The Sisters Who Would Be Queen

by Leanda de Lisle

  Dr. Symondes returned, as Hopton had requested. But on the night of 26 January Katherine told those around her what she had long suspected—and perhaps wanted. She was dying. Through the long dark hours that followed she said the Psalms, or had them read to her, repeating the words when she could. On five or six occasions she said what she believed was to be her last prayer before dying. Hopton, his household, and her servants were all horrified that someone of only twenty-seven could be so fatalistic. Lady Hopton and the women at Katherine’s bedside tried to encourage her: “Madam, be of good comfort …”; “With God’s help you shall live and do well many years.” Katherine, however, merely replied, “No, no. No life in this world; but in the world to come I hope to live ever. For here is nothing but care and misery, and there is life everlasting.” Her words echoed those of her sister Jane in her last letter to their father, just as some of her other prayers and comments would recall Jane’s speech on the scaffold. “Learn to die …” Jane had told her, and she remembered her sister now, as she awaited an end to her suffering.

  In the early hours Katherine felt herself become faint and cried out: “Lord be merciful to me.” The women immediately started to rub and stroke her in an effort to keep her alive, and as Katherine prayed Lady Hopton again said: “Good madam, be of good comfort, for with God’s favour you shall live and escape this.” “No, no, my Lady Hopton,” Katherine insisted. “My time is come and it is not God’s will that I shall live any longer. And his will be done and not mine.”

  At about six or seven Katherine called for Sir Owen Hopton. “Good madam, how [are] you?” he asked as he arrived. “Even now going towards God, Sir Owen, as fast as I can,” she replied, “and I pray you and all the rest that be about me to bear witness that I die a true Christian and that I believe to be saved by the death of Christ.” She had a favor to ask, she said, concerning her husband and children. There were messages she needed delivered, the first of which was to the Queen. “I beseech you to promise me that you, yourself, with your own mouth will make my humble request unto the Queen’s Majesty.” It was a dying plea to be forgiven for marrying without the Queen’s consent. Katherine remembered how her mother had persuaded Queen Mary to forgive her father his treason, in his last hours, and how this had saved the family from ruin: if Elizabeth could only do the same for her family? Katherine’s message made clear how important this was to her. She begged Elizabeth to “be good unto my children and not to impute my fault unto them.” They had few friends now and would have fewer when she was dead, she reflected, unless the Queen was a “good and gracious lady unto them.” Finally, she pleaded for the Queen to “be good unto my Lord, for I know this my death will be heavy new[s] unto him.” Katherine hoped that he would now be freed, “to glad his sorrowful heart withal.”

  Katherine’s second request to Sir Owen Hopton was that he would deliver a few tokens to her husband. Calling for her lady-in-waiting she asked, “Give me the box wherein my wedding ring is.” Katherine then opened it and took out the ring with the pointed diamond that Hertford had given her when they were betrothed in his sister’s chamber at Whitehall.

  “Here, Sir Owen. Deliver this to my husband. This is the ring that I received of him when I gave myself unto him and gave him my faith.” Hopton was startled. “What say you, madam,” he asked Katherine. “Was this your wedding ring?” The existence of such a ring suggested that she and Hertford had, indeed, married, as they had always said. “No, Sir Owen, this was the ring of my assurance [betrothal] unto my Lord. And here is my wedding ring,” she replied.

  She then took the gold ring with its five engraved links and gave it to the stunned knight. “I pray you deliver this also unto my Lord and pray him, even as I have been unto him … a true and faithful wife, that he will be a loving and natural father unto my children.” She took out a third ring, mounted with the image of a skull. Such rings, known as a memento mori, were intended as a reminder to the wearer of their mortality. Jane had told Katherine she must always be ready for death, and Katherine was passing on the same reminder to her husband. “This shall be the last token unto my Lord that I shall ever send him,” she said. The ring was engraved for her husband: “While I Lived, Yours.”

  As Katherine handed over the last ring she noticed that her fingernails had turned purple. “Look you, here he comes,” she said, “Welcome Death!” She began to beat her breast with her fist and prayed: “O Lord, for thy many mercies, blot out of thy book all my sins.” Sir Owen ordered her maid to dash to the church to ask for the bells to be tolled so that the villagers might pray for the dying princess. “Yea good Sir Owen, let it be so,” Katherine told him gratefully. But there was no time left for further prayers. “Lord Jesus receive my spirit,” Katherine said abruptly, and closed her eyes with her own hands. She died at nine o’clock that Tuesday morning.

  There are a thousand doors to let out life and Katherine could have taken any one, but there is a suggestion that she had starved herself to death. Katherine’s bewildered son Thomas Seymour left Cockfield Hall to join his brother in the care of her mother-in-law, the Duchess of Somerset, while someone remained behind to write down a description of his mother’s last hours, and her pious Protestant end. Hopton could have delivered it to Hertford with the rings Katherine had asked him to take to her husband. He may also have visited Mary Grey. He and his wife would become close to the last of the Grey sisters following Katherine’s death.

  One of Hertford’s favorite poets, Thomas Churchyard, used the description of Katherine’s death as the basis for a long poem published a few years later. But the poet altered the names of the star-crossed lovers to avoid royal anger. Despite Katherine’s last requests, Elizabeth never truly forgave her for marrying Hertford and having children. The Queen ordered Sir Owen Hopton to “take care of the interment and burial of our cousin the Lady Katherine, lately deceased, daughter of our entirely beloved cousin, the Lady Frances, Duchess of Suffolk.” But Katherine remained not “beloved.” While Elizabeth put on a public show of grief, as was expected at the death of a relative, the Spanish ambassador reported that it was evident that she did not feel it. “She was afraid of her,” he added, by way of explanation.

  Katherine was to be buried in the modest nearby village church at Yoxford, rather than at Westminster Abbey as her mother and royal relations had been. But protocol could not be ignored, and the funeral was to be carried out with the formality due to a Tudor princess. Katherine’s body was carefully seared and embalmed by the surgeon, and watched over by her servants until 21 February, the day of her burial. Seventy-seven official mourners were sent from court, along with a herald, two pursuivants, and four servants, all in specially made liveries. A hearse had been built in the church and was covered in precious cloth, and a tomb was prepared in the Cockfield chapel.

  The turnout for the funeral was large, with “a great number of comers to see the solemnity of that burial.” Everywhere were representations of Katherine’s arms: six dozen finely drawn representations known as “pencils,” a banner, four thin banderoles, six great escutcheons painted on paste paper, two dozen on the coarse linen known as buckram, a dozen small coats of arms for a valance, and two dozen in paper framed in metal “for garnishing of the house and the church,” along with six dozen more in colors. These were visual symbols of who she was and what she had represented as Elizabeth’s Protestant, English heir. But behind the staring crowds, and the procession of official mourners in their black cloth, was the real grief of her family. A local legend persists that even Katherine’s little dog mourned her: so much so that he refused any meat and “lay and died upon her grave.”

  For many decades after the funeral the evidence of the heralds’ work remained in the chancel of the church at Yoxford. Even in 1594 pennants still hung displaying “for the Lady Katherine a target [a small round shield] of England, and four standards of arms, 2 France and 2 England quarterly, a border … argent and azure.” The colors had faded by then, although memories of her ha
d not.

  XXV

  The Last Sister

  MARY GREY WAS WITH HER STEP-GRANDMOTHER, KATHERINE Suffolk, when her sister died. She had arrived at her house in the Abbey convent of the Minories almost six months before, on 7 August 1567. Mary’s previous jailor, Sir William Hawtrey, accompanied her. She knew the Abbey, which lay under the shadow of the Tower: Edward VI had granted it to her father in January 1553, the year disaster overtook them all. Katherine Suffolk was about to set out for Greenwich Palace and was surprised to see her granddaughter. Although she had received the Queen’s orders concerning Mary’s care, she had not expected Hawtrey to bring her quite so promptly. Greeting Mary, she ordered her baggage to be unloaded: they would travel to Greenwich together the next day, she announced. In the meantime where was Mary’s baggage, the duchess asked? Hawtrey explained that the princess had fallen on very hard times. Her possessions, he warned, were so few and worn he had furnished her rooms at Chequers at his own expense.

  Katherine Suffolk was certain that Hawtrey was exaggerating. Mary Grey had been raised in the greatest luxury. She had to have a few good things, and the duchess asked Hawtrey to send whatever she possessed “for the dressing up of her chamber.” Mary’s belongings arrived at Greenwich in short order, but when they were opened her step-grandmother saw that Hawtrey had spoken the truth. Katherine Suffolk wrote to Cecil, who was one of her oldest and closest friends, describing her shock as she unpacked the trunks: “Would God you had seen what stuff it is! … She has nothing but an old livery feather bed, all torn and full of patches, without either bolster or counterpane, but two old pillows, the one longer than the other, an old quilt of silk so torn as the cotton of it comes out.” There was a canopy of a fine silk called sarsonet, in red, but it was “scant good enough to hang over some secret stool.”* Otherwise there was just “two little pieces of old, old hangings, both of them not seven yards broad.” This posed a problem. The duchess herself had lost many of her own things during her years in exile under Queen Mary. “The truth is,” she admitted to Cecil, “I am so unprovided of stuff here myself, as at the Minories I borrow off my [friends].”

  Katherine Suffolk hoped that Cecil could arrange for the Queen to lend Mary a few necessities. They needed enough to furnish a chamber, which Mary could share with her maid. Together they would then “play the good housewives” and use Mary’s old livery bed for her manservant. In addition she needed “some old silver pots to fetch her drink in, and two little cups … one for beer another for wine.” Although she feared a bowl to wash in and a jug for the water might be too much to ask, “all these things she lacks and were meet she had.” The duchess assured Cecil that anything the Queen lent to them would be returned in as good an order. As for Mary, “I am sure she is now glad to be with me,” but she seemed sad even then, before her sister’s death, and wasn’t eating properly, “not so much as a chicken’s leg” in two days. The duchess admitted she even feared for Mary’s health. It was hoped, however, that surrounded by her loving stepfamily, Mary would rediscover her old spirit, and she needed that strength when the news reached her about Katherine.

  Mary Grey was close to her step-relations, Katherine Suffolk’s children, Peregrine and Susan Bertie. They still enjoyed much of the carefree innocence Mary had known at Bradgate with her sisters. But with Katherine’s death Mary Grey’s place in line of succession had become more significant. The Seymour boys, Katherine’s sons, had been declared illegitimate, which left Mary Grey Elizabeth’s heir under English law. Elizabeth therefore felt she had to take her claim seriously, even when it became plain that it was to be Mary Queen of Scots’ rights of succession that would dominate the political scene in the years ahead. In May 1568, four months after Katherine Grey’s death, Mary Queen of Scots escaped her island prison in Scotland and arrived in England in a fishing boat. Cecil persuaded Elizabeth to keep her Stuart cousin in prison, but had less success in encouraging her to release Mary Grey. She was not even allowed to remain at the house of Katherine Suffolk. Instead, in June 1569, she was obliged to move to yet another prison, this time to the London home of the rich merchant and former Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Gresham. He was able to bear those costs the Queen was reluctant to take on.

  Gresham House in Bishopsgate, east of the City, was built on a large site between Crosby Palace and Winchester House. It had a substantial garden that Mary could walk in under supervision, as well as a chapel in which to pray for her freedom. But as Mary Grey soon discovered, the Gresham home was not a happy one. Sir Thomas had been a strikingly handsome young man, with a trim beard and penetrating dark eyes. But now, in late middle age, he was half blind and in constant physical pain from a badly set broken leg. His only son had died in 1564 and his marriage had turned sour. His wife, Anne, bitterly resented the charitable works he had taken on since their son’s death, and Mary Grey’s presence in the house was a new source of conflict with her husband. She insisted that it was Mary’s presence that prevented her from visiting her ninety-year-old mother in Norfolk, and she referred to their prisoner as the “heart and sorrow of her life.” No opportunity was lost to nag her husband about their unwelcome charge, and Gresham wrote regularly to Cecil begging for Mary’s removal.

  Mary spent most of the time locked in a room with her books. She had a Book of Common Prayer, a book of Psalms and at least three Bibles: the Geneva version, the officially approved Bishops’ Bible, and one in French, like the one her brother-in-law Hertford had inscribed with the birth dates of his sons in the Tower. Several of her other books were also either in French or Italian: they included a grammar book in Italian—very probably the same one that Michel Angelo Florio had dedicated to Jane Grey in 1553, another in French by one of her father’s old teachers, and three French translations of works by the Greek rhetorician Isocrates. He was valued in the sixteenth century in particular for his practical advice on how a person should conduct himself “in all times and tempests”—useful reading in the circumstances in which Mary found herself. Another favorite classical work was her English translation of the orations of Demosthenes. “Nothing is easier than self-deceit,” he wrote, “for what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.” Mary Grey wished to be free. Was she foolish enough to believe it would ever happen?

  Mary’s widowed brother-in-law, Hertford, had been released from prison and was allowed to live at the modest Seymour seat of Wulfhall in Wiltshire. It was the original house the family had owned when they were mere gentry, before Hertford’s aunt Jane Seymour had married Henry VIII. It was only a modest life, in exile from the court, but at least he was able to walk in his grounds when he wished and write to his children freely, as they did to him. The boys remained with his mother, the Duchess of Somerset, at Hanworth. Lord Beauchamp, age eight, was already writing letters in Latin describing his daily studies, while Thomas, at six, was proficient in French. Mary Grey learned about their progress from time to time, along with news of political developments from which she could try to gauge how her circumstances might also change. Elizabeth’s other royal captive, the Queen of Scots, was now in the care of the Earl of Shrewsbury and his wife. This was a curious twist of fate. Lady Shrewsbury had once been that favorite lady-in-waiting, at Bradgate, Bess Hardwick.

  Bess was now on her fourth marriage, but Mary Grey remembered the wedding at Bradgate at which she had married her second husband, Sir William Cavendish, by candlelight at two o’clock on an August morning. It was the same summer that Mary’s sister Jane had left to be ward to Hertford’s uncle Thomas Sudeley, Mary’s parents and sisters had subsequently played godparents to four Cavendish children. Bess still treasured a portrait of Jane, and letters from Katherine. Strange that Bess, who had so admired and loved Mary Grey’s mother and the family, should now act as jailor to the rival claimant. The Privy Council was divided on what to do next with the Queen of Scots. Cecil wanted Katherine’s eldest son, Lord Beauchamp, named Elizabeth’s successor, despite his “illegitimacy.” But the two boys were still
young and might not survive into adulthood. Pembroke, Arundel, and Leicester were of the view that they should instead tie the Queen of Scots to the Protestant cause by marrying her to Norfolk, and name her as heir. The move was intended also to end Cecil’s career. In December 1568, shortly before Katherine had fallen fatally ill, Cecil had seized two of Philip II’s treasure ships, triggering a cold war with Spain. This was considered harmful to English national interests. Cecil had overreached himself, it was decided, and promoting the claims of his great enemy, the Queen of Scots, would weaken him at court. Anxious to show her doctrinal flexibility, the imprisoned Stuart Queen was already using the Protestant Book of Common Prayer for spiritual contemplation. But Elizabeth, no longer threatened by Katherine’s claim, had no intention of turning her Stuart cousin into a more powerful rival, and in this Cecil supported her to the hilt.

  Elizabeth’s opposition to the marriage with Norfolk quickly led to the collapse of the court campaign behind it. But it was also to lead to terrible bloodshed. When Norfolk’s allies in the north, the powerful Catholic Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland, were summoned to see the Queen, they were convinced that there was a plan to place them in the Tower and execute them. Their wives were not members of the Queen’s Privy Chamber and, based far from the royal palaces, they had no means of knowing her mind. What they had come to believe, however, was that her Secretary of State made her decisions, and they knew very well how much Cecil hated Catholics. While, therefore, Mary Grey remained quietly in her room at Bishopsgate in the winter of 1569, the north saw a rebellion raised by the earls “for the reformation of religion and preservation of the person of the Queen of Scots.” Their men marched under the banner of “The Five Wounds of Christ,” used by the Catholic Pilgrims of Grace in 1536. At Wulfhall, Hertford wrote to a friend, enclosing a book written by his old schoolmaster, Thomas Norton. It claimed that there was a long history of Catholics overthrowing their monarchs. Hertford recommended Norton’s thesis, saying: “I know you will like it, but the oftener you read it the better.” It marked the beginning of Catholics being linked with treason, as Protestants had been under Mary Tudor.