The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor (6 page)

Thomas’s disaffection was plain to see. His brother leaned on the new Earl of Warwick to resign his post of Lord Admiral and pass it to him. Warwick had been an active Lord Admiral and likely resented transferring it to his former subordinate, in whose abilities he had little confidence.
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The appointment gratified the younger Seymour. It was an office that he coveted, giving him command over nearly sixty ships and authority over the men who packed the decks.
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It was still not enough, however. His brother – as Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector of England – was now accompanied everywhere by two gilt maces borne before him. Somerset was willing to share authority with no one, in spite of his promise to Paget as the old king lay dying.
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As he vied with the other leading men of the Council he was viewed as ‘heady’, ‘peevish’ and ‘proud disdaining’ in his manners.
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The duke grasped power with an iron fist: when he dissolved Parliament that February he refused to allow the members to return home, ‘in order to prevent them coming back with changed opinions’.
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He displayed his intention to rule the young king, by making a prominent show of knighting the boy on Sunday 9 February.
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At the same time, he waved around several large pieces of paper, all bearing the great seal of Henry VIII. They were, he claimed, letters patent appointing him as Protector even in the lifetime of the old king; but he refused to allow anyone to scrutinize them.

His brother Thomas, meanwhile, appeared to be unaware of just how limited his own power was intended to be. At his first Council meeting he suggested openly – and ill advisedly – that both Princess Mary and Wriothesley, both opposed to religious reform, should immediately be sent to the Tower.
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Given the fact that Wriothesley was seated among them, while Mary – the cousin of the Holy Roman Emperor – was heir to the throne, this was naive in the extreme.
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As Somerset so often did in the face of his brother’s outbursts, he maintained a stony silence. It was Warwick who employed ‘strong language’ to disabuse the younger Seymour of his delusions, remonstrating with him that ‘he had come to occupy such a high position through the favour of his brother and the Council, who had admitted him among their number against the late king’s wish’. This was news to Thomas, but the furious earl was not finished with him, declaring: ‘be content, therefore, with the honour done to you for your brother’s sake, and with your office of Lord High Admiral which I gave up to you for the same motive, for neither the king nor I will be governed by you; nor would we be governed by your brother, were it not that his virtue and loyalty towards the king and the kingdom make him the man fittest to administer the affairs of the country during the king’s minority.’
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Humbled, Thomas apologized to his brother for his presumption, averting any quarrel – for the moment. Yet the rebuke smarted.

John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, was a wily and highly intelligent politician. He was not content with merely knocking Thomas Seymour off his perch for his presumption. As the son of an executed traitor, he had clawed his way almost to the summit of society with his wits alone.
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He saw weakness in Somerset’s regard for his brother and was determined to use it as a way of sowing discord. Shortly after their exchange in the Council room, Dudley came to Thomas and pointed out that, since his brother was Lord Protector, he himself might aspire to the role of governor of the king, Edward’s guardian, and he offered ‘all his help and furtherance’.
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The possibility that he could become governor had not occurred to Thomas before and he gave his hearty thanks, asking if his old naval superior would raise it himself in Council. Dudley refused. After all, he argued, how could such a reasonable request be denied?
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Thomas could see logic in this, since he was entirely oblivious to his own political shortcomings. He was accordingly full of confidence when he raised it in front of the Council the next day – and shocked when his brother, listening in furious silence, suddenly rose to his feet and dissolved the meeting.
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Later that day, Dudley came to Somerset and whispered: ‘Thus, Your Grace may see this man’s ambition.’
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He reminded him that he had previously warned the Protector that his younger brother ‘would envy your state and calling to his room’.
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The duplicitous John Dudley – who was trusted by both siblings – counselled Somerset to be wary of his brother.
22

Thomas Seymour, his ambitions roused, now had no intention of abandoning his claim to the governorship. It must, after all, have seemed terribly unfair. Apart from the accident of birth order, he could have been Protector and governor – he and Somerset even looked similar. He began to take steps to enlist others to his cause, beginning with a carefully composed a letter to the Marquess of Dorset, outlining plans that he had conceived for his daughter Jane Grey. Sealing it, he passed it to John Harington, with whom he had consulted as he wrote. The persuasive young servant was the perfect emissary. He hot-footed it over to Dorset’s residence for the second time that winter.
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On taking Harington aside, the marquess’s face grew ‘cold’ and unfriendly as he scanned the letter, which proposed that he pass his eldest daughter into Seymour’s care. The eminent marquess can only have supposed that Seymour meant to marry his nine-year-old heiress, and it was left to Harington to hastily reassure him otherwise. Had Dorset not heard Seymour say of his daughter ‘that she was as handsome a lady as any in England, and that she might be wife to any prince in Christendom’? Why, Harington had heard Thomas declare this, he assured the peer. Confidentially, he informed his host that Seymour had gone further, saying: ‘if the King’s Majesty, when he came to age, would marry within the realm, it was as likely he would be there, as in any other place, and that he would wish it’.

Dorset believed that his pretty red-haired daughter was worthy of a crown, so the suggestion was a tantalizing one. Confidentially, Harington whispered that ‘being kept in My Lord’s house, who was uncle to the king, it were never the worse for her; and that My Lord would be right glad, if the King’s Majesty could like any in his house’. Dorset must have heard of Seymour’s claims to become the king’s guardian – was it true that the king would soon be lodged in his uncle’s own house? Harington shook his head, saying ‘he durst not tell what it was’, although Jane ‘were as like in his master’s house to have a greater and better turn, than he would think’. To Dorset, who was kept even further from power than Seymour, such a prospect seemed highly likely. He gave the order for his daughter to pack her things. She was going to join Thomas Seymour’s household.

Jane Grey’s marriage was not the only one that Thomas Seymour was pondering in the early months of 1547. He was still a bachelor at almost forty and a desirable one at that. His own marriage could lead him to greatness – and his thoughts turned to Princess Mary, the thirty-year-old heir to the throne. The daughter of Catherine of Aragon was slight, with reddish hair and pale skin. Henry VIII, who had declared her illegitimate, never troubled himself to arrange a marriage for her. There had been offers, most notably from Don Luis of Portugal, who renewed his addresses before the old king was even buried.
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Yet Mary’s cousin, the Emperor Charles V, who kept a fatherly eye on the princess, was under few illusions that she would be permitted to marry during her brother’s minority.
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She was still the best match in England, as England’s most eligible bachelor realized.

Although he was frantically busy, Somerset agreed to meet with his younger brother in private one day at Westminster. He was shocked when Thomas got straight to the point, boldly asking for consent to his marriage to Princess Mary, as though it were a foregone conclusion.
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The certainty with which he spoke would have thrown a less self-assured man; but the duke kept his composure, merely declaring reproachfully that ‘neither of them was born to be king, nor to marry king’s daughters; and though God had given them grace that their sister should have married a king, whence so much honour and benefit had redounded to them, they must thank God and be satisfied’. Somerset must have found Thomas’s proposition laughable; for good measure he added that ‘besides which he knew the Lady Mary would never consent’.

Somerset had good reason to know that Mary had little love for the new regime. The pair had clashed over religion, the Catholic princess dismissing the Protector’s reformed beliefs as ‘new fangledness and fantasy’.
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While Mary heard two, three or even four masses a day, Somerset was in the process of stripping the churches of their ornaments to push ahead with his planned programme of Protestant reform. He had also offended the heir to the throne when he failed to pay her a courtesy visit after her father’s death.
28
She recognized that ‘in the end everything will depend upon the good pleasure and unfettered discretion of the Protector’, but she had no desire to marry his brother. Thomas declared to Somerset that ‘he had merely asked for his brother’s countenance, and he would look after the rest’. The Protector, his anger rising at his younger brother, chided him even more sharply and indicated that the matter was finished. As Somerset stomped away, even Thomas must have recognized the hopelessness of his cause. When told of his suit, Mary merely laughed.

Princess Mary kept herself away from the festivities surrounding King Edward’s coronation on 20 February, at which the Protector insisted on being at the centre of things. In the coronation procession he rode alongside the Earl of Warwick, both vying for the place closest to the king.
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To cap an awkward day, during which the Imperial ambassador’s invitation was mislaid, the boy-king was so nervous that he forgot both his French and Latin. His ignorance was gleefully reported to his counterparts across the Channel. Little Edward, who had previously survived black magic and other attempts on his life during his apprenticeship as Prince of Wales, showed the world the child that he still was, rather than the great king he so wanted to be.
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By contrast, Thomas Seymour acquitted himself well, taking part in the jousts and tournaments that followed the coronation and hosting his fellows for dinner one night in his London house.
30
His thoughts, though, were still on matrimony – albeit now in a different quarter.

Princess Elizabeth, left alone at Enfield following Edward’s departure, had slowly begun to pack up her household. With the loss of her ‘own matchless and most kind father’, she was now an orphan. At thirteen years old, she was too young to live without family supervision, even within her own household.
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Her ‘beloved mother’, Catherine Parr, was the obvious candidate to be her guardian, and Catherine welcomed her at Greenwich when she arrived there, which was by late February 1547. During his frequent and passionate visits to the queen, Thomas Seymour was able to catch a glance at the princess – black-clad and pale with mourning. He approved. Confident and handsome, he was certain that he could win Elizabeth.

Once again, he sought an audience with his brother and his other friends on the Council, asking that they should consent to this match. Predictably, they refused. Yet Thomas resolved to ignore this ‘good advice given to the contrary’.
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He desired a royal bride and Elizabeth fitted the bill perfectly. On 25 February 1547, less than a month after the death of Elizabeth’s father, Seymour sat down to make her an offer in writing. He wrote of his respect for her, which was so great that ‘I dare not tell you of the fire which consumes me, and the impatience with which I yearn to show you my devotion’.
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He claimed to be burning with love for her. If she would only show him kindness, she would have ‘made the happiness of a man who will adore you till death’. He was offering the girl marriage, if she would only consent.

Elizabeth was ‘very much surprised’ to receive Thomas’s letter. She had previously had little direct contact with him and, although she found him dashing (as most women did), she had never contemplated him as a husband. Thomas flattered her. She thanked him in her response, declaring that ‘the letter you have written to me is the most obliging, and at the same time the most eloquent in the world’.
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He had taken her breath away, and she did not consider herself ‘competent to reply to so many courteous expressions’, but she knew that she needed to unburden herself to him. She was too young, she insisted, to even think of matrimony. She also reproved him gently, contending that ‘I never would have believed that anyone 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’. Her words were not, however, an outright refusal. She required time to enjoy ‘some years my virgin state’ and to mature into womanhood; and she intended to mourn her father (‘to him I owe so much’) for at least two years. But after that, she would be open to offers. Elizabeth discussed the letter only with her governess, Kate Ashley – but the decision to reject Seymour’s offer was made by her alone. Catherine Parr was entirely oblivious of Thomas’s suit.