Crown of Blood

by Nicola Tallis

  16 PROB 11/68/664. This was taken at Beaumanor. No mention was ever made of Frances being part of the Queen’s inner circle in the same manner as her stepmother Katherine Willoughby, which suggests that though the two women were on friendly terms, they were probably not overly close.

  17 In the first year of her queenship, Katherine is known to have ordered a staggering 117 pairs of shoes. She also ordered new jewels on a regular basis, and her jewel inventories reveal the extent of the splendour with which she chose to adorn herself. Moreover, she was particularly fond of perfume, and also took milk baths.

  18 Katherine’s first book, Prayers or Meditations, published in 1545, was the first book to be written by a Queen of England and published under her own name. It proved to be extremely successful.

  19 CSPV, VI (884).

  20 Ibid.

  21 Haynes (ed.), State Papers, p. 99.

  22 On one occasion, Kate Ashley confessed that Katherine joined the Admiral in Elizabeth’s bedchamber, and ‘she and the Lord Admiral tickled the Lady Elizabeth in the bed’. Haynes (ed.), State Papers, p. 99.

  23 Ibid., p. 95.

  24 TNA, SP 10/2 f. 84.

  25 Haynes (ed.), State Papers, p. 78.

  Chapter 6: A Second Court of Right

  1 At thirty-six, Katherine was considered old by contemporary standards to be pregnant with her first child.

  2 Though the history of Sudeley stems back to the reign of Ethelred the Unready, in the sixteenth century most of the structure of the castle dated to the 1440s, when it was built by Ralph Boteler, a staunch Lancastrian and supporter of Henry VI. Sudeley was confiscated from Boteler when Edward IV became king, and Edward granted the castle to his younger brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later Richard III), but Richard later returned Sudeley to the Crown in exchange for Richmond Castle in Yorkshire. It remained Crown property until Edward VI granted it to Sir Thomas Seymour in 1547.

  3 The work is purported to have cost him approximately £1,000 (£340,000).

  4 This line comes from a later poem. Cited in J. Mueller (ed.), Katherine Parr: Complete Works and Correspondence (Chicago, 2011), p. 188.

  5 Haynes (ed.), State Papers, p. 82.

  6 CSPS, IX, p. 19.

  7 Some of these jewels had been her own personal property prior to her marriage to Henry VIII, and included bequests from her mother. Several letters from Katherine to her husband survive in which she berates the Lord Protector and his wife; on one occasion she claimed to be so enraged by the Protector that she could have bitten him!

  8 CSPD, VI (182).

  9 Haynes (ed.), State Papers, p. 75.

  10 Ibid.

  11 Mueller (ed.), Katherine Parr, p. 192.

  12 Coverdale completed his translation in Antwerp, and Coverdale’s Bible was printed in 1535.

  13 Mueller (ed.), Katherine Parr, p. 174.

  14 Additional MS 46348, f. 216.

  15 Cited in Mueller (ed.), Katherine Parr, p. 169.

  16 TNA, SP 10/5/2, fol. 3.

  17 J. Parkhurst, Ludicra sive Epigrammata Juvenilia (London, 1573), pp. 153–4.

  18 Ibid.

  19 Katherine Parr had watched Henry VIII’s funeral from a box above St George’s Chapel, Windsor.

  20 Parkhurst, Ludicra, pp. 153–4.

  21 Ibid.

  22 Ibid.

  23 Ibid.

  24 From the original account of Katherine’s funeral it is difficult to ascertain precisely how many people attended. There were certainly in excess of fifty, probably over a hundred.

  25 Parkhurst, Ludicra, pp. 153–4.

  26 Ibid.

  27 Ibid.

  28 Ibid.

  29 Ibid.

  30 Haynes (ed.), State Papers, p. 77.

  31 Ibid., p. 77; p. 78.

  32 Ibid., p. 78.

  33 This is the prayer book now in the collection of the British Library. Mueller argues that the book belonged to Katherine Parr and was written in her hand. This has since been disputed, and it is more likely that the words were written by a professional scribe. It is possible that the prayer book belonged to Katherine, and that it may have come into Jane’s possession at the time of her death – given to her either by the late Queen, or perhaps by Seymour. However, it is unclear exactly when Jane came to own the prayer book, and it is therefore equally likely that it was given to her by someone else.

  34 Richard Taverner was a Reformer, but following the accession of Mary I he wrote An Oration Gratulatory by means of congratulating her upon her accession. He remained in the background for the entirety of Mary’s reign, and only resumed preaching during the reign of Elizabeth I.

  35 Gifts of books were not unusual among those who held a particular interest in them. Lady Mildred Cecil would later make Jane a gift of a book, or perhaps it was even given to her by her parents.

  Chapter 7: Ruled and Framed Towards Virtue

  1 Haynes (ed.), State Papers, p. 72.

  2 Ibid.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Ibid., pp. 75–7.

  5 CSPS, IX, p. 20.

  6 Haynes (ed.), State Papers, p. 78.

  7 Ibid.

  8 Ibid., p. 79.

  9 Unfortunately the letter Seymour wrote to Jane does not survive, but judging from her reply he had been characteristically charming.

  10 CSPD, V (5).

  11 One or both of Jane’s parents may even have dictated her letter; they almost certainly read it prior to it being sent.

  12 CSPD, V (6).

  13 Despite his condemnation, Sharington’s life was spared. He was restored to Edward VI’s favour, and died of natural causes in November 1553.

  14 CSPD, VI (182).

  15 Haynes (ed.), State Papers, p. 82.

  16 Ibid.

  17 Accounts differ as to where Lady Mary Seymour spent the first six months of her life. She may have been at Seymour Place; other sources place her in the care of her uncle, the Lord Protector. However, given that relations between her father and uncle were difficult, it seems more likely that she remained in her father’s household, at Seymour Place.

  18 Born in around 1478, Margaret was the daughter of Sir Henry Wentworth and Anne Saye. She had married Sir John Seymour of Wulfhall in Wiltshire in 1494, and the couple had nine children. Of these, Edward, the Lord Protector, was the eldest surviving son, followed by Henry, who, though serving at court, did not share the ambitions of his brothers. Thomas, the Lord Admiral, was the third surviving son. Thomas was followed by Jane, Henry VIII’s third wife. Jane’s birth was followed by three daughters and a son. Margaret died in 1550.

  19 CSPS, IX, p. 332.

  20 Ibid.

  21 Parts of Henry’s testimony have been cited throughout the chapter.

  22 CSPD, VI (182).

  23 Ibid.

  24 CSPS, IX, p. 349.

  25 Ibid.

  26 Ibid.

  27 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, pp. 198–9. In 1550 Latimer joined the household of Jane’s step-grandmother, Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, as her chaplain.

  28 The fate of Lady Mary Seymour has never been established with absolute certainty, but it is probable that she died when she was around two years old. Katherine Willoughby was dismayed by the arrival of the child in her household, and wrote to the Council complaining of the expense of maintaining her in the style which, as a daughter of the Queen Dowager, was expected. In January 1550, an Act of Parliament meant that Mary was able to inherit property that belonged to her father, but no claim was ever made on her behalf, and nothing more is heard of her. Moreover, a poem written by Katherine’s chaplain John Parkhurst in Ludicra sive Epigrammata Juvenilia almost certainly refers to Mary’s death as a youngster.

  29 CSPD, VI (189).

  Chapter 8: She Did Never Love Her After

  1 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, VI, p. 1430.

  2 Mary, Queen of Scots, was married to the future Francis II of France in 1558. Following his premature death and her return to Scotland, in 1565 she was married to the son of
Lady Margaret Douglas, Henry, Lord Darnley. Finally, following Darnley’s murder, Mary married James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, in 1567. Princess Elisabeth was married in 1559 to Philip of Spain. Philip was married first to Jane’s cousin Queen Mary, but took Elisabeth as his second wife the year after Mary’s death.

  3 Haynes (ed.), State Papers, p. 74.

  4 J. North, England’s Boy King (Welwyn Garden City, 2005), p. 71.

  5 Guildford had also been a close friend of Jane’s maternal grandfather, the Duke of Suffolk. His first wife, and mother of his daughter, was Eleanor West.

  6 Dudley had served under the Duke of Suffolk in France in 1523, and in Boulogne in 1544 among other military posts. He was also an accomplished jouster.

  7 Consequences included spells of imprisonment, and loss of income and position.

  8 Henry VIII left Hunsdon, Beaulieu and Kenninghall to Mary in his will.

  9 Not only did Edward forbid Mary from celebrating the Mass, but members of her household were also arrested over their religious obstinacy.

  10 CSPS, X, p. 5.

  11 HMC Middleton (1911), pp. 520–1.

  12 Cited in A. Weir, Henry VIII: King and Court (London, 2001), p. 58.

  13 Margaret Wotton’s acquisition of the property was clearly questionable, for shortly after obtaining the lease she had written to Cromwell, ‘it does not a little trouble me to hear that you should think this abbey of Tilty is impaired by me. This is some sinister report.’ George Medley was the son of Jane’s paternal grandmother, Margaret, Marchioness of Dorset, by her first husband, William Medley.

  14 The date of this visit has often been confused and placed in the winter of 1551, but this is incorrect. George Medley’s wife was Mary Dannet. A brass commemorating George and Mary can still be seen in St Mary’s Church, Tilty. Unfortunately, only one small fragment of stone still survives from the former abbey in which Jane and her family spent their Christmas celebrations.

  15 George Medley and Mary Dannet had three sons, Henry, Thomas, and William, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Mary.

  16 It is possible that Jane’s father and his two brothers were by their sister’s side at the time of her death on 3 January 1548 at Wollaton Hall in Nottinghamshire, for they were listed in the family accounts as being present at the house on that day. HMC Middleton, p. 395.

  17 HMC Middleton, p. 520.

  18 Thomas Grey did, however, have an illegitimate daughter named Margaret, but her mother is unknown. Margaret later married Sir John Astley, Elizabeth I’s Master of the Jewels. Mary Browne was the daughter of Sir Anthony Browne of Cowdray Park, and his wife Alice Gage. Sir Anthony was the half-brother of Charles Brandon’s second wife, Anne Browne. John and Mary had four sons and two daughters. Later, three more daughters were born to them.

  19 It seems probable that Frances was named as a compliment to Jane’s mother. Frances was later married to the brother of Lady Mildred Cecil, William Cooke.

  20 HMC Middleton, p. 520.

  21 Beaulieu translates as ‘beautiful one’. The name Beaulieu, however, seems to have gone out of use eventually and it was more frequently referred to as New Hall. The palace still stands, but though some of its Tudor fabric survives, it is much altered. Today it is New Hall School, a Catholic boarding school for boys and girls.

  22 HMC Middleton, p. 520.

  23 Elizabeth’s household was also established separately from Edward’s court, and she had little contact with her half-sister.

  24 The coat of arms of Henry VIII that once adorned the gatehouse can still be seen in the Chapel at New Hall School. One of the original stone dragons that once stood on the roof also survives.

  25 The inventories for the years 1542–6 survive. Jane’s aunt, Eleanor Clifford, had received a gold tablet and a pair of bracelets. As well as revealing the nature of Mary’s jewels and the gifts she made, they also list the gifts and jewels she received in return. By comparison to the gifts Mary made to her cousin Frances, those that she received in return were somewhat paltry, a reflection, perhaps, of Frances’s difficult financial circumstances.

  26 F. Madden (ed.), Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary (London, 1831), p. 197.

  27 Ibid., p. 199.

  28 The stained-glass window still survives and can be seen in St Margaret’s Church, Westminster.

  29 Evangelicals based their faith on what was contained in the Bible, in which Mary featured very little.

  30 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, VI, p. 1746. It is possible that the story is apocryphal, but it does sound in keeping with Jane’s character.

  31 Ibid.

  32 Ibid.

  33 Two years later, in 1551, Edward VI introduced a law that stated that everybody had to walk to church on Christmas Day. It is a law that survives to this day.

  34 HMC Middleton, p. 521.

  35 Wassail was hot mulled cider, and wassailing was a toast made in the hope that the harvest of the fruit trees would be plentiful.

  36 De Vere’s ancestors had employed similar troupes of actors since the fourteenth century.

  37 Today the game is more commonly known as Blind Man’s Bluff.

  38 Robinson (ed.), Original Letters, p. 286.

  39 Ibid.

  40 HMC Middleton, pp. 520–1.

  41 Madden (ed.), The Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary, p. 96.

  42 HMS Middleton reveals regular payments that demonstrate that Jane’s father and uncles moved regularly between the family homes. The family of Jane’s mother was extremely limited. Both of her brothers had died in childhood, and her sister Eleanor, Countess of Cumberland, had died in 1547. Eleanor had produced one surviving child, a daughter, Lady Margaret Clifford, who was the same age as Katherine Grey. Following Eleanor’s death, however, her husband, Henry, Earl of Cumberland, had remarried, and it appears that from then on Jane’s family had little to do with them. Frances’s stepmother, Katherine Willoughby, Dowager Duchess of Suffolk, was still alive, and to all appearances she seems to have remained on friendly terms with Jane’s mother, and probably saw Jane and her family on occasion. Moreover, she shared similar radical religious beliefs to Jane, and had been a close friend of Katherine Parr. Her two sons by Frances’s father, however, had both died in 1551. She would later remarry, taking as her second husband Richard Bertie, by whom she had two children.

  Chapter 9: I Think Myself in Hell

  1 CSPS, X, p. 7.

  2 Ibid. The claim that the Marquess of Northampton had two wives is based on the fact that his first marriage to Anne Bourchier had been annulled in 1543, and his second marriage to Elizabeth Brooke was declared to be valid and invalid on several occasions. Little wonder that it led to confusion among his contemporaries.

  3 Ibid.

  4 R. Ascham, The Schoolmaster (London, 1570), pp. 35–6.

  5 Ibid.

  6 Ibid.

  7 Edward VI had a whipping boy named Barnaby Fitzpatrick, whose role it was to take any punishment inflicted upon Edward during childhood. During the days of the Lady Mary’s estrangement from her father, Eustace Chapuys reported that the Duke of Norfolk had claimed that if Mary were his daughter, ‘he would beat her to death, or strike her head against the wall until he made it as soft as a boiled apple’.

  8 G.R. Rosso claimed that Jane was beaten by her father when she initially refused to marry Guildford Dudley, while Ziletti’s Lettere states that ‘the father subdued her by beatings’, and other accounts also support this claim. However, other sources concur with Commendone in supposing that Jane was threatened verbally rather than physically.

  9 Ibid.

  10 Ascham, Works, p. 75.

  11 Ascham, The Schoolmaster, pp. 35–6.

  12 See F. Watson (ed.), Vives and the Renascence Education of Women (London, 1912), p. 133.

  13 Robinson (ed.), Original Letters, p. 430.

  14 Chapman, Lady Jane Grey, p. 19; R. Davey, The Nine Days’ Queen: Lady Jane Grey and her Times, ed. M. Hume (London, 1909), p. 21.

  15 Wingfield
, Vita Mariae, p. 286.

  16 Robinson (ed.), Original Letters, p. 280.

  17 Ives, Lady Jane Grey, pp. 53–4.

  18 Robinson (ed.), Original Letters, p. 276.

  19 W.K. Jordan (ed.), The Chronicle and Political Papers of King Edward VI (London, 1966), p. 53.

  20 CSPS, X, p. 262.

  21 CSPD, VI (73).

  22 Robinson (ed.), Original Letters, p. 7.

  23 CSPD, VI (74).

  24 Ibid.

  25 CSPD, VI (75).

  26 Robinson (ed.), Original Letters, p. 305.

  27 Ibid., p. 10.

  28 Ibid. The wording and tone of Jane’s first surviving letter to Bullinger, dated 1551, suggests that it was the first occasion on which she had written to him.

  29 Ibid., p. 276.

  30 Ibid., p. 279.

  31 Ibid.

  32 Ibid., p. 276.

  33 Ibid.

  34 Though this is the first of the surviving letters, it is clear that Jane had received at least one letter from Bullinger prior to this, though whether she had also written before is uncertain.

  35 Robinson (ed.), Original Letters, p. 276.

  36 Ibid., pp. 4–5.

  37 Ibid., p. 5.

  38 When Bucer died, he left half of his books to Archbishop Cranmer, and half to Katherine Willoughby. His manuscript collection was left to Edward VI.

  39 Walter was a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, from 1536 to 1552.

  40 Martin Bucer died in Cambridge on 28 February 1551. Though there is no evidence that Jane ever met Bucer, it seems highly likely that she did, given the tone in which she wrote about him. Furthermore, the two mixed in the same circles, and were certainly in London at the same time on at least one occasion.

  41 Robinson (ed.), Original Letters, p. 5.

  42 Ibid., p. 6.

  43 Ibid., p. 7.

  44 Ibid., p. 6.

  45 Ibid., pp. 406–7.

  46 Henry Grey had paid for John of Ulm to be educated at Oxford.

  47 Robinson (ed.), Original Letters, p. 276.

  48 John of Ulm, as cited in G. Lloyd Jones, The Discovery of Hebrew in Tudor England: A Third Language (Manchester, 1983), p. 241.

  49 Ibid.

  50 Robinson (ed.), Original Letters, p. 7.

  51 Cited in Lloyd Jones, The Discovery of Hebrew, pp. 241–2.