King Henry with his repudiated
spouse. Anne herself seems to have been not at all averse to the scheme;
and Marillac, the French Ambassador, who favoured it, found her on one
occasion quite hopeful—“in the best of spirits,” and “thinking only of
amusing herself and of her fine clothes.” But when the matter of a reunion

between the King and his discarded wife was formally proposed to Cranmer
by the Duke of Cleves’ Ambassador, it met with a flat refusal. The
Archbishop knew the good-natured lady’s character too well to doubt that
she was never likely to influence the King or be of the least use in
furthering the Reformers’ interests. In the meantime, Parliament had urged
Henry, for his “comfort’s sake,” to take unto himself another wife; and at
the same time, as if to keep him out of the way, Sir Thomas Seymour was
sent on an embassy to the Queen of Hungary, and did not return to London
until some days after Katherine Parr’s wedding.
The earliest intimation in the State Papers of the King’s connection
with Katherine is in a letter from Lord Lisle, afterwards Duke of
Northumberland, to Sir William Parr, dated Greenwich, 20th June 1543:—
“My lady Latymer, your sister, and Mrs. Herbert be both here in the
Court with my Lady Mary’s grace and my Lady Elizabeth.” Quite a friendly
party!
On 22nd June 1543 the gorgeous State barges streamed up the Thames
from Greenwich to Hampton Court. On 10th July Cranmer issued a licence
for the King to marry Katherine, Lady Latimer, “in any church or chapel
without issue of banns,” and two days later Henry VIII led Lord Latimer’s
widow to the altar of an upper oratory called “the Quynes Prevey closet” at
Hampton Court Palace. After Low Mass, said by Bishop Gardiner, the
consent of both parties was pronounced in English. The King, taking the
fair bride’s right hand, repeated after the Bishop the words: “I, Henry, take
thee, Katherine, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day
forward, for better for worse (sic), for richer for poorer, in sickness and in
health, till death us do part, and thereto I plight thee my troth.” Then,
unclasping and once more clasping hands, Katherine likewise said, “I,
Katherine, take thee, Henry, to my wedded husband, to have and to hold
from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness
and in health to be bonayr and buxome in bed and at board, till death us do
part, and thereto I plight unto thee my troth.” The putting on of the wedding
ring and offering of gold and silver followed, and after a prayer the Bishop
pronounced the nuptial benediction.
At the wedding were present, amongst others, Lord Hertford and his
Countess; Sir Anthony Browne; Joan, Lady Dudley; Katherine, Duchess of

Suffolk; Lord John Russell; the King’s niece, the Lady Margaret Douglas;
Mrs. Herbert, the Queen’s sister; and last but not least, the Princesses Mary
and Elizabeth, to whom their stepmother made handsome presents of
money. There is no mention of the Dorsets attending the wedding, though
both were in London at the time. Everybody seemed delighted, even
Wriothesley, who went so far as to write to Suffolk, then with the army in
the north, that “on Thursday last the King had married the Lady Latimer, a
lady in his judgment for virtue and winsomeness and gentleness most mete
for His Highness, who never had such a wife more agreeable to his harte
than she is.” Katherine herself informed her brother, Sir William Parr, that
“it had pleased God to incline the King’s heart to take her as his wife, which
was to her the greatest joy and comfort that could happen.” Wriothesley
enclosed this letter in one of his own in which he entreated Parr to make
himself worthy of such a sister as the new Queen. Chapuys wrote to the
Emperor on 27th July: “My lady of Cleves has taken great grief and despair
at the King’s espousal of this last wife, who is not, she says, nearly so
beautiful as she, and besides that there is no hope of issue, seeing that she
has been twice married before and no children born to her.” Richard Hills,
“Heretic Hills,” as they called him, in a letter to Bullinger, the Swiss
Reformer, who subsequently became the friend of Lady Jane Grey, and
dated from Strasburg on 26th September, makes the following very
characteristic comments on the King’s sixth marriage:—

“No news but that our King has, within these two months as I
have already written to John Bucer, burnt three godly men in one
day. In July he married the widow of a nobleman named Latimer,
and, as you know, he is always wont to celebrate his nuptials by
some wickedness of this kind.”

The victims alluded to are known as the “Windsor martyrs.” They were
35
men in humble circumstances named Parsons, Testwood, and Filmer. A
fourth, John Marbeck, who was organist at St. George’s Chapel Royal, was,
it is said, reprieved at the instance of Dr. Casson, Bishop of Salisbury, and
of the Queen, who is also credited with having saved the life of Dr. Haines,
Dean of Exeter, of Sir Philip Hoby and his wife, and of Sir Thomas Carden,
who had been denounced by Dr. London as spreading heresy even within
the precincts of the palace. The result of the Queen’s action was that

London and Simmonds, his coadjutor, were condemned for perjury, and
sentenced to ride round Windsor with their faces to the horses’ tails—a
humiliating punishment which is said to have caused Dr. London’s death—
no great loss to humanity.
To save human life and to alleviate suffering is a meritorious act that
brings its own reward; but in spite of this, and although the newly made
Queen was thus enabled to realise her own influence, she must have found
her honeymoon a season full of dread, revealing as it did the terrible
insecurity of lives dependent on the fiat of so capricious a tyrant as her
royal mate.

CHAPTER IV

THE KING’S HOUSEHOLD

N
ot Solomon in all his glory—nor Sultan Suleyman the
Magnificent of Istambul—was lodged more sumptuously than
Tudor King Henry VIII of England. When Katherine Parr
espoused the much-married monarch, she found herself
mistress of a score of royal palaces, each furnished in a manner not
unworthy of the splendour of Aladdin after that fortunate youth had gained
possession of his magic Lamp, and served by the most numerous retinue
ever brought together in this ancient kingdom of ours. The Venetian envoys,
accustomed to the luxury and artistic elegance of the Queen of the Adriatic,
were fairly dazzled by the sight of the treasures Henry gathered about him.
Although within the space of a few brief years he suffered vandal hands to
rob his country of more noble abbeys, churches, libraries, and works of art
than had been destroyed by time and foreign and civil war combined since
William’s Conquest, the King’s own artistic sense was highly developed,
and he revelled, with a glee that sometimes verged upon the childish, in
36
pomp and luxury and all things rare and beautiful. To the confiscated
collections of Wolsey he added the spoils of a hundred monasteries, and the
37
Inventory of his effects, taken a few days after his death, fills two
enormous folio volumes preserved among the Harleian Papers in the British
Museum. It is written in a round, legible hand, on the finest paper of the
period, and a glimpse of its contents cannot fail to excite the longing of the
virtuoso and to stir the imagination as effectually as any brilliant page of
description in the Arabian Nights. A perusal of these bulky tomes facilitates
some partial conception of the extraordinary magnificence of the Court at
which Lady Jane Grey figured as a child, and whence, no doubt, she

derived that taste for “costlie attire, music and other vanities,” which was to
evoke the unfavourable criticism of her Puritan friends at Zurich and
Strasburg, who exhorted her, if she really desired to save her soul, to
forswear all such trash, and imitate “the simplicity in dress and modesty in
demeanour” practised by her cousin the Princess Elizabeth. We find
hundreds of entries touching bedsteads, tables, card or playing tables,
chairs, couches and footstools of carved ebony, cedar-wood, walnut, or oak,
inlaid with mother-of-pearl, ivory, or rich metal wirework, and upholstered
in silk, satin, velvet, or Florence brocade, fringed with gold, and even with
strings of seed-pearls. Persian and Turkish carpets, silks and woollen,
covered every available space in corridor, gallery, hall, and bedchamber,
and there is mention of one especially wonderful carpet “of silk,” probably
Persian, “nine yards long by two and a half wide.” One chamber was
decorated with “101 yards of white satin embroidered and fringed with
gold,” while the walls of another were panelled with purple cloth of gold,
i.e. purple silk shot with gold.

There must have been some hundreds of complete sets of the costliest
tapestries and arras in the various royal palaces. Wolsey, whose passion for
tapestry as a mural decoration became quite unreasonable, collected scores
of the finest specimens the looms of Italy and Flanders could produce and
lavish outlay secure. After his fall these remained as he had left them at
Hampton Court, where we still admire the splendid series representing the
“Story of Abraham,” designed by Raphael’s pupil, Bernard van Orly, and
another of yet earlier date illustrating the “Triumphs,” of which three, those
of “Death,” “Renown,” and “Time,” occupy their original positions in
Henry VIII’s Great Watching or Guard Chamber. As we gaze on their faded
beauty, we should remind ourselves that the immense quantity of gold
thread wrought with infinite care and taste into their composition, and now
tarnished, glistened in King Henry’s time in all the glory of its freshness. In
the Audience Chamber at Whitehall many a great Ambassador may have
38
envied the arras hangings, representing the “Acts of the Apostles,” from
designs by Raphael presented to the King by Pope Leo X when he gave him
the proud title of “Defender of the Faith.”
The walls of three State rooms at Hampton Court were hung “with
cloth of gold, blue cloth of gold, crimson velvet upon velvet, tawny velvet

upon velvet, green velvet figury, and cloth of bawdekin,” a regal material
woven partly of silk and partly of gold. Some of the chief tapestries at
Whitehall represented the “History of Our Lady,” the “Story of Ahasuerus
and Esther,” the “Crucifixion,” the “Story of Apollo and Daphne,” “St.
George and the Dragon,” “Hawking and Hunting Scenes,” the “Siege of
Jerusalem,” and many other like episodes in sacred and profane history and
in mythology. The King would order a score of sets of tapestry at once, and
would spend a sum equal to £10,000 or £15,000 of our money upon them.
The overflow of tapestries, “picture-hangings,” Oriental silks, Genoa
velvets, Florence and Venice brocades, curtains of French lace, Chinese
silks, and costly furniture, went to the State rooms of the stern old Tower; to
Windsor—where a few remnants of Henry VIII’s belongings still remain; to
Woodstock, to Richmond, to Greenwich, to Oatlands in Surrey—where
Prince Edward often lived; to Newhall to Havering atte Bower—the chief
country seat of Princess Mary; to Hatfield and Enfield Chase—where
Princess Elizabeth spent her girlhood; to the Queen’s dower-houses at
Hanworth and Chelsea; and above all, to that marvel of the age, the new
39
Palace of Nonesuch, which Henry had built him at Cheam, Surrey. At
Whitehall there were scores of cupboards crammed with gold and silver
plate, and there were ivory and ebony cabinets with crystal doors, in which
glittered strange Italian jewels, and curiosities from all parts of the then
known world. In none of Henry’s palaces does there seem to have been a
gallery exclusively devoted to pictures, such as would be found in most
contemporary Italian and French royal and princely residences; but there
were plenty of pictures or “painted tables,” as the Inventory quaintly calls
them, in nearly every chamber. In 1540 Holbein’s great fresco in the King’s
Privy Council Room at Whitehall, representing King Henry VII and Queen
Elizabeth of York in the background, with Henry VIII and Jane Seymour
standing in front, was a comparatively recent work. The illustrious artist,
who died in London of the plague in 1543, had also designed the ceiling of
the “Matted Gallery,” and covered the walls of the Chapel Royal with
frescoes and arabesques.
The King’s appearance, as he developed from boyhood to manhood and
middle age, might have been studied in scores of presentments of him, to be
met with at every turn: here, a plump little boy, by Mabuse; there, a
singularly handsome fair-haired young man by Paris Bordone; and yonder,

a full-length portrait by Hans Holbein, in which it was evident that His
Majesty was beginning to “put on flesh.” In the Audience Chamber was a
“table” of the monarch painted by Bartolomeo Penni, wherein the “peepy
eyes” and the bloated cheeks of his latter years were only too faithfully
portrayed. Though there were portraits of nearly all the King’s
contemporaries, including one of Charles VIII of France and another of
Charles V, besides a round dozen of Francis I, the likenesses of the five
queens who preceded Katherine Parr had all been carefully removed, or, as
in the case, of Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, destroyed. A cabinet
full of relics of Queen Jane stood, however, in the anteroom of the King’s
bedchamber at the Tower; and at Westminster, in a picture-book, there was
a portrait of this Queen with another of the King facing it on the opposite
page. Among the great “tables” at Whitehall were the “Virgin and Child,”
40
by Leonardo da Vinci, given to the King by Francis I in exchange for a
41
picture by Holbein; “St. George and the Dragon,” by Raphael; “Christina
42
of Denmark,” by Holbein, full length; a portrait, “Like unto Life,” of
43
“Thomas, Duke of Norfolk,” and “one table of the King’s Highness
trampling upon the papal tiara, whence issues a serpent with seven heads
snorting fire. In the King’s hand is the Bible, and a sword whereon is
44
written Verbum Dei.”
If the art of painting was well represented in the King’s many palaces,
that of music was even more cherished. Page after page in the Royal
Inventory is devoted to “double” and “single” virginals, with cases inlaid
and encrusted with ivory and mother-of-pearl or adorned with arabesques of
gold, studded with gems; while of lutes and flutes, rebecks and viols, there
seems to have been a perfect arsenal. Then there was a library of over a
thousand precious volumes, a sort of perambulating feast of reason, for in
the Household Expenses we find various sums of money disbursed from
time to time for the removal of boat-loads of books from one palace to
another. The number of gold, silver, bronze, crystal, and glass chandeliers,
sconces, and candlesticks distributed among the royal residences baffles
belief. Each of the two hundred and eighty-four guest-chambers at Hampton
Court boasted a bedstead hung with the richest silk and satin, with a
gorgeously embroidered and wadded counterpane to match, an Oriental

carpet, and a toilet set, ewer, basin, and candlesticks complete, of massive
silver; while one closet at Whitehall was stored with an immense collection
of the choicest German and Venetian glass. Such, in fact, was the King’s
mania for collecting things rich and rare that, in spite of the hopeless and
suffering condition of his health, he was still “buying,” down to the ultimate
week of his life, and some of his last purchases seem never to have been
paid for by his successors.
These contemporary accounts of the Household of Henry VIII strike the
student by their marked resemblance to similar descriptions, by such writers
as Sagrado and Knowles, of the quaint and numerous population of the
Seraglio in the palmy days of the Ottoman Khaliphats. The Tudor King, like
the Grand Turk, had four battalions of pages—pages of the Outer and of the
Inner Court, of the King’s Antechamber, and of the King’s Presence
Chamber; and yet a fifth contingent was attached to the service of the
Queen. These lads, some hundreds in number, had their captains and even
their school-masters; they were mostly of good family, and were apparelled,
according to their rank, in wondrous State garments either of satin, green
and white, the colours of the house of Tudor, or else of royal scarlet and
gold. There was a legion of Grooms of the Wardrobe, Keepers of the King’s
Horse, Sports and Pastimes, of his Harriers and Beagles, Sergeants-at-
Arms, Sergeants of the Woodyard, Sergeants of the Bakehouse, Sergeants of
the Pantry, Sergeants of the Pastry, Sergeants of the Trumpeters, Yeomen of
the Wardrobe, Yeomen of the Armoury, Yeomen of the Buttery, Yeomen of
the Chamber, Yeomen of the Chariots, of the Cooks, of the Henchmen,
Stables, and Tents. The Royal Chapel was served by a full complement of
chaplains, sub-chaplains, organists, and choir-boys. There were
45
apothecaries, physicians, astronomers, astrologers, secretaries, ushers,
cup-bearers, carvers, servers, singing-boys, virginal players, Italian singers
and English madrigalists, and a perfect orchestra of players on the lute, the
flute, the rebeck, the sackbut, the harp, the psalter, and all manner of
instruments.
Full fifty cooks and twice as many scullions worked in the spacious
kitchens, and in 1544 we hear of a French pastry-cook of good repute who
rejoiced in the very pleasing and appropriate name of M. Doux. A regiment
of gardeners and under-gardeners trimmed the pleasaunces and kept the
King’s orchards in order.

The dresses and costumes of this army of picturesque, though often
quite useless, folk, numbering some thousands or so, were sufficiently
costly to account in part for the straits of the Royal Exchequer. Their wages
and silks and satins cost the nation, in the last year of Henry VIII’s reign,
£56,700—against £17,280 in the last year of that of his father; a prodigious
increase—when we take into consideration the relative value of money—
and sufficient to explain the depletion of the coin.

HENRY VIII IN 1548
FROM AN OLD ENGRAVING

Scarlet, or rather deep red, was the predominant colour of the garments
of King Henry’s retainers, but dark blue and orange, with the white and
light apple green of the house of Tudor, were not lacking, and added to the
kaleidoscopic aspect of the courtyards and staircases, galleries and audience
chamber, in the stately residences of “bluff King Hal.” One Venetian

Ambassador, commenting on the order kept at the English Court, declared
that “everything is regulated as by clock-work, and no one ever seems to be
out of his place.” When the King condescended to walk abroad, he was
attended by a host of superbly attired courtiers, by his grand equerries and
chamberlains, the Grand Master of his Horse, his almoners, ushers, and
46
physicians; his fool—Will Somers ; his pages, and even by a favourite
musician or so. In the last years of his life, owing to his increasing infirmity,
Henry was sometimes carried upon the shoulders of six sturdy noblemen, in
a kind of sedia gestatoria like the Pope’s. At His Majesty’s approach every
knee was bent, and many who particularly desired to conciliate his favour
“grovelled” face downward as Orientals before some Eastern despot. The
officials and serving-men who prepared the table for His Majesty’s meals
made an obeisance each time they passed the vacant chair wherein the
monarch was presently to seat himself. The Queen-Consort, and the
Princesses, his daughters, knelt whenever they addressed him. In brief,
King Henry, having filched from Peter some of Peter’s pontifical
prerogatives, exacted the same sort of homage as that paid to the Roman
Pontiff, and turned himself from mortal into a sort of demigod or idol. But
foreigners and Catholics noted that though people knelt as he rode past, His
Majesty bestowed no blessing upon them. This slavish etiquette continued
47
throughout the reign of Edward VI, but was modified when Mary
renounced the titular position of Head of the Church. Elizabeth, however,
demanded, and, what is more, received, quasi-divine honours from her
subjects.
Yet another point of resemblance between the Courts of England and
the Ottoman at this period: Whitehall, like the Seraglio, was gay and
brilliant on the surface, but in each case there was an undercurrent of terror
and suspicion. The Tudor Court swarmed with spies and informers, and
often a thoughtless jest, a careless remark, spitefully retailed at
headquarters, would send men or women to the Tower, or even to the stake.
Folks went in fear and trembling lest what they had said overnight in their
cups might be brought home to them with appalling consequences in the
morning. This state of abject and habitual fear engendered habits of
whispering and talking apart and an atmosphere of mystery, in spite of
which the gossip and rumours of the King’s own chamber passed to the
pages, grooms, and serving-men in the courtyards below, and thence to the

general public, as rapidly as news flies nowadays by telephone and
telegraph.
There can be no doubt that Jane Grey, the daughter of one so closely
connected with the throne as was the Marchioness of Dorset, must often
have mingled in the gaudy crowd that thronged her grand-uncle’s palace.
Henry was as “fond of children as he was of pastry,” although, for obvious
reasons, he did not display any overweening affection for his own offspring.
This engaging little niece, now about six years of age, is likely to have
found favour in the monarch’s sight, and Jane Grey, for all we know, may
even have throned it on her dread relative’s august knee. Cranmer’s hand,
too, must have rested in benediction upon her head, and she may,
perchance, have won the smile of Gardiner and of Bonner. She must often
have heard the sick King, who had lost his own fine voice, accompany his
favourite fool, Will Somers, on the lute, in some song or hymn of his own
composition. She must have been familiar with the two Seymour brothers;
with the dreamy face and austere manner of the Earl of Hertford, and the
bluff good-nature of Sir Thomas. She may even have been tossed in the
strong arms of John Dudley, at this time Lord High-Admiral of England and
Viscount de Lisle, reputed a “magnificent gentleman,” but otherwise of
secondary importance. Wriothesley, Rich, and foredoomed Surrey and his
father, old Norfolk, must often have watched her run along, clinging to her
portly mother’s trailing brocades as she passed on her way to and from the
King’s cabinet, and may even have whispered one to the other that the little
damsel would surely be as good a match for young Prince Edward as the
Scottish Queen’s daughter, Mary Stuart. In the apartment of her grand-aunt
the Queen, where that busy little lady nestled like a sultana among her
48
innumerable soft pillows and cushions, encased in cloth of gold and
silver, the child Jane must have heard much evangelical counsel from the
erstwhile widow Latimer, who found some consolation in the gorgeousness
of her thraldom for the loss of her handsome lover, Sir Thomas Seymour.
The Queen’s lodgings were parted from the King’s by a short corridor,
and nearly all her windows overlooked the Thames. Here Katherine Parr
played the housewife, and in the midst of her tapestries and brocades and
her “stretches” of silver and gold cloth, made poultices for Henry’s ulcered
legs, wrote her pious treaties on probity and prayers, and probably counted
the hours till the Lord in His mercy should deliver her royal spouse from his

sore sufferings. In these rooms, perhaps, Jane Grey sat for her miniature to
Lavinia Tyrling; Bartolomeo Penni may here have limned her diminutive
but very pretty features; and we fancy we can see Mr. Crane or Mr. John
Heywood, His Majesty’s chief virginal players, teaching her the notes upon
the King’s “favourite virginal,” the one “enlaid with gold and mother-of-
pearl.” In the last months of Henry’s life, when Lady Jane is known to have
been much with Katherine Parr, the little girl may have listened with delight
to the wonderful warbling of the King’s Italian singers, Alberto of Venice,
Marc Antonio Galiadello of Brescia, or Giorgio da Cremona, as they vainly
endeavoured to soothe the sufferings of the dying monarch by their
elaborate cadenze.
Queen Katherine soon made her influence felt at Court. She could not
control the violent passions of her wayward lord, but she did in a measure
modify them, and steered her own course amid the shoals of regal existence
with consummate skill. No breath of scandal ever sullied her fair name,
though Thomas Seymour, back from his convenient mission to Hungary,
was appointed her Chamberlain, and must have been a good deal in her
company. Even her worst enemies never ventured on that track. When at a
later date they planned a blow, which they hoped would prove fatal to the
Queen, they selected her religious leanings, not her love affairs, as their fell
weapon. Katherine Parr, to her credit, lost no time in reconciling the King
with his hitherto neglected daughters. Princess Mary was near her own age,
and had been intimate with her when she was Lady Latimer. The Emperor’s
Ambassadors praise “the new Queen for her kindness to the daughter of
49
Katherine of Aragon, who now takes her proper place at Court.”
Elizabeth, too, was summoned from her suburban retreat, but had not been
many weeks under her father’s roof ere he became so exasperated by her
pert obstinacy that he summarily ordered her back to Enfield. In a few
weeks, however, Katherine patched up the quarrel, and on 24th July 1544
Elizabeth wrote Her Majesty, in Italian, a most graceful letter of thanks for
50
her good offices. Edward was too delicate to be much in London, but
none the less his stepmother looked after his health with so much
“gentleness” that she soon won his sincere affection and lasting goodwill.
He wrote her letters in Latin, French, and Italian, addressed to his charisima
Mater, and full of praise for her beautiful penmanship, which, on
comparison, proves greatly inferior both to his own and to that of either

Elizabeth or Jane Grey. Katherine induced her stepdaughter Mary to assist
in the translation of Erasmus’s Paraphrase of the Four Gospels. The
Princess selected that of St. John, and when the work was finished, an
amusing correspondence ensued as to the propriety of the future Queen of
England placing her name, as translator, on the frontispiece. “I see not why
you should reject the praise deservedly yours,” argued the Queen; and the
Princess at last allowed the editor of the work, the learned Dr. Udall, to
allude to the fact that “the most noble, the most virtuous and the most
51
studious Lady Mary” had a hand in its success.
To occupy her own leisure, Queen Katherine devoted herself to the
composition of a quaint book entitled The Lamentations of a Penitent
Sinner, a pious work which gives us, at least in one passage, a lucid idea of
the methods employed by Her Majesty to keep her hold over her
extraordinary husband, among which gross flattery was by no means the
least. A copy of this work was once in the possession of John Thelwall, and
was sold at the death of his second wife. It contained a curious autograph,
indicating that it had been given by the Queen to her “dear cosyn, Jane
Grey,” who no doubt read it with veneration and delight. In this tiny volume
Henry had the satisfaction of being likened unto Moses leading the Children
of Israel out of bondage. “I mean by Moses, King Henry VIII, my most
sovereign favourable lord and husband, one (if Moses had figured any more
than Christ) through the excellent grace of God, meet to be another
expressed verity of Moses’ conquest over Pharaoh (and I mean by this
Pharaoh the Bishop of Rome), the greatest persecutor of all true Christians
than ever was Pharaoh of the Children of Israel.”
As may well be imagined, Queen Katherine Parr did not fail to use her
influence to obtain prominent positions about the Court for her own kith
and kin. Her uncle and Chamberlain, Sir Thomas Parr, was created Lord
Parr of Horton; her brother was raised from the rank of Baron Parr of
Kendal to be Earl of Essex, in lieu of the lately decapitated Thomas
Cromwell; and her brother-in-law, William Herbert, was knighted. These
gentlemen received their new dignities in the Chapel Royal, but were not
entertained in one of the apartments spread with Persian carpets. Their
dinner was served in the choir-boys’ mess-room, in which a fresh litter of
rushes was strewn for the occasion—a curious fact, which leads one to
conclude that the acting master of ceremonies expected the party to indulge

in libations which might result in some injury to Oriental rugs but were not
likely to do much damage to fresh rushes costing 3s. 6d. the litter. Parr had
to pay 40s. for his new paraphernalia, and the choir-boys got 10s. for
52
singing after the dinner.
On 14th July 1544 King Henry sailed from Dover for France to
superintend in person the approaching siege of Boulogne. He left our shores
in a vessel with sails made of cloth of gold, the glitter of which does not
appear to have added to the ship’s speed, for the King did not get to Calais
for nearly twenty-four hours, although the weather was fine, and the sea
calm—probably too calm. The last time he had crossed the Channel, on his
way to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, Henry had acted the part of pilot,
garbed in nether garments of cloth of gold, and had blown the pilot’s
whistle as loud as any trumpeter. This time he was too anxious and
enfeebled to play at all. His Majesty was attended by his brother-in-law, the
Duke of Suffolk, also a very sick man; by Sir William Herbert, who acted as
his spear-bearer, by the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Surrey, the Spanish
Duke of Alberqurque, John Dudley, the Lord High-Admiral, afterwards
Duke of Northumberland, and half the English nobility. Before his
departure he appointed the Queen Regent of England and Ireland, with
power to sign all official and State documents, this being almost the first
occasion on which a Queen-Consort of England held so responsible a
position. The Earl of Hertford was to be Her Majesty’s constant attendant,
but should he chance to be temporarily absent, Cranmer was to remain with
her, and with these two, Sir William Petre and Lord Parr of Horton, her
Grace’s uncle, Wriothesley, and Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, were to sit
in council.
During this regency Katherine kept aloof from politics and occupied
herself principally with assisting the University of Cambridge and with the
royal children, who were left in her charge. Princess Mary, who was an
almost constant guest during the King’s absence, and Princess Elizabeth,
were both invited to join the circle at Oatlands, where Prince Edward was
residing, and whither, owing to an outbreak of the plague, the Queen herself
soon retired. From the various suburban palaces in which she was residing,
Katherine addressed letters almost daily to the King, giving him accounts of
the health and the doings of his children; and the monarch vouchsafed in
return to write most approvingly of all she did. Towards the middle of

August the Lady Dorset and her daughter, the Lady Jane Grey, came to
Oatlands for a few days’ visit. This was perhaps the first and probably the
only time spent by Lady Jane and Prince Edward under the same roof. The
royal kinsfolk may have lived a very quiet life, spending their days in the
gardens and park, and their evenings either listening to the singing of
Princess Mary, who is reputed to have had a magnificent contralto voice, or
to Princess Elizabeth’s playing upon the virginals, an art in which she
already excelled. The Queen may perchance have favoured the company
with a chapter or so from some one or other of her remarkably dull
theological compositions. There is no evidence that she was a musician, and
she does not seem to have been infected with the prevailing Court vice—
gambling—in which even the pious Princess Mary indulged, frequently
losing much more than she could pay—as demonstrated by the Household
Books of Henry VIII.
Boulogne capitulated to Suffolk on 16th September, after a lengthy
siege, and on the 18th, the King, accompanied by the Duke of Alberqurque,
representing his ally the Emperor, received the keys of the city from his
brother-in-law’s hands, and made what he was pleased to consider his
triumphal entry into the town. But he rode through a city untenanted and in
ruins; even the magnificent Cathedral had not been spared, and the
townsfolk, who had fled for security, as they hoped, to Hardelot and
Etaples, were massacred, man, woman, and child, by the allied Spanish,
German, and English troops. English historians have been reticent in
53
dealing with the siege of Boulogne, and the majority have passed very
lightly over the disagreement which soon broke out between our King and
54
his ally the Emperor. Charles now urged Henry to join him and march on
Paris. Henry, who knew his troops to be enfeebled by hardship and
suffering, and moreover felt himself far too ill to supervise fresh military
operations, would go no farther, more especially because he feared to
infuriate the French King, who might at any moment ally himself with his
former enemy the Emperor Charles, and thus form a Catholic coalition
absolutely inimical to the policy of the English King. Henry’s hesitation
undoubtedly saved the city of Paris. Seeing the Emperor’s troops approach
the capital, Francis roused himself for a moment from the lethargy in which
he had been plunged, and once more became the hero of Marignano. The
King’s attitude and the bravery of the Dauphin, who was covering the

capital with 8000 men, stimulated the drooping spirits of the Parisians, and,
with their usual heroism, they prepared to offer a stout resistance to their
foes. They even made merry at the expense of their two arch-enemies,
ridiculing the gouty Emperor and caricaturing the corpulent English King—
a proof, if one were lacking, that the fatal diseases destined eventually to
carry Henry off had already made sufficient progress to excite general
attention. Queen Eleanor, the neglected wife of Francis I, foreseeing the
horrors to which the capital and its inhabitants were exposed, determined,
without consulting her husband, to plead personally with the Emperor.
Accompanied by a Spanish monk named Guzman, she proceeded to the
Imperial tent, and casting herself upon her knees before Charles, then
writhing in agonies of gout, obtained terms from him, thus averting a siege
which must have cost rivers of blood. The peace then concluded was none
too satisfactory, so far as England was concerned, since it stipulated that
Boulogne was to be restored in the space of six years, during which time the
place lost us in money and men far more than it was worth. Never, indeed,
was there a more futile expedition than this, nor a greater waste of money.
The much-talked-of sails of cloth of gold wafted the King home on 1st
October 1544. In London he was received with little enthusiasm, or none at
all. The nation was disappointed by the terms of the peace, the army was
disorganised, Norfolk already out of favour, and Surrey, accused of
insubordination, was openly disgraced. Boulogne was left in the hands of
Jane Grey’s future father-in-law, Lord High-Admiral John Dudley.
The health of Lady Jane’s maternal grandfather, Charles Brandon,
Duke of Suffolk, failed him completely soon after his return to England. He
seems to have suffered from a complication of disorders not unlike those
which were afflicting his brother-in-law, the King. After the siege of
Boulogne, he appears to have been of very little use, and eighteen months
later he retired with his Duchess to Guildford Castle “in much suffering and
pain.” There is a portrait extant of Charles Brandon, taken at this time,
which represents him seated in a large armchair, his head bound up in a sort
of nightcap, and his swollen and gouty feet, one of which rests on a stool,
enveloped in bandages. The bloated face bears a weird resemblance to
Henry VIII. Brandon died at Guildford in 1546 after a long illness, during
which he was nursed by his Duchess and his two daughters, the Ladies
Frances and Eleanor, the former of whom brought her eldest daughters, Jane
and Katherine, with her. By his will Charles Brandon left, after deducting a

rather meagre dower for his wife, the bulk of his vast fortune to his two
sons, with remainder to his daughters in unequal shares, the Lady Frances,
in the case of the death of her two brothers, inheriting considerably more
than two-thirds of her father’s lands and money. He desired to be buried in
Lincolnshire, but Henry, overlooking this request, caused his body to be
conveyed to Windsor, where it was interred with great pomp in St. George’s
Chapel, in the presence of his family and of a multitude of courtiers.

CHAPTER V

MRS. ANNE ASKEW

I
t was in the latter years of Henry VIII’s reign that Stephen Gardiner,
Bishop of Winchester, conceived his scheme for the reconciliation of
England and England’s monarch with the Roman Pontiff. Although a
less astute intriguer than his powerful opponent Cranmer, Gardiner,
who was apt to lose his temper and blurt out things best kept to himself,
was a man of marked ability, one of whom his crafty master made frequent
use, playing him off against the Archbishop, and so retaining the balance of
power in his own jealous hands. Cranmer was at this period using his
influence with Henry to abolish the use of Latin in the Mass, preparatory to
the eventual introduction of the Book of Common Prayer and the early and
total abrogation of the Eucharistic Service in the Roman sense. Yet the wily
Churchman knew right well that so long as the King lived there was but
faint hope of this change. For His Majesty clung to the doctrine of
Transubstantiation closer than to any other tenet; not so much on account of
his faith—did he believe anything?—as because, in the days of his youth,
he had indited a work in defence of the Catholic doctrine of the Sacraments,
which, so his clergy had averred, proved him wiser than Solomon himself,
and which Pope Leo X had favourably compared with the writings of St.
Augustine and Gregory the Great, rewarding the royal author with that title
of “Defender of the Faith” which is still a cherished appanage of British
royalty. Henry had even made belief in the Sacrament of the Altar a
principal Article amongst the famous Six, any denial of which was
punishable with death. Yet, if the King had searched Cranmer’s study at
Lambeth at the very moment when that wily prelate was professing to
accept his beliefs from his King, as submissively as though the monarch
had possessed the infallible powers of his own Maker, he might have laid

his hand on a bulky correspondence between the Primate and every
Lutheran and Calvinistic leader in Germany and Switzerland—with Calvin,
Bullinger, Œcolampadius, Osiander, Dryander, Bucer, and the rest.
Gardiner, on his side, was in communication with Cardinal Pole, Charles V,
the Pope, and the entire papal party at home and abroad. This duel between
the papal leader and the Reformers, then, was the true basis of all political
undertakings at this momentous crisis. The rival parties were really
preparing themselves for the departure of the dying King, and aimed at
controlling the inevitable Protectorate, necessitated by the minority of his
successor, a lad of nine summers. Had Gardiner, the Howards, and the
Catholic party won the day, history would have had little, perhaps nothing,
to record concerning Lady Jane Grey. Her name, like that of her
accomplished friend Lady Jane Seymour, daughter of Lord Hertford, would
have been lost, buried in the spent sands of the past.

The decline of the King’s health began in the summer of 1541–2, when
he was attacked by a dangerous tertian fever, from which, thanks to his
powerful constitution, he partially recovered.
At the time of his marriage with Anne of Cleves he was again in poor
health, and during the proceedings for the King’s divorce from his Dutch
consort, Cranmer laid great stress on the fact that although she had shared
his chamber for six months, the bride was still to all intents and purposes
unwed. At the siege of Boulogne, as we have seen, Henry was terribly
altered, and the French ballad-writers jested about le cercle de fer, which,
they averred, kept his ungainly carcass together. Queen Katherine was
probably espoused rather as a skilful nurse than as a wife, in the ordinary
acceptance of the term, and a most assiduous attendant she proved, kneeling
for hours at a time rubbing his swelled legs and dressing his many ulcers. It
would be unjust to the Queen’s memory to attribute this wifely devotion to
none but selfish motives. But her contemporaries shrewdly guessed that,
while fulfilling her wifely duty, she did not fail to work in her own interest,
and that of her friends, with her own peculiar skill and tact. She certainly
wished to be appointed Regent during Edward’s minority, and would gladly
have excluded the Howards, Wriothesley, Gardiner, Rich, and the whole
Catholic element from the King’s sick-room, while doing all she could to
strengthen the hand of the Seymours, maternal uncles of the future King,
who were intent on ruling his kingdom for him on strictly anti-papal lines.

In the spring of the year 1546 the King had a bad relapse, and day by day
the grey shadows of approaching death deepened on that broad and bloated
countenance. He would not have the grim word mentioned in his presence,
55
and any courtier who appeared before him dressed in mourning —even for
the nearest kin—was driven in fury from his sight. None the less, he
realised that he had not many months to live. It was imperative, therefore, if
any reconciliation with Rome was to be effected before the new reign
began, that no time should be lost, and that some sharp and decisive blow
should overthrow the influence of the Queen, now the chief intermediary
between her sick spouse, Cranmer, and the Seymours. But Katherine, in
spite of the notoriety of her intimate friendship with Sir Thomas Seymour,
was far too clever to give her enemies any chance of blasting, or even
smirching, her reputation. With respect to her religious opinions, which
were distinctly heterodox, she was less guarded, however, and her enemies
had good reason to believe that if they could convince the King, beyond any
doubt, that she was in correspondence with those whom he was pleased to
term “heretics,” she would never be able to weather the storm her treachery
must inevitably raise in the King’s resentful breast.
Henry, whose brain remained astonishingly active, notwithstanding his
infirmities, had never been so irritable and ferocious as during the last few
months of his life. He was like a half-dead rattlesnake, which may recover
life and spring afresh upon its prey at any moment. Never were the fires at
Smithfield so active as in 1546. Early in this year six poor wretches were
sent to the stake—three Catholics; the other three, Reformers. To
demonstrate the impartiality of their merciless judge they were all chained
together. People scarcely knew what they must believe or what disbelieve,
to escape execution. The King’s informers were always at work, spying
upon the sayings and doings of people in every rank of life; and the wonder
is that the Queen and her ladies were not caught in some imprudent
admission or other, and convicted. At last, however, in the early spring of
1546, an incident occurred which brought Katherine’s foes their longed-for
chance of effecting her downfall.
Anne Askew, second daughter of Sir William Askew, or Ayscough, of
South Kelsy, Lincolnshire, was born at Stallingbrough, near Grimsby, in
1521. When about fifteen years of age, she was married, without her
consent, to Mr. Thomas Kyme, a Lincolnshire squire and neighbour, who

had been previously “contracted” to her elder sister. During her early
wedded life Mrs. Kyme appears to have been happy enough, and became
the mother of two children. She presently occupied herself in studying the
newly translated Scriptures, and shortly after imagined she had a divine
mission to preach the gospel and correct what she deemed the theological
errors of her neighbours, especially on the subject of the Lord’s Supper,
concerning which she held Genevan views.
After a few years of discomfort, Mr. Kyme, who, according to the latest
researches, entertained contrary religious opinions to those of his wife,
began to complain of the scanty enjoyment he derived from her society. She
was perpetually “gadding up and down the country, a-gospelling and a-
gossiping, instead of looking after her children.” Anne is described as a
handsome and daring young woman with a good deal of native wit and
ability, and was evidently the prototype of not a few ladies of our own time,
who prefer public life and controversy to domestic duty and retirement. She
even took upon herself to read and comment on the New Testament in the
nave of Lincoln Cathedral, where she was often to be found surrounded by
an interested or amused group of priests and people. This state of things no
Dean or Chapter could be expected to endure, and one fine day Mrs. Kyme
found herself forcibly ejected from the sacred edifice. After this incident,
she must have had some unusual disagreement with her husband, for her
relations persuaded her to leave the town, and she travelled to London,
where she soon made herself conspicuous as a preacher of the new learning,
and secured several distinguished converts. She lodged in a house near the
Temple, and one of her neighbours, Mr. Wadloe, a hot Catholic, who began
by deriding her behaviour, ended by admiring her “godliness”; to use his
own expression—“At mydnyght when I and others applye ourselves to
sleape, or do worse, Mrs. Askew” (she had resumed her maiden name),
“begins to pray, and ceaseth not in many howers after,” doubtless to the
edification of such of her neighbours as suffered from insomnia.
By dint of perseverance, and also, it may be, through her connections,
Anne Askew formed the acquaintance of several great ladies of the Court,
and is said to have obtained, through the offices of the Duchess of Suffolk,
an interview with the Queen, to whom, in the presence of her ladies,
notably Lady Tyrwhitt, Lady Lane, Lady Denny, and the little Lady Jane
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Grey, she offered some copies of Tyndale’s version of the New Testament,

and certain tracts arguing against Transubstantiation, which were
subsequently found in the Queen’s own closet and in the possession of the
King’s “Suffolk nieces.”
It was in March 1545 that Mrs. Askew was first arrested on a charge of
heresy and taken to Sadler’s Hall, where she was denounced to the civil
authorities and taken before the Lord Mayor, who in the course of his
examination questioned her as to the probable changes in a consecrated
wafer after a “mowse” had swallowed it, whereupon she “made no answer
but smiled,” and was committed to the Counter. That much-abused man,
Bishop Bonner, appears to have taken an interest in her case, and
endeavoured to save her from an awful fate. He granted her a private
interview and drew up a form of recantation which she signed in the
following ambiguous terms: “I, Anne Askew, do believe all manner of
things contained in the Catholic Church and not otherwise.” On this,
Bonner, whose patience had been severely tried,—for Anne was very sharp-
tongued and uncompromising,—waxed wroth, and taking her by the
shoulders, pushed her out of the chamber. Her next friend was Dr. Weston,
afterwards Bishop of Westminster, who got her liberated on her own
security; and for some months we hear no more about her, except that she
was busy preaching and distributing her tracts secretly. On 10th May 1546
both Mr. and Mrs. Kyme received a summons to present themselves within
a specified time before the Privy Council, then sitting at Greenwich, and
they accordingly appeared on the 19th of the following June before the
Chancellor of the Augmentations, Sir Richard Rich, the Bishops of Durham
and Winchester and a number of other noblemen and gentlemen, and were
57
put through a severe cross-examination. Anne, we learn, received this
summons in London, but her husband came to town on purpose to attend.
Kyme got off with a caution, on his promise to return forthwith to Lincoln,
and remain there. His wife, in open court, declared she would never again
recognise him as her husband. He went back to Lincoln, and we lose sight
of him. All we know is that he died, where he is buried, at Friskne in 1591.
Anne Askew was eventually arraigned before the King’s Justices at
Guildhall for speaking against the Sacrament of the Altar, contrary to the
Statute of the Six Articles. This time she appeared with two other
“heretics,” one of them that singular personage Dr. Nicholas Shaxton, ex-
Bishop of Salisbury, whose pupil she is said to have been. Shaxton, a

Norfolk man by birth, was one of the Commission appointed by Gardiner in
connection with the divorce of Katherine of Aragon, and during the
proceedings he so favoured the King’s view that he eventually became
almoner to Anne Boleyn and Bishop of Salisbury. At a later date he
preached Zwinglian doctrines concerning the Eucharist, got himself into
serious difficulties with Archbishop Cranmer, and was forced to relinquish
his see. After a time he became a notorious “gospeller,” and was finally
arrested with Anne Askew and a man named Christopher White. The lady
and White were both sent to Newgate; but the former recanted, and so
escaped a fiery ordeal. Shaxton did the same, obtained his pardon, and was
actually ordered to visit Anne in prison, and persuade her to follow his
example. But, weak woman though she was, Anne was made of sterner stuff
than the ex-prelate. “It were better for you you had not been born than do
that which you have done,” cried she; and, crestfallen, her former friend and
tutor left her presence. Her condemnation followed immediately afterwards.
It was presently noticed that Anne enjoyed more creature comforts in prison
than the customs of Newgate allowed. She explained the matter by saying
that “her maid went abroad into the streets and made moan to the prentices
and they did send her money!” But her persecutors refused to believe this
story, and so one afternoon, not long before her martyrdom, she was
conveyed to the Tower, taken to the torture chamber, and there racked in the
presence of Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, Sir Richard Rich, Sir John
Barker, and Sir Anthony Knyvett, Constable of the Tower. Hitherto no one
had been tortured in England for conscience’ sake, this terrible resource
being solely employed to extract information from persons suspected of
treasonable practices. Wriothesley, exasperated at his failure to elicit direct
information or satisfactory answers from his victim, turned the screws
himself, after Knyvett had refused to order her to be further tormented by
the official executioner. Sir Richard Rich lent his hand to the Chancellor in
this merciless task, and so, to use poor Anne’s own words, she “was nigh
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dead.”
Dr. Lingard and other historians have cast doubt upon the veracity of
this horrible story, but the scene is described by Anne herself in her
“Narrative,” dictated a few days before her death, and published at
Marburg, in the Duchy of Hesse, in 1547, with a long running commentary
by John Bale, afterwards Bishop of Ossory. In his Three Conversions of

England, the Jesuit, Father Parsons, who had access to much information
and evidence long since destroyed or lost, not only confirms the truth of the
torture episode, but adds that it was ordered by the King himself, who,
hearing of the intercourse between his Queen and Anne, “caused her to be
apprehended and put to the rack, to know the truth thereof. And by her
confession he learned so much of Queen Katherine, as he had purposed to
burn her also, if he had lived.” Parsons goes on to say that “the King’s
sickness and death, shortly ensuing, was the chief cause of her escape.”
Mrs. Askew bravely endured the most horrible torments rather than betray
her friends’ trust, and only yielded so far as to admit that whilst in prison
she had received ten shillings, delivered by a man in a blue livery. She
thought the money had been sent her by the Countess of Hertford, but was
not sure. She had a further sum of eight shillings at the hand of a footman in
a purple livery, and believed it was a gift from Lady Denny. Questioned if
she knew Lady Fitzwilliam, the Duchess of Suffolk, Lady Sussex, or any
other great ladies of the Court, she evasively answered that she “knew
nothing about them that could be proved.” She does not seem to have been
questioned point-blank as to whether she had ever had any direct dealings
with the Queen. Wriothesley may have thought he had already obtained
sufficient information for his purpose. However that may have been, the
stout-hearted lady was sent back to Newgate, there to spend her last three
days of life, which she occupied in writing and dictating the “Narrative” to
59
be found among Dr. Bale’s writings.
On the eve of her execution Anne Askew and three men who had been
condemned for heresy at the same time as herself were visited in the little
parlour at Newgate by George Throckmorton and his brother, who were
kinsmen of the Queen—a rather suspicious circumstance. They were
cautioned in time, and thus escaped being arrested on a charge of heresy,
which might have proved fatal to themselves and their royal cousin. John
Louthe, the Reformer, who has left us an account of the meeting, also came,
at great risk to himself, to encourage the unfortunate Anne. Mrs. Askew,
with an “Angel’s countenance and a smiling face,” talked “merrily” with
her unhappy companions, John Laselles, who had been a gentleman in
attendance upon the King, and is supposed to have been the individual who
betrayed the secrets of Katherine Howard; Nicholas Bolenian, a priest from
Shropshire; and John Adams, a tailor. They talked on religious subjects until

it was time to separate. The next day, 16th July, Mrs. Askew and her three
fellow-prisoners were taken from Newgate to Smithfield. So dislocated
were the poor lady’s limbs that she had to be carried to her doom in a chair.
Cranmer, seeking to throw the full odium of the horrible business on
Gardiner, kept much in the background in the whole matter of Anne Askew.
He did not attend the ecclesiastical commission which condemned her to
the stake; but for all that his signature is affixed to her death-warrant. Six
years later, another martyr, Joan Bocher, one of the last of his many victims,
reminded the Archbishop that he had martyred her friend Anne Askew for
teaching more or less the same doctrines he now preached himself.
In the 1563 edition of Foxe’s Martyrs there is a most curious
engraving, probably after an original drawing, representing the burning of
Anne Askew and her companions. The spectators are kept back by a ring
fence within which we see the stake, and a quaint pulpit, from which Dr.
Nicholas Shaxton, duly restored to grace, preached a sermon, supporting the
very dogma for denying which he had been prosecuted but a few days
previously. Anne is shown dressed in white; one side of the pyre is entirely
devoted to her, while the three men, apparently naked to the waist, are
bound together, on the side opposite the pulpit. The concourse of people
appears enormous; the mob seems to seethe round the scaffold, loll out of
the surrounding windows, and even swarm on the opposite roofs. On a
raised bench, under a canopy, sit Wriothesley, Rich, the Dukes of Norfolk,
Surrey, “Swearing Russell,” and the Lord Mayor. These worthies, it
appears, were sorely perturbed by a rumour that there was an unusual
amount of gunpowder on the spot, and were very much afraid of a
dangerous explosion. Their terrors were swiftly allayed when Bedford
informed the company that the explosive in question was merely a number
of small bags of gunpowder concealed about the persons of the victims with
the object of shortening their sufferings.
At the very last moment Mrs. Askew was offered a pardon on condition
that she recanted and gave up the names of her high-born friends. She
refused: the Lord Mayor shouted Fiat justitia, and the faggots were lighted.
Presently the fire crackled. A quick succession of explosions followed, the
smoke concealing the wretched victims from sight. When the flames and
smoke died down only the charred and blackened remains of four human
beings could be descried. Clouds had been gathering; a peal of thunder

rolled, and heavy drops of rain soon dispersed the throng. The show was
over, and the home-returning spectators chatted as they went, blaming or
praising the deed, according to their individual view. The horror of it does
not seem to have affected them much, although among the Reformers and
the better classes of all creeds expressions of hearty indignation were not
lacking. But the masses were accustomed to such sights of horror, and so,
indeed, were our own immediate forbears, until public executions ceased
and the death sentence was carried out in the courtyards of the prisons. We
have indeed progressed in these matters since 1546 and even since 1868.
A few days after the burning of the unfortunate Lincolnshire lady, Foxe
tells us, Wriothesley, Gardiner, and Rich waited on the King, and so
persuaded him that Anne had made damaging revelations concerning the
Queen’s intercourse with heretics that Henry “proposed to burn her also.”
His Majesty, in his rage, actually signed a warrant for the arrest of his
offending Consort and handed it to Wriothesley. That worthy let the paper
drop in a corridor or gallery close to the Queen’s apartment. One of her
servants picked it up and carried it to Her Majesty, who was so terrified by
its contents that she fell into violent hysterics. Her apartments were close to
the King’s, and Henry, overhearing the outcry, and probably disturbed by
the noise, sent to inquire what was amiss. The Queen’s physician, Wendy,
informed the messenger that Her Majesty was dangerously ill, and her
sickness, to his reckoning, caused by sudden and extreme distress of mind.
Whereupon the King sent word that she was not to trouble herself further,
as no ill was intended to her. Greatly comforted by this reassuring message,
Katherine presently felt herself sufficiently recovered to receive a visit from
her husband, who, at great personal inconvenience, caused himself to be
conveyed into her apartment in his chair. Nothing could have been better
calculated to revive the drooping spirits of the scared Consort than the sight
of her august spouse in a good humour. The following evening she was well
enough to return the King’s visit. She was accompanied by the Lady
Tyrwhitt, her sister the Lady Herbert, by the King’s niece the Lady Jane
Grey, and by the Lady Lane, who bore the candles before Her Majesty. The
King welcomed the Queen and her company very courteously, and, bidding
her be seated, in a cheerful tone entered into a controversial conversation
with her. He possibly wished to “draw” his Consort upon certain theological
questions; but she shrewdly observed that “since God had appointed him
Supreme Head of the Church it was not for her to teach him theology, but to

learn it from him.” “Not so, by St. Mary,” said the King, “you are become a
doctor, Kate, to instruct us, and not to be instructed of us, as oftentimes we
have seen.” “Indeed, indeed, Sire,” quoth the Queen, “if your Majesty so
conceive, my meaning has been mistaken, for I have always held it
preposterous for a woman to instruct her lord.” “If,” she continued, “I have
occasionally ventured to differ with your Highness on religious matters, it
was partly to obtain information, and also to pass away the pain and
weariness of your present infirmity with arguments that interested you.”
“And is it so, sweetheart?” replied His Majesty, “then we are perfect
friends,” and thereupon he kissed her and gave her leave to depart.
The day appointed by her foes for the Queen’s arrest chanced to be fine
and the sun shone brightly. The King sent for her to take the early air with
him on the garden terrace overlooking the Thames. Katherine came,
attended as before by her sister, the Lady Herbert, the Lady Lane, the Lady
Tyrwhitt, and the little Lady Jane Grey. They had not been long walking up
and down in the sunshine before the Lord Chancellor, with forty of the
guard, entered the garden, expecting to carry off the Queen to the Tower—
for no intimation of the change in the King’s intentions had reached him.
Henry received his minister with a burst of furious invective. Bidding the
Queen and her ladies stand apart, he called up Wriothesley and cast every
evil name he could think of at him, commanding him, finally, to “avaunt
from his presence and never show his face again till he was summoned.”
Wriothesley, crestfallen and humbled, was about to withdraw, when the
Queen advanced and interceded for him: “Poor soul, poor soul!” quoth the
King; “thou little knowest, Kate, how ill he deserveth this grace at thy
hands. On my hand, sweetheart, he hath been to thee a very knave!” So the
disappointed minister departed, and Henry walked up and down the terrace
again, leaning on his Queen and followed by her escort of ladies. Although
Wriothesley’s part in this tragi-comedy seems to have been overlooked, the
King is said never to have forgiven Gardiner his share in the matter. A little
later, notwithstanding the royal prohibition, both conspirators presented
themselves with their colleagues. The King forthwith reminded Wriothesley
in his most forcible manner that he had ordered him never to show his face
again, and above all never, on any pretext whatever, to bring “that beast
Gardiner” along with him. “My Lord of Winchester,” replied the cunning
Wriothesley, “has come to wait upon your Highness with an offer of
benevolence from his clergy.” The King being as usual in great need of

money, began to listen more benignly, allowed Gardiner to present the
60
address, and finally accepted the bribe. But he took no further notice of
the Bishop, and is said to have struck his name off the list of his executors
within the next few days. He also cancelled that of Thirlby, Bishop of
Westminster, because, said he, “he is too much under the influence of
61
Gardiner.” Queen Katherine may have had a hand in this affair, and after
the revelation of the treachery which would fain have destroyed her she
very likely took the opportunity of letting the King know more concerning
the machinations of Gardiner and Wriothesley than was good for their credit
or likely to serve their influence.
The details of this formidable but abortive plot against Katherine Parr
rest mainly on the authority of Foxe. But it must be remembered, by those
inclined to doubt the “Martyrologist,” that at this time he had attained his
thirtieth year, he was in touch with most of the personages named, and was
consequently in a position to obtain the information which he wove into his
famous narrative—not, we admit, without considerable embellishment and
exaggeration, introduced to suit the taste of his readers—from living
witnesses. Foxe also made liberal use of Paget’s statement during the
proceedings for Gardiner’s deprivation, which took place early in Edward’s
reign. All the Elizabethan and Jacobean historians of Henry VIII—Herbert,
Parsons, Holinshed, Strype, Speed, Oldmixon, and others—reproduce the
story with slight emendations and additions from Foxe. No direct
confirmation of it is to be found indeed in the State Papers, but this is not
surprising, for such matters were not usually set down in writing.
62
Nevertheless, it is hinted at. Nor do the Ambassadors seem to have known
anything about it. Father Parsons, who, like Foxe, obtained much of his
information at first hand, introduces the incident in his Three Conversions
of England, a book written to refute some of Foxe’s errors, and adds that
although Foxe lays “all the cause of the Queen’s trouble upon Bishop
Gardiner and others, and though the King did kindly and lovingly pardon
her, the truth is that the King’s sickness and death were the chief causes of
her escape, for had the King found her guilty he would have commanded
her also to be burned.”
Speed, possibly mistaking Lady Lane for Lady Jane, introduces the
King’s little niece on this occasion, not only as a witness of the

reconciliation of the royal couple, but in the character of a candle-bearer
before the Queen. Jane Grey, being a Princess of the Blood, could never
have been in attendance upon the Queen, and she was too small a child to
be laden with a pair of heavy branch candlesticks. Lady Lane, on the other
hand, was certainly in the Queen’s Household at this particular juncture.
She was Her Majesty’s cousin-german, being the daughter of her uncle,
Lord Parr of Horton, and wife of Sir Ralph Lane of Orlingby,
Nottinghamshire. Still, since the fact of her being present is mentioned by
so many almost contemporary writers, we may conclude that Lady Jane was
a witness of the dramatic scenes that took place between King Henry and
his terrified Consort, and may herself, in after life, have narrated the
incident to some friend of Foxe or immediate forbear of Parson’s informant.
Gardiner’s disgrace does not seem to have been quite as complete as Foxe
has been pleased to represent it, and he was in close enough contact with
those in power to be selected as chief celebrant at the King’s Requiem.
That the King was completely reconciled to his wife is proved by the
conspicuous part he assigned her in the splendid series of festivities in
honour of the French Envoy, who arrived in August, when the Court had
removed to Hampton Court. Not only was her apartment refurnished with
sumptuous tapestries, but her wardrobe was renewed, and the King
presented her with a quantity of magnificent jewellery, which, after his
death, gave rise to considerable misunderstanding and trouble.
These festivities in honour of Monsieur d’Annebault, Francis I’s special
Envoy, were the last flicker of the pageantry of Henry VIII’s reign, and
revived for a week something of the brilliance of the Court of England in
the great days of Wolsey. For the first and only time, Prince Edward, as
heir-apparent, played a conspicuous part. On Monday, 23rd August, the
boy-prince rode out towards London to meet the Ambassador, attended by
the Archbishop of York and the Earls of Hertford and Huntingdon, and by a
retinue of “five hundred and forty persons in velvet coats, and the Prince’s
liveries wore sleeves of cloth of gold, and half the coats embroidered also
with gold, and there were the number of eight hundred, royally apparelled.”
D’Annebault, who came to ratify the peace recently concluded between the
sovereigns of France and England, was accompanied by a suite of two
hundred gentlemen, who were all lodged at the King’s expense and
entertained in the most hospitable manner. His Majesty was not well

enough to receive the Ambassador on his arrival, but he received him in
audience on the following day, after which monarch and Ambassador
proceeded to the Chapel Royal, where, during Mass, they solemnly received
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the Host together. Then followed six days of banqueting, hunting, and
merry-making, masques, and mummeries, “with divers and sundry changes,
inasmuch that the torch-bearers were clothed with gold cloth, and such like
honourable entertainments, it were much to utter and hard to believe.” On
these occasions the Marchioness of Dorset and her daughter, the Lady Jane
Grey, were present, and Prince Edward danced with his little cousin, who
also tripped it with young Lord Edward Seymour, the Lord Hertford’s eldest
boy. When the Ambassador took his leave, Henry made him a present of
silver plate to the value of £1200. After his departure the dying King seems
to have led a very quiet life at Hampton Court and Whitehall. The end was
visibly approaching. His feet and hands were abnormally swollen; dropsy
had set in, and he was probably also suffering from an internal tumour.
Even his most fervent admirers were obliged to confess that in appearance,
at least, he had assumed somewhat of the aspect of a monster; but music
still charmed the suffering monarch, and the last Household Books of his
reign contain various items of payments to musicians and madrigal singers.

Note.—Dr. Gairdner makes the following comments on this
subject in his Preface to vol. 21, part i. of the Calendar of State
Papers for 1546 (published in 1908): “But one word may be
permitted here about that dreadful incident, the racking in the
Tower. It took place after her (Anne’s) condemnation, the object
being to elicit from her information about persons at the Court who
it was suspected had been her allies in promoting heresy. Besides
others whose names are given, against whom she positively refused
to utter a word, she was probably expected to accuse Queen
Katherine Parr herself; for Parsons (Three Conversions of England,
ii. 493) is no doubt perfectly correct in saying that the well-known
incident related by Foxe, about this Queen, when she stood in real
danger from a charge of heresy, was connected with the affair of
Anne Askew. But Parsons is certainly wrong in saying that the King
would have burned Katherine Parr also if he had lived. For though
her heretical propensities were no secret, she survived the King, and
he himself for fully six months survived Anne Askew. More

probably the Queen was saved by Anne’s refusal to commit anyone
except herself.”

CHAPTER VI

THE HOWARDS AND THE SEYMOURS

T
he collapse of the conspiracy against Katherine Parr led to an
immediate counter-plot on the part of the Seymours and their
allies to compromise the Duke of Norfolk and his son, Surrey,
and thereby frustrate the aspirations of the Catholics, of whose
party Norfolk was the acknowledged chief. A previous attempt to inflict
irretrievable damage on the credit of the Howards had partially failed,
though the unsavoury revelations connected with the arrest and execution of
Queen Katherine Howard had covered the illustrious name with obloquy,
and almost every conspicuous Howard in England had been sent to the
64
Tower, on the charge of having concealed the Queen’s previous
immorality from the King’s knowledge when he proposed to marry her. At
that moment Norfolk and his son only escaped by taking Henry’s side
against their miserable kinswoman. But the Duke never regained his full
influence over his master, and, despite his great services, both as statesman
and warrior, lived on, to use the expression of one of his contemporaries,
“like the bird that is wounded i’ the wing.” Yet he was a great power in the
politics of those days, for though the Catholic party was of but small
account at Court, a good two-thirds of the people remained firmly attached
to the ancestral faith; this was the case more especially in the rural districts,
where the vast majority clung to the dogmas and ceremonies of the ancient
Church, and only awaited an opportunity to assert their preference. For the
matter of that, it was shown very early in Queen Mary’s reign that the
Protestant fervour of the official world, being a matter of policy rather than
of conviction, was not to be relied on. The majority of that aristocracy
which had so eagerly accepted the extreme reforms assented to by Edward
VI was to be seen, a few weeks after his death, parading the streets of

London, taper in hand, in the wake of the revived processions of Corpus
65
Christi and Our Lady.

Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, was one of the most
conspicuous figures in Henry’s reign. He may not, perhaps, have been as
astute a statesman as has been asserted, but he showed remarkable qualities
as a capable peacemaker on the occasion of the Pilgrimage of Grace; while
as a warrior he had no rival, and proved himself a hero on Flodden Field. If
anything, he was excessive in his loyalty to the King, and he would even
seem to have sunk all sense of his own dignity and importance, humbling
himself utterly before the monarch whose assumption of quasi-divine
attributes he had aided and abetted. Thus, when his niece Anne Boleyn was
tried and executed for misdemeanours she was certainly not proved to have
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committed, he, at her royal assassin’s command, pronounced the death
sentence, and with his son, the young Earl of Surrey, who sat at his feet,
holding the Earl Marshal’s baton in his hand, was actually present at her
execution. When, some few years later, Norfolk’s other niece, Katherine
Howard, was proved guilty of many serious offences, both before and after
marriage, Norfolk sat in judgment upon her and would have witnessed her
death too but for an attack of gout which kept him a prisoner. Two days
after the execution he penned an abject letter to the King apologising for
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“the naughtiness of his said niece, the late Queen.” In person, Norfolk
was a dark, handsome man, of moderate stature, with piercing eyes and an
exceedingly intelligent countenance. Holbein has left us several magnificent
oil portraits of him, and at least one noble drawing, now in the Windsor
Collection. He was fairly educated, a good Latin scholar, and a patron of
art. His first wife, Princess Anne Plantagenet, the King’s aunt, died young
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in 1512. The day on which he espoused his second, the handsome Lady
Elizabeth Stafford, was an evil one for him. The alliance was one of
convenience on his side and of compulsion on hers. His duchy had been
greatly impoverished by the attainder of his father, the second Duke, after
Bosworth, and the luckless Buckingham’s daughter was possessed of a
handsome fortune in money and wide lands. She had been previously
contracted to Ralph Nevill, afterwards Earl of Westmoreland, to whom she
was greatly attached and with whom she kept up a correspondence till the

end of her life. Although she bore her husband five children, the Duchess of
Norfolk suffered some neglect at his hands, her rival being a certain Bess
69
Holland, a gentlewoman in her service. The mortification caused by this
outrage drove the poor Duchess to the verge of distraction. She seems to
have been a naturally conscientious, if narrow-minded, woman, of an
exceedingly high-strung and excitable temperament. We should describe her
nowadays as an “impossible” person, whose lack of tact and outbursts of
uncontrollable rage not only alienated her husband’s affections, but
deprived her of her children’s love as well as of her servants’ respect.
Of all the men of his time, Surrey, this ill-used lady’s son, was the most
accomplished. He was an excellent Latin, French, and Italian scholar, and
well versed in ancient and modern literature. No one could excel him in
tourney or joust—not even John Dudley, afterwards Duke of
Northumberland, who had exceeding skill with the sword and spear, and
than whom scarce one could pull a bow with surer aim. Surrey danced more
lightly than Thomas Seymour, who prided himself on the “altitude of his
pirouettes,” and the King himself in his singing youth did not warble a
sweeter note. No Englishman since Chaucer had so enriched our literature
with verse all redolent of those sweet-scented fields and lanes, meadows
and gardens amid which the poet’s muse loved best to linger. An
Elizabethan critic well described him as “a poet new crept out of the school
of Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto,” and “coming nearer to Ariosto” than to
either the prophet of Florence or the inspired singer of Vaucluse. Though of
but medium height, Surrey was so graceful and well-proportioned as to
seem taller than he really was. There is a portrait of him at Hampton Court,
most probably by Guilliam Streete, which gives us a fair idea of this prince
for a fairy-tale. The face is full of youthful charm: the eyes hazel, frank, and
winning; the cheeks rounded and flushed with rosy health; the hair a
darkish chestnut; the slight moustache of the colour of ripe corn. His
costume is superb. The young Earl stands before us garbed from head to
foot in red velvet, softened by bands of brocade and sarsenet, the only white
spot visible being the silk shirt open at the neck, and even that enriched
with a dainty arabesque wrought in gold stitchery. On his well-shaped head
rests a jaunty cap of crimson velvet with a feathered plume of the same tint.
There was much that was purely personal in the violent animosity
displayed by the Seymours against the Howards in general and against

Surrey in particular. The Seymours, although of far more ancient and well-
ascertained lineage than either the Brandons or the Boleyns, were not of the
great aristocracy, but, in a sense, what the modern French would call
arrivistes. Had it not been for the accident which raised their sister Jane to
the towering position of Queen-Consort, the Seymours would probably
have remained what they originally were, mere country squires of excellent
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lineage, reputed to be remotely connected with royalty. Their father, Sir
William St. Maur, or Seymour, of Wolf’s Hall, Wiltshire, had on one
occasion entertained King Henry VIII; and their mother, Lady Seymour, by
birth a Wentworth, and a lineal descendant of Edward III, was highly
connected; but otherwise there was nothing in their antecedents to
distinguish them from scores of other equally respectable and wealthy
71
country gentlemen. The sudden elevation of their sister Jane brought them
a rapid promotion, which first dazzled them and then turned their heads.
Honours and positions were heaped upon them. Edward, the eldest son, was
first created Viscount Beauchamp, and, after the birth of Prince Edward,
Earl of Hertford; the second, Thomas, was knighted. The youngest, Henry,
seems to have preferred obscurity and security to rank and risk, and lived
the life of a country gentleman, married young, and merely accepted
knighthood on Edward VI’s accession.
The ranks of the old aristocracy had been thinned by the prolonged
civil wars and the plague, and towards the middle of the century the Court
was so full of new men that at the time of Henry’s last illness there were
only two dukes in the peerage—Norfolk, then seventy-two; and Suffolk, a
lad of seventeen. The new peers, whose fortunes were mainly derived from
confiscated church property, were eager to obtain recognition from the few
of the old aristocracy who yet remained, and more especially from the
Howards, a sturdy race, full of sap and vigour, and conspicuous in Court
and State. The Duke of Norfolk was too experienced a man, both socially
and politically, to permit his inborn pride of birth to display itself out of
season. With Surrey it was otherwise. In his case, pride of ancestry was
something more than a mere matter of vulgar boast. He regarded it with a
poet’s eye and imagination, and took delight in remembering that through
his veins flowed the blood of emperors and kings who had founded realms
and dynasties, and built up the glory of a great nation. In the beginning of
the fifteenth century a marriage between Robert Howard and the Lady

Margaret Mowbray had brought the illustrious house into alliance with
royalty. His father’s first wife had been the reigning King’s aunt, and his
mother, Elizabeth Stafford, had a right to quarter Royal Arms on her
escutcheon. With such a pedigree, and in an age when rank was paramount,
Surrey conceived himself sufficiently powerful to hold his own against the
encroachments of a new peerage only too eager to claim a fellowship which
offended his sense of propriety.
When the Seymours first came to Court, in the heyday of their youth
and good looks, they sought young Surrey’s society, just as in our day new
people seek that of a leader of the “smartest set.” So long as they kept their
place, Surrey consorted with them willingly enough; but their rapacity and
arrogance jarred on him at last, and he resented their many attempts at over-
familiarity. He himself, on occasion, was apt to transgress the bounds of
good behaviour, and once upon a time, being in lodgings in St. Lawrence
Lane, Old Jewry, and leading what he himself is pleased to call a “racketty
life,” went brawling about the streets at midnight with young William
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Pickering and young Wyatt, the poet’s son, casting stones into peaceful
citizens’ windows, and frightening them out of their wits. One night the
party rowed over in a boat to Southwark, where dwelt in those days that gay
and facile sisterhood whose representatives, in this year of Grace, 1909,
patrol more central parts of our great city. In this fast company, our young
gentlemen, evidently in their cups, behaved disgracefully. On Surrey’s part
such conduct was all the more unseemly since he was already married to the
73
plain-faced, but wealthy, Lady Frances Vere, Lord Oxford’s daughter, to
whom he declared himself devotedly attached. These escapades ended by
attracting public attention, and their heroes were arrested for disorderly
conduct. Thanks to their rank, they were brought before the Privy
74
Council, instead of being haled before an ordinary justice, though, as ill-
luck would have it, Edward, Lord Hertford, was presiding at the Council
board. The opportunity of paying off a few old scores was too much for
him, and he swiftly resolved to give Surrey good cause to remember him in
75
future. A very comical and characteristic scene ensued. Surrey, mimicking
Hertford, who was nothing if not puritanical in his mode of expressing
himself, “having ever God on his lips,” assured the Council that if he had
done what he had, it had been for the good of the souls of the wicked

citizens of London, who were behaving more abominably than the men of
papal Rome. Had he not seen them sitting round tables and playing at cards
in the late hours of the night?—and was it not a godly thing to whizz a
stone or so at their windows, which stone, passing silently through the air,
fell with all the greater suddenness among them, thereby recalling them to a
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proper sense of their duties to their God, their King, and their country?
Mrs. Arundel, a woman of good family but greatly impoverished, who kept
a sort of boarding-house for bachelors of rank in St. Lawrence Lane, Old
Jewry, was the Earl’s landlady, and imparted a very different colour to the
episode. “Her young gentleman,” she said, had frankly admitted to her that
he considered these pranks good jokes: but she herself disapproved of them,
especially the shooting at the windows of women of light character, or
“bawds,” in Southwark, which the Earl, it seems, was addicted to, going by
boat close to their quarters and firing off petards at the “trolls”! There was
nothing for it, therefore, but to pronounce sentence. Surrey was committed
to the Fleet, the most abominable of all the many vile prisons of those days,
while Wyatt and Pickering, though of much inferior rank, were sent to the
stately Tower, whence they were delivered in a day or two on payment of a
heavy fine and promising good behaviour. How long Surrey remained in
durance it is difficult to say—long enough certainly for him to compose his
“Satire on the Citizens of London” and several other poems. He never
forgave Seymour his share in the business, and never failed to annoy his
enemy openly or covertly whenever opportunity occurred. It was quite in
keeping with his character to address amatory verses with this intent to
Hertford’s handsome and very proud wife, who took his lines in very bad
part, as so many insults to her honour. The Countess once made a scandal
by deliberately turning her back upon the poet-Earl when, in August 1542,
77
at a ball in his own father’s house, he ventured to ask her permission to
lead her out to dance.
Late in the summer of 1542 a very serious quarrel broke out between
Seymour and Surrey, over an incident which took place in Hampton Court
Park. Seymour, it was alleged, had reported against Surrey that he had
openly approved of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Surrey, coming face to face
with his antagonist in a glen in the park, instantly challenged him. Coats
were off in a moment, and the two were in the midst of a hearty boxing-
match when the guard arrived and took both into custody for violating the

royal privilege and fighting within the precincts of the King’s palace. The
punishment for this offence, as readers of The Fortunes of Nigel will
recollect, was loss of the right hand. All the diplomacy and influence of the
Duke of Norfolk had to be exerted to avert the infliction of this terrible
penalty; but, thanks to his efforts, both the hot-headed young gentlemen
escaped with a sharp reprimand. Scores of similar curious instances might
be quoted from the chronicles and letters of the time, to prove the depth and
bitterness of the social animosity between the Howards and the Seymours.
The Duke himself resented the cruel manner in which Hertford had behaved
in the matter of His Grace’s niece, the unhappy Katherine Howard. There
can be no doubt that at one time both Cranmer and the King wished to spare
her life, and would have spared it had not Hertford, in his hot haste to ruin
the Howards’ credit, prematurely dispatched letters to the King’s
Ambassadors abroad containing full details of the Queen’s disgrace, with
orders to hand them to the sovereigns to whose Courts they were accredited.
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This publicity rendered the royal clemency impossible.
Early in the summer of 1546 the Duke of Norfolk made up his mind, in
what he held to be the interests of himself and his family, to bring about a
reconciliation, if that were possible, between his house and Seymour’s. He
fully realised that, ageing as he was, he could no longer be a match for two
unscrupulous and very able men, then reaching the prime of life, and
already holding the King’s complete confidence. Further, he felt Surrey to
be hopeless in all business calling for tact and diplomacy, and was
convinced the persistent animosity between his son and Hertford would
lead before long to some awful catastrophe. Surrey’s bravery as a fighting
soldier was undisputed, but as a commander his lack of reticence and his
rashness had led the King’s troops in France into more than one disaster; he
himself had paid the penalty of his rashness before the walls of Montreuil,
where he was seriously wounded and only saved from certain death by the
gallantry of Sir Thomas Clere. He had then been recalled, and Hertford had
been sent to take his place, a bitter humiliation to the proud Howards and
one which more than anything else rankled in Surrey’s soul. Yet the old
Duke recognised that Hertford’s bravery and tact as warrior and diplomatist
had soon ended the war and obtained peace with honour for the English
forces, thus raising his popularity to the highest pitch; for there was nothing
the nation then desired so much as peace, at home and abroad. Hertford’s

brother, Sir Thomas, was, if anything, still more popular, for he had so
successfully scoured the seas in quest of French galleons laden with
provisions that suppressed monasteries had been converted into
storehouses. The magnificent ex-church of the Grey Friars had become a
wine-vault, crammed to the roof with barrels of Burgundy and other wines
of the best French vintages. In Austin Friars such a stock of cheeses was
stored that there was no moving in that erstwhile beautiful priory church,
and the huge and splendid church of the Black Friars was literally packed
with salt herring and dried cod. Wherefore the people had good reason to be
well pleased with brother Thomas.
The Duke, then, without consulting his son,—and here his disastrous
mistake,—obtained an interview with Hertford, and, skilfully playing on his
well-known vanity and social ambition, suggested at length that a betrothal
should be forthwith arranged between Hertford’s eldest daughter and
Surrey’s eldest son, and a similar contract entered into between Lord
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Thomas Howard and Seymour’s youngest daughter, the Lady Jane
Seymour. His Grace, apparently in a match-making mood, gave his paternal
sanction to the wooing and wedding of his beautiful daughter, the widowed
Duchess of Richmond, by Sir Thomas Seymour. With all these suggestions
the Seymours gladly closed, making but one condition, that Surrey should
accept a slightly subordinate position under Hertford’s command, virtually
tantamount to a tacit apology for his repeated slights, covert and open, in
the past. On Tuesday in Whitsun week 1546, then, the Duke, well pleased
with his own diplomacy, presented himself at Whitehall and laid his rather
complicated scheme of alliances before His Majesty. Henry was graciously
pleased to approve it, and willingly agreed that his daughter-in-law of
Richmond should become the bride of the handsome Thomas Seymour,
with whom, according to Court gossip, she was already much in love. But
in all these schemes the Duke had reckoned without his host, for when he
put the matter before Surrey, that impetuous poet flew into a towering rage.
He would “sooner see his children dead in their coffins than married to
Seymour’s brats,” he said. Then, turning furiously on his sister, the Duchess
of Richmond, who had accompanied her father, he cried,—at least,
according to that dangerous Court gossip, Sir Gawen Carew,—“Go, carry
out your farce of a marriage. My Lord of Hertford is in full favour, I grant;
but why not do yet better for yourself and follow Madame d’Estampes’

example with King Francis. Get you into the same sort of favour with King
Henry, and rule through him.” This sinister advice was evidently dictated by
that vein of bitter sarcasm usual with Surrey when the uncontrollable
temper which he inherited from his mother mastered his common sense. It
could not have been seriously meant, for nobody knew better than Surrey
that the King was already more than half dead, utterly unable to trouble
himself about new mistresses, and in any case not likely to select his own
daughter-in-law to replace his excellent Queen-Consort and nurse,
Katherine Parr. The Duchess of Richmond, however, took the jibe seriously,
replied that she “would sooner cut her throat” than do “any such vile thing,”
and left her irate brother to his own reflections, which, when he cooled
down, cannot have been particularly agreeable. He knew his sister well; she
was an exceedingly beautiful woman, to whom Holbein, in his exquisite
drawing, has given the expression of one of Ghirlandajo’s sweetest
Madonnas. But at heart she was a little fiend, capable, when her passions
were roused, of working dire mischief. She said little at the time, but she
nursed her grievance and exaggerated its importance. She may also have
felt not a little embittered against Sir Thomas Seymour, who had
ungallantly refused her hand because it was not accompanied by her
brother’s submission. Be this as it may, “the Duchess of Richmond from
that day forth hated her brother as much as she had previously loved
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him,” and when the hour for revenge came at last, forgetful of her
obligations as sister and woman, she scandalised even that unsentimental
age by appearing at her brother’s trial as one of the principal witnesses for
the prosecution.
Meanwhile the Duke of Norfolk was at his wits’ end to know how to
make Hertford aware of the unfortunate results of his negotiations with his
son. He was possessed of a perfect mania for putting pen to paper on any
and every pretext, although, as every one who has waded through his
correspondence knows, there has never been a statesman, before or since,
who could indite more indiscreet and exasperating epistles. If then, as is
likely, he conveyed the unpleasant news by letter, he was not the man to
improve matters by a tactful manner. The breach between the Howards and
the Seymours was now complete. Hertford, hurt in pride and vanity, would
accept no apologies from the Duke, and the feud between himself and
Surrey soon grew more bitter than ever. To make matters worse, the

Duchess of Richmond made a confidant of her friend, Sir Gawen Carew,
who detested her brother, and was the most inveterate gossip of the Court,
as is well known to those who have read the State Papers connected with
the tragedy of Katherine Howard; it was, indeed, the gossip of Sir Gawen
that did most to ruin that Queen. Presently young scions of the nobility,
courtiers who hated the Howards for their airs and graces and forgot the old
Duke’s well-known kindness to the youthful, buzzed about the King, and
did their best to set him against the luckless Earl. Hertford and his brother
afforded them ample assistance, supplying all necessary instructions and
information; and, for all we know to the contrary, the Queen may have lent
a helping hand. In fact, the whole Protestant party was now roused against
the Howards, the representatives of the Catholics, and determined to bring
about their ruin or perish in the attempt. It had hoped the folly of Katherine
Howard would have sufficed for this purpose, but the great house of
Norfolk was firm enough to resist even that storm. Another pretext had to
be found, and the impolitic behaviour of the poet-Earl supplied it.
Poor Surrey was no match for the low and cunning intrigues amongst
which “Fate and metaphysical aid” had thrown him. Somewhere in June
1546 he was summoned before the Privy Council, severely reprimanded for
what he could not possibly help, and imprisoned in Windsor Castle, where
he consoled himself by writing one of his most exquisite poems. This was
his “Swan Song”! By August, however, he was certainly out of durance,
and apparently once more in favour with the King, for he figured as Earl
Marshal at the entertainments given in honour of the French Envoy, Claude
d’Annebault, taking precedence of everyone excepting members of the
royal family.
Early in September he left London, and returned to his wife and
children at Kenninghall, accompanied by Churchyard the poet, who was his
secretary, and an extremely numerous and miscellaneous retinue, which
included several Italian painters, musicians, and jesters. One of the artists,
Toto, was soon engaged upon a portrait of him, which was later used to his
great disadvantage; in the left-hand corner of it appeared his escutcheon,
bearing among its numerous quarterings the arms of England, but so
arranged that a slide could be drawn, when necessary, over the coat-of-
arms. The Duke of Norfolk and my Lady of Richmond came to Kenninghall
Palace about this time; but the mansion, of which not a vestige now

remains, was so enormous that every member of the ducal family had a
separate dwelling. The Duchess of Richmond had a whole wing to herself,
which she shared with her friend Mrs. Holland. The society of those days
was not so dead to all sense of propriety as not to be scandalised by this
singular intimacy between the Duke’s daughter and his mistress. Most
people agreed with the Duchess of Norfolk “that her dater’s abiding ever
with that drab Holland” was a “scandayul and most unnatterall.” Owing to
the huge size of the mansion, not much inferior to that of Hampton Court,
the Duchess and Mrs. Holland may never once have come into contact with
Surrey and his family; otherwise, it is difficult to account for the fact that
we have no record of any fiery scene between brother and sister. The Duke
seems to have spent his time very quietly, reading the books he most
affected, such as Plutarch’s Lives of Illustrious Men, Josephus’s History,
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and The Confessions of St. Augustin.
Whilst the Howard family was thus peacefully rusticating in Norfolk,
gossip and slander were making headway in the metropolis and preparing
poor Surrey’s ruin. Sir George Blagg, the “my Blagg” of one of his finest
poems, had picked a quarrel with him in the summer, and was busy as a bee
spreading evil reports against him. Sir Gawen Carew had confided to every
one what the Duchess of Richmond had related to him anent her brother’s
advice to hasten and become the King’s mistress. His enemies had even
pressed the Court astrologer into their service, and this functionary had
actually warned the King that unless he was careful, his successor’s
monogram would, like his own, be “H.R.” The Duke himself was not
spared: he had been seen to enter the French Ambassador’s house late at
night and to leave it again in the small hours of the morning. A letter of his
to Gardiner, then on a mission to Brussels, was intercepted—and vague
though its terms were, it was held to be proof positive of Norfolk’s
adherence to Gardiner’s scheme, as planned with Cardinal Granville, to
restore the papal supremacy in England. At last, truth and lies together
rolled themselves up into an ominous storm-cloud, which burst when
Surrey was called to appear before the Council in London on a charge of
high treason.
Some writers have attempted to extenuate Henry VIII’s share in the
dénouement of this tragedy. They plead that he was too ill at this time to
know exactly what he was doing, and that, in consequence of the swollen

state of his hands, he was compelled to use a stamp to sign his letters. With
regard to this, we know that as far back as 1st August 1546 he had
commissioned Sir Anthony Denny, Sir John Gates, and William Clere to
sign documents for him with a dry stamp, the signature thus made being
filled in with ink. And even this is not the first time Henry had recourse to a
mechanical contrivance for signing letters and State Papers. Lord Hardwick
has a letter of the King’s signed with a stamp and dated as early as the
seventh year of his reign. Moreover, the official documents, which were
drawn up by Wriothesley, are carefully annotated and corrected in pencil by
Henry himself, with very full marginal notes and numerous interlineations.
The handwriting is very shaky, but it is the King’s none the less, and proves
that if the monarch’s body was infirm, his brain was as clear and his
feelings as vindictive as ever. The death-warrant of the Earl of Surrey is
also scribbled over on the margin with certain pencil notes in the King’s
own writing, proving that Henry must have retained the use of his hands to
the end.
Sufficient evidence having been gathered, and Surrey being summoned
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to London, he left Kenninghall in the last days of September, and
appeared before the Privy Council in Wriothesley’s house in Holborn, not
far from Chancery Lane, on 2nd October. His first accuser was Sir Richard
Southwell, at one time in his mother’s household at Kenninghall, who hated
him heartily. He averred that Surrey had placed the Royal Arms of England
in the first quartering of his escutcheon, thereby claiming the crown. When
confronted with Southwell, Surrey, with his foolish impetuosity, and to the
consternation of the Council, proposed a sort of trial by battle after the
mediæval fashion. Southwell and he were there and then to divest
themselves of their upper garments, descend on to the floor of the court, and
indulge the Lord Chancellor and the Council with the spectacle of a boxing-
match, the winner of which was to be declared innocent. The Council,
needless to say, did not see fit to accept the fiery Earl’s suggestion, and both
Surrey and Southwell were temporarily detained—the Earl being not yet
formally charged.
The examination of the other witnesses took place privately a few days
later, before the Council but not in the presence of the prisoner. Sir Edmund
Knyvyt, a son of the Lady Muriel Howard, the sister of the Duke of
Norfolk, and therefore a cousin of Surrey, out of sheer spite, and also

perhaps to give himself importance, accused the Earl of harbouring Italian
spies in his house at Kenninghall, of affecting foreign airs, of wearing
foreign costumes, and, gravest of all, of entertaining persons suspected of
correspondence with Cardinal Pole and other “traitors” abroad. Then came
Sir Gawen Carew with an exaggerated version of the Duchess of
Richmond’s story that her brother advised her to become the King’s
mistress, and had spoken lightly of the King’s illness, and speculated as to
what might occur in the event of his death; and before the week was out a
score or so of other venal witnesses had concocted sufficient evidence to
send fifty men to the block.
The Duke, meanwhile, tarried at Kenninghall, wondering what had
happened to his son, and never imagining how bitter and relentless was the
suddenly, and indeed inexplicably, developed hatred of the King, which we,
however, know was stimulated by the Seymours and Cranmer for their own
ends. Instead of coming up to London to help the Earl out of his difficulties,
he set himself, as usual, to write confidential letters to those members of the
Council upon whom he thought he could rely. These effusions were
promptly shown to Hertford, with the result that His Grace himself was
ordered to London with the utmost dispatch. On 12th December the Duke
of Norfolk appeared before Lord Chancellor Wriothesley at his house in
Holborn, near the present Southampton Buildings, and, to his unutterable
amazement, found himself formally charged with high treason. He was
immediately committed to the Tower, but on account of his rank and age,
and to spare him the humiliation of being paraded as a prisoner through the
city streets, he was conveyed down the hill, put on board a barge in the
Fleet, and so to the Thames, through the arches of London Bridge, and
onward to his ominous destination in the ancient fortress. Later in the same
day Surrey too was conducted to the Tower, but he had to go on foot and
through a dense multitude. To the consternation of his enemies, he was
83
cheered all along the road, and grave fears were entertained of a rescue.
Three commissioners were now dispatched to Kenninghall to bring the
Duchess of Richmond and her friend Mrs. Holland up to town. Another
embassy rode to Redbourne, to fetch the Duchess of Norfolk, who was only
too delighted to come to London and blurt out all she could to the detriment
of her hated spouse. By this time London could talk of nothing but the
Surrey trial. In the palaces of the rich, in the hovels of the poor, in all the

little taverns and drinking-houses down by the Thames, in the parlours of
the great inns in Southwark and the Cheape, the conversation turned upon
no other subject, and even the all-absorbing topic of the King’s illness was
forgotten for the time being. A touch of horror was added to the general
excitement when it became known that Norfolk’s wife and his daughter and
mistress were to be the chief witnesses against him and his son. The
Duchess did not spare her husband. Snatching at the welcome chance of
avenging her wrongs, the half-witted lady grew garrulous, and confirmed
everything suggested by those who desired to damn her lord’s cause. She
had but little to say, however, concerning her son, for the simple reason that
she had not seen him for many months and knew nothing about his affairs.
He was very “unnatturell” towards her, she declared, and so was her
daughter, but nevertheless she “loved her children dearly.” Her husband, she
said, had leanings towards Popery, and caused his children to be brought up
to deny the King’s supremacy.
Mrs. Holland behaved with great discretion, considering her position
and antecedents. It was true, she said, that the Duke of Norfolk had on one
occasion told her that “if he had been young enough he would like to go to
Rome to venerate the Veronica, an image of our Lord miraculously
impressed upon a handkerchief which He had given to certain women on
His way to Calvary.” The Duke had bidden her lay aside some needlework
upon which she was engaged, to oblige the Earl of Surrey, and in a corner
of which were his arms, one quartering of which was to be left blank,
“probably for the introduction of the Royal Arms and monogram.” She had
obeyed the Duke’s behest and never set needle into the work again. Before
concluding her evidence, she, perhaps not unnaturally, seized the
opportunity to try and clear her own reputation, and informed the Court that
“the Earl detested her because she was so friendly with his sister.”
The appearance of Mary, Duchess of Richmond, must have created a
sensation. Her angelic beauty contrasted strangely with her spiteful and
bitter nature. Like her mother, when she was once started there was no
stopping her, and in her excitement she materially damaged her brother’s
cause, exaggerating every point against him suggested by the prosecution.
With telling and dramatic effect she related the scene when he advised her
to become the King’s mistress. Her brother, she said, had been reading the
book about Lancelot of the Lake, and had introduced that hero’s arms,

together with those of Anjou, into his own. He had recently had his portrait
taken by an Italian artist, as already related, and had caused the arms of
England to be painted into the left corner, with the monogram “H.R.”
surmounted by a crown, which she thought was a closed crown, like the
King’s. He had also appropriated the Confessor’s arms, which belonged by
right to the King, and the King only; he had spoken irreverently of His
Majesty, and had speculated upon what might happen after his death; and,
she added, “my lord of Hertford is particularly hateful to him because he
superseded him at Boulogne, and indeed he detested the new nobility in
general.” The Council, to its credit, discarded the Duchess’s evidence
concerning Surrey’s alleged infamous advice to her. They held it too
abominable to be even probable, and it was not included in the indictment;
but the rest of her evidence was considered very compromising.
On 13th January 1548 Surrey was brought on foot from the Tower to
the Guildhall, which was packed to suffocation, and the charges of
treacherously conspiring, together with his father, either to usurp the throne
or seize the protectorate, were read over to him. He made an eloquent
defence, and, while denying every other item of the charge, said he had a
right, in accordance with a grant made by Richard III to his grandfather, the
first Duke of Norfolk, to use the arms of the Confessor; which was perfectly
true—“Herald-at-Arms knew this, and was content he used them.” As to his
ever “having dreamed of usurping the throne,” that was “mere chatter.” He
owned he bore Hertford no goodwill, but the fault rested with that
gentleman, and was “not of my making.” He was innocent on all points, he
said, and called God to witness his loyalty to his King and country. In spite
of all, sentence was passed upon him, and he was condemned to die on the
following morning. The breathless silence with which the verdict had been
awaited gave way to tumultuous protests from all sides of the Court, and it
was only with great difficulty, even danger, that the hall was cleared. As the
condemned Earl passed from the Guildhall to the Tower every cap was
lifted, and the utmost sorrow and sympathy were displayed when the result
of the trial was revealed by the sight of the executioner walking in the
procession, the sharp edge of his axe turned towards the prisoner’s person.
The next morning, 14th January, rose bright and frosty. A huge
multitude had assembled on Tower Hill to witness the closing scene. Surrey,
dressed in black velvet, looked very handsome, as with brave and elastic

step he mounted the scaffold. He delivered the usual speech—a part of the
grim pageant which no prisoner, male or female, ever missed—in a clear
voice. He eloquently declared his innocence, forgave his enemies, and
avowed his loyalty to his sovereign. He begged the prayers of all the
company, and himself prayed aloud while the final preparations were being
made. These done, in the midst of an awed silence, Surrey knelt to receive
the fatal stroke, and with the sacred name of “Jesus” on his lips, his brave
soul passed into eternity. Thus was the Court of England robbed of a gallant
and magnificent gentleman, and the country of a man of genius, who, had
he lived into the calmer and fostering atmosphere of Elizabeth’s reign,
might have left a name in literature equal, if not superior, to that of Spenser.
The Duke of Norfolk escaped trial, but not attainder. His dignities and
estates were confiscated and distributed among his enemies. On the 27th of
January his death-warrant was brought to the King; but Henry was too far
gone, by this time, to be able to affix his autograph, and Sir Richard Gates
stamped the document with the Royal Seal only. The deed, however, never
reached its destination. Possibly it was detained by the Seymours, who may
have thought that age and infirmity would soon spare them the blood-
shedding of an old man. If so, they were mistaken, for Norfolk survived
them both. A few hours later the King’s death saved the aged Duke’s. He
remained, however, a close prisoner throughout the reign of Edward VI, but
at the accession of Queen Mary he was liberated and all his dignities
restored.
The most pitiable part of this strange episode in the history of an epoch
which was one long series of domestic and political tragedies is that the
Duke, in the hope of saving his life, was induced to address a shameful
confession to the King. This confession His Majesty never read. It is still in
existence, and must be described, even by the most merciful critics, as a
very foolish and impolitic effusion. Yet that the Duke of Norfolk and his
son were both conspiring—not, indeed, to usurp the throne, but to obtain
the protectorate—is beyond dispute. The Seymours, on their side, though
with much greater skill and diplomacy, were doing precisely the same thing.
Among our national archives and those of Norfolk House are full
inventories of the estates, goods, and chattels of the Duke of Norfolk and
his son, and also of the Duchesses of Norfolk and Richmond and of Mrs.
Holland. Norfolk’s list is valuable as affording a fair idea of the contents of

a great English nobleman’s house and wardrobe in the first half of the
sixteenth century. In his desire to save them, the Duke had presented his
vast landed estates to the Prince of Wales, who, needless to say, never got
an acre of them; they were made over to the Duke of Somerset, a title
assumed by Hertford on becoming Lord Protector, to Paget, and to other
members of the new Government. His wearing apparel, which consisted of
many garments, mostly of black or russet velvet or satin richly furred, and
“much worn,” or even “very much worn,” was also seized. The Countess of
Surrey was allowed one of her father-in-law’s “coats” of black satin much
worn, and furred with coney and lamb, which was delivered to her “to put
about her in her chariot.” This is probably the first mention of a carriage rug
in the domestic history of this realm. All the rest of the Duke’s effects,
including “three broad yards of marble cloth and two pairs of old black
slippers,” were given to the Duke of Somerset for his use. The Protector
also obtained possession of the magnificent jewelled collars belonging to
the various Orders of which the Duke was a member. Paget had a “George,
set with diamonds and one ruby,” and Lord St. John had poor Surrey’s
“Order of St. Michael with its chain, studded with pearls and diamonds.”
The Duke left many pictures, all of a sacred character, and an enormous
quantity of gold and silver plate, which was divided into equal parcels, and
delivered to Somerset, Princess Mary, the Duchess of Norfolk, the Duchess
of Richmond, and Surrey’s widow. Somerset seized a collection of thirty-
two splendid rings, but Mrs. Holland claimed the finest table diamond as
her private property. His Grace had also some fifty sets of rosary beads,
some of coral with paternosters in gold, others of pearl, agate, gold studded
with little jewels, black enamel, and even of glass. A great quantity of these
were presented to Princess Mary, to whom also went much of the altar
furniture of the Duke’s private chapel.
Surrey’s wardrobe was as magnificent as that of any prince. There was
“a Parliament robe, of rich purple velvet lined with ermine, and with a
garter set with jewels upon the shoulder,” and a gown “of black velvet
curiously figured in gold pasmentary”; “a coat and cassock of crimson
velvet, wrought with satin in the same colour, with a cloak, hat and hose to
match,” was most probably the identical costume in which he was
represented by Streete in the picture still at Hampton Court. We read of
dozens of gorgeous suits, one more splendid than the other. Somerset chose
the finest for himself, and handed over the rest to his brother Henry, who

had come up to town to be knighted, and who doubtless ultimately paraded
his Wiltshire market town, decked in poor Surrey’s finery, looking very
much like the fabled jay in peacock’s feathers. The furniture of Surrey’s
country house, St. Leonard’s, near Norwich, which he had built after
designs of John of Padua, was given to his widow, but some of the altar
furniture went to Princess Mary at Newhall.
Seals had been placed on the goods and chattels of the Duchesses of
Norfolk and Richmond and of Mrs. Holland, but they were lifted
immediately, and the ladies received all their several properties intact.
The name of Sir Thomas Seymour does not figure in any connection,
even remote, with this tragedy, and he did not receive a single coat or
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“night-gown,” whether of velvet, satin, or common cloth, belonging to
either the Duke or to his son. It may be that by the time the distribution of
the confiscated property took place the feud between the ambitious brothers
had already begun. It was destined amply to avenge Surrey’s untimely fate.
Readers may fairly ask what the story of the poet-Earl’s end has to do
with Lady Jane Grey? It may be replied that his death and his father’s
imprisonment affected her very nearly. They cleared the way for the
temporary triumph of the Protestant party, and enabled Seymour to
proclaim himself Protector unopposed. The close intimacy between the
families of Howard and Dorset is easily traced through at least three
generations in the household books of Thomas, Earl of Surrey, afterwards
Duke of Norfolk.
When the Earl entertained company, the ladies and gentlemen, it seems,
all dined together in the “great chamber,” and there were often as many as
twenty to fifty guests staying in the house. Their names include nearly all
the leading aristocracy of the time, among them being Lady Jane Grey’s
father and mother, the Lord Marquis of Dorset and the Lady Frances;
Brandon, Duke of Suffolk; the Lady Wyndham, the Lady Parker, the Lady
Essex; Mrs. Brian, afterwards governess to the Princesses Mary and
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Elizabeth; the Lady Vere, the “old” Lady of Oxford, etc. The ladies
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attending on the visitors dined at my Lady’s mess, the gentlemen in the
hall. When Mr. Thomas Reddynge, a gentleman of the Duke’s household,
brought his bride to Tenderinge Hall for her honeymoon, “all the company

dined and supped in the bride’s bedroom.” The little Lord Thomas Howard,
afterwards Earl of Surrey, dined in the nursery.
Hospitality was exchanged between the Howards and the Dorsets
almost to the end of the Duke’s life. The Marquis and Marchioness of
Dorset (the Lady Frances Brandon), Lady Jane Grey and her sisters, were
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certainly at Hunsdon on more than one occasion, and when the two
families were in town there was, doubtless, constant visiting between them.
It must be remembered that the Duke of Norfolk, being uncle-by-marriage
to the King, was also uncle to the Lady Frances’s mother, Mary Tudor, the
royal Queen-Duchess of Suffolk. Little Lady Jane must often have sat
perched on Surrey’s knee and listened with delight as he whispered in her
ear those tales of fairy enchantment he himself loved so well. Owing to her
tender age, Jane may never have been told the details of the closing scenes
of her gallant kinsman’s life, but she must surely have noticed that on a
certain day in January 1547–8 the curtains of her father’s house were
drawn, as for a family in mourning; that her parents moved about with pale
and saddened faces; and that the servants stirred noiselessly and spoke
under their breath. The shadow lay everywhere, and the various chronicles
of the period afford abundant proof that there was a genuine sorrow felt in
the city on the day of Surrey’s death.
And there is yet another link between Lady Jane Grey and the unhappy
Surrey. The name of her kinswoman, Elizabeth Fitzgerald, the “fair
Geraldine,” must ever be associated with that of the poet-Earl, for she is as
indissolubly connected with him as is Laura with Petrarch, or Leonora with
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Tasso. A daughter of Oge, Earl of Kildare, by his wife, the Lady Elizabeth
Grey, daughter of the first Marquis of Dorset, the fair Fitzgerald was a not
distant cousin to Lady Jane Grey, and there were but a few years between
them. She was born in Ireland, probably at Maynooth Castle, somewhere in
1528, and was brought to England whilst yet an infant. In 1533 her father
died in the Tower, broken-hearted at the news that his son, whom the Irish
cherished as a patriot and the English hated as a rebel, had been captured
and brought to London. A few days after his father’s decease, the young
man was hanged at Tyburn with some seventeen other Irishmen. Henry VIII
appears to have pitied the widowed Lady Kildare, who was reduced to the
verge of starvation after her husband’s death. A small pension was granted

her, and her children were dispersed among the leading families of the
aristocracy, to receive an education worthy of their rank. Elizabeth, “the fair
Geraldine,” an extremely beautiful child, was placed under the guidance of
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the Princess Mary. It was probably in the year 1542, whilst attending Her
Highness on a visit at Hunsdon, that she first fell under the notice of Surrey,
who, though already married, became desperately enamoured of her. The
young lady cannot have been more than fourteen or fifteen at this time, but
in those days this was quite a marriageable age. We have Surrey’s own
word for it that it was at Hunsdon he first beheld the “fair Geraldine”—
“Hunsdon did first present her to mine eyen:
Bright is her hue, and Geraldine she hight.
Hampton me taught to wish her first for mine;
And Windsor, alas! doth chase her from my sight.
Her beauty of kind; her virtues from above.
Happy is he that can obtain her love!”

They appear to have met again at Hampton Court, and we seem to have
evidence that the “fair Geraldine” yielded to some extent to her suitor’s
prayers. They danced together, no doubt, in the Great Hall, which still
delights us with its lofty beauty and rich arras. They sat side by side in the
oriel windows, or romped among the flower-beds of the palace garden. But
the lovely Irish girl, true to her race, was chaste as snow, and when Surrey’s
ardour grew too hot for modest endurance, he was firmly repulsed. One
thing is quite certain, that “Geraldine” was very beautiful, with Irish sea-
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green eyes and glorious fair hair. She seems otherwise to have been a very
matter-of-fact young lady, who presently bestowed her hand on the rich old
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Sir Anthony Browne. After his death, in 1548, she re-entered the
household of her royal mistress, and as the Lady Frances and her daughter
paid several visits to their cousin, Princess Mary, in 1551, Jane Grey must
often have seen the bella ma fredda innammorata of poet Surrey. After
Queen Mary’s death the “fair Geraldine” consoled herself with a second
husband, in the person of Clinton, Earl of Lincoln. An account of her
funeral still exists, according to which sixty-one old women walked in the
procession, each wearing a new suit of clothes and carrying a loaf of bread,

their number recording the fact that the lady they mourned had reached
sixty-one years at the time of her decease.
The Duchess of Richmond seems ultimately to have repented to some
extent of her wickedness. At any rate, her father left her £500 in his will—a
considerable sum of money in those days—in acknowledgment of the
expense and trouble she had borne to obtain his liberation, and of her care
of her brother’s children. She died of the plague in 1556.
It is curious that Surrey’s children should have been placed under his
sister’s charge, since their mother, an eminently respectable woman, was
living, and they were with her at the time of their father’s death. She was,
however, a Catholic, whereas the Duchess had for some years past rather
ostentatiously proclaimed herself a Protestant. Somerset’s religious
opinions may have had something to do with this transaction, concerning
which there is a strange legend. Three days after the Earl of Surrey’s
execution, Foxe, the martyrologist, was sitting in St. Paul’s Cathedral, pale,
haggard, and almost dying of misery and starvation. Presently a gentleman
approached him and placed a considerable sum of money in his hand,
bidding him be of good cheer, for that “luck was coming to him at last.” A
few days later Somerset appointed him tutor to the children of the late Earl
of Surrey, then under the charge of their aunt, the Lady of Richmond.
Notwithstanding his ardent Protestantism, Foxe was never able to
completely detach the future Duke of Norfolk from the older faith; but he
gave his pupil a sound and virtuous education, and won his enduring
affection. This Duke shared his father’s fate; he was beheaded, in the reign
of Elizabeth, for espousing the cause of Mary Stuart. From him the present
Duke of Norfolk is descended in a direct line.
The Countess of Surrey resided for many years at Kenninghall, but, as
usual in those days, she presently took a second husband, in the person of
Mr. Thomas Steyning, of Woodford, Suffolk, most likely her steward or
secretary. She lived to an advanced age, and is buried in Framlingham
Parish Church, under the elaborate monument she erected to the memory of
her husband, whose remains, however, are by some believed to be still lying
in the interesting church of All Hallows’, Barking, near the Tower, where
they were certainly interred immediately after his decapitation.

CHAPTER VII

HENRY VIII

O
n the night of Wednesday, 27th January 1547, Henry Tudor lay
dying on that huge fourpost bedstead which Andrea Conti, an
Italian traveller who visited Whitehall a few years after the
King’s death, described as “looking like a High Altar,” so
costly were its hangings of crimson velvet and cloth of gold, so dazzling its
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rich embroideries. The vast apartment was hung with rare Flemish
tapestry glistening with gold thread; the furniture, of carved oak and inlaid
ebony, was upholstered in glorious Florentine brocade. Curtains of “red
velvet on velvet” draped the numerous windows overlooking the Thames,
and the Eastern carpets that covered the floor muffled the sound of footsteps
cautiously moving about the mighty couch.

The once puissant and magnificent Henry VIII, King of England,
France, and Ireland, and Defender of the Faith, was now a mass of
deformed flesh, eaten up and disfigured by a complication of awful
disorders—gout, cancer of the stomach, rheumatism, ulcers, and dropsy. So
swollen were the miserable man’s hands, arms, and legs that he could only
move with great pain, and then only with the aid of a mechanical
contrivance. But his immense head tossed restlessly from side to side and
he groaned piteously, often praying those about him to cool his parched lips
with a drop of water. Though little over fifty-six years of age, the dying
monarch’s hair had turned quite white, and his beard, formerly so well
trimmed, had grown scant and straggling. His steel-grey eyes looked as
small in proportion to the broad, bloated face as those set in the elephant’s
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enormous mask, but they still retained their ophidian glitter.

The dying King had been unusually irritable throughout the weary day.
At times indeed he was delirious, but on the whole his mind remained fairly
clear. At about six o’clock in the afternoon he awakened out of a deep sleep
or lethargy and asked for a cup of white wine, which was given him.
Presently he wandered again,—the result, perhaps, of the draught of wine,
—and shouted, “Monks, monks!” imagining, so it would seem, that he saw
cowled forms hovering about his bed. Three times, too, and very distinctly,
he cried out the name “Nan Boleyn.” After that he kept his eyes fixed on a
certain spot near his bedside, where, it may be, his fancy showed him the
menacing wraith of his murdered wife. This outburst of feverish excitement
was followed by a lull, and presently the King grew calmer and fell into a
profound slumber.
The principal persons about the death-bed were the Earl of Hertford
and his brother, Sir Thomas Seymour; Henry’s Chief Secretary, Sir William
Paget; and his Master of the Horse, Sir Anthony Browne, the only non-
schismatic present. The physicians in attendance upon the King were Dr.
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Wendy and Dr. Owen, who had brought the Prince of Wales into the
95
world, and who subsequently assisted at the death-beds of Edward VI and
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Mary. With them was Dr. John Gale, the King’s surgeon-in-ordinary, who
had waited upon Henry and his army when in France. Notwithstanding the
number of priests attached to the Chapel Royal, there were no clergymen in
the room. The Catholic party afterwards declared they had been purposely
kept out of the way lest the King, whose hatred of the Papacy was purely
political, might recant and make a death-bed submission to Rome. The
elimination of the clerical element from the death-chamber is significant,
and we have no certainty as to whether the King, who clung so tenaciously
to the theory of the Church as to her Last Sacraments, ever personally
received them.
Another very remarkable fact is that neither in the State Papers nor in
any other contemporary accounts of the death of Henry VIII is there any
mention of the Queen’s presence at this time. Her Majesty had certainly
been her husband’s assiduous nurse until early in January, but after that we
hear no more of her, and except for one or two hints to the contrary in
documents connected with the household effects of the King, we might
almost conjecture she had left the palace before the King passed away. The

Spanish Chronicle, introduced to English readers by Martin Hume, which
contains a great deal of what would now be called back-stair gossip,
informs us, however, that Katherine Parr was summoned to the King’s
bedside the day before he died, and that “he thanked her for her great
kindness to him,” adding that he had “well provided for her.” The good
Queen, falling on her knees, burst into such loud sobbing that she had to be
removed and conveyed back to her apartments. From the same source we
learn that Princess Mary saw her father three or four days before the end,
and received his blessing. Of these statements there is no confirmation in
the English State Papers; they are confirmed, however, by documents in the
Simancas archives and in a pamphlet published at Valladolid some three
years after Queen Mary’s death entitled La Muerte de la Serenissima Reyna
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Maria d’Inglaterra (Valladolid, 1562).
The last we hear of Katherine Parr as Queen-Consort is in a letter
addressed to her from Hertford on 10th January by her stepson, Prince
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Edward, in which he thanks her for a New Year’s gift.
If we trust the Acts and Monuments, there is direct evidence that Henry
VIII deliberately omitted Gardiner’s name from his testament. In the
afternoon of the day before his death, Sir Anthony Browne asked him
directly if “My Lord of Winchester was left out of His Majesty’s will by
negligence or otherwise?” He was kneeling at the moment by the King’s
bed and endeavouring to recall to him the Bishop’s long services. The broad
face of the dying King turned towards him, and he said angrily, “Hold your
peace. I remember him well enough, and of good purpose have I left him
out; for surely if he were in my testament and one of you, he would cumber
you all and you should never rule him, he is of so troublesome a nature.” If
this be a truthful account of the scene, there can be no doubt that Henry
realised the omission of Winchester’s name from the will, which would
imply a truckling to the Seymour faction; for there was now no one left to
oppose their influence or expose their intrigues.
Between seven and eight in the evening of 27th January, Sir Anthony
Denny, who had been watching his master very closely, thought he
perceived signs that the end was approaching. Stooping over him, he
whispered into the dying ear a message especially dreadful to one who, like
Henry, held the mere mention of death in horror, warning him that his hour

was very near, and that “it was meet for him to review his past life and seek
God’s mercy through Jesus Christ.” The King, although in great agony,
evidently understood what Denny had said, and is reported to have
answered that he would suffer no ecclesiastic near him but Cranmer, who
was immediately sent for. The Archbishop was at Croydon, but, being an
excellent horseman, he galloped up to London, and reached Whitehall about
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one o’clock in the morning of Thursday, 28th January. He found the King
almost speechless but in full possession of his faculties, and exhorted him,
in a few words, to repent him of his sins and “to place his trust in Christ
only.” Henry pressed the Churchman’s hand, and muttering the significant
words, “All is lost!” immediately expired.
So passed into eternity Lady Jane Grey’s great-uncle and the most
extraordinary of all our kings. Even at this date it is impossible to define his
true character, for whereas, on the one hand, his cousin Pole, who knew him
well, likened him unto Nero and Tiberius, that painstaking historian Froude
has endeavoured to prove him a well-intentioned man, whose political and
whose domestic troubles especially were not of his own making, but the
result of circumstance and of Court intrigues beyond his control. Between
these two appreciations the truth doubtless lies. Henry VIII was beyond
question a wonderful being—in whom were reflected, nay, absorbed, all the
good and evil qualities of the subjects whose very Church he contrived to
dominate. With all his treachery, his lust, and his cruelty, he may well have
been a necessary evil, a tool in the guiding Hand that has shaped the
destinies of the British Empire. He tore down the last vestiges of the Middle
Ages; and if the light so suddenly admitted was too dazzling for the eyes
that first beheld it, in due time it mellowed into the slowly developed liberty
and progress that have placed our country at the forefront of civilisation.
Our eighth Henry was the tyrant who inadvertently forced open the gate
whereby Freedom was to enter.
Much as we loathe his sensuality and his cruelty, his personal
extravagance that emptied the overflowing treasury left by his father and
led him to debase the coin of the realm in order to replenish it, much as we
may deplore his iconoclasm that destroyed a thousand abbeys, priories, and
noble churches and dispersed the art treasures of ages, as Englishmen we
still entertain a surreptitious liking for Bluff King Hal. His magnificent
appearance and the Oriental side of his nature, his six wives, his fantastic

and gorgeous pageants, his outbursts of bad language, his masterfulness, his
love of art and music, all appeal to the imagination and help us to convert a
monarch, a very weak and poor specimen of humanity, who really had
much of the vile criminal about him, into a hero of romance, and cast over
his strange career something of the legendary glamour that so fascinates all
students of the reign of the illustrious daughter who inherited so many of
his good and evil qualities and carried on much of his chosen policy. To
King Henry we owe the formation of our Army and the creation of our
Navy. He abused his Parliament, but he was its first and greatest organiser.
He shaped it to his own will; and it eventually shaped itself to the will of
the nation.
Earlier in the evening of that momentous 27th of January Hertford and
Paget had spent slow hours pacing up and down the long corridor outside
the King’s chamber, and consulting as to what it would be best to do as
soon as the monarch was dead. Parliament, then in session, had been busy
with the alleged treasonable transactions of the Duke of Norfolk, now lying
in the Tower under sentence of death. His Grace, therefore, was one of the
only three members of the Privy Council absent from the death-chamber:
the other two were Dr. Thirlby, Bishop of Westminster, then resident
Ambassador at the Court of Charles V; and Dr. Nicholas Wotton, Dean of
Canterbury, recently dispatched on a diplomatic mission to France.
Gardiner, whose name had been erased from the Council list, had lately
returned from Brussels, and must have been communicated with at once, for
to him were eventually entrusted all the arrangements for the late King’s
obsequies. An improvised Council was held immediately after Henry’s
death, and decided that the event should be kept a profound secret until the
Prince of Wales was brought to London. This was cleverly managed by
putting all the immediate attendants in the King’s private apartments under
oath; and the multitudinous household in the outer rooms performed its
usual vocations as though Henry, who had long been absent from his
general courtiers’ sight, were still alive. The sentinels were changed, and
everything at Whitehall went on with clockwork regularity, as if nothing
unusual had happened. At about four o’clock in the morning of 28th
January Hertford and his brother, Thomas Seymour, stole out of the palace,
took horse, and galloped towards Hertford, where the young heir was then
residing. By an oversight—or was it done purposely?—Hertford put in his
pocket the key of the coffer in which the King’s will was kept, and Paget

had to ride out into the dark after him to obtain possession of it. At about
dawn the Seymours were joined by Sir Anthony Browne, an accession
which greatly elated them, for he was one of the most important leaders of
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the Catholic party. They reached Hertford a little after daybreak, and the
boy Edward was instantly roused from his slumbers. They did not at once
inform him of his father’s decease, but rode with him to Enfield Chase,
where his sister, the Princess Elizabeth, was residing with her governess,
Mrs. Ashley. Here they broke the news to both of the dead King’s children,
who burst into tears, the Princess Elizabeth holding her young brother’s
hand the while. The company stayed all Sunday at Enfield, their suite being
in the meantime reinforced by a numerous bodyguard, attended by which
they started on the following morning for London, the boy-King riding on a
milk-white palfrey between Lord Hertford and Sir Anthony Browne. As the
procession passed through the villages on its way to London, the inhabitants
were informed of King Henry’s death. We have proof, however, that it was
not known in the metropolis on the Sunday. On that day the Grey Friar’s
Church, which had been closed for some years and converted into a wine-
vault, was restored to public worship by order of the late King, and his
“munificence and generosity” were fulsomely eulogised by the preacher,
who, however, never alluded to the sovereign’s demise. Towards evening,
the fact that the King was dead began to circulate among the upper classes,
and next morning it was pretty generally known all over London.
At three o’clock on the Monday afternoon King Edward VI entered the
capital through Aldgate, where he was met by the Lord Mayor and a great
assembly of the nobility and gentry. Cranmer greeted him at the Bridge and
read him an address, after which he was conducted in state to the Tower,
being only fairly well received by the populace. Meanwhile, his father’s
body, still at Whitehall, after being “spunged,” cleaned, disembowelled, and
embalmed with spices, was exhibited, covered with a silken garment, to the
great nobility. This done, it was sealed up in a leaden coffin and brought
down into the Privy Chamber, where it lay, “with all manner of lights
thereto requisite, having divine service about him with Masses, obsequies,
and prayers,” until 3rd February, when it was conveyed into the Chapel
Royal, where Mass was said between nine and ten in the morning.
The Chapelle Ardente was hung with black cloth and with banners of
St. George and England. Eighty huge silver candlesticks with tall wax

tapers in them were ranged on either side of the catafalque. On the Tuesday,
and for five following mornings, Norreys stationed himself at the entrance
to the chancel and cried out at intervals to the congregation, “Of your
charity pray for the soul of the most high and mighty Prince Henry VIII, our
late Sovereign Lord and King.” Watch was kept day and night by the
chaplains and gentlemen of the Privy Chamber. Then began the saying of
Masses for the benefit of the King’s soul, and these were “as numerous as
they were on the occasion of the funeral of his father, Henry VII.” They were
continued until the 13th February. Tens of thousands of Masses were said
throughout the country, both in the capital and the provinces, in the
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cathedrals as well as in the parish churches. The ritual was everywhere
absolutely Latin. In London Gardiner was the celebrant at High Mass each
day, assisted by the Bishops of Durham, London, Ely, St. David’s,
Gloucester, Bangor, and Bath. Archbishop Cranmer was present but did not
officiate. Low Masses were said in the chapel at Whitehall, at an altar
erected at the foot of the catafalque, from four o’clock in the morning until
ten, when High Mass was chanted, the Marquis of Dorset acting as chief
mourner. In the evening there were Vespers for the Dead and Dirge and “a
great attendance of noblemen and gentlemen mourners.” The Queen and the
King’s nieces, the Marchioness of Dorset and her daughters, the Ladies Jane
and Katherine Grey, the Lady Eleanor Brandon, Countess of Cumberland,
the Lady Margaret Lennox, the Duchess of Richmond, the Duchess of
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Suffolk, and all the great ladies of the Court, were present, not only at
High Mass, but at countless other Masses in the Chapel Royal. They were,
however, not in the body of the Chapel, but in an upper gallery overlooking
it—mourning cloaks being provided for them out of the Wardrobe.
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Queen Katherine may have left the palace somewhat hurriedly, for in
the inventory taken immediately after the King’s death there is an account
of the seals being on one chamber described as full of female attire of the
most sumptuous description, presumably belonging to the Queen, who
certainly left behind her the jewels given her by the King to wear at the
reception of M. d’Annebault, the French Envoy—an oversight that gave
rise to terrible subsequent dissensions between Sir Thomas Seymour and his
eldest brother.

Lord Chancellor Wriothesley dissolved Parliament early on Monday,
1st February, in a neatly turned speech declaring that “their most puissant
master was dead.” The eventful news was received with every
demonstration of sorrow, some members even bursting into tears, or
pretending to do so. Then followed the reading of that portion of the King’s
will which concerned the Royal Succession.
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By this famous testament Henry provided that in case Edward died
childless, and Henry himself had no other children by his “beloved wife
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Katherine or any other wives he might have hereafter,” King Edward was
to be succeeded by his eldest sister Mary; and if she in her turn proved
without offspring, she was to be succeeded by her sister Elizabeth. Failing
heirs to that princess, the crown was to pass on the same conditions to the
Lady Jane Grey and her sisters Katherine and Mary Grey, daughters of the
King’s eldest niece, the Lady Frances Brandon, Marchioness of Dorset. In
the eventuality of the three sisters Grey dying without issue, the throne was
to be occupied successively by the children of the Lady Frances’ younger
sister, the Lady Eleanor, Countess of Cumberland. The Scotch succession
was set aside, from no personal ill-will, however, to Henry’s eldest sister,
the Dowager Queen of Scotland, Margaret Tudor, for he left her daughter a
handsome legacy. Henry most probably omitted the name of the young
Queen of Scots as heiress to the throne, and gave his preference to the
daughters of his two nieces, because, although at war with the Regent of
Scotland, he still hoped that the betrothal of his grand-niece, Mary Stuart,
then only six years of age, to his son Edward might be arranged, and thus
eventually bring about the desired union of the two crowns in a natural
manner. Moreover, there was the religious question to be considered. The
Regent, Mary of Guise, was an ardent Papist, using all her influence, both
in England and in Scotland, to thwart the English King’s anti-papal policy.
Henry VIII mentioned Queen Katherine in the following eulogistic
manner: “And for the great love, obedience, chastity of life, and wisdom
being in our forenamed wife and Queen, we bequeath unto her for her
proper life, and as it shall please her to order it, three thousand pounds in
plate, jewels, and stuff of household goods, and such apparel as it shall
please her to take of such as we have already. And further, we give unto her
one thousand pounds in money, and the amount of her dower and jointure

according to our grant in Parliament.” Henry appointed the Earl of Hertford
Protector of the Realm during the minority of his son, and mentioned as his
colleagues all those persons who were interested in keeping him in power in
order to share it with him. Gardiner’s name was omitted, as already stated.
The provisions of the will opposed a serious obstacle to the Earl of
Hertford’s ambition, for they made him fifth in order of precedence, thus
placing him on a footing of equality with other executors; recognising no
claim arising out of his kinship to the young Prince. Sir Thomas Clere
declared that the original will was stamped, a fact which inclined so careful
a writer as Mr. Pollard to conclude that the idea that a stamped will was
illegal must have flashed across somebody’s mind, and suggested the hasty
drawing up of another, for the King to sign in autograph. The form now in
the Record Office is doubtless this second one. It displays no trace of a
stamp, and the two signatures at the beginning and end are not sufficiently
uniform to have been impressed mechanically. In the last the up-strokes are
very unsteady, and on comparing them with other signatures of Henry VIII
one is justified in thinking that both were forged. It must not be forgotten,
however, that the King was very ill, and failing; his hand may well have
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trembled.
In those days the funeral of a sovereign and the coronation of his
successor took place almost simultaneously, occasionally with strange
results, considerable confusion arising as to the arrangements for the two
ceremonies: the sombre preparations for the obsequies of King Henry, for
instance, clashed weirdly with the festivities organised for the accession of
his son. Matters became so confused at last that Bishop Gardiner found
himself obliged to appeal to “My Lord of Oxford’s Players,” who were
already at Southwark preparing to act a pageant and a comedy. It would be
more decent, His Lordship pointed out, to sing a solemn Dirge for their
master than to perform a merry play, and he besought them to desist until
after the King’s funeral.
In the end the Bishop had his way, and the grandeur of Henry’s
obsequies suffered nothing from the counter-attractions of the “green men,”
“morris dancers,” and “mountain for the gods,” which were among the
items promised by the players, who produced their performance in the hall
of the ex-monastery of Blackfriars immediately after Edward’s coronation
—doubtless to their own satisfaction and that of the public, albeit they seem

to have had hard work to get the necessary cash for their “properties” out of
Sir William Carwarden or Carden, the official in charge of such matters, to
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whom they had to frequently apply for payment.
On Monday, 31st January, the young King entered London, and passed
direct to the Tower, where, in accordance with traditional etiquette, he was
to remain in semi-seclusion until after his coronation. The next day,
Tuesday, 1st February, the late King’s executors assembled in the great hall
of the Tower, and having heard the will read from beginning to end, took
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the oath for the King, and Hertford was proclaimed Protector during the
coming minority. On 4th February the Protector proceeded in state to
Westminster Hall, where he assumed the offices of Lord Treasurer and Earl
Marshal, rendered vacant by the attainder of the Duke of Norfolk. He
subsequently relinquished his post as Lord Great Chamberlain to John
Dudley, Viscount de Lisle, who in his turn surrendered his place as Lord
High-Admiral to Sir Thomas Seymour.
On Sunday, 13th February, High Mass was again sung in the Chapel
Royal by Gardiner, assisted by the Bishops of London and Bristol, and the
royal coffin was removed “from the Chapell to the Chariot; over the coffin
was cast a pall of rich cloath of gold, and upon it a goodly ymage like to the
Kyng’s person in all poynts, wonderfully richly aparrelled with velvet gold
and precious stones of all sorts, holding in ye right hand a Sceptre of gold,
in the left hand the ball of the world with a crosse; upon the head a crown
imperial of inestimable value, a collar of the Garter about the neck and a
garter of gold about the leg, with this being honourably conducted as
aforesaid, was tied upon the said coffin by the Gentlemen of his Privy
Chamber upon rich cushions of cloath of gold and fast bound with silk
ribands to the pillars of the said Chariot for removing.” It seems, however,
that this image was not quite complete, for it had presently to be removed
and “touched up.”
The gorgeous funeral procession, which is said to have been four miles
long, left the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, at about eleven o’clock on 14th
February for Sion en route for Windsor. The weather was very fine, and
immense crowds lining the streets, people of every class, holding lighted
candles. Over a thousand “lights,” or torches, were held by the mourners
who preceded or followed the hearse containing the King’s body and upon

which was placed the waxen image already described. This hearse was
drawn by eight black horses emblazoned with the Arms of England and of
the house of Tudor, and surrounded by noblemen and knights in mourning
robes, some on horseback and others on foot, holding lights and banners,
images of saints, and other glistening devices and symbols. The procession
passed through the streets of London by Charing Cross, Knightsbridge,
Hammersmith, Chiswick, and Brentford, and, owing to its enormous length,
did not reach Sion until twilight. It is gratifying to note that the vast
assemblage of nobles and gentry was plentifully supplied with
refreshments, wine, and beer throughout the whole of these very elaborate
and costly obsequies, to the tune of about £10,000 of our money.
At Sion the coffin stood all night within the ruined walls of that
erstwhile monastic house which had been the prison of Katherine Howard,
the second of Henry’s murdered consorts. The ravages of ruin to be seen
there were now hidden by hangings of fine black cloth and by two great
altars blazing with lights and jewels. By a curious coincidence, the body
arrived at Sion on the day after the fifth anniversary of the Queen’s
execution, a fact which lends additional horror to the following story,
related in a contemporary document now in the Soane Collection: “The
King’s body rested in the ruined Chapel of Sion, and there, the leaden
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coffin being cleft by the shaking of the carriage, the pavement of the
church was wetted with Henry’s blood. In the morning came plumbers to
solder the coffin, under whose feet, I tremble while I write it,” says the
author, “was suddenly seen a dog creeping and licking up the King’s blood.
If you ask me how I know this, I answer, William Greville, who could
scarce drive away the dog, told me so, and so did the plumber also.”
The coffin had most likely been abandoned by the mourners, who had
retired to rest for the night, and probably some gaseous explosion led to this
uncanny incident, the report of which greatly increased the superstitious
terror in which the late King’s name was held. Thus was fulfilled, so the
people said, Friar Peyto’s denunciation from the pulpit of Greenwich
Church in 1553, when that daring friar compared Henry to Ahab, and told
him to his face “that the dogs would in like manner lick his blood.”
This horrible occurrence, if it really took place, does not seem to have
made any very deep impression on Bishop Gardiner, for no more fulsome

sermon was ever preached than that delivered by him at Windsor on 16th
February. He took for his text, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord,”
and, enlarging on the virtues of the late monarch, lamented the “loss both to
high and low by the death of this most good and gracious King”; for whom,
Sir Anthony Browne declared, “there was no need to pray, for he was surely
in Heaven.” Queen Katherine Parr, the King’s nieces, the Lady Frances,
Marchioness of Dorset, and the Lady Eleanor of Cumberland and their
daughters and other noblewomen attended the obsequies at Windsor from a
closet or chamber looking into the chapel, much such a one as Queen
Victoria used in the Chapel Royal, Windsor, on similar occasions.
Some weird stories of supernatural apparitions were circulated all over
London, especially among the Catholics. The “old King” had appeared,
wreathed in flames, to an ex-Carthusian friar. Folks at Windsor had beheld
him fleeing along the battlements and corridors of the castle, blazing like a
meteoric ball; and he had even, so it was rumoured, paid a warning visit to
his widow in the still hours of darkness.

CHAPTER VIII

CONCERNING THE LADY JANE AND THE
QUEEN-DOWAGER

T
he will of Henry VIII conferred upon the houses of Seymour and
Grey a towering position in the State which naturally brought
forward into extraordinary relief the hitherto ignored name of
Lady Jane. A few weeks earlier she was but the eldest daughter
of the rather weak-minded Marquis of Dorset, a man whom no one seems to
have held in any great consideration, notwithstanding his royal alliance and
rather showy past career as a soldier under Henry VIII; to-day she was
almost as prominent in the matter of the succession as the King’s two
daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, both of whom could easily be set aside by
an ambitious faction: the elder on account of her religion, the younger on
that of her somewhat doubtful legitimacy. It is not surprising, therefore, that
the intrigues which were to culminate in the ruin of the unfortunate Lady
Jane began almost immediately after the accession of her cousin, Edward
VI; for it was at this time that the newly made Lord Sudeley, desiring to
possess “two strings to his bow,” embarked in a most imprudent intrigue to
obtain possession of the person of the Marquis of Dorset’s daughter, who,
as the reversionary heiress of England, was justly regarded by both parties
as a most valuable asset. The intermediary employed in this transaction was
one William Sharington, a gentleman in Seymour’s confidence, who was
his equal in the conducting of tricksome intrigues: it will become apparent
as we proceed that whenever Sudeley had any particularly difficult and
dangerous matter to deal with, he invariably got some subordinate to share
the danger with him. One morning, very soon after King Henry’s death,
Sharington appeared at Dorset Place, Westminster, to open negotiations

with the Marquis about the transfer of his eldest daughter into Sudeley’s
charge. He began by informing Dorset, apparently one of the most
credulous of mortals, that the Admiral, as uncle to the King, “was like to
come to great authority, and was most desirous of forming a bond of
friendship with him.” On the following day Sharington returned, and after
assuring the Marquis that “the Lord High-Admiral was very much his
friend,” insinuated that “it were a goodly thing to happen if my Lady Jane
his daughter were in the keeping of the said Lord Admiral.” He said he had
often heard his master say “that the Lady Jane was the handsomest lady in
England and that the Admiral would see her placed in marriage much to his
(the Marquis’s) comfort.”

“And with whom will he match her?” inquired Dorset.
“Marry,” replied Sharington, “I doubt not but you shall see he will
marry her to the King, and fear you not, he will bring it to pass, and then
you shall be able to help all the friends you have.”
After this visit the Marquis held a consultation with the Lady Frances,
which resulted in his accepting a personal interview with Lord Sudeley.
Thomas Seymour does not appear to have had any fixed London abode
in his bachelor days, but probably lived, on occasion, as Surrey did, in what
we should now call chambers, somewhere in the Strand. But when he
became Baron Sudeley and Lord High-Admiral, he conceived it incumbent
upon him to live in a style commensurate with his increased rank, and
solicited a suitable mansion from his brother, the Protector. Somerset
forthwith filched Bath House, Strand, from Bishop Barlow, and presented it
to his brother. This house, which must not be mistaken for Bath House,
Holborn, was built in the fourteenth century and considerably enlarged and
embellished in the beginning of the sixteenth; it was one of the finest
mansions in London, and, with its gardens, occupied the whole space now
covered by Arundel, Norfolk, and Suffolk Streets, Strand. The mansion
stood on the approximate site of the present Howard Hotel. It commanded
an extensive view of the Thames, and there was an orchard extending to the
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Strand.
To Seymour Place, Strand, therefore, rode my lord of Dorset, to find
Sudeley walking in his garden. The two gentlemen held a most confidential

conversation, in the course of which Sudeley persuaded Dorset not only to
hand the wardship of the Lady Jane over to him, but to send for her then
and there, and allow the young girl to take up her abode under the roof of
one of the most notorious profligates of an exceedingly degenerate Court.
The Lady Jane did not arrive at Seymour Place in formâ pauperis. She
was attended by her governess, Mrs. Ashley, by four waiting women and a
number of male servants of various degrees. Sudeley’s household was at
this time ruled over by his mother, the Dowager Lady Seymour. Since the
death of her husband, Sir John Seymour, in December 1536, this lady had
kept house for her younger son, who brought her for that purpose either
from Hertford or from a suburban house on a site now crossed by Upper
and Lower Seymour Street, Portman Square.
There is some unexplained mystery connected with Lady Seymour
which the present writer does not pretend to have fathomed. No explanation
is discoverable of the strange fact that the mother of a Queen and the
grandmother of a King of England seems to have been almost ignored by
her son-in-law Henry VIII, by her young grandson Edward VI, by her own
son the Protector, and indeed by all the great people with whom her high
position must have brought her into contact. Her name is not once
mentioned in connection with that of her daughter, Jane Seymour, after she
became Queen. She did not figure at the christening of the baby Edward,
and did not present the customary gifts offered by near relations on such
occasions. She has left no correspondence, and there is only one allusion to
her in the Household Books of Henry VIII, and none at all in those of
Edward VI, which contain some reference to almost every lady of
importance of the period, as receiving or presenting gifts from or to the
sovereign, either personally or through attendants. We only know that her
banner of arms figured, close to that of her daughter, Queen Jane, at the
obsequies of Henry VIII and Edward VI; and that Henry, in 1537, during the
year of his marriage with Jane Seymour, when he raised his brother-in-law
Edward Seymour to the rank of Baron Beauchamp, granted him a pension
of £1100 per annum, out of which he was to pay his mother an annuity of
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£60 —but beyond the papers connected with this pension there is only
one other existing document in which her name figures, and this deals with
an incident that arose after her death, in 1551, when her grandson the King
was induced by the Privy Council, and by her own son, the Duke of

Somerset, to countermand the wearing of official mourning for her. Beyond
the fact that Lady Seymour was by birth a Wentworth, and therefore highly
connected, and that in one of his letters to Lady Jane’s mother Seymour
represents his own as a fitting person to take the young girl under her
maternal care, Lady Seymour may be said to have lived and died as much
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ignored as though she had been a woman of no birth and no importance.
Of the sort of life lived by the Lady Jane during the weeks she spent at
Seymour Place we know nothing, but from the alacrity with which she
consented to return there at a later period we may feel justified in believing
she was very happy under the charge of the mysterious Lady Seymour and
her erratic and wilful son. Miss Strickland says, but without naming her
authority, that Lady Seymour was one of the earliest Englishwomen of rank
to adopt the tenets of the Reformation. If this was the case, Lady Jane Grey
probably met at her house some one or other of the numerous foreign
Reformers who began to invade England shortly after the death of Henry
VIII. It is, however, likely that Sudeley undertook the charge of this young
lady at the instigation of Katherine Parr, and that whilst at Seymour Place
her education was continued under the direction of the scholarly Miles
Coverdale, afterwards Bishop of Exeter, who had been appointed chaplain
to the Queen-Dowager. There is some little resemblance between the
handwriting of this divine and that of Lady Jane, which leads one to think
he had a considerable share in directing her studies at this period.
If the Dorsets imagined they were doing themselves and their daughter
a service by placing her under the guardianship of Thomas Seymour, they
made a terrible mistake, for this incident was certainly at the root of that
fatal animosity between the two brothers which led up to one of the most
appalling tragedies in our history. In the first place, it revealed to Somerset
that Sudeley was fighting for his own hand, and further, entirely upset the
Lord Protector’s domestic schemes and arrangements. Both Somerset and
his wife had been very intimate with the Marquis and the Marchioness, his
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royal consort, and the young Earl of Hertford, their eldest son, was a
constant visitor at Westminster and at Bradgate. He was an exceedingly
handsome youth, described by Norton, his tutor, as “singularly like his
father,” who, judged by his portraits, was one of the finest-looking men of
his day. So fond was the Lady Frances of the young Earl that she would call

him “her son,” and undoubtedly looked on him as a welcome suitor for her
eldest daughter; and if there was any love romance in Lady Jane’s brief life,
it was certainly in connection with this youth, and not with Guildford,
whom she eventually married, but whom she slighted rather than loved. The
Somersets, moreover, had made up their minds that if the proposed
marriage between Mary Stuart and Edward VI came to nothing, Edward
should be contracted as soon as possible to their youngest daughter, the
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very pretty and highly accomplished Lady Jane Seymour. Under these
circumstances it may well be imagined that the Duke and Duchess were not
only furious when they learned that Lady Jane Grey was already
comfortably installed under their brother’s roof, without their knowledge
and consent, but firmly resolved that the young lady should see as little of
her cousin the King as possible.
Brother Thomas had yet a greater surprise and vexation in store for
Somerset and his Duchess, and even for King Edward VI himself, than the
matter of the wardship of Lady Jane Grey. He was, if the truth is to be
honestly told, about the most extraordinary scamp of his time. Physically he
eclipsed his elder brother, the Protector, himself considered a very
handsome man. In addition to a fine figure, Thomas possessed beautiful
features, just escaping the long thin nose which characterised his brother’s
face and ruined Queen Jane’s pretensions to beauty. He was dark, with a full
beard, a ruddy complexion, and full brown eyes. In a word, a very fine
fellow indeed, and exceedingly attractive to the fair sex, who found it hard
to resist his blandishments, a cruel fact of which he was apt to boast. He
danced to perfection, was first in all sports, could turn pretty verses when it
suited him—and even godly ones, on occasion. His love of dress was
proverbial, and in that brilliant Court of Henry VIII Sir Thomas Seymour
never failed to hold his own for extravagance and magnificence. Like his
brother Somerset, he could be kindly when it suited his purpose, and liberal
enough to his inferiors when he desired to create a good impression. He
seems to have even been a dutiful son, for, as we have said, his mother lived
with him to the end of his life, and he spoke well of her.
These comparative virtues were outweighted by his evil qualities, for
not even in that age of rascality and of wickedness in high places did there
exist a greater ruffian than this seemingly polished gentleman. Thomas was

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one of those men who are born without a conscience. Henry VIII had not
long been dead and the elder Seymour scarcely proclaimed Protector of the
Realm when Sudeley began to realise that his own part at the Court of his
nephew, Edward VI, must be quite secondary unless he could forthwith
contract some royal alliance and thereby make his position equal to his
brother’s. So it fell out that, before the late King’s body was cold, Thomas
Seymour had made up his mind to marry one of the royal princesses; and
ere it was buried he had offered his hand to the elder of the King’s widows,
Anne of Cleves. That cautious Princess promptly refused the dubious
proposal, preferring her independence and present comfort to the probable
sacrifice of a handsome income paid by the State for the poor pleasure of
espousing a cadet of the house of Seymour. Nothing daunted by this refusal,
the undismayed suitor aimed higher yet, and offered his hand and heart to
Princess Mary, who thanked him, in a courteous letter, for the honour he
paid her, and assured him that she had not the slightest intention of
changing her state, especially so soon after her father’s death. Baffled again,
my Lord of Sudeley now addressed himself to the youthful Princess
Elizabeth, who, according to Leti, answered him in a most becoming
manner, reminding him that her father was just dead, and that it would ill
become her to think of marriage at such a moment or for at least two years
after so sad an event. She had not, she said, had time to enjoy her
maidenhood, and wished to do so for that period at least, before embarking
on the stormy seas of matrimony. Elizabeth’s letter, if she really wrote it,—
one can never quite trust Leti, though he lived near enough to the time to
have access to papers and documents long since destroyed,—was a model
of finesse and good taste.
The rejected, but undejected, Seymour now turned his attention to his
old love, Katherine Parr, whom, as we know, he first courted when she
became the widow of Lord Latimer. He must have been a good deal in her
company in the last months of King Henry’s life, and on her own admission
she had not lost any of her old love for him; for in a letter, written
presumably within a fortnight of the late King’s death, she says, “I would
not have you think that this, mine honest good will towards you to proceed
from any sudden motion of passion; for, as truly as God is God, my mind
was fully bent the other time I was at liberty [that is, after the death of Lord
Latimer], to marry you before any man I know. Howbeit God withstood my

will therein most vehemently for a time, and through His grace and
goodness made that possible which seemed to me most impossible; that
was, made me renounce utterly mine own will and follow His most
willingly. It were long to write all the processes of this matter. If I live, I
shall declare it to you myself. I can say nothing, but as my Lady of
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Suffolk saith, ‘God is a wonderful man.’” In March, after Henry’s death,
the Queen removed to Chelsea Manor, a mansion which Henry had built as
a nursery for his children and settled on her as a dower-house. Princess
Elizabeth had joined her within a few days for the purpose of finishing her
education under the auspices of the learned Queen. At the very time,
therefore, that Seymour was intriguing to secure possession of Lady Jane
Grey, he was clandestinely spending his evenings with Katherine Parr either
at Whitehall or, later, when she finally removed with her household to
Chelsea, at the Manor House, coming there by a lane that led from the
Bishop of London’s house up a path which, until a few years ago, was still
in existence and associated by tradition with the names of Katherine Parr
and Thomas Seymour. Some authorities assert that the two were secretly
married about three weeks after the King’s death, and that the Lord Admiral
prolonged his visits, not leaving his wife till dawn, when she would let him
out by the garden wicket, and then steal back to her room unobserved (at
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least, so she hoped). According to Edward VI’s Journal, however, the
marriage was not officially celebrated until May, and it was certainly not
made public before the end of June 1547. The intrigues of Lord Thomas to
induce the young King, his nephew, to sanction his marriage with his
stepmother began by his poisoning the King’s mind against his brother
Somerset, and, taking advantage of the Protector’s absence in Scotland, he
did all in his power to make himself agreeable to Edward VI by lending him
considerable sums of money. Somerset kept the royal lad very short of petty
cash, so that at times he had none to distribute to such folk as strolling
musicians, servants who brought him presents from his relatives, and other
persons who had obliged him. Seymour, who had isolated the King,
employed a man named Fowler as intermediary between himself and
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Edward. Flattered and cajoled by his uncle Thomas and well disposed by
his natural affection to his stepmother, the poor little King was at length
induced to write a letter advising the Lord Admiral to marry the Queen-
Dowager. This extraordinary missive, which is still extant, was penned a

few days after Edward had received a very curious epistle from his
stepmother, then on a visit to him at St. James’s Palace, in which she had
dilated upon her extraordinary affection for the memory of his late father.
The letter was written in Latin, and the young King’s answer was in the
same dead language. The King’s letter is full of advice, which comes oddly
from a lad not yet ten to a woman verging upon forty. He hopes to do what
is acceptable in her sight because of, firstly, “the great love you bear my
father the King, of most noble memory; then your good-will towards me;
and lastly, your godliness, and knowledge and learning in the Scriptures.
Proceed, therefore, in your good course; continue to love my father, and to
show the same great kindness to me which I have ever perceived in you.
Cease not to love and read the Scriptures, but persevere in always reading
them; for in the first you show the duty of a good wife and a good subject,
and in the second, the warmth of your friendship, and in the third, your
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piety to God.” Very soon after writing this letter he wrote another to Her
Majesty, this time in English, in which he assured her that, far from being
vexed with her for marrying his uncle, he promised to aid her in the hour of
need, should the alliance prove offensive to those who were in power.
In June the marriage was made public. The indignation of the Duke and
Duchess of Somerset knew no bounds. They had been greatly angered over
the matter of Lady Jane Grey, but no words could express their exasperation
at what they were pleased to consider their brother’s fresh exhibition of
“indecency and wickedness.” The first practical expression of their wrath
was the sequestration of the jewels the Queen had left behind at Whitehall
after King Henry’s death. She had applied for them several times, and now
wrote in a more determined strain; only, however, to receive a haughty
refusal and the startling information that the jewels belonged to the Crown,
whereas they really were a personal gift to her from the King at the time of
the visit of the French Envoy M. d’Annebault. These jewels were never
returned to Katherine Parr—a matter which roused the Lord Admiral’s
wrath to a culminating pitch. “My brother,” he said, “is wondrous hot in
helping every man to his right save me. He maketh a great matter to let me
have the Queen’s jewels, which you see by the whole opinion of the
lawyers ought to belong to me, and all under pretence that he would not the
King should lose so much, as if it were a loss to the King to let me have
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mine own!”

Then came another unpleasant incident, in the course of which the
Queen-Dowager was subjected to unfair treatment on account of her
marriage. Somerset determined to force her to lease her favourite manor of
Fausterne to a friend of his named Long. Katherine refused point-blank to
receive this gentleman as a tenant, especially at a ridiculously low rent, and
in a letter to her husband expressed her scornful indignation at the “large”
offer for Fausterne which his brother had made her. Yet in the end she was
obliged to accept Somerset’s terms. Fausterne passed from her hands into
those of Long, and was never restored to her.
It is not surprising that she felt a little “warm,” as she expresses it, at
the manner in which the Somersets handled her. Her position had been
recognised by the King and Parliament, and yet her brother-in-law and his
wife refused to acknowledge her right to precedence: the Duchess of
Somerset declared that she was herself as good as Queen, since she was the
consort of the King’s Protector, “who was virtually the head of the Realm.”
Whenever Katherine went to Court, if the Duchess of Somerset chanced to
be present, there was sure to be trouble. According to Lloyd, the Duchess
not only refused to bear up the Queen’s train, but actually jostled her so as
to pass first. “So that what between the train of the Queen, and the long
gown of the Duchess, they raised so much dust at Court, as at last put out
the eyes of both their husbands, and caused their executions.” Heylin says
the Duchess was accustomed to inveigh against her royal sister-in-law in
her coarsest manner. “Did not King Henry VIII marry Katherine Parr in his
doting days, when he had brought himself so low by his lust and cruelty that
no lady that stood on her honour would venture on him? And shall I now
give place to her who in her former estate was but Latimer’s widow, and is
now fain to cast herself for support on a younger brother? If master admiral
teach his wife no better manners, I am she that will.”
Historians who, for political and religious purposes, have exaggerated
the virtue and accomplishments of Edward VI, and endowed Lady Jane
Grey with charms and gifts which that modest young lady never possessed,
have woven a legend around her and Edward VI which would lead the
uninitiated to believe that she was the constant sharer of his juvenile tasks
and pastimes, whereas in reality it was only in the last few months of his
life that she became in the least prominent at his Court. Immediately after
his birth and the death of his mother Prince Edward was handed over to the

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care of Lady Brian, formerly governess to his two sisters, by whom she
was greatly beloved and respected, and also to that of his dry nurse, Mrs.
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Sybilla Penn. His infancy was spent at Chelsea Manor House and at the
country seats of Ampthill and Oatlands. In these places he was frequently
visited by his sisters Mary and Elizabeth, and presumably also by his little
cousins of the house of Grey; but when he attained his sixth year, in
accordance with the peculiar views of his father on the subject of education,
all female influence was withdrawn from him, although Lady Brian
continued to preside over his household. A number of very young noblemen
were selected to be his constant companions and playfellows. Among them
were his cousins, the two sons of Brandon, Duke of Suffolk; the Lord
Edward Seymour, afterwards Earl of Hertford; and his great friend, the one
being he seems to have really loved, young Barnaby Fitzpatrick, sometimes
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mentioned by the Swiss Reformers as Earl of Ireland. His principal tutors
were the extremely Protestant Dr. Richard Cox, who became Dean of
Westminster in 1549 and subsequently, in Elizabeth’s reign, Bishop of Ely;
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the learned Sir John Cheke, Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, and
his first schoolmaster; Sir Anthony Cooke; M. Jean Bellemain, his French
master; and Roger Ascham, who taught him caligraphy. He also received
lessons in the art of writing in the Italian or Roman type, which most nearly
resembles the modern, from Dr. Croke, who had taught this art at an earlier
period to the young Duke of Richmond and Queen Katherine Parr. Dr.
Christopher Tye was his music master; and Philip Van Wylder taught him to
play upon his father’s favourite instrument, the lute. Lady Jane was
certainly not among his circle of intimate associates, which did not even
include his two sisters, although the Lady Mary was at one time officially
appointed his guardian, and Elizabeth passed the greater part of the year
1546 with him at Hatfield. So little intercourse had he with his sisters after
his accession to the throne that he actually only met Princess Mary three
times, and Elizabeth five. As to Lady Jane, he scarcely ever saw her, unless
indeed she spent a few days with him at Whitehall some weeks before his
death. As soon as the Somersets were thoroughly acquainted with the true
motive that had induced the Dorsets to part with their daughter, they took
every precaution to prevent its accomplishment; and so little was the Lady
Jane seen at the Court of King Edward that she is only once casually

mentioned by that monarch in his Journal as being present at the great
functions arranged in 1550 in honour of the Dowager of Scotland when she
passed through London on her way to her northern dominions; and this was
at the time that Northumberland was in favour and Somerset in disgrace.
On Thursday, 18th February 1547, the temporal Lords assembled at the
Tower in their robes of estate to witness a solemn and significant ceremony.
The young King having ascended his throne, and the officials of his Court
taken their allotted positions about him, the doors were thrown open, and
Edward Seymour, Lord Protector and Earl of Hertford, was led from the
Council Chamber and conducted before His Majesty. Garter bore his letters-
patent, the Earl of Derby his mantle, the Earl of Shrewsbury his rod of gold;
my Lord Oxford carried his cap of estate and coronet. The Lord of Arundel
bore the sword, and walked immediately before the Protector, who was
supported by the young Duke of Suffolk and the Marquis of Dorset. After
the usual ceremonies, Hertford knelt and was invested by his royal nephew,
who put on the mantle, girded on the sword, placed the coronet upon his
uncle’s head, and delivered him his rod of gold. Then the trumpets sounded,
and the Herald proclaimed Edward Seymour to be no longer Earl of
Hertford, but now and hereafter Duke of Somerset.
After the Protector came the Lord William Parr, Earl of Essex, brother
to the Queen-Dowager, who was created Marquis of Northampton and of
Essex. Then appeared John Dudley, Lord de Lisle, who had not assumed
full importance at that time, but who was presently to become the
protagonist of the ominous tragedy already in preparation. The future
father-in-law of Lady Jane Grey, and the Nemesis of Somerset, was a man
of splendid presence, exceedingly tall, with regular and majestic features,
rendered even more striking by his long beard and sweeping moustache. He
entered led by the Earls of Derby and Oxford, and was presently created
Earl of Warwick. Dudley was followed by Wriothesley, who was raised to
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the peerage as Earl of Southampton. Immediately after him came the
majestic Sir Thomas Seymour, whom the King created Baron Seymour of
Sudeley, at the same time delivering to him his patent as Lord High-
Admiral of England. Sir Richard Rich, Sir John Sheffield, and Sir William
Willoughby followed in succession and were created barons by the same
names they had borne as knights. When the elaborate ceremony was over, a
grand banquet, at which the King was not present, was offered to the new

peers in the Tower. His Majesty, who was far from strong, had fainted from
fatigue, and no wonder!—the function had lasted from seven in the morning
till nearly midday!
In the evening of the same day (18th February) three of the handsomest
men of the English Court—Somerset, Sudeley, and Warwick—rode with a
small escort from Whitehall through the Strand to Baynard’s Castle, the
residence of Sir William Herbert, Queen Katherine’s brother-in-law, one of
the wealthiest men in England, served by not less than a thousand men, who
wore his liveries. Here these three gentlemen were hospitably entertained at
supper. There was much to talk over, and the party, elated by the honours so
recently showered upon its members and heated by Herbert’s good wine,
became “right merry”—little dreaming that within two years’ time Somerset
would condemn his own brother Thomas to death, and that a few months
later Warwick, as Duke of Northumberland, would sign the death-warrant
of Somerset, only to be beheaded in his turn for high treason a year or so
later by Queen Mary’s command. The Marquis of Dorset may have been of
the company, and his presence would add an additional note of tragic
significance—for Warwick was to become the direct cause of the deaths
both of Lady Jane and of her father!
King Edward, in the meantime, remained at the Tower until his official
progress thence to Westminster for his coronation. Although Somerset and
his brother were in office, and the Marquis of Dorset in great favour with
them, it is not probable that his cousin, the Lady Frances, or her daughters
were brought to see him. His boyish Majesty was left, according to custom,
in complete isolation, seen and influenced alone by his uncles, the
Seymours, and by his numerous tutors (for even after his accession his
lessons were continued with curious punctuality), so that, what with State
functions and his education, the unfortunate lad had very little or no time
for physical exercise or recreation.
On 19th February His Majesty rode from the Tower in the usual
procession to Westminster before the coronation which formed a part of our
regal ceremonial until the reign of James I, when it was omitted on account
of the plague. Edward, garbed in silver, with a white velvet waistcoat and a
cloak slashed with Venetian silver brocade, embroidered with pearls,
cantered on a milk-white pony under a white silk canopy edged with silver.
On either side of him rode his two uncles, the Lord Protector and the Lord

High-Admiral, whilst Cranmer, dumbly riding with the Emperor’s Envoy,
went between him and the Venetian Ambassador. They passed through
streets gay with tapestry and cloth of gold; whilst at the Conduit in Cornhill
white and red wine ran free for the people to drink at their will, and children
dressed as angels sang a quaint greeting:—
“Hayle, Noble Edward, our Kynge and soveraigne,
Hayle, the cheffe comfort of your communaltye:
Hayle, redolent rose, whose sweetness to reteyne,
Ys unto us all such great comodity,
That earthly joy no more to us can be.”

At the Standard in the Chepe an erection, “like unto a tower,” and hung
with cloth of gold, was surmounted by trumpeters, who, after a flourish,
recited the following poetic (!) effusion:—
“Ye children that are towardes, sing up and downe,
And never play the cowardes to him that weareth the crowne,
But always doo your care his pleasure to fulfyll,
Then shall you keep right sure the honour of England still.
Sing up heart, sing up heart,
Sing no more downe,
But joy in King Edward that wereth the crowne.”

Outside the Metropolitan Cathedral there was an acrobatic display: “An
argosine [Ragusan] came from the batilment of Saint Poule’s Church, upon
a cable, beyng made faste to an anker at the deane’s doore, liying uppon his
breaste, aidyng himself neither with hande nor foote, and after ascended to
the middes [middle] of the same cable, and tumbled and plaied many pretie
toies [tricks], wherat the Kyng and other of the peres and nobles of the
realme laughed hartely.” In Fleet Street the King was met by Faith, Justice,
and Truth, the first holding a Bible conspicuously in her hands: each of
these damsels recited a long poem in His Majesty’s honour. Temple Bar
having been “new painted in dyvers colours,” was garnished with cloth of
arras and standards and flags, and seven French trumpeters “blew sweetly”
to the singing of an anthem by a group of children. The customary banquet
was served in the Great Hall, Westminster, and was attended by Archbishop

Cranmer, most of the bishops, the ambassadors, and envoys, the nobility,
the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and sheriffs.
King Edward stayed at Westminster Palace until the coronation, which
took place on the following Sunday in Westminster Abbey. On account of
the King’s poor health, the service was slightly abridged, otherwise the old
Catholic form was throughout adhered to; for though Cranmer preached a
sermon in refutation of Petrine claims and urged the young monarch to
abolish “idolatry,” he celebrated High Mass, and the incongruous function
concluded with the King’s “offering,” as had always been done in Catholic
times, at St. Edward’s shrine! After the coronation there were public jousts
and tournaments; and the King and Court attended at Blackfriars those very
performances by the “players” which had roused the ire of Bishop Gardiner
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and had been postponed at his request. We may be certain that the
Marchioness of Dorset witnessed the procession and coronation, together
with her two elder daughters, Jane and Katherine, from some place of
vantage set apart for the ladies of the royal family, who, however, took no
active part in either the procession or the actual ceremony, it not being
customary for ladies to be officially present at the coronation of a bachelor
King.
Notwithstanding that Edward VI is always connected in the popular
mind with Protestantism, and notwithstanding Cranmer’s attack on
“Popery” at the coronation, for quite eighteen months, if not two years, after
Henry VIII’s death the Church in England remained exactly as he left it. True
it is, that the first Book of Common Prayer was issued in 1548, but, on the
other hand, Mass was said daily in the Royal Chapel (Low Mass every day
and High Mass on festivals) for the first two or three years of Edward’s
reign; an MS. account book of “the Treasurer of the Chamber” in the
Trevelyan Papers reveals the fact that the boy-King himself heard Mass
almost daily until 1549. There is every reason to believe that Mass
continued to be said or sung in the parish churches also until the same year;
certainly the old feasts were still observed for the first two years of King
Edward’s reign, especially in London. These feasts were much more
numerous than those retained by the Established Church; there were the
first three days in Easter Week, Corpus Christi,—when there was the usual
procession with the Host through the streets,—the “Days” of St. John, SS.
Peter and Paul, St. Mary Magdalen, St. James the Apostle, the

Annunciation, the Nativity, the Conception, and the Assumption of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, All Hallows’ Day, All Souls’ Day, St. Edward
Confessor, Christmas Day, and the three following holy-days. High Mass of
the Holy Ghost was said in St. Stephen’s Chapel when Parliament met for
the first time after Henry’s death, the King and both Houses attending in
State. All the same, things ecclesiastical were not as they used to be; there
was in different churches much diversity in the matter of details—one priest
would use incense, another not, and so on. In 1548, however, Compline was
sung in English and the Litany of the Saints also in the vernacular.
So soon as the news that King Henry was dead was authenticated
abroad, an army of foreign Reformers—Swiss, German, French, and Italian
—poured into England, as a secure refuge from the persecution they
endured in their respective countries. These worthies held the most varied
opinions, some even casting doubt on the Divinity of Christ, and the
Lutherans hating the Calvinists as cordially as they both detested the
Papists. The Londoners in general, who, when not Catholics, were mostly
schismatics and ever jealous of foreigners, did not relish this sudden
invasion; but the leaders of politics and religion in England welcomed the
Reformers with open arms, even overlooking their doctrinal shortcomings
for the sake of their hatred of “the Scarlet Lady.” Some of them—for
instance, Bucer, Peter Martyr, and perhaps Paul Fagius—were awarded
chairs at the Universities; whilst others, such as John ab Ulmis, Conrad
Pellican, Oswald Geisshaüsler (better known as Myconius), Bullinger,
Martin Micronius, Bartholomew Traheron, John Stumphius, Christopher
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Froschover, Bernardine Ochinus, Peter Bizarro of Perugia, etc., were
received into the houses of some of the aristocracy to teach their children
“the new learning.” The Marquis of Dorset, as already noted, welcomed
these foreign Reformers with enthusiasm, and we shall presently learn more
concerning his relations with them. He did not confine his intercourse to a
mere empty display of hospitality, but kept up a regular correspondence
with many of them after their return to their homes. Letter-writing seems,
indeed, to have been a passion with the Reformers, and their voluminous
correspondence, arranged, translated, and published by the Parker
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Society, throws much valuable light on their private characters, their
politics, and their singular theological opinions. It is mostly addressed to
their brethren in Basle, Zurich, Geneva, and Strasburg, or to their English

patrons. According to some authorities, there were from ten to twenty
thousand foreign adherents of the “new learning”—or as we might still
better say, new learnings, so many and diverse were their opinions—in
England during Edward VI’s reign, but the former figure is the more likely
to be correct. Very many of these learned men scattered themselves abroad
again when the Catholic reaction set in under Mary; but doubtless a few
remained, whose descendants to this day worship in the Église Reformée
Française, l’Église Protestante Suisse, the Dutch Church, and in the other
foreign Protestant churches which are sprinkled over the metropolis, but
whose congregations were materially increased after the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes.

CHAPTER IX

THE QUEEN AND THE LORD HIGH-
ADMIRAL

A
t the time of the much-discussed clandestine marriage between
Thomas Seymour and Katherine Parr, the Princess Elizabeth
was a precocious girl of fifteen, not beautiful, but tall for her
age, well developed, and of elegant figure. The aquiline
features, which age was to harshen, were softened at this early period by the
roundness of youth; and the brilliant complexion stood in no need of the
artificial assistance to which the Queen so freely resorted in her later life.
The splendid auburn hair—its colour may have owed something to a touch
of henna—considerably heightened charms not the least striking of which
were a pair of small but black and penetrating eyes, inherited from her
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mother, Anne Boleyn. Unmindful of the fact that a girl of fifteen is not
precisely a baby, the Queen had encouraged the Admiral to romp with “our
Eliza” in the garden and even in her bedroom. Seymour was notoriously
devoid of any sense of delicacy or chivalry, and there can be very little
doubt that the object of his play with his illustrious stepdaughter was to
kindle a passion which might serve his purpose in case the Queen, already
advancing in pregnancy, should die in childbirth—a not improbable
contingency, considering her age and the fact that she had never borne a
child before. At a much later date Mrs. Ashley, the Princess’s governess,
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deposed as follows before the Privy Council: “At Chelsea Manor, after
my Lord Thomas Seymour was married to the Queen, he would come many
mornings into the said Lady Elizabeth’s chamber before she was ready, and
sometimes before she did rise, and strike her familiarly on the back, and so

go forth to his chamber, and sometimes go through to her maidens and play
with them. And if the Princess were in bed, he would put open the curtains
and bid her good morrow, and she would go further in the bed. And one
morning he tried to kiss the Princess in the bed and I was there, and bade
him go away for shame. At Hanworth, for two mornings, the Queen was
with him, and they both tickled my Lady Elizabeth in her bed. Another
time, at Hanworth, he romped with her in the garden, and cut her gown,
being of black silk, into a hundred pieces; and when I chid Lady Elizabeth,
she answered, ‘She could not strive with all, for the Queen held her while
the Lord Admiral cut the dress.’ Another time, Lady Elizabeth heard the
master-key unlock, and knowing my Lord Admiral would come in, ran out
of her bed to her maidens, and then went behind the curtains of her bed and
my Lord Admiral tarried a long while, in hopes she would come out.” Upon
Mrs. Ashley’s begging the Admiral to be more circumspect, because his
tomfooleries were giving the Princess a bad reputation, he answered, with
an oath, “I will tell my Lord Protector how I am slandered; and I will not
leave off, for I mean no evil.” “At Seymour Place,” continues Mrs. Ashley,
“when the Queen slept there, he did use awhile to come up every morning
in his night-gown and slippers. When he found Lady Elizabeth up and at her
book, then he would look in at the gallery-door, and bid her good morrow
and so go on his way; and I did tell my Lord it was an unseemly sight to see
a man so little dressed in a maiden’s chamber, with which he was angry, but
left it. At Hanworth, the Queen did tell me ‘that my Lord Admiral looked in
at the gallery-window, and saw my Lady Elizabeth with her arms about a
man’s neck.’ I did question my Lady Elizabeth about it, which she denied,
weeping, and bade us ‘ax all her women if there were any man who came to
her, excepting Grindal.’ [This gentleman was her tutor.] Howbeit,
methought the Queen, being jealous, did feign this story, to the intent that I
might take more heed to the proceedings of Lady Elizabeth and the Lord
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Admiral.” Mr. Ashley, husband of the above deponent, and also in
Princess Elizabeth’s service, concurred in his wife’s opinion that the
Admiral was going too far, and that the Princess was “inclined” towards
him, for whenever the Admiral was mentioned “she was wont to blush to
her hair-roots.” That Elizabeth herself was alarmed is proved by the fact
that she told Parry, her cofferer, “that she feared the Admiral loved her but
too well, and that the Queen was jealous of them both; and that Her
Majesty, suspecting the frequent access of the Admiral to her, came upon

them suddenly when they were alone, he having her in his arms. The Queen
was greatly offended, and reproved Mrs. Ashley very sharply for her
neglect of duty in permitting the Princess to fall into such reprehensible
freedom of behaviour.” The scandalous conduct of her husband at last
roused not only the jealousy but the apprehensions of Queen Katherine. She
feared some misfortune might befall the Princess at her tender age, and felt
that in such a case the blame very naturally, and not unjustly, would be cast
on her; and she would be generally regarded as the author of her
stepdaughter’s ruin. Very quietly, therefore, Her Majesty suggested the
departure of the Princess, who was forthwith sent back to Hatfield, attended
by her governess and servants. Elizabeth seems to have borne her late
hostess no ill-will on account of this banishment, and a few months later we
see her affectionately concerned about Her Grace’s health, and greatly
rejoiced at the news that she had been safely delivered. Evidently a letter
from the Admiral, received some days before the event, had assured her the
expected child would be a boy, and it must have been on receiving this
expression of opinion that the Princess indited the following quaint epistle
to her stepmother:—

“Although Your Highness’s letters be most joyful to me in
absence, yet, considering what pain it is for you to write, Your
Grace being so sickly, your commendations were enough in my
Lord’s letter. I much rejoice at your health, with the well liking of
the country, with my 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. I cannot reprove my Lord for not doing
your commendations in his letter, for he did it; and although he had
not, yet I will not complain of him, for he shall be diligent to give
me knowledge from time to time how his busy child doth; and if I
were at his birth, no doubt I would see him beaten, for the trouble he
hath put you to. Master Denny and my lady, with humble thanks,
prayeth most entirely for Your Grace, praying the Almighty to send
you a most lucky deliverance; and my mistress [Mrs. Ashley]
wisheth no less, giving Your Highness most humble thanks for her

commendations. Written, with very little leisure, this last day of
July.—Your humble daughter,
Elizabeth”

The phrase, “If I were at his birth, no doubt I would see him beaten, for
the trouble he hath put you to,” is as quaint as any metaphor in
Shakespeare. This letter was dispatched some six weeks before the Queen’s
confinement. About the same time Katherine received a friendly missive
from the Princess Mary, congratulating her on the rumour she hears
concerning her good condition, and assuring her she will pray Almighty
God to help her in her hour of hope and danger.
The unpleasant rumours as to the behaviour of “my Lord Admiral” and
Elizabeth were soon well known all over London, and caused much spiteful
gossip. It was currently reported that when the Princess left the Queen’s
house she had betaken herself to some out-of-the-way dwelling at Hackney,
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where a mysterious infant had been born. This story was so generally
believed that it had an echo even during the great Queen’s reign. In the
twenty-first year of Elizabeth (1579), a youth who appeared at Madrid
asserted himself to be the Queen’s son by the Lord Admiral, and was
accepted as such by the Spanish King and Court. The Lord Admiral
certainly made a great impression on the young girl’s heart, for long after
her accession, Elizabeth, very reticent, as a rule, concerning events
connected with her childhood and youth, would, in the privacy of her closet,
confide to the ladies she admitted to her intimacy that “the Lord Admiral
had been the only man she had ever loved; and the handsomest she had ever
seen.”
Perhaps the departure of Princess Elizabeth left the Queen more leisure
to look after her other charge, the Lady Jane Grey, who had been removed
from Seymour Place to the Manor House, Chelsea. Katherine, on account, it
may be, of the restlessness sometimes observed in ladies in her condition,
moved about a great deal during this period. Sometimes she addresses her
letters from Hanworth, sometimes from Oatlands. Then, as political events
rendered her husband’s position less and less secure, she determined to
retire to Sudeley Castle, Seymour’s lately acquired seat in Gloucestershire,
and to lie-in there. The journey from Hanworth must have been a

troublesome one for a woman in her state of health. She travelled with her
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husband, Lady Jane Grey, Lady Tyrwhitt, six other ladies, and two
chaplains. She herself was in a waggon, comfortably lined and cushioned,
no doubt, and with every possible precaution to ensure her comfort, but the
roads were atrocious, and the journey lasted six days. Yet the weary
traveller’s patience must have been amply rewarded, for Sudeley Castle in
those days was one of the most splendid houses in England—a gem of
Gothic architecture, furnished in the most sumptuous style. The Queen’s
apartments had been fitted up with as much magnificence as she would
have enjoyed if she had still been Queen-Consort of England and about to
present the realm with an expected heir. Her bedchamber was hung with
costly tapestry, specified, in an inventory still preserved at Sudeley, as
consisting of “six fair pieces of hangings illustrating the history of the
Nymph Daphne.” The bed had a tester and curtains of crimson taffeta, with
a counterpoint of silk serge. There was another bed for the nurse, hung with
“counterpoints of imagery to please the babe”—probably some stuff such as
was common in those days embroidered with animals, birds, and little men.
The outer chamber had been arranged as a day nursery, and was hung with
“a fair tapestry” representing the twelve months of the year. In it was set a
“chair of state” covered with cloth of gold—all the other seats were stools
—and a bedstead with tester curtains and rich counterpoints, or
counterpanes, as they are now called. There is still a lovely oriel window of
Tudor architecture at Sudeley popularly called “the nursery window,” but
this cannot be the window of the nursery that was prepared for Katherine
Parr’s babe, for the inventory distinctly says “carpets for four windows in
the nursery.” This other “nursery window” looks out upon one of the most
lovely scenes in England—the chapel where Katherine Parr sleeps in peace
after her chequered life, the garden in front of it, while beyond, the lovely
green of the famous woods of St. Kenelm soften into the haze of the distant
horizon.
Lady Jane’s room, beyond Queen Katherine’s, was also splendidly
furnished, and adorned with tapestries representing the history of St.
Catherine. The bed was hung with blue silk, and a large piece of Turkey
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carpet covered the floor.

Queen Katherine’s life at Sudeley must have been very quiet and
peaceful. Local tradition tells us that she was wont, with her young charge
and her ladies, to visit the poor and take an interest in her gardens. Divine
service according to the rites of the Church of England was said regularly
twice a day in the beautiful chapel by one of her chaplains, Coverdale or
Parkhurst, and sermons were preached at least three times a day. The Lord
Admiral’s ostentatious absence from these pious exercises was a matter of
great vexation to the Queen, and gave rise to a report that his Lordship was
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an atheist.
The return of the Lord Protector from his campaign in Scotland boded
no good for the Lord Admiral; the brothers had a bitter quarrel, and on this
occasion it was that Seymour departed with the Queen for Sudeley. Edward
had been writing to Somerset, calling him “his dearest uncle” and saying
that he was well pleased with his many victories, and on the warrior’s return
the Admiral found himself quite driven into the shade. However, about a
month before the Queen’s confinement, he made a hurried journey to
London, hoping to induce the young King to write a letter complaining of
the treatment his younger uncle and the Queen were receiving from the
Protector. Edward was easily persuaded to write the letter, but before the
plot was thoroughly matured it was betrayed to the elder Seymour, and
Thomas, arrested by the Lord Protector’s order, was taken before the
Council to answer for his behaviour. Threatened with imprisonment in the
Tower, he made a sort of submission to Somerset, and a hollow
reconciliation took place, the Protector adding a sum of £800 per annum to
Sudeley’s appointments in the hope of conciliating his unruly brother, who
hurried back to Sudeley, where he felt himself comparatively safe; for so
long as the Queen lived he could defy his foes, his wife’s great rank and the
well-known affection entertained for her by the boy-King sufficing to
screen him even from the vengeance of the infuriated head of the house of
Seymour.
On 30th August 1548 Queen Katherine bore the infant for whom such
great preparations had been made. The parents had fondly hoped it would
be a boy, but, alack! it was a puny girl, destined to be a child of misfortune.
She cost her mother her life, and grew up to suffer the bitter pangs of
poverty and neglect.

My Lord Sudeley, who had been consulting fortune-tellers and palmists
about the expected child, was bitterly disappointed, for they had predicted
the birth of a son. This did not prevent him from writing a very flattering
account of his infant daughter to his brother the Protector. The Duke had
quite recently sent his brother a very severe letter complaining of his
intrigues; but the birth of the child seems to have had a softening effect, and
the following letter was far more friendly, containing a courteous message
to the Queen, and continuing:—

“We are right glad to understand by your letters that the Queen,
your bedfellow, hath a happy hour; and, escaping all danger, hath
made you the father of so pretty a daughter. And although (if it had
pleased God) it would have been both to us, and (we suppose) also
to you, a more joy and comfort if it had, this the first-born, been a
son, yet the escape of the danger, and the prophecy and good hansell
of this to a great sort of proper sons, which (as I write) we trust no
less than to be true, it is no small joy and comfort to us, as we are
sure it is to you and to her Grace also; to whom you shall make
again our hearty commendations, with no less gratulation of such
good success.
“Thus we bid you heartily farewell. From Sion, the 1st of Sept.
1548.—Your loving brother,
“E. Somerset”

It is a curious fact that the child was born on 30th August, and that
Somerset’s letter is dated the 1st of September, proving that communication
was much more expeditious in those days than we are apt to imagine.
Lady Tyrwhitt, who attended on the Queen, has left a very touching
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account of her last hours. Everything seems to have gone well until about
six days after the child’s birth, when the Queen suddenly became delirious,
and conceived a great dread and a burning jealousy of her husband. Lady
Tyrwhitt says that “two days before the death of the Queen, at my coming
to her in the morning, she asked me ‘Where I had been so long?’ and said
unto me ‘that she did fear such things in herself, that she was sure she could
not live.’ I answered as I thought, ‘that I saw no likelihood of death in her.’
She then, having my Lord Admiral by the hand, and divers others standing

by, spake these words, partly, as I took, idly [that is, “in delirium”]: ‘My
Lady Tyrwhitt, I be not well handled; for those that be about me care not for
me, but stand laughing at my grief, and the more good I will to them, the
less good they will to me.’ Whereunto my Lord Admiral answered, ‘Why,
sweetheart, I would you no hurt.’ And she said to him again, aloud, ‘No, my
lord, I think so’; and immediately she said to him in his ear, ‘But, my lord,
you have given me many shrewd taunts.’ These words I perceived she
spoke with good memory, and very sharply and earnestly, for her mind was
sore disquieted. My Lord Admiral, perceiving that I heard it, called me
aside, and asked me ‘What she said?’ and I declared it plainly to him. Then
he consulted with me ‘that he would lie down on the bed by her, to look if
he could pacify her unquietness with gentle communication,’ whereunto I
agreed; and by the time that he had spoken three or four words to her, she
answered him roundly and sharply, saying, ‘My Lord, I would have given a
thousand marks to have had my full talk with Hewyke [Dr. Huick or
137
Huycke ] the first day I was delivered, but I durst not for displeasing
you.’ And I, hearing that, perceived her trouble to be so great, that my heart
would serve me to hear no more. Such like communications she had with
him the space of an hour, which they did hear that sat by her bedside.”
Little Lady Jane Grey was no doubt near the afflicted Queen
throughout these trying scenes; but she would almost certainly have been
excluded from the bedchamber when the Queen’s condition became
alarming. Just before the end Katherine seems to have rallied, for on 5th
September she was able to make her will, leaving everything to her
husband, and “wishing it had been a thousand times more, so great was her
love for him.” The witnesses to this will were Dr. Huycke, already
mentioned, and Dr. Parkhurst, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, both men of
unimpeachable integrity, who would not have signed the document if there
had been anything illegal about it. Katherine Parr died on 7th September,
the second day after the date of her will and the eighth after the birth of her
child. She was in her thirty-sixth year, and had survived Henry VIII just one
year, six months, and eight days. Her funeral took place at Sudeley Castle,
according to the rites of the Church of England, on Friday, 8th September,
and was the first royal funeral so celebrated in England. Dr. Coverdale was
the officiant at the Queen’s burial. A procession was formed of
“conductors” (i.e. leaders) in black, gentlemen, Somerset Herald, torch-

bearers, Lady Jane Grey, acting as chief mourner, her train borne by a
young gentlewoman, then more ladies and gentlemen; finally, “all other
following.” The Lord Admiral, according to custom, did not attend his
wife’s funeral. The ritual was somewhat curious, and is described in the
following terms in an MS. entitled “A Booke of Buryalls of Trew Noble
138
Persons,” now in the London College of Arms: “When the corpse was set
within the rails, and the mourners placed, the whole choir began and sung
certain psalms in English, and read three lessons; and after the third lesson,
the mourners, according to their degrees and that which is accustomed,
offered into the alms-box.... Doctor Coverdale, the Queen’s almoner, began
his sermon ... in one place thereof he took occasion to declare unto the
people ‘how the offering which was there done, was (not) done anything to
benefit the corpse, but for the poor only; and also the lights, which were
carried and stood about the corpse, were for the honour of the person, and
for none other intent nor purpose’; and so went through with his sermon,
and made a godly prayer, and the whole church answered and prayed with
him.... The sermon done, the corpse was buried, during which time the choir
sung the Te Deum in English. And this done, the mourners dined, and the
rest returned homewards again. All which aforesaid was done in a
morning.”

CHAPTER X

THE LADY JANE GOES TO SEYMOUR
PLACE

A
ll Thomas Seymour’s schemes and conspiracies and political and
domestic intrigues were brought to nought by his wife’s death,
and he swiftly realised that the danger of his position was
immeasurably increased by her decease. She had been an
effective barrier between himself and his foes, for nothing could persuade
the King to consider her otherwise than with great affection, as one of the
only two persons he really loved (his young companion Barnaby Fitzpatrick
being the other). Sudeley was now, metaphorically speaking, at sea in a
storm, and seeking safety in any port he could discover. For a few days his
troubles seem to have dazed him. He may, indeed, have loved his wife and
have sincerely mourned her. There is not the slightest reason to believe that
there was any solid foundation for the accusations brought against him of
having ill-treated and even poisoned the Queen. A few weeks before her
death, on the contrary, he swore, with one of his horrible oaths, that if any
man “speak ill of his Queen in his presence, he would take his fist to his ear,
be he of the lowest or of the highest.” After his wife’s death, Sudeley was at
first inclined to break up his household and throw himself once more into
public life. He even went so far as to dismiss some of his servants, and
returned to Hanworth, the late Queen’s dower-house in Middlesex, taking
Lady Jane and her attendants with him. Hence he wrote to Dorset to say
that, broken-hearted as he was at the departure of the Queen, his wife, he
139
could not keep the Lady Jane any longer, and begged him to send for her.
By 17th September, however, he seems to have cheered up considerably, for
he dispatched another letter to Bradgate, which runs as follows:—

“My last letters, written at a time when, partly with the Queen’s
Highness’s death I was so amazed that I had small regard either to
myself or my doings, and partly then thinking that my great loss
must presently have constrained me to have broken up and
dissolved my whole house, I offered unto your Lordship to send my
Lady Jane unto you whensoever you would send for her, as to him
that I thought would be most tender on her. Forasmuch, since being
both better avised of myself, and having more deeply digested
whereunto my power [i.e. property] would extend; I find, indeed,
that with God’s help, I shall right well be able to continue my house
together, without diminishing any great part thereof; and, therefore,
putting my whole affiance and trust in God, have begun anew to
stablish my household, where shall remain not only the
gentlewomen of the Queen’s Highness’s privy chamber, but also the
maids that 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. Saving that now,
presently, certain of the maids and gentlewomen have desired to
have license for a month or such thing, to see their friends, and then
immediately to return hither again. And, therefore, doubting lest
your Lordship might think any unkindness that I should by my said
letters 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 good-will to her, I am now minded to
keep her until I next speak with your Lordship, which should have
been within these three or four days if it had not been that I must
repair to the Court, as well to help certain of the Queen’s poor
servants with some of the things now fallen by her death, as also for
mine own affairs, unless I shall be advertised from your Lordship to
the contrary. My lady my mother shall and will, I doubt not, be as
dear unto her [i.e. Lady Jane] as though she were her own daughter;
and for my part I shall continue her half-father, and more, and all
that are in my house shall be as diligent about her as yourself would
140
wish accordingly.”

To this letter Dorset replied as follows, in a particularly fine specimen
of the strange orthography of those days:—

“My most hearty commendations unto your good lordship not
forgotten. When it hath pleased you by your most gentle letters to
offer me the abode of my daughter at your lordship’s house, I do as
well acknowledge your most friendly affection towards me and her
therein, as also render unto you most deserved thanks for the same.
Nevertheless, considering the state of my daughter and her tender
years, wherein she shall hardly rule herself as yet without a guide,
lest she should, for lack of a bridle, take too much the head, and
conceive such opinion of herself, that all such good behaviour as
she heretofore hath learned, by the Queen’s and your most
wholesome instructions, should either altogether be quenched in her,
or at the least much diminished, I shall, in most hearty wise, require
your lordship to commit her to the governance of her mother, by
whom for the fear and duty she oweth her, she shall most easily be
ruled and framed towards virtue, which I wish above all things to be
most plentiful in her; and although your lordship’s good mind,
concerning her honest and godly education be so great, that mine
can be no more; yet weighing that you be destitute of such one as
should correct her as a mistress, and admonish her as a mother, I
persuade myself that you will think the eye and oversight of my
wife shall be in this respect most necessary.”

Then follows a mention of the proposed scheme for uniting the Lady
Jane to the King; and the letter concludes thus:—

“My meaning herein is not to withdraw any part of my promise
to you for her bestowing; for I assure your Lordship, I intend, God
willing, to use your discreet advice and consent in that behalf and no
less than mine own; only I seek in these her tender years, wherein
she now standeth, either to make or mar (as the common saying is),
the addressing [the forming] of her mind to humility, soberness, and
obedience. Wherefore, looking upon that fatherly affection which
you bear her, my trust is that your lordship, weighing the premises,
will be content to charge her mother with her, whose waking eye in
respecting her demeanour, shall be, I hope, no less than you as a
friend and I as a father would wish. And thus wishing your lordship
a perfect riddance of all unquietness and grief of mind, I leave any

further to trouble your lordship. From my house at Bradgate, the
19th of September.—Your lordship’s to the best of my power,
141
Henry Dorset”
(Endorsed)
“To my very good Lord Admiral: give this.”

With this precious epistle was enclosed another, from the Lady
Frances:—

“And whereas,” says she, “of a friendly and brotherly good will
you wish to have Jane my daughter, continuing still in your house, I
give you most hearty thanks for your gentle offer, trusting,
nevertheless, that, for the good opinion you have in your sister
(Lady Frances herself), you will be content to charge her with her
(i.e. charge Lady Frances with Lady Jane), who promiseth you, not
only to be ready at all times to account for the ordering of your dear
niece [Lady Jane], but also to use your counsel and advice on the
bestowing of her, whensoever it shall happen. Wherefore, my good
brother, my request shall be, that I may have the oversight of her
with your good will and thereby shall have good occasion to think
that you do trust me in such wise, as is convenient that a sister be
trusted of so loving a brother. And thus my most hearty
commendations not omitted, I wish the whole [or holy] deliverance
of your grief and continuance of your lordship’s health. From
Bradgate, 19th of this September.—Your loving sister and assured
friend,
142
Frances Dorset”
(Endorsed)
“To the right Honourable and my very
good Lord, my Lord Admiral.”

It will be noted that the Lady Frances evinces a quite sisterly affection
for the Lord Admiral, adopting him as her brother; and her daughter,
therefore, was to be considered as his niece.

After this correspondence, the Lady Jane was returned to Bradgate,
whither she proceeded with a semi-regal escort consisting of not less than
forty persons, including Mr. Rous or Rowse, controller of the Lord
Admiral’s household, and Mr. John Harrington, afterwards prominent at
Queen Elizabeth’s Court. On taking their leave of the young Princess, these
gentlemen assured her that all the maids at Hanworth were expecting her
back again. The wily Dorsets themselves had, indeed, made up their minds
she should return, though in their heart of hearts they had something besides
Lady Jane herself in view. It was somewhere about 20th September that
Lady Jane arrived at Bradgate. On or about the 23rd of that month the
Marquis and his spouse journeyed to London, where they met Sir William
143
Sharington, Seymour’s âme damnée, and the Lord High-Admiral
himself. These gentlemen had a very secret business to discuss, the nature
of which must now be described. The Dorsets, not then wealthy people,
were deep in debt. Now Seymour was known to be rich, for, in addition to
his own fortune, he had just inherited that of the Queen, and, so far, his
brother had given no signs of any intention of confiscating it. The Dorsets,
therefore, intimated to Sharington that he would do well to make Sudeley
understand that if he desired to renew his guardianship of the Lady Jane, he
must agree to give her parents £2000, £500 to be paid down at once, on
account. It should be here remarked that Sudeley, by voluntarily
relinquishing the care of the Lady Jane Grey, had given up his guardianship,
which, by the custom of those times, gave him more than parental rights
over her. It was his desire to renew his official charge that enabled the
Dorsets to make this extraordinary proposal to sell him their child for what
in those days was considered a large sum of money. When the game was up
and Sudeley in prison, the Dorsets threw the blame of this transaction on
everybody but themselves. The Lord Admiral, asserted Lady Jane’s father in
his deposition before the Privy Council, “was so earnestly in hand with me
and my wife, the Lady Frances, that in the end, because he would have no
nay, we were content that Jane should return to his house.” Indeed, Sudeley,
not content to treat so important a matter only through the medium of
Sharington, himself appeared at Dorset’s town house and interviewed the
Marquis, who admitted in the above-mentioned deposition that, “At this
very time and place he renewed his promise unto me for the marrying of my
daughter to the King’s Majesty, and he added, ‘If I may get the King at
liberty, I dare warrant you His Majesty will marry no other than Jane.’”

Whilst Sudeley was thus pretending, if nothing more, that he was able
to marry Jane to the King, could he but get possession of her, the Marquis
of Dorset was inditing a letter to the Lord Protector which contained a
passage referring to some negotiations he was conducting with His
Highness for the marriage of Lady Jane to the Earl of Hertford, Somerset’s
eldest son! “Item, for the maryage of your graces sune to be had with my
doghter Jane, I thynk hyt not met [meet] to be wrytyn, but I shall at all
tymes avouche my sayng.” Dorset’s cunning must have nearly matched
Sudeley’s! Young Hertford was the lad mentioned in the papers of the time
of Queen Mary as “contracted” to Lady Jane Grey: in later years he married
her sister Katherine. Jane probably made his acquaintance in her childish
days, when the Seymours lived at Whitehall and she was in residence at the
“Bluff King’s” Court under the wing of Katherine Parr. Hertford was also
one of the band of young noblemen selected as companions for Prince
Edward under the tutelage of the learned Dr. Cheke; and probably had many
a romp with Jane, then a merry little girl. Later on he paid one or two visits
to Bradgate, the Lady Frances conceiving such a strong affection for him
that she was wont to call him her son. Here again the young people must
have been much together, and their childish friendship may have inspired
the Marquis of Dorset with the idea of uniting them in marriage. However
that may be, he certainly got as far as corresponding with Somerset—
though in the profoundest secrecy—about the matter. Was his caution due to
a fear of displeasing Sudeley? What is more than probable is that the Lord
Admiral got wind of the scheme, and that his desire to get Jane away from
her father and his own brother and nephew was at the bottom of his
readiness to pay so heavy a price to resume her guardianship, for which
object he used the likelihood of her marriage with the King as a bait to
catch the Marquis—who was eventually “jockeyed” by both the Seymours,
for no marriage with either the King or Hertford ever took place.
Whilst Seymour was personally negotiating with the Marquis, the task
of persuading the Marchioness fell to Sharington. “Sir William [Sharington]
travailed as earnestly with my wife,” says Dorset, “to gain her good-will for
the return of our daughter to Lord Thomas Seymour as he [probably
Seymour is meant in this case] did with me; so as in the end, after long
debating and ‘much sticking of our sides,’ we did agree that my daughter
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Jane should return to him.”

Their bargain with the Admiral struck, the Dorsets hurried back to
Bradgate, whence they incited the dispatch of the following ingenuous
letter:—

“To the Right Honourable and my singular
good lord, the Lord Admiral.
“My duty to your lordship, in most humble wise remembered,
with no less thanks for the gentle letters which I received from you.
Thinking myself so much bound to your lordship for your great
goodness towards me from time to time, that I cannot by any means
be able to recompense the least part thereof, I purpose to write a few
rude lines to your lordship, rather as a token to show how much
worthier I think your lordship’s goodness, than to give worthy
thanks for the same, and these my letters will be to testify unto you
that, like as you have been unto 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. And thus fearing I should trouble your lordship too much, I
most humbly take leave of your lordship.—Your most humble
servant during my life,
“Jane Graye”
(Endorsed)
“My Lady Jane, the 1st of Oct. 1548.”

With this letter the Lady Frances sent Sudeley another, in which she
again calls him her “very good lord and brother”: Jane considers him as “a
loving and kind father,” and her mother signs herself, “Your assured and
loving sister, Frances Dorset”—most friendly!
It was near Michaelmas when the Lord Admiral, with a numerous
retinue, including several ladies, arrived at Bradgate to carry the girl back
with him to Hanworth. Traces of his return journey may be found in papers
preserved in the Public Library at Leicester, which inform us that “beer,
cold meat, and ale was provided by the Mayor for my Lady Jane and her
escort, proceeding from Bradgate with the Lord Thomas Seymour, to
London.” Sudeley brought the £500 with him and gave it to the father who,

for the sake of filthy lucre, had not scrupled to hand over his young
daughter to a notorious profligate. Thomas treated the matter jovially,
saying “merrily” he would take no receipt for the money, for “the Lady Jane
herself was in pledge of that”; the Marquis, on the other hand, sought to
endue the affair with a more respectable appearance by declaring the cash
was “as it wer for an ernst peny of the favour that he [Sudeley] wold shewe
unto him [Dorset].” To our eyes, there is, and can be, but one redeeming
feature in the whole of this sordid transaction—the fact, proved by
sufficient evidence, that Lady Jane Grey whilst under the Lord Admiral’s
roof was treated not only with respect, but with much kindness, and that,
even allowing for the fact that letters such as that already quoted were
inspired by her parents, she seems to have been genuinely attached to both
Sudeley and his mother.
Had Thomas Seymour contented himself with achieving eminence in
any one legitimate direction—the Navy, for instance—he might have
succeeded in winning both fame and honour. But he lacked the clearness of
judgment and power of reticence necessary to carry any one of his more
nefarious schemes to completion, and so ended in pitiable failure. Whilst
his brother was away fighting in Scotland, he had striven, and with some
success, to ingratiate himself with the young King. To this end, as we have
seen, he lent him various sums of money. He seized every opportunity of
belittling and even calumniating his brother, the Protector, openly accusing
him of conspiring against Edward’s liberty, all of which the poor little King
was only too eager to believe; for Somerset, with his puritanic views, had
not made the boy’s existence very pleasant to him, persistently treating him
as a little old man, and suppressing all those amusements and sports which
lads, even sickly lads, love so dearly. It is said that, on one occasion, when
he came upon the King and Barney Fitzpatrick playing cards, he seized
them in a fury and threw them into the fire. He had striven, in a word, to
make Edward look at life as he saw it himself, through smoked Calvinistic
glasses that robbed it of all brightness.
The Duchess of Feria relates that Queen Mary once told her Edward VI
had confessed to her that he was very tired of sermons—not to be wondered
at, since the poor child had to hear one at least daily on some dogmatic
controversy or other, and these dull homilies often lasted a good two hours.
In fact, the royal lad was bored and “prayed” to death. For more than a year

after his accession to the throne he was compelled to hear a daily Mass,
celebrated according to the old rites but with the Epistle and Gospel said in
English. Interpolated into this Latin service was the inevitable lengthy
sermon preached by men well known for their Reforming zeal, such as
Canon William Barlow of St. Osyth’s, in Essex, who became Bishop of
Chichester in Elizabeth’s reign; Dr. John Taylor; Dr. Redman, a violent
opponent of the doctrine of Transubstantiation; Dr. Thomas Becken; Dr.
Giles Ayre, a bitter enemy of Gardiner; and the extremely Protestant Dr.
Latimer. John Knox, who came to London in 1551, also preached before the
King; but by that time the Mass had been replaced by the services of the
first Book of Common Prayer. Knox was in a very bad temper with the
Protector at the time of his visit, and accused him of paying more attention
to the building of his new house in the Strand than to his (Knox’s) sermons.
As time went on, poor Edward had to listen to controversies in which
Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, Ridley, Bishop of Rochester, and “that
most zealous Papist,” Heath, Bishop of Worcester (afterwards, under Mary,
Archbishop of York), “debated and disputed” on such grave subjects as
Transubstantiation, the Intercession of Saints, Worship of the Virgin,
Prayers for the Dead, Purgatory, etc., and attend sermons preached in the
courtyard of Whitehall Palace, where Gardiner delivered his last discourse
on papal supremacy, which sent him to the Tower. Contemporary evidence
shows exactly how the audience was grouped round the improvised rostrum
built close to the walls of the palace, so that the King might hear the
preacher from an open window, where he generally sat, notebook in hand,
in the company of the Lord Protector, and of Dr. John Cheke, his tutor.
Aged people of both sexes were ranged on benches close to the palace,
whilst the general congregation, standing, filled up the courtyard. The
learned Nicholas Udall often sat at a desk under the pulpit, taking shorthand
notes of the sermon, and by his means many of the more notable of these
orations have been preserved to this day. John Knox preached his last
sermon before Edward VI from the pulpit at Whitehall Palace. At many, if
not at most, of these pious exercises Lady Jane Grey, her mother and sister
must have assisted, for it was expected that all the great ladies of the Court
should attend; and consequently, in one or two old engravings of these
interesting functions, we behold them, wearing their “froze pastes” or coifs,
seated in rows, looking exceedingly sanctimonious, not to say bored. There

are numbers of young children among them, one or two of whom have
evidently fallen into a deep sleep.
Edward, extremely delicate from his birth, slightly deformed, with one
shoulder-blade higher than the other, weak eyes, and occasional attacks of
deafness, suffered terribly, we are told, from headaches, a fact which causes
little surprise, considering the number of sermons he was forced to attend.
The Lord Admiral, during the brief time he held the King’s favour, altered
all this. The sermons were reduced, the sports and pastimes multiplied. No
wonder, then, that of his two uncles Edward VI preferred Thomas to
Edward!
Hardly was Lady Jane installed at Seymour Place, whither she was
removed from Hanworth as soon as the weather grew cold, than her
guardian set himself to weave not one but half a dozen fresh intrigues. Once
more he planned to marry the Princess Elizabeth, or, failing her, a little later
on, his young ward, Lady Jane. He even endeavoured to open a fresh
correspondence with the Princess, and met with some success; but the
astute damsel made him a very politic response. However impressed she
may have been by the Admiral’s good looks, she was well aware that he had
compromised her once, and was resolved there should be no second edition
of the Chelsea business. Yet she had the imprudence to send his Lordship
letters through her servants, and, thus encouraged, the Admiral began to
make minute inquiries as to her fortune and the management of her affairs.
He also endeavoured to find out the amount of the fortunes owned by Lady
Jane Grey and Princess Mary, and, in short, of all the marriageable ladies of
the royal family, not excluding Anne of Cleves. A report of these inquiries
coming to the knowledge of John Russell, the Lord Privy Seal, that
functionary thought it his duty to look into the matter, and seized an
opportunity when riding with the Admiral through the streets of London to
ask him his object point-blank. As they rode past Westminster Hall, Russell
turned to Seymour, saying, “My Lord Admiral, there are certain rumours
bruited of you which I am very sorry to hear.”
“What rumours?” demanded Seymour.
“I have been informed,” replied Russell, “that you mean to marry either
the Lady Mary or the Lady Elizabeth, or else the Lady Jane.”

Sudeley remained silent, and his interlocutor proceeded: “My Lord, if
ye go about any such thing, ye seek the means to undo yourself, and all
those that shall come of you.”
Sudeley, shaking his head, denied ever having had any such intention;
he “had no thought of such an enterprise.” And so, for the time being, the
conversation dropped. But a few days later, when the Lord Admiral was
again riding with his Lordship, he said to Russell, “Father Russell, you are
very suspicious of me; I pray you tell me who showed you of the marriage
that I should attempt, whereof ye brake with me the other day.”
Russell answered, “I will not tell you the authors of the tale, but they be
your very good friends”; and he advised Seymour “to make no suit of
marriage that way”—meaning with Elizabeth or Mary, or eventually with
Lady Jane.
Nothing daunted, Seymour replied, “It is convenient for them to marry,
and better it were that they were married within the realm than in any
foreign place without the realm; and why might not I, or another man raised
by the King their father, marry one of them?”—in allusion to the fact that
Henry VIII had passed a law legalising the marriage of a Princess of the
Blood with a subject.
Russell warned him honestly, “My Lord, if either you, or any other
within this realm, shall match himself in marriage either with my Lady
Mary or my Lady Elizabeth, he shall undoubtedly, whatsoever he be,
procure unto himself the occasion of his undoing, and you especially, above
all others, being of so near alliance to the King’s Majesty.” Then, bearing in
mind the Lord Admiral’s love of money, Lord Russell straightway asked,
“And I pray you, what shall you have with either of them?”
Here Seymour was on his own ground: “He who marries one of them
shall,” he said, “have three thousand pounds a year.”
“My Lord,” responded Russell, “it is not so, for ye may be well assured
that he shall have no more than ten thousand pounds in money, plate, and
goods, and no lands; and what is that to maintain his charges and estates
who matches himself there?”
“They must have three thousand pounds a year also,” said the Lord of
Sudeley.

Thereupon Russell lost his temper, and with some strong expressions
retorted “they should not.”
Seymour, likewise with an oath, asserted “that they should, and that
none should dare to say nay to it.”
Russell answered that he, at least, dared “say nay” to the Lord
Admiral’s greed, “for it was clean against the King’s will.” And so they
parted.
These inquiries about the royal ladies’ fortunes became known to the
Protector, possibly through Russell, and thus the whole intrigue was
brought to light.
Lady Jane at Seymour Place and in the possession of the Lord Admiral
was already a stumbling-block in the way of Somerset’s own matrimonial
schemes for his own son, and the discovery of the underhand manner in
which Thomas had endeavoured to supplant him in the King’s affections
goaded the elder man to fury. But Sudeley had grown reckless, and he
openly defied his all-powerful brother, and vaunted his determination to
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oust him at any cost from his high seat. He boldly set about ingratiating
himself with the yeoman class, which was embittered against Somerset on
account of his exactions; and Dorset, now his willing tool, also strove to
secure a following among the farmers and gentlemen, on bad terms with the
existing Government. The ladies of the Court, who hated the arrogant
Duchess of Somerset, were flattered into a friendly feeling for the Lord
Admiral and what he was pleased to consider his just cause. To keep up his
influence, he had secretly bought over a hundred manors and stewardships,
and he had arranged with his scoundrelly friend, Sharington—who, to save
his skin, turned traitor—to secure sufficient ammunition and arms to store
Holt Castle, to which fortress he intended to convey the King. Thanks to
this man’s frauds on the Bristol Mint, my Lord of Sudeley got together
money enough to raise an army of 10,000 men. In addition to all this, he
was in league with no less than four distinct gangs of pirates or privateers,
and had established a sort of dépôt for stolen property in the Scilly Isles,
whither the cargoes of sea-plundered vessels were taken to await removal to
London. Here, then, was an array of crimes and treasons enough to hang
any man, even if he was the Lord Protector’s brother! One fatal day Thomas
made the egregious mistake of approaching Wriothesley on the subject of

obtaining the Protectorship. He told him Dorset and Pembroke were on his
side. “Beware what you are doing,” replied Wriothesley gravely; “it were
better for you if you had never been born, nay that you were burnt quick
alive, than that you should attempt it.” Sudeley, somewhat dashed by this
rebuff, next sought the Earl of Rutland, and spoke to him in much the same
impudent and imprudent fashion. Rutland, when his visitor departed, went
straight to Wriothesley and told him what he had learnt. Both agreed to
reveal all they knew of the conspiracy to the Council. Several meetings
were held to inquire into the matter; and at length Somerset summoned his
brother to appear before him. Sudeley sent a flat refusal. Early in the
forenoon of 17th January 1549 Sir Thomas Smith and Sir John Baker
proceeded to Seymour Place, and there arrested the Lord Admiral, who was
conveyed by water to the Tower, after a passionate leave-taking with his
146
aged mother.
To Lady Jane the trial and subsequent execution of her guardian must
have been a matter of intense and painful interest. She was still his guest at
Seymour Place when he was arrested, and she must have witnessed the
tragic parting of the unhappy mother from the son so remorselessly torn
from her aged arms to meet his doom. Whatever his crimes and faults, the
Lord of Sudeley had been a good son, and the old Lady Seymour mourned
him deeply till she died of her sorrows, on 18th October in the following
year. She was buried with scant pomp. The King, her grandson, and his
Court did not even put on the customary mourning, on the plea that black
gowns did not really signify respect to the dead, who were best remembered
in the hearts and prayers of those who survived them—certainly not a
popular or contemporary belief, for on the day following Lady Seymour’s
death two State funerals were celebrated with all those honours which were
denied to the remains of the grandmother of the reigning sovereign. There
was probably a political motive at the back of this want of respect, which
may perhaps be ascribed to the evil influence of Warwick, who, in his desire
to humiliate the Somersets, refused the honours due to the corpse of the
Protector’s mother.
Meanwhile, the destruction of Thomas Seymour was being prepared
with skill and secrecy. Whilst the foredoomed Admiral had been boasting
all over London of his immense influence, his foes, now that he was in their
power, subtly compassed his ruin by buying witnesses against him and

securing the goodwill of his numerous and venomous enemies. They had
long been spreading a rumour that he had poisoned the late Queen
Katherine in order to make an even higher alliance with one or other of the
heiresses to the throne. His scandalous proceedings with regard to the
Princess Elizabeth at Chelsea and Hanworth, and the unbecoming manner
in which he had regained possession of Lady Jane, were brought up against
him. Lady Tyrwhitt, one of the bedchamber ladies of the late Queen his
wife, was called to give certain damaging evidence, pointing to a strong
suspicion that Seymour had not only been most unkind to the deceased lady,
but had actually poisoned her food during the last few days of her life, and
set up the fever which carried her off within a week of her child’s birth.
Lord Latimer stated that Seymour, when Queen Katherine had prayers said
in his house morning and afternoon according to the order of the Reformed
Church, would get out of the way, and swear on his oath that “The Book of
Common Prayer was not God’s work at all.” There was a merciless raking
up of misdeeds, true or false, of the man’s earliest youth—as, for instance,
“that, in 1540, a woman who was executed for robbery and child-murder
had declared that the beginning of her evil life was due to her having been
seduced and desolated by Lord Thomas Seymour.” The Dorsets were
summoned from Bradgate to give evidence in the matter of the wardship of
their daughter, and other witnesses were fetched from different parts of the
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kingdom to give damaging testimony.
During, though not at, Seymour’s trial, Elizabeth was subjected to a
private inquiry at Hatfield, and personally asked whether Mrs. Ashley had
encouraged her to marry the Admiral. This she declared she had never done,
adding that she did not believe Mrs. Ashley had said the things attributed to
her. The Princess also wrote the Lord Protector a letter, dated from her
house at Hatfield, saying she had learned that vile rumours regarding her
chastity were in circulation, and that people had even gone so far as to
spread abroad that she was confined in the Tower, being with child by the
Lord Admiral. The story, she protested, was an outrageous slander, and she
demanded that she might be allowed to proceed to Court to disprove these
evil reports. On this momentous occasion, Elizabeth, considering her youth,
displayed no small amount of sagacity and also of that leonine spirit for
which she was afterwards celebrated. When confronted, however, with Mrs.
Ashley’s written evidence, she blushed to the roots of her hair, and, abashed

and breathless, returned the letter with trembling hands to her inquisitors.
Curiously enough, Elizabeth does not seem to have resented Mrs. Ashley’s
outspoken condemnation of her conduct with the Lord Admiral. On the
contrary, hearing of her arrest, she set to work to save her from the clutches
of the law, declaring the lady had been in her service many years, and had
exerted herself diligently to bring her up in learning and honesty.
Elizabeth told Sir Robert Tyrwhitt, who was sent by the Council to
examine her on the subject of her intimacy with the Lord High-Admiral,
“that voices, she knew, went about London that my Lord High-Admiral”
should marry her, but added, with a smile, “It is but London news”—
evidently London was as much a centre of gossip in those days as now. A
little later she asserted that “she did not wish to marry him, for she who had
had him [meaning Katherine Parr] was so unfortunate.”
It would appear that Lady Browne (Surrey’s “fair Geraldine”) was also
a friend of Seymour’s, and that he went to her and asked her to break up her
household and come to stay with the Princess Elizabeth, so that she might
keep him posted as to what was going on in that Princess’s circle. This the
lady had agreed to do, but she was prevented by the sudden illness and
death of her old husband, the famous Master of the Horse, Sir Anthony
Browne. Parry, Elizabeth’s comptroller, seems also to have favoured the
Lord Admiral, although it was mainly owing to him that the revelations
concerning his mistress’s conduct with Seymour were made public. On one
occasion, when Parry was advising the Admiral to leave off his attempt to
court the Princess, he replied that “it mattered little, for, see you, there has
been a talk of late that I should marry the Lady Jane,” adding, “I tell you
this merrily—I tell you this merrily.”
As for the said Admiral, all the world now turned against him,
excepting the late Queen’s brother, the Marquis of Northampton, his other
brother-in-law, Lord Herbert, and his deceased wife’s two cousins, the
Throckmortons, one of whom wrote the following homely lines on the
wretched man’s piteous plight:—
“Thus guiltless he through malice went to pot,
Not answering for himself, not knowing cause.”

No better proof can possibly be quoted in his favour, so far as the
accusation of his having murdered Katherine Parr is concerned, than the
fact that his wife’s closest connections remained his only friends in his
trouble.
Still Thomas Seymour stood out boldly for his innocence. He did not
deny his flirtation with Elizabeth; it was a mere romp between a man and a
child, with no harm in it beyond such as his enemies chose to impute. But
the poor man’s foes proved too much for him, and on 23rd February he was
brought face to face with his accusers, and condemned by the Council
without hearing or defence. The King, his nephew, seems to have made
some effort to save him, but the Council forced the boy to sign the fatal
warrant, which he delivered with a trembling hand, the tears standing in his
eyes, and this despite the fact that the reference to Seymour’s death in the
King’s Journal contains not a word of regret. Seymour had done him,
personally, no great ill, and appears to have shown him kindness on more
than one occasion. Cranmer, who ever ran with the hare and hunted with the
hounds, hastened to affix his signature to the document ordering the
Admiral’s execution, and this, as Hume observes, “in contravention of the
Canon Law, and in sheer spite.” The Bishop of Ely informed Seymour that
his earthly life was shortly to be ended, and a Catholic priest was sent to
confess him; but he is said to have refused these ministrations, as well as
those of a Protestant clergyman. He contrived, according to Latimer, to
write letters to the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth denying the accusations
against him, which letters he hid between the leather of one of his servants’
shoe-soles. Suspected of serving his master too well, the poor faithful
creature was arrested, the letters discovered, and the unfortunate man
hanged without trial.
Without entering into any controversy as to the magnitude of Thomas
Seymour’s guilt, it may be admitted, in fairness to his brother of Somerset,
that, if the misdemeanours of a personal character attributed to Sudeley rest
on the gossiping evidence of women, the graver charges of collecting stores
of arms, raising an army to strike a blow against his brother, and
unscrupulously attempting to obtain funds even through pirates and
notorious swindlers, do in a measure justify the severity of his punishment
and excuse the infliction of an apparently unnatural and fratricidal sentence
of death. Somerset, with all his faults, had a high sense of justice and of the

responsibility of his exalted office. His brother had offended not only as an
ordinary subject of the realm, but as a trusted servant of the nation, and his
treason and unscrupulous abuse of his position were beyond all pardon. The
voice of nature was stifled in the heart of the statesman, and thus the Duke,
with a tolerably clear conscience, signed a death-warrant which must at the
time have cost him a pang of horror and which has since branded him as a
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merciless fratricide.
The Lord of Sudeley’s rage against the Council, his brother, and his
enemies in general, when he heard himself condemned, knew no bounds
and admitted of no Christian forgiveness or resignation. He cursed them one
and all with every terrible oath his tongue could utter. He was beheaded on
Tower Hill on 20th March 1549, six months and some days after the death
of Queen Katherine Parr. His demeanour on the scaffold caused great
scandal: he refused to listen to the pastor deputed to minister to him, and the
attendants had much difficulty in forcing him to kneel to receive the fatal
stroke. He wrestled hard with the executioner, who, being a strong man,
hurled him down on the scaffold and struck off his head at last, after a cruel
hacking, due to his desperate struggles.
For nearly a week after the death of the Admiral, Lady Jane remained
alone with her attendants in the desolate house in the Strand. Then her
father, Lord Dorset, came to London to take her back with him to Bradgate.
On the Sunday after the execution, Hugh Latimer preached a sermon at
Paul’s Cross which for bitterness and uncharitableness has never been
surpassed. “This I say,” he remarked, “if they ask me what I think of the
Lord Admiral’s death, that he died very dangerously, irksomely, and
horribly.” “He shall be to me,” he furiously exclaimed, “Lot’s wife as long
as I live. He was a covetous man—a horrible covetous man. I would there
were no mo’ in England. He was an ambitious man. I would there were no
mo’ in England. He was a seditious man—a contemner of the Common
Prayer. I would there were no mo’ in England. He is gone. I would he had
left none behind him.”
The worst charge that posterity can bring against Somerset is not that
he signed his brother’s death-warrant, but that he seized the dead man’s

estates and even his wearing apparel, and despoiled his orphaned child, the
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infant daughter of Katherine Parr.
Princess Elizabeth learnt the death of the courtier she “loved most”
with a composure singular for so young a lady, simply remarking that he
was over clever—“a man of the greatest wit and the least judgment.”

CHAPTER XI

THE EDUCATION OF LADY JANE

T
he extraordinary revival of letters in Italy, France, and Germany at
the close of the fifteenth century did not fail to influence English
education, and especially that of high-born women. In this
department the exclusively classical culture then in vogue, which
barred many subjects now held of far greater importance, would
undoubtedly be deemed unpractical and excessive for women nowadays.
Modern literature, however, was then in its infancy, and apart from the
classics there was little to read but crude if noble poetry, and some
historical, theological, and legendary works of a very primitive sort. These
soon palled, whereas, to the cultured mind, the classic authors presented,
then as now, an ever-varying and delightful fund of information and
amusement. Science, in the modern acceptation of the word, was in its
infancy, and, in the opinion of the most learned persons of the day, the
secrets of theology and Nature, and those of art as well, were embodied in
the works of the ancients, and above all in the Holy Scriptures. A
knowledge of Greek and Latin was thus supposed to give the key to all
science. It was the fashion, too, for princesses and women of noble birth to
be, or to pose as being, learned; and notwithstanding the political and
religious convulsions of the reign of Henry VIII, a number of English ladies
of the highest rank, following the example of their French and Italian
sisters, devoted their leisure to studies usually left nowadays to that class of
pedantic females whom we somewhat scornfully dub “blue-stockings.” This
practice was not confined to women who had embraced the Reformed
tenets. Many Catholics,—the daughter of Sir Thomas More and her learned
friend, Margaret Clement, for instance,—deeply versed in studies of this
description, enjoyed the dialogues of Plato, and may have laughed over the

scorching epigrams of Martial and the stinging satires of Juvenal in the
original, and even recognised their applicability to the society of their own
times. Most of the women who surrounded Lady Jane Grey were pedants,
and even her shallow-hearted mother had presumably acquired a fair
knowledge of classical literature.

But it was not till the young girl returned to Bradgate, after the death of
Thomas Seymour, that the system of “cramming,” which was to give her, at
the age of seventeen, a reputation as a marvel of erudition, began in grim
earnest.
Dorset, who had been summoned to London to attend the trial of his
quondam friend, the Admiral, as a witness against him, retired to Bradgate
in some despondency after its fatal termination. He and his wife felt they
had been wasting their time over Thomas Seymour; they were conscious,
too, that they were living under a cloud, for the revelation of their pecuniary
interest in the transfer of their daughter to so notorious a scamp had
produced a most damaging impression on the public mind. But the failure
of their plans had not quenched their ambition. They took their luckless
child back with them, and straightway set about preparing her to occupy the
towering position they felt assured she would sooner or later be called to
fill.
Her education was forthwith entrusted to the celebrated Aylmer, a
native of Leicestershire, whom Elizabeth made Bishop of London, to
reward him for his scathing answer to John Knox’s pamphlet, The First
Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment [i.e. regimen = régime
or government] of Women. Aylmer, at this time a good-looking man in his
early thirties, was, so Bacon tells us, engaged as tutor to the daughters of
the Marquis of Dorset at Bradgate. The new preceptor was in close
correspondence with the Genevan Reformers, and it must have been
through him that Jane became acquainted with the celebrated Bullinger and
with John ab Ulmis, better known as Ulmer, a learned but destitute Swiss
Calvinist, who visited Bradgate as early as the summer of 1550. He
mastered the English language, and having been sent to pursue his studies at
Oxford at the Marquis of Dorset’s expense, he spent his summer vacation at
Bradgate, giving lessons in Greek and Latin to Lady Jane and her younger
but less talented sister, Lady Katherine, and together with John Aylmer and

Dr. Harding the Rector of Bradgate, superintended her classical and
theological education. A somewhat crafty young man was Ulmer, skilled in
the art of flattery, and much addicted to repaying solid benefits by empty
compliments. He it was who urged Bullinger, his master, to dedicate his
book, The Holy Marriage of Christians, to the Lord Marquis of Dorset, a
rather venturesome act, seeing this nobleman was publicly credited with
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bigamy! Bullinger also presented the Marquis and the Lady Jane with a
copy of his book, dedicated to Henry II of France, on Christian Perfection,
for which the latter wrote to thank him in her father’s name on 12th July
1551. Her epistle is written in Latin, and may have been suggested and even
edited by Aylmer: it also contains a Biblical quotation in Hebrew. The
following extract from it gives a fair idea of how this child of fourteen
addressed one of the most learned men of his time:—

“From that little volume of pure and unsophisticated religion,
which you lately sent to my father and myself, I gather daily, as out
of a most beautiful garden, the sweetest flowers. My father also, as
far as his weighty engagements permit, is diligently occupied in the
perusal of it: but whatever advantage either of us may derive from
thence, we are bound to render thanks to you for it, and to God on
your account; for we cannot think it right to receive with ungrateful
minds such and so many truly divine benefits, conferred by
Almighty God through the instrumentality of yourself and those like
you, not a few of whom Germany is now in this respect so happy as
to possess. If it be customary with mankind, as indeed it ought to be,
to return favour for favour, and to show ourselves mindful of
benefits bestowed; how much rather should we endeavour to
embrace with joyfulness the benefits conferred by divine goodness,
and at least to acknowledge them with gratitude, though we may be
unable to make an adequate return!
“I come now to that part of your letter,” continues Lady Jane,
“which contains a commendation of myself, which as I cannot
claim, so also I ought not to allow; but whatever the Divine
Goodness may have bestowed on me, I ascribe only to Himself, as
the chief and sole author of anything in me that bears any semblance
to what is good; and to Whom I entreat you, most accomplished sir,

to offer your constant prayers in my behalf, that He may so direct
me and all my actions, that I may not be found unworthy of His so
great goodness. My most noble father would have written to you, to
thank you both for the important labours in which you are engaged,
and also for the singular courtesy you have manifested by inscribing
with his name and publishing under his auspices your Fifth Decade,
had he not been summoned by most weighty business in His
Majesty’s service to the remotest parts of Britain; but as soon as
public affairs afford him leisure he is determined, he says, to write
to you with all diligence.”

Here follows an urgent request for a scheme for the study of the
Hebrew language. She concludes:—

“Farewell, brightest ornament and support of the whole Church
of Christ; and may Almighty God long preserve you to us and to His
Church!—Your most devoted
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“Jana Graia”

Besides these visitors, the Lady Frances appears to have been the friend
and patroness of a learned Protestant, Nicholas Udall, the famous
stenographer. She was even guardian to his daughter, for a letter from her to
Cecil still preserved at Hatfield begs she may be relieved of this
responsibility, as the young lady is about to be married.
Late in the autumn of 1549, within six months of Seymour’s execution,
the celebrated Roger Ascham came on a visit to Bradgate. He too has been
described as tutor to Lady Jane, but this is a mistake; he was preceptor to
the Princess Elizabeth. As one of the leading lights of his time, he was
already well known to the Marquis of Dorset, and passing through the
neighbourhood on his way to attend Rutland and Morysone on an embassy
to Charles V, conceived it his duty to pay his respects to the great man’s
family.
Walking through the beautiful park at Bradgate, on his way to the Hall,
the visitor came upon the Marquis and his lady, with all their household, out
hunting. When the cavalcade halted to greet him, Ascham inquired for the
Lady Jane, and was told she was at home in her own chamber. He begged

leave to wait upon her, a favour readily granted, and found her in her closet
“reading the Phædon of Plato in Greek, with as much delight as gentlemen
read the merry tales of Boccacio.” Much surprised, he asked the young
student “why she relinquished such pastime as was then going on in the
park for the sake of study?”
With a smile, Jane replied, “I think all their sport in the park is but a
shadow to that pleasure I find in Plato. Alas! good folk, they never felt what
true pleasure means.”
“And how attained you, madam,” inquired Ascham, “to this true
knowledge of pleasure? And what did chiefly allure you to it, seeing that
few women and not many men have arrived at it?”

ROGER ASCHAM’S VISIT TO LADY JANE GREY AT
BRADGATE
AFTER THE PAINTING BY J. C. HORSLEY, R.A.

“I will tell you,” replied Lady Jane, “and tell you a truth which
perchance you may marvel at. One of the greatest benefits that God ever
gave me, is that He sent me, with sharp, severe parents, so gentle a
schoolmaster [Aylmer]. When I am in presence of either father or mother,

whether I speak, keep silent, sit, stand or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be
sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else, I must do it, as it were in
such weight, measure and number, even as perfectly as God made the earth,
or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea, presented
sometimes with pinches, nips and bobs and other things, (which I will not
name for the honour I bear them), so without measure misordered, that I
think myself in Hell, till the time comes when I must go with Mr. Aylmer,
who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, and with such pure allurements to
learn, that I think all the time of nothing whilst I am with him [that is to say,
“the time passes pleasantly when I am with him”]. And when I am called
from him, I fall to weeping, because whatever I do else but learning is full
of great trouble, fear, and wholesome misliking unto me. And this my book,
hath been so much my pleasure, and bringing daily to me more pleasure and
more, that in respect of it, all other pleasures in very deed be but trifles and
troubles to me.”
Poor solitary little girl! We of this matter-of-fact age can but feel more
of pity than admiration, as down the long vista of four and a half centuries
we picture her sitting alone, poring over the Phædon—dull reading, one
would imagine, for a child, even to one so harried by the ill-temper of her
weak father and her sharp-tongued mother, “whether she stood still or
moved about, was merry or sad, sewed or played,” that she felt herself “in
Hell” until Mr. Aylmer called her to her studies!
Ascham’s story throws a very unpleasing sidelight on the conduct of
Lady Jane Grey’s parents and their harsh treatment of the child, and proves,
moreover, the sort of forcing system to which she was being subjected.
Ascham tells us that he mentions this interesting interview, which he
introduces into his Schoolmaster, because it was the last time he ever saw
“that sweet and illustrious lady,” and also as a protest against the exceeding
severity of the teaching of those times. It is curious to note, as her historian,
Howard, observes, that whilst her parents were handling her like a froward
child, this extraordinary young lady was in active correspondence with such
famous men as Ascham, Conrad Pellican, Bullinger, and Sturmius, who all
treated her with the respect due to a grown-up woman of uncommon
sagacity and experience. The only explanation of this fact is the supposition
that these worthies, foreseeing Lady Jane might possibly occupy the throne,
and anxious to promote the cause of the Reformation in every possible way,

may have placed her on a higher pedestal than her immature talents
deserved. They certainly flattered her father, of whom they spoke and wrote
as being well-nigh apostolic in zeal and sanctity, and a marvel of light and
learning to boot.
At the age of fourteen, then, Lady Jane was fairly conversant with Latin
152
and Greek, and with or without the aid of a dictionary managed to derive
some entertainment from Plato. But when we are told that she had mastered
Hebrew, and at the age of seventeen was forming the acquaintance of “the
tongue of Chaldea” and “the language of Arabia,” we are inclined, with Sir
Harris Nicolas, to be sceptical. Her Greek and Latin may have been, and
very likely were, thoroughly mastered. Several letters in these languages are
attributed to her and are possibly of her own unaided composition, but even
in these we note that her style and phraseology in many cases closely
resembles that of Demosthenes or Cicero, whom she evidently imitated. In
one of her letters, written on 12th July 1551, to Henry Bullinger, she says,
“I am beginning to learn the Hebrew tongue,” and asks him to give her a
method whereby she may pursue her course of study in that language to the
greatest advantage. Bullinger sent the plan, and in another letter she thanks
him and says she will enter upon the study of the Hebrew language in the
method which he so clearly directs. As this letter is dated July 1552, and her
brief career ended in the following year, her proficiency in the language of
the prophets was probably not very considerable.
That poor Jane Grey was “crammed” there can be no question, and the
wonder is her weak health did not collapse altogether under the strain. The
figurehead of a party she was to be, however, and it was necessary that
extravagant reports of her learning should be spread throughout her own
country and among the Protestants in foreign lands.
Lady Jane Grey at this period, surrounded by learned men and women
so much older than herself, appears strained, even artificial, but later, in her
culminating misery, she displays a dignity, a sweetness of nature, and a
pious sincerity which render her worthy of her fame. Her few compositions
which have come down to us, most of them written during the last days of
her life,—her prayer, for instance, the letter to her sisters, and the lines
which, according to tradition, she scratched on the walls of her cell,—are
full of feeling, and lead us to regret that so fine a nature should not have

been spared to adorn mature womanhood as perfectly as its unaffected
simplicity graced her short maidenhood. Yet there was a strain of obstinacy
and even of coarseness in Jane’s character which leads one to think that
after all she might, had she remained Queen, have displayed in later life
many of the less pleasing peculiarities of her Tudor ancestors.
A very curious letter, written to Lady Jane Grey by Ascham early in
1552, while he was still at the Court of Charles V, throws considerable light
on the subject of her studies; it has also led some authorities to imagine the
learned man had actually fallen in love with his fair pupil. “In this my long
peregrination, most illustrious lady,” says he, “I have travelled far, have
visited the greatest cities, and have made the most diligent observations in
my power on the manners of the nations, their institutions, laws, and
regulations. Nevertheless, there is nothing that has raised in me greater
admiration than what I found in regard to yourself during the last summer,
to see one so young and lovely, even in the absence of her learned
preceptor, in the noble hall of her family, in the very moment when her
friends and relatives were enjoying the field sports, to find, I repeat—oh, all
ye gods!—so divine a maid, diligently perusing the Phædon of Plato, in this
more happy, it may be believed, than in her royal and noble lineage.
“Go on thus, O best adorned virgin, to the honour of thy country, the
delight of thy parents, the comfort of thy relatives, and the admiration of all.
Oh, happy Aylmer! to have such a scholar, and to be her tutor. I congratulate
both you who teach and she who learns. These were the words to myself, as
to my reward for teaching the most illustrious Elizabeth. But to you too I
can repeat them with more truth, to you I concede this felicity, even though
I should have to lament want of success where I had expected to reap the
sweetest fruits of my labours.
“But let me constrain the sharpness of my grief which prudence makes
it necessary I should conceal even to myself. This much I say, that I have no
fault to find with the Lady Elizabeth, whom I have always found the best of
ladies, nor indeed with the Lady Mary, but if ever I shall have the happiness
to meet my friend Aylmer, then I shall repose in his bosom my sorrows
abundantly.
“Two things I repeat to thee, my friend Aylmer [Aylmer was evidently
at Bradgate at this period], for I know thou wilt see this letter, that by your

persuasion and entreaty the Lady Jane Grey, as early as she can
conveniently, may write to me in Greek, which she had already promised to
do. I have even written lately to John Sturmius, mentioning this promise.
Pray let your letters and hers fly together to us. The distance is great, but
John Hales will take care that it shall reach me. If she even were to write to
Sturmius himself in Greek, neither you nor she would have cause to repent
your labour. [The “neither you nor she” points clearly to collaboration.]
“The other request is, my good Aylmer, that you would exert yourself
so that we might conjointly preserve this mode of life among us. How
freely, how sweetly, and philosophically then should we live! Why should
we, my good Aylmer, less enjoy all these things, which Cicero, at the
conclusion of the third book, De Finibus, describes as the only rational
mode of life? Nothing in any tongue, nothing in any times, in human
memory, either past or present, from which something may not be drawn to
sweeten life!
“As to the news here, most illustrious lady, I know not what to write.
That which is written of stupid things, must itself be stupid, and, as Cicero
complains of his times, there is little to amuse or that can be embellished.
Besides, at present, all places and persons are occupied with rumours of
wars and commotions, which, for the most part, are either mere fabrications
or founded on no authority, so that anything respecting Continental politics
would neither be interesting nor useful to you.
“The general Council of Trent is to sit on the first of May,” continues
Jane’s correspondent, “Cardinal Pole, it is asserted, is to be the president.
Besides there are the tumults this year in Africa, their preparation for a war
against the Turks, and then the great expectation of the march of the
Emperor into Austria, of which I shall, God willing, be a companion. Why
need I write to you of the siege of Magdeburg, and how the Duke of
Mecklenburg has been taken, or of that commotion which so universally, at
this moment, afflicts the miserable Saxony? To write of all these things, I
have neither leisure, nor would it be safe; on my return, which I hope is not
far distant, it shall be a great happiness to relate all these things to you in
person.
“Thy kindness to me, oh! most noble Jane Grey, was always most
grateful to me when present with you, but it is ten times more so during this

long absence. To your noble parents, I wish length of happiness, to you a
daily victory in letters and in virtue, and to thy sister Katherine, that she
may resemble thee, and to Aylmer, I wish every good that he may wish to
Ascham.
“Further, dearest lady, if I were not afraid to load thee with the weight
of my light salutations, I would ask thee in my name to salute Elizabeth
Astley, who, as well as her brother John, I believe to be of my best friends,
and whom I believe to be like that brother in all integrity and sweetness of
manners. Salute, I pray thee, my cousin, Mary Laten, and my wife Alice, of
whom I think oftener than I can here express. Salute, also, that worthy
young man Garret and John Haddon.
“Farewell, most noble lady in Christ.
R. A.”
“Augustæ”
“18th January, 1551”
When we consider that this letter was addressed to a girl who was not
yet fifteen years of age, making due allowance for the high-flown style of
the times, we can only conclude that there was some politic motive for a
mode of address so injudicious in its flattery, so fulsome and so extravagant
even for that age of courtly adulation.
Lady Jane Grey spent the better part of the years 1550–1551 and 1552
at Bradgate, improving her mind by hard study, and patiently submitting to
the “nips” and petty tyranny of her mother. At one time she seems to have
commenced the study of such music as was then in vogue. This, Ascham
promptly assured her was a frivolous occupation, unworthy of a godly
maiden. In a very curious letter, dated 23rd December 1551, Aylmer writes
from London to Bullinger concerning the Lady Jane, begging him to write
to her direct and seek to influence her to give up practising music so
zealously.

“It now remains for me,” writes the worthy Reformer, “to
request that, with the kindness we have so long experienced, you
will instruct my pupil in your next letter as to what embellishment
and adornment of person is becoming in young women professing
godliness. In treating upon this subject, you may bring forward the

example of our King’s sister, the Princess Elizabeth, who goes clad
in every respect as becomes a young maiden; and yet no one is
induced by the example of so illustrious a lady, and in so much
Gospel light, to lay aside, much less look down upon, gold, jewels,
and braidings of the hair. They hear preachers declaim against these
things, but yet no one amends her life. Moreover, I would wish you
to prescribe to her (the Lady Jane) the length of time she may
properly devote to the study of music. For in this respect also,
people err beyond measure in this country, while their whole labour
is undertaken, and exertions made, for the sake of ostentation.”

We can see by this letter, presumably written with a view to the great
object all these men kept in their hearts,—that of influencing Jane in the
event of her becoming Queen,—that they were endeavouring to make a
narrow-minded bigot of her, and it is equally certain that the Princess
Elizabeth was just then playing the part of the discreet and modest maiden.
It is very amusing to find this wily Princess, whose reputation was already
the reverse of good, held up as an example to innocent Jane Grey. The
unhappy child was not even to practise on her virginals in peace, or dress as
she chose, but to follow the example of Elizabeth, forsooth! Could Ulmer
and Pellican have seen in a vision the three thousand dresses and the sixteen
hundred wigs which were to adorn the wardrobe of the lady they were
setting up as a model to their simple music-pupil! Even in matters of
religion, Elizabeth at this early stage of her career showed a remarkable
discretion, neither siding with nor offending either party. She was a pious
Catholic in the company of her sister Mary, and an equally edifying
Protestant at the Court of her brother, Edward VI.
In June 1551, after a lengthy absence, the Dorsets returned to their
town mansion. They came to London for the purpose of examining the vast
estate which the Lady Frances had inherited from the two sons of her father,
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, by his fourth wife, Katherine
Willoughby. These two brothers died at Bugden Hall, Cams., of the
sweating sickness, within four hours of each other, and the bulk of their
wealth, excepting the Duchess’s dower, fell to the Lady Frances, whose
husband, in September of the following year (1552), was raised to the rank
of Duke of Suffolk. The Dorsets now lived very sumptuously in London,
and with a view, perhaps, of pleasing the King and pushing forward the

interests of the Lady Jane, whom they still fondly hoped would become
Queen-Consort, they invited a number of English and foreign Reformers, at
this time living in exile in London, to their house.
The Marquis, who was an enthusiastic admirer of Conrad Bullinger,
had on more than one occasion exhorted him to correspond with his
daughter, Lady Jane. In a letter addressed to that eminent Reformer in
December 1551, he says: “I acknowledge myself also to be much indebted
to you on my daughter’s account, for having always exhorted her in your
godly letters to a true faith in Christ, the study of the Scriptures, purity of
manners, and innocence of life, and I earnestly request you to continue
these exhortations as frequently as possible.”
A letter of another Reformer—namely Ab Ulmis—gives us some
interesting glimpses of the Reformation movement in England. He says:
“You will easily perceive the veneration and esteem which the Marquis’s
daughter entertains towards you, from the very learned letter she has written
to you. For my own part, I do not think there ever lived any one more
deserving of respect than this young lady, if you regard her family; more
learned, if you consider her age, or more happy if you consider both. A
report had prevailed, and has begun to be talked of by persons of
consequence, that this most noble virgin is to be betrothed and given in
marriage to the King’s Majesty. Oh! if that event should take place, how
happy would be the union and how beneficial to the Church.... Haddon, a
minister of the Word, and Aylmer, the tutor of the young lady, respect and
reverence you with much duty and affection. It will be a mark of courtesy to
write to them all as soon as possible. Skinner is at Court with the King.
Wallack is preaching with much labour in Scotland,” and so on. Ascham, in
a letter to Sturmius, describes Jane as excelling in learning Lady Mildred,
Cecil’s accomplished wife. She is, says he, the most learned woman in
England. “I hear you have translated the Orations of Æschines and
Demosthenes into Latin. I pray you dedicate the work to this peerless lady.”
These and other letters still extant prove, if proof were needed, that
Aylmer, Ulmer, and Ascham, assisted by Pellican, Sturmius, and Bullinger,
were at this time hard at work, preparing their future Queen and patroness
for the position they fondly hoped she would one day occupy. Hales, too,
was assisting them,—“Club-footed Hales,” as he was called—an English
lawyer who had visited Switzerland and adopted the tenets of the Geneva

sect; he is described as “fanatical, learned, and ill-tempered.” He was a
frequent visitor at Suffolk House and Bradgate, and in after times was much
involved in the troubles of poor Lady Katherine Grey, Jane’s youngest
sister. Further quotation from these letters is unnecessary; they are all
written in the same style of pedantic flattery, and throw more light on
passing events than most people would imagine, although the epistolary
literature of this period is verbose, and as a rule uninforming. We can
imagine, however, that the meetings at Suffolk House were exceedingly
picturesque, and many will marvel that only one painter of note, M. M. P.
Comte, has ever given us a picture of the youthful Lady Jane Grey seated
among the doctors of the Reformed faith, in the noble Gothic hall of a
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mansion second to none in the old city for its architectural magnificence.
The monotony of Jane’s life of close study was frequently interrupted
by long journeys on horseback, or in cumbersome waggons, to pay various
country visits. Late in 1551, the Greys established, for some reason or other,
a close intimacy with the Princess Mary, and this notwithstanding their
religious differences. With increase of wealth and station, Jane’s parents
became more worldly than ever. Perceiving that Edward VI, who began to
show signs of consumption, might not live long, and that the Crown might
after all pass to her Catholic Grace, they wisely considered it prudent to be
on the right side of a lady who was probably destined to become their
sovereign. Accordingly they paid the Princess as many as four visits in a
single year.
In the summer of 1551, Jane came very near losing her mother,
Duchess Frances, who fell ill of a violent fever. The sick lady, who was at
Richmond, sent for her daughter Jane from Bradgate, “to help nurse her.”
Suffolk describes her illness in the following quaint terms in a letter
explaining her absence from Court addressed to the Duke of
Northumberland’s secretary, Cecil, whom he styles his “cousin Cycell”:
“This shall be to advertise you, that my sudden departure from Court was
for that I have received a letter of the state my wife was in, and I assure you
she is mo’ like to die than not. I never saw sicker creature in my life. She
hath three sicknesses, the first is a hot burning nague [ague] that doth hold
her four and twenty hours, the other is the stopping of the spleen, the third
is hypochondriac passion. These three being enclosed in one body, it is to
be feared that death must needs follow.” But it did not “follow”; by the

beginning of October, the Lady Frances was better, and in November she
was sufficiently convalescent to attend the entry into London of the Scottish
Queen Regent, Mary of Guise, and be present at the festivities consequent
on that rather unexpected royal visit.
Early in November 1551, Jane appeared at King Edward’s Court for the
first time, and took a prominent part in these merry-makings. The Scottish
Queen-Regent, Mary of Guise, had recently arrived at Portsmouth from
France, on her way to the dominions of her unfortunate daughter, Mary,
Queen of Scots, and wrote begging the English King’s licence to pass
through his dominions. This was readily granted; and a pressing invitation
to visit the Metropolis was sent to the Regent, and willingly accepted. On
2nd November, she proceeded by water to Paul’s Wharf, and thence rode in
great state through the City. She lodged in the Bishop of London’s house,
where she was entertained with regal hospitality, and, according to Stowe’s
Annals, was supplied with “beefs, muttons, veales, swans, and other kinds
of poultry meates, with fuell, bread, wine, beare, and wax.”
The first interview of King Edward VI with the Scottish Queen took
place on 4th November, at Westminster Palace. She rode in her chariot from
the City to Whitehall, attended by the Lady Margaret Douglas, cousin to the
King, and Countess of Lennox, the Duchesses of Richmond and Suffolk,
the Lady Jane Grey, and many other noble ladies, including the Duchess of
Northumberland.
The Queen and the King dined alone together; but the Duchess of
Suffolk, the Duchess of Northumberland, and the Lady Margaret Lennox,
together with the Ladies Jane and Katherine Grey, dined, we are told, in the
Queen’s hall, and were sumptuously entertained. Neither the Princess
Elizabeth nor the Princess Mary attended these festivities. They were not in
favour at this time and had not been invited.
The banquet must have taken place at the hour we usually devote to
luncheon, for at four the Queen, having visited the galleries and state
apartments of the Palace, then considered “show places,” left Westminster,
and, accompanied by her escort of nobles and ladies, rode once more
through the City to her lodgings in the Episcopal Palace.
On the following day (5th November), she made a solemn progress
through the City, riding from St. Paul’s, through Cheapside and

Bishopsgate, to Shoreditch, whence she took the high road for her own
dominions. She was accompanied by a great train of nobility, among them
the Duchess of Suffolk and her daughter, the Lady Jane Grey, and that
fateful Duke of Northumberland who was destined to bring ruin on the
unfortunate Jane and her father. Northumberland had in his train one
hundred horsemen, of whom thirty were gentlemen clad in black velvet,
guarded with white, and wearing white hats with black feathers.
As soon as this state visit, mentioned with considerable delight by King
Edward in his Journal, was over, the Lady Frances and her daughters
returned to Bradgate.
In the middle of November the Ducal party set out again for Tylsey, the
seat of Suffolk’s young cousin and ward, the heir of Willoughby of
Woollaton. From here they went on a visit to Princess Mary. A very curious
MS. account book, still in the possession of the Willoughby d’Eresby
family, shows that, on 20th November 1551, “ten gentlemen came from
London to escort my Lady Frances’s grace to my Lady Mary’s grace, and
they all left Tylsey after breakfast, the Lady Frances, accompanied by her
daughters, the Lady Jane, the Lady Katherine and the Lady Mary, and
repaired to my Lady Mary’s grace.” Whilst on this visit to Princess Mary,
who was then at her town house, the former Priory of St. John of Jerusalem,
in Clerkenwell, the Dorset family received handsome gifts, as appears from
the Princess’s expense book: “Given to my cousin Frances beads (i.e.
‘rosary’) of black and white, mounted in gold”; “To my cousin, Jane Grey, a
necklace of gold, set with pearls and small rubies.” In return, the Lady Jane
presented Mary with a pair of gloves.
In the first days of December, the two younger daughters returned to
Tylsey, but the Duchess and Lady Jane stayed on in London, for the Lady
Jane, we are told, remained with the Princess at her house in Clerkenwell.
On 16th December, the Duke came to Clerkenwell to escort Jane and
her mother back to Tylsey. There they seem to have spent a merry
Christmas in the company of the Lords Thomas and John Grey. The Duke
of Suffolk, in honour of his young wards the Willoughbys, and in their
name, threw open the gates of Tylsey to all such of the county gentry as
chose to seek hospitality within them. A company of players was ordered
from London, together with a wonderful boy, who “sang like a nightingale,”

besides a tumbler and a juggler. These were presently supplemented by
another band of players, belonging to the Earl of Oxford, who acted several
pieces. Open house was kept until 20th January 1552, when the whole
family proceeded to Walden, to spend some days with the Duke’s sister,
154
Lady Audley, whose husband, Lord Audley, or Audrey, was created Lord
Chancellor by Henry VIII and presented with the house and property of the
London Charterhouse, as an acknowledgment of his infamous treatment of
Anne Boleyn. The record of the doings at Tylsey is in an account book kept
by “old Mr. Medeley,” husband of the heiress of Willoughby’s grandmother
and a trustee. This book was lent to Miss Agnes Strickland, who says—in
her Tudor and Stuart Princesses—Lady Jane Grey—that Medeley “kept a
very thrifty notation of all that was spent in ‘man’s meat’ and ‘horse’s meat’
on these journeys; likewise the payments of the players who were to assist
in spending the Christmas with the ‘godliness and innocence’ dwelt upon
155
with such unction” by Suffolk and by the Reformers. After the visit to
Walden, the Lady Frances and her brood went back to Tylsey for about a
week, at the end of January 1552.
These cross-country journeys, even if sometimes broken by two or
three days’ stay in one place, must have been extremely fatiguing to so
young and delicate a girl as Lady Jane. The Duke of Suffolk and the Lady
Frances being of the blood royal, travelled with a great escort, as many as a
hundred to a hundred and fifty horsemen, scouts, etc., preceding and
following their horses and waggons, otherwise called “chariots.” If the
weather was fine, equestrian travel was exceedingly pleasant: the canter
through the leafy lanes, the midday picnic under the greenwood tree, and
the evening meal in some picturesque inn, full of Shakespearean character,
the bustling, bowing and curtseying host and hostess, the rustic waiters and
grooms, the flicker of lamp and candle light, the glowing wood fire, the
sanded floor, the shining pewter, and the savoury baked and roasted meats,
all combined to make up a scene of primitive comfort, entirely absent from
the great and sumptuous hostelries of our own time, in which luxury often
predominates over more solid qualities of entertainment. But when pouring
rain turned the ill-kept roads into quagmires, when the nipping airs of
autumn and winter whistled through the skeleton branches of the trees, or
the snow lay feet thick on the ground, and the keen wintry winds whistled
over the frozen rivers and streams, then must the welcome glow cast by the

crackling fires within the inn parlours have made them, however humble,
appear so many havens of celestial refuge to the Lady Frances, her husband,
her daughters, and her merry men and women. Since there were no other
means of locomotion in those days, a specially swift and steady steed, or a
particularly well-cushioned waggon, must have been considered with much
the same sense of satisfaction as we bestow now on a new type of motor-car
or a specially well-appointed railway train. Our immediate forbears were by
no means dissatisfied with the old stagecoaches that transported them from
one end of the kingdom to another in a week or ten days; sailing in
luxurious airships which will have so reduced the bulk of the globe that
from being “a vastie sphere” it will have become a mere overgrown orange
—“from London to Rome in less than an hour; London to New York in
three!”—our descendants will try to imagine how it was ever possible for us
to travel by train and motor—so slow and uncomfortable! And thus we and
our civilisation may presently come to be looked upon with the same sort of
good-natured disdain we now bestow upon the social conditions and
travelling arrangements of the days of “My Lord à Suffhoke.”
It may well be that all this hard riding in bad weather and the unwonted
dissipations of Christmas at Tylsey proved too much for Lady Jane, for in
February 1552, Ab Ulmis writes to his friend Bullinger: “The Duke’s
daughter has recovered from a severe and dangerous illness. She is now
engaged in some extraordinary production, which will very soon be brought
to light, accompanied with the commendation of yourself. There has lately
been discovered a great treasure of valuable books: Basil on Isaiah and the
Psalms in Greek, ... Chrysostom on the Gospels, in Greek; the whole of
Proclus; the Platonists, etc.... I have myself seen all these books this very
day. The Duke of Suffolk, his daughter, (the Lady Jane), Haddon, Aylmer,
156
and Skinner, have all written to you.”
These literary treasures were probably found in several parcels of old
books purchased about this time by the Marquis from an Italian merchant.
In March 1552, Lady Jane, then at Bradgate, sent Bullinger’s wife a
present of gloves, and a ring. A month later, Ulmer returned from
Switzerland, whither he had been sent on a mission, and brought with him a
letter from Conrad Pellican, which Jane immediately answered. In
Pellican’s Journal, still preserved at Zurich, we find the following marginal

note: “June 19th, 1552–3, I received a Latin letter, written with admirable
elegance and learning, from the most noble virgin, Lady Jane Grey, of the
illustrious house of Suffolk.” This letter is lost.
157
Early in July 1552, Lady Jane went with her parents to Oxford, and,
almost immediately afterwards, repeated her visit to Princess Mary, now at
Newhall—a visit fraught with much evil, if we may believe the accounts
which have come down to us, from, it must be admitted, rather suspicious
sources; that is to say, from Aylmer and Ascham, both eager to represent
Jane as even more Protestant than she really was.
Newhall Place, Princess Mary’s chief country seat, had formed part, in
days gone by, of the possessions of Waltham Abbey, and had been
exchanged with Sir John de Shadlowe by the monks in the reign of Edward
III for three other properties. Its most illustrious occupant in pre-
Reformation times had been the unfortunate Margaret of Anjou. After her
capture by the Yorkists it was confiscated by the Crown, and was eventually
granted by Henry VII to Bottler or Butler, Earl of Ormond, who fortified the
mansion and enlarged it. It passed, as a dower, to Sir Thomas Boleyn,
grandfather of Queen Anne Boleyn, and he exchanged it with Henry VIII,
who took a great fancy to the place, and changed its name to Beaulieu. The
monarch stayed here on one occasion, at least, with Anne Boleyn, so that
Mary Tudor may have found a few of the personal belongings of her
mother’s chief foe, when she took possession of the house which Henry
bestowed on her towards the end of his reign. She made it her favourite
abode, principally on account of its gardens, which are often mentioned in
the Household Books of the period, as supplying the royal palaces of
London with fruit and vegetables—the cherries and grapes being considered
particularly fine. Elizabeth, who did not care for Beaulieu,—its association
with her mother and sister must have been painful to her,—presented it to
Radcliffe, Earl of Suffolk. He sold it to “Steenie,” Duke of Buckingham,
who let the place fall into such ruin that its value so decreased that
Cromwell was able to buy it for “five shillings and no more!”
In Mary’s day it was still a fine old Gothic mansion of the ecclesiastical
type, with three lofty towers and a magnificent hall, containing a huge
chimneypiece and a broad staircase leading to the upper apartments. In the
chapel was that famous window made at Dort in Flanders by order of Henry

VII, and now the chief ornament of St. Margaret’s, Westminster. The
furniture at Newhall, the inventory of which is still extant, was extremely
magnificent, and included many sets of costly tapestries, hangings of velvet
and Florentine brocades, Turkey carpets and inlaid bedsteads and chairs.
The chief artistic treasure of the house, however, was a superb portrait of
Mary herself by Holbein, and another of the King her father by the same
great painter. These two portraits remained at Newhall until the beginning
of the seventeenth century, when we lose trace of them, but the portrait of
Mary is not improbably the one now in the possession of the Duke of
Norfolk, and that of King Henry, that which is in the possession of Lord
Leconfield at Petworth House.
A state visit to Newhall must have been conducted on similar lines to
such a function at Sandringham or Windsor in our times, being a singular
mixture of extreme simplicity and extreme stateliness. The Princess herself,
who, had her life been cast in a less exalted sphere, would have been a
kindly woman, had a deep hearty voice and a cheery welcome, which
endeared her to all who approached her; yet an observation made by Lady
Jane Grey to Lady Wharton proves that every time anyone passed before
her Grace, they made obeisance by falling on one knee, as if she had been
the Host on the altar. Meals were served somewhat after the French fashion:
a very light breakfast at what we should consider an unearthly hour—six in
summer, seven in winter—a heavy dinner at eleven, and supper at eight. All
sorts of sports and pastimes—hawking, tennis, horse-riding, hunting—
served to pass the intermediate time, and in the evenings there was card-
playing, boisterous games, and dancing. Before retiring for the night,
prayers were said, and a loving cup full of spiced wine was passed round,
the Princess putting her lips to it before passing it, with a blessing, to her
guests. We may take it for granted that during the visit of the Marquis and
Marchioness, notorious Protestants, religious controversy did not enter into
the conversation at Newhall. To do her justice, Mary at this time at least
was very free from bigotry; two of her favourite ladies, Lady Bacon and
Lady Brown, were Protestants, and her friendship for the imprisoned
Duchess of Somerset and her daughters never failed so long as she lived—
and yet the Duchess was an ardent “Gospeller.” That the Princess enjoyed a
little “flutter” at cards is proved by her household books, and as the
Marquis was an excellent card-player, no doubt “Ombre”—a game
introduced into England by the Spaniards whilst Katherine of Aragon was

Queen—served to pass the evening, together with “Gresco,” “Mountsaint,”
“Newcut,” and “Lansquenet.” Lady Jane and her little sisters may have
joined in the romping game of “Trump,” a noisy round game like our “Old
Maid,” in which, on the appearance of a certain card, everybody slapped
their right hand on the table and cried out “Trump!” those who failed to do
so paying a trifling fine. “Gleke,” a primitive sort of whist, was also greatly
in fashion; and at this game, we may be sure, the Lady Frances was prudent
enough to lose fairly large sums to her august cousin, whose hot Spanish
temper was apt to be ruffled when the tide of fortune turned against her.
It was during this visit that the Princess Mary presented the Lady Jane
with a rich dress, and Jane, willing to practise some of the precepts which
she had received from Zurich, asked the lady by whom her cousin sent the
gown, what she was to do with it? “Marry,” replied the lady, “wear it, to be
sure!” “Nay,” replied the Lady Jane, “that were a shame, to follow the Lady
Mary, who leaveth God’s Word, and leave my Lady Elizabeth, who
followeth God’s Word.” This anecdote was recorded by her tutor, Aylmer,
long years after this world had closed on Jane—at a moment, in fact, when
Elizabeth did not thank him at all for reminding her subjects of the Puritan
style she had affected in her youth. Another incident, which may be more
certainly placed during this Newhall visit, shows the cousins at issue on
those points of belief then so hotly debated. Lady Wharton, a fervent
Catholic, crossing the chapel with Lady Jane Grey when service was not
proceeding, made her obeisance to the Host as they passed the altar. Lady
Jane asked “if the Princess were present in the chapel?” Lady Wharton
answered that she was not.
“Then why do you curtsey?” demanded Jane.
“I curtsey to Him that made me,” replied Lady Wharton.
“Nay,” retorted the Lady Jane, “but did not the baker make him?”
Lady Wharton repeated this remark to the Princess, “who never after
loved the Lady Jane as she did before.”

Note.—The London residence of the parents of Lady Jane Grey
was, in her early days, the house in Whitehall overlooking the
Thames and known as Dorset Place; but, after the death of the two
sons of the Duke of Suffolk, the Lady Frances inherited Norwich

House, Strand, which Henry VIII had confiscated from the Bishops
of Norwich, and exchanged with his brother-in-law for Suffolk
Place, Southwark, which he converted into a mint. Norwich House
now became generally known as Suffolk House. Here the Greys
lived in great state, possibly abandoning their other residence in
Whitehall for the larger and more sumptuous residence. The Lady
Frances, after the execution of her husband, sold Suffolk House to
the Percys and it presently became known as Northumberland
House, and, altered from a Tudor to a Jacobean mansion, it
remained a prominent feature of London street architecture until
early in the second half of the last century, when it was pulled down
for the improvements at Charing Cross.

CHAPTER XII

JOHN DUDLEY, EARL OF WARWICK

I
mmediately after the execution of Thomas Seymour, John Dudley
steps forward on the lurid stage of this history. If Seymour was a
rascal, Dudley, son of a rascal, was even worse. Divested of his
magnificent habiliments and picturesque surroundings, this man was
a far meaner and more sordid ruffian than was ever my Lord of Sudeley—
more devilish in his cunning and, if anything, more unscrupulous.

John Dudley was the son of that notorious Edmund Dudley who, under
Henry VII, had remorselessly plundered the public coffers, and so earned the
execution which fell to his lot in the first years of Henry VIII’s reign—on
28th August 1510, to be precise. In common justice, it is fair to say that this
Dudley of evil repute was highly esteemed by his most illustrious
contemporary, Sir Thomas More; and we may believe him to have been
much calumniated, like many other men of his time. Dugdale says Edmund
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Dudley was the son of a carpenter, and the assertion is somewhat
supported by the fact that although he was born twenty years before the
death of the Lord Dudley whom he asserted to be his grandfather, that
gentleman would never acknowledge him. His real patronym was Sutton,
but he assumed that of Dudley after his acquisition of the ancient castle of
that name, and the expulsion of its rightful owner, who fled abroad. On the
gates of the Castle, Edmund affixed his own arms, together with those of
the ancient houses of Someries and Malpas, from which he claimed descent.
He was at one time Sergeant-at-Law and at another Speaker of the House of
Commons, and married Lady Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Edward
Grey, Viscount Lisle, a collateral of the great house of Grey, and the same

young lady to whom Charles Brandon was contracted and who, as we have
seen, refused to carry out her side of the engagement.
The John Dudley of these pages was born about 1502, the eldest of
three brothers, who, after their father’s ignominious death, were placed
under the guardianship of Sir Edward Guildford. The latter fought valiantly
to obtain some part of the father’s ill-gotten property for his wards, and
their possessions were further increased at the death of their mother, a
considerable heiress. Being a handsome, dashing young fellow, the father’s
bad reputation was soon forgotten, and his gay son John, as Viscount Lisle,
was a prominent figure at Court in the last half of Henry VIII’s reign. In his
early years he was a good deal in France with Charles Brandon, Duke of
Suffolk, the Lady Frances’s father, who knighted him at Vian, in Normandy.
John Dudley’s wife, Jane Guildford, whom he married when he was a mere
lad, contrived to absorb his affections so completely that his domestic life
was remarkably respectable. She was a very beautiful woman, and part
heiress of his former guardian, Edward Guildford, Lord Warden of the
Cinque Ports. She bore him a numerous and handsome family, and her
behaviour in clinging to her husband during his hour of danger, and making
desperate efforts to save him, was rare at this strange period. With all her
good qualities, however, she was cordially disliked by Lady Jane Grey,
whom she treated with consistent harshness.
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As Viscount Lisle, John Dudley worked his way up legitimately
enough until he was nominated Lord High-Admiral and Master of the Horse
(1542) to Henry VIII. Although at heart a Catholic, he sided with the
Seymours against the Howards, and thus—for ambition’s sake—came to be
numbered among the chiefs of the Protestant party at Edward VI’s
coronation, and was then created Earl of Warwick. His ambition was now
well fired—he must become aut Cæsar, aut nullus, and this he could only
achieve by ousting the two Seymours and taking their place. Like most of
his contemporaries, he was essentially an opportunist—un arriviste, as the
French would say. For some years he worked like a rat in the dark, waiting
his opportunity: first he nibbled at Thomas Seymour’s good fame—what
there was of it!—and then cunningly set brother against brother. Patiently,
subtly, he gnawed on till he saw Thomas ascend the scaffold; then he
promptly undermined Edward Seymour’s credit with King and people. His

aim was to become Lord Protector himself, to reach at supreme power by
fair means or foul.

JOHN DUDLEY, DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND
FROM AN ENGRAVING BY G. VERTUE

Soon after the death of his brother, Thomas, Somerset began to totter.
The Admiral’s execution had produced a bad effect. Hardened as men were
in those ferocious times, there were yet certain ties of consanguinity which
might not be violated with impunity; and so, although Elizabeth did write to
her sister Mary, that “had the brothers met, the Lord Admiral would have
been saved,” it was none the less the hand of Cain that signed his death-
warrant. The people said so openly. They had not forgotten the dreadful
carnage that had marked Edward Seymour’s return, through Scotland into
160
England, on the occasion of his first Scotch expedition.
If the horrors perpetrated by Somerset himself during that expedition
were execrable, those committed with his knowledge and connivance in the
same forlorn country under Edward VI were even more atrocious. That
“varmint” Lennox, the husband of the Lady Margaret, niece of Henry VIII,
was his chief agent. Reeking corpses of men, women, and little children
marked the passage of the English troops to and from the Border lands.
Thus the Lord Protector’s reputation in the North was of the worst—“his
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very name stank of blood.”
Dudley had not, therefore, so much difficulty as might be thought in
undermining his formidable rival’s position, towering though it was. In
many ways, Somerset had proved himself a failure, and he had already lost
much of his popularity, even among Protestants, who were none too sure of
his loyalty—was he not the friend of Mary and the avowed enemy of
Elizabeth? By the large Catholic party he was, of course, entirely and
heartily detested.
He was not a Calvinist, although he maintained an active
correspondence with Calvin, but a Church of England man of the “Low
Church” description, a hater of ecclesiastical ritual and formality, and,
incidentally, a born iconoclast. The statement that no man or woman was
persecuted or burnt for religious opinions under his rule, is hardly exact.
There are more ways than one of killing a dog—or of persecuting an
opposing faith. True, the fires of Smithfield were quenched for the time
being, but Catholics and Anabaptists were made to feel they were outside
the law, and the prisons were crowded with men and women of those
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persuasions, and of every social grade. The cathedrals and parish

churches were cleared of their sacred images, their plate, their rood-lofts,
and their art treasures; even their frescoed walls were whitewashed. Stained
glass was smashed, because it bore “idolatrous pictures,” and replaced by
plain glass or horn. Even dead men’s tombs were overthrown, and the
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bodies cast “into filthy ditches and fields beyond the city.” In a word, the
artistic treasures of centuries were within a few months dispersed,
destroyed, or sold to a throng of Jews, who flocked to England to seize so
splendid an opportunity. Somerset pulled down three or four episcopal
palaces, the beautiful North Cloister of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the
Churches of St. Mary-le-Strand and St. John’s, Clerkenwell, for the sake of
their building materials, which he used for his own new and almost royal
residence in the Strand. He gave orders for the demolition of St. Margaret’s,
Westminster, and but for the angry protests of the indignant parishioners,
his command would have been obeyed. There was another cause of
discontent, which has been much neglected by historians, namely, the
doctrinal changes, which necessarily greatly altered outward observances,
much to the disgust of the older generation, who saw the destruction of the
cherished traditions of a thousand years, and the desecration of their most
sacred social usages. Their pageants, pilgrimages, and processions were
now paralysed; and it was an offence deemed worthy of imprisonment, ay,
even of burning, to pray for the dead, or to retain the rosary the dying
mother had given, with her last blessing, on her death-bed.
The average Englishman is apt to think of the Sixth Edward’s reign as
an era of peace and plenty, during which, to the applause of the entire
nation, the Book of Common Prayer was formulated by Cranmer, and the
churches emptied of “hated and idolatrous images and symbols.” In reality,
it was one of the most disastrous epochs in the whole of our history. Froude,
in a passage of uncommon brilliance, sums up the appalling effect, after a
lapse of fifteen years, of Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries and
hospitals. With singular vividness he depicts the extreme misery to which
the lower orders were reduced; the high roads and country lanes rendered
dangerous by hordes of starving and half-naked men and women, who a
few years previously had been in fairly comfortable circumstances, earning
a living wage from the now banished masters of abbeys and priories. Now
the poor wretches roved in fear and trembling, begging food and shelter; or,
driven desperate by want, committing deeds of violence. Dr. Latimer, in his

Royal Sermons, puts his unfailing finger on the right spot when he remarks
that “the misery the people were enduring was entirely due to the new order
of things. My father,” he continues, “was a yeoman who lived comfortably,
educated his children, served the King, and gave to the poor, on a farm the
rent of which has been increased fourfold since, so that his successor in the
farm has become a pauper in consequence.” Then, turning upon the
Seymours, the Pagets, and others of their kind, who had enriched
themselves out of the ecclesiastical spoils, he thundered: “I fully certify you
as extortioners, violent oppressors, engrossers of tenements and lands,
through whose covetousness villages decay and fall down; and the King’s
liege people, for lack of sustenance, are famished and decayed.... You
landlords, you rent-raisers, I may say, you step-lords, you unnatural lords,
you have for your possessions yearly too much! The farm that was some
years back from £20 to £40 by the year, is now charged to tenants at from
£50 to £100.... Poor men cannot have a living, all kinds of victuals are so
dear. I think, verily, that if it thus continue, we shall at length be obliged to
pay twenty shillings for a pig. If ye bring it to a pass the yeomen be not able
to put their sons to school, ye pluck salvation from the people, and utterly
destroy the realm.”... “In those days,” he says in another sermon, “they [the
monks] helped the scholars. They maintained and gave them living. It is a
pitiful thing to see schools so neglected; every true Christian ought to
lament the same. To consider what has been plucked from abbeys, colleges,
chantries, it is a marvel that no more is bestowed upon this holy office of
salvation.... Scholars have no exhibition. Very few there be who help poor
scholars, or set children to school to learn the Word of God, and make
provision for the age to come. It would pity a man’s heart to hear what I
have of the state of Cambridge.... I think there be at this day [1550] one
thousand students less than were within twenty years, and fewer preachers.”
The enclosure, too, by their new owners, of the vast tracts of lands,
which had formerly belonged to the abbeys and priories, for the purpose of
cattle rearing, instead of corn growing—as hitherto—(wool being at a
premium) had thrown thousands of agricultural labourers out of
employment; and soon the large cities, London, Bristol, and York, were
crowded with poor creatures seeking work, only to meet with flat refusal
from the citizens, who were angered and alarmed by so considerable an
addition to that pauper population whose hapless descendants still form the
bulk of the very appropriately styled “Submerged Tenth” of our times. This

rapid increase of an undesirable class soon resulted in a marked debasement
of the lowest orders, and so bad did the state of morals in the capital
become, that Ridley, Bishop of London, preached more than one sermon on
the subject, and, in a book entitled The Lamentation of England, gives a
hideous picture of the rising tide of “immorality, crime, drunkenness, hatred
and scorn of religion and its ministers amongst the people.” Domestic
chastity was held at a discount and reviled, and adultery was so common,
even in the highest ranks, that the Privy Council spoke of bringing the
question of prohibitive measures before Parliament. The Protector himself
had set aside his first wife, Catherine Ffoliot, although she had borne him a
son, on no valid pretext, legal or otherwise, in order to marry the higher
born Anne Stanhope—the temper of this Stanhope lady was so peppery that
he went in fear and trembling, and this led his contemporaries to say “he
had got rid of a dove to saddle himself with a scorpion.” Henry, son of
William, Earl of Pembroke, divorced Katherine, daughter of Henry, Duke of
Suffolk (Lady Jane’s younger sister), to marry Mary, daughter of Sir Henry
Sydney. The Earl of Northampton, Katherine Parr’s brother, divorced Anne,
daughter of the Earl of Essex, when he married Lord Cobham’s daughter
Elizabeth. Even Lady Jane Grey’s own legitimacy was disputed; and the
matrimonial adventures of her grandfather Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, have
already been mentioned.
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The wickedness of the upper classes spread downwards, and,
coupled with intense poverty, made “London worse than Babylon of old.”
Well might honest old Latimer cry out to the King, in one of his most
interesting sermons (preached in 1550 at Paul’s Cross), “For the love of
God take an order for marriage here in England.” Cecil also protests against
the prevailing looseness of morals: “Sacrilegious avarice ravenously
invaded Church livings, colleges, chantries, hospitals, and places dedicated
to the poor, as things superfluous. Ambition and emulation among the
nobility, presumption and disobedience among the common people, grew so
extravagant, that England seemed to be in a downright frenzy.” Hear Bishop
Burnet also on the same subject: “This gross and insatiable scramble after
the goods and wealth that had been dedicated to good designs, without
applying any part of it to promote the good of the Gospel, and the
instruction of the poor, made all people conclude that it was for robbery and
not for reformation that their zeal made them so active. The irregular and

immoral lives of many of the professors of the Gospel gave their enemies
great advantage to say that they ran away from confession, penance, fasting,
and prayer, only to be under no restraint, and to indulge themselves in a
licentious and dissolute course of life. By these things, that were but too
visible in some of the most eminent among them, the people were much
alienated from them; and as much as they were formerly against Popery,
they grew to have kinder thoughts of it, and to look on all the changes that
had been made, as designs to enrich some vicious characters, and to let in
an inundation of vice and wickedness upon the nation.” To stem this rising
tide would have been a task for a great statesman; Somerset was not a great
statesman, for, though many of his intentions were good, his methods were
primitively violent. He thought himself capable of repressing the inevitable
result of the evil wrought by Henry VIII and his followers by force of arms,
and by laws which, even in those days, chilled men with horror. To put
down the vagabondage in the country districts,—a consequence of the
disbanding of the great crowd of abbey retainers,—he signed a decree
whereby “Any man or woman found suspiciously near any house, or
wandering by the highways, or in the streets of any city, town, or village,
for three days together, without offering to work, or running away from
their labour, may be brought by the master, or any other person, before two
justices of the peace [these] having the power of the statute law to exercise
the said power by burning into his or her breast with a hot iron the letter V,
and to adjudge him or her to be the slave of the informer, to have and to
hold the said slave to him, his executors or assigns, for the space of two
years, only giving the said slave bread and water.” The “slave” was to be
made to work by blows or chains. In the event of his disappearing for the
space of fourteen days without leave, he could be punished by chaining up
and beating, “and if he [the owner of the slave] chose to prove the fault by
two witnesses before the justices, they shall cause such slave to be marked
on the forehead, or the ball of the cheek with a hot iron, with the sign of an
S, that he may be known for a loiterer, and [the justices] shall adjudge the
runaway to be the said master’s slave for ever.” The penalty of a second
escape from slavery was death by hanging “from the nearest tree, if
violent.” Any one was permitted to take children between five and fourteen
years of age from any wanderer, whether they were willing or not, and if the
child ran away from his master the latter had the power “to keep and punish
the said child in chains, or otherwise, and use him or her as his slave in all

points,” up to the age of twenty at least. The master of a grown-up slave had
the right, under section 4 of this law, “To let, set forth, sell, bequeath, or
give the service of such slaves to any person or persons, whatsoever.” The
law further empowered an owner of slaves “to put a ring of iron about his
neck, arm, or leg, for a better knowledge and surety of keeping him.”
Aiding a slave to escape was punished by the forfeiture of ten pounds by
the person so doing. These and other evils too numerous to detail helped to
fan the flame of popular discontent.
Presently the counties began to rise, the people of Devonshire and
Cornwall flew to arms to vindicate the rights of conscience. They would
have back the religion which their forefathers had held for a thousand years.
They demanded that the “Six Articles” should be put in force. The men of
Cornwall refused the Book of Common Prayer, because, they alleged, they
could not speak English, and could not understand it, while they were
accustomed to the Latin Mass, which they had been trained from infancy to
comprehend. Down into the West went Lord Russell (“Swearing Russell”),
dispatched by the Lord Protector. He behaved “more like a wild beast than a
human being”—as abominably as Lennox in Scotland. Hooper, who went
with him to preach to the rebels, describes his massacres as “the most
horrible butcheries of brave men that ever did happen in this world.”
Russell’s dispatches do not in any way minimise the horrors he perpetrated,
and “our men,” he says, “are daily supplied with large numbers of sheep
and fowl from the places where the farmers and squires forfeited such
property by their obstinate adherence to the Popish Mass, and other
superstitions.” Some three thousand men and several hundreds of women
are said to have suffered death in the fight for freedom of conscience in
Devonshire. The central counties rose too, and there were terrible riots in
Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Derbyshire, and Huntingdonshire.
But it was in Norfolk that the grandest demonstration against the
tyranny of the central Government occurred. It commenced at Aldborough,
and at first seemed a matter of little consequence; but the rumours of what
had happened in Kent, where new enclosures had been broken down,
greatly inflamed the people from one end to the other of the eastern
counties. There was little of the religious element in the revolt, although
two-thirds of the people, at least, still adhered to the old faith, but now
religious differences were set aside, and Catholics and Protestants stood

shoulder to shoulder in the fight for what we should call liberty. At first the
mass of the people were without a leader, but they soon found one in the
165
person of an honest tanner, named Robert Ket. It fell out on the 6th July
1549, at Wymondham, near Norwich, where many folk were watching, on a
small stage erected in the market-place, a sort of “mystery,” that the actors
touched sarcastically upon the leading events and scandals of the day. Ket,
who was present, leapt on to a barrel, and delivered a rough and ready
oration on burning topics, every word of which told, and roused the
enthusiasm of his audience to a very delirium. In a surging, motley crowd,
his hearers followed him from Wymondham to Mousehold Heath, near
Norwich, a desolate sweep of country commanding glorious views,
immortalised in later times by a Crome or a Vincent. Hereabouts, on an
elevation, grew a stalwart oak, beneath which Ket and his men encamped,
and where he held Courts of Justice, of Common Pleas, Chancery and
King’s Bench, “even as in Westminster Hall.” With a high and generous
sense of freedom, he allowed the orators, not only of his own, but of the
opposition party, to harangue the multitude from this tree of liberty, which
was now called “the Oak of Reformation.” The venerable tree had become a
rostrum, and all who had anything to say scrambled into it. Aldrich, Mayor
of Norwich, preached thence against the iniquities of Somerset’s rule.
Clergymen and priests, parsons and ex-monks, made a rough pulpit of it.
Matthew Parker, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, climbed into its
branches one day, and harangued the mob “on the unwisdom of their
attempt,” and the ruin they were sure to bring on themselves and their
families. He would have done better to hold his peace; no one listened to
him. So great was the crowd on Mousehold Heath, it looked on occasions
like a surging sea of heads, and sometimes, as in Hyde Park in our times,
separate groups of lecturers and hearers formed at a distance from the tree.
Suddenly, on July 31st, a glittering figure bearing the Royal Arms of
England, rode into the midst of Ket’s camp—his white horse sheathed like
himself in steel, a plume of white feathers nodding on its head. In a loud
voice the man in the “coat-of-arms” proclaimed a free pardon to all present
in that multitude, if they “would depart to their homes.” Some, weary of the
business and only seeking an excuse, turned their backs on the oak, and
trudged citywards; but Ket and the larger mass held their ground, saying
they wanted no pardon, having committed no offence—they only craved

justice, and that was the right of every Englishman. They were true subjects
of the King, they said, and had done him no harm—all they needed was
justice, justice! Turning his back on the tanner and the ancient oak, the
glittering herald scattered the people right and left, as he galloped away
across heath and common, dissolved into the mist like a meteor. When he
had vanished, Ket, fearing a treacherous surprise, called his merry men
together, and marched into Norwich, where they once more encountered the
royal messenger, who again offered them his master’s pardon. Ket replied
as disdainfully as ever, and the gorgeous official departed, whilst the rebels,
having seized all the arms and ammunition they could find, returned to their
camp on Mousehold Heath. To Court sped the herald, and the Protector,
alarmed at the turn of events, sent a force of fifteen hundred horsemen,
under the Marquis of Northampton, and some Italians led by a condottiére
named Malatesta, against the malcontents. These troops entered Norwich,
but Ket and his men were able to drive both Northampton and the Italian
out of the city, in a fight in which “fell Lord Sheffield and several
gentlemen; so that now, blood being up on both sides, the town was set fire
to and plundered.” Hearing this news, the Protector ordered another army of
eight thousand men, two thousand of whom were Germans, who were on
their way to Scotland under the Earl of Warwick, to turn southward, march
on Norwich, and disperse the rebels. After some resistance, Warwick
entered the city, only to be so fiercely assailed on every side that it was as
much as he could do to hold his ground. Ket galloped off towards
Dossingdale; but Warwick’s troopers came after him, and 3500 of his men
were cut to pieces. Yet another massacre followed, in which many of the
royal forces were killed. Ket was captured at last, and hanged without ado,
on the walls of Norwich Castle, his brother William (who had been a black
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monk of the Hospitallers of St. John) was swung from the steeple of
Wymondham Church, and nine of the ringleaders of the rebellion were
hanged on the “Tree of Reformation.” In the course of this expedition,
Warwick saw enough to convince him that every town and village,
farmstead and cottage, from the borders of Cambridge to the sea, was a
hotbed of rebellion, and that the names of Somerset and Warwick had
become loathed bywords.
Such a state of internal strife, combined with foreign defeat, made up
an aggregate of confusion which only a statesman of the highest genius

could attempt to quell. Somerset, a man of indifferent education, even if of
the best intentions, was quite unequal to the task. His natural defects of
character—his love of power and money, his contempt for the ancient
traditions of the country, his hatred of the religion of his ancestors, his
prejudices and his inveterate habit of scheming, now began to occupy the
malicious attention of his enemies, who felt the time for striking the
decisive blow, which should crush his power for ever, was drawing nigh.
Their plans were served by Warwick’s reception in London as a
conquering hero, recognised by the metropolis as a successful and able
leader. His ambitious views were well seconded by old ex-Chancellor
Wriothesley, who had a personal grudge against Somerset, and who now
took up his would-be rival as a promising instrument for his revenge.
Durham House presently became the rendezvous of a great number of the
older nobility, who were discontented with the new régime; and here they
plotted and schemed, with one great object in their hearts—the overthrow
of Somerset and the exaltation of Warwick. The Londoners, too, were
against the Protector. Boulogne had been lost mainly through his blundering
policy, and the French war had been notoriously unsuccessful. Moreover,
when Warwick demanded extra pay for some two hundred soldiers who had
assisted in quelling the Ket rebellion, and other risings, Somerset,
unconsciously playing into his enemy’s hands, refused the request, and the
mercenaries, naturally incensed against the Protector, held themselves ready
to aid Warwick without compunction.
Realising in some measure—especially after the defection of Pembroke
and Winchester to Warwick’s party—that, unless he made some effort, his
position would soon become altogether untenable, Somerset metaphorically
entrenched himself and his family behind the person of the King at
Hampton Court, and thence began to defy Warwick and his followers, so
that, about September 1549, the Court of England was divided into two
distinct camps—Warwick and the Council at Ely Place, Holborn; the
Protector and the principal members of his party, Cranmer, Sir John
Thynne, his secretary, Sir Thomas Smith, Cecil, Paget, and Petre, at
Hampton Court, where King Edward was held in a state bordering on
captivity. Then Somerset set to work to limit the power of his sovereign as
much as possible, so as to have him on his own side in the struggle with
Warwick, which was now beginning in earnest. On the ground that Warwick

was bribing the Court lackeys to spy on the King, the royal attendants at
Hampton Court were removed and replaced by Somerset’s own men. No
one could approach His Majesty’s person save through the Protector. A stop
was put to all those games and sports in which the little King delighted, on
the score of his health, and the lad was made to feel himself so completely a
prisoner, that he alludes sadly to the matter in his “Diary.” Meanwhile the
Duke himself assumed almost regal rank, styling himself “By the Grace of
God Lord Protector of the Realm, Highness”; using a prayer in which he is
described as being “called by Providence to rule”; addressing the French
King as “brother,” a title hitherto exclusively employed by the anointed
monarch; and, as a climax, offending the nobility by taking a seat in the
House of Lords above his peers. In October, he issued a proclamation,
commanding all the King’s loyal subjects “to repair with all haste to His
Highness at His Majesty’s Manor of Hampton Court, in most defensible
array, with harness and weapons, to defend his most royal person, and his
entirely beloved uncle the Lord Protector, against whom certain have
attempted a most dangerous conspiracy. And this do in all possible haste.
Given at Hampton Court the 5th day of October in the 3rd year of his most
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noble reign.” Hundreds of copies of this document were distributed all
over London; and Lord Edward Seymour, the Protector’s son, was
dispatched with letters in the King’s name to Lord Russell and Sir William
Herbert, who were still in the West, stamping out the rebellion,
commanding them to hasten to the aid of the King and himself, with all the
troops they could muster. These worthies, who would seem to have had
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personal grievances against Somerset, promptly threw in their lot with
Warwick’s party, promising assistance, and sending to Bristol for cannon
for that purpose. Somerset now set the printing-presses to work to distribute
thousands of handbills, calling on townsfolk and villagers to rise and
“protect the King and the Lord Protector,” “because he [the Lord Protector]
is the friend of the poor and the enemy of their oppressors.” The Lord
Mayor and Corporation were also commanded to dispatch a thousand men
to Hampton Court, and the Lieutenant of the Tower received orders to close
the gates of that fortress and refuse admission to members of the Council.
On 5th October, Petre was sent to London to interview Warwick and the
Council. He found them at Ely Place; but as Petre, thinking all lost, did not
return to Hampton Court, the Protector never got any answer to his

message. At the same time, the Council sent letters to the chief nobles
throughout the country, demanding their aid and dilating on Somerset’s
misdeeds. Within a few days, the Lord Mayor, the Aldermen, and the
Lieutenant of the Tower had all turned traitors to the Protector, and
promised Warwick their support.
169
Hampton Court, put into a state of defence, assumed the aspect of a
fortress; the moat was filled up, the gates were fortified, and every
battlement and tower was made ready in case of danger. Five hundred suits
of armour were brought out of the armoury for the palace servants, much to
the delight of King Edward, who watched the preparations. A vast crowd
assembled round the palace, and in the neighbourhood; and the Protector,
hoping that a sight of the King might rouse it to loyalty, led him into the
Base Court, where the soldiers were drawn up to receive him. The stricken
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youth appeared, leaning heavily on his uncle’s arm, with Archbishop
Cranmer, Paget, and Cecil behind him; the heralds sounded their trumpets,
and as the flare of the torches—for it was an autumn evening—flashed on
their armour, the troops greeted his sickly Majesty with three times three
cheers. From the Base Court the King and his escort passed over the stone
bridge across the moat in front of the great gate, where a motley throng was
gathered. Presently silence was obtained, and gradually the mumble of
many voices was hushed, as the young King’s feeble tones struck on the
still evening air, asking humbly, “I pray you be good to us and to our
uncle.” Then Somerset made a speech, pleading in such stupid and selfish
fashion for himself and the King that the rude crowd listened with
impatience, and gave no cheers when he had finished. Mortified and
disappointed, the Protector and the King turned their backs on the mob, and
silently re-entered the palace. The people round Hampton Court were more
bitter against Somerset than he imagined. Their grievance was not abstract
and national, but local; they could not forget that it was Somerset who, in
the first year of King Edward’s reign, had dechased Hampton Court Chase.
Seeing himself unable to inspire the people with anything like
enthusiasm for their sovereign (or for himself), Somerset determined on
more vigorous action, and on 7th October, the King, despite his “rewme,”
was hurried to Windsor, at nine or ten o’clock at night. Thence the Protector
wrote to the Council, asking what had become of Petre, and why no answer

had been vouchsafed to his message, adding, “that if any violence was
intended to the King’s person, he would resist till death.” Negotiations by
letter continued for some days, and there was even an interview on 12th
October at Windsor, between Warwick’s group and the Protector. On the
following day, a number of charges were promulgated against Somerset,
and the once all-powerful “Lord Protector of these Realms” was arrested
and confined for the night in Windsor Castle. Next day he was conducted to
the Tower, whither most of his adherents and associates in the Hampton
Court adventure had preceded him; and he had the mixed pleasure of being
received en route by his quondam friend the Lord Mayor, who had lately
turned traitor to his cause. Meanwhile Edward, very glad, no doubt, to be
rid of so austere and troublesome an uncle, returned from Windsor to
Hampton Court, and appointed Warwick Lord Great Master and Lord High-
Admiral. So far, John Dudley’s plot had prospered.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF SOMERSET

I
n the earlier stages of his struggle for power, when he felt himself
insecure with the Protestant party, Warwick had endeavoured to
secure Catholic support by promising the old religion a satisfactory
amount of freedom; but no sooner was he safe in his saddle, during
Somerset’s imprisonment (1549–50), than he became its inveterate enemy.
The Protector had made an effort to liberate Gardiner, but Warwick kept
him more closely confined than ever. During the new ruler’s term of office,
the internal disorders of the country continued as acute, in every detail, as
under Somerset’s régime; all military works fell into decay, no new ships of
war were built, fortifications came to a standstill, and many troops were
disbanded. The coinage was debased, though the Protector had worked hard
to improve it; the tribunals were as corrupt as at any period. To ensure the
passing of his vigorous religious measures, and carry on his administration,
Warwick “packed” both Parliament and Council with his own staunchest
followers. It was almost a piece of good fortune for him when Somerset
was released from the Tower, for so great was the general dissatisfaction
with his administration that he would probably have been overthrown in his
turn.

EDWARD SEYMOUR, DUKE OF
SOMERSET
FROM AN ENGRAVING AFTER THE PAINTING BY
HOLBEIN

During the winter of 1549–50, Somerset, confined in the gloomy old
fortress, was striving to retrieve his tottering fortunes. His first move was to
sign (in December) a confession of “his guilt, presumption, and incapacity.”

Early in January 1550, a bill, brought before Parliament and passed in both
Houses, promised him his life, on condition that he forfeited his estates to
the King, gave up his positions, and paid a fine of £2000 a year in land. He
attempted to appeal against the extent of the forfeiture, but the Council
grew so menacing that the fallen Protector, with visions, it may be, of
Tower Hill and the block before his eyes, thought it best to pocket his
grievance. So on 2nd February he wrote to the Council expressing his
gratitude to the King for sparing his life and treating him so leniently.
According to a letter from Ab Ulmis to Bullinger, dated from Oxford, 4th
December 1551, Warwick generously made an effort to save the Duke by
imploring him in court to throw himself upon the mercy of the King, which
he did. On the 4th of that same month he was released, after giving a bond
of £10,000 as a guarantee of good behaviour, and on the peculiar conditions
that he should not go more than four miles away from the Council, nor yet
come to the meetings unless summoned; further, if the King went near the
palace at Sheen or Somerset’s own house at Sion (in one or other of which
two places he was to abide), the former Protector was to depart instantly.
The Duke’s full pardon was given on 16th February. At the same time, all
those who had been imprisoned with him were released, after being mulcted
in heavy fines.
Immediately after his liberation Somerset joined the Court at
Greenwich, and was shortly afterwards made a Privy Councillor! Indeed,
before many months were over he had regained his former position and
influence over the King so completely that Warwick considered it safer to
become, at least publicly, reconciled to him. For this purpose he arranged a
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marriage between John, Viscount Lisle, his own eldest son, and the Lady
Ann Seymour, Somerset’s eldest daughter. This marriage took place on 3rd
June (1550) at the royal palace at Sheen, and in the King’s presence. On the
following day occurred yet another aristocratic wedding, also attended by
His Majesty, that of Warwick’s third son, Sir Robert Dudley, afterwards
famous as the Earl of Leicester of Elizabeth’s reign, with that renowned
heroine of romance, Amy Robsart. Sir Walter Scott, in his Kenilworth, falls
into the error—unless, indeed, he wilfully disregarded facts for the sake of
artistic effect—of placing the scene of this marriage in Devonshire, and of
describing it as clandestine. On the contrary, it was quite an open affair,
mentioned by King Edward in his Diary in the already quoted entry for 4th

June 1550, relating to the cruel sport of duck-pulling. The King seems to
have attended this wedding, but he was too ill to be present at the far more
important marriages of his two cousins three years later. About this time,
the summer of 1550, the ex-Protector’s forfeited lands were restored to him,
and he was allowed to reconstitute his household as in the past.
In February 1550 a proposal was brought before Parliament for the
restoration of Somerset to the office and title of Lord Protector, and was
only quashed by the prorogation of that body. He seemed in a fair way of
regaining his old position of power, and the Dorsets, thinking no doubt that
it would be well to be on friendly terms with him, began to bethink
themselves once more of the old project of marriage between their eldest
daughter, Lady Jane Grey, and young Hertford, who had once been on such
intimate terms in their family circle that, as we have seen, the Lady Frances
had on more than one occasion called him her “son.” She now wrote to
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Cecil referring to some service Somerset had rendered her—this may
have been her reason for reviving the matrimonial project—and stated
incidentally that she much desired a match between his (Somerset’s) son
and her daughter, but “that she wished to let the parties have their free
choice.” Somerset does not, however, appear to have approved of the plan,
for there is no evidence that he did anything now to further it, and when it
was originally proposed he had allowed the matter to fall into abeyance. It
is not at all improbable that the lady’s letter, if communicated to him, put
him on his guard against traps such as the wily Dorsets might set for him
and his son. The incident is not devoid of interest, as demonstrating how the
Dorsets never ceased their intrigues and matrimonial schemes, and also how
even Warwick’s best friends were none too sure of his eventual success,
now his rival was again at large. The Dorsets were evidently anxious to
have a foot in each camp; but this time they failed, and ended by falling
back on Northumberland’s youngest son as a husband for the much-
enduring Jane.
Meanwhile, Warwick was contemplating, by no means complacently,
the honours and favour heaped upon the rival for whose ruin he was only
awaiting some favourable opportunity. His first chance of proving his
unvarying hatred of the Protector came on 15th October of the year 1550,
on the occasion of the death of the aged Lady Seymour. This event placed
her son, as we have already seen, in a quandary—a State funeral, such as

was due to the King’s grandmother, would have enabled Warwick to accuse
him of a fresh assumption of regal dignity; a private funeral, on the other
hand, might be maliciously construed into disrespect shown to the
sovereign. Wherefore Somerset consulted the Council as to what should be
done. The reply, as already mentioned, was that a State funeral was not at
all necessary, nor even any formal Court mourning, since such observances
served “rather to pomp than to any edifying,” an opinion peculiar to the
Council, for in the preceding August a State funeral (that of Lord
Southampton) had been organised with all possible “pomp.” This denial of
the honour due to Lady Seymour’s remains did not, of course, proceed from
any idea of economy or Puritanism, but merely from the Council’s desire to
insult Somerset and his family. It was an opportunity neglected, for if
Seymour had insisted upon a State funeral, the events of the following year
might have been anticipated, and the accusation of usurping regal honours
brought against him at once. Another curious fact in connection with this
funeral is that Somerset—a shining light amongst Reformers—wrote to ask
Gardiner to “offer up Mass for the health of his mother’s soul after her
173
death” (!)
Another method adopted by Warwick was that already employed by
Sudeley in his struggle with his elder brother, of spreading calumnies
against his rival through the agency of a third person, and ensuring their
reaching the King’s ears. After a time these tales began to make their
impression on his juvenile Majesty, though Somerset, for his part, was
working hard to recover the King’s favour entirely, and consolidate his own
position. Rich, the Lord Chancellor, an infamous traitor, gave him his aid
and acted as his spy, keeping him informed of every movement made by
Warwick and his party. One of Rich’s letters on this subject, addressed
merely “To the Duke,” was handed by mistake to the Duke of Norfolk, next
to Warwick, Somerset’s bitterest enemy; thus each opponent had some idea
of his adversary’s plans. Still, so subtle was Warwick’s work that there was
no movement against Somerset visible enough to justify him in taking open
measures; there was nothing for it but to bide his time, and do his best,
meanwhile, to ingratiate himself with the King. In public, the rivals
appeared the best of friends, and, to maintain this pleasant fiction,
Somerset, on 11th October 1551, attended what must have been a painful
ceremony to him—the investiture of Warwick with the title of Duke of

174
Northumberland in the Great Hall of Hampton Court. The mortification
caused by this evidence of his rival’s growing power, a power he could not
openly attack, must have been bitter indeed.
Side by side with Northumberland’s intrigues, the national discontent,
of which we have already given instances, and which had been intensified
by Northumberland’s brief term of office, was a potent factor in the
eventual ruin of the Protector: for we may be sure Somerset’s enemies took
good care to father Northumberland’s misrule on his rival. It would be
useless for our purpose, though easy indeed, to cite further and numerous
instances of the universal disorder into which the realm had fallen. Suffice
to say that the England of this period strongly resembled France under the
Directory. Everything was upside down. The faith of the people had
received a staggering blow, from which it would take nearly a hundred
years to recover, and then only in a measure, for to this day the masses of
the lowest class of the people of England remain in terrible darkness, alike
indifferent to influences religious and moral. In the reign of Henry VII, and
in the first years of Henry VIII, no hale man or woman dreamt of missing
Mass on a Sunday: under Edward VI, Latimer complained that the churches
were deserted, and Gardiner describes the lower classes as gradually falling
into a state of paganism. This relaxation of religious observance influenced
the popular morals, and in every class the domestic habits of the country
were most disreputable. So bad was the condition of things, in fact, that
Northumberland and his party came to realise that Somerset’s worst enemy
was himself; in other words, that the general discontent and misery arising
from his maladministration—or, to be just, in some cases from causes over
which he had no control—furnished a more powerful argument against him
than the spiteful inventions of his opponents. They must have felt confident
that any blow they struck at him would meet with little or no opposition, but
rather with encouragement from the people, who had turned the cold
shoulder on his appeal at Hampton Court some two years previously.
Accordingly, on 16th October 1551, the Duke of Somerset was
175
suddenly re-arrested in the Council Chamber at Hampton Court, and
taken to the Tower to await his trial on charges made against him to
Northumberland by Sir Thomas Palmer, “a brilliant but unprincipled
soldier.” Palmer asserted that Somerset and his friends had plotted to raise

the North of England against Northumberland; that he had intended to
secure the Tower, to incite the populace of London to revolt, to seize the
Great Seal, with the aid of the City apprentices, and, finally, to murder the
Duke and his principal supporters at a supper in Lord Paget’s house. There
would seem to have been but little truth in these charges; Northumberland
at a later date, at any rate, confessed that they were fabrications, and
Palmer, before his death, described them as the products of
Northumberland’s fertile imagination. This second trial of the Lord
Protector took place on 1st December in Westminster Hall. The judges were
seven and twenty peers, amongst them all the prisoner’s enemies—
Northumberland, Northampton, and Pembroke, with the Marquis of
Winchester as President. The business was conducted with the unfairness
which distinguished nearly all the political trials of this period; no witnesses
for the prosecution were produced in person, but their depositions were
read. The indictments accused Somerset of plotting to lay hands on
Northumberland and others, to seize the Great Seal and the Tower, and to
deprive the sovereign of his kingly power; he was also charged with having
incited the citizens of London to rebel against the King. The official
indictment made no mention of his supposed intention of assassinating
Northumberland; neither was Paget, in whose house it was alleged the
murder was to have taken place, ever tried for his share in the plot. This
melodramatic accusation would, in fact, seem to have been entirely dropped
at the last moment. Somerset, who denied the charges, was acquitted of
treason on the first count, but found guilty on that of felony for inciting the
citizens to revolt. There is ample evidence that he never did anything of the
kind. Winchester, a few months back his enthusiastic ally, pronounced the
death sentence on the unhappy man. Its effect upon him was sudden and
staggering. He became pale, and fell upon his knees before
Northumberland, Northampton, and Pembroke, who turned their backs
whilst he besought the people to pray for him and his family. And so he was
ordered back to the Tower to prepare for death. The count of treason not
having been proved, the axe did not face the prisoner on the way back to his
cell, and “the people, supposing he had been clerely quitt, when they see the
axe of the Tower put downe, made such a shryke [shriek] and castinge up of
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caps, that it was heard into the Long Acre beyonde Charing crosse.” This
must have cheered him greatly. He may have thought and hoped that the
people loved him still.

King Edward is said to have expressed considerable anxiety on his
uncle’s account, but his distress did not prevent him from indulging,
according to his own statement, notwithstanding his delicate health, in
177
exceptionally riotous Christmas festivities. The popular joy over his
acquittal on the charge of treason proved fatal to Somerset, for it convinced
Northumberland more than ever of the necessity of destroying his rival.
Holinshed sarcastically informs us that “Christmas being thus passed and
spent with much mirth and pastime, it was thought now good to proceed to
the execution of the judgment against the Duke of Somerset.”
Notwithstanding the frequency of such events, the execution of so great a
nobleman produced a considerable impression throughout London. Though
every precaution was taken to prevent the assembling of an unusual crowd,
Tower Hill was black with people long before dawn on 22nd January 1552,
the day of doom. The vast assembly had gathered in the expectation of the
Duke’s reprieve rather than of his death. There was an extraordinary muster
of halberdiers, men-at-arms, sheriffs and their officers. At eight o’clock
Somerset was brought forth. He faced the axe manfully, knelt down and
said his prayers, and then, rising to his feet, made a speech. Unlike most of
his peers, he did not deny with his last breath the religion he had helped to
promulgate; there was nothing he regretted less, said he, when on the brink
of his bloody fate, than his endeavours “to reduce religion to its present
state, and he exhorted the people to continue steadfast in the Reformation
principles, and thereby escape the wrath of God.” Just as he was about,
according to custom, to take formal leave of the crowd, great confusion was
caused by the arrival of a body of soldiers with bills and halberds, who had
received orders to attend the execution. Arriving late, these men dashed
towards the scaffold, and their onrush, combined with some noise as of
thunder,—“a great sound which appeared unto many above in the element
as it had been the sound of gunpowder set on fire in a close house bursting
out,”—terrified the mob, and an awful panic ensued: spectators standing on
the edge of the Tower moat lost their balance and fell into the water, and not
a few were trampled underfoot and others broke their necks. Presently, in
the midst of the hubbub, during which Somerset was left so unguarded that,
it is said, he might easily have escaped, Sir Anthony Browne was seen
riding towards the spot. The mob, somewhat recovered from its
consternation, imagined he was bringing a reprieve, and shouted, “A
pardon, a pardon!” casting their caps and cloaks into the air. But Sir

Anthony brought no message of mercy with him. The doomed Duke had
been standing quietly on the edge of the scaffold, watching the turmoil. He
too, when he heard the shouts of “Pardon!” imagined his nephew had
remembered him; but he soon realised his error. The hectic colour which for
a moment had flushed his cheeks with the gleam of hope faded as, in a
ringing voice, he concluded his interrupted speech; and that done, he
bestowed his rings on the headsman, said a few words to the Dean of
Christchurch, bared his neck, knelt on the straw, and laid his head on the
block. Another instant and the axe had fallen. Edward Seymour, Duke of
Somerset and first Lord Protector of England, was buried in the Church of
St. Peter-ad-Vincula within the Tower on the north side of the choir,
between the coffins of the Queens Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard; the
funeral rites were those of the Church of England, as then constituted, “but
178
hurried and simple as for a pauper.”
The character of Edward Seymour has been the subject of much
discussion; but it would seem fair to seek a via media between the over-
severe condemnation of some historians and the exaggerated praise of
others. If we cannot exalt him to the high pedestal upon which he has been
set by Mr. Pollard, we need not fall into the error of degrading him to the
low level assigned him by eighteenth-century historians. Somerset must not
be judged by modern standards. If the balance of good and evil in his
character is considered, and we contemplate him by the light of the middle
sixteenth century, we may even come to share the opinion of a large section
of the London populace of his day—mostly those of the Protestant party, be
179
it said—who looked on him as an admirable and God-fearing man, who
did his best to free the people from much of the superstition, oppression,
and injustice from which it suffered. His faults, his ambition and lust of
power, were very human; and the evils of his administration were largely
due to the condition to which Henry VIII’s misrule had reduced the country.
The age in which he lived was very unpropitious to statesmen and leaders
of men, for, no matter how intelligent they might be, some rival lurking in
the shade was sure to be ready to trip them up and take their place at the
first opportunity. On the whole, Somerset seems to have worked for what he
believed to be the interests of his King and the good of the Protestant
religion, to which he was consistently faithful. His domestic life was clean,
and in an age of place-hunters and libertines Edward Seymour was one of

the most respectable men. Neither entirely mediocre nor altogether great,
the Duke of Somerset may be described as un grand homme manqué—one
who just missed greatness.

* * * * *
Note.—A long letter from a Reformer named Francis Burgoyne,
written from London to John Calvin on 22nd January 1552, gives a most
detailed account of the Duke of Somerset’s execution, and an analysis of his
character which is of great interest. He says: “Hence arise our tears, hence
arises the all but universal distress, that on this very day, about 9 o’clock,
the Duke of Somerset of pious memory, when hardly any person looked for
or suspected such an event, was led out publicly to execution. I myself was
not present at the sight ... but many of my friends related to me what they
had seen and heard.” Then follows a long account, given to Burgoyne by
Utenhovius, of Somerset’s last speech, continuing that “he spake all this ...
with a look and gesture becoming the firmness of a hero, and the modesty
of a Christian; (they say) that he was splendidly attired, as he used to be
when about to attend upon the King, or to appear in public on some special
occasion; that he gave the executioner some gold rings which he drew from
his fingers, together with all his clothes; only to a certain gentleman, the
Lieutenant of the Tower of London ... he gave his sword and upper garment.
What weeping, and wailing, and lamentation, followed upon the death of
this nobleman, it is as difficult to describe as to believe. It is stated by some
persons who belong to the household of some of the Councillors ... that by
the Royal indulgence the capital punishment had been remitted, with a free
pardon, while the Duke was yet in prison, and that whole Council sent to
inform him of it more than once; but when he rejected with contempt the
grace that was offered to him, (I know not whether in reliance on his own
innocence, or on the favour of the King and some other parties, or on his
own influence, and wealth, and rank, or on some other delusive persuasion),
the whole Council were at length so irritated by this conduct, that they
determined that they would no longer endure that excessive arrogance of
the man.... It is quite evident, in my opinion, that the deceased nobleman,
like other men, was not without his faults, and those perhaps more grievous
than could be passed over by God without punishment in this life.... This
man was endowed and enriched with most excellent gifts of God both in
body and mind, but is not that the best gift, that God has chosen the light of

the Gospel to shine forth by his instrumentality throughout this Kingdom....
I do not now mention how God had so exalted him, from being born in a
private station, that as the late King’s brother-in-law, the brother of a
Queen, the uncle of the present King, he had no one here superior to him in
any degree of honour, and then especially, when appointed Lord Protector
of the Realm, he was all but King, or rather esteemed by everyone as the
King of the King.” Burgoyne then passes to the subject of Somerset’s
religion: “During almost the whole time when we were both of us here, he
had become so lukewarm in the service of Christ as scarcely to have
anything less at heart than the state of Religion in this country. Nor indeed
did he retain in this respect anything worthy of commendation, excepting
that, as far as words go, he always professed himself a Gospeller when
occasion required such acknowledgement.” “It is notorious to every one in
this Kingdom,” he continues, “that he was the occasion of his brother’s
death, who, having been convicted on a charge of treason which no one
could prove against him by legal evidence, and of which when brought to
execution he perseveringly denied the truth, was beheaded owing to his
information, instigated by I know not what hatred and rivalry against his
brother.... In fine, that very act, for which he was last of all thrown into
prison, was both unworthy of a Christian such as he professed himself to be,
and also sufficiently shews that the most part of the crimes which I have
laid to his charge, have their foundation in truth. For he was himself the
head and author of a certain conspiracy against the Duke of
Northumberland, lately called the Earl of Warwick, whom he pursued with
the most unrelenting hatred, as having been foremost in depriving him of
the rank of Protector, and being himself regarded from that time by the
King’s Councillors as occupying that office; the Duke of Somerset, I say,
gained over some accomplices in this conspiracy even from among the
Council itself (who are now in prison awaiting the King’s pleasure
respecting them), by which it was agreed among them, that on the Duke of
Northumberland being dispatched (together with any of his friends who
should oppose their views) either by violence, or in secret, or in any other
way, they should place the entire administration of the Kingdom in their
own hands, but that the Duke of Somerset should be invested with the chief
authority, or even be restored to the order of Protector.” The writer, after
saying that “at his death he manifested some favourable marks of Christian
penitence,” concludes: “Two reasons are present to my mind which increase

my regret; one of them is, that we have lost so great a man, and one who
was not so entirely corrupted but that there remained some hope both of his
reformation, and also that the interest of the Gospel would in any case be
advanced by his authority and protection, since there is certainly the
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greatest scarcity and want of such characters in this country.”

CHAPTER XIV

THE LADY JANE MARRIES THE LORD
GUILDFORD

T
he execution of the Duke of Somerset left the stage clear for
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Northumberland, who was now all-powerful. More cunning
than his predecessor, he avoided offending the nation by
assuming the title of “Protector,” and rousing his colleagues’ jealousy by
styling himself “Highness.” Little cared he whether he sat on the King’s
right hand or on his left, so long as his young sovereign obeyed him
implicitly—on this point he was resolved. His ambition was sordid enough:
he had no care for the people, but a great deal for his own advancement to
wealth and power; and his wife and children were as greedy and ambitious
as himself. He had flattered the Catholics, and if Princess Mary had been
younger, and willing to marry one of his sons, the religious history of
England might have been different. Somerset had always entertained a
friendly feeling for Mary, who was kind to his wife, while he hated
Elizabeth; Northumberland loathed both Henry VIII’s daughters equally.
Almost his first act on entering office, nominally as Great Master of the
Household or Lord High Steward, but virtually as Lord Protector of the
Realm, was to annoy Mary by opening up the question of her chaplains, and
her right to have Mass said in her private chapel—a blunder which nearly
resulted in a war with the Emperor, her cousin, to whom the Princess
appealed. Then he lent Cranmer a hand in persecuting the Anabaptists. The
fires of Smithfield flared up once more. Joan Bocher, and Peter of Paris a
Dutchman, were put to death, though Cranmer found it hard to get Edward
VI to set his hand to the warrant for Joan’s execution. With great alacrity,
then, Northumberland pushed on Somerset’s iconoclastic vandalism, till he

made our glorious cathedrals and churches as bare as meeting-houses.
Shiploads of holy images, chalices, pictures, and painted windows were
carted out of the churches, defaced, destroyed, or sold, and carried abroad,
even as far as Constantinople, where a cargo of “imaugys” from England
fetched a high figure among the Catholics of Pera and Galata. So wanton
was the destruction of Church linen at this time that the citizens, disgusted
at seeing it burnt at the street corners, petitioned Northumberland to hand it
over to the hospitals.

The Catholics, perceiving they had gained nothing in return for the help
they had given Northumberland, retired into obscurity, to wait for better
days; whilst the Reformers acclaimed the zeal of a man who fought so
fiercely against the faith in which he eventually elected to die. It presently
occurred to the Lord High Steward that the young King was failing fast.
The servants about the Court saw death in the boy’s pale face and shrunken
form, and heard its stealthy advance in his feeble voice and hacking cough.
To curry favour for himself, Northumberland allowed the dying monarch
greater freedom than he had hitherto enjoyed. Sports and pastimes were
arranged for his amusement, and if we may believe his Journal, he enjoyed
them after his own fashion. Nobody had been so kind to him since his uncle
Thomas’s death! But sports and pastimes could not galvanise the attenuated
lad into fresh vigour, and he grew worse every day, watched with anxious
eyes by Northumberland and Suffolk, and above all by Cranmer, whose
hopes were concentrated in him.
Since his accession to great wealth the Duke of Suffolk had gradually
182
abandoned Bradgate for London and fixed his family’s abode at Sheen,
in the abbot’s buildings of the once opulent Carthusian monastery, which he
183
had adapted as a private residence. Here the Suffolks resided towards the
end of the year 1552 and during the early part of the momentous year 1553.
The house, a large and noble structure, with a long Gothic gallery running
from end to end, stood close to the venerable palace built by Edward the
Confessor. It was supposed to be haunted—the place was often disturbed
after dark by the sound of footsteps, the rustle of ghostly garments, and the
mutter of unearthly voices; but the most ghastly incident of all was one
which struck sudden terror into the hearts of the Duke and Duchess as they
paced the gallery in the gloaming. All at once a skeleton hand and arm

thrust itself from the wall, and brandished in their faces a sword, or, as some
said, an axe, dripping with blood. It should be remembered that the Lady
Frances was now in possession of nearly all the Carthusian property in and
about London, which had been granted by Henry VIII to her father, Charles
Brandon, and which she had lately inherited from her stepbrothers; and this
spectre may have been contrived by some friend of the exiled Brotherhood
to impress on the Duchess and her brood the sacrilegious origin of this
wealth, which certainly did not bring them good luck.
Nearly opposite to this uncanny residence stood Syon or Sion House,
an ancient Bridgetine convent which had been presented at the Dissolution
to the late Duke of Somerset, and which his rival, the Duke of
Northumberland, had filched from his widow. As the scene of the most
dramatic event in Lady Jane Grey’s short life, it still retains considerable
historical interest; but although much of the old convent is standing, the
cloisters and other portions have been hidden under the plaster and stucco
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of an exceedingly ugly structure of the debased Victorian villa type.
Northumberland, although he had not yet evolved the scheme of
marrying his only bachelor and youngest son to Jane Grey, none the less
considered the amity of the Suffolks too valuable an asset to be neglected.
At this time Northumberland’s power and certainly his secrets were largely
shared by his ally, the Duke of Suffolk, who never took any initiative or
made a step in any direction without the consent of his all-powerful friend,
185
who knew him to be a “weakling.”

SUPPOSED PORTRAIT OF LADY JANE GREY,
FORMERLY IN THE COLLECTION OF COL.
ELLIOTT, AND NOW AT OXFORD UNIVERSITY
FROM AN ENGRAVING AFTER THE PAINTING BY HOLBEIN

Northumberland, it would seem, did not at first intend Guildford for
Lady Jane Grey, but for the Lady Margaret Clifford, whose right to the
throne was at this time considered less disputable, she being Henry VIII’s

own grand-niece, eldest daughter of the Lady Eleanor Brandon, the younger
sister of the Duchess of Suffolk. Born after the nullification of Charles
Brandon’s marriage with Lady Mortimer, her legitimacy was indisputable,
whereas the enemies of the Suffolks were busily engaged about this time
(1552) in spreading a report that Jane was illegitimate, her mother, the Lady
Frances, having come into the world during the lifetime of the said Lady
Mortimer. This insinuation was probably made by Lady Powis, Brandon’s
eldest daughter by his second wife, Anne Browne. At one moment this
matter of Lady Jane’s illegitimacy came very near saving her life, but
Queen Mary, to whom the matter was represented, refused, it is said, to take
such a possibility into consideration, out of respect for the memory of her
aunt, the Queen-Duchess of Suffolk, whose marriage would have been
invalidated if this assumption had been proved. Among Catholics, however,
Lady Jane’s legitimacy was much disputed, and the Lady Eleanor prudently
refused to encourage any great intimacy between her daughter and
Northumberland’s son; she and her family, indeed, kept themselves in the
background as much as they possibly could. At last, even though the boy-
King had been induced to take an interest in the projected marriage, and had
written both to Northumberland and to the Earl of Cumberland on the
subject, the Duke altered his mind, and in 1553, with the casual fashion of
those days, having decided to marry Guildford to the Lady Jane, he
“offered” the Lady Margaret Clifford to his own younger brother, Sir
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Andrew Dudley.
Perhaps that which finally decided Northumberland to abandon his first
project was the unguarded and compromising language used by a certain
Mrs. Huggones, a former servant of the widowed Duchess of Somerset.
This good woman’s tongue having been loosened on one occasion by too
liberal potations—the conversation is said to have taken place during
supper—openly lamented the Duke of Somerset’s misfortunes (the incident
occurred about August 1552), called the young King an unnatural nephew,
and vivaciously remarked she wished she “had the jerking of him.” She
added that Lord Guildford Dudley was to marry the daughter of the Earl of
Cumberland, the match having been planned by the King, and finally, “with
a stoute gesture,” she cried, “have at the Crown, with your leave.” Further,
she used “unseemly saiyenges, neither meet to be spoken, nor conseyled of
any hearer.” Sir William Stafford, in whose house at Rochford, in Essex, the

affair apparently occurred, wrote to the Privy Council an account of these
injudicious remarks. On 8th September, Mrs. Huggones was arraigned
before Sir Robert Bowes, Master of the Robes, and Sir Arthur Darcy,
Lieutenant of the Tower, acting for the Privy Council. She denied what had
been said of her, and expressed great admiration for Northumberland. “And,
moreover, she being examined of the last article concerning the marriage of
the Lord Guildford Dudley with the Earl of Cumberland’s daughter, she
deposeth that she heard it spoken in London (but by whom she now
remembereth not) that the King’s maty had made such a marriage, and so
she told the first night that she came to Rochford to supper, showing herself
to be glad thereof, and so she thought that all the hearers were also glad at
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that marriage.” Maybe the fact that her daughter was becoming the
subject of popular gossip was another incentive to the proud Lady Eleanor
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to place obstacles in the way of Northumberland’s proposal.
There is no evidence that any of the Reformers visited the Suffolks at
Sheen, but it is probable they did so, for the success of the
Northumberlands’ scheme depended on the zeal of Lady Jane for
Protestantism being kept at fever heat; and we may therefore conclude her
Reforming friends were frequent guests at the ex-monastery.
The foreign Reformers were at this time very active all over England.
Cranmer was particularly engaged with them, sending the smartest among
them to lecture at Oxford and Cambridge, and inviting the great
Melanchthon, and even Calvin himself, to visit England and preach,
although the religious opinions of both were very different from his own.
He even proposed to Calvin the formation of a sort of Protestant
œcumenical council in London in opposition to the Council of Trent. In
March 1552, he wrote to Calvin: “Our adversaries are now holding their
Council at Trent for the establishment of their errors. Shall we neglect to
call together here in London a godly synod for restoring and propagating
the truth?”
There is nothing in Reformation correspondence so interesting or so
curious as the Zurich Letters—no writings so rich in details and revelations.
The tone of these old letters, of Melanchthon, Calvin, Cranmer, Hooper,
Conrad Pellican, Œcolampadius, Hilles, Hales, Gualter, Fagius, Stumphius,
Ab Ulmis, Bullinger, Bucer, etc. etc., is strangely modern. It is easy to

imagine oneself to be reading the documentary evidence of some great
modern revolutionary scheme for “the betterment of humanity.” All these
worthies held themselves in a “godly” light uncommon to the rest of
mankind. They, and they only, brandished the torch of truth, albeit they did
not by any means hold identical views on even the most vital points of
Christian faith—but they were as one when face to face with their common
enemy, the Pope, and the religion he represented, and any blow dealt at
Lutheranism was an equal joy to them. Cranmer would have burnt half of
them to cinders for their “heresies” had they been Englishmen—he sent
Anne Askew and Joan Bocher to the stake for holding “errors” which
coincided with those of some of his foreign friends, Stumphius, Fagius, and
Calvin, for instance! He would have hanged a Briton for stating in plain
English his belief in predestination—but none the less invited over to a
synod the great teacher of that desperate doctrine. These men were, no
doubt, in earnest, and have left some strange details of their doings which
throw floods of light on the history and mentality of the times in which they
lived. They believed themselves to be so many God-appointed apostles, and
addressed each other as “father in Christ,” even substituting for their
common Teutonic names rich-sounding classical ones—Œcolampadius,
Stumphius, Massarius, Utenhovius, Terentianus, Vadianus, Osiander,
Dryander, Ochianus, etc. They would willingly have suffered death
heroically and patiently for what they believed to be the truth. On the other
hand, they could hate like very devils; Mary to them was Jezebel or Ataliah,
Philip, Satan, Pole, a hell-hound, and the Pope, the Scarlet Whore and
worse than the Devil. They could not speak decently of their adversaries;
and it is precisely here that we see their influence on the youthful Jane—the
reason why, if she really wrote the letter to Harding after his reversion to
Catholicism, she employed a viragoish language unworthy of so gentle a
Christian.
We have no positive proof of how the two families, of Northumberland
and Suffolk, passed their time in the more genial months of the years 1552–
3, when the Thames is pleasantest, especially in the neighbourhood where
they had elected to pitch their respective camps. The two Dukes and their
Duchesses cannot always have been engaged in political intrigues; they
must have given themselves some occasional recreation, and we may
imagine that archery, tennis, and other sports, dancing, music, and such
amusements, were frequently indulged in at Sheen and Sion, the two state

barges incessantly crossing and recrossing the river, from one mansion to
the other. We can picture the scene on the lawn in front of Sion, down
which the handsome Duchess of Northumberland often went to welcome
the Lady Frances and her daughters as they landed from their barge, leading
them, with the stately ceremony of those days, from the water-gate to the
terrace in front of the former convent, and so into the cloisters along which
the sisterhood of St. Bridget had so often and so recently passed in solemn
procession to their now ruined chapel. And then came the gay romp in the
hall and the merry games of the young folk, in which even the austere little
Lady Jane would condescend to mingle, to the righteous consternation,
doubtless, of her friends from Zurich and Geneva. Here, too, must have
come the handsome Ambrose Dudley, lately married to the Lady Anne
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Seymour; —but did that lady visit the house of the man who had
compassed the ruin and death of her father? And here Robert Dudley,
afterwards the famous Earl of Leicester, may have brought his affianced
wife, the fair Amy Robsart of Kenilworth fame. And the Lady Mary Sidney,
Northumberland’s elder daughter, and wife of Sir Henry Sidney, soon to
become the mother of one of the most illustrious men of the Elizabethan
age, no doubt joined the circle with her clever young husband. In these
hours of relaxation, when the dark undertakings to which the politics of
those bloody days forced them were forgotten, these youths overflowed
with animal spirits, and it is more than likely that Jane and her sister
Katherine, and even the little Lady Mary, romped merrily with their guests.
It was a romping age, the good old healthy country dances were in high
favour, and the best performer was he who could lift his lady highest off the
ground, or could cross his legs twice in a pirouette before he touched the
floor again! Northumberland himself was famous as a dancer of
extraordinary elegance and skill. That the Calvinism in which they had
dabbled had not as yet stirred up Henry of Suffolk and his Tudor consort to
a proper pitch of “godliness” is evident, for a company of players who had
enacted comedies, tragedies, and tragi-comedies at Tylsey in the previous
year, repeated their performances at Sheen in the winter of 1552–3, and
brought a smile, perchance, to the pale lips of the studious Lady Jane, and
evoked a hearty laugh from her materialistic mother, who, for aught we
know to the contrary,—let us hope it was not so!—may already have begun
to allow a certain ginger-headed Master Adrian Stokes, His Lordship’s
Groom of the Chambers, to pay her compliments which a great Princess and

an honest woman ought to have nipped in the bud. Tradition has it that
Northumberland and his colleague of Suffolk often played a game of chess
together, and that Suffolk would wax irritable if Northumberland won more
often than himself.
No doubt, as soon as the Cumberland affair was broken off, and
Northumberland had decided to marry his son to Lady Jane, Guildford was
thrown as much into the young girl’s society as was possible in those days
of rigid etiquette, when maidens of rank were not often allowed out of the
sight of their parents and governesses. But there is no record of any love-
making between the young folk: on the contrary, there is plenty of evidence
that the girl disliked her suitor. About a week before the wedding her
parents ordered her to marry the young gentleman, and, according to
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Baoardo, she at first stoutly refused, “her heart,” she said, “being
plighted elsewhere.” The Duke harshly reiterated his command and,
according to the Italian chronicler, even struck his daughter several hard
blows, whilst the broad red face of the Lady Frances purpled threateningly.
The Duke told Jane her marriage had been ordained by no less a person
than King Edward himself, and sharply inquired “whether she intended to
disobey her King as well as her father?” Poor Jane, aching from his blows,
could scarcely stammer her reply, “that she could not marry with Guildford
since she was already contracted to another” and that with her father’s
consent,—she doubtless alluded to the young Earl of Hertford, the late
Duke of Somerset’s son. But what could a forlorn little girl of less than
sixteen do, surrounded, as Jane was, by people whom she believed to be all-
powerful? She had been so “nipped and pinched and bobbed” in her youth
for an ill-constructed Latin verse or a faulty translation of a Greek
191
sentence, that her spirit was already more or less broken; she gave a
reluctant consent at last; and straightway the two Duchesses began their
wedding preparations. Milliners and haberdashers, glove-makers,
embroiderers and Italian silk merchants flocked to Sion and Sheen to
display their gewgaws and rich stuffs. Let us hope the little bride-elect
derived some childish pleasure from all this finery, the ostentatious display
of which must have thrown her Calvinistic friends into hysterics of
righteous indignation. And thus, long before she went to the Tower and
thence to her unmerited doom, Jane’s life was made a burden to her. Like
the forlorn bride of Lammermoor, she was the victim of cruel parents, and

one only wonders her young mind did not totter under the weight of so
much woe!
Lord Guildford Dudley was born about 1533, and was consequently not
yet of age, as Queen Mary afterwards remarked to the Imperial
Ambassador. He was in his nineteenth year at the time of his ill-omened
marriage. The Duchess of Northumberland, his mother, was granddaughter
of that Lady Guildford who had been governess to Mary Tudor, sister of
Henry VIII, and to whom occasional allusion is made in early Tudor
documents as “Moder Guildford.” This lady had contrived to offend Louis
XII of France, who packed her off to England the day after he married the
English Princess. Thus the great-grandson of the governess and the
granddaughter of the royal pupil eventually became man and wife. Lord
Guildford Dudley’s case is believed to be the first instance, in this country,
of the bestowal of a family instead of a Christian name at baptism; in
stricter Catholic times it had been illegal to baptize a child by any name but
that of a saint. Guildford was a tall, well-built youth, of very fair
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complexion. In contrast with his splendid colouring and light-brown hair,
he had the soft brown eyes which lend so peculiar a charm to the authentic
193
portraits of his father, whose darling he was. The Northumberland family
was proverbially beautiful;—Robert, the famous Earl of Leicester and lover
of Queen Elizabeth, was considered the handsomest man of his time.
Guildford Dudley had a second name, James or Diego, received at his
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christening from a Spanish nobleman, the famous Diego Hurtado de
Mendoza, a trivial circumstance, apparently, but fatal in its consequences,
for, as we shall see, it was largely a foolishly worded letter from this
godfather that brought Guildford to the block.
It is uncertain whether Jane’s wedding was celebrated towards the end
195
of May or in the beginning of June (1553), but the former is the date
generally received. Three marriages occurred on the same day: the first that
of Lady Jane Grey and Guildford Dudley; the second between Lord
196
Herbert, eldest son of the Earl of Pembroke, and the Lady Katherine
Grey, younger sister of Guildford’s bride; whilst the third was between
Henry, Lord Hastings, eldest son of the Earl of Huntingdon, and Lady
Katherine, the young sister of Lord Guildford Dudley. On the same day,

little Lady Mary Grey, barely eight years of age, was solemnly betrothed to
her equally youthful kinsman, Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton.
Lady Jane Grey’s wedding seems to have been exceptionally
magnificent. Strype tells us that to increase its splendour and solemnity, the
Master of the Wardrobe, Sir Andrew Dudley, had orders to deliver to the
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various parties much rich apparel and jewels out of the royal wardrobe.
As the King’s “table diamond” was delivered to the Princess Mary about
this time, it seems probable that she also attended the wedding. These
articles were not new, but consisted of velvets, brocades, pieces of cloth of
gold, of silver, etc., the property of the late Duke of Somerset and of his
Duchess, who was still a prisoner in the Tower; which had been forfeited to
the King, on their attainder. Thus was poor Jane’s bridal party bedecked
with the finery of her father’s victim, who preceded her by a few months
only on the road to the bloodstained scaffold. The French Ambassador also
mentions the exceptional pomp displayed at this wedding, but gives no
details.
198
No contemporary account of this particular ceremony is in existence,
but the general custom was for the bride, attired in a dress highly
ornamented with gold and embroidery, her hair hanging down, curiously
waved and plaited, to be led to the church “between two sweet boys, with
bride laces, and rosemary tied about their silken sleeves.” Before the bride
was carried “a fair bride cup, of silver gilt,” “therein was a goodly branch of
rosemary, gilded very fair, and hung about with silken ribbands of all
colours; next there was a noise of musicians, that played all the way before
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her.” Then followed a train of virgins in white, crowned with fresh
flowers, with their hair hanging loose, some bearing bride cakes, and others
garlands, adorned with gold. Last came the bridegroom, splendidly
apparelled, with young men following close behind. There were scarves and
gloves, an “epithalamium” and masques and dances; and “all the company
was decked out with the bride’s colours, in every form and fantasy.”
When Jane’s marriage took place, the populace, though far from
pleased with the exorbitant pretensions of the Duke of Northumberland,
could not forbear admiring the bridegroom’s extreme beauty of person. The
bride was considered pretty, but small and freckled. She must have come, in

all her bridal bravery, from Suffolk House in the Strand to Durham House,
for it was the custom then, as it is still, for the bride to start from her
paternal roof, and meet the bridegroom at the church door or even at the
altar. The Church of St. Mary-le-Strand having been destroyed by Somerset,
the service was undoubtedly held in the private chapel of the ex-palace of
the Bishops of Durham, then the town residence of Northumberland.
Edward VI was too ill to attend the wedding, and there is no direct
evidence that either of the Princesses, his sisters, were present; though, as
we have already said, Princess Mary may have been. Their absence,
however, points to their fear of Northumberland’s sinister intentions. The
young King made his cousin, Jane, and Lady Katherine Grey some wedding
gifts of jewels and plate.
Burke says in his Tudor Portraits, though on what authority he does not
200
tell us, that on the morning of her fatal marriage, “Lady Jane’s headdress
was of green velvet, set round with precious stones. She wore a gown of
cloth of gold, and a mantle of silver tissue. Her hair hung down her back,
combed and plaited in a curious fashion ‘then unknown to ladies of
qualitie.’ This arrangement was said to have been devised by Mrs. Elizabeth
Tylney, her friend and attendant, who was with her to the end. The bride
was led to the altar by two handsome pages, with bride lace and rosemary
tied to their sleeves. Sixteen virgins, dressed in ‘pure white,’ preceded the
bride to the altar. Northumberland and his family were remarkable on this
occasion for the splendour of their costumes. We have seen that they were
jays in borrowed plumes. A profusion of flowers was scattered along the
bridal route, the church bells gave a greeting, and the poor received beef,
bread and ale for three days.”
Ascham reports that the wedding was “conducted much in the old
Popish fashion,” and adds, curiously enough, as a rider to this observation,
that “Northumberland, notwithstanding his pretended zeal for the
Reformation, was a Papist at heart.” He was quite right, as events proved,
though it should be remembered that at this time of transition the order of
the marriage ceremony, unlike that for funerals, had not yet been formulated
according to the Reformed rite.
Every item in this tragic story would seem predestined to increase its
fateful horror. Part of Jane’s wedding dower was the estate of Stanfield in