The Sisters Who Would Be Queen

by Leanda de Lisle

  It was an extraordinary statement. Elizabeth had made it quite clear that she believed Mary’s right of succession, under the tradition of primogeniture, took precedence over English statute. She denied there was any case to exclude Mary as a foreigner, or for any other reason, and indicated that she would nominate Mary her successor if she felt free to do so. Of her English heirs Elizabeth expressed nothing but bitterness: “It is true, that some of them have made declaration to the world that they are more worthy of [the crown] than either [Mary] or I, by demonstrating that they are not barren, but able to have children.” She claimed, however, that the pregnant Katherine and her sister, the Lady Mary Grey, were unable “to succeed to the crown by reason of their father’s forfeiture.” This was the same failed argument their cousin, Lady Margaret Strange, had made years before during Queen Mary’s reign, when she had claimed that the Duke of Suffolk’s conviction for treason had cost the Grey sisters their right to the succession. It was a mark of her fear and loathing for the Greys that she made it. But if there had ever been any doubts that Elizabeth preferred the claim of the Catholic, foreign Mary over the Protestant, English Katherine, she had now put them to an end. Maitland hoped that if he pressed Elizabeth further she might change her mind and name Mary Queen of Scots her choice of heir. At his final audience, however, Elizabeth explained in detail why she could never do this. “First,” she informed him, “I know what a dangerous thing it is to touch this string.” Elizabeth believed the confusion and uncertainty caused by changing laws on the succession, and the annulment of and anxiety over royal marriages, were together responsible for a series of revolts, from the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536 to those of her sister’s reign. Elizabeth would not risk provoking further unrest. This, she claimed, was why she had not married, instead considering herself married to her kingdom.

  “Secondly,” she told Maitland, “you think that this devise of yours [to name Mary heir to the English throne] should make friendship between us? I fear it should produce the contrary effect.” How could she trust that a powerful monarch, from a neighboring country with a long history of enmity to England, would not take advantage of being confirmed as her heir? If Elizabeth were killed, Mary, and her allies, would know that she would inherit the kingdom of England. It was a powerful motive for war, or murder. Princes could not even trust the children who were to succeed them, Elizabeth said.

  “But,” Elizabeth continued, “the third consideration” was the “most weighty” of all: “I know the inconstancy of the people of England,” she recalled, “how they ever mislike the present government and have their eyes fixed upon that person that is next to succeed, and naturally men be so disposed: plures adorant solem orientem quam occidentem”—more men worship the rising than the setting sun. Elizabeth reminded Maitland how men had looked to her during the previous reign, hoping to use her to replace her sister, Mary. One day such men might wish to overthrow her. In that light Maitland could judge for himself how dangerous it would be for her to name Mary as her heir. Elizabeth, however, reserved her parting comment for the subject of Katherine and the threat she posed. She thought there was more behind the marriage with Hertford than had yet emerged, Maitland recalled, and she was certain that “some of her nobility were partners in the making of that match.”

  As Maitland left for Scotland, Elizabeth’s progress began, at last, to make its way back to London. She had always trusted the people over the court, and she took heart and comfort in the displays of loyalty from those who lined the route. When she reached Islington on the night of 22 September, thousands of her subjects came out to greet her. But, two days later, between 2 and 2:30 p.m. on 24 September, what Elizabeth dreaded happened: Katherine gave birth to a son, Edward Seymour, Viscount Beauchamp, heir to Elizabeth under the will of Henry VIII, following his mother in line of succession. There was no more need for Cecil to fear a world turned upside down in which Queen succeeded Queen: England had a Protestant male heir. Hertford wrote the date in a small Bible written in French, acquired, most probably, during his carefree days in Paris. On the title page it had the Seymour family motto: “Foy pour devoir” (to duty true) and at the bottom the name E. Hertford, next to which was the signature W. Wingfield, the name of a family friend. Following the entry for the birth of Hertford’s son was written a prayer in French asking that God bless the child and that Queen Elizabeth’s heart be moved to pity for the parents. The earl had also written in Greek, “In human affairs, nothing is certain.”

  Lord Beauchamp was baptized two days later in the Tower chapel, only feet away from the buried remains of several executed members of his family: his paternal grandfather, the Protector Somerset; his great-uncle Thomas Seymour of Sudeley; his maternal grandfather, Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk; and of course his aunt, Lady Jane Grey. A Roman diplomat reported that the Queen did not allow them a priest.

  The rivalries and tensions that had riven the court the previous winter on the death of Amy Dudley now broke forth once more. The Spanish ambassador heard that Robert Dudley had such words with the Earl of Arundel that Arundel had stormed off home, with the intention of looking into testimony concerning the death of Dudley’s wife. Dudley was now trying to make peace with him. Meanwhile, a Vatican diplomat in Lower Germany picked up information that Cecil, whose name was everywhere being associated with Katherine’s marriage, was trying equally hard to achieve a reconciliation with Dudley. His relationship to Dudley would always be a complex one. Cecil had served his father and they had many friends in common. Although he often mistrusted Dudley, he hoped that they could unite for the sake of their religion. This boy of Katherine’s was infinitely precious to the Protestant cause, and the Vatican diplomat declared that the Queen was “bent on having the child declared a bastard by Parliament.” Anything seemed possible, such was Elizabeth’s anger. A son!

  In the Tower, Katherine recovered from the birth of her son in her rooms within the mansion house of the Lieutenant, Sir Edward Warner. He had also been Lieutenant of the Tower during the brief period that Jane was Queen, and much of the furniture around Katherine was also familiar. Most were cast-offs from the state apartments used during her sister’s time. There was a chair in cloth of gold, half a dozen “very old and coarse” tapestries, “an old cast” cushion in purple velvet, and three green velvet stools that Henry VIII used to rest his feet on. But Katherine was not unhappy. She had a healthy son, and her little dogs and pet monkeys were with her. Her husband’s rooms were also only ten feet away from her own, and Warner’s deputy was sufficiently sympathetic to allow messages to pass between the couple. In the outside world, meanwhile, a renewed effort was being made to promote Katherine and her son as Elizabeth’s legal heirs. If it succeeded, and Elizabeth agreed to nominate them as her successors, they would all soon be freed.

  Leading Protestants had been disturbed by Elizabeth’s refusal to exclude Mary Queen of Scots from the succession. At the Inner Temple law school, Hertford’s poet friend Thomas Sackville and fellow students had joined forces with Cecil in trying to engage Robert Dudley as an ally. The school named Lord Robert their “Christmas Prince.” This would make him the central figure of their twelve-day Yuletide revels, of which a visitor to London left a description. The tourist was in the City when he heard the shot of cannon “in so great a number, and so terrible that it darkened the whole air.” He asked a man passing by what it was. “It is a warning shot to the Constable-Marshal of the Inner Temple to prepare for dinner,” the man replied. Curious, the next day he went to have a look at the Temple. Entering the gates he found a modest building, bustling with handsome, well-dressed young men. One, offering to show him the revels, took him to the dining hall. There he saw a dozen tables laid with linen, silver and gilt plate, beer, ale, and wine. At one table, marked out by a green checked cloth, sat the Master of the Game with his Chief Ranger, dressed in green satins and velvets. At another he saw the four Masters of the Revels. But in pride of place at the high table was Lord Robert Dudley.


  The Christmas Prince was “a man of tall personage, a manly countenance, somewhat brown of visage, strongly featured, and thereto comely proportioned in all lineaments of body.” He was being waited on by a carver and a cupbearer, as well as numerous gentlemen servers, each bringing “tender meats, sweet fruits, and dainty delicates confectioned with curious cookery.” Each course was delivered to the blast of trumpets and the roll of drums, while between the courses there were entertainments. We know from records left by the Inner Temple what many of these were. On the feast of St. Stephen’s, for example, after the first course, a huntsman brought in ten couples of hounds and released a fox along with a cat. Both were quickly chased down and killed by the hounds beneath the fireplace, while the hunting horn sounded. There were also, however, more decorous, politically inspired entertainments. On Twelfth Night, Robert Dudley watched the masque “Beauty and Desire,” in which he was presented as a highly desirable consort for the Queen. This was followed by a play that suggested the same but hinted that Katherine Grey should be named her heir until such time as Elizabeth had children.

  The play Gorboduc has been described as the most boring tragedy in the English language, but it represented, at the time, a revolution in drama. Related in blank verse—the first play to use the medium—it tells the story of a mythical King of the Britons (Gorboduc), who fails to settle the succession securely. When he is brutally murdered, his nobles are left unable to agree to whom the crown should fall. As the play comes to an end, England is on the point of civil war and a foreign prince, bearing the Scots title “Duke of Albany,” prepares to take the kingdom by force. At the opening of each act was another novel feature: a mime that delivered a visual message explaining how the drama should be interpreted. The mime emphasized in turn the dangers of political uncertainty, the misery of war, the importance of monarchs marrying within their kingdom, and how, if childless, they should name an English heir, with the backing of Parliament. The speech at the play’s conclusion has Gorboduc’s Secretary—a figure who bore a close resemblance to William Cecil—lamenting that the imminent war could have been avoided. If the King had listened to his wisest counselors and settled the succession with the backing of statute, there need have been no bloodshed.

  Then parliament should have been held

  And certain heirs appointed to the crown

  To stay the title of established right

  And in the people plant obedience.

  The possible role parliamentary support—or lack of it—had played in the fate of “Jane the Queen” had not been forgotten. The authors of the play both had close connections to Hertford and Cecil. The first, Thomas Norton, was a protégé of Cecil and the childhood tutor of Hertford, in whose employ he remained. Norton’s coauthor, Thomas Sackville, meanwhile, was the same young man with whom Hertford had breakfasted in Dover when he was arrested—a detail that has been overlooked until now.

  The play and the masque were brought subsequently to court, where they were both shown on 18 January 1562, with performances before the Queen at Whitehall. An eyewitness employed by Cecil recorded that the play’s message, that Parliament should be used to settle the succession, was clearly understood by the audience. But the play does not seem to be the only means by which support was being drummed up for Katherine’s claim. A miniature or “limning” of Katherine holding the baby Lord Beauchamp dates from this period, and it may be that the limning of Lady Jane Grey, with its spray of oak leaves for Robert Dudley alongside the gillyflowers for Guildford, does also; the iconography certainly fits. There were other reminders in print of Robert Dudley’s link to Katherine through Guildford’s marriage to Jane Grey, including a ballad, published in November 1560, in which Jane laments her fate and that of Guildford, as covictims of their ambitious fathers.

  Queen Elizabeth had no intention of paying the slightest bit of attention to the play, however, or any other propaganda in favor of Katherine’s claim. The Vatican diplomat who predicted that she wished to have baby Beauchamp declared illegitimate was about to be proved correct. On 10 February, Lieutenant Warner received a letter from the Queen announcing the setting up of a Church commission “to examine, inquire, and judge of the infamous conversation and pretended marriage betwixt the Lady Katherine Grey and the Earl of Hertford.” The intended verdict was indicated in the phrase “pretended marriage.” But for several days Katherine and Hertford were rowed up and down the river from the Tower to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s palace at Lambeth for further rounds of interviews on their wedding arrangements.

  It was evident from the information Katherine and Hertford gave that theirs was not a model wedding. According to the Book of Common Prayer, banns should be read three Sundays in a row before a wedding. Theirs, of course, had not been. Nor did anyone give the bride away. Nor did the bride and groom take Communion. But these were minor quibbles. According to canon law all that was required for a valid marriage was consent by the bride and groom in the presence of witnesses. It was the death of Jane Seymour and the disappearance of the priest who had married them that made the commissioners’ task in deciding their marriage invalid a simple one.

  Robert Dudley had expected, and surely hoped, for such a result. Any enthusiasm he showed for Gorboduc would have cost him nothing, while gaining him friends, and his star was now rising again. At the Garter ceremony in April the young Duke of Norfolk, who had been Dudley’s most bitter opponent, invited the Knights of the Garter to give Dudley their support in his courtship of the Queen. They all agreed to do so, save for Arundel and Parr of Northampton, who walked out of the proceedings. It is surely no coincidence that they were the two Councillors present at the dinner party attended also by Katherine and Hertford two days after Amy Dudley was found dead.

  Cecil, the other loyal supporter of Katherine’s cause, was equally angry that Dudley had failed to protect the interests of her son. But he soon dealt him a punishing blow. Cecil had been bribing de Quadra’s secretary to spy on the ambassador and, on 28 April, the secretary made a statement describing his master’s dealings with Dudley and the ambassador’s opinion of Elizabeth’s behavior with him. It painted a devastating portrait of a woman foolish in love, and when Cecil revealed the findings it brought home to Elizabeth just how compromised her reputation would be if she were to marry Dudley. Lord Robert’s hopes were dashed once more, and Elizabeth feared that she would now have to do something about the succession.

  Elizabeth wanted desperately to be able to trust the Queen of Scots. She was the one person who shared with Elizabeth the dangers and difficulties of being a Queen regnant. Elizabeth was sure that if only they could meet they would become mutually supportive. To the outside world the meeting would be a symbolic expression of their friendship: a dynastic alliance, akin to a marriage between two queens and two kingdoms.

  In May, Elizabeth delivered her message to Mary in a three-day masque which she attended at Nottingham Castle. It was here, in the fifteenth century, that the medieval King of Scots James I had been imprisoned. Elizabeth wanted to bury the old enmities. The first night opened with the figure of Pallas riding into the hall on a unicorn, carrying a standard of two female hands clasped together. Then two female figures followed, one on a red lion wearing the crown of Temperance, the second on a golden lion, with the crown of Prudence. The next day Peace was drawn in on a chariot pulled by an elephant on which sat Friendship. Then, on the final day, Malice, in the form of a serpent, was trodden underfoot. The masque concluded with a song, “as full of harmony as may be devised,” which proclaimed that peace in Britain was dependent on dynastic (and not parliamentary) monarchy. Mary, when she learned the details, was enthusiastic about this vision and to the delight of both queens a meeting was set for September in Nottingham.

  Katherine and Hertford, however, had no intention of allowing their son to remain illegitimate and excluded from the succession. Hertford was determined to appeal and in the meantime he succeeded in bribing two Tower guards, “one George and one Da
lton,” to allow him to visit his wife. On 25 May, at about eleven at night, Katherine welcomed her husband into her rooms. They only had about an hour and they didn’t waste it. She had a fine bed hung with silk-shot damask, covered with a silken quilt of red striped with gold—not unlike the cushions of the carriages at the Queen’s coronation—and there they lay and made love, “with joyful heart.” On the 29th Hertford visited once more and they returned to the bed. But on a third night, the guards got cold feet and Hertford found the door to Katherine’s rooms locked. She could hear him but there was nothing she could do to get the door open, although, as she later recalled, she longed to be with her “sweet bedfellow” again. As the days passed she missed his company all the more. She suspected that her “naughty Lord” had conceived a second child with her and communicated this to Hertford, who proved to be delighted by the news. Elizabeth’s commissioners had argued that their first child was illegitimate on the grounds that there were no witnesses to their promise to each other. It would be very difficult to argue this of their second baby. The couple had declared their marriage before the Archbishop of Canterbury and half of England, under interrogation.