THE KING’S SISTER.
1547-1553.
At the time of her father’s death, Mary was thirty-one years old. Her youth had passed away amid storms such as few women are called upon to weather, and they had left their traces on her character no less than on the brilliant beauty for which she had been famed throughout Europe. The slightly mutine expression, which we notice in Holbein’s fascinating portrait, had changed into a thoughtful, self-contained and rather sad look. She had acquired a thorough knowledge of the world, of men’s foibles, ambitions, passions and intrigues, and thus came well-equipped and undismayed into the new struggle that awaited her with her brother’s Privy Council. In spite of her many friends (for her popularity had increased rather than diminished) she was necessarily somewhat isolated in her exalted position, and her enemies were powerful.
By the terms of her father’s will she was now the first lady in the land, being placed in the line of succession, as was her right, immediately after Edward, in default of male heirs of his body. Projects were formed for her marriage with the Duke of Ferrara, with the King of Poland, with Albert Marquis of Brandenburg, and with Don Loys of Portugal, who was again put forward as a suitable husband, but the Council were not more eager to send her out of the country than Henry had been.
So far as Edward was allowed to entertain any warmth of affection, he was, it may be said, sincerely attached to both his sisters, but he was entirely a puppet in the hands of his uncles the Seymours. He was nine years old at the time of his accession, and but for them might have regarded Mary something in the light of a mother. She was in fact his godmother, and had watched over him as well as circumstances would allow, from his birth, but those who surrounded him were careful that her interest in her young brother should not assume a more definite shape than the bestowal of countless presents, and the constant providing of juvenile amusements. One of his letters to her shortly before his father’s death contains a pretty passage: “Amo te, sicut frater debet amare charissimam sororem, quæ habet omnia ornamenta virtutis et honestatis in se”.[252] In May 1546, he told her that God had given her the wisdom of Esther, and that he looked up to her virtues with admiration.[253] But scarcely was he on the throne, when his uncles made him the mouthpiece of the narrow Puritan views to which they were committed, and we find him writing to Katharine Parr, to entreat her “to preserve his dear sister Mary from the enchantments of the Evil One, by beseeching her to attend no longer to foreign dances and merriments, which do not become a Christian princess”. When left to himself, however, he showed her simple, child-like affection.[254] The rapid decline of Henry’s health had been a signal to the Seymours to seize what extra power they could. They even went so far as to amend the King’s will, a few days before his death, conferring on themselves more authority than had been already decreed. Henry had refused to sign the amendment, but they, disguising the fact that it did not bear the royal sign manual, carried matters with so high a hand that their powers were taken for granted. The supreme authority had originally been vested in sixteen executors, but the two Seymours claimed the entire guardianship of the boy-king. Henry had had little regard for his brothers-in-law. He knew them to be ambitious, and had been sparing of his favours towards them. He suspected them moreover of a secret fondness for the new doctrines, to which he was again strenuously opposed, but as there was no kinsman of the blood royal to whom he could confide his son, he was obliged to accept the inevitable.
Thomas and Edward Seymour were at Henry’s death, the one a simple knight, the other Earl of Hertford and Lord Chamberlain. Not content with these mediocre honours, they at once busied themselves with their own advancement. Hertford caused himself to be created Duke of Somerset, while Sir Thomas was made Lord Seymour of Sudley. Besides this, the latter coveted the patent of High Admiral, held by the Earl of Warwick, and as with the Seymours to covet was to have, Warwick was obliged to resign the patent in his favour. Neither of the brothers was sensitive in regard to the outspoken criticism of the other members of the Council, who suggested that it would have been well to await the King’s majority, to be rewarded according to their merits; and in spite of murmurs of dissatisfaction the new Duke of Somerset had himself proclaimed Protector, and procured letters patent under the Great Seal, conferring on his person the whole authority of the Crown.
The ambition of Admiral Seymour had, it is said, further led him to solicit the hand of Elizabeth, immediately after her father’s death,[255] and, meeting with a rebuff, he at once offered himself to the widowed Queen, greatly to the indignation of Henry’s daughters when the fact became known to them. The indecency of the proceeding could scarcely have been more accentuated, for as soon as Henry’s body was laid in the tomb, the Admiral was secretly married to Katharine Parr.
Henry died on the 28th January, and an undated letter from Katharine to the Admiral, bearing intrinsic evidence that she was his wife when she wrote it, also contains irrefragable proof that it could not have been written later than the middle of February next following.[256] Thus the marriage was an accomplished fact weeks before his appeal to Edward for permission to marry his stepmother. To marry a queen dowager, without the royal consent was a misdemeanour involving fine and imprisonment, and he therefore by means of flattery, and by supplying the boy secretly with large sums of money, so wormed himself into his favour, that Edward being made aware of his uncle’s wishes, affectionately urged him to marry Katharine, and afterwards thanked him for doing so. It is probable that Henry’s children never knew the extent to which they had been deceived, although in the subsequent indictment of Seymour, one of the charges brought against him was, that he had married the Queen Dowager so quickly after the King’s death, that if she had had a child within the next nine months, disputes might well have arisen regarding the succession.
There had been little difficulty in gaining Edward’s consent, but it was no such plain sailing to win Mary’s good-will towards the marriage. In spite of all she had suffered at her father’s hands, Mary was astonishingly devout to his memory, and her letter in answer to the Admiral’s hypocritical pleading that she would intercede with the Queen in his behalf, when he had already been married to her for months, is dignified and sensible.
“My Lord,