The Other Tudors (32 page)

Jane had two sisters. Mary Grey, born in 1545, was a hunchback. Katherine Grey, born in 1540, was described as being the pretty one, but Baptista Spinola, a Genovese merchant who witnessed Jane’s procession to the Tower on her proclamation as queen on 10 July 1553, said of Jane that she was, ‘very short and thin, but prettily shaped and graceful.’
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Like most of Henry’s female relatives, she was a pretty girl and very intelligent.

Edward VI himself was set on a foreign marriage and alliance. For many years, it was hoped that his wife would be Mary, Queen of Scots. Then there were discussions with the French Court, as a marriage was suggested between Edward and a French princess, and he sent her a large diamond ring as a betrothal gift. This did not stop Thomas Seymour intriguing for ‘Queen Jane’.

In January 1549 Harrington was imprisoned in the Tower with Thomas Seymour, his friend and master. Seymour had capped a series of follies by persuading himself that he could lead a rebellion against his brother and the Council. Edward VI, he imagined, wished to be free of his brother’s government and he went to the palace by night, attempting to kidnap the King out of his bedchamber. The plan, which involved Seymour becoming First Minister in place of Somerset and arranging the Grey marriage, failed when the King’s dog barked and gave the alarm; Seymour’s response was to shoot it with a pistol before fleeing the palace.

A document dating to 18 January says of Seymour, ‘Harrington his man was sent to the Tower by decree of the Counsell.’
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In January and February, Harrington was one of those questioned at Seymour’s trial, about Seymour’s relationship with the Princess Elizabeth whilst they were part of Catherine Parr’s household. The Privy Council investigating Seymour’s treason believed that he had had sex with Elizabeth, a treasonable crime in itself. The aim was to prove that he may even have contemplated seizing the throne for himself by marrying Elizabeth and disposing of Edward VI and Princess Mary.

Harrington remained faithful. He refused to implicate either Seymour or Elizabeth in any improper action, and returned to the Tower for his pains. The fact that Seymour had planned to seize the King, and had raised funds to support a rebellion to make himself Protector, was enough to seal his fate.

It is ironic that the Lieutenant responsible for the prisoners in the Tower was Sir John Markham, whose daughter Isabella would eventually marry Harrington. It might also explain why Sir John Markham did not support his daughter’s proposed marriage to Harrington when the question of it arose some years later.

Elizabeth I called Seymour, ‘a man of much wit and little judgement’, an assessment which has gone down through the centuries as a remarkably astute reading of his character. Seymour was executed for treason, beyond the help of Somerset and unlamented by his nephew, the King; Harrington was released in the spring of 1550. A portrait of Seymour, presently on the wall at Longleat, is decorated with a set of laudatory verses, written by Harrington. According to legend, Harrington had commissioned the picture to give to Elizabeth I; despite all his reversals, Harrington remained faithful to the memory of Seymour. The verse reads:

Before this first imprisonment in the Tower, Harrington seems to have fallen in love with Isabella Markham. He wrote a sonnet, ‘On Isabella Markhame, when I first thought her fayre as she stood at the Princess’s Windowe in goodlye Attyre, and talkede of dyvers in the Courte-Yard’. It is believed that this sonnet dates to 1548 when the Princess Elizabeth had her household at Hatfield, and Harrington would have visited her as Seymour’s messenger. He also wrote a poem, ‘The prayse of six gentle Women attending of the Ladye Elizabeth, her grace at Hatfield then … Grey, Willobie, Markhams, Norwyche, Seintloe, Skypwith’.
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It may be that even now Etheldreda, a dearly loved wife, was suffering from some illness and Harrington knew he was going to lose her sooner rather than later. He was married to a child, while he was a man in his prime, so it is entirely possible that his eye should turn to a more mature woman. As the years passed, however, he seems to have made the most of the situation, and at some point between 1548 and 1555 when she died, Etheldreda gave birth to a daughter called Esther (also referred to as Hester).

In 1553 Harrington was imprisoned again, as part of the conspiracy to make Jane Grey the queen. He was kept at first in the Tower, but moved to the Fleet prison in June. Bishop Gardiner wrote that he had ordered the arrest of ‘Harrington … who confesses to having been in correspondence with Lord John Grey.’
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This treasonable correspondence took place during Wyatt’s rebellion, a further attempt to usurp Mary I and replace Jane Grey on the throne. As a plot, it was doomed to failure from the outset, and Harrington seems to have been involved only as far as he supported his new patron, Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, to whom he was distantly related.

Edward VI died on 6 July 1553, and Jane Grey was proclaimed queen. By 12 February 1554, however, Jane had ruled, been overthrown, imprisoned and executed. John Harrington was in the Fleet in January 1554. He was then removed and sent back to the Tower on 8 February. On this occasion, his fellow prisoner in the Tower was Princess Elizabeth, also implicated by rumour in Wyatt’s rebellion. She had been at Ashridge at the time of the rebellion and, hoping to distance herself from any suspicion of complicity, in January 1554 she wrote to Mary I explaining that her poor health kept her from leaving the manor. Mary listened to her claims of sickness, and then insisted that she travel, even if only for a few miles a day, to join the Queen in London for her own safety.

Once in London, Mary ordered that Elizabeth be transferred to the Tower, on the suspicion of treason. She came to the Tower on 18 March 1554 (Palm Sunday) with a modest household of two yeoman of the chamber, two of the robe, two of the pantry, two of the kitchen, one of the buttery, the cellar and the larder, along with six ladies and two gentlemen. One of the ladies was Etheldreda Malte. When John Harrington wrote to Bishop Gardiner, requesting his freedom, in one letter he wrote,

Later statements that the wife in question was Isabella Markham are confounded by the fact that in 1554 Harrington’s wife was Etheldreda; we also have a letter written many years later by Sir John Harrington, Isabella’s son, referring to the time that Elizabeth was in the Tower, ‘My mother [Isabella], that then served the said Lady Elizabeth, he [Bishop Gardiner] causeth to be sequestered from her as an heretick …’
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Isabella, therefore, was not allowed to stay with Elizabeth in the Tower.

Etheldreda would have made a sound choice as an attendant for the Princess. She was the daughter of the mistress who had tried to help Mary I while she had been under her father’s displeasure and the malice of Anne Boleyn in the early 1530s. Mary would feel deeply obligated to the daughter of her friend. Such a woman could be trusted to remain faithful to Mary I in the presence of her rival, Elizabeth. Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I all seem to have got on well with their bastard brothers and sisters, and there is no reason to suppose that Elizabeth was any less pleased to have Etheldreda close to her; Elizabeth, too, felt she could trust her father’s daughter. Though still a young woman, perhaps Etheldreda did, indeed, resemble the old King, in a way that reassured Mary and Elizabeth.

John Harrington spent 11 months in the Tower on this occasion; he eventually got out on 18 January 1555 by expending over £1,000 in bribes, and when this failed to have effect, he wrote an impudent verse about Bishop Gardiner, who laughed heartily at his wit and released the author. Harrington’s son, Sir John, wrote in later years, concerning the verse, ‘He [Gardiner] would say that my father was worthy to have lain in prison a year longer for the saucy sonnet he wrote to him from out of the Tower.’
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Sadly there is no surviving description of Etheldreda. There is a portrait of John Harrington in the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath, in south west England, bought in 1942 when the Harrington collection of pictures was sold at auction by Sotheby’s. Portraits of Etheldreda and their daughter Esther were sold, but their new owners’ identities are not known. In the first catalogue of the family portraits, the picture of Etheldreda is recorded as being by Hans Holbein; however, the later sale catalogue records ‘British School’. Etheldreda’s portrait is a three-quarter length (47 x 33-in panel) ‘in embroidered dress’; that of Esther is entitled ‘Child holding a book, embroidered dress’ (23 x 19-in panel) and a Victoria Gallery note says the dress is brown.

If the picture had been by Holbein, it would have had to have been painted before the artist’s death in 1543, which would mean that it was completed more than five years before Etheldreda married. If the picture were available, it might be possible to estimate the age of the subject, and therefore the possible date of Etheldreda’s birth; Holbein usually gave the date of the painting in one corner, and sometimes the sitter’s age. If, as seems more likely, it was by an artist influenced by Holbein, this would also give a clue to the period in which it was painted.

In St Catherine’s Church, adjacent to St Catherine’s Court, are printed pages of copies of family records: ‘King Henry VIII was seized in the manor or lordship of Exton and Katherin and of St. Katherine’s Court sometime belonging to the late dissolved priory of Bath. Henry VIII granted it to his servant John Mawlt (sic) taylor and his bastard daughter Etheldred alias Dingley. John Mawlte died, Ethledred married John Harrington, of London, esquire, father of the John Harrington party to these present. 1554–55 Second and third King Phillipp and Queen Marie, John Harrington and Etheldred held the property and had a daughter Esther. By 1558–59, Etheldred was dead and John Harrington had married Isobell [Isabella], daughter of Sir John Markham, knight. After the death of John and Isobel, the property descended to the son and heir, John Harrington.’

The date of Etheldreda’s death is not known, but on 9 October 1555, a licence was issued which read, ‘The like, for 40 marks, to John Harrington, esquire, and Audrey his wife to grant the manors of Watchyngfeld … Andressy alias Nyland, Batcombe, Kelmeston, Eston alias Bathe Eston, Kateryne alias Katerynes Court … and Forde, 10 Somerset: to Thomas Harryngton gentleman, and Thomas Thurgood and the heirs of Thomas Harryngton.’ A further licence from Harryngton and Thurgood granted Audrey the right of residence for one further month, ‘with remainder to John Harryngton and his heirs.’
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These properties were either those that came directly to Etheldreda, or those left to her by John Malte. Even if she died without surviving heirs, they would revert to her husband as they had had a child, and therefore there had been heirs of Etheldreda’s body. However, the manoeuvre may indicate that Etheldreda, and possibly Esther, was ill and believed to be dying. If the properties had stayed in John’s hands, and he had got into further trouble, he would have lost everything. As it was, he had effectively sold all the lands to his own kinsman, Thomas Harrington, and Thomas Thurgood. When Etheldreda died, there were no lands to be seized by the Crown or by other possible heirs. As it happened, Esther did not die, but by this strategy John Harrington was able to buy the lands back, when this could be safely done.

The second licence that granted Audrey the right to live in the house for a further month could indicate that she had returned to St Catherine’s Court as a last hope of restoring her to good health or in anticipation of her death. On 28 November 1555, just over a month later, a further licence was issued, but this time in one name only, ‘The like, for 31 6s 8d to John Harryngton of Batheston alias Batheneston, co. Somerset, esquire, to grant his rectory of Batheston … to the Dean and Chapter of the cathedral church of Christ, Oxford, of the foundation of Henry VIII, and their successors.’
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This grant was John’s in his own right, so Etheldreda’s name does not necessarily need to appear. What is noticeable is that after the October licences, Etheldreda’s name does not appear again.

It looks as if Etheldreda died at St Catherine’s Court, and was buried in the church next door. Her death was probably expected, and her illness may have been longstanding. Unfortunately, the church records for the period have been lost.