Tudor (49 page)

The subsequent interrogations revealed the story of the young lovers' feelings for one another. There had been a summer romance in 1558, but they had only fallen deeply in love during the progress of 1559. They had decided to marry in the winter of 1560 with a flurry of secret assignations, a diamond betrothal ring, and a gold wedding band engraved with the promise their union was a ‘knot of secret might' that no man could break.
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The spinster queen had at her fingertips even the details of the consummation of the marriage. The documents describe them as naked, save that Katherine had kept on a small wedding veil, and for two hours they had lain together, ‘sometimes on the one side of the bed, sometimes on the other'. They had got up from the bed once, but in their passion soon returned, staying until the time came when Katherine had to return to court for supper.
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Elizabeth learned that over the following months Katherine and Hertford had met for sex in half the royal palaces of England, as well as his London house. No proof emerged that anyone of significance was linked to the marriage, but
Quadra also suspected there was more to the story than a simple love affair.

One name mentioned to Quadra was that of Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, the flabby, middle-aged nobleman who had courted Elizabeth in the summer of 1559. Having been humiliated in his hopes of marrying the queen he had begun courting Hertford's nineteen-year-old sister, Lady Jane Seymour. She had died that spring of 1561, but it emerged that she helped the lovers meet and had witnessed her brother's marriage. The earl had perhaps hoped to become if not a king consort to Elizabeth, then a king's brother-in-law, with Hertford and Katherine made king and queen on Elizabeth's fall.
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The most significant name Quadra mentioned was, however, that of William Cecil. He had begun his career as servant to Hertford's father, the Protector Somerset and was a kinsman of the Grey family. Quadra believed Cecil had arranged the marriage in the immediate aftermath of Amy Dudley's death, fearing Elizabeth would marry Dudley with the backing of King Philip. He had then dropped the matter when he was back in the queen's good graces.

Elizabeth, seeing treachery all around her, and knowing nothing could be proved, became deeply depressed. She had been in great danger during the Protectorate of Hertford's father – and now another Seymour was aspiring to be king! An emissary of Mary, Queen of Scots, who joined the progress at the royal palace of Hertford on 8 September, found the frightened queen ‘extremely thin and the colour of a corpse'.
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Mary, Queen of Scots' advisers had proposed that Mary renounce her immediate claim to the English throne (a claim based on the grounds she was the senior legitimate descendant of Henry VII) in exchange for formal and binding recognition as Elizabeth's heir. Mary was working with the incumbent Protestant regime in Scotland, she accepted Protestantism as the national religion while she, in turn, had assurances that she could hear Mass. It was a possible template for a future role as Queen of England, and William Maitland of Lethington,
the ‘flower of the wits of Scotland', had arrived to negotiate the issue with Elizabeth. Cecil feared he might be successful, with Elizabeth moving to dispose of the Grey/Seymour claim once and for all.

Elizabeth began by stating her preference for Mary's claim. ‘I have noted', she told Maitland, ‘that you have said to me . . . that your queen is descended of the royal blood of England and that I am obliged to love her as being nearest to me in blood of any other, all which I must confess to be true.' She dismissed the claim of Katherine Grey, saying that while ‘It is true, that some of them have made declaration to the world that they are more worthy than either [Mary] or I, by demonstrating that they are not barren, but able to have children', the pregnant Katherine and her younger sister, Lady Mary Grey, were unable ‘to succeed to the crown by reason of their father's forfeiture' for treason in 1554. Elizabeth reassured Maitland that ‘despite the recent war with Scotland' she never ‘meant ill towards' his queen, and though she had offended her ‘by bearing my arms and acclaiming the title of my crown', she had blamed others for what had happened.

Elizabeth warned Maitland the succession was not a matter she wished to discuss formally, but as the meeting closed she reiterated her personal support for Mary's claim: ‘I here protest to you, in the presence of God, I for my part know no better [claim] nor that I myself would prefer to her, or yet, to be plain with you, that case that might debar her from it.' Maitland hoped that if he pressed Elizabeth, she might offer her direct backing for a parliament's recognition of Mary, Queen of Scots as her preferred choice. At his final audience, however, Elizabeth gave three reasons why she would never do so.

‘First', Elizabeth reminded Maitland, the uncertainty caused by changing laws of succession and controversies over marriages ‘lawful and unlawful, of legitimate and base-born children', had been responsible for a series of crises in England. Elizabeth did not wish to provoke further unrest. This was also why ‘I have hitherto forborne to match with any husband', she explained. Elizabeth's reasons for not marrying have long been speculated on. Often it is assumed she had
some psychological hang-up associated with her mother's death, or the execution of Katherine Howard when Elizabeth was at the impressionable age of nine. But there seems to be no reason to disbelieve her own explanation that she didn't marry because she feared making a divisive choice. Elizabeth had witnessed the damage done to both Jane Grey and Mary I by their marriages, and in the tensions at court following Amy Dudley's death she had experienced a taste of what would happen if she married Robert Dudley,

‘Now', Elizabeth said to Maitland, as she came to her second point, ‘where you said that by declaring your queen my successor our affection should become more firm. I rather fear it should be the seed of a most bitter hatred.' How could she trust that a powerful monarch, from a neighbouring country with a long history of enmity to England, would not take advantage of her new position? ‘But', Elizabeth continued, ‘the third consideration is the most weighty of all.'

Elizabeth remembered how men had looked to her during the previous reign, hoping to use her to replace her Catholic sister. One day, she feared, such men might wish to overthrow her too: ‘I know the inconstancy of the people of England, how they ever mislike the present government and have their eyes fixed upon that person that is next to succeed, and naturally there are more that look, as it is said, on the rising than the setting sun.' In that light, she asked Maitland to judge for himself how dangerous it would be for her to name the Queen of Scots as her heir. ‘I was married to this kingdom, whereof always I carry this ring as a pledge', she concluded, and ‘howsoever things go I shall be Queen of England so long as I live, when I am dead let them succeed who have the best right.'

As with the issue of her marriage, the safest option for Elizabeth in naming a successor was to stall: ‘let them succeed who have the best right'. If Elizabeth had left few in any doubt that she believed Mary, Queen of Scots had the ‘best right' she had done so largely to weaken the claim of Katherine Grey who posed the immediate threat. What Elizabeth could not do was prevent the young mother-to-be
from carrying out the primary purpose of a royal princess – the delivery of a son. On 24 September Katherine Grey gave birth to a boy: Edward Seymour, Viscount Beauchamp.

Katherine's newborn baby posed a threat not only to Elizabeth, of course, but also to the Stuart claim, and within a week Margaret Douglas had sent a message to Mary, Queen of Scots. It asked cryptically ‘whether she would keep her promise made in France, or not'.
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Elizabeth's agents intercepted it. The family competition for the Tudor crown was becoming acute, and Elizabeth would have to decide carefully what to do next.

35

ROYAL PRISONERS

E
LIZABETH'S INVITATION TO SPEND
C
HRISTMAS AT COURT PUT
Margaret Douglas ‘in great alarm'. Acutely attuned to any indications of political trouble Margaret realised her letters to Scotland must have been intercepted. She feared she could be thrown in the Tower; even that her son Darnley's life was at risk. Yet she was also defiant. What was wrong, she asked the Spanish ambassador, in giving marital advice to her niece, when a marriage between Mary, Queen of Scots and Darnley would protect England from a civil war on Elizabeth's death? Quadra knew the answer to that. A childless spinster who was already twenty-eight, Elizabeth based ‘her security on there being no certain successor should the people tire of her rule'.
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The Christmas season came and went with the Lennox family all at court. It must have been grim for everyone, not least Elizabeth, who seemed to spend her life dealing with people planning for what would happen on her death. Beside the Lennox family, there was the danger posed by Katherine Grey's son to face. On 10 February 1562 Elizabeth set up a Church Commission ‘to examine, inquire, and judge of the infamous conversation and pretended marriage betwixt the Lady Katherine Grey and the Earl of Hertford'.
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According to canon law all that was required for a valid marriage was consent by the bride and groom to marry in the presence of witnesses, followed by intercourse. The death of Hertford's sister, Jane Seymour, the sole witness to the
wedding, along with the disappearance of the priest, simplified the commissioners' task in deciding the marriage was invalid and Katherine's son a bastard. This left Elizabeth free to concentrate once more on the threat from the Lennox family.

Cecil had gathered a great deal of incriminating information from Lennox's former secretary, a professional spy called Thomas Bishop. This information included their contacts with the Spanish ambassador. Margaret, however, suspected Bishop's disloyalty after spotting one of his men at court, and she launched an attack on Bishop's character. He was a coward, a sexual reprobate, a thief and a troublemaker, who had even tried to come between her and Lennox in their early marriage, to the fury of Henry VIII, she warned Cecil. Bishop defended himself vociferously, claiming that Margaret had always been determined to damage his reputation in order to ‘rule' Lennox and that Henry VIII had been so angry over her slanders against him that he had passed her over in his will.
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No one took that claim seriously, but Bishop was throwing a lot of mud at the family – he even claimed that Margaret was behind Mary I's decision to place Elizabeth in the Tower in 1554 – and some of it began to stick.
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Lennox was placed under guard with the Master of the Rolls, and then sent to the Tower on 11 March. Margaret and her sons were also imprisoned, by 2 April, at the former Carthusian abbey of Sheen. With Lennox and Hertford in the Tower, and their wives and children also locked up, the Spanish ambassador was moved to comment ‘The prisons will soon be full of the nearest relations of the crown.'
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Lennox's imprisonment was particularly onerous with him kept ‘close' prisoner while, to Lennox's irritation, Hertford was granted certain privileges, including having messages carried to Katherine
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. Margaret Douglas ascribed this to Lennox's robust defence of their actions and reputation.
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But it was she who was considered the tougher nut to crack. As Margaret's interrogators complained, she was ‘very obstinate in her answers to the council' concerning the new charges that were laid against her that month.
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The fresh accusations could hardly have been more serious. Margaret was said to have committed treason in the recent war in Scotland, of being in secret communication with a foreign monarch (her niece Mary, Queen of Scots), and also with the French and Spanish ambassadors. It was further alleged that there were ‘proofs' that she did ‘not love the queen'. Servants claimed that she referred to Elizabeth as a bastard and that her fool at Temple Newsam in Yorkshire often roundly mocked Elizabeth and Robert Dudley, who she despised.
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She had described Dudley and his siblings as ‘traitor's birds', and Robert Dudley also as a pox-ridden wife-murderer.

The greatest danger to Margaret was, however, that she would be accused of attempting to kill the queen with witchcraft, like the Catholics Cecil had arrested at Easter the previous year. Cecil was already planning to frighten the queen with a more dangerous version of the 1561 plot. His aim was to turn Elizabeth against Mary, Queen of Scots by convincing her that her cousin was at the heart of these satanic conspiracies to end her life. Cardinal Pole's nephew Arthur Pole (who had been arrested, but released in 1561) was already being lined up to implicate the Scottish queen.
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Margaret was at risk of being used similarly. Not only had it emerged that Margaret was a Catholic who heard Mass said ‘by one little Sir William', it was also alleged that she was in contact with ‘witches and soothsayers', even that she had conjured the lightning that had burned down the steeple of St Paul's in 1561, on the feast of Corpus Christi.
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An atmosphere of fear and paranoia was being stoked in Parliament where witchcraft was, at this very moment, being made an offence in common law. Parliament was similarly reviving a law against ‘fond and fantastical prophecies', and here too Margaret was in trouble.
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Her servants had revealed that when her first son had died as a baby, she had been comforted by a prophecy that Darnley would one day unite the crowns of England and Scotland.
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Margaret asked to see Elizabeth to defend herself, quoting an old proverb that the greater the distance a person was from the court, the greater the slanders about them could
grow. Lennox weighed in, describing their accusers as mere ‘exploiters, hired men and other fantastical persons'.
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But the accusation that most angered Margaret was not that concerning treason or witchcraft, which she rightly thought Elizabeth did not intend to pursue (Elizabeth suspected she was being manipulated), it was the attack on her legitimacy that had been planned for over a year. After Lennox's disloyal former servant, Thomas Bishop, had described Margaret as ‘a mere bastard', she fired off a furious missive to Cecil reminding him ‘Even as God hath made me, I am lawful daughter to the Queen of Scots [Margaret Tudor] and the Earl of Angus which none alive is able to make me other without doing me wrong.'
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