LADY KATHERINE AND HER HUSBAND IN THE TOWER
BEFORE the inquiry, which dragged on for some weeks, had come to a
close, Lady Katherine, on September 21, 1561, was delivered in the
Tower of a male child, whose birth Machyn records in a delightfully
complicated phrase: “The xxj day of September was browth [brought]
to bed of a sune my lade Katheryn Gray, the dowther of the Duke that
was heded on the Towre hylle, and ys brodur Lord Thomas Gray the sam
tyme.” Five days later the boy was baptized in the church of St. Peter
ad Vincula within the Tower, his father declaring he was indeed his
son and heir, and giving him the name of Edward. The witnesses of this
christening must have stood on the flagstones covering the remains of
no less than six of this infant’s immediate forbears, all of whom had
lately perished by the axe.[74] According to Henry VIII’s will, the
unconscious babe, thus baptized above the remains of his slaughtered
relatives, was the legitimate heir to the English Throne; and, as such,
in after years, added yet another complication to the tangle of the
succession.
Meanwhile, the young mother’s health broke down, and for some months
she had to keep her bed, in her room in the Belfry or Bell Tower. In
spite of her suffering condition, Elizabeth’s relentless persecution
continued. She put spies about the Tower, who informed her of any
attempt at communication between the two young prisoners: and the
“Virgin Queen” was violently excited on learning that the earl had been
inquiring after his wife’s health, through a third person (a Tower
official), and that he had on one occasion actually sent her a “posy.”
According to Lady Katherine’s statement (for she was interrogated even
about this simple incident), being “a close prisoner in the Tower,” she
never saw the person who brought her messages and “posies” from the
earl.
In May 1562, Sir Edward Warner received orders to conduct the two
prisoners before the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth, to be further
examined as to what Elizabeth was pleased to describe in the warrant
as “the infamose conversation and pretended marriage betwixt the Lady
Katherine Grey and the Earl of Hertford.” Despite the ecclesiastical
nature of this court, it would seem that the prisoners were not taken
to Lambeth, but that whatever trial ever took place occurred in the
Tower. On May 12, 1562, the commission, composed, it may be, of the
officers who had examined Hertford on his first entering the Tower,
passed sentence, at the Bishop of London’s palace near to St. Paul’s
Cathedral, to the effect that “there had been no marriage between
the Earl of Hertford and the Lady Katherine Grey.” It is probable
that neither Hertford nor Lady Katherine was present during this
adjudication.
Five months later, in October 1562, Lady Katherine, still confined in
the Belfry of the Tower, came nearer being placed on the Throne than
at any time in her life. On the 10th of that month, Queen Elizabeth
went with her train to Hampton Court, and there fell seriously ill.
After several days of high fever, and a fit of syncope lasting two
hours, during which her life was despaired of, Her Majesty was
found to be suffering from small-pox, aggravated by a bad chill.
Quadra’s dispatches, written at this time, show how precarious was
her condition. “Last night,” he writes, in a letter dated the 17th
October, “the palace people were all mourning for her as if she
were already dead ... She was all but gone.” Naturally, the chief
effect of the queen’s sudden illness was to raise the hopes of the
various pretenders to her succession and of those who, from interest
or conviction, supported them. There was such diversity of opinion,
however, even amongst the members of the privy council,[75] as to
who was the rightful or most suitable future sovereign, that it is
not improbable, that had the queen died at this juncture, England,
between the ambitions of one party and of another, would have been
plunged into a civil war, since some of the pretenders seem to have
been prepared to assert their rights by an appeal to arms; “Lord Robert
[Dudley],” says the Spanish Ambassador, “has a large armed force under
his control, and will probably pronounce for his brother-in-law, the
Earl of Huntingdon.” Lady Katherine Grey’s partisans did not miss this
opportunity to agitate in her favour; and in the event of the queen’s
death, a determined attempt would undoubtedly have been made to seat
her on the Throne of her oppressor. The news of Elizabeth’s precarious
condition produced a profound feeling of anxiety in the political world
both at home and abroad; and Quadra writes to King Philip, that “if
her improvement had not come soon, some hidden thoughts would have
become manifest. The council discussed the succession twice, and I am
told there were three different opinions. Some wished King Henry’s
will to be followed and Lady Katherine declared heiress. Others, who
found flaws in the will, were in favour of the Earl of Huntingdon.
Lord Robert, the Earl of Bedford, the Earl of Pembroke, and the Duke
of Norfolk ... were in favour of this.”[76] A few members of the
council wished the others not to be in such “a furious hurry,” and
advised them to wait until the claims of the various pretenders had
been examined by “the greatest jurists in the country”; a suggestion
regarded, however, as simply an expedient, to give the King of Spain
time to place a Catholic Sovereign on the English Throne. Fortunately
for England, Elizabeth made a rapid recovery. To the consternation of
the council her first act, after the prolonged syncope into which she
had fallen, was to ask the said council to appoint the Lord Robert
Dudley protector of the realm during her convalescence, at an income of
£20,000. “Everything she asked was promised,” Quadra adds, “but will
not be fulfilled.” And he proved a true prophet!
In November 1562 the question of the succession was again discussed, at
a meeting attended by the Duke of Norfolk and others, which was held
in the Earl of Arundel’s house. The object of this gathering seems to
have been to endorse Lady Katherine’s pretensions, now greatly favoured
by Norfolk, who in the course of the preceding month, had developed
a shadowy notion that, at some future time, one of his daughters (as
yet mere infants) “might marry the Countess of Hertford’s lately born
son.” The council discussed these grave matters all one evening and
till two o’clock the next morning, when they parted, unanimously in
favour of Lady Katherine’s right to the Throne after the queen’s death.
When Elizabeth heard of the affair, she actually “wept for rage,” and
summoning Arundel, upbraided him in no measured terms for allowing
such a meeting to take place under his roof. The earl, in an off-hand
manner, told the queen that “if she wanted to govern the country by
passion, he could assure her the nobles would not allow her to do so”;
whereupon Her Majesty, abashed, hastily changed the subject.
During the winter of 1562-63, the partisans of Lady Katherine seem
to have directed their attention to Hertford, and at one time, led
by Cecil, seriously proposed setting him up as a claimant to the
Throne,[77] _faute de míeux_. Needless to say, the earl, except for
his position as Lady Katherine’s husband, had no more to do with the
succession than any other nobleman. Cecil, however, was still anxious
to aid Lady Katherine and her husband, and had it depended on him,
doubtless they would have been forthwith set at liberty. He was hostile
to Lord Robert Dudley, and moreover jealous of his influence; and
being out of favour with the queen in consequence, was quite prepared
to aid her rival. Not improbably, the queen’s persistent refusal to
be merciful to her captives, was to some extent caused by a desire to
annoy and embarrass her chief secretary. Elizabeth’s health being still
unsatisfactory, early in 1563, the question of the succession was again
brought before Parliament, and Cecil, as a solution to the difficulty,
proposed that a committee should be formed of twenty-four members
of the privy council, who, in the event of the queen’s death, would
conduct the affairs of the nation for the first three weeks after the
sovereign’s demise, until a successor had been approved of by them. The
gentlemen nominated for this high office, however, one and all begged
to be excused, pleading that they felt safer on their country estates
than if they were all gathered together in London: though, at the
same time, they refused to appoint others to take their places on this
commission. The fact is, it was well known that Cecil had determined to
try to include amongst these councillors as many of the male claimants
to the Throne or their chief supporters as he conveniently could; his
real object being, it was suspected, to attempt, when the queen died,
a _coup d’état_ similar to that which followed on the death of Edward
VI. Hertford and Lady Katherine would, it was feared, be released; and,
supported by the Londoners—“the City being so much in favour of the
Earl of Hertford on the ground of religion,” according to Quadra—the
Lady Katherine would be crowned queen, as her sister Jane had been.[78]
Meanwhile, as many of the other claimants and their partisans as could
be laid hands on, especially such of them as the wily Cecil had got
together in London on the pretext of the above-mentioned committee,
would be thrust into prison, and, possibly, executed. The opposition
being too strong, the scheme was forthwith dropped, and the vexed
question of the succession was again left in abeyance for a few months.
Whilst her name was thus being bandied about by various political
factions, Lady Katherine remained a peaceful and probably fairly
contented prisoner in the Tower. The old Italian proverb, that
neither walls nor waters can separate lovers, once more proved true,
when, on February 10, 1563, notwithstanding Elizabeth’s vigilance,
and the strict orders issued to Sir Edward Warner, the Lady Katherine
became the mother of a second boy, who was baptized in St. Peter’s in
the Tower, two warders acting as godfathers. He received the name of
Thomas, after his great-uncle, the lord high admiral. Elizabeth when
she heard of this second child’s birth, raged less like Medea than one
of her dragons, and vented her spleen on the young earl, who was haled
before Star Chamber to justify himself of the further “offence” of
having visited his wife in prison. Hertford, attacked in the coarsest
terms, replied like a man, that “being lawfully married to the Lady
Katherine Grey, who hath borne me a fair son during the time of our
imprisonment in the Tower, and finding her prison door unbarred, I
came in to comfort her in her sadness, of which I cannot repent.” The
lieutenant, Warner, who was likewise examined, gave a different account
of the meeting, since he admitted without hesitation that he had
allowed the earl and countess “to visit one another once on being over
persuaded, and afterwards thought it was of no use keeping them apart.”
Nevertheless, the earl was heavily fined—15,000 marks in all; 5000 for
“seducing a virgin of the blood royal”; 5000 for breaking prison—i.e.
when he left his own apartments to visit Lady Katherine; and 5000 for
the birth of the second child, described by the Chamber as “a bastard.”
The earl not having sufficient money to pay this sum off-hand, his
estates were, as usual in such cases, confiscated instead.
Star Chamber was certainly influenced, in passing this sentence, by one
of its most servile members, Sir John Mason,[79] with whom Hertford was
eventually condemned to live for a time. On January 28, 1562 (a year
before the date of the birth of the second child), this worthy, in a
letter to Secretary Cecil, declares:—
“There be abroad in the city, and in sundry other places in the
realm, broad speeches of the case of the Lady Katherine and the Earl
of Hertford. Some of ignorance make such talks thereof as liketh
them, not letting to say [meaning, ‘not scrupling to say’] they be
man and wife. And why should man and wife be lett (‘hindered’] from
coming together? These speeches and others are very common. And, to
tell my foolish judgment thereof, methinketh it will be no ill way
to call him [Hertford] to the Star Chamber, and there, after a good
declaration of the queen’s proceedings for the trial of the truth of
the supposed marriage, and what was found adjudged, then to charge
him with his presumptuous, contemptuous, and outrageous behaviour in
using the said Lady Katherine as he hath done, before the sentence
and since. And in the end to set upon his head a fine of XM [10,000]
marks: if they be made pounds it is little enough. There is not a
more oultreayed youth—I speak French for lack of apt English [perhaps
the curious word ‘oultreayed’ was Mason’s version of the ‘French’
adjective _outré_]—neither one that better liketh himself, nor that
promiseth himself greater things. He should be made to learn himself
[i.e. ‘discipline himself’] to see his own faults. His imprisonment
fatteneth him, and he hath rather thereby commodity than hindrance
[meaning, ‘He rather enjoys his imprisonment than otherwise’]. If
a good part of his living (‘income’] might answer some part of his
offence, and the imprisonment therewithal continue, it would make him
to know what it is to have so arrogantly and contemptuously offended
his prince [i.e. the queen], and would make him hereafter to know his
duty to the state and to Almighty God. I beseech you pardon my rude
scribbling and my boldness showed in the same, and to weigh my good
meaning in this matter, and nothing else. And thus Almighty God have
you in His Most blessed keeping, and assist you alway with His present
grace.”
Star Chamber therefore not only treated Hertford in a manner that
must have been most pleasing to the spiteful Sir John Mason, but even
exceeded his suggestion in the matter of the fine. Maybe Mason had
had some quarrel or words with the earl, that led him to write so
bitterly; although even his mother, the duchess, can have had no very
high opinion of him, since she speaks of his “wylfulness.” Elizabeth
now ordered Sir Edward Warner, Lieutenant of the Tower, to be arrested
and forthwith confined in that fortress over which he had lately ruled
supreme. He had indeed been imprisoned there once before, for alleged
complicity in the Wyatt rebellion, and had only been reinstated as
lieutenant at Elizabeth’s accession. Through the influence of Cecil,
his close friend, Warner contrived to regain his freedom, after his
second imprisonment, in 1563; but he lost his post, this time for good,
and retired into the country.
Meanwhile the House of Commons had been holding lengthy debates about
the troubles of the two young victims of Elizabeth’s persecution,
and many of the Puritan, or extreme Low Church, party, who favoured
Katherine’s right to the Throne, were very much inclined to believe
in the validity of the marriage, and consequently, in the legitimacy
of the two children. In the meantime, Elizabeth released Lady
Margaret Lennox, whom she had confined in the Tower on an obscure
charge—a liberation on which the Reformers looked askance, for though
Margaret stood nearer the Throne than Katherine, being a daughter
of Henry VIII’s eldest sister, Margaret Queen of Scots, she, as a
Roman Catholic, was regarded by the Protestants as a danger to their
cause. Her husband, the Earl of Lennox, had also been imprisoned
some months earlier, but was set free about November 1562. Quadra,
in mentioning this fact, states that it took place “by the favour of
the Earl of Pembroke and Lord Robert [Dudley], who are much against
Lady Katherine.” He also confirms what we have said above. “I think,”
he adds, “that the liberation of Lennox has two objects: first, to
hinder Lady Katherine by providing a competitor; and secondly, to
give a little satisfaction to the Catholics, who are desperate at
Lady Margaret’s misery, and place all their hopes in the Queen of
Scots and the husband she may choose. By giving them some hope that
the succession may fall to Lady Margaret and her son, they may cool
somewhat towards the Queen of Scots. All this is convenient for the
queen, who wants to have the power to declare her own successor when
she likes.”[80]
In the summer of 1563, the plague broke out in London with such
violence, and made so many victims within the precincts of the Tower,
that Lady Katherine, greatly alarmed, begged Cecil to intercede with
the queen for her removal from the infected fortress. Elizabeth at
once consented, signing (August 21, 1563) an order[81] expressing her
“contentation” that the Lady “Catharyne” should be sent to her uncle,
Lord John Grey,[82] at his seat at Pirgo, near Havering-atte-Bower
and Hainault Forest in Essex. This nobleman, be it said, was not very
friendly to his niece. Still—“any port in the storm”; and it was
certainly better to go to Pirgo with an unpleasant relation, than
to stay in London with a chance of dying of the plague. With the
Lady Katherine went her baby son and a goodly number of nurses and
attendants. Hertford, as the warrant shows, was also removed from
the Tower, and sent, with the eldest child, Edward, to Hanworth, to
the house of the old Duchess of Somerset, his mother. Shortly after
her husband’s execution, this handsome—but haughty and ill-tempered
dame—had married, as already stated, Sergeant Newdigate,[83] who was
now entrusted with the duty of conducting Lady Katherine to Pirgo. He
led the caravan which escorted her and her baby, with their attendants
and baggage, from the Tower; and on their arrival at Pirgo, which was
before the end of August, made himself very disagreeable both to Lady
Katherine and to Lord John.
Meanwhile, a little comedy occurred with respect to the tattered
furniture in the Tower of London. Sir Edward Warner, after his
dismissal from the lieutenancy, had retired to Plumstead, near
Norwich, where he had a country house. As soon as he heard Katherine
had been transferred from the Tower to Pirgo, he wrote to Cecil,
demanding compensation for furniture and hangings which he had lent
to the imprisoned lady, when under his care. “Sir,” he writes, “my
Lady Katherine is, as ye know, delivered [from the Tower], and the
stuff that she had—I would it were seen. It was delivered to her by
the queen’s commandment, and she hath worn, now two years full, most
of it so torn and tattered with her monks [i.e. monkeys] and dogs
as will serve to small purpose.... Besides,” he continues, “my Lady
Katherine had one other chamber, furnished with stuff of mine, the
which is all marred also.” He goes on to suggest that it would not be
unreasonable, considering its dilapidated condition, if he were granted
the furniture allotted to Lady Katherine out of the royal Wardrobe,
as well as his own. “It was,” he says, “delivered by the queen’s
pleasure.... If I have it not, some of it is fitter to be given away
than to be stored into the Wardrobe again, and that I justify with my
hand. If he [the Lord Chamberlain] like not that I have the bed of
down, I shall be content to forbear it. I send you here enclosed the
bill of parcels,[84] with some notes in the margent truly written.”
He concludes his appeal—from “my poor house at Plumsted”—by rather
ambiguously wishing Cecil “prosperous felicity, with _increase_ of
godliness.” Whether Sir Edward Warner ever got his coveted goods and
chattels or not we are unable to ascertain. Neither are we informed
whether Katherine conveyed her “monks,” her dogs, and her other pets to
Pirgo; it is probable enough that she did, for one of her pet dogs was
with her when she died a few years later.
The journey to Pirgo, notwithstanding that it was performed in one of
Elizabeth’s own travelling coaches—a ponderous vehicle, that required
four Flemish cart-horses to drag it along the ill-kept roads—must
have been very fatiguing for a woman in Lady Katherine’s delicate
condition. Pirgo, too, though a fine old mansion, dating far back into
Edward III’s time, and surrounded by a moat, did not present many
of the “modern improvements,” even of those days: it is described
as “very draughty, damp, and cold.” The Lord John had lately made
some alterations, but they do not seem to have been very important.
The gardens of Pirgo—and this may have been some consolation to the
prisoner—were exceedingly fine; and the park was one of the grandest in
Essex.