LADY KATHERINE AT PIRGO
THE prisoner’s life at Pirgo seems to have been tolerably peaceful
and comfortable. Although her uncle continued to treat her coldly,
nevertheless, before the end of August (1563), the month in which she
reached his house, Lord John Grey wrote to thank Cecil for obtaining
“this indulgence from the queen for his niece.” She herself also
addressed a similar letter to Cecil dated the “thred” of September;[85]
but very soon after, she seems to have been overcome by an attack
of profound melancholy, and even the kindness of her aunt—this lady
was a daughter of Sir Anthony Browne, and therefore a stepdaughter of
Katherine’s friend, the “Fair Geraldine”—failed to cheer her drooping
spirits.
“I assure you, good cowsigne [cousin] Cecil,” writes my Lord John to
“Mister Chief Secretary,” on September 20,1563, “as I have written
unto my Lord Robert—i.e. Dudley—the thought and care she [Katherine]
taketh for the want of Her Highness’s favour pines her away; before
God I speak it, if it come not the sooner she will not long live thus;
she eateth not above six morsels in the meal. If I say unto her, ‘Good
Madam, eat somewhat to comfort yourself,’ she falls a-weeping and
goeth up to her chamber; if I ask her what the cause is she useth
herself in that sort, she answers me: ‘Alas! Uncle, what a life this
is to me, thus to live in the Queen’s displeasure; but for my lord
and my children, I would to God I were buried.’ Good cousin Cecil, as
time, places, and occasion may serve, ease her of this woful grief and
sorrow, and rid me of this life which, I assure you, grieveth me at
the heart’s roots.”
It is much more likely that Lady Katherine’s distress was due to her
enforced separation from her husband and her eldest child, than to
the fact that she had lost the queen’s favour; though, indeed, the
consequences rendered Elizabeth’s friendships invaluable and her
enmities equally dangerous. Nearly two months elapsed without bringing
any answer to the above-quoted letter; and then Lady Katherine, very
likely on her uncle’s advice, addressed a formal petition to the queen,
which Lord John enclosed in another letter to Cecil, begging him to
have it presented to Her Majesty on some appropriate occasion, and
signing himself—
“Your loving cousin and assured friend to my _smaule_ power,
“JOHN GREY.”
This petition, like most of the letters to and from both Lord John and
Lady Katherine at this period, will be found among the Lansdowne MSS.
It runs as follows:—
“I dare not presume, Most Gracious Sovereign, to crave pardon for
my disobedient and rash matching of myself without Your Highness’s
consent; I only most humbly sue unto Your Highness to continue your
merciful nature towards me. I [ac]knowledge myself a most unworthy
creature to feel so much of your gracious favour as I have done. My
just[ly] felt misery and continual grief doth teach me daily more and
more the greatness of my fault, and your princely pity increaseth my
sorrow that [I] have so forgotten my duty towards Your Majesty. This
is my great torment of mind. May it therefore please Your Excellent
Majesty to licence me to be a most lowly suitor unto Your Highness to
extend towards my miserable state Your Majesty’s further favour and
accustomed mercy, which upon my knees in all humble wise I crave, with
my daily prayers to God to long continue and preserve Your Majesty’s
reign over us. From Pirgo the vi of November 1563. Your Majesty’s most
humble, bounden, and obedient servant.”
Either Cecil dared not present the petition to Her Majesty—Lord John,
in enclosing it, asks him to deliver it to Lord Robert Dudley—or
else the queen was more hardened than ever; for this appeal also
remained unanswered. A little later, Lady Katherine, according to a
letter from Lord John to Cecil, dated December 12, “has been in bed
for three or four days,” and so ill that he thought of sending for one
of the queen’s doctors. She was weeping all the time, and “assuredly,
she never went to bed all this time of her sickness, but they that
watched with her much doubted how to find her in the morning. She is so
fraughted with phlegm, by reason of thought, weeping and sitting still,
that many hours she is like to be overcome therewith.” “Indeed,” he
continues, “if it were not that the women attending her were ‘painful’
[he means painstaking] he could not sleep in quiet” for worrying about
her condition. He therefore begs Cecil to make a fresh appeal on her
behalf. The following day, Katherine herself addressed a letter to
Cecil, beseeching the great man to intercede for her; wishing to God
she were buried rather than continue to languish in her sorrow and
misery, and moreover intimating that she had also written to Lord
Robert Dudley, who had been created Earl of Leicester on the previous
29th of September.[86] Apparently no answer from any one was ever
vouchsafed to these appeals.
During the winter of 1563-64, Newdigate, Hertford’s step-father—who
must have been a most odious personality—began to interfere in the
affairs of Lady Katherine and her husband. He spoke of Lord John Grey
to Lady Clinton in the most insolent terms—“with no small bragging
words”—and seems to have tried to persuade Hertford that Lord John
was his worst enemy. He said that Lady Katherine ought not to be
sending letters to the queen or council without his (Hertford’s)
knowledge. Lord John Grey consequently wrote to Cecil on January 20,
1564, describing the language Newdigate had used about him to the
Lady Clinton, and also pointing out that Lady Katherine was very badly
off for furniture and house linen, etc., as she had scarcely anything
but what he had lent her,[87] concluding with a mysterious statement
that “of the cat there is no more to be had but the skin, which
hitherto I have thought well bestowed.” In a postscript he begs that
Lady Katherine may be allowed some wine, if possible out of the royal
stores, and encloses an inventory of her effects.[88] A document among
the Domestic State Papers of the reign of Elizabeth (vol. xxxiii. fol.
10) shows us what response was made to Lord John’s appeal. This is a
receipt signed by the steward of Pirgo[89] for money paid him for the
lady’s maintenance, and dated January 23, 1564. The feeding of Lady
Katherine and her attendants cost £6 16s. 8d. a week. When we consider
that her retinue only consisted of a nurse, two women (Mrs. Woodeforde
and Mrs. Isham), two laundresses, a groom, a footman, a page, and a
lacquey, besides Mr. William Hampton, who was a sort of secretary, and
compare the purchasing value of money in those days with what it is
in ours, it becomes evident that My Lord of Pirgo was making what we
should consider a very good thing out of his niece’s maintenance. Be
this as it may, in May 1564 Hertford received a communication from Lord
Robert Dudley (who does not seem to have made use, at this time, of his
title of Earl of Leicester) and Cecil, asking him to send some one with
a sum of money to pay my Lord of Pirgo’s charge for the maintenance of
his wife and infant. The amount was stated to be £114, which had to be
paid at once, “because the said Lady Graye (as she complaineth) cannot
longer endure from payment.” It will be remembered that in January of
the same year the steward of Pirgo had acknowledged full payment of all
moneys due to Lord Grey up to date; it is somewhat strange, therefore,
that four months later, £114 should have been demanded for her
Ladyship’s expenses, and it is not unreasonable to believe that Dudley
and Cecil, when they named so large a sum, intended to help themselves
liberally out of it. Whether Lord John or the other two worthies ever
got this money or not, remains uncertain to this day.
Somewhere about Christmas 1563, the Duchess of Somerset had gone to
court, and had been received in very friendly fashion by Robert Dudley.
For once in her life, Anne Stanhope seems to have showed some feeling,
and to have done her best for her unfortunate son and his persecuted
wife. But so far as we can judge, she set to work the wrong way, as
was her custom, insisting where she should have pleaded, and so made
matters worse. On March 18, 1564, Hertford addressed a personal appeal
to Leicester on behalf of himself and his wife, thanking him at the
same time for his kindness to the Duchess.[90] Leicester replied,
within a few days, that he had done everything that “speech and humble
art” could do, but saw no sign of any more favourable feeling towards
the captives on the queen’s part: although “he had moved the Queen’s
Majesty in his [Hertford’s] behalf” it was all in vain. Then—with
an hypocrisy worthy of Uriah Heep, considering he was universally
suspected of having murdered his wife, Amy Robsart, and was jeered at
as the queen’s paramour—he unctuously adds, “Love God and fear Him,
and pray earnestly to Him, for it must be your chief work that He may
further your help to obtain the favour and comfort you seek.” A week
later, Hertford writes him another letter, enclosing a present of
gloves for the queen, which he beseeches him to present to Her Majesty.
Leicester, in answer to Hertford’s request that he should tell him if
there was anything wrong with them, replied, two days later, that he
had given the gloves to the queen, and that there was no fault, except
that they were too thin, a defect he had taken care to point out to
“Thurgans,” the servant who brought the gloves from Hanworth. He adds
that it would be well if the next pair “you _make_ a little stronger”;
evidently the earl employed his leisure in manufacturing gloves, of
which these were a specimen pair.[91] But neither Cecil, nor Leicester,
nor the Duchess of Somerset—who continued to intercede for her son
and her daughter-in-law—nor the gloves, sufficed to mollify the
inflexible Elizabeth, who manifested no inclination whatever to grant
the unfortunate prisoners what Hertford had termed “the countershine
comfort” of their freedom.
At this time Lord John Grey, too, joined the chorus of appeals,
addressing a letter[92] to Cecil on March 6 (1564), in which he
mentions that he has not written for three months—probably his last
letter was the one sent together with the inventory of Lady Katherine’s
effects—points out that they are now in the season of Lent, “which of
all others hath been counted a time of mercy and forgiveness,” and
again begs the queen’s pardon for his charge and her husband. “In
faith,” says he, “I would I were the Queen’s confessor this Lent, that
I might enjoin her in penance to forgive and forget, or otherwise able
to step into the pulpit to tell Her Highness that God will not forgive
her, unless she freely forgive all the world.”