The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor (9 page)

For appearances’ sake, the Protector and his wife sent gifts to Catherine at Chelsea, including a pasty of venison, while one of the king’s servants sent her a book.
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Yet, they had failed to give her what she really wanted. A different course of action was required. She had always been close to Princess Mary, who was only four years her junior, and now Thomas and Catherine resolved privately to approach her and request her support. Catherine had not seen her stepdaughter for some weeks when Thomas wrote to her at Wanstead, Essex, where the princess was staying, warily keeping her distance from London.

Mary, who had been a pretty, promising child, had grown into a sad figure, moving purposelessly from house to house that spring and summer. Depressed and lonely she had resorted to begging the Imperial ambassador to visit.
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But it was not Van der Delft who arrived one day in early June, for he was caught up with affairs in London. Instead, a servant dressed in the Lord Admiral’s livery trotted into the stable yard and made his way to the princess. Although Catherine had already thrown off her coarse black mourning clothes for dark silk and stylish French hoods, Thomas’s servant found the princess and her household still sunk in the deepest gloom.
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He passed no fewer than six private messages of his master’s support to the princess, before also handing her a letter in which Thomas asked for Mary’s help in persuading Catherine to marry him.
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The princess was horrified by what she read. It was ‘strange news’ to her, for how could Catherine even consider forgetting the duty to her late husband, who, as Mary commented, ‘is yet very ripe in mine own remembrance’. No, she would not do as Seymour asked, not even for her ‘nearest kinsman and dearest friend alive’ since, surely, he should consider ‘whose wife Her Grace was of late’. Mary’s response was final and cutting. She would not be ‘a meddler in this matter’ for anything, and she trusted her stepmother to show better judgment. Besides, she wrote in response to Thomas, she was embarrassed by this insight into his love life since ‘I, being a maid, am nothing cunning’. She wanted nothing more than to be left alone by this troublesome man with whom her name kept being connected.

Mary’s rebuff left only one recourse: the young king himself. A child king was still a king, and the mystique and aura of monarchy – even when embodied in a pale, freckled nine-year-old – possessed a unique authority. Somerset knew this, and so kept Edward on a tight rein and strictly monitored those who were brought into his presence. Even Thomas – the boy’s uncle – found admittance difficult. He had, though, already used his considerable charms to win the trust of John Fowler, one of the gentlemen of the king’s privy chamber and a man who had daily access to the king. Fowler was the grandson of both a chancellor of the exchequer and a lord mayor; but his family had declined in social terms, and Thomas Seymour’s attentions flattered him.
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One day in June 1547, Seymour called Fowler to the chamber he kept at court, chatting amiably with his guest and putting him at his ease before commanding his servant to leave the room.
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Finding himself alone with Thomas, Fowler was surprised by the sudden change in tone. Seymour asked him: ‘Now Mr Fowler how doth the King’s Majesty?’ Being one of the king’s closest attendants, Fowler assured him that the king was well. Thomas then asked whether the boy lacked anything, to which his guest demurred.

Seymour now came to the point, enquiring whether ‘His Grace would not in his absence ask for him, or ask any question of him?’ The king’s servant could nod his agreement to this – the king would sometimes speak of Thomas, but nothing else. Fowler asked his host: ‘What question should the king ask of you?’ ‘Nay nothing,’ replied Thomas, ‘unless sometimes he would ask why I married not.’ The marital status of the king’s uncle was hardly likely to be uppermost in the nine-year-old’s mind, as was confirmed when Fowler assured Thomas that ‘I never heard him ask me such a question.’

The answer was disappointing for Seymour, and he paused. After some uncomfortable, silent seconds, he looked again at his guest, before asking: ‘Mr Fowler I pray you if you have any communication with the King’s Majesty soon or tomorrow, ask his highness whether he would be content I should marry or not. And if he say yes I pray you ask His Grace who he would should be my wife.’ The urgency of the request was clear to Fowler. He desperately wanted the Lord Admiral’s patronage and agreed to to do as he was asked.

That night, Fowler sidled up to the king on finding him alone in his chambers. Almost reciting Thomas’s words verbatim, he said boldly: ‘I marvel that My Lord Admiral marrieth not.’ Edward ignored him. Undaunted, Fowler tried again, asking directly: ‘Could Your Grace be contented he should marry?’ The king had never given it any thought, but it seemed reasonable to him; he merely answered ‘very well’. Fowler tried to draw more interest from the boy, asking whom he thought his uncle should marry. Raised as he was among men, Edward had little knowledge of the women of his kingdom, but Anne of Cleves – his father’s fourth wife and former stepmother, whose annuity he was still paying – sprang to mind. After a pause during which he considered further, Edward changed his mind: ‘nay, nay… I would he married my sister Mary to turn her opinions’.

The interview was over, and Edward wandered away, oblivious to the blow with which he had just struck Thomas. Fowler reported back to Thomas in the palace gallery the next day. But Seymour laughed when told of the king’s words, before sending the servant straight back to Edward to ask whether ‘he could be content that I should marry the queen’. Pretending that Catherine still needed to be wooed, he also asked the boy to write to her on his behalf.

Given Fowler’s earlier lack of success in the matter, Seymour did not entirely trust him. He therefore managed to slip into the royal apartments himself the following day.
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In private, he entirely persuaded the king that the match was his idea. Edward wrote at once to Catherine to promote his uncle. It was a brilliant piece of manoeuvring, making the marriage tantamount to a royal command. Thomas himself brought Catherine’s meek reply to the king, in which she made a ‘gentle acceptation’ of the suit – before confirming that she had done as bid and married Thomas.
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Edward replied on 25 June, thanking Catherine for this proof of her love and obedience.
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He was sure she would be pleased with her new husband, since Thomas, ‘being mine uncle, is of so good a nature that he will not be troublesome any means unto you’. Furthermore, the king resolved to protect them, promising that ‘I will so provide for you both that hereafter, if any grief befall, I shall be a sufficient succour in your godly and praiseworthy enterprises’. With the king’s approval, the couple could now publicize their marriage – it was widely put about as having occurred around 16 June 1547.
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The Duke of Somerset was furious at what he took to be proof of his brother’s ‘evil and dissembling nature’. He made his feelings known even to the king, who recorded that he was ‘much offended’.
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In public, Somerset put on a brave face, despite rumours that it was all part of a wider scheme of Seymour family marriages: there was another advantageous union arranged for Somerset’s daughter with the son of the Earl of Derby.
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Thomas still attended Council meetings, but the atmosphere was frosty. As they reviewed some written instructions for the French negotiations, produced that June, the rivalry was discernible in their signatures.
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The brothers had the two largest signatures, and both signed with similar flourishes, dwarfing the other councillors’ marks. But, as always, it was Somerset who dominated, signing above all others. Thomas’s florid attempt was constrained within the only space left on the far right of the page.
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The Protector was not the only person to be shocked at Catherine’s apparent lack of self-control. Princess Mary, who usually had so little in common with Somerset, shared his anger. One evening at dinner with Van der Delft, she spoke candidly of the marriage, asking her guest what he thought of it.
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The ambassador considered that ‘it appeared to me to be quite fitting, since the queen and he were of similar rank, she having been content to forget the honour she had enjoyed from the late king’. Mary was distressed, laying the blame for the marriage firmly with her stepmother.
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The princess was also deeply worried about Catherine’s suitability as a guardian. She now saw the queen as a woman filled with lust. She wrote at once to Elizabeth, to remind her that their ‘interests being common, the just grief we feel in seeing the ashes, or rather the scarcely cold body of the king, our father, so shamefully dishonoured by the queen, our stepmother, ought to be common to us also’.
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Elizabeth should come and live with her, she declared, since she herself could now no longer return visits to the fallen queen.

The letter placed Elizabeth in a difficult position, and she took her time over her response. She had (she claimed) suffered ‘affliction’ when she heard of the marriage, finding comfort only in God. However, she thought that ‘the best course we can take is that of dissimulation, that the mortification may fall upon those who commit the fault’ rather than those who merely consoled themselves ‘by making the best of what we cannot remedy’. In truth, Elizabeth had no wish to leave her stepmother for the dour environment of Mary’s establishment, writing that ‘the queen having shown me so great affection, and done me so many kind offices, that I must use much tact in manoeuvring with her, for fear of appearing ungrateful’. Despite her talk of ‘dissimulation’, it was to her half-sister that she dissembled. She was staying at Chelsea.

Princess Mary’s anger was stoked by Somerset’s wife. The forthright, capable but controversial Anne Stanhope was believed by many to rule her husband with ‘ambitious will and mischievous persuasions’.
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There was some truth in the characterization, and even Paget rued Somerset’s ‘bad wife’.
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Her husband feared to cross her. On one occasion, when he showed leniency in a political matter, she was said to have complained ominously ‘that she had never so much displeasure of her husband since she was first Sir Edward Seymour’s wife’.
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In spite of the frostiness of Mary’s relationship with the Protector, his wife was the princess’s greatest friend – her ‘Good Gossip’ or ‘Good Nan’, in whom she could confide.
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Indeed, Mary, Anne and the queen had once been so close that Catherine and Mary had shared the same sheet of paper to draft a friendly note to Anne, while Catherine wished her ‘so well to fare as I would myself’.
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Catherine and Anne also shared a deep commitment to the reformed faith, having both held a dangerous connection to the Protestant martyr, Anne Askew, during the latter years of Henry’s reign.
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But now, the relationship between the two Seymour sisters-in-law exploded into outright hostility. If Mary was forced to take sides, she would line up with the Duchess of Somerset.

The duchess had initially got on reasonably well with Thomas, but she was deeply jealous of Catherine.
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The marriage gave her the opportunity to publicly attack her rival, since she was not the only person at court to raise eyebrows at the new Lady Seymour of Sudeley’s claims to regal status.
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The queen’s own friend, the Duchess of Suffolk, who had once (playfully) promoted the marriage, cruelly mocked the couple in private, naming a black stallion and a mare in her stables ‘Seymour’ and ‘Parr’ respectively.
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Catherine’s haste to the altar made her seem wanton – and she was castigated for it. Given her apparent barrenness, as well as her matronly years, contemporaries were certain that there could be no other motive for Catherine other than sexual desire.
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After all, marriages were supposed to be consummated purely for the begetting of children – and most people had strong doubts that the queen could achieve that.
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In short, Catherine had debased herself.

Despite the murmuring and gossip, Catherine was, though, still the queen. She continued to appear proudly at court in her finery, wearing crimson satin and gold buttons, garnished with small pearls.
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It may have been an attempt to reduce her pride that led Somerset to confiscate many of her jewels, which she had left in the Tower for safekeeping. Or, it could have been mere covetousness, since both Somerset and his duchess were busily helping themselves to choice items from the royal stores. Lady Somerset would soon be seen with her brother smuggling fine fabrics out of the royal silk house, trussed in a sheet.
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Somerset was availing himself of Catherine’s lands, too, granting leases and inciting her servants to disobey her.
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That summer, in the face of such hostility, she attempted to secure the return of her jewels, only to find them declared Crown property. Catherine was not short of jewellery, including beautiful rings set with rubies and other gems, kept in a box of crimson velvet garnished with silver and gilt.
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But the Protector’s actions filled her with fury nonetheless. Among the items taken from her were her wedding ring from Henry VIII, as well as a gold cross and some pearl pendants which she had received from her mother.
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