CHAPTER VII 1547-1548 Katherine Parr's unhappy married life--Dissensions between the Seymour brothers--The King and his uncles--The Admiral and Princess Elizabeth--Birth of Katherine's child, and her death.

The belated idyll of love and happiness enjoyed by “Kateryn the Quene” was of pitifully short duration. During the first days of September 1548, some fifteen months after the stolen marriage at Chelsea, a funeral procession left Sudeley Castle, and the body of the wife of the Lord Admiral was carried forth to burial, Lady Jane Grey, his ward, then in her twelfth year, acting as chief mourner.61

Jane had good cause to mourn, in other than an official capacity. It is hard to believe that, had Katherine Parr been living, the child she had cared for and who had made her home under her roof, would not have been saved from the doom destined to overtake her not six years later.

Katherine’s dream had died before she did, and the period of her marriage, short though it was, must have been a time of rapid disillusionment. It could scarcely, taking the circumstances into account, have been otherwise. Seymour was not the man to make the happiness of a wife touching upon middle age, studious, learned, and devout, “avoiding all occasions of idleness, and contemning vain pastimes.”62 His love, if indeed it had been ever other than disguised ambition, was short-lived, and Katherine’s awakening must have come all too swiftly.

Nor was the revelation of her husband’s true character her only cause of trouble. Minor vexations had, from the first, attended her new condition of life, and she had been made to feel that the wife of the Protector’s younger brother could not expect to enjoy the deference due to a Dowager-Queen. To Katherine, who clung to her former dignity, the loss of it was no light matter, and her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Somerset, and she were at open war.

Contemporary and early writers are agreed as to the nature of the woman with whom she had to deal. “The Protector,” explains the Spanish chronicler, giving the popular version of the affair, “had a wife who was prouder than he was, and she ruled the Protector so completely that he did whatever she wished, and she, finding herself in such great state, became more presumptuous than Lucifer.”63 Hayward attributes the subsequent disunion between the brothers, in the first place, to “the unquiet vanity of a mannish, or rather a devilish woman ... for many imperfections intolerable, but for pride monstrous”;64 whilst Heylyn represents the Duchess as observing that, if Mr. Admiral should teach his wife no better manners, “I am she that will.”65

The struggle for precedence carried on between the wives could scarcely fail to have a bad effect upon the relationship of the husbands, already at issue upon graver questions; and Warwick, Somerset’s future rival, was at hand to foment the strife between Protector and Admiral, and, “secretly playing with both hands,” paved the way for the fall of the younger brother and the consequent weakening of the forces which barred the way to the attainment of his personal ambitions.

Nor can there be any doubt that, apart from the ill offices of those who desired to separate the interests of the brothers, the Protector had good reason to stand upon his guard. When Seymour was tried for his life during the winter of 1548-9, dependants and equals alike came forward to bear witness to his intriguing propensities, their evidence going far to prove that, whatever may be thought of Somerset’s conduct as a brother in sending him to the scaffold, as head of the State and responsible for the government of the realm, he was not without justification. It is clear that from the first the Admiral, jealous of the position accorded to the Duke by the Council, had been sedulously engaged in attempting to undermine his power, and had not disguised his resentment at his appropriation of undivided authority. Never had it been seen in a minority—so he informed a confidant66—that the one brother should bear all rule, the other none. One being Protector, the other should have filled the post of Governor to the King, so he averred; although, on another occasion, contradicting himself, he declared he would wish the earth to open and swallow him rather than accept either post. There was abundant proof that he had done his utmost, whenever opportunity was afforded him, to rouse the King to discontent. It was a disagreeable feature of the day that men were in no wise slack in accusing their friends in times of disgrace, thereby seeking to safeguard their reputations; and Dorset came forward later to testify that Seymour had told him that his nephew had divers times made his moan, saying that “My uncle of Somerset dealeth very hardly with me, and keepeth me so straight that I cannot have money at my will.” The Lord Admiral, added the boy, both sent him money and gave it to him.67

Perhaps the most significant testimony brought against the Admiral was that of the little King himself, who asserted that Seymour had charged him with being “bashful” in his own affairs, asking why he did not speak to bear rule as did other Kings. “I said I needed not, for I was well enough,” the boy replied on this occasion. At another time, according to his confession, a conversation took place the more grim from the simplicity of the language in which it is recorded.

“Within these two years at least,” said Edward, now eleven years old, “he said, ‘Ye must take upon yourself to rule, and then ye may give your men somewhat; for your uncle is old, and I trust he will not live long.’ I answered it were better that he should die.”68

It was scarcely possible that the Protector should not have been cognisant of a part at least of his brother’s machinations; and he naturally, so far as was possible, kept his charge from falling further under the influence of his enemies. The young King’s affection for his step-mother had been a cause of disquiet to her brother-in-law and his wife, care being taken to separate him from her as much as was possible. So long as Katherine remained in London it had been Edward’s habit to visit her apartments unattended, and by a private entrance. Familiar intercourse of this kind terminated when she removed to a distance; and, so far as the Lord Protector could ensure obedience, little communication was permitted between the two during the short time the Queen had to live. The boy, however, was constant to old affection, and used what opportunities he could to express it.

“If his Grace could get any spare time,” wrote one John Fowler, a servant of the royal household, to the Admiral, “his Grace would write a letter to the Queen’s Grace, and to you. His Highness desires your lordship to pardon him, for his Grace is not half a quarter of an hour alone. But in such leisure as his Grace has, his Majesty hath written (here enclosed) his commendations to the Queen’s Grace and to your lordship, that he is so much bound to you that he must remember you always, and, as his Grace may have time, you shall well perceive by such small lines of recommendations with his own hand.”69

The scribbled notes, on scraps of paper, written by stealth and as he could find opportunity, by the King, testify to the closeness of the watch kept upon him; their contents show the means by which the Admiral strove to maintain his hold upon his nephew.

“My lord,” so runs the first, “send me, per Latimer, as much as ye think good, and deliver it to Fowler.” The second note is one of thanks.

An attempt was made by the Admiral to obtain a letter from the King which, complaining of the Protector’s system of restraint, should be laid before Parliament; but the intrigue was discovered, the Admiral summoned to appear before the Council, and, though he was at first inclined to bluster, and replied by a defiance, a hint of imprisonment brought him to reason, and some sort of hollow reconciliation between the brothers followed.

The King, the unfortunate subject of dispute, was probably lonely enough. For his tutor, Sir John Cheke, and for his school-mate, Barnaby Fitzpatrick, he appears to have entertained a real affection; but for his elder uncle and guardian he had little liking, nor was the Duchess of Somerset a woman to win the heart of her husband’s ward. From his step-mother and the Admiral he was practically cut off; and his sisters, for whom his attachment was genuine, were at a distance, and paid only occasional visits to Court. Mary’s influence, as a Catholic, would naturally have been feared; and Elizabeth, living for the time under the Admiral’s roof, would be regarded likewise with suspicion. But the happiness of the nominal head of the State was not a principal consideration with those around him, mostly engaged in a struggle not only to secure present personal advantages, but to ensure their continuance at such time as Edward should have attained his majority.

The relations between the Seymour brothers being that of a scarcely disguised hostility, the Admiral had the more reason to congratulate himself upon having obtained the possession and disposal of the person of Lady Jane Grey—third, save for her mother, in the line of succession to the throne. Should her guardian succeed in effecting her marriage with the King the arrangement might prove of vital importance. On the other hand, Somerset’s matrimonial schemes for the younger members of the royal house were of an altogether different nature. He would have liked to marry the King to a daughter of his own, another Lady Jane, and to have obtained the hand of Lady Jane Grey for his son, young Lord Hertford.

Such projects, however, belonged to the future. Nothing could be done for the present, nor does it appear that, when Somerset’s scheme afterwards became known to the King, it met with any favour in his eyes; since, noting it in his journal, he added his private intention of wedding “a foreign princess, well stuffed and jewelled.”

So far as Katherine was concerned, her domestic affairs were probably causing her too much anxiety to leave attention to spare for those of King or kingdom, except as they were gratifying, or the reverse, to her husband. Since the May day when she had given herself, rashly and eagerly, into the keeping of the Lord Admiral, she had been sorrowfully enlightened as to the nature of the man and of his affection; and, if she still loved him, her heart must often have been heavy. The presence of the Princess Elizabeth under her roof had been disastrous in its consequences; and, though it was at first the interest of all to keep the matter secret, the inquisition made at the time of the Admiral’s disgrace into the circumstances of his married life affords an insight into his wife’s wrongs.

In a conversation held between Mrs. Ashley, Elizabeth’s governess, and her cofferer, Parry, after the Queen’s death, the possibility of a marriage between the widower and the Princess was discussed, Parry raising objections to the scheme, on the score that he had heard evil of Seymour as being covetous and oppressive, and also “how cruelly, dishonourably, and jealously he had used the Queen.”

Ashley, from first to last eager to forward the Admiral’s interests, brushed the protest aside.

“Tush, tush,” she replied, “that is no matter. I know him better than ye do, or those that do so report him. I know he will make but too much of her, and that she knows well enough.”70

The same witness confessed at this later date that she feared the Admiral had loved the Princess too well, and the Queen had been jealous of both—an avowal corroborated by Elizabeth’s admissions, when she too underwent examination concerning the relations which had existed between herself and her step-mother’s husband.

“Kat Ashley told me,” she deposed, “after the Lord Admiral was married to the Queen, that if my lord might have had his own will, he would have had me, afore the Queen. Then I asked her how she knew that. Then she said she knew it well enough, both from himself and from others.”71

If the correspondence quoted in a previous page is genuine,72 Elizabeth, though she may have had reason to keep her knowledge to herself, can have been in no doubt as to the Admiral’s sentiments at the time of her father’s death. With a governess of Mrs. Ashley’s type, a girl of fifteen such as Elizabeth was shown to be by her subsequent career, and a man like Seymour, it would not have been difficult to prophesy trouble. That the Admiral was in love with his wife’s charge may be doubted; in the same way that ambition, rather than any other sentiment, may be credited with his desire to obtain her hand a few months earlier. What was certain was that he amused himself, after his boisterous fashion, with the sharp-witted girl to an extent calculated to cause both uneasiness and anger to the Queen. That no actual harm was intended may be true—he could scarcely have been blind to the consequences had he dared to deal otherwise with the daughter and sister of Kings; and the whole story, when it subsequently came to light, reads like an instance of coarse and vulgar flirtation, in harmony with the nature of the man and the habits of the times. What is less easy to account for is Katherine’s partial connivance, in its earlier stages, at the rough horse-play, if nothing worse, carried on by her husband and her step-daughter. A scene, for example, is described as taking place at Hanworth, where the Admiral, in the garden with his wife and the Princess, cut the girl’s gown, “being black cloth,” into a hundred pieces; Elizabeth replying to Mrs. Ashley’s protests by saying that “she could not strive with all, for the Queen held her while the Lord Admiral cut the dress.” Nor was this the only occasion upon which Katherine appears to have looked on without disapproval whilst her husband treated her charge in a fashion befitting her character neither as Princess nor guest.

The explanation may lie in the fact that the unfortunate Queen was attempting to adapt her taste and her manners to those of the man she had married. But the condition of the household could not last. A crisis was reached when one day Katherine, coming unexpectedly upon the two, found Seymour with the Princess in his arms, and decided, none too soon, that an end must be put to the situation. It was not long after that the households of Queen and Princess were parted, “and as I remember,” explained Parry the cofferer, “this was the cause why she was sent from the Queen, or else that her Grace parted from the Queen. I do not perfectly remember whether of both she [Ashley] said she went of herself or was sent away.”73

There can be little doubt, one would imagine, that it was Katherine who determined to disembarrass herself of her visitor. A letter from Elizabeth, evidently written after their separation, appears to show that farewell had been taken in outwardly friendly fashion, although the promise she quotes Katherine as making has an ambiguous sound about it. The Princess wrote to say that she had been replete in sorrow at leaving the Queen, “and albeit I answered little, I weighed it more deeply when you said you would warn me of all evils that you should hear of me; for if your Grace had not a good opinion of me, you would not have offered friendship to me that way, that all men judge the contrary.”74

It is not difficult to detect the sore feeling underlying Elizabeth’s acknowledgments of a promise of open criticism. Katherine must have breathed more freely when the Princess and her governess had quitted the house.

Meantime, in spite of disappointment and anger and care, the winter was to bring the Queen one genuine cause of rejoicing. Thrice married without children, she was hoping to give Seymour an heir, and the prospect was hailed with delight by husband and wife alike. In her gladness, and the chief cause of dissension removed, her just grounds of complaint were forgotten; her letters continued to be couched in terms as loving as if no domestic friction had interrupted her wedded happiness, and she ranged herself upon Seymour’s side in his recurrent disputes with his brother with a passionate vehemence out of keeping with her character.

“This shall be to advertise you,” she wrote some time in 1548, “that my lord your brother hath this afternoon made me a little warm. It was fortunate we were so much distant, for I suppose else I should have bitten him. What cause have they to fear having such a wife! It is requisite for them continually to pray for a dispatch of that hell. To-morrow, or else upon Saturday ... I will see the King, where I intend to utter all my choler to my lord your brother, if you shall not give me advice to the contrary.”75

Another letter, also indicating the strained relations existing between the brothers, is again full of affection for the man who deserved it so ill.

“I gave your little knave your blessing,” she tells the Admiral, alluding to the unborn child neither parent was to see grow up, “... bidding my sweetheart and loving husband better to fare than myself.”76 A few months more, and hope and fear and love and disappointment were alike to find an end. Sudeley Castle, where the final scene took place, was a property granted to the Admiral on the death of the late King, from which he took his title as Lord Seymour of Sudeley. It was a question whether those responsible for the government had the right of alienating possessions of the Crown during the minority of a sovereign, and the tenure upon which the place was held was therefore insecure, Katherine asserting on one occasion that it was her husband’s intention to restore it to his nephew when he should come of age. In awaiting that event Seymour and his wife had the enjoyment of the beauty for which the old building had long been noted.

“Ah, Sudeley Castle, thou art the traitor, not I!” said one of its former lords as, arrested by the orders of Henry IV. for treason, and taken away to abide his trial, he cast a last look back at his home—a possession worthy of being coveted by a King, and by the attainder of its owner forfeited to the Crown.

Here, during the summer of 1548—the last Katherine was to see—a motley company gathered round the Queen. Jane Grey, “the young and early wise,” was still a member of her household, and the repudiated wife of Katherine’s brother, the Earl of Northampton—placed, it would seem, under some species of restraint—was in the keeping of her sister-in-law. Her true and tried friend, Lady Tyrwhitt, described by her husband as half a Scripture woman, kept her company, as she had done in her perilous days of royal state. Learned divines, living with her in the capacity of chaplains, were inmates of the castle, charged with the duty of performing service twice each day—exercises little to the taste of the master of the house, who made no secret of his aversion for them.

“I have heard say,” affirmed Latimer, in the course of one of the sermons, preached after Seymour’s execution, in which the Bishop took occasion again and again to revile the dead man, “I have heard say that when the good Queen that is gone had ordained daily prayer in her house, both before noon and after noon, the Admiral getteth him out of the way, like a mole digging in the earth. He shall be Lot’s wife to me as long as I live.”77

To Sudeley also had repaired, in the course of the summer, Lord Dorset, possibly desirous of assuring himself that all was well with his little daughter. He may have had other objects in view. According to his subsequent confession, Seymour had discussed with him the methods to be pursued in order to gain popularity in the country, making significant inquiries as to the formation of the marquis’s household. Learning that Dorset had divers gentlemen who were his servants, the Admiral admitted that it was well. “Yet,” he added shrewdly, “trust not too much to the gentlemen, for they have something to lose”; proceeding to urge his ally to make much of the chief yeomen and men of their class, who were able to persuade the multitude; to visit them in their houses, bringing venison and wine; to use familiarity with them, and thus to gain their love. Such, he added, was his own intention.78

Another inmate had been received at Sudeley not more than a few weeks before Katherine’s confinement. This was the Princess Elizabeth, who appears, by a letter she addressed to the Queen when the visit had been concluded, to have been at this time again on terms of friendship and affection with her step-mother, since writing to Katherine with very little leisure on the last day of July, she returned humble thanks for the Queen’s wish that she should have remained with her “till she were weary of that country.” Yet in spite of the hospitable desire, she can scarcely have been a welcome guest, and it must have been with little regret that her step-mother saw her depart.

Meantime, the birth of the Queen’s child was anxiously expected. Seymour characteristically desired a son who “should God give him life to live as long as his father, will avenge his wrongs”—the problematical wrongs of a man who had risen to his heights. Elizabeth, who had done her best to wreck the Queen’s happiness and peace, was “praying the Almighty God to send her a most lucky deliverance”; and Mary, more sincere in her friendship, wrote a letter full of affection to her step-mother. The preparations made by Katherine for the new-comer equalled in magnificence those that might have befitted a Prince of Wales; and though the birth of a girl, on August 30, must have been in some degree a disappointment, she received a welcome scarcely less warm than might have been accorded to the desired son. A general reconciliation appears to have taken place on the occasion, and the Protector responded to the announcement of the event in terms of cordial congratulation, regarding the advent of so pretty a daughter in the light of a “prophesy and good hansell to a great sort of happy sons.”

Eight days after the rejoicings at the birth Katherine was dead.

Into the circumstances attending her illness and death close inquisition was made at a time when it had become an object to throw discredit upon the Admiral, and foul play—the use of poison—was suggested. The charge was probably without foundation; the facts elicited nevertheless afford additional proof of the unsatisfactory relations existing between husband and wife, and throw a melancholy light upon the closing scene of the union from which so much had been hoped.

It was deposed by Lady Tyrwhitt, one of the principal witnesses, that, upon her visiting the chamber of the sick woman one morning, two days before her death, Katherine had asked where she had been so long, adding that “she did fear such things in herself that she was sure she could not live.” When her friend attempted to soothe her by reassuring words, the Queen went on to say—holding her husband’s hand and being, as Lady Tyrwhitt thought, partly delirious—“I am 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.”

The words, to those cognisant of the condition of the household, must have been startling. The Queen may have been wandering, yet her complaint, as such complaints do, pointed to a truth. Others besides Lady Tyrwhitt were standing by; and Seymour made no attempt to ignore his wife’s meaning, or to deny that the charge was directed against himself.

“Why, sweet heart,” he said, “I would do you no hurt.”

“No, my lord, I think not,” answered Katherine aloud, adding, in his ear, “but, my lord, you have given me many shrewd taunts.”

“These words,” said Lady Tyrwhitt in her narrative, “I perceived she spake with good memory, and very sharply and earnestly, for her mind was sore disquieted.”

After consultation it was decided that Seymour should lie down by her side and seek to quiet her by gentle words; but his efforts were ineffectual, the Queen interrupting him by saying, roundly and sharply, “that she would have given a thousand marks to have had her full talk with the doctor on the day of her delivery, but dared not, for fear of his displeasure.”

“And I, hearing that,” said the lady-in-waiting, “perceived her trouble to be so great, that my heart would serve me to hear no more.”79

Yet on that same day the dying Queen made her will and, “being persuaded and perceiving the extremity of death to approach her,” left all she possessed to her husband, wishing it a thousand times more in value than it was.80

Whether pressure was used, or whether, in spite of all, her old love awakened and stirred her to kindness towards the man she was leaving, there is nothing to show. But the names of the witnesses—Robert Huyck, the physician attending her, and John Parkhurst, her chaplain, afterwards a Bishop—would seem a guarantee that the document, dictated but not signed—no uncommon case—was genuine. For the rest, Seymour was coarse and heartless, a man of ambition, and intent upon the furtherance of his fortunes. It is not unlikely that, when his wife lay dying, his thoughts may have turned to the girl to whom he had in his own way already made love; who, of higher rank than the Queen, might serve his interests better, and whom her death would leave him free to win as his bride. And Katherine, with the memories of the last two years to aid her and with the intuitions born of love and jealousy, may have divined his thoughts. But of murder, or of hastening the end by actual unkindness, there is no reason to suspect him. The affair was in any case sufficiently tragic, and one more mournful recollection to be stored in the minds of those who had loved the Queen.

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