The Sisters Who Would Be Queen

by Leanda de Lisle

  Cecil recorded privately his assessment of what the Council should try to achieve and the difficulties they faced. To require the now thirty-three-year-old Queen to marry would be the most acceptable option open to her, he wrote. To require her to decide on the succession was, however, what most people wanted. It seemed best, therefore, to require her to marry, and if she did not do so immediately, to insist she decide on the succession. Cecil was also prepared to argue that the three estates in Parliament—the Commons, the Lords, and the bishops—had a duty to “counsel” the Queen on whom she chose as her heir. The Spanish ambassador, de Silva, believed the most popular candidates among the Protestants remained Katherine and the Earl of Huntingdon. In fact, Huntingdon’s support had fallen away. This must have had something to do with the various succession tracts that had followed Hales’s book. None had found any legal basis for Huntingdon’s claim. But not all Huntingdon’s supporters now backed Katherine.

  Huntingdon’s brother-in-law Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, had shifted his allegiance to the Queen of Scots. Although a Catholic she had shown herself, thus far, capable of ruling a Protestant country and willing to accept subjects of different faiths. She had a son, she was no ideologue (in contrast to her bitter opponents), and Leicester was certain she could be brought into an alliance with Elizabeth. Mary Queen of Scots had some additional support in the Lords, but here, as in the Commons, Katherine’s position was a strong one, especially among the bishops.

  As soon as Parliament was assembled in October 1566, the capital became alive with activities aimed at urging MPs to decide on the succession. A whirlwind of pamphlets was published. Ordinary people, as well as their leaders, wanted to secure a peaceable transfer of power if anything were to happen to Elizabeth. At the law courts of Lincoln’s Inn, the trainee lawyers held a debate that concluded no one born outside England should inherit the throne, “even if she were the nearest in birth and the ablest.” In the Commons, meanwhile, Katherine’s supporters were the most vociferous in favor of a succession debate. When the day of the debate came, some MPs attempted to leave the chamber rather than anger the Queen by addressing the issue, but they found the doors of the Commons were shut, and punches were thrown by Katherine’s supporters, who were determined to prevent them from leaving. Once the subsequent debate was finished the Commons did what Elizabeth had feared. They agreed to appoint a committee to draw up a petition on the succession, and persuaded the Lords to join them. “These heretics neither fear God nor obey their betters,” the Spanish ambassador commented. Elizabeth’s hand was to be forced.

  At Gosfield, Katherine wrote cheerfully to her husband’s servant Anthony Penne, asking him to assure Mrs. Penne that she would come and visit her as soon as she could. Mary Grey, who had been rebuffed in her request to meet the Queen at Lord Windsor’s during her summer progress, had particular reason, however, to hope Elizabeth would soon free them. That summer a sadistic new jailor at the Fleet had taken charge of Keyes and he was now forbidden from preparing his own food. The jailor had confiscated the slings Keyes had used to kill birds he saw from his window, and was giving him rotten meat to eat instead. “If it were her Majesty’s pleasure and your honour’s … to fetter me with iron girds, I would most willingly endure it,” Keyes had told Cecil; “but to bear this warden’s imprisonment without cause, is no small grief to my heart.” On one occasion he discovered that his food had been dropped, deliberately or accidentally, in the poison used to cure the Fleet’s dogs of mange. Mary Grey could not be certain he could survive such treatment for long. Her husband was a big man, but no longer a young one.

  On 22 October a delegation arrived from the Lords to explain to Elizabeth what had been agreed with the Commons concerning the petition. But her retort, delivered from her throne under a canopy of state, was sharp. The Commons would not have dared act so during her father’s day. It did not become subjects to compel their ruler. As for the Lords, “do what you will” she told them, “I shall do nothing but according to my pleasure. All the resolutions which you may make have no force without my consent and authority.” It was a reminder of the meaning of absolute royal power. Elizabeth shared her father’s view that the King “was under God, but not the law because the King makes the law.” The succession issues were too important to be decided by “a knot of hare-brains,” Elizabeth informed them. She would take “proper” counsel, she said, and having taken such counsel she would then let them know her will. This was a delaying tactic. Elizabeth would become infamous for her refusal to come to decisions; it was condemned later in her life as feminine irresolution. In reality it was a means of saying no, while avoiding confrontation. Elizabeth was using the demands that she rule through good counsel to her own ends. Usually the tactic worked, but not on this occasion.

  Three days later, Elizabeth learned that her peers and bishops had confirmed their intention to join the Commons in their petition. She turned on her nobles in her anger. Norfolk she accused of being a “traitor or conspirator or other words of similar flavour.” When Pembroke tried to defend him, saying he was only doing his duty in offering his advice, Elizabeth replied witheringly that he talked like a “swaggering soldier.” She then turned on Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. If the world had been against her, she had thought she could rely on him. He swore that he would die at her feet, but she snapped back: “What has that to do with the matter?” The three men and Parr of Northampton were then banned from her presence. She hoped she had now frightened the Lords sufficiently for the succession petition to be dropped. But it wasn’t. On 4 November 1566, the Commons and Lords completed their negotiations and resolved “to petition the Queen by common consent to deal with the matter of the succession.” At that, Elizabeth summoned a deputation of thirty men from the Lords and Commons. The Speaker was barred. The deputation was to hear Elizabeth’s views the following day, not to give their own.

  First came the dressing-down, with Commons and bishops singled out for particular abuse. Elizabeth hoped to divide the latter from her secular peers and recalled bitterly the period after her brother’s death when the bishops had “openly preached and set forth that my sister and I were bastards.” Then Elizabeth reminded them of her reasons against receiving a petition on the succession: how she had been used as the focus for plots against her sister, and how a nominated heir could also be used one day against her. She would name her heir, she promised, but in her own good time, “for it is monstrous that the feet should direct the head.” Elizabeth swore also that she would marry: “I will never break the word of a Prince spoken in public place, for my honour’s sake. And therefore I say again, I will marry as soon as I can conveniently.” It was a bravura performance. But news of Elizabeth’s speech was delivered to the Commons on 6 November amid stony silence. And on the 8th arguments for delivering the petition on the succession began again.

  Elizabeth responded to the assault on her royal will by issuing a decree forbidding any further discussion of the succession. According to the Spanish ambassador de Silva, Elizabeth was convinced that this would put the matter to rest. He was not so sure, however, that “it will be sufficient to bridle the insolence of these heretics.” This sense of foreboding was fully justified. Debates began in Parliament on the rights of free speech, and new pamphlets were printed condemning the Queen’s actions. Finally, Elizabeth received a threat. On 11 November a paper was thrown down in the Presence Chamber: it declared that if she continued to forbid Parliament from debating the succession, “she would see some things she would not like.” Cecil, far from supporting Elizabeth during this crisis, was, meanwhile, working on the drafts of Parliament’s petition. But with the world seemingly against her, Elizabeth now chose a tactical retreat. She withdrew her command that Parliament cease to discuss the succession and instead politely requested they do so. She then declined a third of the financial subsidy that Parliament had proposed to raise. The reduction in the tax burden prompted a “most hearty prayer and thanks” from the Common
s and, thus bought off, the MPs did not bring up the issue of the succession again in that Parliament.

  Elizabeth had beaten Cecil convincingly. He had only one more card to play. Elizabeth had specifically requested that he ensure that the subsidies were not linked in any way to the matter of the succession. But the preamble he wrote to the financial subsidy bill did exactly that. He linked the money to the Queen’s promises to declare on the succession soon, and noted it was the duty of Parliament to press the Queen to do so. Elizabeth, however, simply obliged him to write another. The Queen dissolved Parliament on 2 January 1567, with a clear message for her MPs. The succession was a matter for “a zealous Prince’s consideration,” not for “lip-laboured orations out of … subjects’ mouths”: she was Queen, and was not giving up such powers to them. Privately, Elizabeth now had no intention of ever naming her heir. But she did remain determined that Mary Queen of Scots should emerge as the proper choice after her death. To achieve this, Elizabeth hoped she had simply to ensure the continued ruin of the Grey sisters and their immediate heirs. But in the face of all Elizabeth’s efforts on her behalf, Mary Queen of Scots was about to self-destruct.

  Hertford was not supposed to have visitors. The greedy, unpopular merchant Sir Richard Spencer, who was his latest jailor, was expected to ensure that he did not. But the man who arrived at the door on a mid-February day in 1567 was the eldest brother of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. This was not a figure Spencer’s servants could easily turn away. Hertford was aware that the Dudleys backed the Stuart cause and not that of his wife. Something dramatic must have occurred. It had. News had reached England that Darnley had been murdered and that his wife, Mary Queen of Scots, was suspected of having ordered his assassination. Elsewhere Cecil’s wife was informing a weeping Countess of Lennox of her son’s brutal death.

  According to the reports filtering down to London, the city of Edinburgh had been shaken by a violent explosion at two in the morning of 10 February. People ran toward the apparent origin of the blast—and found the lodging where Darnley had been sleeping a heap of rubble. Nearby, in the orchard, was his body, along with that of his valet. It was naked save for his nightgown and unmarked, although it seemed someone had carefully laid it out. The Dudleys, convinced the Queen of Scots was involved, had decided immediately to switch camps in the question of succession. The Spanish ambassador de Silva reported that Leicester had sent his brother “to the Earl of Hertford, Katherine’s husband, to offer him his services in the matter of succession,” while he “went to see the Duchess of Somerset, the Earl’s mother, with the same object.” A shocked Elizabeth sent a personal message to the Queen of Scots urging her to seek justice for her murdered husband as soon as possible and to end the rumors of her involvement. But her dismay was matched in other quarters by delight. Cecil at last had an ideal opportunity to dispose of Mary Stuart’s candidature altogether.

  By the end of April there were reports, emanating from among Katherine’s supporters, directly accusing Mary of Darnley’s murder. It was suggested she was acting in revenge for the murder of her Secretary, David Riccio. The Queen of Scots helped the slanderers’ cause immeasurably, however, when in May 1567 she married the principal suspect in her husband’s murder, the Earl of Bothwell. She may have believed he was the only man who could protect her from being the next victim of assassination, but the Protestant lords spotted an opportunity to associate her with the murder and raise a rebellion against her as a woman unfit to be Queen. Among them were Bothwell’s erstwhile allies and fellow murderers. Both-well swiftly became a fugitive and Mary Stuart was imprisoned in a castle on a tiny island in Loch Leven. Her son, James, was crowned King of Scots in her place on 24 July. The fact that the misogynist John Knox gave the sermon at the coronation was a reminder of Elizabeth’s long-standing concern that she would be replaced by a male heir, if it ever became sufficiently easy to achieve. As Elizabeth had told Mary Stuart’s messenger in 1561, Princes could not even trust the children who were to succeed them.

  Elizabeth feared that her position was also now a dangerous one. It was a relief to know that she had succeeded in having Katherine’s sons declared bastards, but the Spanish ambassador had warned her that Katherine’s camp was “strong and might cause trouble.” What Elizabeth wanted was for Mary Queen of Scots to have her throne back, as soon as possible. She called for Cecil and lectured him in “a great offensive speech” for failing to do anything to save Mary Stuart, demanding that an English army restore her cousin at once. Thinking on his feet, Cecil warned Elizabeth that a war might trigger the assassination of the deposed Queen. Elizabeth then backed down, but she admitted to de Silva that she remained afraid for her own safety. She ordered that the keys to all the doors leading to her chambers be hidden away, save for one. The terms of Hertford’s imprisonment were also made stricter. “They are possibly afraid of some movement in his interest as I am assured that certain negotiations are afoot respecting the succession to the crown,” de Silva reported.

  Elizabeth knew she had to contain any potential threat posed by the candidature to the throne of the Grey sisters, but she recognized that they were not personally dangerous. While poor Keyes remained in the Fleet, Mary Grey was moved in August from Chequers in Buckinghamshire to the care of her step-grandmother, Katherine Suffolk. Her elder sister, meanwhile, was left to languish, almost forgotten, in Essex. When Katherine’s ancient jailor, Sir John Wentworth, died, in late September 1567, his widow and the executor of his will, a Mr. Roke Green, were left with no orders about what they should do with her. For all the political drama, Katherine had been reduced to little more than a name, barely a person at all. The Wentworth household had grown very fond of Katherine and her young son. But at seventy-one, Lady Wentworth was shattered by her husband’s death, and Mr. Roke Green warned Cecil that she would not live long. He offered to take Katherine and Thomas into his own home, but warned Cecil it was “nothing meet in many respects for such a personage.” He was a poor widower. Without a wife there was no one to run his house; he could afford almost no furniture and had several children of his own. But he promised he would do his best for Katherine if called on to do so:

  Sir, I do not deal thus plainly and truly with you for that I am loath to take charge of her ladyship (if I were meet for the same) for any misliking I have of her or hers, for I must for truths sake confess, as one that has had good experience of her Ladyship’s behaviour here, that it has been very honourable and quiet, and her ladyship’s servants very orderly.

  It was a touching letter from a decent, ordinary man, caught up in cruel and extraordinary events. But once Elizabeth understood the situation she instructed that Katherine and her child be placed under more careful guard. She was to be moved to a location farther from the court, in Suffolk, at Cockfield Hall, the house of Sir Owen Hopton, a future Lieutenant of the Tower. The Queen’s latest letter of instruction reiterated that Katherine was to be kept totally isolated. She was not to be allowed to join her hosts for dinner if they had guests, or have any of her own. Hopton complained bitterly about the responsibility he had been given, but like the Wentworths before him, he would discover it was difficult not to like Katherine. His prisoners rested overnight at Ipswich, the same town in which Katherine had stayed in 1561 when she had been forced to confess that she was married and pregnant. The next day they arrived at the brick gatehouse of Cockfield, their fifth prison in seven years.

  A wooden sixteenth-century travel chest, covered with leather and lined with linen, said to be Katherine’s, remains at Cockfield. The sides are decorated with the biblical story of the prodigal son, who was welcomed home by his forgiving father. Katherine’s chamber at Cockfield was described in the following century as “a very fair room.” We even have some idea what was in it. The then owner of the house, Sir Robert Brooke, drew up a list of the furnishings. They included “the great barred chest,” a “high bedstead,” and a “pallet bedstead” for a servant.

  Sir Owen was shocked to see
how pale and thin Katherine was. The slender shoulders of the woman at the center of the great struggle for power between Queen and Parliament were bowed. She appeared lonely and deeply depressed. Her hopes of seeing her husband, or her now six-year-old elder son, had been dashed repeatedly, and it was evident that Elizabeth had no intention of freeing her now. Katherine’s position as Elizabeth’s heir seemed fixed, but with this political success had come personal disaster. The prodigal daughter would never be welcomed home by the mother of the kingdom under such circumstances. Never again, Katherine believed, would she lie with her “Ned” or play with their “sweet little boys.”

  Her stay at Cockfield would not be a long one, however. And the threat she posed to Elizabeth was about to conclude for good.

  XXIV

  While I Lived, Yours

  SIR OWEN HOPTON SENT TO LONDON FOR THE QUEEN’S physician, Dr. Symondes, as soon as he realized Katherine was ill. The doctor came twice and Katherine seemed to rally, briefly. But on 11 January 1568, Sir Owen wrote to Cecil “beseeching” for the doctor to return. Her condition had deteriorated since Dr. Symondes’s last visit. She had lain in bed for three days, eating little. “And the worst is,” Hopton wrote, that she had given up hope of recovery. If Dr. Symondes could only come again, Hopton hoped, “he then shall show his cunning, and God shall do the cure.”