The Sisters Who Would Be Queen Read online

  Sudeley persisted in his efforts to reassure and soothe Catherine and, as it became clear she was dying, Jane and the other women read the Scriptures with her. They would have prayed also, as the chaplain arrived to perform the service for the Visitation of the Sick. The priest was expected to exhort Catherine to ask forgiveness for her sins and to forgive all those who had offended her, and before she died, on 5 September, Catherine and Sudeley were reconciled. Her will left her husband everything she had, “wishing them to be a thousand times more in value than they were.” For his part, Sudeley was left stunned by his wife’s death. The happiness at the birth of his daughter had tapped into a deep well of feeling and now he was plunged into desperate grief. “I was so amazed I had small regard either to myself or to my doings,” he later recalled. Politics were forgotten. He went with his baby daughter to his brother the Protector’s house, to recuperate, and ordered that his own household be broken up. Jane Grey was to be sent back to Bradgate. But he asked first that she fulfill the role of chief mourner at Catherine’s funeral.

  The eleven-year-old Jane performed her first public role with great dignity. She walked behind the Queen’s coffin in the procession from the house to the chapel at Sudeley, her small figure erect in a black gown, the long train “borne up by a young Lady.” This was, perhaps, the fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Tilney, the younger sister of the favorite lady-in-waiting of Henry’s fifth wife, Katherine Howard, and a friend who would accompany Jane on the last procession of her life. The funeral ceremony in the chapel was modest and took only a morning, but it was of disproportionate historical significance. This was the first Protestant royal funeral in English history. The biblical translator Miles Coverdale conducted the service in English and gave the sermon. In it he stressed that the alms given for the poor at the funeral and the candles burned were not to profit Catherine’s soul but to honor her memory. In reformed teaching there was no purgatory (whereas in Catholic belief sinners do penance after death for their sins and the living pray for their release into paradise): the elect go straight to heaven, while the rest go to hell. Jane did not pray for Catherine, therefore, although she surely remembered her distraught guardian and his motherless baby.

  When the service was over, and Catherine buried, Jane returned home. The records of the towns she traveled through on the road to Bradgate reveal the expenses laid out to entertain their royal visitor. When she was a little girl, Jane often saw her parents going off to Leicester and other local towns before returning with gifts from the mayor and the aldermen’s wives. There would be strawberries, walnuts, pears, and homemade treats such as the spiced wine hippocras. Now she was treated with similar deference. Jane’s mother was not getting back the child she had said goodbye to a year before, but a questioning, maturing girl with a strong sense of her own dignity.

  * John Foxe, who knew Aylmer, claimed that Jane was a better student than Edward, and Elizabeth’s later tutor, Roger Ascham, recorded her superiority to Elizabeth. Neither had reason to exaggerate.

  V

  The Guardian’s Fate

  JANE’S YOUNGER SISTERS HAD ENDURED THEIR SHARE OF mourning at Bradgate. Their mother, Frances, who had been fond of Catherine Parr and kept her portrait all her life, had lost her younger sister, Eleanor, Countess of Cumberland, the previous November. Eleanor, still only in her twenties, left a daughter and a husband so stricken with shock that he was laid out as if dead, until revived with breast milk. Then, on 3 January 1548, when the family was celebrating the Christmas season at Bradgate, Dorset had received news that his younger sister Anne Willoughby was also dying. This branch of the Willoughbys, kin of Katherine Suffolk, was based in Nottinghamshire, not far from Bradgate, and the two families were very close.

  Katherine and Mary understood something of Jane’s grief, then, as they prepared to welcome her home after the Queen dowager’s funeral. The excitement of having their sister with them again and the hopes of exchanging confidences soon gave way, however, to the awkwardness of readjustment. The three-year gap between Jane and Katherine seemed suddenly very wide. While Katherine and Mary Grey were both still of an age when they wanted to please their parents, Jane was more questioning. At eleven she was showing the same rebellious streak her father had had at her age. Dorset used to infuriate his Latin teacher. He would laugh at rude jokes about the clergy made by traveling entertainers, and then, when the teacher complained, stir up the other pupils against him. Jane felt equally irritated by the restrictions and demands imposed on her at Bradgate. She had got used to a long rein at Seymour Place and resented her mother’s efforts to reassert her authority. Frances, in turn, was angered and worried by Jane’s defiance.

  In Tudor thinking, to rule and to obey were the essential characteristics of an ordered society. Frances believed that, with discipline, Jane’s youthful willfulness could be transformed into willpower and become a force for good. Without it, however, she would pursue only her own selfish appetites. That, Frances feared, was dangerous for Jane and for society. As the heiress of a noble house, and perhaps even a future Queen, Jane could do great things for her country, or great harm. Frances was furious that Sudeley had not done a better job of guiding her child, and to her horror, less than a fortnight after Jane’s return home, Sudeley asked for her to be sent back to him.

  Sudeley’s grief over his wife’s death had passed rapidly through the early stages of numbness and denial that follow bereavement. He now grasped it as fact, with all its implications. Her wealth was being returned to the crown. This dealt a severe blow to his finances and status. That could not be helped, but returning Jane to her parents was an act of political self-mutilation that he could yet rectify. Sudeley had written on 17 September pleading with Jane’s father for her return. He anticipated that Frances, in particular, would be unenthusiastic and assured Dorset that he would be keeping on Catherine Parr’s gentlewomen, the unmarried Maids of Honor, “and other women being about her Grace in her lifetime.” Everyone, Sudeley swore, would be “as diligent about [Jane], as yourself would wish.” His own mother would take charge of the house, and would treat Jane “as though she were her own daughter. And for my own part, I shall continue her half father and more.” Sudeley then wrote to Jane in a suitably strict, fatherly manner. Jane thanked him politely. “Like as you have become towards me a loving and kind father, so I shall be always most ready to obey your godly monitions and good instructions,” she replied.

  Frances was unimpressed, however, by Sudeley’s assurances, and her husband, aware that Sudeley’s status had fallen with the death of Catherine Parr, agreed that it would be better if Jane now stayed at home. Dorset wrote thanking him for his care of Jane thus far, and then reminded his friend that Jane was very young, and while he regarded him as an excellent father figure, he could not also be a mother to her. With Catherine Parr dead, Sudeley could surely see that “the eye and oversight of my wife shall in this respect be most necessary.” Jane was on the cusp of adolescence, a crucial age for “the addressing of the mind to humility, sobriety and obedience.” Dorset concluded hopefully that he still intended to take Sudeley’s advice about Jane’s marriage.

  Frances then wrote her own letter to Sudeley, enclosed with another from her stepmother, Katherine Suffolk (an indication of how close the women were). As Jane’s guardian and the Queen dowager’s widower, Sudeley was a member of the family and Frances referred to him in her letter as her “good brother” and to Jane as his “niece.” She also accepted that when it came to Jane’s marriage they would ask for his advice, as her husband wished. But she made it clear that she did not expect any marriage to take place for a good while yet. Having been married herself at sixteen, Frances did not want her daughter hurried into a husband’s bed. Frances concluded her letter expressing the hope that she could keep her daughter with his “goodwill.” It was not to be. Within days Sudeley was on the road to Leicestershire determined to change their minds. When the sisters and their parents greeted him at Bradgate he also had a f
riend at his side, Sir William Sharington, the Under Treasurer of the Royal Mint.

  Jane had seen Sharington often at Seymour Place, and Katherine and Mary may have remembered him from the previous autumn, when he had accompanied Sudeley to Bradgate on another visit. A handsome, charming man, he had an elegant, aquiline nose, though his eyes were dark-ringed and prematurely lined. Sharington had used his position at the Mint to perpetrate extensive frauds. Sudeley knew what he had done and in exchange for his secrecy Sharington was providing him with money. This included the ready cash Sudeley needed to buy Jane’s wardship. But Sharington also had talents that Sudeley would make good use of at Bradgate. He could be extremely plausible. The previous autumn he had helped persuade Dorset to vote with Sudeley against a bill in Parliament confirming Somerset’s legal status as Lord Protector—Dorset had been the only peer to do so. Now Sharington had the task of persuading Frances to return her daughter to Seymour Place, while Sudeley worked on Dorset.

  Sudeley knew his most effective leverage with Dorset remained the promise that he could deliver the King’s hand in marriage to Jane. And he had a piece of good fortune in this respect. Jane’s principal rival, the infant Mary Queen of Scots, had been sent to live in France so that she could be betrothed to the Dauphin, Francis. Sudeley assured Dorset that “if he might once get the King at liberty” then he could immediately have Edward married to Jane. Dorset hummed and hawed, but, as he later recalled, Sudeley “would have no nay.” Sharington, meanwhile, was doing an excellent job at weakening Frances’s resolve, reassuring her that all her fears were misplaced. Eventually, “after long debating and much sticking,” she agreed that Jane should be returned to Sudeley’s care and her husband followed suit. It was a decision they would soon regret, as would Jane.

  Life at Seymour Place that autumn of 1548 was not as Jane remembered it, despite the comforting presence of her old friends from Catherine’s Privy Chamber. The Queen dowager’s stabilizing influence on Sudeley was gone and a part of him had not quite accepted that she was dead.

  Sudeley spoke often of promoting a parliamentary bill that would prevent people slandering Catherine Parr’s name over her decision to marry him so quickly after Henry VIII’s death. But there were also rumors circulating that he wanted to remarry. Some claimed Sudeley had his eye on the Princess Mary, others that he hoped to marry Lady Jane Grey. He laughed at that suggestion, but admitted to his former brother-in-law Parr of Northampton that there would be “much ado” for Jane’s hand. His ward would be twelve in May and able to make a binding marriage contract under canon law. He believed the Somersets, in particular, “would do what they could to obtain her for [their son] Lord Hertford.”

  Northampton asked Sudeley if his real intention might be to marry the Princess Elizabeth rather than Jane. Sudeley replied that “he had heard that the Protector would clap him in the Tower if he went to Elizabeth,” though he could see no other reason why he shouldn’t marry her, if she were willing. As he told other friends, it was far better that Elizabeth should marry within the kingdom than outside it. Elizabeth, however, had learned the lessons of the previous spring when Sudeley had embarrassed her with Catherine Parr. She was acutely aware that she could not marry without the permission of the King and the Privy Council, and refused even to see Sudeley without a warrant. But some of her servants were prepared to help him, believing, rightly or wrongly, that this was what Elizabeth truly wanted. Two or three weeks before Christmas, Jane noticed the familiar full face of Elizabeth’s servant Thomas Parry at Seymour Place. Parry, who as Elizabeth’s cofferer managed the princess’s money, appeared several times, walking alone with Sudeley in the gallery. Out of earshot, they were discussing the financial details of a possible marriage to Elizabeth.

  Such dabbling in a matter of high state caused considerable alarm with other servants in Elizabeth’s household. The princess’s tutor, Roger Ascham, was so appalled by Parry’s actions that he asked for permission to return to Cambridge for the entire Christmas season. Kate Astley’s husband, John, equally concerned, argued furiously with his wife over the arrangements. One of these arguments was so heated that afterward Elizabeth noticed bruising on her governess’s arms (Astley claimed that a doctor had been bleeding her to cure some ailment). The atmosphere at Seymour Place, meanwhile, was equally charged. Sudeley’s friends and servants desperately tried to dissuade him from his course. It was against all sense of decency and right order that a man without royal blood should align himself with an heir to the throne. “Beware,” one warned Sudeley: “It were better for you if you had never been born, nay, that you were burnt to the quick alive, than that you should attempt it.” Men had died for attempting royal alliances during King Henry’s time and it would put Elizabeth’s life at risk. They begged him instead to improve his relations with his brother. But Sudeley only blustered about how he would use Parliament to get the Governorship of the King’s Person in spite of the Protector, and seize his rightful share of power.

  Sudeley judged that Somerset’s political position was continuing to weaken as he persisted in his arrogant treatment of his colleagues. In this he was correct. Somerset often ignored advice and once slapped down a Privy Councillor in such a humiliating manner that the man was reduced to tears. Somerset’s most faithful ally on the Council, William Paget, was moved to write to him in the middle of Christmas night, to warn him of disaster ahead. But not everything was going Sudeley’s way. Within the Privy Council it was Sudeley who was judged the immediate threat to national stability. Dorset, aware that there was an impending crisis, demonstrated his usual poor political judgment by throwing in his lot with his friend. Whatever happened, Dorset promised Sudeley, he would “defend him against all men, save the King.” Night after night during the Christmas season, Katherine and Mary Grey saw their father leave Dorset House for Seymour Place, where Jane saw him arrive along with their great Leicestershire neighbor Francis Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon. Sometimes Sudeley would leave them to go on forays to court. There were accusations later that Sudeley was planning to kidnap Edward and Elizabeth. Dorset may have hoped he would, believing Sudeley planned a double wedding, with Edward marrying Lady Jane Grey and he marrying Princess Elizabeth. If so it was an ominous portent for Jane of the danger in which her father was prepared to place her in pursuit of his ambitions.

  The evidence suggests, however, that for the moment at least, Sudeley was merely picking up gossip from the King’s Groom John Fowler. Sudeley would moan over a drink in the Privy Buttery to Fowler how he wished Edward were old enough to be independent of Somerset, a time too far off to do him any good. On 6 January, the feast of the Epiphany and the last day of Christmas, Sir William Sharington’s house, Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, was searched on the orders of the Council, and incriminating evidence of his fraud at the Royal Mint discovered. Sharington understood what was expected of him and to save his skin gave up all he knew about Sudeley’s ambitions, including his hopes of marrying Elizabeth. Others were then rounded up. The young Earl of Rutland, whom Sudeley had attempted to recruit as an ally, was called in for questioning at Somerset House in the middle of the night. Terrified, the twenty-one-year-old repeated what Sudeley had said about the need for those who loved the King to build up a following among “honest and wealthy yeomen who were ringleaders in good towns.” One of Sudeley’s servants had a brother in Rutland’s household and Sudeley learned what the earl had said before morning. He hoped, nonetheless, to brazen it out. The next day he went to Parliament as usual and left at dinnertime with Dorset, to whom he confided what Rutland had said. They ate at Huntingdon’s house and returned to Seymour Place with a group of friends. These included Jane’s youngest uncle, Lord Thomas Grey. In contrast with the brothers Sudeley and Somerset, her father and his brothers were close.

  Jane must have known something was wrong from the nervous conversation of the servants. Behind closed doors, Sudeley was boasting that he had been called to see the Privy Council, but had refused to go. Lord Thoma
s was unimpressed, pointing out that the Council could simply arrest him. He advised Sudeley to trust his brother as “a man of much mercy.” Sudeley refused to contemplate it. In the palace next door, meanwhile, Somerset was proving more amenable to advice—the worse for Sudeley. His enemies were insisting to Somerset that his life would only be safe when his brother was dead. That night, the Clerk of the Privy Council, Sir Thomas Smith, and the Privy Councillor and lawyer Sir John Baker came to arrest Sudeley. Jane would have recognized the sickly Smith, with his long beard and heavy coat. He was a friend of her tutor, John Aylmer. Baker, a man in his fifties, was distinguishable by his gray hair; he was old by the standards of the day, but “Butcher Baker,” as he later came to be called, would send many young men to their graves before his time was up.* Sudeley accepted his arrest quietly, hoping that all would be well. Others, however, proved less sanguine.