The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracy, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant (34 page)

As touching on my lord’s promise, I trust to make you friends, assuring you that I wait as well on him as any man he has, to creep into his favour to bring our matters well to pass.

My lady of Somerset told me on Friday night that she would [go] to Sheen the next day and at her return on Tuesday (which is tomorrow) she would see your highness, but I think it will be Wednesday ere she comes for that my lord will be tomorrow all day in the Star Chamber.
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He adds: ‘I never over-read it after it was written, [therefore] if any faults be I pray you hold me excused.’

Katherine received another of Seymour’s letters, delivered by one of her sister’s servants. She wrote back that beforehand, she was hell bent on writing to Somerset so that

he might well and manifestly perceive my fantasy to be more towards you for marriage than any other.

Notwithstanding I am determined to add thereto a full determination never to marry and to break it when I have done, if I live two years. I think to see the king one day this week at which time I would be glad to see you, though I scarce dare ask in speech.

She promises to write letters to him once every three days and that she had

sent in haste to the painters for one of my little pictures which is very perfect by the judgement of as many as has seen the same. The last I had myself I bestowed … upon my lady of Suffolk.

Katherine adds plaintively:

I dare not desire to see you for fear of suspicion. I wish the world was as well pleased with our meaning as I am well assured the goodness of God’s but the world is so wicked that it cannot be contented with good things.
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Both official and family approval for the marriage was essential. After being approached by Seymour, Princess Mary, on 3 June, firmly declined to become involved:

[I have] received your letter wherein (I think) I perceive strange news concerning a suit you have in hand to the Queen for marriage.

My lord … it stands less without my poor honour to be a meddler in this matter, considering whose wife her grace was of late.

Besides, if she be minded to grant you your suit my letters shall do you but small pleasure. On the other side, if the remembrance of the king’s majesty, my father (whose soul God pardon) will not suffer her to grant your suit, I am nothing able to persuade her to forget the loss of him who is as yet very ripe in my remembrance.

Wherefore, I shall most earnestly require you to think no unkindness in me though I refuse to be a meddler anyways in this matter (wooing matters set apart, wherein I being a maid, am nothing cunning).
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Seymour then tried the young king. He employed John Fowler, a member of the Privy Chamber, to suggest the idea that Edward’s uncle should marry his stepmother. After several embarrassing false starts – including the king’s bright but inconvenient idea of Seymour marrying Anne of Cleves – on 25 June, Edward wrote to Katherine blessing the union:

Proceed therefore in your good course. Continue to love my father and show the great kindness to me, which I have ever perceived in you.

Cease not to love and read the Scriptures but persevere in always reading them.
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The couple may have signed the written marriage contracts and exchanged rings within thirty-four days of Henry’s death. They were probably not married at Chelsea until early June, although it may even have been later by a few weeks, as van der Delft reported on 10 July 1547 that

the Queen [dowager] was married a few days ago since to the Lord Admiral, the brother of the Protector and still causes herself to be served ceremoniously as queen, which, it appears, is the custom here.

Nevertheless, when she went lately to dine at the house of her new husband she was not served with the royal state, from which it is presumed that she will eventually live according to her new condition.
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Somerset was sorely offended by the marriage and disputed the ownership of the jewels given to the dowager queen by Henry. Katherine vented her anger to her new husband at the cavalier treatment accorded her by Somerset:

My lord: This shall be to advertise you that my lord your brother has this afternoon a little made me warm.

It was fortunate we were so much distant for I suppose else I should have bitten him.

What cause have they to fear [you] having such a wife? It is requisite for them to continually pray for a short dispatch of that hell.

Tomorrow or else upon Saturday at afternoon about three o’clock I will see the king where I intend to utter all my choler to my lord your brother, if you do not give me advice to the contrary: for I would be loath to do anything to hinder your matter.

I will declare unto you how my lord has used me concerning Fausterne,
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and after I shall most humbly desire to direct mine answer to him in that behalf … My lord, I beseech you send me word with speed how I shall use myself to my new brother.
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It was a testing time for her, made worse by the insistence of precedence over her at court by Somerset’s wife. Katherine wrote to Seymour:

How is this that through my marriage to you, the wife of your brother is treating me with contempt and presumes to go before me.

I will never allow it, for I am Queen and shall be called so all my life and I promise you if she does again what she did yesterday I will pull her back myself.
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Somerset was unsympathetic. He wrote to Seymour: ‘Brother, are you not my younger brother and am I not Protector? Do you not know that your wife, before she married the king, was of lower rank than my wife?’

The next day, in the chapel either at Westminster or St James’s Palace, the Protector’s wife ‘came and thrust herself forward and sat in the Queen’s place. As soon as the Queen saw it, she could not bear it and took hold of her arm and said: “I deserve this for degrading myself from a queen to marrying the admiral.” The other ladies that were there would not allow the quarrel to go further.’

The duchess was brimming over with fury about Katherine’s behaviour, refused to bear her train and told all and sundry about her contempt for the dowager queen:

Did not Henry VIII marry Katherine Parr in his doting days when he brought himself so low by his lust and cruelty that no lady that stood on her honour would venture on him?

And shall I now give place to her who in her former estate was but Latimer’s widow and is now fain to cast herself on a younger brother.

If master admiral teaches his wife no better manners, I am she that will.
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Aside from court jealousies and the row over ownership of her jewels, Katherine was still dutifully concerned about the welfare of her stepchildren. A letter to her from Elizabeth, written from Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, sometime in 1547 talks fondly of the queen dowager’s friendship:

Truly I was replete with sorrow to depart from your highness, especially leaving you undoubtful of health. Although I answered little, I weighed it more deeper when you said you would warn me of all evils that you should hear of me.

For if your grace had not a good opinion of me, you would not have offered friendship to me that way, that all men judge the contrary.

But what may I more say than thank God for providing such friends to me; desiring God to enrich me with their long life and [grant] me grace to be in heart no less thankful to receive it than I now am glad in writing to show it.

Although I have plenty of matter, here I will stay for I know you are not quiet to read.
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Elizabeth, now aged thirteen, came to live with Katherine at Chelsea very soon after Henry’s death and was to spend seventeen months with her stepmother and her new husband. Therein lay great danger: the boisterous Seymour was fond of fun and games with the princess, and she, in the first flush of puberty, enjoyed his flirtations. Her governess Catherine, or ‘Cat’, Ashley later testified:

At Chelsea, after he was married to the Queen, he would come many mornings into Lady Elizabeth’s chamber before she was ready and sometimes before she had risen and if she were up he would bid her good morrow and would ask her how she did and strike her on the back or on the buttocks familiarly …

And if she were in bed, he would put open the curtains and make as though he would come at her and one morning he strove to have kissed her in bed.

That one morning at Hanworth, the Queen came with him and she and the Lord Admiral tickled the Lady Elizabeth in the bed.

Another time at Hanworth, he romped with her in the garden and cut her gown, being black cloth, into a hundred pieces, and when this deponent came up and chided Lady Elizabeth, she
answered that she could not strive withal, for the Queen held her while the Lord Admiral cut her dress.
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There is evidence that Katherine grew uneasy and angry at this flirting: ‘The Lord Admiral came sometimes [to Elizabeth’s chamber] without the Queen, which some misliked.’
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Shortly after Whitsun 1548, Katherine put her foot down and sent Elizabeth back to Cheshunt.

Then, astonishingly, the dowager queen, at the age of around thirty-five, became pregnant. She retreated from Chelsea to her manor of Hanworth in Middlesex because of the spread of the plague. One of her letters from there, on 9 June 1548, talks of her unborn child stirring in her womb:

I gave your little knave your blessing who like an honest man stirred apace after and before. For Mary Odell, being abed with me, had laid her hand upon my belly to feel it stir.

It has stirred these three days every morning and evening so that I trust when you come, it will make you some pastime.

And thus I end, bidding my sweetheart and loving husband better to fare than myself.
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Katherine was hoping that Seymour would escort her from Hanworth to their home at Sudeley Castle, near Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, where she was planning to spend her confinement. But a threatened attack by the French fleet on Pevensey Castle, Sussex, could have summoned the admiral to duty at any time. ‘I am very sorry for the news of the Frenchmen,’ she wrote to him. ‘I pray God it not be a let [hindrance] to our journey. As soon as you know what they will do, good my lord, I beseech you to let me hear from you, for I shall not be quiet till I know.’

Her husband replied from Westminster the same day, saying that her letter revived his spirits ‘partly for that I do perceive you be armed with patience’ but ‘chiefest, that I hear my little man doth shake his poll’, referring to the unborn child’s movements, probably of its head. Seymour had spoken to the Lord Protector about taking a leave of absence from his duties:

I spoke to him of your going down into the country on Wednesday, who was sorry thereof, trusting that I would be here all tomorrow to hear what the Frenchmen will do.

And on Monday dinner, I trust to be with you. As for the Frenchmen, I have no mistrust that they shall be any let of my going with you on this journey or of any continuance [at Sudeley] there with your highness.
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He adds: ‘I do desire your highness to keep the little knave so lean and gaunt with your good diet and walking, that he may be so small that he may creep out of a mouse hole.’ Seymour took his wife and Lady Jane Grey – the young daughter of the Marquis of Dorset and Seymour’s ward – to Sudeley on 13 June, for the last three months of Katherine’s pregnancy. She was clearly having a difficult time. Elizabeth wrote to Katherine as her confinement drew near:

Although your highness’s letters be most joyful to me in absence, yet considering what pain it is for you to write, your grace being so great with child and so sickly …

I much rejoice at your health, with the well liking of the country, with my humble thanks that your grace wished me with you … [Seymour] shall be diligent to give me knowledge from time to time how his busy child doth and if I were at his birth, no doubt I would see him beaten for the trouble he hath put to you.

Master [Sir Anthony] Denny and my lady [his wife, Joan] with humble thanks pray most entirely for your grace, praying the almighty God to send you a most lucky deliverance …

Written, with very little leisure, this last day of July.

Your humble daughter, Elizabeth.
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Mary also wrote, rather stiffly, on 9 August:

I trust to hear great success of your grace’s great belly and in the meantime shall desire much to hear of your health, which I pray almighty God to continue and increase to his pleasure as much as your own heart can desire.
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Katherine, attended by Henry’s former physician Dr Robert Huicke, gave birth to a healthy daughter on 30 August. She was named Mary, after the princess, her stepsister. Seymour’s brother, the Lord Protector, wrote to congratulate him from Syon on 1 September:

We are right glad to understand by your letters that the Queen your bedfellow has had a happy hour and escaping all danger, has made you the father of so pretty a daughter.

Although (if it so pleased God) it would have been both to us and we suppose to you, a more joy and comfort if it had been this the first a son, yet the escape of danger and the prophecy and good promise of this to a great sort of happy sons, the which as you write, we trust no less than to be true.
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But all was not well. Like Jane Seymour, Katherine contracted an infection and became delirious. She died of puerperal fever between two and three in the morning of 5 September 1548. Lady Elizabeth Tyrwhit said that two days before her death, Katherine told her that ‘she did fear such things in herself’ and ‘that she was sure she could not live’. Katherine had held Seymour’s hand and said: ‘My lady Tyrwhitt, 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 them, the less good they will to me.’ The admiral answered: ‘Why sweetheart, I would do you no hurt.’ But she replied: ‘No, my lord, I think so,’ and whispered in his ear, ‘But my lord, you have given me many shrewd taunts.’ She went on: ‘My lord, I would have given a thousand marks to have had my full talk with Huicke the first day I was delivered but I dared not for [fear of] displeasing you.’
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