LADY KATHERINE AGAIN THE CENTRE OF INTRIGUES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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