[99] By a curious error this order is endorsed: “The Queen to Sr. Owen Hopton to receive the custody of Lady Mary Grey.”
[100] The text of the letter is as follows:—
“My duty most humbly remembered, may it like your Honour to be advertised, that the sixth of this month I received the Queen Her Highness’ letters touching the charges and custody of the Lady Katerine [sic], her Highness’ pleasure wherein I shall at all points endeavour myself to accomplish as one that dare not presume to make suit to the contrary, although I have great cause. For it may please you to understand that I was presently prepared with my wife and small household to lay at our little house in Ipswich and have disposed all things touching my provision in such sort as I must be now driven speedily to alter the same, and to rest at my poor head-house in Suffolk, for that this house and place in Ipswich is in all respects unfit for the charge now imposed upon me.”
[101] State Papers, Elizabeth, vol. xlvi., fol. 12.
[102] A room known as “Lady Katherine’s,” is still shown at Cockfield Hall. Yoxford, where the house is situated, is in Suffolk, about four miles north of Saxmundham, and five from the sea.
[103] State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. xlvi., fol. 1.
[104] “She is now come to such weakness that she hath kept her bed these three days, being not able to rise, and taketh little sustenance, and the worst is she standeth in fear of herself [i.e. fears that she will die].”
[105] British Museum, Harleian MSS., No. xxxix., fol. 380.
[106] The accounts sent in by Sir Owen Hopton to the Exchequer are divided into three bills, the first for the expenses of Lady Katherine’s keep before her death; the second for the funeral expenses; and the third for the heralds’ fees.
The first, endorsed “The charges of the Lady Catherine and of her servants until her funeral at Sir Owen Hopton’s,” begins with the cost of her transport from Gosfield, already detailed, and continues:—