The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor (12 page)

Thomas Seymour’s presence always added excitement to the atmosphere at Catherine’s manors of Chelsea, or Hanworth to where the queen moved in July 1547. The queen was determined to maintain a godly household for ‘the young damsels’ in her care who, as the schoolmaster-cleric Nicholas Udall put it, ‘instead of cards and other instruments of idle trifling… have continually in their hands either psalms or homilies, and other devout meditations, or else Paul’s epistles, or some book of Holy Scripture matters, and as familiarly both to read or reason thereof in Greek, Latin, French, or Italian, as in English’.
47
The ‘young virgins’ in Catherine’s care were reputed to want nothing except their books, abandoning hunting trips, dancing and games; but this was an exaggeration. While they often studied both early in the morning and late into the evening, there was also time to indulge in ‘courtly dalliance’ as the minstrels played and the ladies danced.
48

Catherine Parr loved dancing. Her household, while striving for the godly, was also filled with merriment as she sought to make the most of her freedom as a dowager queen. Sometimes, she would go by boat to dine with her friend the Duchess of Suffolk, making a cheerful party as she and her attendants sailed in the summer heat.
49
The duchess, who had once been rumoured to be Henry VIII’s choice for a seventh wife,
*7
would dance playfully with Seymour, either in her own house or when she returned Catherine’s visits.
50
Princess Elizabeth watched the pair with her dark almond-shaped eyes. When the time came and the music changed, she stepped forward shyly, claiming her stepmother’s husband as her own for the dance.

As she touched his hand, she would ‘laugh and pale at it’, as though it were a joke, but there was always a clucking Kate Ashley whispering in her ear: ‘Iwis you would not refuse him if the Council would be content thereunto’, causing the girl to chase her dancing partner away as quickly as she selected him.
51
Mistress Ashley was as captivated by the dashing Seymour as the others in the household. She knew, of course, that Elizabeth could not now have the married Seymour, even with the Council’s consent. Yet, his desirability to the princess was obvious, and Kate teased her. To her young and impressionable royal charge, she gave conflicting messages: the person whose role it was to provide a defence of Elizabeth’s honour was, simultaneously, nudging her and Thomas closer together. Kate, more than anyone, knew that the princess, as she approached her fourteenth birthday, was growing up. She took care of Elizabeth’s intimate needs, purchasing material for her most private garments, including linen cloth to be made into pads for the princess’s periods.
*8
The child was nearly a woman.

Somerset, at court, was also aware that Elizabeth was reaching womanhood. He had turned his attention to her marriage by September 1547, when Warwick informed him that an emissary of the Earl of Bothwell – a powerful Scottish divorcé – had suggested a trio of English ladies as potential wives.
52
While the emissary named the youthful Duchess of Suffolk, he was more coy about revealing the names of the other two, but hinted at either Mary or Elizabeth. Warwick kept a poker face, refusing to be drawn on the royal ladies, although he did tell the emissary that he thought the Duchess of Suffolk was his to be won, since she would follow the Protector’s commands. Bothwell was not to be thwarted, however. He declared that he would go a-wooing himself in England if he were granted safe conduct, declaring that ‘if he liked them they would not mislike him’.

Somerset might also have considered the nine-year-old son of the Earl of Arran as a potential husband for Elizabeth. He had asked Lord Clinton to kidnap the earl and bring him to London.
53
Such a marriage would help his Scottish negotiations – although negotiations were always long and drawn out.

Oblivious to these intrigues, Elizabeth continued to spend many of her daylight hours at Chelsea studying. As the sun waned, even in the long days of early summer, the gathering darkness of late evening made the house feel claustrophobic and dingy. True, there was sometimes the dancing by candlelight. But a dozen candles cost one-and-a-half shillings, which, when the average labourer earned around two or three shillings a week, was a huge expense.
54
There was certainly no sense in lighting all the dark or unnecessary corners of the manor house. At night, around the princess’s bed, the darkness would have been impenetrable.

Night-time was also the only occasion that Elizabeth was alone. Kate Ashley had always been possessive of her young charge and, towards the end of Lady Troy’s tenure as lady mistress, succeeded in taking the old lady’s place in sleeping on a small pallet bed beside the princess’s own.
55
Sharing Elizabeth’s bedchamber, Kate thus acted as both chaperone and confidante, marking her position as a rising star in the household. All had changed with Lady Troy’s retirement. Although her niece Blanche Parry had asserted her own claim to sleep beside the girl, she was ‘put out’ by her rival. Kate could not abide anyone else taking her place on the pallet bed; she only reluctantly allowed her maid to sleep there when she was absent from the household.

It caused comment when this arrangement suddenly altered at Chelsea. One day, Kate ordered the removal of the pallet bed from Elizabeth’s bedchamber, on the grounds that the room ‘was so little’. (There was, though, room for a reading desk at which the princess could study.) Henceforth, Elizabeth was to lie alone and unchaperoned at nights in her great bed at Chelsea.
*9

It would leave Elizabeth exposed. For the sake of her virtue, she badly needed protection.

*1
Her half-sister Mary’s household showed similar continuity over the years, although it was initially larger because of Mary’s status as heir to the throne for most of her childhood (BL Harley MS 6807 f. 2–9). Also, see McIntosh (2010), p. 68.

*2
Both were also proud of their royal connections; John ended his life as the contented resident of a house in Maidstone, Kent, known as ‘the Palace’.

*3
In correspondence and even in his own will, Sir John always appears as ‘Astley’. Kate on the other hand is called ‘Ashley’ in most documents, suggesting that the pair pronounced the surname differently. Although Katherine is often referred to as ‘Kat’, Elizabeth usually called her ‘Kate’: the reference to her as ‘Kat’ by the princess in her interrogation in 1549 is most likely an abbreviation.

*4
In 1546 Queen Catherine had narrowly escaped arrest for heresy after her husband began to tire of her outspoken religious beliefs and her opponents sought to take advantage.

*5
Mary was the daughter of James V of Scotland and grand-daughter of Henry VIII’s elder sister Margaret Tudor. She had inherited the Scottish throne in 1542 on the death of her father when she was less than a week old. The Treaties of Greenwich (1543), agreeing a marriage between the infant Mary and Edward, were repudiated by the Scottish Parliament later that year, and instead Scotland maintained its traditional alliance with France. English attempts to coerce the Scots into accepting the marriage treaty began with punitive expeditions under Edward Seymour in 1545: they became known as the ‘rough wooing’.

*6
Cheke’s involvement is surprising, and he obviously failed to heed the third of his mother’s recommendations when he first came to court – that he take care of his God, his soul and his company (BL Sloane MS 1523 f. 37v).

*7
There were already rumours, reported by Ambassador Van Der Delft in February 1546, that Henry meant to replace his sixth queen around the time of the heresy accusations with none other than the queen’s recently widowed friend Catherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk.

*8
There is a later reference in Princess Elizabeth’s household accounts to Kate purchasing ‘linen cloth and other necessarys for her grace’s use’ for 4 shillings (Strangford, p. 32). The small sum, when compared to other purchases of linen cloth, such as one made for 22s 4d, suggests that a small quantity of linen was purchased. It seems likely that this would have been for Elizabeth’s sanitary protection, or at the very least for underwear.

*9
This was highly unusual. Even as queen, Elizabeth was expected always to be chaperoned (Merton, p. 85).

Thomas Seymour’s first early-morning visit to Elizabeth’s bedchamber came within days of his arrival at Chelsea in June 1547. He entered a household that, although still draped in mourning black, was lively and filled with hope for the future. Thrice widowed, the queen had worn too much black in her thirty-five years. No wonder she preferred rich velvets and satins, and favoured bright crimson and jewels over dark veils.
1

Thomas had his own London house, having acquired the residence of the Bishop of Bath soon after Edward’s accession.
2
Seymour Place, more palace than house, occupied a pleasant and convenient spot on the Strand, its site sloping down towards the River Thames. Riding into its large courtyard, cobbled with uneven stones, Seymour could dismount while his horse was led away to open stables close to the buttressed chapel.
3
The better rooms faced away from the courtyard, towards the fine, ornate gardens that descended in terraces towards the river and a private wharf, which allowed the house’s occupants to take to the river at whim.
4

Jane Grey, having been placed under Thomas’s care by her father, the Marquess of Dorset, was at Seymour Place when her guardian’s marriage became public knowledge. She spent her days with her head quietly bowed over her books, under the guidance of her tutor, Mr Aylmer. Her mother, Frances Brandon, was on friendly terms with Queen Catherine, whom she had often encountered at court.
5
Both she and her husband were in no way offended by Catherine’s marriage when it was publicized; instead, they hoped that their daughter would be transferred to the queen’s household, believing that she would learn ‘good behaviour’. They considered that owing to her ‘tender years’ the girl required firm instruction lest, ‘for lack of a bridle’, as her mother would later fearsomely put it, she should ‘take too much the head’.
6

Jane was tiny, even for her age; she would later be dressed in wooden platform shoes to give her some extra
gravitas
. But she was fiercely intelligent and opinionated. It made sense for Thomas to bring Jane – who was, after all, Catherine’s great-niece by marriage – with him when he took up residence at Chelsea in June 1547.
*1
Prior to Thomas and Catherine’s marriage being publicized, many must have assumed that Jane Grey was at Seymour Place as Thomas’s fiancé. Somerset and others at court must have wondered just whom it was intended she should marry, if it was not her now spoken-for guardian. It was better, more proper, that she be transferred to the queen’s household.

Jane brought her own servants with her. One gentlewoman, John Astley’s sister Elizabeth, was particularly welcome, for she resembled her brother in her pleasant manner and her integrity.
7
Princess Elizabeth and Jane Grey shared a similar outlook, and Jane later praised her older cousin as one who ‘followeth God’s word’.
8
However, a four-year age gap, while nothing between adults, was still a large gulf between two girls aged nearly ten and nearly fourteen. The girls respected each other, but Jane was not someone in whom Elizabeth could confide once Seymour began his early-morning visits. Neither did the princess make many other friends among the household at Chelsea. She seemed ‘proud and disdainful’ to those around her, who misinterpreted her natural reserve and sadness at her father’s death as arrogance.
9
And her stepfather’s attentions were soon proving alarmingly persistent.

Elizabeth had dressed quickly following Seymour’s first visit, as though nothing had happened. She spent her day alone with her tutor at her books and her evening with her ladies. As she retired to bed that night, it must have crossed her mind whether Seymour would return again. The thought was a startling one for the daughter of the disgraced Anne Boleyn. There were many who believed the daughter shared the character defects of the mother executed on accusations of adultery.
10
Elizabeth, though fashionably pale-skinned, resembled her dead mother in most other respects. In particular, both had dark, flashing eyes, which captivated men and made women wary. Princess Mary, who had always tried to show kindness to Elizabeth, nevertheless sometimes looked at her suspiciously, even going so far as to whisper that Elizabeth’s conduct made her doubt her half-sister’s paternity.
11

Elizabeth was fascinated by the mother she could not remember, later hiding Anne’s portrait in a secret compartment in a ring.
*2
But, as the daughter of ‘such a mother’, Elizabeth was expected by many to behave with her mother’s impropriety. Discussing the fate of Anne was taboo to those around Elizabeth, creating a barrier. Thomas Seymour was the only one bold enough to break the taboo. Indeed, he mocked the embargo to others in the household. ‘No Words of Boleyn,’ he sniggered – a punning reaction on being asked about ‘Boulogne’ by Elizabeth’s treasurer, Thomas Parry. This was shocking, but it was also liberating for the princess, helping to draw her further towards her unorthodox new stepfather.

Whatever the complexity of Elizabeth’s emerging feelings about Seymour, on the next morning following that of Seymour’s first visit she rose from bed early.
*3
This was a considerable effort of will for her: she was, as she freely admitted, ‘no morning woman’, yet she did not want to be caught by surprise.
12