LADY KATHERINE AND HER HUSBAND IN THE TOWER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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