The Boleyn Women: The Tudor Femmes Fatales Who Changed English History (31 page)

By the summer of 1544, Elizabeth had grown into a very promising child, as her half-sister, Mary, had predicted. A letter written by the princess to her stepmother survives from that July, demonstrating the girl’s erudition and her desire for approval from the woman who was to take the place of her own mother:

Inimical fortune, envious of all good and ever resolving human affairs, has deprived me for a whole year of your most illustrious presence, and not thus content, has yet again robbed me of the same good, which thing would be intolerable to me, did I not hope to enjoy it very soon. And in my exile, I well know that the clemency of your highness has had as much care and solicitude for my health as the king’s majesty himself. By which thing I am not only bound to serve you, but also to revere you with filial love, since I understand that your most illustrious highness has not forgotten me every time you have written to the king’s majesty, which, indeed, it was my duty to have requested from you. For heretofore I have not dared to write to him. Wherefore I now humbly pray your most excellent highness, that, when you write to is majesty, you will condescend to recommend me to him, praying ever for his sweet benediction, and similarly entreating our Lord God to send him best success, and the obtaining of victory over his enemies, so that your highness and I may, as soon as possible, rejoice together with him on his happy return. No less pray I God, that he would preserve your most illustrious highness, to whose grace, humbly kissing your hands, I offer and recommend myself.
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Elizabeth signed her letter ‘your most obedient daughter, and most faithful servant, Elizabeth’ and it is clear that she already held her stepmother in affection. She spent the summer with Catherine at court. Elizabeth could not, in any event, have been entirely out of favour with her father. In February 1544 Parliament passed the third Act of Succession, on Henry’s instructions, which bequeathed the crown first to his son, Prince Edward, and then to any child born to Catherine Parr or a subsequent wife.
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In default of any such issue, the crown was to pass instead first to Princess Mary and then to Princess Elizabeth, both of whom remained legally illegitimate. Soon afterwards, Henry also commissioned a great painting in which he sat centrally flanked by his third wife, Jane Seymour, and their son, Edward. Standing some distance away but very much included in the picture were the king’s two daughters, demonstrating that both Elizabeth and her elder half-sister were once again part of the royal family. The king remained firm to this change of heart for the rest of his life, reiterating the new order of succession in his will, as well as leaving both his daughters wealthy with substantial marriage portions. Elizabeth continued to flourish under the care of her royal stepmother and, with the death of Henry VIII in January 1547, joined the queen’s establishment at Chelsea permanently.

The queen dowager had intended to marry Jane Seymour’s brother, Thomas Seymour, before the king had first declared an interest in her back in 1543 and, with her husband’s death, the two quickly renewed their relationship.
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Seymour was consumed by a deep hatred for his elder brother, Edward Seymour, who had become Edward VI’s protector and had been created Duke of Somerset. He was determined to obtain a royal bride, although it does not appear that his choice first fell on his former love. Within weeks of Henry VIII’s death there were rumours that he intended to marry Princess Mary, with the Imperial ambassador going so far as to raise the matter with the princess.
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Elizabeth’s elder half-sister certainly had no intention of marrying an English commoner, laughing when the rumours were mentioned and declaring that ‘she had never spoken to him in her life, and had only seen him once’. The king himself wanted his uncle to marry his former stepmother, Anne of Cleves, who was an expensive burden on the government.
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Thomas Seymour never countenanced marrying Anne of Cleves and there is little evidence that he truly looked upon Princess Mary. There is, however, a suggestion that he was interested in taking Elizabeth as his bride.

Two letters exist which imply that Thomas Seymour showed an interest in marriage to Elizabeth. Both letters are highly debatable as they survive only as Italian copies in a seventeenth-century work. It is indeed possible that they are genuine but, without the originals, they must be treated with caution. According to the first letter, supposedly written by Seymour on 25 February 1547 and addressed to the princess,

I have so much respect for you my Princess, that I dare not tell you of the fire which consumes me, and the impatience with which I yearn to show you my devotion. If it is my good fortune to inspire in you feelings of kindness, and you will consent to a marriage you may assure yourself of having made the happiness of a man who will adore you till death.
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Elizabeth’s response stated,

The letter you have written to me is the most obliging, and at the same time the most eloquent in the world. And as I do not feel myself competent to reply to so many courteous expressions, I shall content myself with unfolding to you, in few words, my real sentiments. I confess to you that your letter, all elegant as it is has very much surprised me; for, besides that neither my age nor my inclination allows me to think of marriage, I never would have believed that any one would have spoken to me of nuptials, at a time when I ought to think of nothing but sorrow for the death of my father. And to him I owe so much, that I must have two years at least to mourn his loss. And how can I make up my mind to become a wife before I shall have enjoyed some years my virgin state, and arrived at years of discretion?
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The letter ends saying that ‘though I decline the happiness of becoming your wife, I shall never cease to interest myself in all that can crown your merit with glory, and shall ever feel the greatest pleasure in being your servant, and good friend’.

In spite of the doubts over the letters, there is strong evidence that Seymour did at least make enquiries into the possibility of a marriage with Anne Boleyn’s daughter. On 17 January 1549 the Privy Council reported of Seymour that ‘notwithstanding the good advice given to the contrary as well by the said lord protector as others his friends of the Council, practised to have in marriage the Lady Elizabeth, one of his Majesty’s sisters and the second inheritor after his Majesty to the crown’.
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One of the charges later laid against Seymour was that in the early months of 1547 he had sought to marry Elizabeth and that he had resurrected these attempts after Catherine Parr’s death ‘by secret and crafty means’.
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Elizabeth’s governess also later referred to Seymour as her ‘old suitor’. Whether the thirteen-year-old princess had any involvement or knowledge in Seymour’s machinations is unclear. In any event, when it became evident that the council would never sanction a marriage between Seymour and the princess he turned his attentions back to Catherine, with the pair marrying in secret within a few months of Henry VIII’s death.

With Catherine Parr’s marriage, Thomas Seymour effectively became Elizabeth’s stepfather and joined her stepmother’s household. Although he had been frustrated in his attempts to marry her, he was still interested in his young charge, who in the autumn of 1547 reached the age of fourteen, which was generally considered to be the earliest age for a girl to consummate a marriage in the sixteenth century. The first evidence of an attraction between Elizabeth and Seymour appeared innocent enough to the members of Catherine Parr’s household.
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The queen dowager loved dancing, often employing musicians to entertain her household. According to Elizabeth’s governess, Katherine Ashley, the princess would often choose Seymour as her partner and then ‘laugh and pale at it’ with embarrassment. Alternatively, she would shyly choose her stepfather before she ‘chased him away’, too embarrassed to actually step out and dance with him. For Seymour, this was probably the first indication that his wife’s young charge was attracted to him and he took full advantage of the situation. Shortly after his marriage he began coming into Elizabeth’s bedchamber early in the morning, often before she was even out of bed, ‘and if she were up, he would bid her good morrow, and ask how she did, and strike her upon the back or on the buttocks familiarly’. Worse was to happen if the princess was still in bed, with Seymour throwing open the curtains and attempting to step into the bed himself, as Elizabeth shrank back under the covers away from him. It was only when he actually attempted to kiss the girl while she lay in her bed that her governess chased him away, leaving the princess, who appears to have had a crush on her dashing guardian, giggling in her bed. Catherine Parr chose to ignore much of what was happening, but she was not ignorant of her husband’s actions. It is significant that, when the household moved to Hanworth, Catherine took to joining him on his morning romps, although she took no part in actually curtailing Seymour’s behaviour, merely chaperoning him. On two occasions, the queen and her husband tickled Elizabeth as she lay in her bed. On another occasion, in the gardens, Seymour cut Elizabeth’s black dress to shreds while the queen held her still, laughing.

The involvement of his wife in the romps seems only to emboldened Seymour. When the household returned to Chelsea, later in 1547, he renewed his morning visits to Elizabeth’s bedchamber, with the young girl often jumping out of bed and hiding when she heard the door being unlocked. The fact that Seymour had a key to Elizabeth’s bedroom was, in itself, a lapse in propriety on the part of the queen and does suggest that she was completely under the thrall of her husband and unable to see that the slight young girl that she had originally taken under her wing was growing into a woman. When the family moved to Seymour Place in London the visits continued, with Seymour visiting Elizabeth in the morning ‘in his night-gown, barelegged in his slippers’. By this time, Elizabeth was anxious about her reputation and would ensure that she was always up and reading, leaving Seymour to go away disappointed.

Elizabeth was right to be concerned about her reputation. From a modern viewpoint, Seymour’s conduct with a fourteen-year-old under his care would be considered to be child abuse but this was not how it was viewed by contemporaries, particularly those that remembered Elizabeth’s mother and the blackening of her name at her arrest. One contemporary, for example, the hostile Jane Dormer, who was a friend of Princess Mary, recalled to her biographer one of the stories that was current at the time of the Seymour affair. According to Dormer’s recollections of Elizabeth,

a great lady, who knew her very well, being a girl of twelve or thirteen, told me that she was proud and disdainful, and related to me some particulars of her scornful behaviour, which much blemished the handsomeness and beauty of her person. In King Edward’s time what passed between the Lord Admiral, Sir Thomas Seymour, and her Dr Latimer preached in a sermon, and was a chief cause that the Parliament condemned the Admiral. There was a bruit of a child born and miserably destroyed, but could not be discovered whose it was; only the report of the midwife, who was brought from her house blindfold thither, and so returned, saw nothing in the house while she was there, but candle light; only she said, it was the child of a very fair young lady. There was a muttering of the Admiral and this lady, who was between fifteen and sixteen years of age.
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Rumours that Elizabeth bore Seymour a child persisted, and even in the nineteenth century, one writer was able to report with certainty that such a child existed and that Elizabeth was largely to blame for all that happened.
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It is certain that Elizabeth had feelings for Seymour, but there is no evidence of a sexual relationship. If anything, there was little that Elizabeth could do to avoid her stepmother’s husband, with both her governess and the queen encouraging Seymour in his outrageous behaviour. Katherine Ashley later admitted that she had spoken to Seymour in the park at St James’s Palace, commenting, ‘I have heard ever said that he should have married my lady.’ To her credit, Ashley did seek to turn Seymour away from the princess’s bedchamber, speaking ‘ugly’ words to him and eventually complaining to Catherine Parr. The queen again made a ‘small matter of it’, but even she was growing worried. Finally, early in 1548, Catherine complained to Mistress Ashley that Seymour had informed her that he had ‘looked in at the gallery window, and seen my lady Elizabeth cast her arms about a man’s neck’. Elizabeth, weeping, denied this charge and Ashley believed her, considering that the accusation had been invented by the jealous queen in order to ensure that the governess would watch her charge more closely. When, in May 1548, Catherine herself caught the pair embracing, Elizabeth was sent away. She never saw the woman who had been a mother to her again, with Catherine dying in childbirth later that year.

For Elizabeth, the loss of her stepmother must have been devastating. In her delirium as she lay dying, Catherine complained that ‘I am not well handled, for those that be about me care not for me, but stand laughing at my grief, and the more good I will to them the less good they will to me’. When Seymour attempted to soothe her, she accused him of giving her ‘many shrewd taunts’.
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Elizabeth, who is likely to have heard of Catherine’s words from the queen’s attendant, Lady Tyrwhit, would have known that they referred to her own relationship with Seymour. Quite apart from her grief at the queen’s death, Elizabeth soon learned that it was dangerous to associate with Thomas Seymour. He had continued to plot against his brother following his marriage and, in January 1549 was arrested on suspicion of treason.
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During the investigations Elizabeth was interrogated, with some of her servants sent to the Tower. She conducted herself well and revealed nothing, but her reputation was damaged. Seymour was executed on 20 March 1549. The incident terrified the princess who, at the age of only fifteen, found herself involved in treason and facing arrest as her mother had done. She spent the rest of her brother’s reign conducting herself as a good Protestant maiden and wearing sober black.