“Hearing a great bruit that my Lady Katherine Grey is in the Tower, and also that she should say she is married already to my son, I could not choose but trouble you with my cares and sorrows thereof. And although I might, upon my son’s earnest and often protesting to me the contrary, desire you to be an humble suitor on my behalf, that her tales might not be credited before my son did answer, yet, instead thereof, my first and chief suit is that the Queen’s Majesty will think and judge of me in this matter, according to my desert and meaning. And if my son have so much forgotten Her Highness calling him to honour, and so much overshot his bounden duty, and so far abused Her Majesty’s benignity, yet never was his mother privy or consenting thereunto. I will not fill my letter with how much I have schooled and persuaded him to the contrary, nor yet will I desire that youth and fear may help, excuse, or lessen his fault; but only that Her Highness will have that opinion of me as of one that, neither for child nor friend, shall willingly neglect the duty of a faithful subject. And to conserve my credit with Her Majesty, good Master Secretary, stand now my friend, that the wildness of mine unruly child do not minish Her Majesty’s favour towards me. And thus so perplexed with this discomfortable rumour I end, not knowing how to proceed nor what to do therein. Therefore, good Master Secretary, let me understand some comfort of my grief from the Queen’s Majesty, and some counsel from yourself, and so do leave you to God.
“Your assured friend to my power,
“Ann Somerset.”
[73] Parrots and monkeys were apparently favourite domestic pets at the end of the sixteenth century—the Duchess of Northumberland (the widow of John Dudley), for instance, left her grey parrot to the Duchess of Alva; in itself a slight “sign of the times,” indicating how ideas of travel were gradually spreading. The animals were probably brought from the north of Africa, Algeria, Morocco, etc.
[74] These were: Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector, the infant’s grandfather, beheaded in 1552; Henry, Duke of Suffolk, his maternal grandfather (1554); Lady Jane Grey, his aunt (1554); Lord Seymour of Sudeley, his grandfather’s brother (1549); the Duke of Northumberland, his great-uncle (1553); and finally, Lord Thomas Grey, another great-uncle (1554).
[75] “Out of the fifteen or sixteen of them (i.e. members of the council) that there are, there were nearly as many different opinions about the succession to the Crown. It would be impossible to please them all, but I am sure in the end they would form two or three parties and that the Catholic party would have on its side the majority of the country, although I do not know whether the Catholics themselves would be able to agree, as some would like the Queen of Scots and others Lady Margaret [Lennox].”—Quadra to the Duchess of Parma, October 25, 1562; see Calendar of Spanish State Papers, Elizabeth, vol. i.
[76] Quadra to the King of Spain, October 25, 1562.
[77] Spanish State Papers, vol. i. p. 311.
[78] Spanish State Papers, vol. i. p. 321.
[79] Sir John Mason, who had been at one time English Ambassador to the court of the Emperor Charles V, was one of Elizabeth’s privy councillors.