The Men Who Would Be King

by Josephine Ross

  Around Christmas it was being widely rumored that Elizabeth was to marry the admiral. Kat had told her charge of one such report, and Elizabeth “smiled at it, and said it was but a London news”; but gossip, and the Duchess of Somerset’s annoyance, cannot have been diminished by the fact that Thomas offered to lend his house and all his household belongings to Elizabeth and her servants while they were in London. When Parry told her of the admiral’s offer she seemed overjoyed, and Parry, remembering the rumors he had heard, and how Elizabeth looked happy when Thomas was spoken of, “took occasion to ask her, whether, if the Council would like it, she would marry with him.” To that crucial question Elizabeth gave a reply that was characteristic of her cool, equivocating intelligence. “When that comes to pass,” she said carefully, “I shall do as God shall put my mind.”

  It was a mind markedly superior to that of her shallow, showy suitor. Parry, unabashed by the girl’s guarded reply, continued the conversation with the revelation that the admiral wished her to visit the hated Duchess of Somerset and gain her favor in the hope that she would influence her husband, the protector, to permit Elizabeth’s lands to be exchanged for others more useful to Thomas—“to entertain Her Grace for your furtherance,” he phrased it. Elizabeth was shocked. At first she would not believe that the strong, splendid admiral wanted her to fawn before an enemy for personal profit. “I dare say he did not so, nor would so,” she said scornfully. Parry assured her it was true, and she retorted, “I will not do so, and so tell him.” She “seemed to be angry, that she should be driven to make such suits,” he later recalled, and she swore, “In faith I will not come there, nor begin to flatter now.”

  Hypocrisy was one of Thomas Seymour’s failings; indiscretion was another. Like an excited child, he seemed unable to keep safely silent about his hopes and plans, but instead bragged of his intentions. In the autumn of 1548, riding to the Parliament House with Lord Russell, he was warned that rumors were flying that he intended to marry one of the king’s sisters. Quickly, he denied it, but two or three days later he brought the subject up again with Russell, and said defiantly that it would be better for the king’s sisters to marry Englishmen than foreigners: “And why might not I, or another, made by the King their father, marry one of them?” The prudent old Lord Russell gave him a strong warning about the dangers of such an ambition, and then added dryly, “I pray you, my Lord, what shall you have with any of them?” “Three thousand a year,” Thomas answered promptly. “My Lord, it is not so,” said Russell, “no more than only ten thousand pounds in money, plate and goods, and no land,” and he went on to ask Thomas if he could afford to maintain a household fitting a wife of such rank. A vehement argument ensued, which Russell later reported: the admiral “answered, ‘They must have the three thousand pounds a year also.’ I answered, ‘By God, but they may not.’ He answered, ‘By God, none of you dare say nay to it.’ I answered, ‘By God, for my part I will say nay to it, for it is clean against the King’s will.’ ”

  But neither oaths nor advice could cure Thomas of the ache of swollen ambition. While doing all that he could to disrupt his brother’s rule, swearing that he would bring about “the blackest Parliament that ever was in England,” levying troops, winning over nobles and yeomen, and conspiring with the vice-treasurer of the Bristol Mint to raise money illegally, he maintained a blind unrealistic faith that his brother would, in the last resort, save him from the consequences of his dangerous play for power. The courtier George Blagge made an attempt to reason with the admiral. “What if my Lord Protector, understanding your mind, commit you to ward?” he asked urgently, and received the airy reply, “No, no, by God’s precious soul, he will not commit me to ward. No, no, I warrant you.” “But if he do,” Blagge pressed him, “how will you come out?” “Well, as for that,” said Thomas, shrugging, “I care not, but who shall have me to prison?” “Your brother,” said Blagge. “Which way?” said Thomas. “Marry, well enough,” retorted Blagge promptly, “even send for you, and commit you, and I pray you, who shall prevent him?” “If the Council send for me, I will go,” Thomas answered confidently. “He will not be so hasty to send me to prison.” Blagge was so disturbed by this exasperating exchange that he never spoke to the admiral again.

  Thomas Seymour’s trust in the protector’s fraternal loyalty was indeed misplaced. On January 17, 1549, he was sent to the Tower of London, almost exactly two years after the death of Henry VIII had set spurs to his hopes. “I thought before I came to this place that my Lord’s Grace, with all the rest of the Council, had been my friends,” he said to his jailer, “and that I had had as many friends as any man within the realm, but now I think they have forgotten me.” Four days later, on Monday, January 21, Elizabeth’s cofferer, Parry, and her governess, Kat Ashley, were also committed to the Tower, on account of “the matter of the Admiral.” And thus Elizabeth, at the age of fifteen, was left almost friendless at Hatfield, to face alone the first great crisis of her life.

  She had been let down badly by those who should have protected her interests, and so again she learned harshly of the need for self-reliance, and the danger of committing her destiny and herself into another’s keeping. Her elders were in the Tower, and she, not long out of childhood, had only her own mature and subtle mind to aid her in the frightening situation that her first suitor had created.

  Sir Robert Tyrwhitt was sent down to Hatfield to interrogate her. He required proof that the admiral had, in direct contravention of the council’s wishes, conspired “to have in marriage the Lady Elizabeth, one of His Majesty’s sisters, and second inheritor after His Majesty to the crown.” Evidence of all kinds was accumulating around the admiral, and at first Tyrwhitt believed his task would not be difficult. “I have good hopes to make her cough out the whole,” he wrote with grim confidence to the protector. The pale, aloof girl was “marvellous abashed” when she learned that Parry and Kat were in the Tower, and she showed her youth by crying miserably for a long time, begging to know whether they had confessed anything or not. Tyrwhitt was encouraged when she sent for him and said she had certain things to tell him, but to his disappointment these turned out to be merely some details of a letter which she had sent the admiral concerning her chaplain, to which she had added a postscript that she said referred to Durham Place. Such trivialities were not what he wanted, and he ominously reminded Elizabeth of “the peril that might ensue, for she was but a subject.” He tried to lure her into trustful confession of all that had passed between her and Thomas Seymour by promising that “all the evil and shame” should be ascribed to Parry and Kat Ashley, and that her own youth would cause the king, the protector, and the council to treat her leniently, but Elizabeth would not be drawn. “In no way she will not confess to any practice by Mistress Ashley or the Cofferer,” Tyrwhitt reported to the protector, “and yet I do see it in her face that she is guilty, and do perceive as yet she will abide more storms ere she will accuse Mistress Ashley.” He decided to change his tactics with this slippery and resilient little witness; instead of “more storms” he tried “gentle persuasion,” which he thought brought more promising results. Yet still she would give him no real evidence, merely describing how Parry had asked her whether she “would be content” to marry the admiral or not, and resolutely including in her account the all-important clause, “if the Council would consent.” Embarrassed at seeming to be outwitted by a young girl, Tyrwhitt wrote earnestly to the protector: “I do assure Your Grace she hath a very good wit, and nothing is gotten of her save by great policy.”

  Parry and Ashley could not match their young mistress’s skillful elusiveness. In the Tower, Parry broke down first; he told of the long confiding talk he had had with Kat Ashley, on Twelfth Night, during which the governess had foolishly let him know a good deal too much about the “familiarity” between the admiral and Elizabeth. He recalled,

  But after that she had told me the tale of finding Her Grace in his arms, she seemed to repent that she had gone so far wit
h me as she did, and prayed me in every wise that I would not disclose these matters. And I said I would not. And again she prayed me not to open it, as ever she might do for me; for Her Grace should be dishonoured for ever, and I likewise undone. And I said I would not; and I said, I had rather be pulled with horses than I would.

  Kat Ashley steadfastly confessed nothing until she was brought face-to-face with Parry, and then, when he reaffirmed his statements in her presence, she proved it all by bursting out that he was a “false wretch,” and crying that he had promised that “he never would confess it to death.” After that she could make no more denials, but revealed what she knew of the admiral’s intimate romping with her charge, of rumors, of tidbits of information, of the admiral’s hopes of marriage with Elizabeth.

  Triumphant, Tyrwhitt produced the statements for the girl to see, yet even in that daunting moment her courage and presence of mind did not waver. “She was much abashed and half-breathless,” he reported, but she bought a few vital seconds in which to collect her thoughts by pretending to scrutinize the signatures for forgery—though, as Tyrwhitt commented cynically, “She knew both Mistress Ashley’s handwriting and the Cofferer’s with half a glance.” She must have been scared and embarrassed to see set down as cold-blooded evidence the details of the admiral’s behavior, his bare-legged visits to her chamber, the smacking and teasing and furtive flirting that had ended in her having to leave Catherine’s happy household, but still she did not drop her guard; when she had read the confessions, and Tyrwhitt had told her of Parry’s betrayal, her only comment was the simple, unassailable truth: “That it was a great matter for him to promise such a promise, and to break it.”

  Tyrwhitt found himself baffled. “In no way she will confess that either Mistress Ashley or Parry willed her to any practice with my Lord Admiral, either by message or writing,” he complained. Her willfulness was not to be tolerated; the council decreed that she must have a new governess in place of Kat Ashley, and they appointed Tyrwhitt’s wife to the task. Elizabeth was furious, snubbed Lady Tyrwhitt, cried all night, and sulked all the next day. She was determined to have Kat back—“The love she yet beareth her is to be wondered at,” Tyrwhitt remarked. The strain had begun to tell; Tyrwhitt went on,

  She beginneth now a little to droop, by reason she heareth that my Lord Admiral’s households be dispersed. And my wife tells me now that she cannot hear him discommended but she is ready to make answer therein; and so she has not been accustomed to do, unless Mistress Ashley were touched, whereunto she was very ready to make answer vehemently.

  Her loyalty and resistance were of no use to Thomas Seymour; on February 23 he was charged with high treason. Among the thirty-three articles produced was the following accusation:

  It is objected and laid to your charge that you have, not only before you married the Queen, attempted and gone about to marry the King’s sister, the Lady Elizabeth, second inheritor in remainder to the Crown, but also being then prevented by the Lord Protector and others of the Council, since that time both in the life of the Queen continued your old labour and love, and after her death by secret and crafty means practised to achieve your said purpose of marrying the said Lady Elizabeth; to the danger of the King’s Majesty’s person and peril of the state of the realm.

  He was condemned to death. The protector, “for natural pity’s sake,” was not present when the Bill of Attainder was put through Parliament, but he headed the council meeting of March 17, when the date of his brother’s execution was to be decided upon. The eleven-year-old king, for whom Thomas had been an endless source of play and presents, gave willing consent to the beheading of “the Lord Admiral mine Uncle,” and so on Wednesday, March 20, “betwixt the hours of nine and twelve in the morning,” Elizabeth’s first love and first suitor was led out of prison to die on Tower Hill.

  Londoners were familiar with the scaffold scene—the dull, crunching thump; the head bouncing down, comic and disgusting, from the raw neck; blood drenching the crisp straw and darkening into pools as the crowds, their interest fading, began to move away. “He died very dangerously, irksomely, horribly,” thundered Latimer from the palace pulpit. “I have a little neck,” Elizabeth’s mother had giggled, putting her elegant fingers around it. “That woman had never such delight in her incontinency as she shall have torment in her death,” Henry VIII had sworn of Catherine Howard. Love and marriage, love and shame, love and death: the conclusion was inescapable.

  Physically Elizabeth was intact, but emotionally she was rifled and despoiled. In addition to all the private pain she had to bear, she was faced with the threat of public ignominy; Tyrwhitt had lost no time in informing her that there were sordid rumors about her, and these she was determined to halt. “There goeth rumours abroad which be greatly both against my honour and honesty,” she wrote to the protector, “which be these: that I am in the Tower, and with child by my Lord Admiral. My Lord, these are shameful slanders.” It was masterly diplomacy, to place the damaging allegation after the obviously false and easily disproven assumption. She asked to be allowed to come to court, saying proudly that she wished to visit the king, and, incidentally, to show the world she was not pregnant. Her request was refused, and she became more anxious than ever to rout out public belief in her “lewd demeanour,” pressing the protector to send out a proclamation declaring the tales to be lies and forbidding the people to repeat them. In her alert, capable mind, Elizabeth was conscious of the possibilities which the future might hold, and, unlike her half sister Mary, she was acutely aware that public opinion was a force which might play a part in shaping that future. Prurient eyes would be peering at Anne Boleyn’s daughter as she grew to womanhood; if she were to win and hold the love of the English people, Elizabeth knew she must keep her reputation spotless. That was to be her first concern as the Seymour affair faded into the past. Even at fifteen years old, beset with intense personal difficulties, she was deeply concerned with her public image, and anxious not to gain “the ill-will of the people, which thing I would be loath to have,” as she informed the protector, with pathetic dignity.

  Her first personal encounter with love and courtship had ended in tragedy, like the marriages of her mother and stepmothers, and only her own quick, clear wits had saved her from disgrace. For the rest of her life Elizabeth would carry with her the memory of her first suitor; she would always be attracted to vigorous, ambitious, hardy men such as the admiral had been. But she would never dare to entrust herself wholly into any man’s keeping. Noli me tangere would be her safeguard against the tragedies of love and marriage.

  3

  “The Question of the Day”

  Youth must have some dalliance,” Henry VIII had written, early in the century, in the most joyous of his songs, but Elizabeth’s shadowy youth was not a time for dalliance. In the nine years that followed her first tentative love affair, her constant concern was not to give herself but to guard herself, against threats to her status, her independence, and her life. She had learned to fear physical capture, and the disastrous political marriages that her cousin Lady Jane Grey and her sister, Mary, were to make would deepen the scars of her early impressions. She was a political prize, and as such she was courted, but those who were to pursue her in her sister’s reign, on behalf of a dissolute English nobleman and a warlike foreign prince, would be setting nets to catch the wind.

  Elizabeth had been profoundly shaken by Thomas Seymour’s emotional and political assault. Under the strain of the affair and its aftermath her health gave way, and at the country palace of Hatfield, for weeks and months after her suitor’s death, she suffered from torturing headaches, she was troubled with catarrh, and often she felt too weak even to write to her brother, the king. “Whilst I often attempted to write to Your Majesty, some ill health of body, especially headache, recalled me from the attempt,” she apologized. Protector Somerset put aside his sarcastic rebukes and treated her gently, showing that she was exonerated from blame in his brother’s treason by send
ing doctors to her and writing what she gratefully referred to as “comfortable letters.” But the pallor, breathlessness, and fainting persisted, and as she grew older there were constant references to swellings in her face and body. The illness, which almost certainly developed into the serious kidney ailment known as nephritis, was to recur throughout her youth in times of stress.

  “She was first sick about midsummer,” Kat Ashley had recalled during the investigation of the admiral’s treason; perhaps it was “about midsummer” 1548, that puberty had begun for the younger daughter of Henry VIII. She had been “sick” again immediately after the death in childbed of Catherine Parr, an event that cannot have heightened her desire for marriage and motherhood, and which Kat Ashley tactlessly enlarged upon in a morbid remark which so haunted Elizabeth that she quoted it later, in the sparse confession that Tyrwhitt elicited from her: “She said she would not wish that I should have the Admiral, because she that he had before did so miscarry.” Relentlessly, the association of the sexual relationship with fear and danger seemed to meet Elizabeth at every turn.