Lady Jane Grey and Her Times

by Ida A. Taylor

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]