“I dare say he did not so,” she replied hotly, refusing to credit the suggestion he was reported to have made that she, a Tudor, should sue to his brother’s wife in order to obtain her rights, “nor would so.”
Parry adhered to his statement.
“Yes,” he answered, “by my faith.”
“Well, I will not do so,” returned his mistress, “and so tell him. I will not come there, nor begin to flatter now.”
If the Admiral possessed partisans in the members of Elizabeth’s household, it was probably no less owing to hostility towards the Somersets than to liking for himself; a passage of arms having taken place between Mrs. Ashley and the Duchess, who had found fault with the governess, on account of the Princess having gone on a barge on the Thames by night, “and for other light parts,” observing—in which she was undoubtedly right—that Ashley was not worthy to have the charge of the daughter of a King. Such home-truths were not unfitted to quicken the culprit’s zeal in the cause of the Admiral, and Ashley was always at hand to push his interests.
It was, nevertheless, necessary that the Princess’s dependants should act with caution; and, discussing with Lord Seymour the question of a visit he desired to pay her, Parry declined to give any opinion on the subject, professing himself unacquainted with his mistress’s pleasure. The Admiral answered with assumed indifference. It was no matter, he said, “for there has been a talk of late ... they say now I shall marry my Lady Jane,” adding, “I tell you this but merrily, I tell you this but merrily.”[90]
The gossip may have been repeated in the certainty that it would reach Elizabeth’s ears and in the hope of rousing her to jealousy. But had it suited his plans, there is no reason to doubt that Seymour would not have hesitated to gain permanent possession of the ward who had been left him “as a gage.” Elizabeth was, however, nearer to the throne, and was, beside her few additional years, better suited to please his taste than the quiet child who dwelt under his roof.
As it proved he was destined to further his ambitious projects neither by marriage with Jane nor her cousin. By the middle of January the Protector had struck his blow—a blow which was to end in fratricide. Charged with treason, in conspiring to change the form of government and to carry off the person of the King, Seymour was sent on January 16 to the Tower—in those days so often the ante-room to death.
Though he had long been suspected of harbouring designs against his brother’s administration, the specific grounds of his accusation were based upon the confessions of one Sherrington, master of the mint at Bristol; who, under examination, and in terror for his personal safety, had declared, truly or falsely, that he had promised to coin money for the Admiral, and had heard him boast of the number of his friends, saying that he thought more gentlemen loved him than loved the Lord Protector. The same witness added that he had heard Seymour say that, for her qualities and virtues, Lady Jane Grey was a fit match for the King, and he would rather he should marry her than the daughter of the Protector.
Many of great name and place in England must have been disquieted by the news of the arrest of the man who stood so near the King, and who, if any one, could have counted upon being safeguarded by position and rank from the consequences of his rashness. His assertion that he was more loved than his brother amongst his own class was true, and not a few nobles will have trembled lest they should be implicated in his fall. Loyalty to a disgraced friend was not amongst the customs of a day when the friendship might mean death, and most men were anxious, on these occasions, to dissociate themselves from a former comrade.