LADY KATHERINE AT PIRGO

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

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

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

“John Grey.”

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

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

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

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

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