LADY KATHERINE GREY AT THE COURT OF QUEEN MARY
Miss Agnes Strickland and other historians have fallen into the error of stating that Mary Tudor appointed the Lady Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, to be one of her women of the bedchamber, and her two daughters, the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey, maids of honour. A little reflection will show that such appointments were as impossible in Mary’s time, as it would be, in our day, for Her present Majesty, to name the Duchess of Fife and her children, or the Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, to similar positions in her household. The Ladies Grey were royal princesses and possible successors to the reigning sovereign. Mary, therefore, simply restored to the royal Duchess of Suffolk her rights of precedence and entrée at court, which had been withdrawn on account of her share in the conspiracy to place her daughter, the Lady Jane Grey, upon the Throne. A note among the Willoughby Papers (1556) probably gave rise to the error in question, by stating that “Mrs. Margaret Willoughby has been to Court with the Lady Frances’ Grace, who has her place in the Privy-chamber. Young Mistress Willoughby was much commended, and the Lady Frances’ Grace did not doubt but, in a short time, to place her about the Queen’s highness, so as to content all her friends.” This, however, merely confirms what we have said above. Throughout her reign, owing to ill-health, Queen Mary received not only her intimate friends, but even ambassadors and other official persons, in her bed-chamber, whilst she lay, propped up with cushions, in the bed.
The Lady Frances, after her ill-assorted marriage, lived with her young husband at Sheen, but came up to London to her house in the Strand (which she had not as yet sold, and on the site of which Northumberland House was subsequently built) whenever it suited her purpose to visit the queen or her other royal relatives. Though the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey were not exactly “received” into the queen’s household—their rank forbade it—they accompanied the queen wherever she went, and lodged in the royal palaces. Mary did not wish the sisters of Lady Jane Grey to be far out of her sight and reach, lest they might be involved in some attempt to place either of them, and especially the Lady Katherine, at the head of the Protestant party, in the position left vacant in so tragic a manner by their sister Jane. Mary, and after Mary’s death, Elizabeth in her turn, paid each sister a pension of eighty pounds a year; but this was a bounty, not a salary. After the deaths of their father, uncle, and sister, the estates of the Greys, at Bradgate and elsewhere, were confiscated, and eventually passed by entail to the next male heir, Lord Grey of Pirgo; and therefore the inheritance of the two sisters from their father was lost to them and never restored. It was otherwise with the Lady Frances, whose property, although considerably diminished by mortgages and loans, was never confiscated; but the rents only sufficed for her own maintenance and that of her young husband. As to her daughters, this sinister lady does not seem to have troubled much about them. She apparently left their interests to Providence—and the queen. Lady Katherine Grey and her little sister were treated with consideration at the court of Queen Mary, and granted the state and precedence due to princesses of the blood, as is clearly indicated in the records of the time, by an apparently trivial mention, that “their trains were upheld by a gentlewoman” on all great occasions, a privilege only accorded to members of the royal family.
The contrast between the secluded life which she had led at Baynard’s Castle, and the court of Queen Mary, must have been great, and afforded, to a very young girl of Katherine’s age, sufficient amusement to make her forget the sorrows through which she had recently passed. The Duke of Somerset, when protector, had reduced the household expenses of Edward VI to about half what they had been in the reign of his father, Henry VIII. Queen Mary, being economically inclined, although aware that she must make a great figure if she wished to captivate Philip of Spain, did not restore things to the splendid state in which they had been in her father’s time. She reduced the number of her servants and attendants, but in a measure increased the splendour of their costumes. Like her sister Elizabeth, she was inordinately fond of dress, with this difference, however, that she had perfect taste; and fortunately for her, fashion was not then as grotesque as it became later on, when good Queen Elizabeth wore farthingales four yards in circumference, and a ruff that gave her head the appearance of being in the centre of her body. Mary’s household was ordered almost on monastic lines. Mass every morning, saying the rosary, evening and night prayers, and pious readings took up much of the ladies’ time. They were, moreover, expected to accompany the queen to hear innumerable sermons, and to follow her in the countless religious processions which were now revived with exaggerated zeal. The queen, it is true, occasionally indulged in a stately measure, was fond of music and not a little, also, of cards; but until the advent of Philip, her court was as decorous as it was dull.
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MARY TUDOR, QUEEN OF ENGLAND
(From a little known portrait by Antonio Moro, in the Escurial)