Lady Jane Grey and Her Times

by Ida A. Taylor

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.”