The Queen did not prove difficult to persuade. If it is true that she had been cognisant of Seymour’s attempt to obtain the hand of her step-daughter, the fact might have warned her of the nature of the love he was offering to herself. But a woman in her state of mind is not accessible to reason. A little more than a month after Henry’s death the betrothal took place, the marriage following upon it in May, and the haste displayed giving singular proof of how far the Queen’s old passion had mastered prudence and discretion. The world was scandalised, and the King’s daughters in particular were strong in their disapproval; Mary, the more energetic of the two on this occasion, summoning her sister to visit her, that together they might devise means of preventing the impending insult to their father’s memory, or concert a method of making their attitude clear.
Elizabeth, though her objections to the match were probably, on personal grounds, stronger than those of her sister, was more cautious than Mary. The girl, or her advisers, may have been aware of the fact that opposition to the King’s uncle would be a dangerous course to be pursued by any one whose future was as ill assured as her own; and, in answer to her sister, she pointed out, though expressing her grief at the affair, that their sole consolation would lie in submission to the will of Providence, since neither was able to offer practical resistance to the project. Dissimulation, under these circumstances, would be their best policy. Mary might decline to visit the Queen, but in Elizabeth’s subordinate position she would herself be compelled to do so, her step-mother having shown her so much kindness.[59]
Despite public censure, despite the blame and disapproval of critics whose disapproval would carry more weight, Katherine may not at this time have regretted her defiance of conventional propriety; and those spring weeks, passed at her jointure palace in Chelsea, were probably the happiest of her life. The nightmare sense of insecurity, which can never have been wholly laid to rest so long as Henry lived, was removed; the price exacted for her royal dignity had been paid, to the uttermost farthing; and she was a free woman. Her old love for Seymour had re-awakened in full force, and she believed it was returned. Pious and prudent, Katherine had forgotten to be wise. Disillusionment might come later, but at present the future smiled upon her; and she may fairly have counted upon it to pay, at long last, the debts of the past.
Her letters, light and tender, grave and gay, indicate her mood as she awaited the day when she would take her place before the world as Seymour’s wife. Whether a marriage had already taken place, though kept private as a concession to public opinion, or whether it was still to come, there were secret meetings in the early spring mornings by the river, when the town was scarcely awake, the more welcome, it may be, because of the sense that they were stolen.
“When it shall be your pleasure to repair hither,” wrote Kateryn the Quene—her invariable signature—to her lover, “ye must take some pains to come early in the morning, that ye may be gone again by seven o’clock; and so I suppose ye may come hither without suspect. I pray you let me have knowledge over-night at what hour ye will come, that your portress [herself] may wait at the gate of the fields for you.... By her that is, and shall be, your humble, true, and loving wife during her life.”
Poor, learned Katherine had fallen an unresisting victim, like any other common woman, to the gifts and attractions of the man who was to prove so unsatisfactory a husband!
By May 17, if not before, it is clear that the marriage had taken place, though the secret had been so closely kept that it was a surprise to the bridegroom to discover that it was known to the Queen’s own sister, Lady Herbert. On visiting the latter, he told Katherine in a letter of this date, she had charged him “touching my lodging with your Highness at Chelsea,” the Admiral stoutly maintaining that he had done no more than pass by the garden on his way to the house of the Bishop of London; “till at last she told me further tokens, which made me change colour,” and he had arrived at the conclusion that Lady Herbert had been taken into her sister’s confidence.
Meantime the inconvenience of the present condition of things was evident; and to Mary—curiously enough, since her disapproval of the projected marriage had been so pronounced—Seymour applied for help which should enable him to put an end to it. Although he preserved the attitude of a mere suitor for the Queen’s hand, it may be that the Princess suspected that she was being consulted after the event. Her answer was not encouraging. Had the matter concerned her nearest kinsman and dearest friend it would, she told the Admiral, stand least with her poor honour than with any other creature to meddle in the affair, considering whose wife the Queen had lately been.
“If the remembrance of the King’s Majesty my father ... will not suffer her to grant your suit, I am nothing able to persuade her to forget the loss of him who is, as yet, very rife in mine own remembrance.” If, however, the Princess refused the assistance he begged, she assured him that, “wooing matters apart, wherein, being a maid, I am nothing cunning,” she would be ready in other things to serve him.
The young King, to whom recourse was next had, was found more accommodating; and indeed appears to have been skilfully convinced that it was by his persuasions that his step-mother had been induced to bestow her hand upon his uncle, writing to thank the Queen for her gentle acceptation of his suit. The boy, after Katherine’s death and her husband’s disgrace, gave an account of the methods used to obtain his intervention: