Produced by Giovanni Fini, MWS and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
—Whereas adequate character is unavalaible, superscripts are rendered
as word^[sup].
—Bold text has been rendered as =bold text=.
THE SISTERS OF LADY JANE GREY
[Illustration:
[_Frontispiece_
LADY KATHERINE GREY
(_From the original painting, by an unknown artist, in the possession
of Mrs. Wright-Biddulph, bearing the following inscription_:)
“Now thus but like to change
And fade as dothe the flowre
Which springe and bloom full gay,
And wythrethe in one hour.”]
THE SISTERS OF
LADY JANE GREY
_AND THEIR WICKED GRANDFATHER_
BEING THE TRUE STORIES
OF THE STRANGE LIVES OF CHARLES BRANDON, DUKE OF
SUFFOLK, AND OF THE LADIES KATHERINE AND
MARY GREY, SISTERS OF LADY JANE GREY,
“THE NINE-DAYS’ QUEEN”
BY
RICHARD DAVEY
AUTHOR OF
“THE SULTAN AND HIS SUBJECTS,” “THE PAGEANT OF LONDON,”
AND “THE NINE-DAYS’ QUEEN”
_WITH 14 ILLUSTRATIONS_
LONDON
CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD.
1911
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E.
AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
TO
THE MEMORY OF THE LATE
MAJOR MARTIN HUME
A GREAT HISTORIAN OF TUDOR TIMES
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY A STUDENT OF
THE SAME PERIOD OF OUR
NATIONAL HISTORY
PREFACE
THE strange adventures of the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey, although
they excited great interest at the time of their happening, and were
of immense contemporary political importance, are now almost unknown,
even to professed students of Elizabethan history. The sad fate of
these unfortunate princesses has paled before that of their more famous
sister, Lady Jane Grey, who, although the heroine of an appalling
tragedy, was rather the victim of others than of her own actions. In
a sense, she was merely a lay-figure, whereas her sisters, especially
Lady Katherine, who played an active part on the stage of history at a
later period of life, and possessed an unusually strong personality,
were entirely swayed by the most interesting of human passions—love.
Lady Katherine was literally “done to death” by her infatuation for the
young Earl of Hertford, the eldest son of that Protector Somerset who
suffered death under Edward VI. The feline cruelty with which Queen
Elizabeth tormented Lady Katherine, after the clandestine marriage with
her lover was revealed, called forth the freely expressed condemnation
of Chief Secretary Cecil, who denounced his royal mistress’s harshness
in no measured terms.
It is said that Lady Willoughby d’Eresby, one of the faithful
attendants on Katherine of Aragon, was so infuriated by Henry VIII’s
courtship and marriage with Anne Boleyn, that she pronounced a terrible
curse upon that wretched queen and the infant Elizabeth. If, through
her intercession or incantations, she contrived to induce some evil
spirit to inspire Henry VIII to make his famous but ill-considered
Will, she certainly succeeded in adding very considerably to the
discomfort of his celebrated daughter, who, during all her life, had
to experience the consequences of an ill-judged testament, whereby
Henry VIII, by passing over the legitimate claim to the succession,
of his grandniece, Mary Queen of Scots, the descendant of his eldest
sister, Margaret Tudor, widow of James IV of Scotland, in favour of the
heirs of his youngest sister, Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Duchess
of Suffolk, opened a very Pandora’s box, full of more or less genuine
claimants, after Elizabeth’s death, to the English Throne. The Spanish
Ambassador enumerates a round dozen of these, all of whom, with the
exception of Mary Stuart and Lady Katherine Grey, he describes as
more or less incompetent place-seekers, not worth the butter on their
bread, but who clamoured to obtain the queen’s recognition of what
they believed to be their legal rights, and thereby added greatly to
the general confusion. Of these claimants, Lady Katherine Grey was by
far the most important, her right to the Crown being not only based on
two Royal Wills—those of Henry VIII and Edward VI[1]—but, moreover,
ratified by a special Act of Parliament. She therefore played a more
conspicuous part in the politics of the early years of Elizabeth’s
reign than is generally known, and, as a matter of fact, was rarely out
of the queen’s calculations. In the first year of her reign, Elizabeth,
wishing to be on the best of terms with her young cousins, not only
admitted them to her privy chamber, but went so far as to recognize
Lady Katherine as her legitimate successor, and even proposed to adopt
her, calling her, in public, her “daughter.” For all this, there was
no love lost between the queen and the princess. Lady Katherine, who
had been intimate with the Countess of Feria, an Englishwoman by birth,
and a close friend of Queen Mary, was strongly prejudiced against the
Princess Elizabeth, who, she had been assured, was no daughter of
Henry VIII, but a mere result of Anne Boleyn’s intimacy with Smeaton
the musician. Notwithstanding, therefore, the queen’s advances, on
more than one occasion Lady Katherine Grey, according to Quadra, the
Spanish Ambassador, answered Elizabeth disrespectfully. It was not,
however, until after the news of the clandestine marriage between Lady
Katherine Grey and the Earl of Hertford reached her majesty, that she
began to persecute the wretched girl and her husband, by sending them
to the Tower—not, indeed, to “dungeons damp and low,” but to fairly
comfortable apartments, worthy of their high station, for which the
earl, at least, had to pay handsomely. When, thanks to the carelessness
or connivance of Sir Edward Warner, the lieutenant, the offending
couple were allowed occasionally to meet, and Lady Katherine eventually
gave birth to two sons, Elizabeth’s fury knew no bounds, and the young
mother had to undergo an awful and lifelong penance as the result
of her imprudence. That Elizabeth had good cause to object to the
introduction into this world of a male successor, became unpleasantly
apparent some ten years later, when the two boys were put forward as
claimants to her Throne, and thereby came very near involving England
in an ugly civil war.
The misfortunes of her elder sister do not seem to have impressed Lady
Mary Grey, on whom the Crown devolved, according to the Wills of Henry
VIII and Edward VI, in the event of Lady Katherine dying without issue.
She was a dwarf, and married secretly Mr. Thomas Keyes, the “giant”
Sergeant-Porter of Whitehall Palace, who “stood seven feet without his
shoes.” When Elizabeth received the news of this “outrage” on the part
of the youngest of the sisters Grey, her resentment was truly dreadful,
though her indignation, in this instance, was almost justifiable,
since there is nothing a great sovereign dislikes more than that any
members of the royal family should expose themselves to ridicule. Lady
Mary, by her unequal marriage, had dragged the great name of Tudor
into the mire, and had rendered herself the laughing-stock of Europe!
Elizabeth adopted in this case the same unpleasant treatment which she
had administered to the recalcitrant Lady Katherine; but, fortunately
for the little Lady Mary, Mr. Keyes died “of his torments,” at an early
stage of proceedings, and his widow, having promised never to repeat
her offence, by re-marrying with an ordinary mortal, let alone with a
dwarf or a “giant,” was permitted to spend the rest of her short life
in peace and plenty.
The character of Elizabeth does not shine for its wisdom or kindliness
in these pages; and some incidental information concerning the
mysterious fate of Amy Robsart, Leicester’s first wife, tends to prove
that “our Eliza” was perfectly well aware of what was going on at
Cumnor Hall, where, it will be remembered, the fair heroine of Scott’s
magnificent novel, _Kenilworth_, died “of a fall downstairs,” which,
at the time, was not generally considered accidental. The callous
manner in which the queen announced this accident—if accident it was—to
the Spanish Ambassador, is full of significance. Meeting him one day
in a corridor at Hampton Court, she said to him very lightly, and in
Italian: “The Lady Amy, the Lord Robert’s wife, has fallen downstairs
and broken her neck.” A few days earlier the queen had asked the
ambassador whether he thought there would be any harm in her marrying
her servant, meaning Dudley. He ventured to remind her that there was
an impediment to this scheme, as the Lord Robert’s wife was then still
living. This impediment was soon removed!
Elizabeth’s openly expressed passion for the future Earl of Leicester,
who was Lady Katherine Grey’s brother-in-law, damaged her reputation
throughout Europe, and even jeopardized her Throne. The French
Ambassador informs his sovereign that “the Queen of England is mad
on the subject of the Lord Robert,” “she cannot live without him,”
“their rooms communicate.” “I could tell your Majesty,” says the
Spanish representative at our Court, in a letter to Philip II, “things
about the Queen and the Lord Robert which baffle belief, but I dare
not do so in a letter.” Strange to relate, however, no sooner was Amy
Robsart dead, than Elizabeth’s behaviour to the Lord Robert, as he was
generally called, underwent a considerable change. She was willing
to retain him as a lover, but, after what had happened, she was too
frightened of possible consequences, to accept him as a husband. It was
only the beauty of his person that captivated the queen: otherwise, she
recognized him to be what he really was—a fool. “You cannot trust the
Lord Robert,”[2] she once complained to the French Ambassador, “any
further than you see him. Il est si bête.” She was perfectly right,
for, although she was perhaps never aware of the fact, the Spanish
State Papers reveal that at one time Robert Dudley[3] was actually
in correspondence, through the Spanish Ambassador, with Philip II,
to obtain his approval of the following astounding scheme, which, in
abbreviated form, stands thus: “The Lord Robert is to marry the Queen,
and, with Philip’s aid, they are to become Catholics, and work for the
reconciliation of England to the Church, and the interests of Spain.”
Comment is needless!
The biographies of the two princesses, Katherine and Mary Grey, are
preceded by a few chapters dealing with Charles Brandon, Duke of
Suffolk, and Mary Tudor, their grandfather and grandmother. I have
published these chapters, because they seem to me to complete the
history of this strange family, and enable me to place before my
readers a subject never before, I believe, treated in detail: that of
the remarkable series of marriages of Charles Brandon, who, at the
time that he was courting his king’s sister, had two wives living,
one of whom, the Lady Mortimer, was destined to give him considerable
trouble, and to vex his spirit and that of his consort not a little. I
think I may claim to be the first writer on Tudor topics and times who
has been able to determine who was this Lady Mortimer, Brandon’s first
wife, and to trace her very interesting pedigree to a singular source.
The story of Charles Brandon and of his clandestine marriage with Mary
Tudor has been frequently related, and, indeed, it forms the subject
of one of the last essays ever written by Major Martin Hume. Brandon’s
earlier adventures, however, have entirely escaped the attention
of historians, and are only alluded to in a casual manner in most
volumes on this subject. Brandon had a very interesting and complex
personality, and the strange resemblance which existed between him and
his master, King Henry VIII, forms not the least singular feature in
his romantic career. This resemblance was not only physical, but moral.
So great was it, from the physical point of view, that certain of his
portraits are often mistaken for those of King Henry, to whom, however,
he was not even remotely connected by birth. As to his moral character;
his marriages—he had four wives, whilst a fifth lady, Baroness Lisle,
was “contracted to him”—tend to prove that either Henry VIII influenced
his favourite, or the favourite influenced his master, especially in
matters matrimonial.
A brief account of Lady Eleanor Brandon and her heirs closes this
volume, which I hope will receive from the public as indulgent and
kindly a reception as did the story of Lady Jane Grey (_The Nine-days’
Queen_), of which the celebrated M. T. de Wyzewa, in a lengthy review
in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, did me the honour of saying that
“Jamais encore, je crois, aucun historien n’a reconstitué avec autant
de relief et de couleur pittoresque le tableau des intrigues ourdies
autour du trône du vieil Henri VIII et de son pitoyable successeur,
Edouard VI.”
It is my duty to state that I submitted the manuscript of this book
for the consideration of the late Major Martin Hume, who had already
done me the honour of editing my previous work, on Lady Jane Grey,
for which he supplied an Introduction on the foreign policy of England
during the reign of Edward VI and the “nine-days’ reign,” possibly one
of the most brilliant essays on Tudor times he ever wrote. He was so
much interested in the present volume, that he promised to write for it
a similar introductory chapter; but, unfortunately, a few weeks after
this kind offer of assistance was made, I received the sad news of his
sudden death. Major Martin Hume, was, therefore, unable to carry his
promise into effect; but in a letter which he wrote to me at an earlier
period of our agreeable correspondence, he indicated to me several
sources of information, of which I have gratefully availed myself.
The loss that historical literature sustained by the death of Major
Hume was far greater than the general public, I think, realizes. He was
a past-master in Tudor lore and history, and the future will, I trust,
accord him that high position amongst our historians to which his work
on the Spanish or Simancas State Papers should alone entitle him. In
paying this, my poor tribute, to his memory as an historian, I can only
add my sincere expression of profound regret at his loss as a personal
friend.
In this volume—as well as in the previous one on Lady Jane Grey—I
received considerable assistance, in the earlier stages of its
compilation, from the celebrated Dr. Gairdner, and from my deeply
regretted friend, the late Dr. Garnett. I wish to acknowledge my
debt of gratitude to these gentlemen; and to renew my thanks to the
authorities of the Record Office, the Bodleian Library, and other
libraries, public and private, for their unvarying courtesy.
In conclusion, I desire to express my appreciation of Mrs.
Wright-Biddulph’s kindness in allowing me to publish in this work
a reproduction of her unique portrait of Lady Katherine Grey. Lord
Leconfield, likewise, gave me permission to reproduce several of
the portraits in his magnificent collection at Petworth, but,
unfortunately, his courteous offer came too late. None the less it
merits acknowledgment in these pages.
RICHARD DAVEY.
_Palazzo Vendramin Calergi, Venice._
AUGUST 1911.
NOTE.—The following brief account of Henry VIII’s Will may aid the
reader in understanding the complications to which it gave rise. By
this famous testament (dated 26th of December 1546 and revoking all
his previous Wills), King Henry VIII provided that, in case he himself
had no other children by his “beloved wife Katherine [Parr] or any
other wives he might have thereafter,” and in the event of his only
son, Edward [afterwards King Edward VI], who was to be his immediate
successor, dying childless, that prince was to be succeeded by his
eldest sister, Princess Mary; and if she, in turn, proved without
offspring, she was to be succeeded by her sister, King Henry’s younger
daughter, Elizabeth. Failing heirs to that princess, the Crown was to
pass to the Lady Jane Grey and her sisters, Katherine and Mary Grey,
successively, these being the daughters of Henry’s eldest niece, the
Lady Frances Brandon, Marchioness of Dorset. In the event of the three
sisters Grey dying without issue, the Throne was to be occupied
successively by the children of the Lady Frances’s sister, the King’s
other niece, the Lady Eleanor Brandon, Countess of Cumberland. The
Scotch succession, through Henry’s eldest sister, Margaret Tudor,
Dowager Queen of Scotland, was set aside, and the name of the young
Queen of Scots [Mary Stuart] omitted from the Will, preference being
given to the Ladies Grey, the daughters of Henry’s niece, because he
hoped that the betrothal of Mary Stuart, then only six years of age,
to his son Edward, might be arranged, and the desired union of England
and Scotland brought about in a natural manner. It is curious that
Henry’s nieces, the Ladies Frances and Eleanor, are not named in the
Will as possible successors to the Crown, although their children are.
Probably the King thought that, considering the number of claimants in
the field, both ladies would be dead, in the course of nature, long
before they could be called upon to occupy the Throne.
In 1553 the Duke of Northumberland, then all powerful, induced
Edward VI, in the last weeks of his reign, to make a Will, in which
he set aside the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, his sisters, even
stigmatizing them as bastards, and thus reversing his father’s
testament; and named Lady Jane Grey, his cousin, and in default
of her, her sisters Katherine and Mary Grey, as his immediate and
legitimate successors. The consequences of this unfortunate “Devise,”
as it is called, were, as all the world knows, fatal to the Lady Jane
and her family.
As the result of these two Royal Wills, the principal claimants to
the Crown on Elizabeth’s death were, therefore, at the beginning of
her reign, the following: firstly, Mary Queen of Scots, and her son,
afterwards James I, who may be described as the legitimate pretenders;
secondly, the Lady Margaret Lennox, step-sister to the Queen of Scots,
and her two sons Darnley and Charles Lennox, and, eventually, the
latter’s daughter, Arabella Stuart; thirdly, the Lady Katherine Grey
and her two sons, and finally, in the event of their deaths, their
aunt, the Lady Mary Grey. In case of all these princes and princesses
leaving no issue, there remained the children and grandchildren of
the Lady Frances’s sister, the Lady Eleanor Brandon, Countess of
Cumberland, one of whom, at least, Fernando Strange, rendered himself
and his claims distinctly troublesome to Elizabeth.
The queen had, moreover, to contend with the heirs of the
Plantagenets, the members of the royal house of Pole, who, in the
person of the Earl of Huntingdon, hoped, at one time, to dethrone the
queen, and, with the assistance of the ultra-Protestant party, reign
in her stead.
* * * * *
TABLE showing the heirs female, in remainder to the Crown, named in
the Will of Henry VIII and the “Devise” of Edward VI:—
King Henry the Seventh and Queen Elizabeth of York
had issue
|
|
+————————————+————————————+
| | |
| | |
King Henry VIII, Margaret, Queen of Scots, Mary, Queen of France,
father of, grandmother of Mary Stuart, mother of, by
by by and great-grandmother of Charles Brandon,
Katherine Anne King James the First. Duke of Suffolk,
of Aragon, Boleyn, |
| | |
| | +————————————+
| | | |
| | | |
The Lady The Lady The Lady Frances, The Lady Eleanor,
Mary. Elizabeth. Marchioness of Dorset, Countess of
Duchess of Suffolk, Cumberland.
| |
| |
+———————-+——————-+—+ |
| | | |
| | | |
The Lady The Lady The Lady The Lady
Jane Grey, Katherine Grey, Mary Grey, Margaret,
_m._ to _m._ to _m._ to Countess of Clifford,
Guildford the Earl of Thomas Keyes, issue.
Dudley, Hertford, no issue.
no issue. issue.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
PREFACE vii
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOUSE OF TUDOR xxiii
CHARLES BRANDON, DUKE OF SUFFOLK
I CLOTH OF FRIEZE 3
II THE FRENCH MARRIAGE 23
III CLOTH OF FRIEZE WEDS CLOTH OF GOLD 49
IV THE LAST DAYS OF SUFFOLK AND OF THE QUEEN-DUCHESS 67
LADY KATHERINE GREY
I BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 83
II LADY KATHERINE GREY AT THE COURT OF QUEEN MARY 107
III THE PROGRESS OF LADY KATHERINE’S LOVE AFFAIRS 128
IV QUEEN ELIZABETH AND HER SUCCESSION 146
V THE CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE 165
VI LADY KATHERINE AND HER HUSBAND IN THE TOWER 181
VII LADY KATHERINE AT PIRGO 199
VIII LADY KATHERINE AGAIN THE CENTRE OF INTRIGUES 212
IX LADY KATHERINE’S LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH 231
LADY MARY GREY
I EARLY YEARS 255
II A STRANGE WEDDING 262
III THE LAST YEARS OF LADY MARY 282
LADY ELEANOR BRANDON AND HER HEIRS 293
INDEX 305
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LADY KATHERINE GREY _Frontispiece_
_From the original painting, by an unknown artist, in
the possession of Mrs. Wright-Biddulph, bearing the
following inscription_—
“Now thus but like to change
And fade as dothe the flowre
Which springe and bloom full gay,
And wythrethe in one hour.”
_Facing page_
MARGARET BEAUFORT, COUNTESS OF RICHMOND xxviii
_From the original portrait in the National Portrait
Gallery._
CHARLES BRANDON, DUKE OF SUFFOLK 4
_From an engraving, after the original in the collection
of His Grace the Duke of Bedford._
HENRY VIII (at the age of fifty-three) 20
_From the original portrait in the National Portrait
Gallery._
CHARLES BRANDON, DUKE OF SUFFOLK, AND MARY TUDOR TAKEN
TOGETHER 50
_From an engraving, by Vertue, of the original portrait by
Mabuse._
LADY MONTEAGLE (younger daughter of Charles Brandon,
Duke of Suffolk) 62
_From an engraving after Holbein._
KATHERINE WILLOUGHBY, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK 74
_From an engraving by Bartolozzi, of the original
drawing, attributed to Holbein, in the King’s
collection._
FRANCES BRANDON, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK, AND HER SECOND
HUSBAND, ADRIAN STOKES 104
_From an engraving by Vertue, after the original
portrait by Lucas de Heere._
MARY TUDOR, QUEEN OF ENGLAND 110
_From a little-known portrait by Antonio Moro, in the
Escurial._
PHILIP II, KING OF SPAIN 122
_From a contemporary Spanish print._
QUEEN ELIZABETH 134
_From the original portrait, by F. Zucchero, at
Hatfield._
ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER 156
_From the original portrait, by Zuccaro, in the
National Portrait Gallery._
WILLIAM CECIL, LORD BURLEIGH 214
SIR THOMAS GRESHAM 278
_From a contemporary engraving._
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOUSE OF TUDOR
THE amazing marriage of Katherine of Valois, widow of Henry V, with
Owen Tudor, possibly accounts for much that was abnormal in the
character of their royal descendants of the redoubted House of Tudor.
The queen dowager was the daughter of the mad King Charles VI of France
and of his licentious consort, Isabeau of Bavaria—bad blood, indeed;
and Owen was a mere soldier of fortune. In his grandson Henry VII’s
day, a goodly pedigree was discovered for him, which set forth that
far from being a “mean born pup,” as was popularly reported, Owen was
descended from Kenan, son of Coel, who was king of Britain, and brother
of Helen, the mother of Constantine the Great. As to Owen ap Merideth
ap Twydder or Tudor, good old Sandford affirms that “the Meanness
of his Estate was recompensated by the Delicacy of his Person, so
absolute in all the Lineaments of his Body, that the only Contemplation
of it might make a Queen forget all other Circumstances”—which it
did! Stowe, who lived near enough to those times to receive direct
tradition concerning this brave soldier, says, in his _Annals_,[4]
that he was “as ignorant as any savage.” Tall beyond the average, the
founder of the House of Tudor carried himself with “a perfect grace.”
He was well featured, with hair that was curly and “yellow as gold.”
At an entertainment given in 1423, and attended, notwithstanding her
recent bereavement, by the widowed queen, this Adonis, while in the
act of executing an intricate pirouette, fell at the royal lady’s
feet. Whether the passion kindled by this ludicrous accident was
reciprocated, we are not told; but so ardent was it, on Katherine’s
part, at least, that she soon afterwards clandestinely married the
handsome Welshman.[5]
The enemies of the House of Tudor averred that this secret marriage
never really took place, and it is a singular fact that no allusion
whatever is made to it in the hearse verse originally placed over the
tomb of Queen Katherine in Westminster Abbey, and quoted in full in
the contemporary Chronicle of William of Worcester. But when Henry VII
became king, this inscription was removed and another hearse verse,
containing the following significant lines, was substituted and hung
over his grandmother’s monument:—
“Of Owen Tudor after this,
The next son Edmund was,
O Katherine, a renowned Prince,
That did in Glory pass.
Henry the Seventh, a Britain Pearl,
A Gem of England’s Joy,
A peerless Prince was Edmund’s Son,
A good and gracious Roy.
Therefore a happy Wife this was,
A happy Mother pure,
Thrice happy Child, but Grandam she,
More than Thrice happy sure.”
For more than seven years, during which time she gave birth to four
children, the queen’s household observed profound secrecy with respect
to her marriage—a fact which honours the fidelity and discretion of its
members.
Notwithstanding all these precautions, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, who
was regent during the minority of Henry VI, suspected the existence
of something unusual, and, according to Sir Edward Coke,[6] forthwith
framed a statute that “anyone who should dare to marry a queen dowager
of these realms without the consent of king and council should be
considered an outlaw and a traitor.” Spies were placed about the queen;
but they either failed to discover anything unusual, or were bribed
to secrecy: for the fact of the clandestine marriage was not really
established until shortly before her death. When it became known,
there must have been a terrible storm in the royal circle, for Owen
was arrested and sent to Newgate, and the queen banished to Bermondsey
Abbey,[7] where she died, six months later, on January 1, 1447, of
a lingering illness and a broken heart. Katherine de la Pole, Abbess
of Barking, took charge of the children, but she did not reveal their
existence to Henry VI till some months after the queen’s decease, and
then “only because she needed money for their sustenance.”
Meanwhile the _London Chronicle_, a most valuable contemporary
document, thus relates the subsequent misadventures of the unfortunate
Owen: “This year [1447] one Owen Twyder, who had followed Henry V
to France, broke out of Newgate at searching time, the which Owen
had privately married Queen Katherine and had four children by her,
unknown to the common people until she was dead and buried.” Owen Tudor
was three times imprisoned for marrying the queen, but each time he
contrived to baffle the vigilance of his gaolers, only, however, to be
promptly recaptured. As years went by, he came to be received into a
certain measure of favour by his stepson, the king; and he fought so
valiantly for the Lancastrian cause at Northampton, in 1460, that the
king made “his well beloved squire Owen Tudyer” [_sic_] keeper of his
parks in Denbigh, Wales.[8]
Later on, at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross, he again unsheathed his
Agincourt sword in the Lancastrian cause, but, being taken prisoner by
Edward IV, he was beheaded in Hereford market place. Many years later,
by a strange and romantic concatenation of events, Edward’s eldest
daughter, Elizabeth, married the fallen Owen’s grandson, Henry VII,
thereby becoming the first queen of England of the Tudor line, and the
great-grandmother of the Ladies Jane, Katherine and Mary Grey.
There was, it seems, a rugged grandeur about Owen Tudor, which stood
him in lieu of gentle accomplishments. The physical power, persistent
obstinacy and bluff address of his royal descendants may indeed have
been derived from this fine old warrior; and from him surely it was
that they inherited the magnificent personal appearance, the lofty
stature, the fair complexion and leonine locks, that distinguished them
from the dark but equally splendid Plantagenets. May we not also justly
conclude that their violent passions were an inheritance transmitted to
them by the amorous Katherine and her vicious mother?—passions which
played so fateful a part in the tragic stories of Lady Katherine and
Lady Mary Grey—the two younger sisters of the unfortunate “Nine-days’
Queen,” Lady Jane Grey.
[Illustration:
[_To face p._ xxviii
MARGARET BEAUFORT, COUNTESS OF RICHMOND
(_From National Portrait Gallery_)]
Soon after Queen Katherine’s decease, Henry VI brought his Tudor
brethren into the royal circle. When the eldest, Edmund of Hadham,
grew to manhood, he created him Earl of Richmond (November 23, 1452),
with precedence of all other earls. This stalwart nobleman married
the dwarfish Princess Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Beaufort,
great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt by his last wife Catherine
Swynford, and daughter and heiress of the last Duke of Somerset of
the first creation. He was one of the pillars of the Lancastrian
party, lending great help at the temporary restoration of Henry VI;
afterwards, under Edward IV, he was compelled, with other Lancastrians,
to seek safety in Brittany. He died shortly after his return to
England, within a year of his marriage, leaving a son, who succeeded
to his father’s title of Earl of Richmond, and eventually became King
Henry VII. Edmund’s next brother, Jasper of Hatfield, so called from
the place of his birth, was raised at the same time to the rank of
Earl of Pembroke. He was with his father at the battle of Mortimer’s
Cross; but escaped, and later, at the accession of Henry VII, he was
created Duke of Bedford in the place of George Nevill, elder brother of
the famous “Kingmaker,” whose titles and lands were confirmed in his
favour. He died young in 1456 and was buried in St. David’s Cathedral.
He never married, but left an illegitimate daughter, who became the
wife of William Gardiner, a citizen of London. Stephen Gardiner,
Bishop of Winchester, was reputed to be their son. Owen, third son of
Katherine of Valois and Owen Tudor, embraced the religious life and
lived a monk, at Westminster, into the first half of the sixteenth
century. Their only daughter—who was blessed with the curious name of
Tacina, and whose existence is ignored by most historians—married Lord
Grey de Wilton, an ancestor of the ill-fated subjects of this book.
It is worthy of note that whereas most of the Tudor Princes were very
tall, several of them, thanks to a well-known law of atavism, reverted
to the tiny type of their ancestress, Margaret Plantagenet. Mary I
was a small woman, and the three sisters Grey were not much above the
height of average-sized dwarfs.
CHARLES BRANDON, DUKE OF SUFFOLK
CHAPTER I
CLOTH OF FRIEZE
IT is a remarkable fact that, although Charles Brandon, Duke of
Suffolk, was, after Thomas More, Wolsey and the king himself, the most
conspicuous personage at the court of Henry VIII, no authoritative
biography of him exists, unless indeed it be a short, but very
unimportant, monograph (written in Latin, at the end of the sixteenth
century) now in the King’s Library at the British Museum. Suffolk
outlived nearly all his principal contemporaries, except the king and
the Duke of Norfolk, and his career, therefore, runs almost parallel
with that of Henry VIII, whom he attended in nearly every event of
importance, from boyhood to death. Brandon predeceased the king by
only a few months. In person, he bore so striking a resemblance to
Henry, that the French, when on bad terms with us, were wont to say
that he was his master’s bastard brother. The two men were of the same
towering height, but Charles was, perhaps, the more powerful; at any
rate, King Henry had good cause, on one occasion, to admit the fact,
for Brandon overthrew and slightly injured him in a wrestling match at
Hampton Court. Both king and duke were exceedingly fair, and had the
same curly, golden hair, the same steel-grey eyes, planted on either
side of an aquiline nose, somewhat too small for the breadth of a
very large face. In youth and early manhood, owing to the brilliancy
of their pink-and-white complexions, they were universally considered
extremely handsome, but with the advent of years they became abnormally
stout, and vainly tried to conceal their fat, wide cheeks, and double
chins, with beards and whiskers. A French chronicler, speaking of
Charles Brandon at the time that he was in Paris for the marriage of
Mary Tudor to Louis XII, says he had never seen so handsome a man, or
one of such manly power who possessed so delicate a complexion—_rose et
blanc tout comme une fille_. And yet he was not the least effeminate,
for of all the men of his day, he was the most splendid sportsman, the
most skilful in the tilt-yard, and the surest with the arrow. He danced
so lightly and so gracefully that to see him was a sight in which even
Henry VIII, himself an elegant dancer, delighted.
[Illustration:
[_To face p._ 4
CHARLES BRANDON, DUKE OF SUFFOLK
(_From an engraving, after the original in the collection of His Grace
the Duke of Bedford_)]
Unfortunately, so many physical advantages were not allied to an equal
number of virtues; and here again, the resemblance between King Henry
and his bosom friend is extraordinary. Both were equally cruel, selfish
and unscrupulous, and both entertained the same loose ideas as to the
sanctity of marriage—with this difference, however, that whereas King
Henry usually divorced one wife before he took another, Charles had
two wives living at one and the same time, from neither of whom was he
properly divorced! What is most singular, too, is that he ventured to
marry the king’s sister whilst his first wife was still living, and not
as yet legally separated from him, whereby he might easily have been
hauled before a justice as a bigamist, and his offspring by a princess
of the blood royal of England, and dowager queen of France to boot,
been declared illegitimate.
In addition to his great strength and exceptional ability as a
commander, both on land and sea, Suffolk possessed a luxuriant
imagination, which delighted in magnificent pageantry. In the halcyon
days of Henry’s reign, long before the fires of Smithfield had shed
their lurid glow over the city, Suffolk and his master devised sports
and pastimes, masques and dances, to please the ladies.[9] Once he
entered the tilt-yard dressed as a penitent, in a confraternity robe
and cowl of crimson velvet, his horse draped in cardinal-coloured
satin. Assuming a humble attitude, he approached the pavilion in which
sat the king and Queen Katherine, and in a penitential whine, implored
her grace’s leave to break a lance in her honour. This favour being
granted, he threw back his cloak, and appeared, a blaze of cloth of
gold, of glittering damascened armour and sparkling jewels, to break
sixteen lances in honour of the queen. Again, when Queen Mary was his
bride, and the court went a-maying at Shooters Hill, he devised a sort
of pastoral play, and with Jane Grey’s paternal grandfather, Thomas,
Marquis of Dorset, disguised himself and his merry men as palmers, in
gowns of grey satin with scallop-shells of pure gold and staves of
silver. The royal guests having been duly greeted, the palmers doffed
their sober raiment and appeared, garbed in green and gold, as so many
Robin Hoods. They then conducted their Majesties to a glade where there
were “pastimes and daunces,” and, doubtless, abundant wine and cakes.
Much later yet, Brandon went, in the guise of a palmer, with Henry
VIII, to that memorable ball given by Wolsey at Whitehall, at which
Anne Boleyn won the heart of the most fickle of our kings.
The last half of the fourteenth century witnessed the beginning of
the decline of feudalism in England. The advance of education, and
consequently of civilization, had by this time largely developed the
commercial and agricultural resources of the country, and the yeoman
class, with that of the country gentry, had gradually come into being.
At the Conquest, the majority of the lands owned by the Saxons—rebels
to Norman force—were confiscated and handed over to the Conqueror’s
greater generals: to such men as William, Earl of Warren, or Quarenne,
who seated himself in East Anglia, having, as his principal Norfolk
fortress, Castleacre Castle, on the coast, not far from East Dereham.
Its picturesque ruins still tower above those of the magnificent priory
that the great William de Warren raised, “to the honour of God and Our
Lady,” for monks of the Cluniac branch of the Benedictine Order. This
Earl of Warren, who was overlord of a prodigious number of manors and
fiefs in East Anglia, numbered, among the bonny men who came out of
Picardy and Normandy in his train, two stalwart troopers: one haled
from Boulogne-on-the-Sea, so tradition says—and is not tradition
unwritten history?—and was known as “Thomas of Boulogne”; he settled at
Sale, near Aylsham, in Norfolk, and was the progenitor of the Boleyns
or Bullens, whose surname is an evident corruption of _de Boulogne_;
the other dropped his French patronym, whatever it was, and assumed
the name of Brandon, after a little West Suffolk border town, in the
immediate vicinity of the broad and fertile lands he had acquired.
These Brandons, then, had lived on their farm near Brandon for about
four centuries, deriving, no doubt, a very considerable income from
the produce of their fields and from their cattle. It is certain that
they sent several members of their family to the Crusades; that one of
them followed the Black Prince to Poitiers, and that yet another, a
trooper, it is true, died on the field of Agincourt.[10] Somewhere in
the last quarter of the fourteenth century, William, the then head of
the family, apprenticed his son Geoffrey to a rich mercer of Norwich,
a great commercial centre in those days, next to London and Bristol in
importance, and doing what we should now call a “roaring trade” with
Flanders, and through Flanders, with Venice and Florence, and even with
the East. This Norwich Brandon having made a fortune, was seized with
an ambition to attain still greater wealth and station for his son and
heir William; and hence it came about, that near the time King Henry
VI ascended the throne, young Brandon arrived in London, apprenticed
to a firm of mercers established near Great St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate
Street. He was a pushing, shrewd, energetic, and very unscrupulous
knave, who soon acquired great influence in the city and amassed
corresponding wealth. Finally, he became sheriff, and was knighted
by Henry VI. He purchased a large property in Southwark, and built
himself a mansion, later known as Suffolk Court. During the Wars of the
Roses he allied himself at first with the Yorkists, and lent Edward IV
considerable sums of money, which, according to Paston, that monarch
dishonestly refused to repay. This drove William to cast his fortunes
with the Lancastrians and largely assist Henry VII, then simply Earl
of Richmond, both with money and men, and so was held in high esteem
by that monarch till his death, in the twelfth year of Henry’s reign.
William Brandon married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Robert Wingfield of
Letheringham, whose mother was the daughter and co-heir of Sir Robert
Goushall, the third husband of the dowager Duchess of Norfolk, widow
of the first duke, who, dying in exile in Venice, was buried in the
magnificent church of San Giovanni e Paolo. Even thus early, we see a
Brandon, the great-grandson of a Suffolk farmer, connecting himself
with the noble houses of Wingfield, Fitzalan and Howard.[11]
At one time this gentleman was on very intimate terms with the renowned
Sir John Paston, whose _Letters_ throw so much light on the manners and
customs of the age in which he lived; but the cronies fell out over
some matter of business connected with Paston’s claim to the possession
of Caistairs Castle, in which transaction, Paston declares, Brandon
behaved like a blackguard—indeed, King Edward, to whom appeal was
made, listed him as a “lyre.” During their intimacy, Paston, possibly
over a tankard of ale at a merry dinner or supper party, had made
some irreverent and coarse remarks about her grace of Norfolk, in the
presence of Lady Brandon, who was the duchess’s grand-daughter. He had
poked fun at the poor lady’s appearance when on the eve of adding her
tribute to the population. Paston has recorded what he said, and it
must be confessed, that if Lady Brandon did repeat his vulgar jest to
her august relation, that lady had every reason to feel indignant at
such familiarity.
Whether it was repeated or not has never transpired, so perhaps we may
suppose Lady Brandon was a prudent woman and kept her counsel. But
Paston wrote to his brother to ask if he thought she might be trusted,
or whether she was likely to have made mischief by repeating his
ill-timed remarks to the duchess, her mother, adding a “lye or two of
her own to help it out.”
Sir William Brandon, eldest son of the first William, and father
of Charles Brandon, was never knighted, although usually styled
by courtesy “Sir.” He married, when he was very young, Elizabeth,
daughter and co-heir of Sir Henry Bruyn, or Brown,[12] by his wife,
Elizabeth Darcy.[13] Sir William Brandon was standard-bearer to Henry
VII at Bosworth Field, and there lost his life at the hand of Richard
III, whilst gallantly defending his royal patron. Henry proved his
gratitude by educating his only son, Charles, who, by his marriage
with Mary Tudor, became the grandfather of Lady Jane Grey and her
sisters Katherine and Mary. Some historians have confused King Henry’s
standard-bearer with a younger brother, Thomas Brandon, who married
Anne Fiennes, daughter of Lord Dacre and widow of the Marquis of
Berkeley, but had no children. He looms large (in every sense of the
word, being of great height and bulk) in all the tournaments and jousts
held in honour of the marriage of Katherine of Aragon with Prince
Henry. He died, a very wealthy man, at his London house, Southwark
Place, in 1502.
At four years of age the child Charles Brandon became playfellow to
Arthur, Prince of Wales; but on the birth of the future Henry VIII, he
was transferred to the younger prince as his companion. He may even
have received his education with Henry, from Bernard André, historian
and poet, or perhaps from Skelton, poet-laureate to Henry VII, who,
with Dr. Ewes, had a considerable share in the instruction of the
young prince. But there is reason to believe that Brandon, as a lad,
did not spend so much time at court as has been generally stated, for
his letters, phonetically spelt, in accordance with the fashion of his
time, prove him to have spoken with a broad Suffolk accent; he must,
therefore, have passed a good deal of his youth at Brandon, on the
borders of Suffolk and Norfolk, where, according to tradition, he was
born. His letters, although the worst written and spelt of his day, are
full, too, of East Anglianisms, which could only have been picked up
by a man in his position through contact, in boyhood, with yokels and
country-folk in general.
Charles, who grew up to be a remarkably fine youth, tall and “wondrous
powerful,” began life virtually as an attendant in the royal household,
though, as already stated, in due time he became Henry’s principal
favourite and confidant. When little over twenty, he distinguished
himself in a sea-fight off Brest, and was sent by Wolsey to join Henry
VIII in his adventurous campaign to Therouanne. At the famous battle
of the Spurs, he proved himself as brave a soldier as he had already
shown himself to be a doughty sailor; but for all this merit he can
scarcely be described as an honest gentleman, especially where ladies
are concerned, and his matrimonial adventures were not only strange
and complicated, but also exceedingly characteristic of the times
in which he lived. In 1505/6, Charles Brandon became betrothed,[14]
_per verba de præsenti_, to a young lady of good family, Anne Browne,
third daughter of Sir Anthony Binyon Browne, K.G., governor of Calais,
and of his wife, the Lady Lucy Nevill, daughter and co-heiress of
John Nevill, Marquis of Montagu, brother of the “Kingmaker,” Richard,
Earl of Warwick. In 1506/7 this contract was set aside and the young
gentleman married Margaret, the mature widow of Sir John Mortimer
of Essex[15] (will proved, 1505). And now came trouble. The Lady
Mortimer, _née_ Nevill (probably rather a tedious companion for
so youthful a husband), was none other than the aunt of his first
_fiancée_, Anne Browne, her sister being the Lady Lucy Nevill, who,
as stated above, was the wife of Sir Anthony Browne and mother of
Anne. Brandon, therefore, probably with the aid of Henry VIII, about
1507, after having squandered a good deal of her fortune, induced the
Archdeacon of London (in compliance with a papal bull) to declare
his marriage with Lady Mortimer null and void, on the grounds that:
Firstly, he and his wife were within the second and third degrees
of affinity; secondly, that his wife and the lady to whom he was
first betrothed (Anne Browne) were within the prohibited degrees of
consanguinity—i.e. aunt and niece; thirdly, that he was cousin once
removed to his wife’s former husband. After these proceedings, he
married, or rather re-married, in 1508/11, in “full court,” and in
the presence of a great gathering of relations and friends—and not
secretly, as usually stated—the aforesaid Anne Browne, by whom he
had two daughters, the eldest being born so soon after wedlock as to
give rise to unpleasant gossip, probably started by Lady Mortimer.
Anne, Lady Brandon, did not long survive her marriage, for she died
in 1511/12; and in the following year (1513) her widower made a third
attempt at matrimony, by a contract with his ward, the Lady Elizabeth
Grey, _suo jure_ Baroness Lisle, who, born in 1503/4, was only ten
years of age; but the negotiations failed, though Brandon had been
granted the viscounty of Lisle, which title he assumed (May 15, 1513).
As this lady absolutely refused him, he surrendered the patent of the
title of Lisle in favour of Arthur Plantagenet, illegitimate son of
Edward IV and husband of Lady Elizabeth Lisle, the aunt and co-heiress
of the young lady he had wished to make his bride, and who, being
free, gave her hand to Courtenay, Earl of Devon, who presently became
Marquis of Exeter. This above-mentioned aunt, the other Lady Elizabeth,
had married, in 1495, Edmund Dudley, the notorious minister of Henry
VII, and became, about 1502, mother of that John Dudley, Duke of
Northumberland, who proved so fatal to Lady Jane Grey and her family.
Whilst he was still plodding through the labyrinth of his matrimonial
difficulties, early in 1513, Charles Brandon was entrusted with a
diplomatic mission to Flanders, to negotiate a marriage between Mary
Tudor, the king’s youngest sister, and the young Archduke Charles of
Austria, Infante of Spain, the most powerful and richest prince in
Europe. On this occasion he displayed his majestic and graceful figure
to such advantage in the tilt-yard, that the demonstrative expressions
of admiration which escaped the proposed bridegroom’s aunt, Drayton’s
“blooming duchess,” the most high and mighty Princess Margaret,
Archduchess of Austria, dowager Duchess of Savoy, and daughter of the
Emperor Maximilian, evoked sarcastic comment from the illustrious
company.
On Brandon’s return, Henry VIII, probably with a view to facilitating
a possible alliance between his favourite and the dowager of Savoy,
to universal surprise and some indignation, created his “well-beloved
Charles Brandon,” Duke of Suffolk, a title until quite recently held by
the semi-regal, but dispossessed house of de la Pole,[16] and further
presented him with the vast territorial apanage of that family, which
included Westhorpe Hall, near Bury St. Edmunds; Donnington Castle, the
inheritance of Chaucer’s granddaughter, the first Duchess of Suffolk;
Wingfield Castle, in Suffolk; Rising Castle in Norfolk; and Lethering
Butley in Herefordshire.[17]
In the summer of 1513, while the king was sojourning at Tournay, he
received a visit from the Archduke Charles of Castile and Austria, and
his aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Savoy, Regent of the Netherlands.
These august personages came to congratulate the English monarch on
the capture of Tournay from their mutual enemy, Louis XI of France.
At this time the Austro-Spanish archduke still hoped to secure the
hand of the King of England’s handsome sister, Mary Tudor, who had
accompanied her brother to France. Henry did his best to ingratiate
himself with the regent, a handsome lady with a foolish whimpering
expression, who, if we may judge her by her portrait in the Museum at
Brussels, was most apt to credit anything and everything that flattered
her fancy. The king and his favourites, indeed, to amuse her, behaved
less like gentlemen than mountebanks. Henry danced grotesquely before
her and played on the giltrone, the lute and the cornet for her
diversion, and his boon companions followed their master’s example
and exhibited their accomplishments as dancers and musicians. The
contemporary _Chronicle of Calais_ contains a most amusing account of
the way Henry and Charles made game of the poor dowager, who betrayed
her too evident partiality for the latter. Brandon actually went so
far on one occasion as to steal a ring from her finger; “and I took
him to laugh,” says Margaret of Savoy, describing this incident,[18]
“and said to him that he was _un larron_—a thief—and that I thought the
king had with him led thieves out of his country. This word _larron_
he could not understand.” So Henry had to be called in to explain
it to him. His Majesty next contrived a sort of love-scene between
the pair, in which he made Duchess Margaret a very laughing-stock,
by inducing her to repeat after him in her broken English the most
appalling improprieties, the princess being utterly ignorant of the
meaning of the words she was parroting. To lead her on, Suffolk, who
was not a good French scholar, made answer, at the king’s prompting,
to the princess’s extraordinary declarations, in fairly respectable
French. At last, however, the good lady realized the situation, and,
rising in dudgeon, declared Brandon to be “no gentleman and no match
for her,”[19] and thus he lost his chance, though he never lost, as we
shall presently see, the great lady’s friendship.
[Illustration:
[_To face p._ 20
HENRY VIII AT THE AGE OF 53
(_From National Portrait Gallery_)]
This silly prank on the English king’s part was, no doubt, the final
cause of the rupture of the proposed alliance between Mary Tudor
and the Archduke Charles of Castile. Be this as it may, it was at
Tournay that Mary was reported to have first fallen a victim to the
blandishments of Suffolk, who, while fooling the regent, was covertly
courting his dread patron’s sister. He flattered himself that the
king, loving him so tenderly as a friend, would readily accept him as
a brother-in-law. In this he was mistaken. Henry had other views for
Princess Mary’s future; and no sooner was the Austro-Spanish match
broken off,[20] thanks to certain political intrigues too lengthy
and intricate to recapitulate here, than he set to work to arrange a
marriage between Mary and King Louis XII,[21] who, although generally
described as “old,” was at this time not more than fifty-three years of
age. His appearance, however, was most forbidding; he suffered from the
deformity of elephantiasis, and was scarred by some scorbutic disease,
“as if with small-pox.”[22]
CHAPTER II
THE FRENCH MARRIAGE
THE negotiations for this incongruous marriage, which united, for the
first time since the Norman Conquest, a British princess to a French
king, proceeded very slowly, for Henry knew well that his sister would
reluctantly sacrifice her youth to so ugly and sickly a bridegroom:
thus, according to the late Major Martin Hume, the first intimation of
the proposal Mary received was not until after a tournament held at
Westminster on May 14, 1514.
This tournament, in the open space between the ancient Palace and the
Abbey, was magnificent in the extreme. Never before had there been
seen in England so many silken banners, canopies, and tents of cloth
of silver and gold. Queen Katherine of Aragon watched the tilting from
a pavilion of crimson damask, embroidered with golden pomegranates,
the emblems of her native country. Beside her sat Princess Mary, a
pink-and-white beauty, with hair of amazing length shimmering down
her back, and held in position by a band of jewels that encircled
her graceful head. Behind the princess many great ladies occupied
the roomy chairs of state—the Countess of Westmorland and her lovely
Nevill daughters, the Lady Paulet, the Lady of Exeter, the Lady de
Mowbray, the Duchess of Norfolk, the Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, sister
of the Duke of Norfolk and mother of the future Queen Anne, the “old
Lady” of Oxford, and the Princess Margaret Plantagenet, that fated
Countess of Salisbury who in after years was hacked to death by order
of her most affectionate nephew, King Henry VIII, now in the full
bloom of early manhood. There was a great nodding of glittering hoods
and rustling of silken gowns, and whispering and tittering amongst
this bevy of high and mighty dames, unto whom many a gallant knight
and lordly sire conveyed his homage and the latest gossip of the day.
Over the multi-coloured crowd fell the golden haze of a lovely October
afternoon. Farther away from the throng of lords and ladies, the hearty
citizens of London pressed against the barriers, whilst rich burghers,
and British and foreign merchants, with their wives and daughters,
filled the special seats allotted to them, that commanded a finer view
of the towers of Westminster than did the richer canopies of the court
folk. Itinerant vendors of sweetmeats, apples, nuts and cakes, hawked
their wares up and down the free spaces, whilst ballad-mongers sang—or
rather shouted—their ditties, just as their descendants do, whenever
there is a show of sport or pastime in our own day. Men and maidens
cheered lustily as knight after knight, armed _cap-à-pie_, pranced his
steed before the delighted spectators, even as we parade our horses
before the race at Epsom, Sandown or Ascot.
The expressed hope was, of course, that the English knights should
vanquish the French noble prisoners who had been set at liberty shortly
before the tilt, so that they might join in the sport. The champions
among them were the Duc de Longueville and the Sire de Clermont. The
trumpets sounded, a hush fell upon the noisy gathering, all eyes were
turned in one direction, as two stalwart champions entered the lists.
They were garbed as hermits, the one in a black satin cloak with a
hood, the other in a white one. With all the punctilious observance
demanded by established rule and etiquette, these hermits, who rode
mighty chargers caparisoned in silver mail, advanced towards the royal
pavilion and made obeisance. On a sudden, off fell their cloaks and
hoods, to reveal the two handsomest men in Europe, to boot, Henry,
King of England, and Charles, Duke of Suffolk, clad from head to
foot in silver armour, damascened in gold by Venetian armourers. Long
white plumes flowed from the crests of their gilded helmets. Behind
the British champions rode two other fine fellows, bearing standards
on which figured in golden letters the motto: “Who can hold that will
away?” On reading this motto, the fair bent, the one to the other, to
discuss its meaning. Did it refer to the young King of Castile and
Flanders; or to the fact that Charles Brandon, as it was whispered
about, was venturing to raise his eyes so high as to meet those of the
Emperor Maximilian’s daughter, Margaret of Austria? It was said, too,
that the Lady Mary, the king’s sister, liked not the motto; for even
then she had conceived a wild though secret passion for the splendid
son of a Suffolk squire.
The English (God and St. George be praised!) won the day; the Duc de
Longueville was defeated “right honourably,” and so, too, was the Sire
de Clermont. The silken kerchief, the gilded cup and the wreath of
laurel were for Charles Brandon; and the princess, the Beauty Queen of
the day, presented them to him as he knelt before her. Katherine of
Aragon bestowed the second prize, a cup of gold, on her husband, who
had vanquished Clermont.
Immediately after the jousts, Mary Tudor learnt, to her exasperation,
that her hand was destined, not for the Spanish prince, the future
Emperor Charles V, nor for the Suffolk gentleman, but for the decrepit
and doomed King of France. She was too much of a Tudor to accept her
fate with meekness, and King Henry soon found he had set himself a
difficult task to conciliate his sister, and obtain her consent to
what was even then considered a monstrous match. She swore she would
not marry his French majesty, unless her brother gave her his solemn
promise that she should marry whom she listed when she became a widow.
The king answered that, by God! she might do as she listed, if only she
pleased him this time. He urged that King Louis was prematurely aged,
and not likely, so he had been told, to live many months. Besides, he
was passing rich, and the princess would have more diamonds, pearls
and rubies than she had hairs on her head. Henry even appealed to her
patriotism. England needed peace; the prolonged wars between France and
England had exhausted both, and it was deemed advisable that the French
should be made to understand, by this happy event, that the enmity
which had existed so long had ceased at last. It was to be a thorough
_entente cordiale_ on both sides. None the less, when they got to know
of it, both the English and the French cracked many an indelicate jest
over this unnatural alliance. The bride, it will be remembered, was
still in her teens, and beautiful: the bridegroom-elect was fifty-three
and looked twenty years older, the most disfiguring of his complication
of loathsome diseases being, as we have seen, elephantiasis, which had
swollen his face and head so enormously that when, on her arrival in
France, Mary first beheld her future consort, she drew back, with an
unconcealed cry of horror. For some days Mary seemed obdurate, despite
Henry’s promise that, on the death of the French king, she might marry
whom she listed. But at last she allowed her brother’s persuasive
arguments to prevail, so that, dazzled by the prospect of becoming the
richest and grandest princess in Europe, she finally, but reluctantly,
consented to marry King Louis.
The “treaty of marriage” between Louis XII and Mary Tudor was signed at
London by the representatives of both parties on August 7 (1514); and
the marriage by proxy, according to the custom of the time, took place
in the Grey Friars’ Church at Greenwich, before Henry VIII, Katherine
of Aragon, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Dukes of Norfolk and
Suffolk, the Bishops of Winchester and Durham, and others, on August
13. The recently liberated Duc de Longueville represented the French
king, whereas the Duke of Orleans gave the bride the ring; afterwards
the primate pronounced a brief panegyric of the young queen’s virtues,
and those of her august spouse, whom he described as the best and
greatest prince in Europe.
The bride left England’s shores on October 2, after a tearful
leave-taking of her brother and sister-in-law, King Henry and Queen
Katherine. The chronicles of those far-off times, ever delighting in
giving the minutest details, inform us that she was “terrible sea-sick”
before she arrived at Boulogne, where a pious pageant had been prepared
to greet her. Above the drawbridge of the port, suspended in mid-air,
was a ship, painted with garlands of the roses of England mingled with
the _fleur-de-lys_ of France, and bearing the inscription, _Un Dieu,
Un Roy, Une Foy, Une Loy_: “One God, One King, One Faith, One Law.”
In this ship stood a young girl—“dressed like the Virgin Mary,” as
the chronicler tells us—together with two winged children, supposed
to be angels. The young lady represented Notre Dame de Boulogne, the
patroness of the city, and bore the civic gift, destined for the
princess, consisting of a silver swan, whose neck opened, to disclose
a golden heart weighing sixty _écus_. So violently raged the storm,
that the heavy vessel, instead of riding gracefully into the harbour,
stuck on a sandbank, and the future Queen of France, dripping with
sea-water, had to be carried ashore by Sir Christopher Gervase.
On reaching land, she was met by the Heir Presumptive of her new
dominions, François, Duc de Valois, the Dukes of Alençon and Bourbon,
and the Counts de Vendôme, de Saint-Pol, and de Guise, supported by
the Abbots of Notre Dame and of St. Wulmer, accompanied by their monks
wearing copes, and bearing, enclosed in gold and silver shrines, all
the relics from their respective churches. In the presence of this
goodly company, the ship containing the aforesaid representative of
Our Lady of Boulogne was lowered to the ground, and the young lady
addressed the princess “en rhétoricque,” otherwise French verse,
welcoming her to Boulogne, and presenting her with the city’s gift.
Mary then proceeded to the Church of Notre Dame, and after praying
there awhile, she was, so says our chronicler, “agreeably occupied in
admiring all the rich and royal offerings that formed the principal
attraction of the Church.” And gorgeous and wonderful indeed must it
have been, before the vandal greed of King Henry’s troops had sacked
the shrine. The Treasury contained nearly a hundred gold and silver
reliquaries, eighteen great silver images, most of them containing
relics, “eleven hearts and a great number of arms and legs, both in
gold and silver” (votive offerings), twenty dresses and twelve mantles
of very precious stuffs, “for the use of the holy Image.” The altar of
the Blessed Virgin was especially magnificent. Seven lamps, four in
silver and the rest of gold, burnt incessantly before the Madonna, who
held in one hand a golden heart, whilst the other supported a figure of
the Infant Jesus, who clasped in His chubby hand a bouquet of “golden
flowers,” amongst which was “a carbuncle of a prodigious bigness”;
the pillars and columns round this altar were sheathed in “blades of
silver”: “in short,” says the chronicler, “everything which was in this
chapel could challenge comparison with the richest and most renowned
objects that antiquity ever had.” Such was the splendour that enchanted
and bewildered our Princess Mary, who after offering to Our Lady of
Boulogne a gift consisting of “a great arm of silver, enamelled with
the arms of France and England, and weighing eight marcs,” proceeded
on her way to Abbeville, near which city she was met, in the forest
of Ardres, by King Louis, mounted on a charger and attended by a
glittering train of lords and attendants.
To the young and beautiful Mary, who had only just recovered from
a violent sea-sickness, this first meeting with her future lord and
master must indeed have been painful. As she afterwards admitted,
she had never before seen a human being so horribly ugly. It is
not therefore to be wondered at that she should have uttered the
exclamation of horror above mentioned. King Louis, for his part, was in
the best of humours; never merrier. He was very plainly dressed, and
was evidently bent on correcting, by his munificence and good temper,
whatever unfavourable impression might be created by his unfortunate
appearance. Before arriving at the place of meeting, Princess Mary
had changed her travelling gown for a weighty robe covered with
goldsmith’s work “like unto a suit of armour.” So awkward and stiff was
this costume, that when the princess, in accordance with etiquette,
attempted to descend from her litter to bend the knee before her
royal spouse, she found she was unable to do so, and was in great
distress until the deformed king gallantly begged her not to attempt so
complicated a manœuvre, and won a grateful smile from his embarrassed
bride.
The marriage took place on Monday, October 9 (1514), at Abbeville, in
the fine old Church of St. Wolfran, and is one of the most gorgeous
functions recorded of those pageant-loving times. Something mysterious
must have happened at Abbeville, for, according to the Bishop of Asti,
the marriage was consummated by proxy—a weird ceremony in which the
Marquis de Rothelin (representing King Louis), fully dressed in a
red suit, except for one stocking, hopped into the bride’s bed and
touched her with his naked leg; and the “marriage was then declared
consummated.” Possibly, considering the rickety state of his health,
this was all the married life, in its more intimate form, that,
fortunately, Mary Tudor ever knew so long as Louis XII lived. As an
earnest of his affection, however, the sickly king presented his spouse
with a collection of jewels a few days after the marriage, amongst
these being “a ruby almost two inches long and valued at ten thousand
marks.”
In the meantime, there had been some unpleasantness between the French
monarch and the Earl of Worcester, the English ambassador, about
the presence in France of one of the queen’s maids, Mistress Joan
Popincourt. The question of her fitness to accompany the princess was
first raised before Mary left our shores, to reach its culminating
point whilst the new queen was resting at Boulogne, at which time
King Louis (then at Abbeville) had an interview with Worcester on
the subject. The trouble is said to have originated in the fact
that Mistress Popincourt had behaved herself with considerable
impropriety,—at least that was the accusation the English envoy laid
before his majesty of France; but if we read between the lines of
the letters and documents connected with this side-plot, we learn
that it was Mistress Popincourt who had first attempted to negotiate
the marriage of her mistress with King Louis by means of the Duc de
Longueville, whilst that nobleman was still imprisoned in the Tower of
London. As the negotiations had succeeded, even through another medium,
she considered herself entitled to some recompense for her share in
the affair, and probably attempted to blackmail the king; at any rate,
for one reason or another, he was so furious with her, that on the
occasion in question, he told Worcester never to “name her any more
unto me.” “I would she were burnt,” he added; “if King Henry make her
to be burnt, he shall do but well and a good deed!” Mary, however, held
the recalcitrant Popincourt in the highest esteem. None the less, King
Louis decided that she should be there and then sent back to England,
but whether with a goodly recompense to soothe her disappointment is
not recorded. Maybe she, who had done so much to further the royal
match, found herself better off than the other unfortunate attendants
on Princess Mary, who, being dismissed after her arrival at Abbeville,
were stranded, penniless. Some of these misguided ladies had, says
Hall, “been at much expense to wait on her [Princess Mary] to France,
and now returned destitute, which many took to heart, insomuch some
died by the way returning, and some fell mad.”[23]
Evidently King Louis was determined not to have too many Englishwomen
in attendance upon his wife, or, as he put it, “to spy upon his
actions,” for fresh difficulties arose, even after the Popincourt
incident was closed, and he and the princess had been united in
matrimony. According to arrangement, certain of the queen’s ladies
were to return to England forthwith, but King Louis and his English
monitor, the Duke of Norfolk, settled the matter by ordering that
_all_ Mary’s train of young English gentlewomen and maidens, with
the exception of the Lady Anne Boleyn[24] and of three others,
were to return home. This was bad enough, but Mary was still more
distressed to find that her confidential attendant and nurse, Mother
Guildford, was very unceremoniously packed off with the rest. “Moder”
or “Mowder” Guildford, as the queen was pleased to call her, was the
wife of Sir William Guildford, controller of the royal household, who
eventually stood godfather to that unfortunate Guildford Dudley who
became the husband of Lady Jane Grey. If we may believe King Louis,
he had certainly some justification for wishing Lady Guildford out of
his sight, since she exasperated him to such an extent that he told
Worcester that “rather than have such a woman about my wife, I would
liever be without a wife.... Also, “he continued, “I am a sickly body,
and not at all times that I would be merry with my wife like I to have
any strange woman with her, but one that I am well acquainted with,
afore whom I durst be merry.” The king went on to pathetically relate
the story of his own and his wife’s sufferings under Lady Guildford’s
iron rule. “For as soon as she came on land,” says he, “and also when
I was married, Lady Guildford began to take upon her not only to rule
the queen, but also that she should not come to me, but she should
remain with her, nor that no lady or lord should speak with the queen
but she [Lady Guildford] hear it. Withal she began to set a murmur and
banding among the ladies of the French court.” The “Moder” Guildford
episode induced Mary to write several letters home, one to Henry VIII
and another to Wolsey, complaining of the treatment she had received
with respect to the dismissal of her attendants. In these she speaks
in no measured terms of the Duke of Norfolk, who, as we have seen, had
the matter in hand: “I would to God,” she exclaims in the letter to
Henry VIII, “that my Lord of York [Wolsey] had come with me instead of
Norfolk, for then I am sure I should not have been left as I am now!”
In fact, she cast the whole blame of the incident on the shoulders of
the Duke of Norfolk, whom she ever afterwards disliked for his share
in it. Nevertheless, “Mowder” Guildford was sent back to England, to
the great distress and grief of her royal mistress, who was preparing
to have a violent scene on the subject with her rickety husband,
when the latter came into her chamber, accompanied by two attendants
bearing a tray so heaped with rubies, diamonds and pearls, that the
cloud of anger instantly passed from the queen’s brow, and her sunny
smiles beamed afresh, when she heard the politic and courteous monarch
say, “I have deprived you of one treasure, let me now present you with
another.” And then he placed a collar of immense pearls round her neck,
and taking a heap of jewels in his big hands, dropped them into her
lap. “I will have no Guildfords, Popincourts, or other jades to mar my
cheer or to stand betwixt me and my wife,” he continued laughingly;
“but I intend to be paid for my jewels, and each kiss my wife gives
me shall cost me a gem.” On this the covetous Mary kissed him several
times, to the number of eight, which he counted, and punctually repaid
by giving her eight enamelled buttons surrounded by large pearls. By
this amorous playfulness, the astute Louis succeeded in making his
queen so contented with her lot, that she presently told Worcester
that “finding she was now able to do as she liked in all things,” she
thought she was better without Lady Guildford, and would decline to
have her back again in France. Mary not only forgave King Louis his
share in the business, but personally nursed him through an attack of
gout, which beset him at Abbeville, and delayed the royal departure
from that town until October 31, when the quaint cavalcade resumed its
journey towards St. Denis.
It was one continuous pageant in every village and town through which
the royal _cortège_ passed, between Abbeville and St. Denis. Even in
villages and hamlets, children dressed as angels, with golden wings,
met the fair queen, to present to her pretty gifts of fruit and
flowers. It took the king and queen and their escort six days to reach
St. Denis, spending the nights either in episcopal palaces or in the
splendid abbeys which lined the way. Although the French greeted the
queen heartily, it was noticed that they “became overcast and sour”
as they looked on the magnificent but defiant figure of the Duke of
Suffolk, as he rode, in his silver armour, on the right side of the
queen’s litter, whilst on the left cantered that stalwart nobleman,
Thomas Grey, first Marquis of Dorset, who was destined by a curious
and unexpected event to become the grandfather of Her Majesty’s
ill-fated grandchildren, the Ladies Jane, Katherine and Mary Grey. At
last, early in the morning of Sunday, November 5, the English princess
passed up the splendid nave of St. Denis, escorted by all that was
highest and mightiest in French chivalry. The Duc de Longueville, the
Duc d’Alençon, the Duke of Albany, Regent of Scotland, the Duke of
Bourbon, and the Count de Vendôme, preceded her, bearing between them
the regalia. Mary followed, escorted by the Duke of Valois, and clothed
in a mantle of cloth of gold. She wore such a prodigious quantity of
jewels that a number of them had to be removed in the sacristy before
she was able to proceed with the innumerable ceremonies of the day.
The new queen was anointed by the Cardinal de Pré, who also presented
her with the sceptre and “verge of justice.” When, after more ceremony
than prayer, the cardinal had placed the crown of France upon her brow,
Prince Francis of Valois led Her Majesty to a throne raised high above
the choir, whence in solitary state she glanced down upon the throng of
prelates, priests and noblemen and noblewomen who crowded the chancel
and the altar-steps, and overflowed into the nave and transepts. There
she sat alone, for weak and sickly King Louis could do no more than
witness the coronation, contenting himself by obtaining a view of it
from a small closet window above the high altar.
The following day, at noon, Queen Mary passed on to Paris, whither King
Louis had preceded her earlier in the morning. On this occasion she
did not occupy a litter, but rode by herself in a species of carriage
designated “a chaise or chair,” embellished with cloth of gold, and
drawn by two milk-white horses with silver reins and harness. Her
Majesty, all in white and gold, did not wear the crown of France, but
merely a diadem of pearls, from beneath which streamed her luxuriant
tresses. Pressing round the queen’s chariot, rode the pick of the
nobility of France, followed by the Scotch Guard and a detachment of
German mercenaries. Pageants and allegories greeted the royal progress
at every turn. When close to Paris, the queen’s train was met by three
thousand Parisian students, law officers and representatives of the
city council, who chanted in chorus a quaint song, still extant, in
which Mary is likened to the Queen of Sheba and Louis XII to King
Solomon. Over the portcullis of the Porte St. Denis was erected a ship,
containing “mountebanks” representing Henry VIII in the character of
Honour, and Princess Mary as Ceres, whilst an actor, wearing King
Louis’s own gorgeous robes, offered “Ceres” a bunch of grapes, and was
popularly held to personate Bacchus!
In the midst of what we should now consider a circus-like cavalcade,
the queen, escorted by a thousand horsemen bearing flaring torches,
passed round the quays of Paris, brilliantly illuminated for the
occasion, to her resting-place at the Conciergerie, where, we are
informed, she was so dead tired that, after the official reception
by King Louis and subsequent banquet, she fell asleep and had to be
carried to her nuptial chamber. Here, so it is stated, King Louis did
not receive her, since he was fast asleep already in his own bedchamber
at the Louvre, whither he had retired many hours earlier. He was awake
pretty early the next day, for at nine o’clock he breakfasted with the
queen, having previously presented her with a bouquet of gems, the
flowers being made of coloured stones and the leaves of emeralds. The
king never left his bride the whole of that day, and it was observed
that whenever he gazed upon her, he would put his hand to his heart
and heave a deep sigh. Nothing can be imagined more ludicrous, and at
the same time more pathetic, than the ardour of this poor, hopelessly
love-sick monarch for his beautiful wife, who, thorough Tudor as
she was, never missed an opportunity of fleecing him of jewels and
trinkets, to such an extent as at last to excite the indignation of the
court.
The coronation festivities closed with jousts in which “my lorde à
Sofehoke,” as the Marquis of Dorset calls him in a letter,[25] got
“a little hurt in the hand.” In this same epistle the marquis adds
that King Louis considered that Suffolk and his English company “dyd
shame aule (all) Franse.” They did such execution indeed that, as
the chroniclers complacently remark, “at every course many dead were
carried off without notice taken.” The exasperation of the French
against Suffolk grew so great—or was it due, as tradition suggests,
to Francis of Valois’s personal jealousy of the British duke?—that
they commissioned, contrary to all etiquette of tourney, an abnormally
powerful German trooper to kill him by treachery in the lists. Suffolk,
however, saw through the mean trick, and refusing to treat such a
ruffian according to chivalric rules, gripped him by the scruff of the
neck, and punched his head with much heartiness, to the ill-concealed
satisfaction of the spectators.
It does not require much imagination to divine what were the thoughts
of the lusty young queen, as she watched the prowess of her triumphant
lover in the tilt-yard, and mentally contrasted his manly beauty
with the wreck that was her husband, who lay on a couch at her side,
“grunting and groaning.” He, poor man, was ever graciously courteous,
and expressed his delight whenever, in her enthusiasm, the lovely
queen, regardless of etiquette, rose to her feet and leant over to
applaud the British champions as they rode by her canopy of state.
“Ma mie,” cried old Louis, “your eyes brighten like stars when the
English succeed. I shall be jealous.” “Fie!” returned the queen with
an arch smile, “surely there is no chance for the French today, since,
fortunately for my countrymen, your majesty is too unwell to join in
the fray?”
When the queen rose to return to the palace, the whole crowd burst into
a storm of cheering, crying: “Vive la Reine anglaise!” Mary’s beauty
was not the beauty of regularity of feature so often found in France,
but of that rarer sort, peculiar to northerly regions, the beauty
of the glorious colouring of the blended Tudor and Lancaster roses;
so that when the queen pressed forward to the gorgeously decorated
balustrade and kissed her hands to the people, the enthusiasm of _ses
bons Parisiens_ passed all bounds; and Mary Tudor’s tact and grace won
all hearts, when she insisted that the king should lean upon her arm
to descend the stairway. Louise of Savoy, jealously noting all these
things, said to herself: “Elle ira loin, celle-là”; and forthwith
endeavoured to set her son, Francis of Valois, against the young queen,
whereby she only fanned his rising passion for her. If Queen Mary
Tudor had managed in a few hours to captivate the Parisians, she failed
to make a favourable impression upon the court of France. Her free and
easy manner, her good nature, her pleasant smiles, and, above all, her
astounding love of jewelry, were well calculated to stimulate jealousy
and hatred. The game against her now began in earnest. Its object was
to abstract the king from her influence. But Mary was a Tudor, and went
ahead steadfastly, regardless of intrigues, quips and frowns; and by
a sheer display of good nature and the firm obstinacy peculiar to her
race, succeeded in defeating her enemies, and having all things her own
way. Possibly, in her heart of hearts, she rejoiced to think that she
had an opportunity of amassing great wealth by very easy means, and
was buoyed up by her secret passion for the Duke of Suffolk, and the
knowledge that, with a little patience, she would be able to claim him
from her brother as a pledge of her good behaviour whilst occupying the
difficult position of Queen of France.
Mary, notwithstanding her overwhelming passion for Suffolk, was by
far the most amiable and respectable member of the Tudor family;
she behaved with the utmost propriety while Queen of France, and
her kindness to her infirm husband filled him with a hopeless but
chivalrous passion, of which he gave practical expression by a
boundless generosity[26] that excited the jealousy of the rest of the
French royal family and imperilled the safety of his greedy queen.
King Louis XII died on New Year’s Day 1515, less than four months
after his marriage, and his widow immediately retired to the Hôtel de
Cluny[27] to spend the first weeks of her widowhood in the rigorous
seclusion imposed by the etiquette of the French court. She was
obliged, according to custom, to dress herself entirely in white,
and to remain the whole day long in a bed of state, draped with
black velvet. The room was darkened, and only lighted with tapers of
unbleached wax, whilst all the queen’s meals were served on silver
platters covered with black silk cloths and serviettes.
In the meantime, Louise of Savoy, mother of the new king, Francis I,
a most intriguing princess, began to agitate for the return of the
youthful dowager to England. She had made up her mind that Mary should
not wed the Archduke Charles of Austria-Spain, who again came forward
as a suitor, nor yet encourage the attentions of her own son, who
had practically deserted his consort, Claude, daughter of the late
king by his second wife, Anne of Brittany. The court astrologers had
persuaded Francis that before many weeks were over, good Queen Claude,
of greengage fame,[28] stout, short, and very plain, would die, and
that, as he was soon to become a widower, he might just as well begin
his courtship at once. The duchess-mother, well versed in the laxity of
the age in which she lived, was terribly afraid Francis might attempt
to set aside his wife, in order to marry the English widow, in which
event Claude’s rich heritage, the duchy of Brittany, would pass from
the French Crown. She therefore resolved to get rid of Mary Tudor, a
resolution strengthened by her well-founded conviction that even in the
early days of her mourning, Francis I had intruded into the widow’s
presence. At her first secret interview with the new king, Mary told
him plainly that her heart already belonged to Suffolk, and that
she “was resolved to marry none other.” She even reminded Francis of
his own neglected consort, and he, instead of resenting this rebuff,
promised to exert his influence to obtain Henry VIII’s consent to
Mary’s union with her lover.
CHAPTER III
CLOTH OF FRIEZE WEDS CLOTH OF GOLD
HENRY VIII was accused, at the time, of having sent Suffolk as special
ambassador, on the death of King Louis, in order to lure his sister
back to England, with the object, as soon as he had her in his power,
of re-opening negotiations for her marriage with the Archduke Charles
of Castile.[29] If this was the case, he little understood his sister’s
character, for in her first interview with Suffolk she gave him to
understand that she “would not land in her brother’s dominions except
as his [Suffolk’s] bride.” According to the French contemporary
historian Daniel,[30] she even declared: “If you do not court and wed
me within four days I will not hold you for much of a man, and will
stay abroad.” The duke, much alarmed, remonstrated with her, objecting
that so exalted an alliance might lead to his ruin both in France and
England, seeing he was but “base born”; and, he might have added,
already married to no less than two wives, both still living. The young
dowager of France, however, reminded him that “when she married King
Louis she had made it a condition that on becoming a widow she was to
have full liberty to marry whom she chose, and she chose to marry none
other than himself.” Whereupon Suffolk, as he subsequently informed his
master, “could but obey”; and, to use his homely expression, “she and I
were married.”[31]
[Illustration:
[_To face p._ 50
CHARLES BRANDON, DUKE OF SUFFOLK, AND MARY TUDOR, TAKEN TOGETHER
(_From an engraving, by Vertue, of the original portrait by Mabuse_)]
Louise of Savoy’s spies soon informed her that Mary and Suffolk were
in constant communication with each other, and she was even informed
that the duke had been seen leaving her apartment at questionable
hours. Seizing a favourable opportunity when she knew the lovers to be
together, the duchess threw open the door of the queen’s closet and,
it seems, discovered Her Majesty and her lover in so compromising a
situation, that “she ordered the startled couple into the chapel and
then and there had them married by a priest who chanced to be saying
Mass.” When Francis heard the wedding was well over, he did all in his
power to propitiate his “dearly beloved brother Henry VIII.” He was not
very successful, however, and Mary and her husband had to spend some
weeks of terrible suspense, during which an astounding correspondence
was kept up between them, Henry VIII, and Wolsey,[32] one of Mary’s
staunchest friends, who consistently took her part. Most of Suffolk’s
letters are undated, and written in an almost illegible hand. Their
tone is honest enough, but he takes good care not to allude to the
fact that he had two wives living. In one missive, of a particularly
confidential sort, he expresses fear that this royal marriage may ruin
him; and adds: “My Lord, as the reverence of God, help that I may
be married as I go out of France openly for many things of which I
will advertise you.” The queen’s handwriting in her numerous letters
to her brother and to the cardinal varies much, apparently according
to the state of her nerves. In some of them her hand has evidently
trembled, so as to render her calligraphy almost illegible, and this
is notably the case in a document which settled her business to her
own satisfaction and most certainly to that of her greedy brother. As
we have seen, King Louis had been very lavish with gifts of gold and
silver plate, and above all jewelry, including even the celebrated
“Star of Naples” (_Stella di Napoli_),[33] a diamond of abnormal size
and brilliance, which Charles VIII had filched from Ferrante of Naples,
when he paid his unwelcome visit to Italy in 1498. These glittering
baubles, valued in those days at the enormous sum of £200,000, equal
to over £1,000,000 of present currency, together with her rich dower,
Mary freely handed over to Henry VIII, on condition that he recognized
her marriage with her worthless, though handsome, husband and forgave
them both. The deed of gift[34] whereby the queen yields up all her
treasures to Henry VIII, is preserved in the _Cottonían Collection_ in
the King’s Library of the British Museum. When Francis I learnt that
she had parted with the “Star of Naples” he waxed exceeding wroth and
attempted to repossess himself of it. If Duchess Louise, who at this
time ruled her son, had not been in such a hurry to get rid of the
queen dowager, this affair of the Neapolitan diamond might have cost
Mary dear. Out of France, however, it was necessary that she should go,
and the sooner the better; so she was allowed to depart in peace, with
all her valuables, which, shortly after her arrival in England, were
duly handed over to the king, her brother.[35]
Henry was so well pleased with the treasure she brought him that
he received his sister at Greenwich Palace with effusion, and was
ostentatiously civil to Suffolk. On May 13, 1515, the Queen Dowager of
France and Charles Brandon were re-married publicly in Grey Friars’
Church, Greenwich, the ceremony being performed by the Archbishop of
Canterbury and graced by the presence of King Henry and Katherine of
Aragon. The wedding was followed by a magnificent banquet, the plan for
the arrangement of the table for which still exists. This plan proves
that in those days ladies and gentlemen were seated alternately,
according to their precedence, precisely as at a modern dinner-party.
In honour of these unequal nuptials, elaborate jousts and tournaments
were held, in which the bridegroom, and Thomas, Marquis of Dorset,
Lady Jane’s other grandfather, won great applause and many prizes. A
number of bridal portraits, intended as gifts to friends, were painted
on this occasion. These depict Mary Tudor as a broad-faced woman, with
an evidently dazzling complexion, small eyes, golden hair, and a firm
but rather sensual mouth. At the Historical Exhibition held in the New
Gallery in 1902, the writer was particularly struck by the remarkable
resemblance between the disputed likeness of Jane Grey, preserved
at Althorp, and the small portrait of her grandmother, Mary Tudor,
attributed to Holbein, now in His Majesty’s collection at Windsor
Castle. Mary has the same broad face with small features as Jane
Grey. Her expression is pleasing[36] and bears a strong resemblance
to the earlier likenesses of Henry VIII. In the Windsor picture the
queen-duchess holds a globe in the shape of an artichoke, above which,
in the left corner of the portrait, appear some lines, said to have
been composed by the Duke of Suffolk for the occasion:—
“Cloth of gold, do not despise,
Though thou hast wedded cloth of frieze.
Cloth of frieze, be not too bold,
Though thou hast wedded cloth of gold.”
The attitude assumed by Cardinal Wolsey in the affair of Charles
Brandon’s royal marriage was friendly enough both to bride and
bridegroom, although in the course of the correspondence which preceded
the wedding, he reminded Suffolk, in very straightforward fashion, of
his “cloth-of-frieze” origin. There was some mysterious connection
between the cardinal and Charles Brandon: it seems, indeed, that
Henry VIII had conceived the sinister project of ridding himself of
his brother-in-law on some trumped-up charge of treason, once he had
possessed himself of her treasure. Apparently Wolsey saved Brandon’s
life at that time, of which fact he reminded him some years later.
Suffolk was one of the judges at Queen Katherine’s trial (1529), and,
being exasperated one day by the way in which Wolsey constantly impeded
the king’s desire to close the matter at once without appealing to
Rome, he struck the table, exclaiming loudly that “they had never been
merry in England since a cardinal came amongst them.” Rising to his
feet, Wolsey replied with the utmost dignity: “Sir, of all men within
this realm, ye have the least cause to dispraise or be offended with
cardinals, for, but for me, simple cardinal as I am, you at this moment
would have had no head upon your shoulders, and therefore no tongue
to make so rude a report against me. You know what friendship ye have
received at my hand, and which never before this time have I revealed
to any one alive, either to my own glory or to your dishonour.”
Suffolk, who well knew the circumstance to which the cardinal alluded,
rose abruptly,[37] and, abashed, left the council chamber.
Wolsey evidently hinted at some matter connected with Brandon’s weird
matrimonial adventures already related; or else to the fact that he had
saved him from the clutches of his brother-in-law for some imprudence
history has not revealed.
After her return to England, Mary Tudor regained her royal position,
and for a brief time she lived in considerable state at Suffolk’s house
on his Southwark estate. A year or two ago, a fair Tudor archway and
a few other remains of this fine mansion were discovered during the
erection of some model school-houses. Suffolk Court, as it was called,
had two parks, one of which stretched down to the bank of the Thames;
and in the extensive gardens there was a maze, or labyrinth, similar to
the one at Hampton Court. A street in the neighbourhood is still known
as Suffolk Street, though probably not one of its inhabitants is aware
that it marks the site of a princely residence. The Duke of Suffolk
had yet another dwelling in London, situated at the top of the Strand:
it was built in 1539 on a site occupied in our day by Northumberland
Avenue. He and his royal consort frequently lived here, and probably
used it as their winter residence. They occasionally rented Stepney
Palace from the bishops of London, and some of Mary’s letters are dated
thence.
At Suffolk Court, about eighteen months after her marriage, Mary gave
birth to a son, to whom Henry VIII stood godfather, the christening
being attended by the king and queen. Some time after his birth, the
infant was taken to Bridewell Palace, where Henry raised him to the
rank of Earl of Lincoln. At Suffolk Court the queen-duchess received
and entertained the Emperor Charles V, when he visited England
to be betrothed to the young Princess Mary. Notwithstanding her
_mésalliance_, the Duchess of Suffolk was treated as the second lady
in the realm, precedence immediately after the queen being accorded to
her at all State functions, notably during the great reception given
to Charles V at Canterbury (1518), and, later, at that unparalleled
pageant, the Field of the Cloth of Gold, at which she figured both as
dowager Queen of France and as a princess of the blood royal and a
duchess.
In March 1517 Mary and her husband accompanied Katherine of Aragon on
a pilgrimage to Walsingham Priory. Three months later, the duchess
returned to London to entertain her sister, Margaret of Scotland, whom
she had not seen since childhood; on this occasion Suffolk won splendid
success in a tournament before the king and the then queen. Later in
the same month, Brandon and his wife were at Bishops Hatfield, where,
on July 16, was born the Lady Frances, “who was mother to the Lady Jane
Grey.”[38] The queen-duchess, it appears, was suddenly taken ill on
her way from London to Suffolk, and had perforce to ask the hospitality
of the Bishop of Ely, to whom Hatfield Palace in those days belonged.
Some years later it was confiscated by Henry VIII and converted into a
royal residence.
A very elaborate account of the manner in which the parish church at
Hatfield was decorated “with cloth of gold and garlands of evergreen,”
on the occasion of the baptism of the said Lady Frances, is still
extant. The sponsors were Queen Katherine and the young Princess Mary,
who were represented by proxy, the queen by the Lady Anne Boleyn[39]
and the princess by the Lady Elizabeth Grey. The Abbot of St. Albans
was godfather, and there was an abundant distribution of viands, cakes,
and wine, to the parishioners, rich and poor alike.
In 1524 the queen-duchess gave birth to her second daughter, the Lady
Eleanor, who in due time became Countess of Cumberland.
All this long while, Brandon’s discarded wife, the Lady Mortimer,
nursed her grievance (which she held to be supported by an
ecclesiastical dispensation in her possession) against the Duke of
Suffolk, so that, justly incensed as she was at his marriage with the
ex-queen of France, she endeavoured to force him to recognize her as
his legitimate wife; which he steadfastly refused to do. Possibly,
in a sense, she blackmailed him, knowing full well the parlous
position in which he had placed himself. Some time in 1524, therefore,
just before the birth of the Lady Eleanor, Lady Mortimer must have
clamoured so loudly for the return of her recalcitrant husband to
his conjugal duties, as to make herself very unpleasant, for Brandon
was once more fain to have recourse to the law to obtain an official
absolute dissolution of his connection with her. He appealed to the
ecclesiastical and to the civil courts, and received a favourable
verdict from both, the marriage between himself and the Lady Mortimer
being declared null and void. This decision, however, did not satisfy
Wolsey as a sufficient protection for the queen and her children
against the humiliating aspersions persistently cast on them by Lady
Mortimer and her friends. In 1528 a mission, headed by Stephen Gardiner
and Edward Fox, was sent to Orvieto, where Clement VII was then
residing,[40] with the object of inducing His Holiness to despatch
Cardinal Campeggio to England to represent the pope on the Commission
for the matter of the divorce of Queen Katherine of Aragon. Wolsey
availed himself of this mission to forward an account, written by
Suffolk and endorsed by himself, of the reasons why the duke petitioned
the Pontiff for the dissolution of his marriage with the Lady Mortimer.
In this document Suffolk declared that, “although a lapse of time had
passed, instead of diminishing, it only increased his crime, and hence
his seeking this divorce from a woman with whom he was too closely
allied.” Clement, after due investigation, and on the strength of
Wolsey’s assurance, issued a bull dissolving the marriage with Lady
Mortimer, and declaring the children of Anne Browne, alias Brandon,
the second wife, legitimate. This bull, dated Orvieto, May 12, 1528,
was not, however, published in England until August of the following
year, when Bishop Nix of Norwich read it from the pulpit of his
cathedral, to a no doubt highly interested and gossiping congregation.
This successful appeal to Rome apparently settled the matter, even
in the eyes of Lady Mortimer herself, for she presently took a third
husband,[41] Robert Horn, Esq., with whom she lived in peace for the
rest of her life, which, however, was not long, for the invaluable
_Baronagium_ informs us that she died before the marriage of Suffolk’s
second daughter, the Lady Eleanor Brandon, which took place in 1537.
[Illustration:
[_To face p._ 62
LADY MONTEAGLE
(Younger daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk)
(_From an engraving after Holbein_)]
Anne and Mary, the two daughters of Brandon by his second wife, Anne
Browne, became respectively Baroness Powis and Viscountess Monteagle.
After her mother’s death, the first-named lady, in accordance with the
custom of those days, was sent abroad for her education and placed
in the household of Suffolk’s faithful friend, Margaret of Savoy,
Governess of the Netherlands. Among the State Papers is a letter
written by Suffolk, and dated May 13, 1515, in which he thanks the
duchess for her kindness to his daughter Anne, and begs she will
allow her to return to England “at the request of the queen dowager,
my wife.” He sent Sir E. Guildford and Mr. William Woodale to escort
the young lady home. Both Miss Strickland and Miss Green, in their
respective lives of Mary Tudor, and Mr. Howard, in his _Life of Jane
Grey_, state that Lady Powis, in the thirteenth year of Elizabeth,
charged Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, and her sister Eleanor, Countess
of Cumberland, with bastardy. This is an error, since an entry in
Machyn’s _Diary_ proves that Lady Powis died in 1557,[42] during
the reign of Mary. That the _affaire Mortimer_ was revived in the
thirteenth year of Elizabeth is true, for among the State Papers
we find documents relative to the matter; but it was probably put
forward at the instigation of Elizabeth herself, merely as a test
case, to settle, once and for all, the validity of the claims of the
Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey and their heirs to the succession. The
verdict then given confirmed the decision arrived at, forty-two years
previously, and the document containing it is endorsed in Burleigh’s
own hand.
Lady Monteagle,[43] Brandon’s second daughter, enjoyed the rare
distinction of being limned by Holbein, and her portrait is one of the
most magnificent in all the collection of drawings of the nobility of
the court of Henry VIII, now in the possession of His Majesty the King.
She is represented as an exceedingly handsome woman, and wears some
fine pearl ornaments, one of them being a medallion in the shape of
the letter “M,” composed of very large gems. There was some doubt, at
one time, as to whether this particular portrait represented the first
or second Lady Monteagle, but the fashion of the gown and the coif, in
conjunction with the discovery of the exact date of Holbein’s death,
settles the question beyond dispute, and in this drawing we have an
undoubted presentment of Brandon’s younger daughter by his second wife.
In addition to his wives, Brandon had a notorious mistress, who bore
him several children, one of whom, Sir Charles Brandon, had a son who
was a celebrated jeweller in the reign of Elizabeth,[44] and who, some
say, was the father of that Richard Brandon who is alleged to have
beheaded Charles I.[45] These scandals and many others, of which we
know little or nothing, though some are hinted at in the correspondence
of the various ambassadors, no doubt affected the happiness of the
queen-duchess, and account for the infrequency of her visits to London
and her rare appearances at court functions.
CHAPTER IV
THE LAST DAYS OF SUFFOLK AND OF THE QUEEN-DUCHESS
NOTWITHSTANDING Mary Tudor’s exalted rank, her husband neglected her.
The Chronicles and State Papers of the period frequently allude to this
sad fact. The death of her only son, the young Earl of Lincoln, of the
“sweating sickness,” which occurred in 1527, when he was only twelve
years old, affected her health, so that she retired from London, and
spent nearly all her time at Westhorpe Hall, a grand Tudor mansion near
Bury St. Edmunds, which remained intact until the beginning of the last
century, when it was pulled down to make room for the present ugly
and uninteresting structure. The ancient furniture, some of which had
evidently belonged to the queen-duchess, was sold in 1805, and amongst
the other miscellaneous lots put up to auction was a lock of Mary
Tudor’s fair hair, which was purchased by a Suffolk antiquary for seven
shillings.
Mary espoused, as far as she dared, the cause of her unhappy
sister-in-law, Katherine of Aragon, and it is not surprising,
therefore, that though in London at the time, she did not attend the
coronation of Anne Boleyn, where her husband figured so conspicuously
as Lord High Constable of England. He behaved abominably to Queen
Katherine, and even insulted her grossly when he was sent by Henry to
Bugden to visit her, just before her removal to Kimbolton; so coarsely,
indeed, that the queen ordered him out of her presence, reminding him,
at the same time, of the many favours she had heaped upon him when she
was in power.
The royal grandmother of the unfortunate sisters of the House of Grey
seems never to have enjoyed good health. As far back as 1518, Suffolk
wrote to Wolsey to inform him that the queen-duchess, his wife, was ill
of a “anagu” [an ague], the cure of which gave the king’s “fuesesune”
plenty of good occupation. The word “physician” was apparently an
orthographic stumbling-block to both the duke and his consort. Early
in February 1533, Mary Tudor wrote from Westhorpe Hall to the king,
informing him that she intended coming to London to consult “Master
Peter, her fesysyon”; as her health was failing, she felt it wise
to seek other advice. Accordingly, towards the middle of April, she
arrived, with her two daughters, at Suffolk Court; here preparations
were at once made for the marriage of the elder of these young ladies
with the youthful Marquis of Dorset, and for the betrothal of the
younger, the Lady Eleanor, to Lord Henry Clifford, eldest son of the
Earl of Cumberland. These combined ceremonies were solemnized in the
first week of May, most likely in that stately parish church which is
now Southwark Cathedral. Henry VIII attended the function, but whether
he was accompanied by Anne Boleyn, who was already queen, though not as
yet crowned, we know not.[46]
A few days later, on May 19, Queen Anne Boleyn passed in triumph
through the streets of London from the Tower to Westminster Abbey, to
be crowned. On either side of her open litter, sumptuously hung with
silver tissue, and borne by two milk-white palfreys draped in white
brocade, rode the Duke of Suffolk and Henry, Marquis of Dorset, who
bore the sceptre. Cecily, dowager Marchioness of Dorset, was with the
old Duchess of Norfolk in a chariot that followed the litter conveying
the queen, who in glittering robes of cloth of gold and with a circlet
of magnificent rubies crowning her raven tresses, “freely exposed the
beauty of her person to the gaze of the people.” But the populace, even
as it gazed upon her loveliness, did not forget the good “old queen”
it had worshipped, who was even then lying sick unto death at Bugden
Hall in Huntingdonshire. Anne was received in dead silence, throughout
the whole line of the procession: not a cap was raised in her honour.
On June 26, of this same year (1533), the queen-duchess—who had
returned with Lady Dorset, the bride, and her younger daughter, the
Lady Eleanor, to Westhorpe, none the better for consulting the Court
“fesysyon”—died somewhat suddenly, in the presence of her two children;
her husband and son-in-law being still in London. Her body was embalmed
and carried to Bury Abbey on July 20, nearly a month after her decease.
Garter King at Arms and other heralds preceded the hearse, which was
followed by a procession of lords and ladies on horseback, among whom,
as chief mourners, the Ladies Frances and Eleanor rode pillion on the
same black steed, caparisoned with violet cloth. They were supported
on either side by the Marquis of Dorset and the young Lord Clifford,
who had been summoned from London to attend the funeral. A strange
incident occurred during the ceremony, at which the Duke of Suffolk
was not present. The Ladies Powis and Monteagle, the duke’s daughters
by his second wife, appeared uninvited, and assisted at the Mass, on
perceiving which intrusion, the Lady Frances and the Lady Eleanor
rose, and left the church, without waiting for the conclusion of the
office. The unbidden guests had evidently determined to assert their
position in the family by appearing at their step-mother’s obsequies,
an act which was openly resented by the rest of the family,[47] since
it was intended to prove the Ladies Powis and Monteagle’s legitimacy,
and, moreover, insinuate that the queen-duchess’s daughters were
bastards.
Mary Tudor’s death[48] may well have been hastened by anxiety about the
calamities that had overwhelmed her sister-in-law, Queen Katherine,
and by the certainty that her own husband had been Henry’s most active
confederate in maligning the luckless queen. Suffolk’s behaviour to
Katherine of Aragon was, in fact, infamous and ungrateful in the
extreme. In the early stages of his career she had given him a helping
hand, she had accepted entertainment at his house, and had stood
godmother to his elder daughter; yet, in the hour of misfortune, he
turned against her, and became her “unjust judge” and bitterest foe. He
treated Anne Boleyn in the same fashion. When that ill-fated woman’s
star reached its zenith, the craven duke was one of her most obsequious
courtiers, but no sooner did the shadow of her impending doom darken
the horizon, than Suffolk deserted her, went over to her enemies,
urged his master to hasten her destruction, and outraged decency—even
the decency of those callous times—by appearing at her execution. He
was also present as one of the Privy Council when, some hours before
her death, she was compelled to hear the sentence: That her marriage
with the king was “invalid, frustrate, and of none effect.” So, too,
when poor Anne of Cleves displeased the king by her Dutch homeliness,
Suffolk was overheard offering his advice as to the best means of
getting rid of her. Katherine Howard fared no better at his hands.
He was her flatterer in her brief hour of success, but it was he who
escorted her as a prisoner from Sion House to the Tower, who judged
her, and who, but for sudden indisposition, would have feasted his
eyes on her mangled form when her head was struck off at one blow by
the skilful Calais headsman who had already proved his dexterity at the
execution of Anne Boleyn.
In November 1534 the duke took a fourth wife, his deceased consort’s
ward, the Lady Katherine Willoughby d’Eresby, a child of fifteen, whose
rich dower had evidently excited his rapacity; for, notwithstanding
his vast landed possessions, he was in constant want of ready money,
Mary Tudor’s income having been very scanty, and most irregularly
paid. Katherine was the only child of the lately deceased William,
Lord Willoughby d’Eresby by his second wife, Doña Maria de Sarmiento y
Salinas, a Spanish noblewoman and a faithful and tried attendant upon
Queen Katherine. It seems incredible that such a pious woman should
have approved of so unnatural an alliance, but in Tudor times the voice
of Nature herself was often hushed, and that of personal and political
interest alone heard. Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, of whom we shall
see more anon, developed into a very handsome and cultured woman, and
was the authoress of quite the most brilliant and witty letters in the
English epistolary literature of the period. She had the distinction
of being sketched by Holbein, and her portrait is one of the most
beautiful in the king’s collection. By this lady, Suffolk had two
sons, who survived him and became successively Dukes of Suffolk. They
were reputed to be exceedingly clever lads, and were educated with
Prince Edward. Both died at an early age, on July 6th, 1551, of the
“sweating sickness,” at Bugden, in Huntingdonshire, within a few hours
of each other and in the same bed.[49]
Shortly after his fourth marriage, Suffolk wrote to his mother-in-law,
the dowager Lady Willoughby, that he had been ordered to proceed
to Bugden Hall to reduce the household of the “Princess Dowager,”
as the divorced queen was now called, and to induce her to remove
to Fotheringhay Castle. He adds that he wishes “an accident might
befall him” to prevent his undertaking so unpleasant an expedition.
Notwithstanding this heroic desire, Suffolk arrived at Bugden Hall late
in December[50] 1534/5, and behaved so abominably that the poor queen,
stung to the quick by the repeated humiliations and insults heaped upon
her and her handful of faithful retainers, rose and swept haughtily
from his presence. She resolutely refused to go to Fotheringhay, which,
she had heard, was “damp,” but after much more trouble she submitted
to being sent to Kimbolton, where she arrived early in the following
January.
[Illustration:
[_To face p._ 74
KATHERINE WILLOUGHBY, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK
(_From an engraving, by Bartolozzi, after Holbein_)]
On January 7, 1535/6, the sorely tried and persecuted queen passed
quietly away at Kimbolton Castle, in the arms of Lady Willoughby, and
in the presence of Eustache Chapuys, the imperial ambassador; being
“done to death by cruelty,” as her Spanish chronicler quaintly and
faithfully puts it.[51]
The public career of Jane Grey’s maternal grandfather was far more
creditable than his private life. In early manhood, as we have seen,
he distinguished himself as a naval commander, and he later became
a skilful general, affording his master most efficient help against
the popular rising known as the “Pilgrimage of Grace.” During that
otherwise futile expedition into Picardy which resulted in King Henry’s
only substantial French victory, the capture of Boulogne, Suffolk
proved himself both bold and sagacious, and was able to present the
keys of that city to the king. He was also of great service all
through the intricate operations against the Scots, which occupied
English diplomacy and arms from 1543 to 1544, and formed the first
link in the chain of misfortunes marking the untoward career of Mary
Stuart—since these certainly arose out of the attempt made by Henry
VIII to affiance his son Edward to the infant Queen of Scots, and so
secure the custody of her person. This effort, had it been crowned
with success, would have united the Crowns of England and Scotland
some fifty years before the union of the two kingdoms was finally
accomplished, under James I.
In 1532-33, when Henry VIII and Francis I held a conference in the
Church of Our Lady at Boulogne, such was the piety of bluff King Hal
that he was well pleased to attend as many as three and four Masses
every day before St. Mary’s shrine, whilst round him knelt the Dukes of
Suffolk and Norfolk; the Marquises of Dorset and Exeter; the Lords of
Surrey, Essex, Derby, Rutland, Huntingdon and Sussex; and a legion of
other noblemen and knights. Boulogne was greatly edified at beholding
the French and English Kings, the King of Navarre, the Dauphin, and
the Princes of Orleans, Angoulême, Vendôme, and Guise, together with a
glittering train of French and English peers, devoutly telling their
rosaries, and following the cherished image in solemn procession
through the streets. But in July 1544 all this was changed. Suffolk
ordered the Church of Notre Dame to be desecrated and occupied by the
English artillery. The sacred image, however, was carefully packed and
sent over to England, where Henry, who had burnt the Lady of Walsingham
and “her old syster of Ipswich,” preserved it in high veneration in his
own bedroom. Edward VI, at the time of the restitution of Boulogne,
consented to restore the treasure, and Louis de la Tremeuil, Prince of
Talmont, was deputed to fetch it back to its time-honoured shrine.[52]
In August 1545 Suffolk died, after a long illness, at Guildford Castle,
which had evidently been lent to him by Sir William Parr, who had it
from the king. The duke’s illness seems to have been, in every phase,
identical with that of the king, who died of a similar complication
of diseases not two years later: Charles suffered from gout, heart
failure, rheumatism, and dropsy. Henry VIII expressed great interest
and anxiety concerning him, and sent constantly to Guildford to obtain
news of his old friend and life-long companion. One of Suffolk’s
portraits, painted in the last year of his life, represents him
looking much older than he really was, and extremely like Henry VIII.
He wears a dressing-gown and a silk skull cap, and his feet, much
swollen with gout, are resting on a stool. During his last illness,
the duke was attended by his wife and his two daughters, the Ladies
Frances and Eleanor. He expired in their presence and in that of his
grand-children, including Katherine Grey. Suffolk left instructions
in his will that he was to be buried in an obscure Lincolnshire
parish, without pomp, but Henry VIII ordered otherwise, and gave his
accommodating brother-in-law and friend splendid obsequies at Windsor,
where his tomb may still be seen, on the right-hand entrance to St.
George’s Chapel. Requiem Masses for the repose of the soul of “the most
High and Puissant Prince,” Charles, Duke of Suffolk, were said at St.
Paul’s and at Westminster Abbey.
Suffolk left all his property to his widow and her children, with
reversion to his daughters Frances and Eleanor Brandon, respectively
Marchioness of Dorset and Countess of Cumberland, and to their heirs
and successors, who are named. His widow retired to her lodging at the
Barbican, where she was several times visited by the Lady Frances and
her daughters, and by the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, the latter
being her sincere friend, whereas the former disliked her exceedingly,
on account of her change of religion. When the duchess, some short
time after the death of her first husband, took unto herself a second,
in the person of her young secretary, Mr. Bertie, an aggressive
Protestant, Queen Mary was exceedingly wroth at what she considered to
be a _mésalliance_. Mr. Bertie and the Duchess fled from England, and
after staying awhile in Germany and visiting Venice, succeeded, despite
many romantic adventures, in reaching Poland. The duchess and her
“unequal match” did not return to England until after Mary’s death.
LADY KATHERINE GREY
CHAPTER I
BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD
THE LADY KATHERINE GREY, two years younger than her unfortunate sister,
the Lady Jane, was born in August 1540, and, according to tradition,
not at Bradgate Hall in Leicestershire, but in London, at Dorset
Place, Westminster, a mansion which the Duke of Suffolk, her father,
then Marquis of Dorset, had purchased and rebuilt in the finest Tudor
architecture of the period, having a very long gallery and terrace,
overlooking the Thames. It was considerably altered towards the close
of the sixteenth century, when it was divided into three separate
houses, and in one of these Locke the philosopher lived and died. A
relic of the existence of this palace was extant only a few years ago,
in the name of a little street called Dorset Place, which was pulled
down for modern improvements when the new War Office and its adjacent
edifices were built.
There is, needless to say, no registered record of Lady Katherine’s
birth, and we know very little of how her childhood was spent. The
hygienic and more humane methods of rearing children, which are now in
vogue, were then unknown. Lady Katherine’s little limbs must have been
swathed in swaddling clothes, precisely as were those of all her infant
contemporaries. She was certainly not nursed by her mother—which would
have been against all precedent in royal circles of society—but by some
country foster-mother, possibly the Mrs. Helen who performed the same
office for Lady Jane, and who attended that unfortunate princess on the
scaffold. A foster-mother in the family of the great position of the
Dorsets was in many ways a personage. Her costume was rich; her board
and lodging expensive, even luxurious; and the children she nursed were
taught to consider her almost in the light of a mother, and this, many
years after the very necessary functions which she had performed for
their benefit had ceased.
The child’s costume as she grew up was cut on absolutely the
same pattern as that of her mother, of which it was a miniature
reproduction, without, however, the train or _manteau de cour_, which
the Lady Frances only wore on state occasions. At five years of age,
Lady Katherine wore long petticoats and a dress of brocade reaching
to the feet, a ruff, and a little white cap, tied in a bow under the
chin. There is still in existence a list or inventory of the toys
which were in the possession of Princess Elizabeth when she was an
infant at Hunsdon. They included a number of dolls of all sizes, one or
two mechanical, “that could speke” and even walk (evidently imported
from Italy), a wooden horse on rockers, a set of marionettes, some
little cooking utensils, and no doubt most popular of all, a kind of
Noah’s Ark, containing “beesties and Noah with hys familie.” With
similar toys, doubtless, the little Lady Katherine and her sister Jane
frequently did play.
As she grew older she was placed, to learn her letters, under the care
of a certain Mrs. Ashley or Astley (sister or sister-in-law of the lady
who figures so largely in history as the governess of Queen Elizabeth),
who remained in the quality of governess-companion to the children of
the Marquis of Dorset until the death of Lady Jane, when we lose sight
of her, unless indeed the little Lady Mary was placed in her charge and
remained at Bradgate during the tragic events that decimated her family.
Lady Katherine’s entry into what we should now call society, took place
on the 20th August, 1547, when that renowned, not to say redoubted,
lady, Bess of Hardwick, married her second husband, Sir William
Cavendish. For some reason or other which has escaped record, this
wedding took place at Bradgate Hall, in Leicestershire, evidently
placed at the disposal of the bride and bridegroom by the Dorsets. The
nuptial knot was tied at two o’clock in the morning, according to a
curious custom of nocturnal marriages which holds good to this day in
certain parts of America, Italy, and Spain. There was a house-party
assembled for this festive occasion, and among the guests were the
Earl of Shrewsbury, who in due time became the fourth husband of the
bride of that day—or better, night—and the Marchioness of Northampton,
the discarded wife of Katherine Parr’s brother, a lady who had had
a very curious and adventurous history, which excluded her from
court, although, at the time of her death, she was staying at Sudeley
Castle, as the guest of Henry VIII’s sixth wife, Katherine Parr. The
Marchioness was evidently a very great friend of the Dorset family,
with whom, for all her rather scandalous reputation, she was a frequent
visitor. The wedding must have taken place in the private chapel (which
is still standing) of the now ruined hall, and amongst those present
were the Marquis and Marchioness of Dorset, with their three daughters,
the Ladies Jane, Katherine and Mary, who acted as bridesmaids.
Immediately after the wedding ceremony, a sort of breakfast was served,
after which, with much music and noise, the bride and bridegroom were
led in procession to the bridal chamber. This marriage taking place at
Bradgate, shows how early was the connection that existed between Bess
of Hardwick and the Greys—a connection which, some twenty years later,
proved a very uncomfortable one for the said Bess, since it sent her to
the Tower.
As Bess of Hardwick will be mentioned again in these pages, it may
be well to remind the reader here, that she was the daughter of a
certain Mr. John Hardwick, a small Derbyshire yeoman farmer or squire,
and one of seven or eight brothers and sisters. She had acquired,
under her paternal roof, an excellent knowledge of brewing, baking,
starching, making of elder and cowslip wine, preserves and cordials;
but she grew tired of the country, early in life, and on one occasion,
without warning any of her relatives, put herself in communication with
Lady Zouch,[53] a distant cousin, who was then residing in London,
in a prominent position at the court of Henry VIII. To Lady Zouch,
therefore, Bess addressed herself, begging of her not to think it
impertinent that she should write to her, but to remember her forlorn
condition and take compassion on it. It would seem that Derbyshire,
and especially that part of it in which she lived, was not conducive
to matrimony, and the enterprising Bess thought that if she could come
to London as companion to Lady Zouch, she might succeed in extricating
herself from the narrow circumstances in which she had hitherto lived.
Lady Zouch replied favourably, and invited Mistress Elizabeth Hardwick
to come and stay with her. She had not been very long under her noble
cousin’s roof, ere she formed the acquaintance of old Mr. John Barlow.
He was seventy, and Bess was considerably under twenty. The gentleman,
who was a great invalid, was very rich; the young lady was active
and healthy, but poor. She became his nurse, and rubbed his legs and
applied his leeches and poultices with such admirable skill, avoiding
giving him unnecessary pain, that he proposed to her and was accepted.
Mr. Barlow did not long survive his wedding, and when he died, Bess
inherited every penny of his fortune. Having now secured wealth, she
was determined to acquire rank. Her next choice fell upon Sir William
Cavendish, a son of that Thomas Cavendish who assisted Henry VIII
in suppressing the monasteries, and who wrote an excellent life of
Cardinal Wolsey. Sir William was not a very young man when he first
made the acquaintance of Mistress Barlow, and he was already the father
of six sons and daughters. Bess, who wished to be a “lady,” forgave
him this numerous progeny, even going so far as to declare she would be
a mother unto them all. It is at this period of her existence that she
begins to loom largely in the social history of her time. During the
ten years that she was Cavendish’s wife, she filled his quiver with not
less than eight children, four sons and four daughters, one of whom,
Elizabeth, had by way of godmother Queen Elizabeth, the Lady Katherine
Grey representing “Our Eliza” by proxy. This Elizabeth Cavendish in due
time married Darnley’s youngest brother (there were seventeen years
between them), and became, eventually, the mother of the unfortunate
Arabella Stuart, whose life-story runs on almost parallel lines with
that of Lady Katherine Grey, her godmother by proxy. Both were the
victims of their unfortunate love affairs and of the vindictiveness of
Elizabeth, who was determined to have as few heirs to her Throne as
possible. Bess, after the death of Sir William, married again, for the
third time, Mr. William Saintlow or St. Lo, a rich gentleman, captain
in Queen Elizabeth’s bodyguard, and considered to be the handsomest man
in Europe.
In the case of the Cavendish children, Bess behaved admirably, but she
evidently took a fierce dislike to the Saintlow progeny, whom she
treated so abominably that they never set foot inside their father’s
house until his death, when they attended his funeral, to learn that
he had left them all his available property. The ambitious Mrs.
Saintlow, wishing to still further increase her rank, next married
George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. This marriage was not a very happy
one, mainly through the strange circumstances in which the earl and
countess were placed. They were obliged by Queen Elizabeth to take
into their charge the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots; and Bess, by
marrying her daughter, Elizabeth, to young Charles Lennox, Darnley’s
brother, became the grandmother of Arabella Stuart, which, to use her
own words, was “the greatest trouble that ever God inflicted upon her.”
Bess of Hardwick built Hardwick Hall, near Chatsworth, one of the most
beautiful Elizabethan mansions in England, and possibly the only one
which still contains intact the furniture, tapestries and works of art
which its builder installed there.
After the wedding of Mrs. Barlow with Sir William Cavendish, the name
of Lady Katherine Grey becomes more conspicuous in the memorials of
her family. We know, for instance, that, together with her parents
and her sisters, Jane and Mary, she spent the Christmas of 1551 with
her cousin, Princess Mary, afterwards queen, at Hunsdon. The princess
had provided a good deal of amusement for the children, in the shape
of singers and conjurers obtained from London. In the following year
(1552/3), the Marquis of Dorset—now become Duke of Suffolk, thanks
to the Lord Protector Somerset, and consequently to Edward VI—helped
Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk,[54] to entertain a large party at
Tilsey, the seat of the young Willoughbys, who were her grace’s
wards. There still exists, in the archives of the Willoughby family,
a note-book of household expenses drawn up by “old Mr. Medley,” a
connection of the family who acted as a sort of majordomo. Mr. Medley
informs us that for the forty guests and servants who were being
entertained, as much as £200 a week was spent for meat, fowls, fish,
fruit, sweetmeats, etc. He likewise says that a sum of six pounds,
equivalent to about sixty of our money, was given to the manager
of Lord Oxford’s players, who brought his troupe to Tilsey, with
the permission of the earl, to perform before the company on three
separate days, when they gave, no doubt to the huge delight of the
children, some of those horse-play comedies and farces which amused
our Tudor ancestors, and which included amongst their attractions
such items as “four hobby-horses, two dragons, four men as monkeys,
a giraffe, and a man that swallowed fire.” Such wonders as these,
probably, greatly pleased Lady Katherine and her little sisters, for
children are the same in all ages. Then there were “romps, games
and dances” in the great hall; and altogether, to use our familiar
expression, the young people had “a real good time” at Tilsey—which
doubtless contrasted rather unpleasantly with the formal hospitality
offered them a fortnight later by the duke’s sister, the Lady Audley,
at Saffron Walden, where there was a preacher engaged to improve
their manners and their morals. Bullinger, who got wind of the very
secular form of entertainment ordered by the Duke of Suffolk for the
amusement of his young guests at Tilsey, took umbrage, and wrote one
or two bitter letters about it, which, let us hope, never fell into
the hands of his grace, else the cause of the Reformation might have
suffered considerably thereby. Probably the duke was not at this time
as completely converted to Puritanism as he was a couple of years
later. After their visit to Walden, the whole family rode up to London,
the little Ladies Katherine and Jane perched on pillions in front of
their father and their uncle John. Here they were again entertained by
Princess Mary, at the Priory, Clerkenwell. When the Suffolks returned
to Bradgate, they stayed in Leicester, and were entertained with wine
and hippocras and more solid refreshments by the mayoress and her
sister. After partaking of these, they proceeded to Bradgate, three
miles farther on.
So many cross-country journeys on horseback, to and fro, from
Bradgate to Hunsdon, Hunsdon to Tilsey, Tilsey to Saffron Walden,
from Saffron Walden to London, and then a three-days’ journey back to
Leicestershire, either in a litter or on horseback, told unfortunately
on the health of the little Ladies Jane and Katherine, and both
of them—and no wonder!—were laid up for a week or so with serious
illnesses. Indeed, Lady Katherine’s health, like that of her sister
Jane, seems, throughout her life, to have been very fragile, for later
we shall hear of her being frequently ill with fever, headaches, and
rheumatic pains.
The Lady Frances and her husband, the Duke of Suffolk,[55] never seem
to have destined Lady Katherine, as they did her sister Jane, to play
any very conspicuous part in history. Jane they set aside and educated,
coached—or better, “crammed”—to be the head of the Protestant party
in England, and, as such, either to share the Throne with her cousin,
Edward VI, or else to occupy it alone, instead of the Catholic Princess
Mary, or of Elizabeth, whose religious opinions were not at this time
clearly defined. Lady Jane, very skilfully surrounded by the most able
and learned Reformers of her time, was veritably moulded for the dizzy
but unfortunate station for which she was destined, and her parents,
in their eagerness to fit her to occupy the Throne on the death of the
sickly Edward VI, did not even allow her the time to take necessary
recreation. The memorable interview between Lady Jane and Roger Ascham
proves that the poor child was tortured into learning. If by chance,
worn out by study, she turned to lighter things than Greek or Latin
grammar, she got so many “bobs and pinches” from her charming mother,
“that for pain she was fain to weep”; or find relief from so much
cruelty and trouble in the unusual recreation, for a young girl, of
reading Plato’s _Dialogues_ or the _Orations_ of Demosthenes. Ascham
found Lady Katherine otherwise engaged, enjoying herself with the
rest of the company at hunting and archery and those sports in which
her mother, the Lady Frances, excelled. It is not surprising, then,
to find that Bullinger, Œcolampadius, Conrad Pellican, Ulmer and the
many other Reformers who flocked to England during the reign of Edward
VI, and who were specially welcome at Bradgate, had very little or
nothing to do with Lady Katherine. Under the shade of the beautiful
trees of Bradgate, therefore, and in the sunlight of its broad and
flower-covered meadows; in the stately avenues of its gardens and by
the running brooks and broad pools of its park, the girlhood of Lady
Katherine Grey was passed, we may presume, far more pleasantly and
naturally than that of her sister Jane. She was at least allowed to
indulge in sports and pastimes suitable to her age, to try her skill
at archery and possibly to leap a fence on a favourite pony, to dance
in the hall, and may be to sing a ballad to the accompaniment of a
lute, aye, even to practise on the virginals, without incurring, as
her elder sister had done, the displeasure of good Master Bullinger,
who in one of his most remarkable letters, written at the request of
Aylmer, cautioned the Lady Jane against the vanities of this world and
urged her to dress soberly, as becomes a Christian maiden, by taking
as her model the Princess Elizabeth!—above all, not to lose time in
practising music and in other like frivolities.[56]
In his history of Lady Jane Grey (_The Nine-days’ Queen_), the author
pointed out that the legends as to any intimacy or love-making having
ever existed between Lady Jane and her cousin King Edward VI, are
absolutely apocryphal. Although at one time the Lord Admiral Thomas
Seymour actually suggested that, in the event of the engagement between
Edward and the Queen of Scots failing, the Lady Jane Grey should be
proposed as queen consort, the young people do not seem to have come
much in contact; and despite that the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk and
the Lady Katherine were in London very frequently during the reign of
Edward VI, there is no record of the Lady Katherine having been to her
cousin’s court, not even on the occasion when her sister Jane figured
rather prominently at the revels given in honour of the queen dowager
of Scotland, when she passed through London on her way northwards.
Katherine was probably too young; but there is a touching record
extant, proving that, notwithstanding a slight disparity in age (only
two years, however), a great affection existed between Lady Jane Grey
and her sister.
On Whit-Sunday (probably May 21) 1553, the day on which Lady Jane
became the bride of Lord Guildford Dudley, Katherine was married, or
rather, contracted—she was only thirteen years old at the time—to
Henry, Lord Herbert, eldest son of the Earl of Pembroke, who was just
a little over nineteen. After the ceremony (it was no more than a
ceremony), the very youthful “bride” lived, according to custom, under
her father-in-law’s roof at Baynard’s Castle, the ancient palace on the
Thames, within the walls of which Pembroke proclaimed his allegiance to
Mary on the last day of Queen Jane’s reign. Lady Katherine, unlike her
sister Jane, was not blessed (or cursed) with a mother-in-law, for Anne
Parr, only sister of Queen Katherine Parr and mother of Lord Herbert,
had died some months before her son’s marriage and her husband’s
accession to the rank of earl. The young “bride’s” father-in-law,
however, must have been the reverse of a pleasant companion—his
selfishness, craft, and brutality, like his enormous wealth, were
common talk. When he expelled the abbess and nuns from the royal abbey
of Wilton, which had been bestowed upon him by Henry VIII, he is said
to have struck some of them with his whip, exclaiming, “Go spin, ye
jades, go spin!” Like the majority of his peers, indeed, he was a
staunch Protestant under Edward VI, a “Janeite” for something near nine
days, and, when Mary came to the Throne, so fervent a Catholic that he
actually invited the nuns of Wilton to return to their old home, and
stood bareheaded as they filed into it in his presence.
Lady Katherine Grey was still at Baynard’s Castle during the whole of
the last days of the tragic existence of her unfortunate sister, and
was not, as usually stated, at Sheen. The more minute details of what
had befallen Lady Jane may have been spared her; but surely she must
have been acquainted with the general outline of what was happening
to her father and mother and to the victim of their ambition, the
“Nine-days’ Queen.” There is no evidence, however, that during the
time Lady Jane was on the Throne, Lady Katherine Grey ever entered
the Tower, and she certainly never saw her sister again; but she
was remembered by her in one of the most exquisite letters of the
period.[57] The letter runs as follows:—
“I have sent you, good sister Katherine, a book [i.e. the Testament],
which, though it be not outwardly trimmed with gold, yet inwardly it
is of more worth than precious stones. It is the book, dear sister,
of the laws of the Lord; it is His Testament and last Will, which He
bequeathed to us poor wretches, which shall lead us to the path of
eternal joy; and if you, with good mind and an earnest desire, follow
it, it will bring you to immortal and everlasting life. It will teach
you to live—it will teach you to die—it will win you more than you
would have gained by the possession of your woeful father’s lands, for
if God had prospered him ye would have inherited his lands.
“If ye apply diligently to this book, trying to direct your life by
it, you shall be inheritor of those riches as neither the covetous
shall withdraw from you, neither the thief shall steal, nor the moth
corrupt. Desire, dear sister, to understand the law of the Lord your
God. Live still to die, that you by death may purchase eternal life,
or, after your death, enjoy the life purchased for you by Christ’s
death. Trust not that the tenderness of your age shall lengthen your
life, for as soon as God will, goeth the young as the old. Labour
alway and learn to die. Deny the world, defy the devil, and despise
the flesh. Delight only in the Lord. Be penitent for your sins, but
despair not. Be steady in your faith, yet presume not, and desire,
with St. Paul, to be dissolved, to be with Christ, with Whom, even in
death, there is life. Be like the good servant, and even in midnight
be waking, lest when death cometh, he steal upon you like a thief in
the night, and you be, with the evil servant, found sleeping, and lest
for lack of oil ye be found like the first foolish wench,[58] and
like him that had not the wedding garment, ye be cast out from the
marriage. Persist ye (as I trust ye do, seeing ye have the name of a
Christian), as near as ye can, to follow the steps of your Master,
Christ, and take up your cross, lay your sins on His back, and always
embrace Him!
“As touching my death, rejoice as I do, and adsist [i.e. consider]
that I shall be delivered from corruption and put on incorruption, for
I am assured that I shall, for losing a mortal life, find an immortal
felicity. Pray God grant that ye live in His fear and die in His
love....[59] neither for love of life nor fear of death. For if ye
deny His truth to lengthen your life, God will deny you and shorten
your days, and if ye will cleave to Him, He will prolong your days, to
your comfort, and for His glory, to the which glory God bring mine and
you hereafter, when it shall please Him to call you.
“Farewell, dear sister; put your only trust in God, Who only must
uphold you.
“Your loving sister,
“JANE DUDDELY.”
Shortly after the “Nine-days’ Queen’s” execution, the Earl of Pembroke,
true to his callous nature, and so as to avoid any suspicion of having
supported the fallen cause, forced his son to annul his engagement
with Lady Katherine, on the plea that it had been a mere formality,
and that the bride had been at the time betrothed to the young Earl of
Hertford—a curious statement, certainly, when considered in the light
of subsequent events. Camden says that she was officially “divorced,”
but this is not probable, there having been no marriage beyond a mere
ceremony of contract. It was therefore simply annulled, and the
bride, who, according to the custom of the period, had gone to live
with her husband’s parents, in order the better to form her future
husband’s acquaintance, was sent back to her mother. Strange to say,
five years later (March 24, 1559), the Count de Feria wrote to King
Philip of Spain stating that “Lady Katherine has been hitherto very
willing to marry the Earl of Pembroke’s son, but she has ceased to
talk about it as she used to. The Bishop will have told Your Majesty
what passed between the Earl of Pembroke and me on this matter.” It is
easy to understand that Pembroke, recognizing Katherine’s position in
respect to the succession, may have eventually regretted the over-hasty
dissolution of his son’s betrothal, and desired that so advantageous a
marriage should take place; but why Katherine, at that time engaged to
the Earl of Hertford, should have favoured Pembroke’s son, is hard to
say, unless she was suddenly temporarily jealous or annoyed with her
_fiancé_, or was simply _pretending_ to approve of Pembroke’s plan, in
order to distract attention from her real engagement to the earl, which
it was advisable to keep secret.
Scarcely had Lady Katherine returned to the maternal roof from
Baynard’s Castle than she had to undergo the trying ordeal of hearing
of the executions of her father and uncle, and of witnessing the
callous manner in which these tragedies were treated by her mother.
The Lady Frances’s mourning for her husband or her daughter could not
have been of long duration, for well within the first three weeks of
her widowhood, regardless of the tragic fate of her daughter, her
husband, and her brother-in-law, this heartless woman put aside her
mourning robes, and, gaily attired, allowed herself to be led to the
hymeneal altar by a ginger-headed lad of twenty-one, young enough to
be her son and of such inferior rank that the Princess Elizabeth, in
her indignation at so unequal a match, cried out: “What? Has the woman
so far forgotten herself as to mate with a common groom!” “A common
groom,” however, Mr. Stokes was not. He was a member of a fairly
good yeoman family and had been appointed secretary and groom of the
chambers to the princess some two years earlier, during which time
he must not only have won her confidence, but been on terms of so
unusually intimate a kind, that had his first child been born alive,
which fortunately it was not, it might have claimed the paternity of
the Duke of Suffolk, and have added another complication to the many
as to the succession, the result of the irregular wills[60] made by
Henry VIII and Edward VI, who both appointed the Lady Frances and her
daughters the immediate heiresses to the Throne, in the event of the
deaths without issue of the former king’s daughters, Elizabeth and
Mary. Perhaps the real reason why Lady Jane Grey never wrote to her
mother in the last months of her life and never mentioned her in the
letters to her sister Katherine and to her father, nor even on the
margin of the Prayer Book (still in the possession of the nation) in
which she has recorded her last thoughts, was that she was well aware
of some scandal attaching to the Lady Frances in connection with
the “base-born” Mr. Adrian Stokes. There are portraits, both in one
canvas, facing each other, of Mr. Adrian Stokes and the Lady Frances,
at Chatsworth. The gentleman is distinctly plain and common looking—he
might indeed be a groom, with his ginger hair, his colourless eyes
and rather silly expression. He wears a very rich doublet of black
velvet, furred with ermine; whereas the Lady Frances, a buxom, but
sour and ill-tempered looking lady, bearing a strange resemblance to
her uncle, Henry VIII, is attired in a dress of black satin, with a
jewelled pattern. She wears the well-known Mary Stuart coif and some
fine jewels. In the corner of the picture figures the date “1555” and
the words, “Adrian Stokes, aged twenty-one, and Lady Frances Duchess of
Suffolk, aged thirty-six”—she looks fully ten years older.
[Illustration:
[_To face p._ 104
FRANCES BRANDON, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK, AND HER SECOND HUSBAND, ADRIAN
STOKES
(_From an engraving, by Vertue, after the original portrait by Lucas de
Heere_)]
The question arises, Why did Lady Frances marry Mr. Stokes? The match
appeared, even at that time, an incredible breach of common decency.
Was it a love-passion; or was it not rather the result of well pondered
policy? The Lady Frances might easily have been selected as the head
of one or other of the numerous parties then existing in England, in
order that she should become a possible successor or even rival to
Queen Mary. The fact that she was the wife of a “base-born knave” made
it almost an impossibility that she could be used as a tool against
the queen. The people would never have accepted her as a ruler, nor
would they have allowed her offspring, notwithstanding the example of
Katherine of Valois and Owen Tudor, to have succeeded to the Throne.
This was the view of the case taken, even at the time, at court; for
the French ambassador speaks of it as simply a move on the part of the
Lady Frances to get herself tacitly excluded from the succession, and
thereby enable her to lead a peaceful existence. It may be remarked
here that nearly all the greatest court ladies of the late King
Edward’s reign, including the Duchess of Somerset and Katherine,
Duchess of Suffolk, married men who were their inferiors by birth and
station. Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, married her youthful secretary,
Mr. Bertie; and Mr. Newdigate, Anne Stanhope, Duchess of Somerset’s
secretary, became, in due course, that haughty lady’s husband.