By far the most curious allusion, in the Spanish State Papers, to the plot for putting Hertford’s son on the Scotch Throne is contained in a collection of extracts from letters written by Antonio de Guaras in December 1574. Mary Queen of Scots was then a prisoner in the Earl of Shrewsbury’s mansion at the Peak, whilst Lady Margaret Lennox had just been sent to the Tower afresh for marrying her son to Shrewsbury’s daughter. The marriage had greatly incensed “Gloriana,” who, probably with a deeper motive than appears at first sight, ordered the Scottish queen’s removal to the Tower of London. The earl, however, protested so vigorously against this, that Her Majesty changed her mind: but, says de Guaras, after recounting this incident, “The Queen of Scots was in great fear of such a change, which must imperil her, the more so as Killigrew[118] was leaving for Scotland, and three ships were ready to accompany him; the object being to obtain possession of the prince (James) if possible, and put an end to both him and his mother. They would then raise to power the son of the Earl of Hertford, whom they would marry to a daughter of Leicester and the Queen of England, who, it is said, is kept hidden, although there are Bishops to witness that she is legitimate. They think this will shut the door to all other claimants. This intrigue is said to be arranged very secretly.”[119]
This plot, like so many others in the tortuous labyrinth of the succession, came to naught; and beyond a brief mention of the eldest son, Edward, in connection with his father’s imprisonment in 1596, the sons of Lady Hertford henceforth disappear from the stage of history until the last moments of Elizabeth’s complicated existence. When, on March 23, 1603, the great queen lay on her deathbed at Richmond Palace, her once acute and clear mind wandering deliriously, the Lords of the Council begged admittance, and kneeling by the dying monarch, asked her whom she wished to succeed her on the Throne she had clung to so tenaciously in her active life. Her Majesty was suffering too much in her throat to reply, so they desired her to raise one finger when they named the person of her choice. When the King of France and the King of Scotland were named, she made no sign; but when Lady Katherine’s eldest son (now Lord Beauchamp) was mentioned, the dying queen, rousing herself, exclaimed fiercely: “I will have no rascal’s son in my seat, but one worthy to be a King.”
The following day the queen died, and King James I was proclaimed. The party that favoured Hertford or his sons deemed it wiser to drop the matter, and the union of the English and Scottish Thrones was effected, under “our Second Solomon,” without opposition. Cecil’s son, forgetting how his father had moved heaven and earth in order that, first, Lady Katherine, and then, her children, might succeed Elizabeth, and all the paternal schemes and plots for King James’s exclusion from the seat of power, became that monarch’s most servile courtier. As to the much-talked-of “sons,” they very wisely left the matter of the succession strictly alone, and settled down quietly as private noblemen. They both predeceased their father, but the elder married, and it was in the person of his son, William Seymour, Lady Katherine’s grandson and the husband of Arabella Stuart, that the family name was perpetuated, and the title of Duke of Somerset revived.
LADY MARY GREY
[CHAPTER I]
EARLY YEARS
The life-story of Lady Mary Grey followed almost precisely the same track as that of her elder sister, Lady Katherine, with this difference, however, that although Mary, too, made a clandestine marriage, her husband was as completely her inferior in rank as he was her superior in girth and stature. She was a dwarf; he was a giant!