Elizabeth (8 page)
Russell replied that this was unthinkable. For one thing, it would arouse suspicions that Thomas might be plotting to gain power, and also there was the matter of a dowry. When Thomas said he would expect £3,000 a year, Russell disabused him. The princesses’ dowries were to be ‘ten thousand pounds in money, plate
and goods, and no land.’
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Thomas insisted there must be an additional £3,000 a year, and Russell firmly replied there would be no such thing as it would be ‘clean against the King’s will.’
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This conversation did not discourage Thomas, however. He began to woo Elizabeth in earnest and solicited the Privy Council for permission to marry her.
Kat Ashley proved a valuable ally in Thomas’s courtship. She frequently spoke to Elizabeth on the subject of their marriage, which she seemed to believe would eventually be approved by the Council. Her husband, Sir John Ashley, Elizabeth’s senior gentleman attendant, was less certain. He warned his wife to be careful, ‘to take heed, for he did fear that the Lady Elizabeth did bear some affection to my Lord Admiral. She seemed to be well pleased therewith, and sometime she would blush when he were spoken of.’
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Sir John could see the danger of Elizabeth allowing herself to become embroiled in the plots of Thomas Seymour, even if Kat, his romantic wife, could not.
Thomas, recalling what Russell had told him about Elizabeth’s dowry, spoke to her Cofferer, Thomas Parry, to offer several suggestions. As part of Henry VIII’s will, each of his daughters had been awarded lands worth £3,000. The law moved slowly in confirming the ladies’ inheritance and Thomas wanted to know how much the lands were worth and where they lay. If the titles had not yet been finalized, he suggested that Elizabeth should ask to exchange them for better, richer lands in the West Country and Wales, closer to his own properties, in order to form a future power base.
In order to speed this plan along, Thomas made another suggestion to Parry. Elizabeth wanted to go to London to see Edward VI, but her town house, Durham House, had been appropriated by the Crown to act as a Mint. Thomas suggested that Elizabeth should apply to Edward Seymour for another house,
befriending Anne, Edward’s wife, who might lend her support to the request. Once friends, Elizabeth could ask Anne to use her influence with her husband to exchange her lands for more desirable ones.
When Parry next met with Elizabeth, he asked if she would like to marry Thomas. She replied rather cryptically, ‘I will do as God shall put into my mind.’
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She pressed Parry as to why he was quizzing her on the matter, and he told her about Thomas’s suggestion regarding Anne Seymour. Elizabeth was extremely angry and told Parry to inform Thomas that this was a plan that she would not countenance. She also told him to tell Kat Ashley everything immediately ‘for I shall know nothing but she shall know of it. In faith, I cannot be quiet until ye have told her of it.’
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While Parry may have been prepared to discuss such potentially treasonable matters in secret, Elizabeth was not. She could not be seen to be part of any plot against the King, the Crown or the Council.
Kat was in London at the time, where she had been summoned by Anne Seymour. Anne had heard rumours that Elizabeth had been permitted to go out unchaperoned at night in a barge on the Thames with Thomas. Anne informed Kat that if ‘she was not worthy to have the governance of the King’s daughter … another should have her place’.
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Kat did not seem unduly worried, however; the complaints against her were petty, and Elizabeth would never allow her beloved Governess to be taken from her.
Of more concern was information Kat had obtained from Lady Tyrwhitt and Mary Hill, the wife of Sir John Cheke, Edward VI’s tutor and friend. Rumours were circulating that Thomas had simply kept on the female servants of Catherine Parr’s household in anticipation of them serving Elizabeth when she became his wife. The fact that the matter was being discussed so openly at Court must have sobered Kat. When she returned to Elizabeth she
told the young girl that there should be no more talk of her marrying Thomas ‘till the King’s Majesty [Edward VI] came to his own rule.’ The King’s Protector and the Privy Council would never consider allowing her marriage to Thomas or anyone else.
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Later, when questioned during the enquiry into Thomas Seymour’s treasonable activities, Sir Thomas Parry recalled a conversation he had had with Kat Ashley in January 1549. Parry believed that some affection existed between Elizabeth and Thomas. Kat had agreed with him, adding, ‘I would wish her his wife of all men living.’ Parry countered this by saying that he had heard Thomas ‘was not only a very covetous man and an oppressor, but also an evil, jealous man; and how cruelly, how dishonourably and how jealously he had used the Queen [Catherine Parr].’
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Kat rose to Thomas’s defence, insisting, ‘I know him better than ye do, or those that so report of him.’ Thomas loved Elizabeth, she said, too well and had done so for a long time. She told Parry about Catherine Parr’s jealousy when she had found Thomas and Elizabeth in an embrace, which had led her to send Elizabeth away. Parry, sensing a scandal, pressed her, ‘Why, hath there been such familiarity indeed between them?’ Realizing she had said too much (she ‘seemed to repent that she had gone so far’), Kat swore Parry to secrecy and begged him several times never to repeat what she had said, ‘for her Grace should be dishonoured for ever and likewise she undone.’
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By now, Thomas Seymour’s various schemes had been reported to the Privy Council, and the Bristol Mint had been investigated. Sir William Sharington, arrested for embezzling, had informed against Thomas. But it was Thomas himself who made matters worse and, in a sense, brought about his own downfall. On the evening of 16 January, Thomas broke into Hampton Court Palace and tried to seize the King from his bed as he slept. He and a small
gang used stolen keys to get as far as the antechamber, and when one of Edward’s dogs began to bark, Thomas shot it. The King’s guards rushed in and escorted Thomas out as he pled, ‘I wished to know whether his Majesty was safely guarded.’
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On the following day, an order was issued for Thomas’s arrest. He was dining with the Earl of Dorset when troops came to take him to the Tower of London. Within two days, William Paulet, Lord St John, Sir Anthony Denny and Sir Robert Tyrwhitt had arrived at Hatfield to interview Elizabeth and those in her service: they were suspected of being involved in Thomas’s schemes – particularly his plot to marry Elizabeth.
Kat Ashley and Thomas Parry were arrested and taken to London. Sir Robert Tyrwhitt remained at Hatfield to take a statement from Elizabeth, a task he found increasingly onerous. At first Elizabeth ‘was marvellous abashed and did weep very tenderly a long time’ when she heard that Parry and Kat Ashley had been arrested. Elizabeth acknowledged she had written to Thomas Seymour regarding the help he was to give her in getting Durham Place back. She also recalled that Kat had written to him to warn him against visiting ‘for fear of suspicion’, and that she had been angry with her Governess for being so presumptuous.
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By 22 January, Tyrwhitt was fighting his frustration as he tried to get Elizabeth to utter an admission of guilt or prior knowledge of the plot.
I did require her to consider her honour and the peril that might ensue, for she was but a subject … I further declared what a woman Mistress Ashley was … saying that if she would open all things herself, all the evil and shame should be ascribed to them and her youth considered both with the King’s Majesty, your Grace and the whole Council. But in
no way she will not confess any practice by Mistress Ashley or the Cofferer concerning my Lord Admiral; and yet I do see it in her face that she is guilty, and do perceive as yet she will abide more storms ere she accuse Mistress Ashley.
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The next day Tyrwhitt tried a kinder approach, ‘All I have gotten yet is by gentle persuasion, whereby I do begin to grow with her in credit.’ Elizabeth confirmed that Thomas had offered to lend her his house in London and reported Parry’s account of their conversation. Tyrwhitt was pleased, even though there was nothing new in her account. He reported, ‘this is a good beginning, I trust more will follow … I do assure your Grace, she hath a very good wit, and nothing is gotten of her but by great policy.’
For a week Tyrwhitt tried to extract a confession, to no avail. On 28 January he wrote, ‘I do verily believe that there hath been some secret promise between my Lady, Mistress Ashley and the Cofferer, never to confess till death; and if it be so, it will never be gotten of her, but either by the King’s Majesty, or else by your Grace.’
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On receiving Tyrwhitt’s report, the Protector wrote to Elizabeth himself ‘as an earnest friend’, and she replied on 28 January, effectively laying out what she had already told Tyrwhitt about her relationship with Thomas. She also made reference to the rumours regarding a possible child borne of her relationship with him:
… Master Tyrwhit and others have told me that there goeth rumours abroad which be greatly both against my honour and honesty, which, above all other things, I esteem, which be these, that I am in the Tower, and with child by my lord admiral [Thomas Seymour]. My lord, these are shameful slanders, for the which, besides the great desire I have to see
the king’s majesty, I shall most heartily desire your lordship that I may come to the court after your first determination that I may shew myself there as I am.
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The Protector wrote back to her to say that if Elizabeth could identify anyone who uttered such slanders against her, the Council would have them punished. Elizabeth was unwilling to accuse specific people in case it made her look vindictive. She came up with a better plan, asking the Council to stop the gossip instead:
… if it might seem good to your lordship, and the rest of the council, to send forth a proclamation into the countries that they refrain their tongues, declaring how the tales be but lies, it should make both the people think that you and the council have great regard that no such rumours should be spread of any of the King’s majesty’s sisters (as I am, though unworthy) and also that I should think myself to receive such friendship at your hands as you have promised me, although your lordship shewed me great already.
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By early February, both Parry and Kat Ashley had made full and detailed statements to the Council. On 5 February, Tyrwhitt showed copies of their confessions to Elizabeth, hoping that their written disclosures might cause her to break down. Tyrwhitt was pleased to see that ‘she was much abashed and half breathless and perused all their names particularly.’
Tyrwhitt allowed Elizabeth one night to think matters over, but when they next met Elizabeth was once more in command of herself. What had been reported was not treasonable, after all, and there was no evidence that Elizabeth was involved in a marriage plot. The exasperated Tyrwhitt wrote, ‘They all sing the same song
and so I think they would not do, unless they had set the note before.’
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After the investigations both Kat and Parry remained in prison. The Council decided that Kat had been lax in her care of Elizabeth and that she should be replaced as Governess by Lady Tyrwhitt, who had served Catherine Parr and was a puritanical Protestant. When she was told, Elizabeth replied, ‘Mrs Ashley was her mistress and she had not so demeaned herself that the Council should now need to put any more mistresses unto her.’ Rather lacking in tact, Lady Tyrwhitt replied, ‘seeing she did allow Mrs Ashley to be her mistress, she need not be ashamed to have any honest woman to be in that place.’ The teenage Elizabeth wept and then sulked. Tyrwhitt reported her despair at losing Kat and her hope that she might recover Kat as her mistress one day: ‘The love she beareth her is to be wondered at.’
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Tyrwhitt noted that she was also protective of Thomas Seymour: ‘She beginneth now a little to droop by reason she heareth that my Lord Admiral’s house be dispersed. And my wife telleth me now that she cannot bear to hear him discommended but she is ready to make answer therein; and so she hath not been accustomed to do, unless Mistress Ashley were touched, whereunto she was very ready to make answer vehemently.’
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Elizabeth was loyal to those she counted as friends. She wanted Kat Ashley back, a woman who had been like a mother to her in many ways, and she would not hear anything against Thomas, who may have been the first man she loved.
Others were not so loyal, and so Thomas’s fortunes were doomed from the moment of his arrest. While Elizabeth and servants such as John Harington might stand firm, others did not – the nobles with whom he had discussed his plans came forward, his servants spoke out against him, and even the King reported
conversations with Thomas that indicated some treasonable intent. The Council charged him with treason, producing 39 articles of treasonable activities, including that he ‘had attempted and gone about to marry the King’s Majesty’s sister, the Lady Elizabeth, second inheritor in remainder to the Crown.’
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Thomas demanded an open trial to face his accusers. The Council, headed by Thomas’s brother, Edward Seymour, asked the King for an Act of Attainder to bypass the need for a trial, which was granted. Thomas finally spoke out: he had meant no harm to the King or the Protector, and had long given up his pursuit to share power. To prevent Edward Seymour showing leniency to his brother, the other Council members went to the King on 10 March to ask for the authorization to act without him. This, too, was granted.
On 20 March, Thomas Seymour was beheaded on Tower Hill. Even on the scaffold, Thomas refused to make the usual confession, leading Bishop Latimer to say of him, ‘Whether he be saved or no, I leave it to God, but surely he was a wicked man, and the realm is well rid of him.’
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