[111] State Papers, 1537, under Seymour.
[112] It is possible that Henry VIII intended, when he married Jane Seymour, not to allow his mother-in-law to interfere in his concerns. Some such thing happened with regard to Lady Wiltshire, Anne Boleyn’s mother, who is very little heard of after her daughter’s marriage.
[113] Lord Hertford clandestinely married Lady Jane Grey’s second sister, Lady Katherine, and was imprisoned for many years in the Tower by Elizabeth’s order “for venturing to marry an heiress to the throne.”
[114] When this proposal was eventually made to the boy-King, he was highly indignant, and remarks in his Journal that it “was his intention to choose for his Queen a foreign princess well stuffed and jewelled”—meaning that his bride should be endowed with a suitable dower and a regal wardrobe.
Lady Jane Seymour died early in the reign of Elizabeth, one of whose maids-of-honour she was, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
[115] Hayward (Life of Edward VI) describes Sudeley as “fierce in courage, courtly in fashion, in personage stately, in voice magnificent, but somewhat empty in matter”(!).
[116] The Queen alludes here not, as generally supposed, to the Lady Frances Brandon, but to her stepmother, the witty Duchess Katherine, who uses this curious expression in one of her letters.
[117] This belief received confirmation in a letter of “Kateryn the Quene” to the Lord Admiral in which she says, “When it shall be your pleasure to repair hither, ye must take some pains to come early in the morning, that ye may be gone again by seven o’clock; and so I suppose ye may come hither without suspect. I pray you let me have knowledge over-night at what hour ye will come, that your portress [i.e. herself] may wait at the gate of the fields for you.” This letter is signed, “By her that is and shall be, your humble, true, and loving wife during her life.” This was written from Chelsea Manor House after Henry VIII’s death.
[118] From one of Fowler’s letters to Sudeley we learn that “His Highness the King is not half a quarter of an hour by himself,” and that “in his secret leisure His Grace hath written his commendations to the Queen’s Grace and to your lordship [Sudeley].” Moreover, he says that the King intends to write letters “whenever he can do so, that is, when there is no supervision kept over his actions.” Enclosed in this letter from Fowler were two notes written in Edward’s childish hand on torn scraps of paper. The first is a request for money: “My Lord, send me per Latimer [another go-between] as much as ye think good, and deliver it to Fowler.—Edward.” On the second is written: “My Lord, I thank you and pray you have me commended to the Queen.”
[119] Strype’s Memoirs, vol. ii. part i. p. 59.