Meanwhile, in March 1559, the Lady Frances being still very sick, her daughters were once more sent for, and, with the queen’s permission, arrived at the Charterhouse at Sheen one windy day towards evening. The scheme for the marriage of Lady Katherine with young Hertford was now revived with greater vigour than ever.
The Lady Frances was in such very bad health that she evidently wished, before leaving this world, to provide her eldest surviving daughter with a husband. The Lady Frances had recently given birth to a child, which, notwithstanding the attention and skill of Dr. Wendy, had died almost as soon as it was born; but although its mother failed to gain strength, her mind continued very clear. Calling one day the Lady Katherine and young Hertford to her, she declared it was her opinion that he (Hertford) “would make a very suitable husband for her daughter Katherine, if the queen would only see it in the same light; but she (the Lady Frances) would have nothing to do with the matter unless with the queen’s knowledge and consent, and that of her honourable council.” Mr. Stokes then drew Hertford aside, and taking him into an inner room, held a consultation with him. He thought, as the Lady Frances was so near a kinswoman of the queen, it would be well if she wrote Her Majesty a letter on the subject. This advice pleased Hertford, and the two gentlemen set to work to frame what they deemed a suitable letter. They, however, considered it wise, before obtaining the Lady Frances’s signature, to consult Mr. Bertie, the husband of the other dowager Duchess of Suffolk, Katherine Willoughby, who had returned from his exile in Poland, and who apparently expressed considerable sympathy with the lovers. They therefore rode to London, to the Barbican, where Duchess Katherine had her house, and not only saw Mr. Bertie, but a Mr. Gilgate and a Mr. Strikely, who were apparently in the employ of the duchess and Mr. Bertie. Whatever may have been their exact social position, they were taken into the secret, as they were probably necessary as witnesses to documents that might have to be signed. The duchess and her husband and all concerned considered it imperative that, before any further steps were taken, Elizabeth should be made aware of all that was going on, and, if possible, conciliated and induced to countenance the match. If these worthy people thought that Elizabeth was likely to be “conciliated,” they knew evidently very little about her, for of all the happenings of this world, the one she dreaded most was precisely the marriage of Lady Katherine and her having children, for, as she observed later on, “it was bad enough to have Lady Katherine to deal with, let alone to endure her brats.” She was determined, she added, “to keep the sisters Grey, spinsters.” She bore no personal dislike to either of them, if they would only do as she wished, but if they were rebellious, she would be obliged to act, in her own defence and in that of the realm.
On their return to Sheen, Hertford and Mr. Stokes found the Lady Frances much worse. Greatly alarmed, they conceived it to be their duty to act as promptly as possible. They were terribly afraid of Elizabeth, and did not hesitate to say so, even in the presence of the dying woman. They advised the duchess to send at once for her daughters, who had returned to court a few days earlier. On informing Elizabeth that their mother was not expected to live, the queen gave them permission to go back immediately, sending them in one of her own palanquins or litters. They arrived to find the duchess propped up with cushions, and looking very ill indeed. The Lady Frances, taking Katherine’s hand in hers, and stretching out her other hand to Hertford, said: “Daughter Kate, I have found a husband for you, if you like well to frame your fancy and good-will in his direction.” On this the Lady Katherine replied that she was very willing so to do, as she loved Hertford very dearly. The Lady Frances, thinking that a message from one who was so near her end might influence the queen, called her husband, Mr. Adrian Stokes, to her, and asked him to frame a letter for her which should be delivered to the queen, and he, bending over her, declared that “he would be right glad to do so.” He then, with the assistance of Hertford, wrote a draft of the letter which was to be addressed to Elizabeth, and which ran much as follows: “That such a nobleman did bear good-will to her daughter the Lady Katherine, and that she did humbly require the Queen’s Highness to be good and gracious lady unto her, and that it would please Her Majesty to assent to the marriage of her to the said Earl, which was the only thing she desired before her death, and should be the occasion for her to die the more quietly.” This draft of the letter, which was never sent, was read out at the subsequent trial which took place after the clandestine marriage of the Lady Katherine with the Earl of Hertford. Mr. Stokes on that occasion said: “My Lord of Hertford would not let me send the letter, for he took fright at the boldness of it and said he would not care to meddle any more in the matter.” Mr. Stokes did not seem to think this was a very manly thing on Hertford’s part; but Hertford was not manly, only a very small, delicate, frail-looking young gentleman, who, however, like so many other frail and sickly looking youths, contrived to live to a very advanced age. These occurrences took place somewhere in March: throughout the spring and summer the Lady Frances lingered on, a very sick woman, rarely if ever rising from her bed or her couch, but frequently visited by her daughters, who brought her kind messages and gifts from Elizabeth, still in complete ignorance of the matrimonial project. Hertford seems to have been a good deal at Sheen, though nothing was determined as to the marriage. It was apparently, under advice, deemed safest to leave the whole concern in abeyance until after the Lady Frances’s death; which took place, in the fifty-fifth year of her age, in the presence of her husband and children, on the 20th November 1559. Elizabeth gave her “beloved” cousin a right royal burial, worthy of a princess of the blood. She was represented by her chamberlain, and the court put on the mourning usual for a member of the royal family. The Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey attended their mother’s funeral, “having their trains upheld by gentlewomen.” Clarencieux stood at the head of the coffin, and cried out, at a given moment, in a loud voice: “Laud and praise be to Almighty God, that it hath pleased Him to call out of this transitory life into His eternal glory, the most noble and excellent Princess, the Lady Frances, late Duchess of Suffolk, daughter to the right high and mighty Prince, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and of the most noble and excellent Princess, Mary the French Queen, daughter to the most illustrious King Henry VII.” The Communion Service was then read in English, and a carpet laid before the high altar for the chief mourners to kneel upon. At the Communion, the Ladies Katherine and Mary, kneeling upon this carpet, received the Holy Communion, Dr. Jewel having previously preached the usual panegyric. When the service was over, Mr. Adrian Stokes, who had been chief mourner, went back to the Charterhouse, with his step-daughters, in the very chariot that had borne the Lady Frances’s coffin to the abbey: they literally returned on the hearse! The Lady Frances is buried in St. Edmund’s Chapel, on the south side of the abbey. Her tomb is a handsome specimen of the art of the period, and although considerably damaged, the likeness between the face of the effigy and that in the famous portrait is remarkable. Quite close to the Lady Frances’s tomb is an upright figure of a small girl, kneeling. Is this the tomb of her child by Adrian Stokes, which died in infancy; or is it, as Stow seems to imply, that of her daughter, the dwarfish Lady Mary Grey? By her will, the Lady Frances left all her possessions to her husband for life, with reversion to her two daughters. As Mr. Stokes outlived them both, they never inherited much of their mother’s property, except the proceeds of the sale of some land near Oxford and of several other manors which were in her possession at the time of her last illness, and concerning the disposal of which she wrote to Cecil some eight or ten days before her death.
The Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey, on their return to Westminster, found themselves in pecuniary straits, although their embarrassment was, it seems, relieved by Mr. Stokes, out of the money he had received from his late wife’s executors. Elizabeth welcomed her bereaved cousins with much apparent sympathy. She was, or pretended to be, most affectionate to them, and even called Lady Katherine “her daughter,” although, as Quadra, the Spanish ambassador, says, “the feeling between them could hardly have been that of mother and child.” “But,” he goes on to say, “the Queen has thought best to put her [Lady Katherine] in her chamber and makes much of her in order to keep her quiet. She even talks about formally adopting her.”
Whilst still in the early weeks of her mourning for her mother, the Lady Katherine received information that greatly distressed her. Young Hertford, so she was told, had been paying his addresses to the daughter of Sir Peter Mewtas,[62] a piece of news that made her very jealous and unhappy. Seeing the state of nervous prostration into which Lady Katherine was thrown by Hertford’s alleged infidelity, Lady Jane Seymour insisted upon knowing what was the matter, whereupon Katherine confessed to her tearfully that she had heard there was love-making between Mistress Mewtas and Lord Hertford. On the following day, the Lady Jane obtained leave to go to Hanworth, where Hertford was staying with his mother, the Duchess of Somerset. She taxed her brother, in no measured terms, with his lack of fidelity to the Lady Katherine, to which he replied that he knew nothing of the matter of the daughter of Sir Peter Mewtas, that the whole story was a falsehood, and that he was willing to live or die for the sake of Lady Katherine. He added that if she would but consent to marry him, he was willing to defy Elizabeth, and he thought that the sooner the marriage took place the better; and so saying, he drew from his finger a ring with a pointed diamond in it, and gave it to his sister to carry to the Lady Katherine. Armed with this bond of peace, Lady Jane Seymour returned to London and found Lady Katherine, to whom she gave the ring and her brother’s message. “My little love, my little love,” said Katherine, “well pleased am I that he should thus treat me,” and drying her eyes, she became once more her cheerful self.
Amongst Lady Katherine Grey’s friends at the court of Elizabeth was a certain Mrs. Blanche Parry,[63] widow of Sir Thomas Parry, and a pupil, in the occult arts, of the famous Dr. Dee.[64] Elizabeth entertained for Blanche not only a great affection, but also held her in a sort of awe. She believed implicitly in her favourite’s powers, and never a week passed that Blanche Parry was not admitted to confidential interviews with her august mistress, whose innermost secrets she possessed, and, through her knowledge of palmistry, not only shared, but even guided.
Blanche was a handsome and amiable woman, who used her influence over her mistress to the advantage of others as well as of herself. One day, Lady Katherine asked her to “do” her hand for her, and Blanche, who was probably well aware of all that was going on between young Hertford and her royal client, told her: “The lines say, madam, that if you ever marry without the queen’s consent in writing, you and your husband will be undone, and your fate worse than that of my Lady Jane.” Katherine paid very little attention to the admonition, but went her way to perdition blindly. In after years she probably remembered Blanche Parry’s sagacious advice, for she left her a legacy in her will, as also did her sister, Lady Mary Grey, another of Blanche’s clients and friends.