It has been already mentioned, that the secret marriage of the earl of Hertford with lady Catherine Gray, notwithstanding the sentence of nullity which the queen had caused to be so precipitately pronounced and the punishment which she had tyrannically inflicted on the parties, had at length been duly established by a legal decision in which her majesty was compelled to acquiesce. The eldest son of the earl assumed in consequence his father's second title of lord Beauchamp, and became undoubted heir to all the claims of the Suffolk line. About the year 1585, this young nobleman married, unknown to his father, a daughter of sir Richard Rogers, of Brianston, a gentleman of ancient family, whose son had already been permitted to intermarry with a daughter of the house of Seymour. It might have been hoped that the earl of Hertford, from his own long and unmerited sufferings on a similar account, would have learned such a lesson of indulgence towards the affections of his children, that a match of greater disparity might have received from him a ready forgiveness. But he inherited, it seems, too much of the unfeeling haughtiness of his high-born mother; and in the fury of his resentment on discovery of this connexion of his son's, he made no scruple of separating by force the young couple, in direct defiance of the sacred tie which bound them to each other. Lord Beauchamp bore in the beginning this arbitrary treatment with a dutiful submission, by which he flattered himself that the heart of his father must sooner or later be touched; but at length, finding all entreaties vain, and seeing reason to believe that a settled plan was entertained by the earl of estranging him for ever from his wife, he broke on a sudden from the solitary mansion which had been assigned him as his place of abode, or of banishment, and was hastening to London to throw himself at the feet of her majesty and beseech her interposition, when a servant of his father's overtook and forcibly detained him.
Well aware that his nearness to the crown must have rendered peculiarly offensive to the queen what she would regard as his presumption in marrying without her knowledge and consent, he at first suspected her majesty as the author of this attack on his liberty; but being soon informed of her declaration, "that he was no prisoner of hers, and the man had acted without warrant," he addressed to lord Burleigh an earnest petition for redress. In this remarkable piece, after a statement of his case, he begs to submit himself by the lord-treasurer's means to the queen and council, hoping that they will grant him the benefit of the laws of the realm; that it would please his lordship to send for him by his warrant; and that he might not be injured by his father's men, though hardly dealt with by himself. Such were the lengths to which, in this age, a parent could venture to proceed against his child, and such the measures which it was then necessary to take in order to obtain the protection of the laws. It is not stated whether lord Beauchamp was at this time a minor; but if so, he probably made application to Burleigh as master of the wards. Apparently his representations were not without effect; for he procured in the end both a re-union with his wife and a reconciliation with his father.
The grandmother of this young nobleman, Anne duchess-dowager of Somerset, died at a great age in 1587. Maternally descended from the Plantagenets, and elevated by marriage to the highest rank of English nobility, she perhaps gloried in the character of being the proudest woman of her day. It has often been repeated, that her repugnance to yield precedence to queen Catherine Parr, when remarried to the younger brother of her husband, was the first occasion of that division in the house of Seymour by which Northumberland succeeded in working its overthrow. In the misfortune to which she had thus contributed, the duchess largely shared. When the Protector was committed to the Tower, she also was carried thither amid the insults of the people, to whom her arrogance had rendered her odious; and rigorous examinations and an imprisonment of considerable duration here awaited her. She saw her husband stripped of power and reputation, convicted of felony, and led by his enemies to an ignominious death; and what to a woman of her temper was perhaps a still severer trial, she beheld her son,—that son for whose aggrandizement she had without remorse urged her weak husband to strip of his birthright his own eldest born,—dispossessed in his turn of title and estates, and reduced by an act of forfeiture to the humble level of a private gentleman.
Her remarriage to an obscure person of the name of Newdigate, may prove, either that ambition was not the only inordinate affection to which the disposition of the duchess was subject, or that she was now reduced to seek safety in insignificance.
During the reign of Mary, no favor beyond an unmolested obscurity was to be expected by the protestant house of Seymour; but it was one of the earliest acts of Elizabeth generously to restore to Edward Seymour the whole of the Protector's confiscated estates not previously granted to his elder half-brother, and with them the title of earl of Hertford, the highest which his father had received from Henry VIII., and that with which he ought to have rested content. Still no door was opened for the return of the duchess of Somerset to power or favor; Elizabeth never ceasing to behold in this haughty woman both the deadly enemy of admiral Seymour,—that Seymour who was the first to touch her youthful heart, and whose pretensions to her hand had precipitated his ruin,—and that rigid censor of her early levities, who, dressed in a "brief authority," had once dared to assume over her a kind of superiority, which she had treated at the time with disdain, and apparently continued to recollect with bitterness.
It appears from a letter in which the duchess earnestly implores the intercession of Cecil in behalf of her son, when under confinement on account of his marriage, that she was at the time of writing it excluded from the royal presence; and it was nine whole years before all the interest she could make, all the solicitations which she compelled herself to use towards persons whom she could once have commanded at her pleasure, proved effectual in procuring his release. The vast wealth which she had amassed must still, however, have maintained her ascendency over her own family and numerous dependents, though with its final disposal her majesty evinced a strong disposition to intermeddle. Learning that she had appointed her eldest son sole executor, to the prejudice of his brother sir Henry Seymour, whom she did not love, the queen sent a gentleman to expostulate with her, and urge her strongly to change this disposition. The aged duchess, after long refusal, agreed at length to comply with the royal wish: but this promise she omitted to fulfil, and some obstruction was in consequence given to the execution of her last will. We possess a large inventory of her jewels and valuables, among which are enumerated "two pieces of unicorn's horn," an article highly valued in that day, from its supposed efficacy as an antidote, or a test, for poisons. The extreme smallness of her bequests for charitable purposes was justly remarked as a strong indication of a harsh and unfeeling disposition, in an age when similar benefactions formed almost the sole resource of the sick and needy.
In this year lord-chancellor Bromley died: and it should appear that there was at the time no other lawyer of eminence who had the good fortune to stand high in the favor of the queen and her counsellors, for we are told that she had it in contemplation to appoint as his successor the earl of Rutland; a nobleman in the thirtieth year of his age, distinguished indeed among the courtiers for his proficiency in elegant literature and his knowledge of the laws of his country, but known to the public only in the capacity of a colonel of foot in the bloodless campaign of the earl of Sussex against the Northern rebels.
How far this young man might have been qualified to do honor to so extraordinary a choice, remains matter of conjecture; his lordship being carried off by a sudden illness within a week of Bromley himself, after which her majesty thought proper to invest with this high office sir Christopher Hatton her vice-chamberlain.
This was a nomination scarcely less mortifying to lawyers than that of the earl of Rutland. Hatton's abode at one of the inns of court had been so short as scarcely to entitle him to a professional character; and since his fine dancing had recommended him to the favor of her majesty, he had entirely abandoned his legal pursuits for the life and the hopes of a courtier. It is asserted that his enemies promoted his appointment with more zeal than his friends, in the confident expectation of seeing him disgrace himself: what may be regarded as more certain is, that he was so disquieted by intimations of the queen's repenting of her choice, that he tendered to her his resignation before he entered on the duties of his office; and that in the beginning of his career the serjeants refused to plead before him. But he soon found means both to vanquish their repugnance and to establish in the public mind an opinion of his integrity and sufficiency, which served to redeem his sovereign from the censure or ridicule to which this extraordinary choice seemed likely to expose her. He had the wisdom to avail himself, in all cases of peculiar difficulty, of the advice of two learned serjeants;—in other matters he might reasonably regard his own prudence and good sense as competent guides. In fact, it was only since the reformation that this great office had begun to be filled by common-law lawyers: before this period it was usally exercised by some ecclesiastic who was also a civilian, and instances were not rare of the seals having been held in commission by noblemen during considerable intervals;—facts which, in justice to Hatton and to Elizabeth, ought on this occasion to be kept in mind.
The pride of Leicester had been deeply wounded by the circumstances of that forced return from Holland which, notwithstanding all his artful endeavours to color it to the world, was perfectly understood at court as a disgraceful recall.