Katherine and Hertford were not the only ones to lose their heads to their hearts that summer at Nonsuch. While Arundel had hoped to engage the Queen’s interest in himself as a possible suitor, it became clear that Elizabeth’s attention was fixed entirely on Lord Robert Dudley. In the well-built man, compared in looks to a gypsy, Elizabeth saw a boyish sweetness she found irresistible. She knew what it was like to have a hated traitor for a parent, and perhaps the complexities of his family history made her feel still closer to him. Kate Astley, Elizabeth’s governess since her days in the household of Catherine Parr, was so concerned by Elizabeth’s evident infatuation that she fell on her knees one day, begging the Queen to take a husband and quash the rumors that her relationship with Dudley was dishonorable. To this Elizabeth retorted that, since her Ladies of the Bedchamber were always with her, there was no opportunity for her to behave badly, adding defiantly that should she ever wish for a dishonourable life she knew of no one who could forbid her. A shocked Kate Astley warned her mistress that even rumors of such a thing could lead to civil war. Elizabeth, chastened, confessed that she needed Dudley at her side as she had “so little joy.” For Elizabeth the risks of being with Dudley were a price worth paying, just as for Katherine the dangers of intimate moments with Hertford seemed trivial compared with the emptiness of life without him.
On 10 August the party at Nonsuch came to an end, but Dudley remained at Elizabeth’s side, at Hampton Court, and Hertford was on hand to comfort Katherine when her cousin Thomas Willoughby died after “overheating” while out hunting. He was close too, almost two months later, when John Foxe published his Latin forerunner to his Book of Martyrs, the Rerum in Ecclesia Gentarum. It must have brought back many painful memories for Katherine, as it republished Jane’s letter to her and gave a detailed description of Jane’s death, as well as publishing several new verses written by prominent Protestants in praise of her courage and piety.
Katherine hoped, however, that she was about to take a step toward a new life. It was at about this time, in early October, that Hertford rode from Hampton Court to Sheen to ask the “Lady Frances to grant the goodwill that he might marry the Lady Katherine.” How Elizabeth might react to news of Katherine’s betrothal, he and Katherine would worry about later.
XVII
Betrothal
FRANCES’S RESIDENCE AT SHEEN HOUSE LAY IN RICHMOND Park, southwest of London, just across the river from Sion, where Jane was first proclaimed Queen. It dated back to the early fifteenth century, when it was founded as a Carthusian monastery, and became the burial place of James IV of Scots, the husband of Henry VIII’s elder sister, Margaret. He had been killed in a war against England, reconfirming the centuries of enmity between the kingdoms that the marriage had been intended to end. It was this tradition of national rivalry and ancient hatreds that lay, in part, behind Henry’s later decision to exclude the entire Stuart line from the succession. Instead of leaving it to God to decide who should succeed to the throne, Parliament had acknowledged Henry’s power to make his illegitimate daughter Elizabeth Queen and to make the Grey sisters her heirs. But James’s granddaughter, the seventeen-year-old Mary Queen of Scots, was now thumbing her nose at these decisions, and asserting the traditional rights of primogeniture.
To the fury of English Protestants and Catholics alike, and the horror of William Cecil, it had just emerged that the previous year, 1558, Mary Queen of Scots had had the dinnerware at her Paris wedding to the then Dauphin quartered with the arms of England. It had sent a message to the world that she judged Elizabeth a bastard usurper of her throne. That Elizabeth was illegitimate was not an argument that could be easily refuted. Her father’s affair with her aunt Mary Boleyn before he married her mother was well-known. Under canon law his marriage to her mother was, therefore, invalid and incestuous. Unlike Mary I, Elizabeth never addressed the statement of illegitimacy against her, knowing it would raise too many awkward questions, and ugly stories. But it was insulting and threatening to draw attention to it, as the Queen of Scots had done. Someone at Sheen House, however, showed the Stuarts equal contempt. The King of Scots’ body was later found dug up and thrown into a waste room, among all the old timber, stone, lead, and other rubble: a brutal advertisement of hatred for the Scottish claim.
Frances was delighted to see Hertford as he arrived at Sheen. He had been her father’s godson and she was very fond of him. When he asked for her permission to marry Katherine she was both happy and relieved. Although still only forty-two, her health had been poor since at least the summer of 1552, when she had been described as having “a constant burning ague and stopping of the spleen.” She knew she did not have much time left and was keen for Katherine to be happily married before her death. She had called Hertford “son” for some time, but while she confided in her husband, Adrian Stokes, that she thought Hertford “very fit” for her daughter, she was concerned that it would prove difficult to persuade the Queen to give her permission for the marriage.
Stokes agreed the match was a good one and suggested to Hertford that he acquire as much support on the Privy Council for the marriage as he could muster before the Queen was approached. He did not think it would be difficult to find friends. Katherine’s marriage would strengthen her position as Elizabeth’s heir against the pretensions of Mary Stuart, who represented England’s two traditional enemies: France and Scotland. Hertford thought this excellent advice and left for court assuring Stokes that “he would follow the same.” Stokes then drew up a rough draft of a letter for Frances to Elizabeth, informing the Queen that Hertford bore “good will to her daughter,” and begging Elizabeth to assent to the marriage, which “was the only thing that she desired before her death and should be an occasion to her to die the more quietly.” The letter was then put aside for Hertford’s return and to allow Frances to talk to Katherine.
Frances wanted to confirm with her daughter that the marriage was what she wanted. The answer Katherine gave when she arrived at her mother’s house was an emphatic yes—she was “very willing” to marry Hertford. There must have been many happy faces at Sheen that night as the family considered Katherine’s future. But the earl returned soon after from court with gloomy news: his friends had warned him off a marriage at this stage. There was a suit being made to the Queen by the Protestant heir to the Swedish crown, Prince Erik. He had to wait to see how it would play out. Over the following weeks Hertford made it his business to befriend Prince Erik’s brother, the Duke of Finland, who was in London promoting the suit, becoming the duke’s regular tennis partner and companion. If Erik were to marry Elizabeth, the duke would make a useful ally. Frances’s health, however, was worsening rapidly.
On 3 November the failing duchess petitioned the crown to sell off some of her jointure property that her daughters were to inherit, and on 9 November she drew up her will. Her first concern was her creditors. Debt was the chronic condition of the aristocracy and Frances did not wish to have any money owed left on her conscience. She remembered, perhaps, the desperate creditor who had assaulted her first husband on the scaffold. Everything else not already passed on to her daughters she left to Stokes, whom she made her executor. He had proved a better husband to her than the father of her daughters.
Frances died on the 20th or 21st of November with her two daughters and a few close friends beside her. When Elizabeth was brought the news she promptly agreed to take on the expenses of the funeral for her “beloved cousin.” Frances’s second marriage had ensured that she had never threatened Elizabeth’s position and the Queen was grateful for it. She awarded Frances in death an augmentation to her heraldic arms of a royal quartering, a symbol of her Tudor blood on her mother’s side, and “an apparent declaration of her consanguity unto us.” Stokes and her daughters similarly gave careful thought to the other arrangements for Frances’s funeral. In particular they had to consider what statement it would make about their attitude to Elizabeth’s controversial religious settlement.
The Queen
was a natural conservative. She had wanted to move to a moderate position nearer to that of the 1549 Prayer Book than that of 1552, which Katherine’s father had helped introduce. She enjoyed religious ceremonial, candles, and copes, disapproved of married priests, and disliked the sermon-giving that was central to purer forms of Protestant worship. William Cecil and allies such as Lord John Grey had succeeded in pushing her religious settlement toward that represented by the 1552 Prayer Book, but she had managed to insist on several concessions. The 1552 statement denying that kneeling at Communion implied adoration was dropped, distinctive vestments were allowed for priests, and a couple of sentences on the administration of the bread and wine were added to imply that Christ was present, at least in some spiritual sense, in the elements. The Grey sisters’ step-grandmother, Katherine Suffolk, and Jane’s former tutor, John Aylmer, complained vociferously about these changes. But tact had been a mark of Frances’s relationship with Elizabeth in life, and her family ensured it remained so in death.
The funeral service was to be officiated by the new Bishop of Salisbury, John Jewel, who, like Frances, combined piety with prudence. He was a close friend of the family’s spiritual mentor, Heinrich Bullinger. But while Jewel referred to Elizabeth’s religious settlement as a “leaden mediocrity” in private, he had been careful not to embarrass her in public. The bishopric was his reward and he was regarded as a safe pair of hands to manage the funeral, which took place on 5 December.
Frances’s body was brought in procession from Richmond to Westminster Abbey “with a great banner of arms and eight dozen escutcheons, and two heralds of arms.” Katherine, acting as chief mourner, followed the coffin dressed in black, her train carried by a gentlewoman assisted by an usher. The diminutive Lady Mary Grey, who was now about fourteen, followed in line of procession. As Frances’s body was brought inside the abbey it was set under a static structure known as a hearse, which was big enough to hold the coffin and allow the principal mourners to sit within it. Katherine sat at the head with the other mourners on each side.
The service was in English and distinctively Protestant, but Bishop Jewel’s sermon “was very much commended by them that heard it.” The sisters and the congregation all received Communion in accordance with Elizabeth’s Prayer Book and Frances was then buried in St. Edmund’s Chapel on the south side of the choir. Four years later her widower erected a monument that still remains. It is surmounted by her image, dressed in the ermine robes of a duchess, her royal crown on her head and in her hand a prayer book such as Jane carried to the scaffold, a reminder of their shared faith. Underneath Frances’s epitaph is written in Latin:
Nor grace, nor splendor, nor a royal name,
Nor widespread fame can aught avail;
All, all have vanished here. True worth alone
Survives the funeral pyre and silent tomb.
Stokes could not have imagined how Frances’s reputation would be traduced in centuries to come, and nor could her daughters. Mary Grey was comforted in her loss by the extended family with whom she would always remain close: friends such as her orphaned cousin Margaret Willoughby, whom Frances had taken under her wing in the terrible months after Jane was executed. Katherine, of course, had Hertford, but their hopes of marriage in the immediate future had been buried with Frances. Sometime that winter, while Katherine was still wearing mourning, Hertford wrote a verse describing his feelings about their situation. He compared his pain to that of the Greek classical hero Troilus, who was kept apart from his lover, Cressida, by political imperatives, as they were:
She stood in black said Troylus he,
That with her look hath wounded me.
She stood in black say I also
That with her eye, hath bred my woe.
Underneath he recalled the story of the two lovers as told by Geoffrey Chaucer. The end of the story expressed his ultimate fear: Cressida marries one of her lover’s enemies. Hertford was aware, perhaps, that the Spanish were again paying court to Katherine. Elizabeth’s infatuation with Dudley was having an increasingly damaging effect on her reputation, and the Spanish ambassador was advising Philip that when the Archduke Charles came to England to woo Elizabeth he should also see Katherine, to whom, they judged, the crown would fall if the Queen were overthrown. Hertford’s fears were misplaced, however: Katherine would not leave him. She loved him too much.
The new year of 1560 brought an incredible transformation in Elizabeth’s treatment of Katherine. Suddenly she found herself promoted to attend on the Queen personally alongside the intimates of Elizabeth’s Privy Chamber and old friends like Kate Astley. Spanish diplomats reported that the Queen was even talking of adopting Katherine. For Elizabeth it was a case, however, of keeping your friends close, and your enemies closer. She had been informed of the Spanish plot to smuggle Katherine out of the country and she did not want to drive her into their hands. The suggestion that she would adopt Katherine implied she was poised to name her as her heir. In contrast, however, to the myth of Elizabeth as Gloriana, the great Protestant icon of English nationalism, in her heart she preferred—and would always prefer—the claim of Mary Queen of Scots to that of Katherine Grey. Catholic and foreign Mary might be, where Katherine was Protestant and English, but Mary represented the dynastic principle and the absolute right of a monarch to rule. And for Elizabeth these took precedence over the religious and nationalist concerns of her Secretary of State, William Cecil.
The ideological differences between Elizabeth and Cecil were particularly acute at the moment Katherine found herself in the Queen’s brittle embrace. John Knox, the cleric who had so vociferously stated the case against the “monstrous” rule of women, had arrived in Scotland the previous May and found a civil war in progress. He had promptly joined the Protestant-backed rebels fighting Mary’s mother, the regent, Mary of Guise. Cecil saw that if England were also to back the rebels they could together seize the opportunity to create a Protestant “Britain.” Such a result would help secure England’s northern border while uniting the whole island against Catholic Europe, and the Guise family, whom he saw as “being professionally gathered to destroy the gospel of Christ.” To his frustration, however, Elizabeth agreed only reluctantly on covert aid for the rebels and refused point-blank to give any outright military support to those who took up arms against a rightful sovereign. Only when Cecil threatened to withdraw from any further involvement in Scottish policy did she give way—and Elizabeth resented having her hand forced.
When Mary of Guise’s French allies defeated the English army in Scotland at Leith in May 1560, Elizabeth vented her anger on her Secretary. In an effort to rescue the situation Cecil left court to take charge of the campaign. But while he was soon turning defeat into victory in Scotland, back at court his influence over Elizabeth waned rapidly. From the close quarters of the Privy Chamber, Katherine saw Robert Dudley build on the Queen’s disaffection with Cecil’s Scottish policy and woo the Queen more passionately than ever. Elizabeth went out hunting with her “sweet Robin” every day from morning till night. This did not trouble Katherine. As before, she and Hertford used Elizabeth’s distraction to conduct their own affair. Hertford’s brother Henry joined their sister Lady Jane Seymour and their servants in delivering tokens and messages for the couple. The lovers also met in private when and where they could. Sometimes they used Jane Seymour’s private chamber at court and, on at least two occasions, Katherine visited Hertford at his London home on Cannon Row, Westminster. Several of their friends were aware of what was happening, but it was the Queen who was the focus of scandal when Cecil returned from Scotland.
The rumors of a sexual affair, which Kate Astley had warned Elizabeth could end in civil war, were spreading. By mid-August they had reached even remote villages, with magistrates in Essex questioning a woman from Brentwood who had claimed that the Queen was pregnant by Dudley. There was tremendous anger at court that Dudley was sullying the Queen’s good name and standing in the way of her making a proper marriage.
Norfolk warned the Spanish ambassador that Dudley “would not die in his bed” if he did not change course, and a man called Drury was imprisoned for plotting his assassination. Nothing, however, would deter Elizabeth from Dudley’s company, “her only source of happiness.” Diplomats reported that Cecil was in disgrace for his open hostility to Lord Robert, and Spanish hopes that Katherine would make a Hapsburg marriage went back to the top of their agenda. Cecil tried to deflect their interest in her, assuring the latest Spanish ambassador, Bishop Alvarez de Quadra, that if anything happened to Elizabeth no woman would be acceptable to the Privy Council as a successor. Instead the likely choice, he told the Spaniard, was Dudley’s brother-in-law Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, who was of Plantagenet descent.
Huntingdon was certainly a potential choice: Northumberland had married his daughter to him in May 1553 for exactly that reason. But Huntingdon was not a Tudor and had not been mentioned in any of the Acts of Succession. Like all convincing liars, Cecil had told the Spanish a half-truth. The Council didn’t want any more queens—unless they were married already to a suitable husband. Several Councillors had expressed the desire to marry Katherine to the Earl of Arran, the leader of the Scottish Protestants and Mary Queen of Scots’ cousin and heir. De Quadra had an informant who was prepared “to lay a horse worth a hundred crowns that it shall so come to pass.” For those few who knew about Katherine’s romance, however, the Earl of Hertford had much to recommend him. It was his father who had introduced “true religion” to England and, although young and inexperienced, he was a known quantity. Only circumstantial evidence remains to indicate who these people were, but Katherine’s uncle (by marriage) the Earl of Arundel appears to have been among them.
The Sisters Who Would Be Queen Page 22