On 30th August 1548 Queen Katherine bore the infant for whom such great preparations had been made. The parents had fondly hoped it would be a boy, but, alack! it was a puny girl, destined to be a child of misfortune. She cost her mother her life, and grew up to suffer the bitter pangs of poverty and neglect.

My Lord Sudeley, who had been consulting fortune-tellers and palmists about the expected child, was bitterly disappointed, for they had predicted the birth of a son. This did not prevent him from writing a very flattering account of his infant daughter to his brother the Protector. The Duke had quite recently sent his brother a very severe letter complaining of his intrigues; but the birth of the child seems to have had a softening effect, and the following letter was far more friendly, containing a courteous message to the Queen, and continuing:—

“We are right glad to understand by your letters that the Queen, your bedfellow, hath a happy hour; and, escaping all danger, hath made you the father of so pretty a daughter. And although (if it had pleased God) it would have been both to us, and (we suppose) also to you, a more joy and comfort if it had, this the first-born, been a son, yet the escape of the danger, and the prophecy and good hansell of this to a great sort of proper sons, which (as I write) we trust no less than to be true, it is no small joy and comfort to us, as we are sure it is to you and to her Grace also; to whom you shall make again our hearty commendations, with no less gratulation of such good success.

“Thus we bid you heartily farewell. From Sion, the 1st of Sept. 1548.—Your loving brother,

“E. Somerset”

It is a curious fact that the child was born on 30th August, and that Somerset’s letter is dated the 1st of September, proving that communication was much more expeditious in those days than we are apt to imagine.

Lady Tyrwhitt, who attended on the Queen, has left a very touching account of her last hours.[136] Everything seems to have gone well until about six days after the child’s birth, when the Queen suddenly became delirious, and conceived a great dread and a burning jealousy of her husband. Lady Tyrwhitt says that “two days before the death of the Queen, at my coming to her in the morning, she asked me ‘Where I had been so long?’ and said unto me ‘that she did fear such things in herself, that she was sure she could not live.’ I answered as I thought, ‘that I saw no likelihood of death in her.’ She then, having my Lord Admiral by the hand, and divers others standing by, spake these words, partly, as I took, idly [that is, “in delirium”]: ‘My Lady Tyrwhitt, I be not well handled; for those that be about me care not for me, but stand laughing at my grief, and the more good I will to them, the less good they will to me.’ Whereunto my Lord Admiral answered, ‘Why, sweetheart, I would you no hurt.’ And she said to him again, aloud, ‘No, my lord, I think so’; and immediately she said to him in his ear, ‘But, my lord, you have given me many shrewd taunts.’ These words I perceived she spoke with good memory, and very sharply and earnestly, for her mind was sore disquieted. My Lord Admiral, perceiving that I heard it, called me aside, and asked me ‘What she said?’ and I declared it plainly to him. Then he consulted with me ‘that he would lie down on the bed by her, to look if he could pacify her unquietness with gentle communication,’ whereunto I agreed; and by the time that he had spoken three or four words to her, she answered him roundly and sharply, saying, ‘My Lord, I would have given a thousand marks to have had my full talk with Hewyke [Dr. Huick or Huycke[137]] the first day I was delivered, but I durst not for displeasing you.’ And I, hearing that, perceived her trouble to be so great, that my heart would serve me to hear no more. Such like communications she had with him the space of an hour, which they did hear that sat by her bedside.”

Little Lady Jane Grey was no doubt near the afflicted Queen throughout these trying scenes; but she would almost certainly have been excluded from the bedchamber when the Queen’s condition became alarming. Just before the end Katherine seems to have rallied, for on 5th September she was able to make her will, leaving everything to her husband, and “wishing it had been a thousand times more, so great was her love for him.” The witnesses to this will were Dr. Huycke, already mentioned, and Dr. Parkhurst, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, both men of unimpeachable integrity, who would not have signed the document if there had been anything illegal about it. Katherine Parr died on 7th September, the second day after the date of her will and the eighth after the birth of her child. She was in her thirty-sixth year, and had survived Henry VIII just one year, six months, and eight days. Her funeral took place at Sudeley Castle, according to the rites of the Church of England, on Friday, 8th September, and was the first royal funeral so celebrated in England. Dr. Coverdale was the officiant at the Queen’s burial. A procession was formed of “conductors” (i.e. leaders) in black, gentlemen, Somerset Herald, torch-bearers, Lady Jane Grey, acting as chief mourner, her train borne by a young gentlewoman, then more ladies and gentlemen; finally, “all other following.” The Lord Admiral, according to custom, did not attend his wife’s funeral. The ritual was somewhat curious, and is described in the following terms in an MS. entitled “A Booke of Buryalls of Trew Noble Persons,” now in the London College of Arms:[138] “When the corpse was set within the rails, and the mourners placed, the whole choir began and sung certain psalms in English, and read three lessons; and after the third lesson, the mourners, according to their degrees and that which is accustomed, offered into the alms-box.... Doctor Coverdale, the Queen’s almoner, began his sermon ... in one place thereof he took occasion to declare unto the people ‘how the offering which was there done, was (not) done anything to benefit the corpse, but for the poor only; and also the lights, which were carried and stood about the corpse, were for the honour of the person, and for none other intent nor purpose’; and so went through with his sermon, and made a godly prayer, and the whole church answered and prayed with him.... The sermon done, the corpse was buried, during which time the choir sung the Te Deum in English. And this done, the mourners dined, and the rest returned homewards again. All which aforesaid was done in a morning.”

CHAPTER X
THE LADY JANE GOES TO SEYMOUR PLACE

All Thomas Seymour’s schemes and conspiracies and political and domestic intrigues were brought to nought by his wife’s death, and he swiftly realised that the danger of his position was immeasurably increased by her decease. She had been an effective barrier between himself and his foes, for nothing could persuade the King to consider her otherwise than with great affection, as one of the only two persons he really loved (his young companion Barnaby Fitzpatrick being the other). Sudeley was now, metaphorically speaking, at sea in a storm, and seeking safety in any port he could discover. For a few days his troubles seem to have dazed him. He may, indeed, have loved his wife and have sincerely mourned her. There is not the slightest reason to believe that there was any solid foundation for the accusations brought against him of having ill-treated and even poisoned the Queen. A few weeks before her death, on the contrary, he swore, with one of his horrible oaths, that if any man “speak ill of his Queen in his presence, he would take his fist to his ear, be he of the lowest or of the highest.” After his wife’s death, Sudeley was at first inclined to break up his household and throw himself once more into public life. He even went so far as to dismiss some of his servants, and returned to Hanworth, the late Queen’s dower-house in Middlesex, taking Lady Jane and her attendants with him. Hence he wrote to Dorset to say that, broken-hearted as he was at the departure of the Queen, his wife, he could not keep the Lady Jane any longer,[139] and begged him to send for her. By 17th September, however, he seems to have cheered up considerably, for he dispatched another letter to Bradgate, which runs as follows:—