Tudor Queens of England (29 page)

The infl iction of capital punishment upon women was comparatively rare in the early sixteenth century. Females were executed for murder and robbery but on nothing like the scale of their male contemporaries and Anne Boleyn was the fi rst gentlewoman to suffer on the block in living memory. Witchcraft, while claiming many women’s lives in the early seventeenth century, was hardly an issue in the reign of Henry VIII. A few female Lollards had been burned, but the execution of Anne Askew in 1546 was notorious partly because it was so rare. Margaret Pole had been despatched for high treason in the summer of 1541, but adultery was the treason of Queens and the simultaneous despatch of two women 152

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for that offence in February 1542 was a very notable event. Nobody has ever had much good to tell of Catherine. She was an instrument of her family, who was broken in the effort largely because of the defects in her own personality. She was obviously very attractive to men and may well have had others, in addition to Henry Mannox, of whom we know nothing because it was in no one’s interest to disclose them. Having discovered this fact at an early age, she was quite unable to discipline herself and became, in effect, a ‘girl who couldn’t say no’. In her original confession, she claimed to have put her wanton past behind her and after her marriage to have kept herself for the King. What she did not, of course, say was that Henry was a very unsatisfactory lover and that, even by her own admission, she had sought solace in fl irtations which were second nature to her. Her confession was not accepted as satisfactory at the time, and has become no more convincing today. She was in effect just a silly girl in the wrong place at the wrong time – and for that her family can be largely blamed.

As we have seen, Henry took her behaviour very hard. She had infl icted more psychological damage upon him in a few short months than several successive Popes, or Francis of France over many years. By the summer of 1540 his abortive encounter with Anne of Cleves had warned him that all was not well but Catherine had appeared to offer rejuvenation. The lustful, potent Henry who had wrought havoc with the damsels of the court was back! Then he was forced to confront the truth. He was old, tired and periodically sick. His once magnifi cent frame was now grossly overweight and regularly overtaxed. The sexual potency that had once kept Catherine of Aragon in a state of regular pregnancy was now unable to satisfy a young girl who had fewer years than his own daughter. A consort was supposed to maintain a King’s honour, but this ignorant child had humiliated him in the most intimate possible way. Fortunately, international affairs did not await the King’s mood or convenience. During the ill-fated summer progress of 1541 Henry thought that he had persuaded James V of Scotland to meet him at York. James’s council persuaded him otherwise, and the English king took his non-appearance as an insult. Then at about the same time, on 10 July, Charles and Francis resumed their interminable confl ict, and these two events shook the diplomatic kaleidoscope. Negotiations had been going on for a marriage between Mary and the duc d’Orleans, but these had foundered on the reef of Mary’s illegitimacy. Early in 1542, at the same time that Catherine was awaiting the attentions of the executioner, Henry began secret negotiations for a renewal of his old Imperial alliance. In June plans were settled for a joint invasion of France in 1543, and through the autumn ships and guns were gathered for the impending action.

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No doubt these bellicose preparations restored a measure of vitality and confi dence to the King, and perhaps they were intended to do just

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that. However, the fi rst action came against Scotland. Remembering what had happened a generation earlier, Henry was minded to exclude the Scots from the forthcoming action, by a treaty preferably, but if not by intimidation. The treaty option did not work, and in October 1542 the Duke of Norfolk launched a brief but savage raid into the lowlands. It was by doing his master’s bidding in such ways that the Duke crept back into favour after his niece’s disgrace. James could not fail to respond to such provocation and early in November he launched 20,000 men into the debateable ground north of Carlisle. His army walked into a well-laid trap and was routed at the battle of Solway Moss on 23 October. It was not a bloody defeat like Flodden but it left a lot of Scottish nobles as prisoners in English hands. It also took Scotland out of the forthcoming continental war because not only had its main fi eld army been destroyed but James V himself died about a week later of unrelated causes, leaving his infant daughter Mary as his heir. These events, and the prospect of action in France, restored some youthful bounce to the decrepit Henry, and as his black moods retreated he began to contemplate marriage again. As we have seen, by March 1543 he was showing a serious interest in Lady Latimer.

The damage that Catherine had done to Henry was severe, but not irreparable. In a sense she had done him a favour, because she had proved conclusively that he was not the man he had been, and that sort of realism was necessary. He lowered his sights, and did not make the same demands upon his sixth wife that he had attempted to make on all the others. Of the six, Catherine stands out because she was the only one to be actually guilty of serious misconduct. Unlike Catherine of Aragon or Anne Boleyn, she had no political presence of her own. In that respect she resembled Jane Seymour but there the similarity began and ended. Jane’s sexuality had been gentle and passive, Catherine’s was devious and manipulative. Unlike any of Henry’s other wives, she was the creation of a family faction, rather than the founder of one. The Boleyns and the Seymours would have had a presence at Court, even if their leading women had not shared the royal bed – the Parrs probably not. But neither the Boleyns nor the Seymours were powerful in the same sense as the Howards. Anne Boleyn had been more a councillor than a consort, but she had always been meticulous in her preservation of the King’s honour and even her alleged misdemeanours had produced anger rather than humiliation or depression. Like Anne, but in a completely different way, Catherine did not know how to be a consort. She accepted all the privileges and wealth of her position but gave nothing in return except a sexual complaisance, which turned out to be fraudulent. She is not known to have been the patron of any group, or of any particular style of piety, nor did she receive petitions soliciting her arbitration. Her time, admittedly was short, but then so was that 154

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of Jane, who was a conspicuous peacemaker in the royal family. Catherine was at daggers drawn with Mary, who seems to have suspected her motives from the start, and who was a dedicated spinster fi ve years her senior. Paradoxically the only member of the royal family with whom she seems to have been on good terms was her immediate predecessor, Anne of Cleves. It must have been an attraction of opposites because no two women could have been more different, except in one important respect – both were relatively uneducated, and when Anne was at court the Queen may have sought her company as a relief from the demands of her more learned compatriots. Judged by the standards normally applied to a consort, Catherine had almost no redeeming feature, and the fact that it took a major crisis to convince Henry of that fact is probably a better indication of his declining judgement than either the Boulogne campaign or the rough wooing, which as we shall see, was a seriously counterproductive policy.

8

The Queens who Never Were: Jane Grey and

Mary Stuart

These women were both claimants or pretenders not to the role of consort but to the Crown in their own right. They therefore belong in a different league from the ladies we have so far considered. Mary was Queen of Scotland in her own right almost from birth, and for about 18 months was also Queen Consort of France. Her claim to the throne of England was by what was called ‘indefeasible hereditary succession’, a custom or rule recognized in both England and Scotland (but not in France) whereby the oldest legitimate descendant of the last monarch to produce offspring was recognized as heir. By this custom males took precedence over females, irrespective of seniority, but in the absence of men, the right of women to succeed was recognized. Mary was the daughter and only surviving child of James V of Scotland, born just a week before his death, and thus the granddaughter of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII’s elder sister, who had married King James IV. If it was claimed – as it was in Catholic Europe – that both Henry VIII’s younger children were illegitimate, then the lawful Tudor line was represented on his death by his elder daughter, Mary, and after her by Mary of Scotland. The English, however, did not see it that way. As far as English law was concerned, Edward, Henry’s son was legitimate because Papal sanctions were not recognized, and he was the heir in 1547.

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Mary also recognized his right, and did not put forward a claim. Although unchallenged, Edward’s position was nevertheless ambiguous, because he had also been declared the heir by his father’s last succession Act in 1544, and by the will which that Act had authorized. In other words an Englishman could choose whether he recognized Edward by hereditary right, or by statutory authorization. When Edward died childless, the issue returned, but was resolved, as we shall see, in favour of the statute. In neither of these situations was any claim by Mary of Scotland considered, but when Mary Tudor also died childless, the issue returned.

In 1558 there were two possible claimants representing different principles of succession. Elizabeth represented the statutory policy laid down in 1544, 156

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whereas Mary of Scotland, whose claim had been ignored in the Succession Act, represented indefeasible hereditary right. At the time it was no contest, because Mary was betrothed to the Dauphin, and England was at war with France. Moreover the Succession Act was universally respected. The issue arose over who should be recognized as Elizabeth’s heir should she, like her siblings, die childless. As we shall see, that problem was to affl ict English politics for over twenty y

ears.2

By comparison, Jane Grey was a very short-term problem. She was not the direct heir by anyone’s standards, except those of Edward VI. Edward issued (or tried to issue) Letters Patent recognizing Jane as his successor when it became clear that he was mortally ill in the summer of 1553.

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It looked at fi rst as though his wishes would be obeyed, but the superiority of Mary’s claim, both by hereditary right and by the Succession Act, was soon apparent. Jane was consigned to the Tower, and eventually to the block. She became a footnote to history. However, because her pretension came fi rst chronologically, and it was she rather than either of the Marys who can claim in a sense to have been England’s fi rst ruling Queen, Jane takes priority for consideration.

Jane was the eldest of three daughters of Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, and his wife Frances Brandon. She was born at Bradgate Hall in Leicestershire in October 1537. Frances was the elder daughter of Mary, Henry VIII’s younger sister by her second marriage to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and by the Succession Act of 1544 was next in line to the throne should all Henry’s own offspring die childless. That was not the case in the summer of 1553, when both Mary and Elizabeth were very much alive. Frances was also alive, and indeed Edward’s ‘device for the succession’ had started by naming any son who might be born to her. Only when it was apparent that his time was very short did the young King switch his option to Jane, who should have had no claim by anyone’s standards. The reason for this implausible change was that Edward knew Jane and liked her. Her education and theological tastes matched his own and she was almost exactly his age. For several years there had been talk of a marriage between them and Jane seems to have been brought up with that in mind. Her early education at Bradgate was ordinary enough, except that she seems to have been taught Latin from the beginning, which was not normal for a girl. At the age of about 9 she went to live in the household of the Dowager Queen Catherine and for a year or so appears to have shared the education of the precocious Edward there, which elevated her onto an altogether new plane of learning

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For two or three months Mary, Elizabeth and Jane all continued in Catherine’s establishment. The latter’s controversial and somewhat hasty marriage to Lord Thomas Seymour prompted Mary to move out. She could afford to do so, since she was of age and the estates conferred upon her by the terms of Henry’s will

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were promptly assigned. Elizabeth and Jane stayed put. Elizabeth was 13 and her estates had not yet been assigned. Jane stayed by a special arrangement between the Marquis of Dorset and Lord Thomas Seymour, in the course of which Lord Thomas hinted broadly that he was in a position to arrange her marriage to the young king. ‘You will see’, one contemporary observed, ‘he will marry her to the king.

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Why he should have thought that – and still more why the Marquis should have believed him, remain something of a mystery. Grey paid Seymour something like £2,000 for the privilege.

In the summer of 1548, while Catherine was pregnant, she discovered the indiscreet Lord Thomas with his arms around Elizabeth. The girl was sent away in disgrace and, having nowhere obvious to go, retreated to the home of Sir Anthony and Lady Denny at Cheshunt. Then, early in September, Catherine died in childbirth, leaving Jane apparently unprotected in the household of a notorious womanizer. Lord Thomas, however, was not a child abuser and the Marquis appears to have continued to trust him. His fi rst thought was to break up the overlarge household that he had kept up while married to the Queen Dowager, and after a friendly exchange of correspondence, Dorset took his daughter back to Bradgate, where she arrived on about 20 September. Seymour, meanwhile had changed his mind, and decided for political reasons to retain a much larger establishment than he could really afford. Jane’s role in all this was obvious, so he opened negotiations with Dorset to get her back. The latter, meanwhile, may have grown sceptical of these ambitions because he had also opened a correspondence with the Lord Protector for a marriage between Jane and the Earl of Hertford, his eldest son. It is probable that Dorset was simply keeping his options open because, within a couple of weeks Lord Thomas had persuaded him to allow his daughter to return to Hanworth. On 1 October the girl herself wrote to Thomas, expressing her gratitude for his kindness and describing him as her ‘loving and kind father’. His charm seems to have been working overtime because at the same time her mother, Frances, also wrote to him as her ‘very good lord and brother’. It may have been Lord Seymour’s friend and associate Sir William Sharrington who got on so well with the Marchioness but relations between the two establishments could hardly have been more cosy.