In the Shadow of the Crown

by Jean Plaidy

  So the woman drew back to the shelter of a pillar, and as she did so, she saw him drop one of the papers. He obviously did not notice, for he did not stop to retrieve it. She ran from her hiding-place and picked it up, meaning to give it to him, but by that time he had disappeared into the Palace. Some impulse made the woman look at the scroll, and she saw at once what it was. It was a mandate for the Queen's arrest.

  She stood for a moment staring at it, unsure how to act. If she took it to the Chancellor, the Queen would be in the Tower very shortly. But if the paper were lost, he would have to get another. That would take time, and time was all-important on such occasions.

  Tucking the scroll under her arm, she made her way in great haste to the apartments of the Queen's sister.

  Lady Herbert almost swooned when she saw what it was. She had been expecting trouble and had, I believe, on many occasions warned her sister, to whom she was devoted; when she actually saw a warrant for the Queen's arrest, she must have thought the end was near.

  She decided what she must do. Her sister must be prepared. She went to her immediately and showed her what the woman had brought to her.

  It was then that Katharine sank into such melancholy that they feared for her life.

  She wept piteously, Lady Herbert herself told me afterward. They did not know what to do. They had seen the mandate, and there would be some delay, but it would come. The King had approved this. His signature was on the document. So there was no hope.

  Katharine could think of nothing to do. She was a very religious woman but she was afraid of death. The shadow which had hung over her since that fearful day when she had been told the King wished to marry her, was now upon her—a shadow no more: a reality.

  The fact that she had had this on her mind and had lived so long with fear did not help her. It would come soon: the walk to the block, the gory death while people looked on and would say: “That is the end of the sixth wife.”

  “And who will be the seventh?” she said hysterically. “The Duchess of Richmond… the Duchess of Suffolk? And how long for them?”

  Lady Herbert tried to console her but there was no consolation.

  “The King put a ring of doom about me when he put the ring on my finger,” she said. “I knew it at the time. I am no martyr. I am no Anne Askew. She went willingly to her death for her faith. I am merely a woman who does not please her husband.”

  Anne Herbert was afraid for her sanity. Her eyes were wide and tragic… she saw herself taking those last steps to the scaffold.

  Her sister called me, and I went to see Katharine. We tried to soothe her. Her eyes were glazed and she began to sob. Then she called out that she did not want to die. She was too young to die. She had never lived the life she had wanted. She had been nothing but a nurse to old men, and now she was to die.

  We tried to calm her but a fearful hysteria had taken possession of her. She was laughing and crying at the same time. It was heartbreaking to hear her.

  I really think she would have lost her senses, but God saw fit to save her. She was the most fortunate of the King's wives, which was due to the fact that he was now old. His fancy for the Duchesses of Richmond and Suffolk waned according to his health. The state of his diseased body was Katharine's salvation; she was such a good nurse.

  He had signed the mandate that she should be taken to the Tower and questioned about her religious beliefs; no doubt it had been presented to him when he was smouldering with anger against her because he thought she was daring to contradict him. The rumblings of discontent which had followed Anne Askew's death were not far behind. They had aroused his rage, and to think that there was dissension in his own household must have infuriated him.

  So in a flush of resentment he had signed the document.

  With Katharine indisposed, one of his gentlemen had to dress his leg— and that was when he missed her.

  Katharine was certainly lucky. I often thought of poor little Catharine Howard, who had not had a chance. I had always believed that, if she could have reached him, pleaded with him, he, who had been so enamored of her at that time, would have forgiven her and turned against all those who had attempted to destroy her, and she would have been alive today. But she had not had the luck of Katharine Parr.

  He asked where she was. She was sick unto death in her apartments, he was told.

  “Then I must go to her,” he said.

  He could not walk. His accursed leg would not allow it. He must be wheeled to her. This was done. I wondered how he felt when he heard her sobbing. Did he feel a twinge from that well-ordered conscience? I doubted it. That conscience was as well disciplined as he expected his loyal subjects to be.

  I only know what I heard later of that interview. Katharine herself told Lady Herbert, who told others, and so it came to my ears.

  I wondered what the Queen had felt, seeing before her the man who had signed the mandate for her arrest. At that time, Lady Herbert said, Katharine despaired of saving her life and thought she was looking Death straight in the face.

  He must have had a little pity for her. He was a sentimental man at times. He could change in a few minutes. Here was the Queen, of whom, shortly before, he was planning to rid himself, now lying helpless, frightened, believing that she was going the way of her predecessors. He must have remembered her gentleness, her kindness to his children, how she had made a home for them such as they had never had before. She was a woman of some learning: that was where the trouble had arisen; but he had enjoyed her discourse, and she had such gentle hands.

  He must have made up his mind that, if her beauty did not set him afire with desire, if she failed to give him sons, he was getting too old for amorous adventures; he needed a good nurse rather than a voluptuous wife. So he came to her in a conciliatory mood.

  He said that he disliked to see her in such a state, and he would do a great deal to restore her to health.

  It must gradually have dawned on her that he had changed his mind about ridding himself of her. But she was too far gone in melancholy to rejoice. No doubt she thought that, if she were saved today, what would her fate be tomorrow? In those first moments she must have been far too bemused to remember what was said, and he, being aware of her state and the reason for it, realized how important she was to him.

  This much she did remember. He became thoughtful. He said that they were well matched. He was no longer young; he was looking for peace, and she brought him that. He had been deceived by those he had loved; his marriages had failed when all he had sought was a loving and happy family. All he had wanted from a wife was fidelity, love… and obedience.

  It was the last word which was significant. It was where Katharine had failed.

  At this stage her hysteria was fading. Death was receding. There is an urge in all of us to cling to life, and Katharine must have realized that here was a chance to save hers. She had to forget that bold signature on the mandate. She must remember how quickly his moods changed.

  He then raised a theological point concerning the scriptures. She believed that more should be translated into English so that many people could understand them. He wanted her to tell him if there was still disagreement with him. Here was the crux of the matter. He was swaying toward her, giving her a chance to save herself in a way which would be easy for him.

  “Your Majesty,” she said, “it is not for a woman to have an opinion. Such matters should be passed to the wisdom of her husband.”

  I could imagine his little eyes watching her shrewdly. He would know of the state to which she had been reduced. He would want to make absolutely sure that this was a mood of true repentance and not merely a desperate, frightened woman fighting for her life.

  He replied, “Not so, by Mary. You are become a doctor, Kate, to instruct as we take it, not to be instructed by us.”

  She assured him that he had mistaken her intentions. She had taken a different view now and then only to amuse him, to divert him, to take his mind from the terrible pain he su
ffered. She had believed he found their talk entertaining, and she had sometimes taken a view opposed to his own, for if she had not, there would have been nothing to discuss. That had been her sole intention—to divert, to amuse, to entertain. Moreover, she wanted to profit from his learned discourse. She wanted to hear him express his views with more vehemence than he would, perhaps, if she agreed with him.

  The words were widely chosen. He was placated. After all, he had intended to be. He needed her. She was the best possible nurse, and there was no one who could replace her.

  He had said, “Is that so, sweetheart? Then we are the best of friends.”

  The battle for her life was over. But she must have asked herself: For how long?

  THE SEQUEL WAS AMUSING. She had returned to his apartments with him, removed the clumsily applied bandages in her skilful way, dressed his leg and talked to him.

  The next morning they were in the garden together, and it was there that Sir Thomas Wriothesley came with his guards to arrest her.

  There were several to witness this scene, so I had an accurate report of what happened.

  “What means this?” demanded the King.

  Wriothesley replied that he came with forty halberdiers on the King's orders. “We have come to take the Queen to the Tower, Your Majesty. My barge is at the privy steps.”

  One would have thought my father would have felt some embarrassment. He may have done but he let it erupt in anger against Wriothesley.

  “Make sure it is not you who are sent to the Tower,” he growled.

  “Your Grace…Your Majesty …” stammered Wriothesley. “The mandate…Your Majesty has forgotten… the Queen was to be arrested at this hour…”

  “The Queen is where she belongs… with the King!” shouted my father.

  “The order was to arrest her wherever she might be, Your Majesty.”

  My father lifted his stick and would have struck Wriothesley if the man had not quickly dodged out of the way.

  “Get you gone!” he shouted.

  Katharine must have been in a state of terror. The King's mood might have changed. He might have remembered the order and decided to carry it out after all. She had only to say one thing of which he did not approve and which might have sounded to him like arrogance, making a doctor of herself to instruct him…

  The King turned to Katharine.

  “The knave,” he grumbled.

  “Methinks he believed he was obeying Your Majesty's orders.”

  “Don't defend him, Kate. Poor soul, you do not know how little he deserves grace at your hands.”

  So for this time she was saved. She had seen death very close, and now there was a reprieve. But still there must be the eternal question: For how long?

  IT SEEMED CLEAR to everyone except the King that his end could not be far off. His legs were now in such a state of decay that they could scarcely support him. He needed constant attention, and the Queen was essential to his comfort. We did not say it, but it was in everyone's mind that she was the luckiest woman on Earth, for it seemed possible that she was going to outlive him. He was beyond sexual desire now—another point in her favor.

  Yes, said the Court—and, I have no doubt, the country—Katharine Parr is a very fortunate woman.

  He was irritable in the extreme and his anger could boil up in an instant, so it was still very necessary to take care. As for Katharine she looked blooming, younger than she had for some time; she could see the end in sight.

  Intrigue was rife. There would be a young King, and he was already in the hands of his Seymour uncles, who were supporters of the Reformed Faith. This was not at all to the liking of the Howards, who must have cursed fate which gave the heir to the Seymours and not the Howards, who had had two chances, one with Anne Boleyn and one with Catharine Howard.

  The more feeble the King grew, the greater was the arrogance of the Seymours. Young Edward doted on them, and in particular on the younger uncle, Thomas; and everyone knew that the Seymour brothers were the two most ambitious men in the country.

  The Duke of Norfolk and his son, the Earl of Surrey, stood on one side, and the Seymours on the other. I watched with interest. They were like carrion crows, fighting over the carcass before it was dead, while the King, who had always hated even to talk of death, went on pretending to himself that he had years before him.

  It was certainly an anxious time. Edward would be King, and he was not ten years old. No wonder the uncles were rubbing their hands with glee. The government of the country—by grace of their sister Jane—would be in their hands.

  Surrey was one of the most reckless men I have ever known. He was extremely handsome, proud, arrogant, a poet of some ability, a scion of a family which considered itself the highest in the land—so great, he implied, that the Tudors were upstarts in comparison.

  On the other hand there were the Seymours, and Edward Seymour was, without doubt, one of the cleverest men at Court. I could not say the same for Thomas. Like Surrey, he was exceptionally attractive—and well aware of it. He had charmed Edward and, I fancy, little Jane Grey and even Elizabeth. He was very ambitious but a little lacking in wisdom, I always thought.

  The younger Seymour was often in my thoughts, because I knew that the Queen was in love with him. Poor lady, had the King's eyes not alighted on her, she might have been Thomas Seymour's wife by now. I fancied I had seen his eyes on Elizabeth. I could not believe that he fancied her as a possible wife for himself. She was, after all, the daughter of the King, and she would be Protestant or Catholic, whichever the people desired. Seymour would recognize her qualities, and her position could be considered promising.

  Uneasy days they were, with all eyes on the King. Serious-minded people willed him to live until his son was just a little older. It was not good for a country to be left with a minor for a king and a divided people.

  Edward Seymour, Lord Hertford, with John Dudley, Lord Lisle, and Cranmer were preparing to rule through the new King. They—with the help of the Queen—had managed to instill in him a fondness for the New Learning. On the other hand there was Norfolk, with Surrey, and the Catholic supporters such as Gardiner and Wriothesley who might even attempt to return to papal authority.

  It was an interesting situation, which it was feared, if the King were to die, might lead to civil conflict.

  I wondered how Katharine felt when she saw death coming nearer and nearer to my father. Did she dream of days without the threat of death hanging over her? Did she dream of the marriage with Thomas Seymour which had been stopped by the King's preference for her? Was married bliss with the man of her choice to prove to be just a postponement?

  That was how it was as my father's health deteriorated and it became obvious to all that his days on Earth were limited.

  Surrey became more reckless. There were times when it seemed that his contempt for the Seymour brothers would bring about open warfare between them.

  He referred to them as a low family which had been brought up solely because one of its women had happened to please the King.

  The Seymours retaliated by demanding: What of the Howards? Had they not used their women to further their own ends?

  The quarrel between the Howards and Seymours went on during the whole of the winter. Everyone knew that it could not be long before it flared into open warfare. The Howards were foolish and no match for the wily Hertford, who saw himself lord of all England when his nephew became King; and he was determined to rid himself of his enemies.

  It was not difficult to bring a case against the Howards. They might have blue blood but they had very little common sense to go with it.

  Edward Seymour was soon accusing them before the King. They were in communication with Cardinal Pole, the King was told, and there was little that aroused his fury more than the very mention of that name. He had regarded Reginald as his friend, and there was greater enmity in his heart for one whom he had trusted in years gone by and who had, as he said, turned traitor. Moreover the Howards had
planned to make Mary Howard, Duchess of Richmond, who was, of course, Surrey's sister, the King's mistress so that she could influence him.

  To tell the King that someone was going to influence him was the quickest way to arouse his fury.

  Then there was the final outrage. Surrey had had the leopards of England emblazoned on one of the walls of his mansion at Kenninghall. Thus he proclaimed himself royal. He boasted that he had Plantagenet blood in his veins besides being descended from Charlemagne.

  This was too much to be borne. Norfolk and his son, Surrey, were sent to the Tower.

  IT WAS A BITTERLY COLD Christmas. The King was growing feeble. He was the only one who would not admit it.

  In the January Surrey lost his head—a lesson to all. He had died from his own vanity. Was the setting up of the royal arms on a wall worth his life? For it was that which had really been responsible for his death.

  Crowds had gathered to see Surrey die. There was silence as his head fell. It was such a handsome head and he such a proud man. He was so young to die, son of a noble house and one of the finest poets at Court; but a man of little sense, to barter his life for the sake of a witty quip, for the sake of parading his claim to royalty.

  And his father was in the Tower. Norfolk was not much loved. He had been a meddler in affairs all his life. He had been callous to his poor, sad kinswomen; he had applauded them when they became Queens of England and turned against them as soon as they fell out of favor. When those two women had been condemned to death, they had not had a greater enemy than their noble kinsman—apart from Anne Boleyn, whose enemy was her own husband.

  There had been a scandal when Norfolk left his wife for the laundress Bess Holland. Yet he had been loud in his condemnation of what he called his lewd and immoral kinswomen. I think everyone hates a hypocrite—so Norfolk was certainly not popular.