LADY KATHERINE AGAIN THE CENTRE OF INTRIGUES
IN the year 1564, John Hales, Clerk of the Hanaper, secretly published
a pamphlet or book, “wherein,” says Cecil, “he hath taken upon him to
discuss no small matter, viz., the title [right] to the Crown after the
Queen’s Majesty, having confuted and rejected the line of the Scottish
Queen, and made the line of the Lady Frances, mother to Lady Katherine
Grey, the only next and lawful.”[93] This, the most open declaration
in favour of Katherine’s claim that had yet appeared, naturally
incensed Elizabeth, all the more so as it eventually transpired that
both the Chancellor (Sir Nicholas Bacon) and Secretary Cecil had had
a share in the preparation of the book, though all the blame, when
the queen learnt of it later on, was laid upon Hales, who, to add to
his offence, had called in foreign lawyers to prove the legality of
Hertford’s marriage. Hales was sent to the Fleet Prison for six months,
Bacon was severely reprimanded, whilst Cecil, in a letter dated May 9,
1564, states that he was “not free from the Queen’s suspicions.” No
doubt Elizabeth’s resentment against the authors or suspected authors
of this attempt to favour Lady Katherine, was fanned by Lord Robert
Dudley, who took advantage of this opportunity to strike a nasty blow
at his arch-enemy, Cecil, whom he accused of being the author of the
offensive pamphlet. The foreign State Papers throw considerable light
on the events of this period, especially a letter from Don Diego Guzman
de Silva, the Spanish ambassador ordinary, who came into office after
the sudden death of Quadra, and who, writing to the King of Spain on
June 27 (1564), says: “A great friend of Lord Robert Dudley has been
to visit me on his behalf, and has informed me of the great enmity
that exists between Cecil and Robert even before this book [i.e.
Hales’s pamphlet] was published, but now very much more.... The Queen
is extremely angry about it [the book], although she signifies that
there are so many accomplices in the offence that they must overlook
it, and has begun to slacken in the matter. This person has asked me
from Robert with great secrecy to take an opportunity in speaking
to the Queen to urge her not to fail in adopting strong measures in
this business, as if Cecil were _out of the way_, the affairs of Your
Majesty [the King of Spain] would be more favourably dealt with and
religious questions as well, because this Cecil and his friends are
those who persecute the Catholics and dislike Your Majesty, whereas the
other man [Lord Robert] is looked upon as faithful.... If the Queen
would disgrace Cecil, it would be a great good to them, and this man
tried to persuade me to make use of Robert.... With regard to this
particular business [of the pamphlet], also, I would be glad to do
as Robert desired.... I have advice reaching me from all sides, and
particularly from Catholics, that this punishment [i.e. the disgrace
of Cecil] should be pressed upon the Queen.” Nevertheless, these
sinister schemes do not seem to have come to anything, since Cecil
did not receive so much as a reprimand; but, as already stated, he
was well aware that he had aroused Her Majesty’s suspicions of him,
and doubtless, with his characteristic acuteness, took good care to
do nothing that might compromise him further. Lord John Grey was not
so fortunate, though it is difficult to see what he had to do with
the affair; but all the same he received a warning, and was kept
under arrest at Pirgo until his death. It may be that, apart from the
abortive Spanish plot for the abduction of Lady Katherine, some other
conspiracy was on foot to place her on the Throne, and that Lord John
Grey was cognizant of this scheme. Really the Greys’ motto might well
have been “Save me from my friends,” for their worst enemies were their
most eager supporters—Lady Jane’s execution was the immediate result
of her father’s insurrection; and Hales’s attempt to vindicate Lady
Katherine’s honour, only served to increase Elizabeth’s anger against
her and hers.
[Illustration:
[_To face p._ 214
WILLIAM CECIL, LORD BURLEIGH]
The loss of the queen’s favour had a depressing effect on the health
of Lord John Grey, who, on May 20, 1564, in a curious letter to Cecil,
says it will no longer endure the strain of anxiety caused by the care
of his niece, the Lady Katherine, adding that he has been very ill and
fears he may not live much longer. Late in November 1564, Cecil wrote
to Lord Robert Dudley to inform him that Lord John Grey had died at
Pirgo five days previously [i.e. about November 21], “of whom his
friends report that he died of thought, but his gout was sufficient to
have ended his life.” By “thought” his Lordship no doubt meant “worry.”
Whether Lady Katherine stayed at Pirgo for her uncle’s funeral, we know
not: she may even have left before his death, for Cecil, in his letter,
expressly states that at the time of writing she was in the charge of
Sir William Petre at Ingatestone House in Essex. As this mansion is
about ten miles from Pirgo, she would have had no great distance to
travel—a mercy for her, in her weak state. For the next eighteen months
we hear nothing of her; very likely she remained more or less closely
confined at Ingatestone, until she was consigned, in 1566, to the care
of Sir John Wentworth of Gosfield Hall, near Halstead in Essex.
Meanwhile, the Duchess of Somerset continued her agitation on behalf of
her son and his wife; and in Lent 1565 (the letter is dated April 18),
she writes to Cecil and Dudley, begging them “to take some occasion to
do good in my son’s case.” The former she also beseeched to “provoke”
[i.e. urge] Lord Robert; “trusting the occasion of this Holy Week and
charitable time for forgiveness, earnestly set forth by his Lordship
and you, will bring forth some comfortable fruit of relief to the long
afflicted parties, wherein my Lord and you cannot go so far, but God’s
cause and the Queen’s honour bid you go farther.”
The young Earl of Hertford had, as we have seen, been removed from
the Tower to his mother’s house at Hanworth in August 1563. He soon
had good cause to regret the change, for the duchess, who had always
discountenanced his marriage, made him feel his error in a most
unpleasant manner. She was, she said, “tired of the whole matter,” and
wished she “had never heard of Lady Katherine or of her family”—no
good had come of it. She did not, however, refuse to assist her son
in his difficulties, but she did so in an “unfriendly way,” so that
the first days at Hanworth must have been the reverse of pleasant;
particularly as the duchess’s husband, Mr. Newdigate, made himself
exceedingly disagreeable and interfering. In May 1564, Hertford was
suddenly sent from Hanworth to the custody of Sir John Mason—that very
subtle man who had desired he should be harshly dealt with—at his
house in Clerkenwell. The wording of the royal warrant (dated May 26,
1564), which commits the Earl of Hertford to his [Mason’s] custody,
“discharging him of Fr. Newdigate, who is to confine himself to his own
house,” has given rise to the erroneous impression that Newdigate also
had been imprisoned at Sir John’s mansion. It should probably read,
“Discharging him [i.e. Hertford] _from_ Francis Newdigate,” meaning
that the earl’s step-father, who was in these terms ordered to hand his
prisoner over to Mason, should have no further intercourse with him,
and therefore “confine himself to his own house”—in other words, stay
at home.
Misfortune seems to have attended most of the ladies and gentlemen whom
Elizabeth obliged to act as jailers to her various obnoxious kinsmen.
They nearly all came to some grief or other. In April 1566, Sir John
Mason died somewhat suddenly. After his death, Hertford lodged, for
a time, with his widow, from whose house, on June 24 of the same
year, he writes to Cecil complaining that his brother, Henry Seymour,
“bears part of the penalty of the Queen’s displeasure.” Was this young
gentleman also involved in the Hales business? In 1567, Quadra tells
us that the earl’s imprisonment had become more strict, but omits to
say where he was at that time. On June 7 of the following year (1568),
he, however, reappears, when he addresses a joint letter to Leicester,
Mildmay and Cecil, in which he says he is “much bound to the Queen”
for her “acceptation of his mother’s suit”—apparently the duchess had
met with some success in her supplications on his behalf—and further
thanks Her Majesty for “her intention to take £700 a year till the
£10,000 be paid.” The meaning of this is not clear, unless it refers
to the payment of his fine, which however was adjudged in marks, not
pounds. Hertford was then living at “Sir John Spencer’s.”
In 1566, as we have stated, his unhappy countess, the Lady Katherine,
had been sent to Sir John Wentworth’s very dreary mansion, Gosfield
Hall, Essex.[94] The official order to receive her must have been
a heavy blow to Sir John, for on May 14 of that year he wrote a
letter[95] to the privy council, declaring himself a most “unmeet man
to receive such a charge, being of years above threescore and sixteen,
and of late much visited with sickness”; and, he adds, “my wife for
this fortnight or three weeks hath been visited with an ague, and
doubteth much (but) that it will breed to a quartain, who is above the
years of threescore and ten and cannot go so much as unto her garden to
take any air.”
Gosfield Hall must have at this juncture somewhat resembled a hospital,
for in addition to the sick Wentworth and his wife, their daughter,
the Lady Maltravers—or “Mattrevers,” as he spells it—lay there “so
ill that she could not see anyone.” To crown all these objections,
Sir John informs the council that his house is the last in which the
Lady Katherine would be safe; “for all the times in the night they
may come to the windows of every chamber in my house, or talk with
her or deliver letters unto her, or if she were so disposed, she may
either let them into her chamber, or go out to them at the loops of the
windows, they are so great and wide.”[96] Indeed, he says, it would be
better for him to be imprisoned himself than to take up a task like
this, which he could not fulfil.
Unfortunately for the poor man, Elizabeth had visited Gosfield Hall on
one of her progresses (in 1561), and remembered the house well enough
not to place much faith in its being so very unsafe a residence for her
afflicted prisoner. No notice accordingly seems to have been taken of
Sir John’s letter; and to Gosfield Lady Katherine proceeded, with her
retinue, her “monks,” her parrots, and her pet dogs.
Albeit Elizabeth had good cause to wish her to be kept very secure.
On account of the agitation in her favour, Lady Katherine, though
imprisoned, was almost as great a thorn in the queen’s side as if she
had been free. The party which supported her claims to the Throne was
now stronger than ever; although Spain kept aloof, for the Spanish
ambassador did not hesitate to warn Elizabeth against allowing
Katherine to be nominated her successor, and once more urged the queen
to cut the question short by marrying. Had it merely depended on a
vote in Parliament, Katherine would certainly have been nominated, for
the Ambassador remarks that the Protestant party, who were greatly
in the majority in the Commons, were “furiously in favour of her.”
Doubtless this was precisely the reason why the Spaniards had lost the
interest in her they had felt in past times, when she declared herself
a Catholic. At the head of the movement was Cecil, whilst the Duke of
Norfolk, who still cherished the idea of uniting his daughter to one of
Katherine’s sons, gave him his hearty support. On the other hand, the
lords were mostly in favour of the Queen of Scots, Catholic influence
being strong in the Upper House. By the year 1566, the Protestant party
in Parliament was waxing so irritable at the queen’s persistent refusal
to name her successor, that during the autumn session of that year,
they boldly threatened to refuse to vote Her Majesty further financial
supplies, unless she consented to come to a decision in the matter. The
tension was so great, that on one occasion, about this time, a regular
hand-to-hand fight took place in full Parliament, between Katherine’s
supporters and their opponents. Not daring, however, to “starve out”
Elizabeth in the way proposed, the Protestant party next tried to bribe
the queen into consenting to their proposals, by offering to vote her,
without discussion, £250,000, on the sole condition that she allowed
them to nominate her successor, in which case, it was thought, they
would choose Katherine as her heir. Elizabeth, exasperated beyond
endurance at such insolence, this time replied that “on no account
would she allow this nomination to be discussed further,” that she
refused to make any conditions whatever, and that they ought to have
the decency to vote supplies from motives of pure patriotism, instead
of from interest or party gain. The queen must have felt that her
position was very insecure, else surely, with her characteristic
vindictiveness, she would have taken more drastic—and in this case
justifiable—measures against those who had dared to offer her such
an obvious affront. On the other hand, what she told the Spanish
ambassador may have been true that, “though she would concede nothing
in this matter of the succession, she wished to dissemble, and let
the Parliament talk, in order that she might know what were their
opinions and thus discover the lady of each man’s choice,” meaning Mary
Stuart or Lady Katherine. Nevertheless, “Gloriana” was considerably
exercised in her mind, for, the Ambassador continues, “she fears that
if the matter is carried further they will adopt Katherine, both she
and her husband being strong Protestants, and most of the members of
Parliament are heretics, and are going on that course to maintain their
own party.” For all that, she severely reprimanded the Parliament
in her prorogation speech, and had a violent quarrel with Norfolk,
Leicester and other noblemen for daring to discuss the matter; finally,
she issued an order to the effect that no allusion was to be made to
it in Parliament under pain of punishment. This order was withdrawn
soon after, but the question was dropped. The agitation in Katherine’s
favour continued, however, in secret, and the Spanish State Papers
clearly demonstrate that the accusations against Mary Stuart, of having
connived at her husband Darnley’s murder, were brought forward by the
Protestant party principally in order to benefit Lady Katherine by
injuring the reputation of, and creating a prejudice against, the
Catholic Queen of Scots, the rival claimant to the succession.[97] On
the night that Darnley’s death became known in London (somewhere in
February 1567), Leicester sent his brother, the Earl of Warwick, to
Hertford, “to offer him his services in the matter of the succession,
and Lord Robert himself went to see the Duchess of Somerset, the earl’s
mother, with the same object, and has made friends with them both,
contrary to his former action.” He had hitherto supported the Queen
of Scots, and, as we have seen, had been extremely averse to Lady
Katherine’s claim. It is strange, therefore, that he should have veered
round so suddenly, unless he felt convinced that Katherine’s chances
of succeeding Elizabeth were now better than ever, and deemed it good
policy to be on the winning side. The result of these interviews,
the details of which are lost, is unknown; probably Lord Robert’s
suggestions fell through, owing to Hertford’s habitual pusillanimity;
whilst the duchess is not likely to have been over enthusiastic for
the advancement of her daughter-in-law, or desirous of seeing her son
get himself into still worse trouble by taking any further ill-advised
action. No doubt, moreover, Elizabeth was aware that her captives were
likely to become dangerous again, for in December 1567 we learn from
the Spanish State Papers that Hertford’s imprisonment became stricter
than ever, “they are,” he says, “possibly afraid of some movement
in his favour, as I am assured that certain negotiations are afoot
respecting the succession to the Crown very different from the marriage
business.” What these were, he does not say, but probably he alludes
to the attempts to injure Mary Stuart’s good name, in order the better
to forward Lady Katherine’s cause, or to Dudley’s visit to the Earl of
Hertford, which, if he were still a prisoner at that time, must have
been arranged secretly, and was doubtless the principal reason why he
was treated with renewed severity.
Meanwhile, Lady Katherine remained, for some seventeen months, at
Gosfield, until Sir John Wentworth’s death, in 1567,—he too, so to
speak, died of Lady Katherine—obliged the queen to make a fresh
disposal of her luckless cousin. Lady Wentworth still lived on, but
“besides her great age, which is seventy-one years, is grieven by
the sorrow of her late husband’s death so weak and sickly as it is
to be feared she cannot long continue without she shortly amend.” It
almost looks as though Elizabeth had sent her unhappy kinswoman to
Gosfield with the deliberate intention of driving her melancholy mad!
The poor soul stayed on for several weeks in the house of death and
mourning, until Mr. Roke Green, Wentworth’s executor and agent, who was
a relative of the family, received the queen’s orders to take charge
of the prisoner, her child, and her train—a charge he politely, but
firmly, declined to undertake, his house, he urged, being altogether
too small, whilst he himself had no wife, and “by the occasion of
the great charge of children I have, I am much enforced to be from
my house,” which probably means that he was a sort of guardian to a
numerous group of orphans. He might as well have spared himself the
trouble of writing his letter,[98] which probably crossed one from the
queen—dated Windsor, October 2, 1567—commanding him to convey the Lady
Katherine and her train to Cockfield Hall, Yoxford, and commit them to
the custody of Sir Owen Hopton (who, so far as we can discover, was
not at this time, as some writers assert, Lieutenant of the Tower). On
the same day (October 2), Her Majesty sent her commands to Sir Owen
to receive Lady Katherine and such servants as were in attendance on
her. The fear of a fresh plot concerning Katherine and the succession
must have haunted Elizabeth, for in making this order, she enjoins on
Hopton to take the following significant precautions: “Do not suffer
her to have any conference with any stranger, nor that any resort be
made unto her other than by yourself and of your household. And in case
you shall be occasioned either for our service or for neighbourhood
(‘companionship’] to have any repair to your table [i.e.—‘have any
one to sup or dine with you’], that she be not permitted to be in
company of them, but so to be secluded as yourself and your wife be not
thereby restrained from the entertainment of any of your friends. And
generally we require you and your wife to keep her as one committed to
your charge from conference or sight of strangers, according to the
trust we repose in you. And as occasion shall arise wherein you shall
desire to know our pleasure, you may thereof advertise some of our
privy council, of whom you shall receive answer. And for the charges
of the debts of her and her necessary servants attending upon her,
you shall be satisfied as by the foresaid Roke Greene you may at more
length understand was answered for the same unto the said Sr. John
Wentworthe.”[99] Sir Owen, who received the royal command on October
6, manifested even more than Mr. Roke Green, his reluctance to receive
the princess, for in a letter to “Cissyll” [Cecil] dated the 11th of
the same month, he pointed out that he was just about to start with
his wife and domestics for a stay at a house he had bought at Ipswich,
an outing which the queen’s orders compelled him to forego.[100] After
conference with Mr. Roke Green, who appears to have gone to Cockfield
Hall to consult with Hopton, it was agreed that Lady Katherine should
remain where she was—apparently at Gosfield Hall—till the 20th of
October. About that date, therefore, her Ladyship left Gosfield for
Ipswich, a distance of some thirty miles. Owing to her delicate health,
she performed the journey in a “coche,” a ponderous vehicle drawn
by four strong Flemish horses, sent from London for the purpose of
her removal. In this she sat with her nurse and child, deeming it,
no doubt, a very comfortable mode of travelling; whilst her escort,
forming a picturesque group, followed on horseback. The party spent a
night at an inn in Ipswich; the landlord’s bill of charges for their
entertainment is still extant, in the account sent to the Exchequer by
Hopton after Lady Katherine’s death. It runs as follows:—
“The charges for the receipt of the Lady Katherine, and for the board
of her and her ordinary servants, &c.
“Imprimis; expended at Ipswich upon the receipt of the Lady Katherine
for one supper and one dinner, fire, lodging and horsemeat there, 7li.
15s.
“Item; for one bait at Snape when the Lady Katherine came from Ipswich
to Cokfield (Cockfield), 20s.
“Item; for the hire of a cart for the carriage of the stuff and apparel
of the same Lady Katherine from Ipswich to Cockfield, 20s.
“Item; given in reward for the coach, 10s.”[101]