The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor (14 page)

Hanworth was a Renaissance palace in miniature. Henry VIII had maintained his second wife’s work there after Anne’s execution, before passing the house to Catherine in 1544. The ghost of Anne Boleyn must have been everywhere for the late queen’s daughter, as she studied and danced in its lavish rooms.

Henry’s ample expenditure on Hanworth had created ‘a fine royal seat’ that provided ‘a scene of his pleasures’.
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Now Thomas Seymour was determined to have his pleasure there as well.

Kate Ashley had actively encouraged Seymour in his earlier pursuit of Elizabeth, believing his protestations of love in his proposal letter.
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For Mistress Ashley, a marriage of Elizabeth to Thomas would have offered the possibility of a stable home and status for Henry VIII’s illegitimate daughter and, more importantly as far as Kate was concerned, the promise that the girl would remain close to her in England rather than being taken abroad as the bride of some foreign prince. She would later declare that ‘I would wish her his wife of all men living’.
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With no evidence at all, Kate had somehow got it into her head that Henry VIII himself had desired Seymour as a son-in-law. As such, she genuinely believed that Elizabeth was meant for Thomas Seymour and that Catherine had effectively stolen the girl’s betrothed.
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Yet the fact remained that Thomas’s marriage to Catherine meant that he was now, in Kate’s eyes, out of bounds. She was therefore deeply concerned when informed of his morning visits to the princess. In spite of her fondness for Seymour and the fact that she considered herself his ‘friend’, Kate’s higher loyalty remained with Elizabeth. She was not prepared to let Seymour, through rash behaviour, wreck Elizabeth’s reputation, and in the autumn of 1547 that was all his attentions seemed to promise for the princess.

Kate resolved to keep a closer eye on her charge, going to her early in the morning. She was sitting in Elizabeth’s chamber one morning when Thomas entered to find the princess still asleep in her bed. He must have seen Kate waiting, but merely smiled, ignoring her as he reached once again for the bed curtains. If anything, Kate’s presence as an involuntary but powerless chaperone seemed only to serve to inflame the situation, as Seymour climbed into the bed itself, pulling the sheets over his bare knees. Although Elizabeth shrank back, as she had done on the previous occasion, there was nowhere for her to go. She held the covers up in an attempt to preserve her modesty, but did not struggle as her visitor reached down to kiss her where she lay. This was too scandalous for Kate, who darted forward crying ‘go away for shame’: she was ignored. To the maids, with whom Seymour flirted, it was nothing but a playful game between a stepfather and his stepdaughter. How could anyone see anything sinister in his actions? But Kate did see something deeply alarming in Seymour’s conduct. She warned her charge not to let herself be placed in such compromising positions.

Elizabeth herself was deeply conflicted. Catherine had offered her the only stable home she had known, but the queen’s new husband had been Elizabeth’s suitor just months before. Seymour was handsome and she was attracted to him. Nevertheless, she took Mistress Ashley’s admonishing to heart, ensuring that she woke before her usual hour the next day. This proved fortunate, since Seymour visited early, intending to beat the disapproving Kate to the room. As his key began to turn in the lock, Elizabeth, ‘knowing he would come in’, leapt from her bed and called her maids from the next room.
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Together, they hid behind the bed curtains, keeping out of Thomas Seymour’s reach. Seymour waited, with growing impatience, but Elizabeth remained where she was, her mounting unease recognized even by the women around her. Seymour’s silent presence finally unnerved Elizabeth’s gentlewomen too. That day they told Mistress Ashley what had occurred.

For Kate Ashley, Elizabeth’s evident alarm proved that Seymour had overstepped the mark. How could it be a friendly childish game if the girl was forced to hide to defend her modesty? Given Thomas’s standing, she knew that she had to deal with the matter delicately. She first tried an indirect approach, speaking with Seymour’s servant John Harington, while the queen was again away at Chelsea.
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She took him aside, pointing out that while visits to Elizabeth’s chamber by Seymour and the queen together were ‘well taken of everybody’, Thomas’s visits by himself were ‘misliked’ by some. Kate’s subtle approach had no effect; she knew that a more forceful response was required. Steeling herself to confront Thomas himself, Kate marched to the gallery at Hanworth, where she found Seymour alone. Although tiny in stature next to the athletic Thomas, she squared up to him as she dared to speak to him even in his own house. Her neck craned as she berated him for his conduct, stating that ‘these things were complained of, and that My Lady was evil spoken of’. Seymour was having none of it, however, swearing fiercely ‘God’s precious soul!’, before declaring that ‘he would tell My Lord Protector how it slandered him, and he would not leave it, for he meant no evil’.

What disturbed Kate most was the fact that Seymour only seemed interested in pursuing his games with Elizabeth when she was in bed or in a state of undress. Naturally bashful, and under pressure from her lady mistress, Elizabeth continued to make an effort to get ready earlier. Often she would be dressed and reading when Thomas arrived. This certainly had the desired effect. Now Seymour would merely look in at the door and bid her good morning before going on his way. There were no playful spanks or tickles when the princess was up and fully clothed in undergarments, corsets, gowns, bodices and kirtles.

At night, in the privacy of her own marital bed, Kate Ashley discussed the matter with her husband, running over the events of the day and the previous weeks. John Astley, who was himself one of Elizabeth’s chief attendants, was as concerned as his wife, warning her ‘to take heed’. He had his own private worries that he now shared, confiding that ‘he did fear that the Lady Elizabeth did bear some affection to My Lord Admiral,’ since ‘she seemed to be well pleased’ with his attentions and ‘sometimes she would blush when he was spoken of’. As a virgin, Elizabeth was not supposed to know anything of sexual intercourse and, still less, desire it.
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Nonetheless, in spite of her protestations, there are hints that she enjoyed the attention and even reciprocated it. Astley was not the only one to warn his wife that Seymour’s affections appeared to be repaid.

Kate was uncomfortably aware that she bore some guilt in the matter herself. As the princess herself later confessed, Kate had playfully confided to her not long after Seymour had married Catherine, that if the bridegroom ‘might have had his own will’ he would have had Elizabeth ‘afore the queen’.
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This piqued the girl’s interest. She had asked Kate ‘how she knew that’, to which Kate had replied that ‘she knew it well enough, both by himself and by others’.

Kate must also have been concerned about her own position, since it was she who had removed the pallet bed from Elizabeth’s room. Whether that change was motivated by her new married status, or by pressure from Elizabeth to let her sleep alone, either way it did not look good. Yet, in spite of her unease, Kate did not force the girl to be chaperoned again at night. For several hours each night, Elizabeth continued to remain alone, and Thomas Seymour had a key to her room. It would have been a simple matter for him to slip into her chamber at Hanworth, unobserved, just as he had slipped into Catherine’s bedchamber at Chelsea some months earlier during his secret night-time visits.

The queen, in love with her husband but also in thrall to him as her ‘oppressor’, resisted seeing what was in front of her face. That summer and autumn, she was far from an attentive guardian. She had other things on her mind. Sometimes she would be away at court or even at the Protector’s house at Sheen, remonstrating with him over his treatment of her and her property.
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She was also grieving the loss of Lord Parr of Horton, who had raised her. On his death in September 1547, she wrote plaintively that ‘it hath pleased Almighty God to take unto his mercy my entirely beloved uncle’, before remembering her position and substituting the more royal ‘our beloved uncle’.
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Despite mixed, confused emotions, Elizabeth was rapidly growing infatuated with her alluring admirer. It was while they were staying together again at Hanworth that events took on a more dramatic turn. As Kate later put it, Thomas Seymour, who had with such little effort won himself a queen, also wanted to possess and ‘be homely with’ the young princess.
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*1
There is historical dispute about her whereabouts. Some (James, Porter and de Lisle) consider that she remained, for the most part, at Seymour Place until the household moved to Seymour’s castle at Sudeley in the summer of 1548. However, the fact that Elizabeth’s later tutor, Roger Ascham, obviously knew Jane and her tutor well suggests that Elizabeth and Jane were sharing a household some time earlier.

*2
In the two recorded instances that Elizabeth spoke of Anne, she portrayed her favourably, in one case asserting that her mother would never have agreed to cohabit with the king except by way of marriage (Cole, p. 4).

*3
In one sense, Thomas Seymour might be said to have been doing Elizabeth a favour in causing her to rise earlier, since contemporaries agreed that ‘the sleep of a virgin should not be long’ (Vives, p. 91).

*4
A. Haynes, in his study of Tudor sexual activity (1999, p. 19), considers that Seymour’s conduct was ‘an eroticised substitute for penetrative sex, an attempt to subordinate her to his will’.

*5
As mentioned in Thomas Parry’s confession. A. Haynes (1999, p. 11) discusses the close relationships between master/mistress and servants in the household, suggesting that Seymour’s concerns need not have been entirely paranoid. In 1556 a Somerset gentlewoman, Mary Stawell, was found to have become besotted with a servant, to her husband’s rage.

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In spite of Catherine’s considerable number of administrative staff, Seymour also took on a controlling role in relation to her lands (as can be seen at The National Archives in document TNA E163/12/17 f. 1). He had terrified one of Catherine’s officers in Hampshire, such that the man protested that he had in no way ‘misused’ his office and pleaded: ‘I shall be glad and most willing to accomplish in all that I may [which] your lordship determine as well herein as in all other things.’

*7
These were the only parts of the old building to survive into modern times (Dugdale).

When the court moved to Oatlands Palace, in Surrey, towards the start of autumn 1547, Hanworth proved to be a convenient location for Thomas. Oatlands was another fine house coveted, and then acquired cheaply, by Henry VIII.
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The palace, which stood near Weybridge, was nearly 20 miles from Chelsea – too far for Seymour to make the journey comfortably from there in a day. Catherine’s continuing residence at Hanworth, however, meant just an 8-mile trip to the boy-king’s court, allowing Thomas to return home at night if he chose not to make use of his rooms at court.

Catherine visited the court herself in August, but as the months began to turn colder she tended to stay at Hanworth, where, unfortunately, she fell ill in October.
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While recuperating, she occupied herself with her ladies, her gardens and her intellectual pursuits.
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She continued to mother little Edward Herbert, ensuring that he had sufficient shirts to see him through the winter and engaging a tailor ‘for making apparel’ and ‘other necessaries’ for him.
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Catherine also continued to try to make contact with her royal stepson. While still in his ‘tender years’ and ‘as yet by age unable to direct his own things’, Edward had, as God’s anointed, a certain innate authority.
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Both Catherine and Thomas were therefore keen to ‘instil into His Grace’s head’ that he should ‘take upon himself the government and managing of his own affairs’, a position that Protector Somerset considered to be perilous.
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Catherine and Thomas could see only the benefits in Edward obtaining greater authority. The queen wrote regular lengthy letters to the king. He finally replied in September 1547, informing her that her letters had ‘been thoroughly enjoyable to me, most noble queen, which you have written to me very recently’.
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This was encouraging; yet Catherine was still not allowed to see her stepson, who was kept cloistered away. Instead, Somerset surrounded him with his wife’s family, whom, unlike his brother and Catherine, he trusted absolutely.

Thomas Seymour was jealous of the access afforded to Lady Somerset’s stepfather Sir Richard Page, about whom he complained on a number of occasions. If he could have ‘the king in his custody as Master Page had he would be glad,’ as he once assured John Fowler. He disliked the duchess’s grasping half-brother Sir Michael Stanhope too, the man who controlled access to the household. Thomas would have been ‘contented that he [Thomas] should have the governance of him [Edward] as Master Stanhope had,’ he assured anyone who would listen. Somerset trusted Page and Stanhope implicitly, seeing them as a line of defence in his attempts to maintain his authority. It was with his support that Stanhope issued orders to the king’s household that ‘if any man should knock at the door after that he was abed they should call him up and waken him before they did open the door’. The fact that Stanhope had to issue this order three or four times in six months suggests that it was not, though, very effective.