Still there remained untouched two mighty pillars of Protestantism that Gardiner and Wriothesley had to overthrow. These were the queen and Archbishop Cranmer.
Still there were two powerful and hated enemies whom the Seymours had to overcome; these were the Duke of Norfolk and his son, the Earl of Surrey.
But the various parties that in turn besieged the king’s ear and controlled it, were in singular and unheard-of opposition, and at the same time inflamed with bitterest enmity, and they strove to supplant each other in the favor of the king.
To the popish party of Gardiner and Earl Douglas, everything depended on dispossessing the Seymours of the king’s favor; and they, on the other hand, wanted above all things to continue in power the young queen, already inclined to them, and to destroy for the papists one of their most powerful leaders, the Duke of Norfolk.
The one party controlled the king’s ear through the queen; the other, through his favorite, Earl Douglas.
Never had the king been more gracious and affable to his consort—never had he required more Earl Douglas’s presence than in those days of his sickness and bodily anguish.
But there was yet a third party that occupied an important place in the king’s favor—a power which every one feared, and which seemed to keep itself perfectly independent and free from all foreign influences. This power was John Heywood, the king’s fool, the epigrammatist, who was dreaded by the whole court.
Only one person had influence with him. John Heywood was the friend of the queen. For the moment, then, it appeared as if the “heretical party,” of which the queen was regarded as the head, was the most powerful at court.
It was therefore very natural for the popish party to cherish an ardent hatred against the queen; very natural for them to be contriving new plots and machinations to ruin her and hurl her from the throne.
But Catharine knew very well the danger that threatened her, and she was on her guard. She watched her every look, her every word; and Gardiner and Douglas could not examine the queen’s manner of life each day and hour more suspiciously than she herself did.