The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor (3 page)

On 12 July 1543, the nine-year-old Princess Elizabeth woke at Hampton Court and made her way to the queen’s tiny private chapel. She squeezed herself in among the company, which included her half-sister Mary, as well as her cousin Margaret Douglas and Catherine Willoughby, the Duchess of Suffolk – the young wife of her uncle (and the king’s old friend) Charles Brandon.
28
Much of the Privy Council had also crowded in, including Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, and his wife. They had come for a wedding. As King Henry took Catherine’s hand in his, Bishop Stephen Gardiner recited the words of the marriage ceremony – the sixth time Henry had heard it and the third for Catherine. Quietly, the widow gave herself to Henry ‘as long as they both shall live’, promising to obey and serve him, while for his part he vowed to ‘love and honour her as a spouse and husband ought to love and honour his wife’.

Although childless, the new queen was an experienced step-parent; already her two Neville stepchildren were devoted to their ‘dear sovereign mistress’.
29
But Catherine was denied the opportunity to become an immediate influence over Elizabeth, as her ‘obedient daughter’ was sent back to the nursery within days of the wedding. It was to be a year before the pair met again, by which time Elizabeth’s world had changed.
30
On 7 July 1544, the king decreed that it was time for his son Edward, now six years old, to learn how to become a man. Edward Seymour and the conservative Lord Chancellor Thomas Wriothesley were sent to strip the boy’s female attendants of their posts.
31
It was an event that seared itself in the memory of Edward, who recorded years later that ‘he was brought up among the women until he was six years of age’.
32
Henceforth, the prince was to be cared for and instructed by men, and there was no place in this establishment for his ten-year-old sister. Instead, Elizabeth now came to spend more time at court and in the company of her father’s new queen.

Edward Seymour’s commission to take charge of his royal nephew’s household was far from the only time that he had been of use to King Henry. Dour and unsmiling, he was a born politician. In 1544 he was appointed as part of a five-man council tasked with assisting Queen Catherine, who was acting as regent while Henry tried to recapture his youth on campaign in France.
33
The sombre and black-clad Earl of Hertford had little respect for the queen, who delighted in pretty things, treasuring a set of six gold buttons decorated with Catherine wheels.
34
If he could have seen under her skirts, he would have noted that even her underwear was gilded, including a gold girdle enamelled with blue and white – just one of her fine items. She could check her appearance in a mirror garnished with blue sapphires, rock rubies and twenty-six pearls of assorted sizes, or screen her face from scrutiny with a fan of black ostrich feathers, set in gold and bejewelled. Such a love of jewellery did not mean, however, that Catherine was an intellectual lightweight. She was the first Englishwoman to publish under her own name. Her
Prayers, or, Meditations
, which appeared in 1545, was an immediate bestseller.

Sir Thomas Seymour, aware of the danger of his former connection with Catherine, mostly kept away from the queen’s household – although he watched from afar.
35
In the summer of 1542, Henry had sent him on an embassy to the Habsburg monarch (and future Holy Roman Emperor) Ferdinand, King of the Romans, in Vienna.
36
In an age when very few Englishmen travelled beyond the shores of Dover, this was an exciting venture, and Thomas wrote enthusiastic reports of his time abroad, recording military preparations as he joined Ferdinand’s camp in his war against the Turks.
37
He showed a particular interest in the Habsburg king’s navy, taking the time to draw a picture of a boat in one letter to Henry to illustrate the strange, flat-bottomed craft that he saw being carried on wagons by the army.
38

Such zeal was not enough, though, to mask Thomas’s lack of talent in diplomacy. He was often uncertain of just what he was supposed to report to the king.
39
He also failed to secure the German mercenaries that Henry had specifically requested he hire.
40
In May 1543, some weeks before the king’s marriage to Catherine, he found himself sent to the Netherlands – an appointment that he owed more to his status as Henry’s love rival than to his ability.
41
He returned a few days before Henry’s wedding, once the bride was safely promised to the sovereign.

Undistinguished in diplomacy, Thomas next tried the military – and a successful French campaign ensued in July 1543.
42
In recognition of his new-found military expertise, he was appointed Master of the Ordnance for life, a role that placed him in charge of equipping future military expeditions.

Thomas’s experiences in recent years had also given him a taste for the adventure of the sea – a contrast to a childhood growing up in landlocked Wiltshire. In 1537, he had sailed under the command of Vice-Admiral John Dudley, when the pair had had instructions to guard the English Channel against the French.
43
All that summer they patrolled the coast, although they saw little action.
44
Undaunted, Thomas could not leave the ocean behind him – and this was an exhilarating time to be involved with an English navy that was rapidly growing in strength and which was Henry’s pride and joy.
45

In October 1544 Thomas presented a detailed ‘advice’ for King Henry regarding naval tactics in his new war with France.
46
It was a comprehensive report, and it achieved the desired result: Seymour was appointed as an admiral of the king’s navy that month and ordered to convey provisions to supply Boulogne, the captured prize of the campaign.
47
He gathered up his possessions in a wooden trunk and hurried up the gangplank to his ship, the
Peter
Pomegranate
.
48
At 500 tons and carrying 400 men, it was a floating fortress, armed to the teeth with guns on wheeled carriages, ready for action against England’s old enemy across the Channel.
49

Despite having previously sailed only under John Dudley, Thomas Seymour was placed in command of a fleet of fourteen ships. He looked the part of the dashing mariner, with his handsome face and excellent bearing; but the voyage, on ships laden with supplies, seemed cursed from the start. As the vessels lay close to Harwich, sheltered in the mouth of the River Orwell, ‘such a mist’ arose that the sailors could not see their fellows only a few feet away.
50
It was icy cold, but Thomas, still full of enthusiasm for his first naval command, set out to sea as soon as the weather calmed on 5 November. That night, a gale roared around his ships, puffing up their sails and pushing them out into the English Channel. It was nearly too much for the novice admiral, who wrote to the King’s Council the following morning from his cabin: ‘God be thanked we got to Dover’.

As he dipped his pen in the inkwell, and as the ship rolled in the harbour, an easterly wind rose. Thomas gave orders to make at once for the French coast, for he had already heard rumours of seventeen French ships at Dieppe; after dropping off his supplies at Boulogne, he wanted to test his guns on them and win glory. He hoped to earn such a reputation that the Frenchmen should ‘fear our wind, that should bring us thither’.

Sailing the wintry seas, with the wind and salt whipping around his face and hardening his skin and hair, proved a rather less certain route to military glory than Thomas had anticipated. That night, as he approached the French coast, the ‘wind veered to the north-east’ forcing the ships westwards, although (as Thomas later lamented to the Council) ‘we had meant no such thing’.
51
As a tempest squalled around them, the ships were buffeted on the waves, out of control. Mariners clung to wooden rails to avoid being cast into the sea. The heavy iron guns ‘flew about, and shook the ships’.
52
Seymour abandoned all plans to reach France; eventually, his own vessel found safety in the harbour of the Isle of Wight. He was among the luckier ones. Three of the great ships that followed him overshot the chalk cliff coast. They were forced to fight their way into a bay on the east of the island, where one of them broke up in the struggle, drowning nearly 260 of those on board.

The storm lasted all through the night and the next day, and some of the ships were still in open water. Thomas’s older brother Henry, who had surprisingly decided to join him for the adventure, had a narrow escape when the vessel on which he was sailing was dashed to pieces on the rocks. Miraculously all lives on his ship were saved. Surveying the disaster of his expedition in the cold light of day, Thomas Seymour accounted himself fortunate to be alive. He was indignant when word arrived from the king complaining of his negligence. The admiral was genuinely hurt that his ability to command a fleet was called into question, and he sat down with five of his captains, still dazed from the drama, to write in his defence of their actions.

Thomas Seymour was nothing if not confident, and the king duly forgave him.
53
He remained a vice-admiral, staying with the fleet for much of the following year and making occasional assays out into open water.
54
But he was not trusted with real authority. Henry liked him but had little faith in his abilities – unlike those of the older brother Edward Seymour who, by the second half of the 1540s, was rising to a position nearing pre-eminence in the king’s estimation. And, as King Henry grew increasingly decrepit, Edward Seymour kept a close eye on the throne and the person of his nephew Prince Edward, who was likely – should matters come to it – to be in need of a regent.

*1
In 1533, Princess Mary had been delegitimized and removed from the succession by Act of Parliament.

*2
Bryan’s ‘vicar of Hell’ nickname related to his irreverent, libertine nature, and it was given him by Henry VIII after the king asked Bryan ‘what sort of sin it was to ruin the mother and then the child’. Bryan replied drily that ‘it was a sin like that of eating a hen first and its chicken afterwards’ (Sander, p. 24). Thomas Cromwell also used the nickname in a letter dated 14 May 1536 (in Merriman, Vol. II, pp. 12–13). Bryan, a longstanding member of the court, had been appointed, before 1522, to act as chief cupbearer to the king (Rutland Papers, p. 101).

*3
Henry had also had a son, Henry Fitzroy (born 1519), Duke of Richmond and Somerset, but he was illegitimate – the result of the king’s relationship with Elizabeth Blount. Fitzroy died in 1536.

By the end of 1546, Henry VIII had loomed over his realm for nearly forty years. But now his health was failing. That September, he and Queen Catherine took their court hunting at Guildford, before indulging in further sporting pursuits the following month at Windsor. These exertions took their toll on the monarch. On 5 December he was well enough to meet the Ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire, François Van der Delft, at Oatlands Palace in Surrey. Only nine days later, however, such access to the king was barred. A sudden fever had beset Henry, burning for thirty hours and leaving him ‘greatly fallen away’.
1
He declared himself ‘quite restored’ soon afterwards, but he did not really believe it.

On Christmas Eve Henry abandoned any pretence, abruptly sending his wife and Princess Mary away to Greenwich to celebrate the season without him. There was no cheer that Christmas at Westminster as the king retreated into his private rooms. The plate and glassware, kept carefully for banquets and other great occasions, were left dusty in the ancient palace. The many musical instruments, all stored carefully for a king who loved music, were ignored.
2
Henry kept at least ten clocks in the palace, which produced a cacophony as each marked the hour or half hour; they included the copper-and-gilt clock still engraved with the initials of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Now, the chiming of the clocks uncomfortably marked the passing of time.

Henry himself expected his end to be imminent. After his secluded Christmas, he called his brother-in-law Edward Seymour (Earl of Hertford), John Dudley (Viscount Lisle) and four other members of his Council to him, asking them to bring his will. As they read the document, which had been prepared in 1544, the king expressed his surprise at its contents: they were not what he wanted at all.

Despite his physical weakness, Henry remained largely in control of affairs. Accordingly, on 30 December a new will – drafted in accordance with his instructions – was presented to him. Although doubts would later be cast on the authenticity of this document (including by Princess Mary), the king appeared to be active in its drafting.
3
He ordered the removal of Bishop Gardiner from among the names of the executors before he consented to sign it. Three of his physicians acted as witnesses.