THE LAST YEARS OF LADY MARY
Lady Mary Grey’s life with the Greshams was more uncomfortable by several degrees than it had been with the dowager duchess. Sir Thomas seems to have disliked her heartily, and his wife, Lady Gresham—who, by the way, had been a milliner, and who still, notwithstanding her husband’s wealth, occasionally made caps for Queen Elizabeth—called the poor little woman the “heart sorrow of her life.” The couple therefore strained every nerve to get their unwelcome guest removed. Letter after letter did Gresham send to Cecil and to Leicester, not complaining of any particular ill-conduct on Lady Mary’s part, but merely putting forward reasons for her departure. First, his wife wants to ride into Norfolk to see her old mother, and the Lady Mary is some sort of hindrance to her journey; then, one of his servants at Osterley has the plague and they want to get into the country. In all these compositions the writer reckons up, to a day, the time Lady Mary has been in his house, to his wife’s “bondiage and harte sorrow.” Sometimes he even offers to pay well for her removal; but the powers that were, gave no heed to these agonized complaints and appeals. Hence Lady Mary was still at Gresham House when, early in September 1571, Dr. Smythe, her doctor, came to inform Sir Thomas that the obnoxious ex-Sergeant-Porter had passed out of the reach of “this warden of the Fleet” for all eternity. The poor little widow was deeply distressed; “his death she grievously taketh,” wrote her host-jailer to Cecil; “she hath requested me to write to you to be a mean to the Queen’s Majesty to be good to her, and that she may have Her Majesty’s leave to keep and bring up his poor children.” This care for her step-children is a pleasant side-light on Lady Mary’s kindness of heart. “As likewise,” continues Sir Thomas, “I desire to know Her Majesty’s pleasure, whether I shall suffer her to wear any black mourning apparel or not.” Then he recurs to his old bone of contention: “Trusting that now I shall be presently [soon] despatched of her by your good means.” Shortly after this, Mary, having retired to Osterley Park, wrote to Cecil that “as God had taken away the cause of Her Majesty’s displeasure [i.e. Mr. Keyes] she begged to be restored to her favour.” This letter was signed “Mary Keyes,” which apparently gave offence, for the next letter was from plain “Mary Grey,” and she never repeated the obnoxious appellation of Keyes. Still she was not removed, and still the Greshams importuned: at length, after a final appeal (for “the quietness of my poor wife”), Sir Thomas rode up to London to make a personal request. Mary would seem to have been as anxious to leave her unwilling host and hostess, as they were to get rid of her, and greatly desired to take up her residence with her step-father, Adrian Stokes, Esq., then living in the Charterhouse at Sheen, who had kindly offered to receive her. But Sir Thomas’s personal efforts were not crowned with success, and the young widow had to spend the winter of 1571-72 with her inhospitable hosts at Mayfield in Sussex, where they had a country seat.
In March 1572, a letter from Sir Thomas Gresham to Cecil, then Lord Burleigh—or as he calls him “Lord Bowerly”—indicates that his oft-expressed desire for the removal of his charge was now nearing accomplishment, and he proceeds to clinch the matter by an offer which is nothing less than bare-faced bribery. “And whereas,” says he, “I have allowed my lord of Oxford [Cecil’s son-in-law] for his money but after the rate of ten per centum, I shall [now] be content to allow him after twelve per centum with any other service I can do for him or you.” This offer of increased interest was too good to be neglected, and before June of the same year, Mary was free to go where she would—liberty had come at last. In a pathetic letter dated May 24, 1572, the released prisoner describes herself as “destitute of all friends—only God and Her Majesty,” and only possessing £80 allowed her by the queen, and £20 per annum of her own. Her “father-in-law”—meaning of course Adrian Stokes, her step-father—will give her nothing, for he has married again. She had expectations which would slightly better her actual income: by a reversion of the dowager Duchess of Suffolk she was to receive £333 6s. 8d. and the same sum at the death of Adrian Stokes.[135] By the summer of this year (1572), Lady Mary was settled with her step-father in the Charterhouse; and Sir Thomas Gresham wrote to express his heartfelt thanks to Cecil for his “delivery [i.e. deliverance] from the Lady Mary.”
After this, Master Keyes’s widow seems to have dwelt in peace till the end of her days. She addressed no further complaints to Cecil, and her will proves that her financial position was a fairly good one. Her name figures no more in the State Papers: she seems to have dropped completely out of sight and out of mind. We know, however, that she eventually either returned to the dowager duchess at the Minories, or occupied that lady’s house in the Barbican;[136] and that on New Year’s Day 1577 she presented the queen, then at Hampton Court, with “four dozen buttons of gold, in each of them a seed pearl, and two pairs of sweet [i.e. perfumed] gloves,” a gift acknowledged by Elizabeth, who gave her kinswoman a silver cup and cover, weighing eighteen ounces: apparently Mary occasionally went to court, and enjoyed the royal favour, at least to some extent.
An entry in the royal household books for 1576 states that Lady Mary Grey stood sufficiently well in the queen’s graces to be at Hampton Court during the great revels held there at Christmas time. The list of guests who presented gifts to Her Majesty opens with the names of her two cousins, the Lady Margaret Lennox and the Lady Mary Grey. The latter presented a gold cup; Leicester, a carcanet glittering with diamonds, emeralds and rubies; Burleigh, a purse of £30; and the Lady Derby, “a gown of satin broidered with peacocks’ feathers in silk.” Even the humblest servant gave some trifle to the greedy queen, who by this means generally obtained something like £10,000 per annum, as voluntary contributions—we will not vouch much, however, for the sincerity of the “voluntary.” The queen’s gifts generally amounted to less than £2000, and, with the exception of those given to members of the royal family, were the merest trifles in silver. She was, however, fairly generous, as a rule, to the poorer menials, giving them warm clothing and blankets.
Lady Mary died, of what complaint we do not know, on April 20, 1578, aged thirty-three, her death being hastened, no doubt, by her griefs and miseries. She may have been buried at St. Botolph’s-without-Aldersgate, but some authorities think otherwise, and even state that her place of burial is Bradgate Church. In Stowe’s Survey occurs an entry to the effect that the Lady Mary Grey shares her mother’s tomb in Westminster Abbey.
Lady Mary’s will is not only a fine specimen of sixteenth-century orthography, but proves that she possessed more property than is generally supposed. The document (which is in the Lansdowne MSS. at the British Museum, xxvii. 31) begins: “In the name of God Amen. The xvij daye of Aprill in the yeare of our lord god 1578. And in the xxth yeare of the Raigne of our Soveraigne Lady Elizabethe.” Lady Mary Grey describes herself as “of the p’ishe of St. Botolphe wthout Aldersgate,” a “widowe of wholl minde and of good and perfect remambraunce laude and praise be unto Almightie God.” She commits her “soull” to the care of its Maker, trusting in salvation through Christ “without any other waies or meanes.” Her body is “to be buried where the Quens Ma’tie should think most meete and convenient.” This seems to suggest that she was still under royal supervision. To the dowager Duchess of Suffolk, her step-grandmother, she bequeathes “one paere of hand Bracelettes of gould with a jacinte stonne in eatche Bracelette wh Bracelettes were my ladie grace my late mothers or els my Juell of unycornes horne wchsoever herr grace refusathe I geave and bequeathe to my verie good ladie ye lady Susanne Countesse of Kente.”[137] It is curious that she should “geave to my verie frend Mrs. Blaunche a Parr a little gilt bowlle wth a cover to it.”[138] It was possibly thanks to Blanche Parry that Lady Mary obtained some measure of favour and liberty in her last years. She leaves to the “Fair Geraldine,” now Countess of Lincoln, a girdle of goldsmith’s work and some gold buttons. To Lady Mary Bertie—she spells it “Bartye,” even as it is still pronounced—and to her husband, Mr. Bertie, she leaves her best gilt cup and the best silver and gilt salt-cellar. She bequeathes to Mary, Lady Stafford, a “tablet of gould with an aggett in it”; and to Anne, Lady Arundel, a “tankarde of sylver.” To a certain Lady Margaret Nevill, she leaves a number of gowns of velvet and satin; to Lady Throckmorton, a “boulle” of silver, with a cover; to her god-daughter, Jane Merrick, she leaves “one good fethered bedde and a boulstere to the same and the three peres of hangings which I have of myne owne and a cowple of covered stoolles.” Were these the identical objects that had excited the dowager duchess’s scorn? Lady Mary next disposes of the lease of “my house wherein I now dwell,” which she wishes to be sold, the purchase money being assigned to “Marrie Merrick my goddaughter” in trust of Edmund “Haull my cowsen.” This plainly indicates that at the time of her death she was in a house of her own, and not at the Duchess of Suffolk’s; and the will also proves her to have been rich enough to keep her coach. Mary Merrick must have been a sister of the testator’s godchild, Jane Merrick, since she is expressly stated to have been not yet twenty-one years of age. After various bequests to divers persons, she leaves to Anne Goldwell, evidently the witness of her unhappy wedding, “half a dozen silver spoones and twoe trenchers plattes of silver.” “Henrie Gouldwell,” very likely that lady’s husband, receives “my baie coatche geldings.” The residue “of all my goods and catteles [chattels] both moveable and immoveable,” are to be applied to the payment of her debts. Finally, Mr. Edmund Hall[139] and Mr. Thomas Duport—the latter her cousin by marriage—are appointed executors.
There is no authentic portrait of this poor little princess extant; she was possibly never in a position to have one taken. Nor do we know much of her personal appearance or character. There is no evidence of her having been accomplished in any particular way; still, Gresham, even at the height of his desire to be rid of her, brings against her no accusation of bad temper or undue haughtiness. Most likely she was merely peevish and melancholy, which is not surprising when we remember that she was separated from her husband of a week, and deprived of her freedom. Her very dismal library, which she possessed to the time of her death and had carted about with her wherever she went,[140] suggests that she was acquainted with French and Italian, and greatly interested in religious matters, being a strong Protestant. Her library includes Palgrave’s French Dictionary and Grammar, and an Italian Commentary on the Scriptures, as well as the following works of sombre old-world philosophy and theology: Mr. Knox, His Answer to the Adversary of God’s Predestination; Mr. Knewstubbe’s Readings; The Ship of Assured Safety, by Dr. Cradocke; Mr. Cartwright’s First and Second Reply; The Second Course of the Hunter and of the Romish Fox; Godly Mr. Whitgift’s Answer; Mr. Dearing’s Reply; Dr. Fulkes’ Answer to the Popish Demands; Dr. Fulkes’ Answer to Allen touching Purgatory; The First Admonition to the Parliament; The Image of God, by Hutchinson; The Duty of Perseverance; The Edict of Pacification; The Book of Martyrs, in two volumes; Latimer’s Sermons on the Four Evangelists; A Treatise of the Deeds of the True Successors of Christ; The Life of the Countie Baltazer Castiglione, and A Treatise of the Resurrection of the Dead; also three editions of the Bible—the Geneva Translation, the Bishops’ and the French—and a Common Prayer Book!
Poor little woman! When Gresham literally turned her out of his house, with one man and a cartload of her belongings, her sacred library was amongst her greatest treasures. “She hath taken all her bookes and rubbish,” writes the great man to the greater Cecil; but provided he and his wife were rid of Lady Mary, they did not much care where she and her “bookes and rubbish” went.