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.
CHAPTER VIII
1548 Lady Jane’s temporary return to her father—He surrenders her again to the Admiral—The terms of the bargain.
One of the secondary but immediate effects of the Queen’s death was to send Lady Jane Grey back to her parents. It was indeed to Seymour, and not to his wife, that the care of the child had been entrusted; but in his first confusion of mind after what he termed his great loss, the Admiral appears to have recognised the difficulty of providing a home for a girl in her twelfth year in a house without a mistress, and to have offered to relinquish her to her natural guardians.
Having acted in haste, he was not slow to perceive that he had committed a blunder, and quickly reawakened to the importance of retaining the possession and disposal of the child. On September 17, not ten days after Katherine’s death, he was writing to Lord Dorset to cancel, so far as it was possible, his hasty suggestion that she should return to her father’s house, and begging that she might be permitted to remain in his hands. In his former letter, he explained, he had been partly so amazed at the death of the Queen as to have small regard either to himself or his doings, partly had believed that he would be compelled, in consequence of it, to break up his household. Under these circumstances he had suggested sending Lady Jane to her father, as to him who would be most tender of her. Having had time to reconsider the question, he found that he would be in a position to maintain his establishment much on its old footing. “Therefore, putting my whole affiance and trust in God,” he had begun to arrange his household as before, retaining the services not only of the gentlewomen of the late Queen’s privy chamber, but also her inferior attendants. “And doubting lest your lordship should think any unkindness that I should by my said letter take occasion to rid me of your daughter so soon after the Queen’s death, for the proof both of my hearty affection towards you and good will towards her, I mind now to keep her until I shall next speak to your lordship ... unless I shall be advertised from your lordship of your express mind to the contrary.” His mother will, he has no doubt, be as dear to Lady Jane as though she were her daughter, and for his part he will continue her half-father and more.[81]
It was clear that the Admiral would only yield the point upon compulsion. Dorset, however, was not disposed to accede to his wishes. Developing a sudden parental anxiety concerning the child he had been content to leave to the care of others for more than eighteen months, he replied, firmly though courteously negativing the Admiral’s request.
“Considering,” he said, “the state of my daughter and her tender years wherein she shall hardly rule herself as yet without a guide, lest she should, for lack of a bridle, take too much the head and conceive such opinion of herself that all such good behaviour as she heretofore have learned by the Queen’s and your most wholesome instruction, should either altogether be quenched in her, or at the least much diminished, I shall in most hearty wise require your lordship to commit her to the governance of her mother, by whom, for the fear and duty she owes her, she shall be most easily ruled and framed towards virtue, which I wish above all things to be most plentiful in her.” Seymour no doubt would do his best; but, being destitute of any one who should correct the child as a mistress and monish her as a mother, Dorset was sure that the Admiral would think, with him, that the eye and oversight of his wife was necessary. He reiterated his former promise to dispose of her only according to Seymour’s advice, intending to use his consent in that matter no less than his own. “Only I seek in these her young years, wherein she now standeth either to make or mar (as the common saying is) the addressing of her mind to humility, soberness, and obedience.”[82]
It was the letter of a model parent, anxious concerning the welfare, spiritual and mental, of a beloved child, and Dorset, as he sealed and despatched it, will have felt that policy and conscience were for once in full accord. Lady Dorset likewise wrote, endorsing her husband’s views.