The moment that Henry was dead Katharine Parr left the palace and went to her country house at Chelsea—close to where Cheyne pier now stands; and here she was immediately joined by Elizabeth, at the request of the council of regency. Katharine had been in every way a good wife to Henry, and had nursed him with a care and skill shown by nobody else during the last long months of his illness. He depended on her entirely for the soothing of his many pains, yet it was at this very time that he listened to the schemes of her enemies, who were anxious to remove her from the king's presence, and consented to a bill of attainder being brought against her, by which she would have lost her head. Accident revealed the plot to Katharine, and by her cleverness she managed to avert the danger—though she never breathed freely again as long as the king was alive.
The old friendship between Katharine and her stepchildren was destined to receive a severe shock, and in this matter the two princesses were in the right, and the queen wholly wrong. It came about in this way.
As far as we can gather from the rather confused accounts, sir Thomas Seymour, Katharine Parr's old lover, a man as greedy and ambitious as he was handsome, had taken advantage of Henry's affection for him to try to win the heart of the princess Elizabeth, not long before the king's death. As she was at that time living at Hertford, under the care of a vulgar and untrustworthy governess, Mrs. Ashley, it would have been easy for Seymour to ride to and fro without anyone in London being the wiser. Certain it is that, from whatever motive, he was most anxious to marry her, and a month after her father's death wrote, it is said, a proposal to the princess in person—a very strange thing to do in those days, and one which would assuredly bring down on him the wrath of the council. But Elizabeth was quite able to manage her own affairs, and answered that she had no intention of marrying anybody for the present, and was surprised at the subject being mentioned so soon after the death of her father, for whom she should wear mourning two years at least.
Although Seymour thought highly of his own charms, he had a certain sort of prudence and sense, and he saw that for the time nothing further could be gained from Elizabeth. He therefore at once turned his attention to the rich widow whom the king had formerly torn from him, and with whom he felt pretty sure of success. He was not mistaken; and deep indeed must have been Katharine's love for him, as she consented to throw aside all the modesty and good manners for which she was famed and to accept him as a husband a fortnight after the king's burial, and only four days after he had been refused by Elizabeth, with her knowledge and by her advice.
The marriage seems to have followed soon after, but was kept secret for a time.
It is difficult to say whether Mary or Elizabeth was more angry when these things came to light. Elizabeth had, as we know, been almost a daughter to Katharine, but she and queen Mary had always been good friends, and many little presents had passed between them. At her coronation Katharine had given the princess, only three years younger than herself, a splendid bracelet of rubies set in gold, and when Mary was living at Hunsdon a royal messenger was often to be seen trotting down the London road, bearing fur to trim a court train, a new French coif for the hair, or even a cheese of a sort which Katharine herself had found good eating. Mary accepted them all gratefully and gladly, and passed some of her spare hours, which were many, in embroidering a cushion for the closet of her stepmother.
And now, in a moment, everything was changed, and both princesses saw, not only the insult to their father's memory in this hasty re-marriage, but also the fact that royalty itself was humbled in the conduct of the queen, who should have been an example to all. Mary wrote at once to her sister, praying her to mark her disapproval of the queen's conduct by leaving her house and taking up her abode at Hunsdon. Elizabeth, however, though not yet fourteen, showed signs of the prudence which marked her in after-life, and answered that having been placed at Chelsea by order of the king's council, it would not become her to set herself up against them. Besides, she feared to seem ungrateful for the previous kindness of the queen.