The will of Henry VIII conferred upon the houses of Seymour and Grey a towering position in the State which naturally brought forward into extraordinary relief the hitherto ignored name of Lady Jane. A few weeks earlier she was but the eldest daughter of the rather weak-minded Marquis of Dorset, a man whom no one seems to have held in any great consideration, notwithstanding his royal alliance and rather showy past career as a soldier under Henry VIII; to-day she was almost as prominent in the matter of the succession as the King’s two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, both of whom could easily be set aside by an ambitious faction: the elder on account of her religion, the younger on that of her somewhat doubtful legitimacy. It is not surprising, therefore, that the intrigues which were to culminate in the ruin of the unfortunate Lady Jane began almost immediately after the accession of her cousin, Edward VI; for it was at this time that the newly made Lord Sudeley, desiring to possess “two strings to his bow,” embarked in a most imprudent intrigue to obtain possession of the person of the Marquis of Dorset’s daughter, who, as the reversionary heiress of England, was justly regarded by both parties as a most valuable asset. The intermediary employed in this transaction was one William Sharington, a gentleman in Seymour’s confidence, who was his equal in the conducting of tricksome intrigues: it will become apparent as we proceed that whenever Sudeley had any particularly difficult and dangerous matter to deal with, he invariably got some subordinate to share the danger with him. One morning, very soon after King Henry’s death, Sharington appeared at Dorset Place, Westminster, to open negotiations with the Marquis about the transfer of his eldest daughter into Sudeley’s charge. He began by informing Dorset, apparently one of the most credulous of mortals, that the Admiral, as uncle to the King, “was like to come to great authority, and was most desirous of forming a bond of friendship with him.” On the following day Sharington returned, and after assuring the Marquis that “the Lord High-Admiral was very much his friend,” insinuated that “it were a goodly thing to happen if my Lady Jane his daughter were in the keeping of the said Lord Admiral.” He said he had often heard his master say “that the Lady Jane was the handsomest lady in England and that the Admiral would see her placed in marriage much to his (the Marquis’s) comfort.”
“And with whom will he match her?” inquired Dorset.
“Marry,” replied Sharington, “I doubt not but you shall see he will marry her to the King, and fear you not, he will bring it to pass, and then you shall be able to help all the friends you have.”
After this visit the Marquis held a consultation with the Lady Frances, which resulted in his accepting a personal interview with Lord Sudeley.
Thomas Seymour does not appear to have had any fixed London abode in his bachelor days, but probably lived, on occasion, as Surrey did, in what we should now call chambers, somewhere in the Strand. But when he became Baron Sudeley and Lord High-Admiral, he conceived it incumbent upon him to live in a style commensurate with his increased rank, and solicited a suitable mansion from his brother, the Protector. Somerset forthwith filched Bath House, Strand, from Bishop Barlow, and presented it to his brother. This house, which must not be mistaken for Bath House, Holborn, was built in the fourteenth century and considerably enlarged and embellished in the beginning of the sixteenth; it was one of the finest mansions in London, and, with its gardens, occupied the whole space now covered by Arundel, Norfolk, and Suffolk Streets, Strand. The mansion stood on the approximate site of the present Howard Hotel. It commanded an extensive view of the Thames, and there was an orchard extending to the Strand.[110]
To Seymour Place, Strand, therefore, rode my lord of Dorset, to find Sudeley walking in his garden. The two gentlemen held a most confidential conversation, in the course of which Sudeley persuaded Dorset not only to hand the wardship of the Lady Jane over to him, but to send for her then and there, and allow the young girl to take up her abode under the roof of one of the most notorious profligates of an exceedingly degenerate Court.
The Lady Jane did not arrive at Seymour Place in formâ pauperis. She was attended by her governess, Mrs. Ashley, by four waiting women and a number of male servants of various degrees. Sudeley’s household was at this time ruled over by his mother, the Dowager Lady Seymour. Since the death of her husband, Sir John Seymour, in December 1536, this lady had kept house for her younger son, who brought her for that purpose either from Hertford or from a suburban house on a site now crossed by Upper and Lower Seymour Street, Portman Square.
There is some unexplained mystery connected with Lady Seymour which the present writer does not pretend to have fathomed. No explanation is discoverable of the strange fact that the mother of a Queen and the grandmother of a King of England seems to have been almost ignored by her son-in-law Henry VIII, by her young grandson Edward VI, by her own son the Protector, and indeed by all the great people with whom her high position must have brought her into contact. Her name is not once mentioned in connection with that of her daughter, Jane Seymour, after she became Queen. She did not figure at the christening of the baby Edward, and did not present the customary gifts offered by near relations on such occasions. She has left no correspondence, and there is only one allusion to her in the Household Books of Henry VIII, and none at all in those of Edward VI, which contain some reference to almost every lady of importance of the period, as receiving or presenting gifts from or to the sovereign, either personally or through attendants. We only know that her banner of arms figured, close to that of her daughter, Queen Jane, at the obsequies of Henry VIII and Edward VI; and that Henry, in 1537, during the year of his marriage with Jane Seymour, when he raised his brother-in-law Edward Seymour to the rank of Baron Beauchamp, granted him a pension of £1100 per annum, out of which he was to pay his mother an annuity of £60[111]—but beyond the papers connected with this pension there is only one other existing document in which her name figures, and this deals with an incident that arose after her death, in 1551, when her grandson the King was induced by the Privy Council, and by her own son, the Duke of Somerset, to countermand the wearing of official mourning for her. Beyond the fact that Lady Seymour was by birth a Wentworth, and therefore highly connected, and that in one of his letters to Lady Jane’s mother Seymour represents his own as a fitting person to take the young girl under her maternal care, Lady Seymour may be said to have lived and died as much ignored as though she had been a woman of no birth and no importance.[112]
Of the sort of life lived by the Lady Jane during the weeks she spent at Seymour Place we know nothing, but from the alacrity with which she consented to return there at a later period we may feel justified in believing she was very happy under the charge of the mysterious Lady Seymour and her erratic and wilful son. Miss Strickland says, but without naming her authority, that Lady Seymour was one of the earliest Englishwomen of rank to adopt the tenets of the Reformation. If this was the case, Lady Jane Grey probably met at her house some one or other of the numerous foreign Reformers who began to invade England shortly after the death of Henry VIII. It is, however, likely that Sudeley undertook the charge of this young lady at the instigation of Katherine Parr, and that whilst at Seymour Place her education was continued under the direction of the scholarly Miles Coverdale, afterwards Bishop of Exeter, who had been appointed chaplain to the Queen-Dowager. There is some little resemblance between the handwriting of this divine and that of Lady Jane, which leads one to think he had a considerable share in directing her studies at this period.
If the Dorsets imagined they were doing themselves and their daughter a service by placing her under the guardianship of Thomas Seymour, they made a terrible mistake, for this incident was certainly at the root of that fatal animosity between the two brothers which led up to one of the most appalling tragedies in our history. In the first place, it revealed to Somerset that Sudeley was fighting for his own hand, and further, entirely upset the Lord Protector’s domestic schemes and arrangements. Both Somerset and his wife had been very intimate with the Marquis and the Marchioness, his royal consort, and the young Earl of Hertford,[113] their eldest son, was a constant visitor at Westminster and at Bradgate. He was an exceedingly handsome youth, described by Norton, his tutor, as “singularly like his father,” who, judged by his portraits, was one of the finest-looking men of his day. So fond was the Lady Frances of the young Earl that she would call him “her son,” and undoubtedly looked on him as a welcome suitor for her eldest daughter; and if there was any love romance in Lady Jane’s brief life, it was certainly in connection with this youth, and not with Guildford, whom she eventually married, but whom she slighted rather than loved. The Somersets, moreover, had made up their minds that if the proposed marriage between Mary Stuart and Edward VI came to nothing, Edward should be contracted as soon as possible to their youngest daughter, the very pretty and highly accomplished Lady Jane Seymour.[114] Under these circumstances it may well be imagined that the Duke and Duchess were not only furious when they learned that Lady Jane Grey was already comfortably installed under their brother’s roof, without their knowledge and consent, but firmly resolved that the young lady should see as little of her cousin the King as possible.