CHAPTER IX

LADY KATHERINE’S LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH

VERY soon after her arrival at Cockfield,[102] Lady Katherine, who

was already in a deep decline, fell dangerously ill. Sorrow, anxiety,

and hope deferred had done their work, and by the close of 1567, Sir

Owen Hopton decided to send for Dr. Symonds, the queen’s physician,

who must have left for London somewhere in January 1568, since on the

11th of that month, Hopton wrote to Cecil[103] that his charge was

much worse since Dr. Symonds’s departure.[104] He adds that he would

like the queen to order her doctor to return at once; “he then shall

show his cunning and God shall do the cure.” He did come back, but

as soon as he beheld the evidently dying lady, he warned her weeping

attendants that her end was near. Sir Owen seems to have done his best

to alleviate Lady Katherine’s sufferings; and his household books

mention the despatch of no less than three messengers to London with

news concerning her illness.

A remarkably interesting document, entitled _The Manner of Her

Departing_, is still extant among the Harleian MSS. in the British

Museum.[105] All the night of January 26, 1568, says the writer, Lady

Katherine prayed incessantly, repeating the orisons in the Book of

Common Prayer, the service for the Visitation of the Sick from the

same, and the Psalms. Her attendants endeavoured to persuade her that

she would live, but she, being entirely reconciled to the idea of

death, would not listen to them. “Then said the Lady Hopton to her,

‘Madam, be of good comfort, for with God’s favour you shall live and

escape this; for Mrs. Cousins saith you have escaped many dangers when

you were as like to die as you be now.’ ‘No, no, my lady,’ answered

the Lady Katherine, ‘my time is come, and it is not God’s will I

should live longer. His will be done, and not mine.’ Then, looking on

those about her, she added, ‘As I am, so you shall behold the picture

of yourselves.’ About six or seven of the clock in the morning, she

desired Sir Owen should be sent for, and upon his asking her how she

did, replied, ‘Even going to God, Sir Owen, even as fast as I can.’

Then she added, ‘I beseech you promise me one thing, that you yourself,

with your own mouth, will make this request unto the Queen’s Majesty,

which shall be the last suit and request I ever shall make to Her

Highness, even from the mouth of a dead woman, that she would forgive

her displeasure towards me, as my hope is she hath done. I must needs

confess I have greatly offended her, in that I made my choice without

her knowledge, otherwise I take God to witness, I had never the heart

to think any evil against Her Majesty; and that she would be good unto

my children, and not impute my fault unto them, whom I give wholly

to Her Majesty; for in my life they had few friends, and fewer shall

they have when I am dead, except Her Majesty be gracious unto them;

and I desire Her Highness to be good unto my Lord [Hertford], for I

know this my death will be heavy news to him; that Her Grace will be

so good as to send liberty to glad[den] his heart withal.’” She next

asked for her jewel-box, and taking from it the ring with the pointed

diamond in it, which her husband had given her when they plighted

their troth, she desired Sir Owen to return it to him in her name, for

“This is the ring that I received of him when I gave myself unto him

and gave him my faith.” Sir Owen, evidently remembering what had been

said by Hertford about the wedding-ring at the time of his examination

by Grindal and the commission, inquired rather abruptly, “What say you,

Madam, was this your wedding-ring?” “No, Sir Owen,” said the dying

lady, “this was the ring of my assurance [betrothal] to Lord Hertford:

there is my wedding-ring,” and she lifted another ring, the one with

the inscription upon it, out of the box: “Deliver this also to my Lord,

and pray him, even as I have been to him (as I take God to witness

I have been) a true and faithful wife, that he will be a loving and

natural father to our children, to whom I give the same blessing that

God gave unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” And then she took out yet

another ring, with a death’s head enamelled on it and the words, “While

I lyve yours,” and said, “This shall be the last token to my Lord that

ever I shall send him; it is the picture of myself.” “After which,

noticing that her nails were turning purple, she said, with a joyful

countenance, ‘Lo, He comes! Yea, even so come, Lord Jesus!’ Then, after

ejaculating the words, ‘Welcome death!’ she, embracing herself, as it

were, with her arms, and lifting up her eyes and hands to Heaven, and

striking her breast with her hands, brake forth with these words: ‘O

Lord! for Thy manifold mercies, blot out of Thy book all my offences!’

Whereby Sir Owen Hopton, perceiving her to draw towards her end, said

to Mr. Bockeham, ‘Were it not best to send to the Church that the

bell may be rung?’ And Lady Katherine, overhearing him, said, ‘Good

Sir Owen, let it be so.’” Then, the parish-church of the neighbouring

village of Yoxford tolled the passing bell. Some time—perhaps an

hour—had elapsed, when Lady Katherine, awaking as if from a dream, and

closing her eyes with her own hands, murmured—just as her sister, Lady

Jane Grey, had done, when on the scaffold, fourteen years earlier:

“Lord! into Thy hands I commend my spirit!” and “thus she yielded unto

God her meek spirit at nine o’clock in the morning of the 27th of

January 1568.” She was only twenty-seven years of age at the time of

her death.

Elizabeth’s persecution of Lady Katherine and Hertford was very nearly,

if not quite, as unrelenting as Mary’s treatment of Jane Grey and

Guildford Dudley; but far less justifiable. Her methods were those

of Julian and not of Nero; but quite as efficacious! Jane had been

actually placed on the Throne by a powerful party, had been proclaimed

queen, and had received the homage due to royalty; whereas the scheme

in favour of Lady Katherine never took shape. Besides, Elizabeth, who

had succeeded in making herself popular with a large section of the

people, was far more firmly seated on the Throne in 1563 than Mary

had been in 1554, when her proposed Spanish marriage had rendered

her obnoxious to a great number of her subjects. On the other hand,

Hertford had violated the law passed in Henry VIII’s reign, punishing

with the utmost severity any subject who was so bold as to venture

to marry a princess of the blood royal, especially if she was in the

line of succession, without the sovereign’s consent, ratified by Act

of Parliament. His fate might indeed have been even worse, had not the

Duchess of Somerset represented Lady Katherine as the more blameworthy

of the two.

Lady Katherine’s remains were evidently embalmed, for among the items

in the list of expenses incurred by Sir Owen Hopton we find the

following: “Itm’; for one Mr. Hannse S’geon, for the cering of the

corpse of the Lady Katherine, 3 li. Itm’; for spice, flax, rosin,

wax, and the coffin-making and for the serge clothes, 3 li.” The

funeral took place on February 21, 1568, in Yoxford Church. There

were seventy-seven mourners, but nobody of great note was present;

and, needless to say, Hertford was not allowed to attend, even by

proxy. According to Hopton’s account, there was but a meagre display

of the banners, etc.,[106] usual at state and semi-state funerals;

and it also indicates that the service was choral.[107] A sum of £4

17s. 8d. was dispensed to the poor after the funeral. There is no

monument to Lady Katherine Grey in Yoxford Church; but a small black

stone in the chancel was, according to local tradition, said to mark

her resting-place. As the words _Hic tandem qua vixere concordia

requiescant simul_ (“At length they rest _together_ here, in the

concord in which they lived”) are inscribed on Hertford’s tomb in

Salisbury Cathedral, it is believed that Lady Katherine’s remains

were translated thither. There is no clear documentary evidence that

this was the case, but the theory seems supported by a statement in

an MS. in the College of Arms (Reyce’s MSS. relating to Suffolk),

to the effect that, “There lie buried in the church and chancel of

Yoxford, the _bowels_ of Lady Katherine, wife of Edward Seymour, Earl

of Hertford,” implying that her _body_ was interred elsewhere. Another

MS. relating to Yoxford states that the banners and pennons, mentioned

in Hopton’s accounts, continued to hang in the chancel of the parish

church as late as 1594, and included, “for the Lady Katherine, a target

[i.e. coat of arms] of England, and four standards of arms, two France

and England quarterly, a bordure, goboné argent and azure.”

According to a pretty tradition still lingering through the ages at

Yoxford, a little pet spaniel that had belonged to Lady Katherine,

was, for weeks, seen to come daily to her grave, upon which it was

one morning found dead. Much the same story is related of a spaniel

belonging to Mary Queen of Scots, which followed her to the scaffold

and died of grief a few days after her execution.

No trace is to be found in the State Papers of any letters addressed

by Katherine, either to her sister Mary or to others, save Cecil,

Leicester or the queen, during all the time of her imprisonment.

Probably she was strictly prohibited from writing to any one except

these last three, and to them only. Considering how actively Cecil

supported her cause, it seems a little unwise to have allowed him to

hold intercourse with her; but, no doubt, Elizabeth kept watch also

over him, and therefore had nothing to fear from that quarter.

From 1568 onwards we hear nothing of Hertford until, in June 1571, he

addresses a letter to Burleigh, “from my park of Tottenham,” in which

he speaks of “the endeavour to bring in question great part of the

title of my lands.” The details of this dispute are lost, nor is any

mention of this Tottenham property to be found in the records of that

place. A letter from Queen Elizabeth, the date and destination of which

are uncertain, but which was probably written in 1570, alluding to “a

suit long dependent between the Earl of Hertford and the Lord Wentworth

for certain concealed lands,” doubtless refers to this matter. At that

time, Hertford seems to have been still in disfavour with the queen;

but soon after, matters mended, for, according to Doyle’s _Official

Baronage_, on August 30, 1571, he was permitted to proceed to Cambridge

to take his degree as Master of Arts.

The earl remarried some years after Lady Katherine’s death. His second

wife was a sister of that Lady Sheffield who was at this time secretly

married to Leicester, and was a daughter of Lord Howard of Effingham,

and maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth. This marriage brought back to

Hertford Elizabeth’s favour, to such an extent that he entertained

her with great pomp at his estate of Elvetham in Hampshire, in

September 1591.[108] He had no children by his second wife, who died

some years after her marriage. Hertford had a fine monument erected

over her remains; according to Dean Stanley, he was also instrumental

in erecting his mother’s (the Duchess of Somerset) handsome tomb in

St. Edmund’s Chapel, Westminster. The Earl of Hertford’s third wife

was Lady Frances Howard, another cousin of the queen, and widow of

a certain Mr. Prannel, a London wine merchant, who had left her an

enormous fortune. She seems to have been a very haughty woman, who gave

herself such prodigious airs, that her husband was fain to remind her,

from time to time, of the fact that before he married her she had been

a mere city dame: “Frank! Frank!” he would call out—the lady’s name was

Frances—“how long is it since thou wert wedded to Prannel?”

Shortly after this marriage, Hertford once more incurred the queen’s

displeasure by attempting to prove, before the Court of Arches, the

legitimacy of his eldest son by Lady Katherine Grey. Elizabeth promptly

lodged him in the Tower again (in 1596), and his wife came up to London

to petition Her Majesty for his release. For nearly six months she came

daily to the palace, without being received by Elizabeth, who seems,

however, to have treated her not unkindly, sending her broths, meats,

sweets and wine from the royal table. After a good deal of trouble,

Hertford was released, and probably from sheer fear of angering Her

Majesty anew, kept out of London till after her death. Under James I

he returned to court, and in 1605 he was appointed ambassador to the

archduke regent at Brussels. He died in 1621 in his eighty-third year,

having survived his first wife fifty-three years: the third Countess of

Hertford outlived him, and two months after his death, married Ludovic,

Duke of Richmond and Lennox, being buried with him, in a fine tomb in

Henry VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey. Hertford lived long enough

to see the validity of his marriage to Katherine Grey proved by the

reappearance (in 1608) of the priest who had performed the ceremony. He

left no issue by his second and third marriages.

Lady Katherine’s husband was buried under a handsome but over-elaborate

Jacobean monument of various marbles, which stands at the east end of

the south aisle of Salisbury Cathedral.[109] The recumbent effigies

of the earl and Lady Katherine praying, the former clothed in armour,

are remarkably fine; so, too, are the figures of the two sons, also in

armour, kneeling on either side. This monument is said to be the work

of an Italian sculptor, and bears a strong resemblance to some of the

tombs of the decadent period in Venice.

The question of the succession, in relation to the Grey family, did not

close with the death of Lady Katherine. Henry VIII’s will, the cause

of all the trouble, and Edward VI’s “Devise for the Succession,” its

confirmation, both placed the children of the two Ladies Grey in the

direct line of the succession, a fact not forgotten by Lady Katherine’s

partisans, even in her lifetime. Death having removed that lady, a

movement was started in favour of the claims of her sons, then aged six

and four years respectively. Eight days after Lady Katherine’s funeral,

Guzman de Silva informed the King of Spain, his master, that Leicester

had obtained the queen’s leave to go and visit his estates and meet the

Duke of Norfolk on the road, “and it is now said that he will leave

here in five days, and that in Northampton the duke and earl will meet

together with the earls of Warwick and Huntingdon and other nobles, in

order to arrange a new friendship. Cecil and Leicester will also be

reconciled, and they will discuss the succession in consequence of

Katherine’s death.”[110] The result of this meeting, if it ever took

place, is not on record; but it was rumoured in political circles at

this time, that one of the sons of Lady Katherine might be eventually

placed on the Scottish Throne, and thus the conversion of that country

to Protestantism be absolutely assured, and probably its annexation

to England effected at the same time. The greatest supporters of this

scheme were Cecil and the chancellor (Sir Nicholas Bacon), who, as we

have already seen, had all along consistently favoured Lady Katherine’s

claim. More remarkable still, Elizabeth, although she abhorred the

idea that these boys, “brats” as she called them, might one day occupy

her Throne, endorsed the scheme for placing one of them on that of

Scotland. Very likely she saw in this a chance of getting at least the

eldest out of the way of the English succession. A letter written in

June 1570 by one Antonio de Guaras, a Spanish merchant or banker who

acted as a sort of spy in England, during a period when there was no

regular ambassador, contains the following curious statement, which

had no doubt considerable foundation in fact. The northern rebellion

had only recently been crushed, and Elizabeth demanded of the Scotch,

certain hostages, including Prince James of Scotland, afterwards James

I of England, to be held as pledges of the future good behaviour of our

northern neighbours. The Scotch, says De Guaras, would not accede to

these demands, “which would be their ruin, as the object of the Queen

of England, it is suspected, is to at once kill the prince [James],

and place on the [Scotch] Throne the eldest son of Katherine, sister

of Jane who was beheaded, he being a heretic.”[111] It was doubtless

with some such object in view that Elizabeth, as another Spanish envoy

informs us, was “bringing up with much more state than formerly the two

children of Hertford and Katherine,”[112] from which we may suppose

that poor Katherine’s dying request had been conveyed to the queen

by Sir Owen Hopton, and that Elizabeth acceded to it, if only from

interested motives.[113]

Meanwhile, the vexed question of the English succession was not left

in abeyance. In 1572, Parliament met to discuss who should take Her

Majesty’s place in the event of her death, and the claim of the young

son of Katherine and Hertford was supported by many of the members,

although others contested his legitimacy, and it was even thought that

the second son had a better chance, because, according to the Spanish

State Papers, “his parents were married, before he was born, with the

consent of the queen and council.” It is puzzling to make out what is

meant by this statement; either it is an error, or else indeed the

ecclesiastical courts had, on some date now unknown to historians,

reversed their previous decision, annulling the marriage. Certainly the

legitimacy of the children of this marriage was still doubted as late

as 1574, since a document in the British Museum,[114] states that in

October of that year “the privy council were disputing warmly as to the

legitimacy of the sons of the Earl of Hertford, and it was understood

that they unanimously agreed that they were not legitimate; and that

the legitimate heir (to the English Throne) was the Prince of Scotland

(afterwards James I).”

In October 1572 Elizabeth had a recurrence of exactly the same sickness

which had so alarmed her subjects ten years before—the physicians

called it small-pox.[115] She was soon once more so near death that her

life was despaired of: Sir Thomas Smith, in a letter to Cecil, tells us

“My Lord Leicester sat up by her bed all night.” Again the question of

the succession was actively discussed, and an unsigned letter addressed

from London to the Duke of Alva,[116] dated the 26th of October 1572,

informs us that before the precise nature of the queen’s complaint was

known at court, “the Earl of Leicester, the Treasurer (the Marquis of

Winchester), and the Earl of Bedford were closeted together several

times to arrange, in case the queen died, to proclaim king one of the

two sons of the Earl of Hertford by Lady Katherine; this being the

intention of the three lords in question and all their party. The two

boys,” the letter continues, “are being brought up by their paternal

grandmother, the Duchess of Somerset.” Once more the vigorous queen

rallied, but falling ill again in December of the same year, “the

secret murmurs in court, and amongst people all over the country, as to

what will become of the country in case of the queen’s death, were very

remarkable.... The Catholics wish in such case to proclaim the Queen

of Scots, and the heretics to take up arms against her and proclaim

the son of the Earl of Hertford.... They have passed a law, making

it treason to discuss the matter during the queen’s life.”[117] Her

Majesty had at this time once more refused to allow a successor to be

nominated.

By far the most curious allusion, in the Spanish State Papers, to the

plot for putting Hertford’s son on the Scotch Throne is contained in

a collection of extracts from letters written by Antonio de Guaras in

December 1574. Mary Queen of Scots was then a prisoner in the Earl of

Shrewsbury’s mansion at the Peak, whilst Lady Margaret Lennox had just

been sent to the Tower afresh for marrying her son to Shrewsbury’s

daughter. The marriage had greatly incensed “Gloriana,” who, probably

with a deeper motive than appears at first sight, ordered the Scottish

queen’s removal to the Tower of London. The earl, however, protested

so vigorously against this, that Her Majesty changed her mind: but,

says de Guaras, after recounting this incident, “The Queen of Scots

was in great fear of such a change, which must imperil her, the more

so as Killigrew[118] was leaving for Scotland, and three ships were

ready to accompany him; the object being to obtain possession of the

prince (James) if possible, and put an end to both him and his mother.

They would then raise to power the son of _the Earl of Hertford, whom

they would marry to a daughter of Leicester and the Queen of England,

who, it is said, is kept hidden_, although there are Bishops to witness

that she is legitimate. They think this will shut the door to all other

claimants. This intrigue is said to be arranged very secretly.”[119]

This plot, like so many others in the tortuous labyrinth of the

succession, came to naught; and beyond a brief mention of the eldest

son, Edward, in connection with his father’s imprisonment in 1596, the

sons of Lady Hertford henceforth disappear from the stage of history

until the last moments of Elizabeth’s complicated existence. When, on

March 23, 1603, the great queen lay on her deathbed at Richmond Palace,

her once acute and clear mind wandering deliriously, the Lords of the

Council begged admittance, and kneeling by the dying monarch, asked

her whom she wished to succeed her on the Throne she had clung to so

tenaciously in her active life. Her Majesty was suffering too much in

her throat to reply, so they desired her to raise one finger when they

named the person of her choice. When the King of France and the King

of Scotland were named, she made no sign; but when Lady Katherine’s

eldest son (now Lord Beauchamp) was mentioned, the dying queen, rousing

herself, exclaimed fiercely: “I will have no rascal’s son in my seat,

but one worthy to be a King.”

The following day the queen died, and King James I was proclaimed.

The party that favoured Hertford or his sons deemed it wiser to drop

the matter, and the union of the English and Scottish Thrones was

effected, under “our Second Solomon,” without opposition. Cecil’s son,

forgetting how his father had moved heaven and earth in order that,

first, Lady Katherine, and then, her children, might succeed Elizabeth,

and all the paternal schemes and plots for King James’s exclusion

from the seat of power, became that monarch’s most servile courtier.

As to the much-talked-of “sons,” they very wisely left the matter of

the succession strictly alone, and settled down quietly as private

noblemen. They both predeceased their father, but the elder married,

and it was in the person of his son, William Seymour, Lady Katherine’s

grandson and the husband of Arabella Stuart, that the family name was

perpetuated, and the title of Duke of Somerset revived.

LADY MARY GREY

CHAPTER I

EARLY YEARS

THE life-story of Lady Mary Grey followed almost precisely the

same track as that of her elder sister, Lady Katherine, with this

difference, however, that although Mary, too, made a clandestine

marriage, her husband was as completely her inferior in rank as he was

her superior in girth and stature. She was a dwarf; he was a giant!

Born in 1545, the Lady Mary was contracted to her kinsman, Arthur,

Lord Grey de Wilton, on the day her sister Jane was married to Lord

Guildford Dudley, and Katherine betrothed to Lord Pembroke’s son.

Froude is not correct in stating that Lady Mary was _married_ on that

day “to Martin Keys, a Groom of the Chambers,” a statement which proves

that he knew nothing whatever of Lady Mary’s history. She was then

(1553) in her eighth year, and England was on the eve of the tragedy of

which her eldest sister, Jane, was to be at once the heroine and the

victim, a tragedy speedily followed by her mother, the Lady Frances,

the widowed Duchess of Suffolk’s indecorous marriage with her groom

of the chambers, Adrian Stokes.[120] Lady Mary’s early betrothal was,

however, annulled, mainly on account of the terrible troubles that

overwhelmed the Dudley family.

All we know of Lady Mary’s childhood and youth is an occasional mention

of her name in the State Papers, in connection with those of her

sisters, or in the correspondence, wills and bequests of her family,

and in accounts of visits to royal and other illustrious persons, in

which she accompanied her parents. She is also mentioned in a legal

document, recently discovered in the Record Office, as co-heiress with

her sisters, of certain landed estates in Warwickshire belonging to

their mother, the Lady Frances. Long after that lady’s death, this

document was submitted to Queen Elizabeth, who apparently desired to

know the exact amount of her cousin’s fortune. It was not large, but

the queen none the less confiscated the greater part. We know nothing

of what became of Lady Mary during the catastrophe which overwhelmed

her sister Jane.[121] We can only conclude she was either abandoned

to her nurses at Sheen, or sheltered by some relative or friend of her

parents. In the first months of Mary’s reign, and after some measure of

order had been restored, that queen, as we have seen, took compassion

on the two sisters, Katherine and Mary Grey, received them at court and

admitted them to her privy chamber. Elizabeth also befriended the two

sisters, but far less generously. Lady Mary received a pension of £80

a year from the queen, paid through the Lady Clinton, mistress of the

royal household.

In 1559, Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, died, and the Ladies Katherine

and Mary Grey, who nursed her during her last sickness, attended her

funeral in Westminster Abbey, their flowing trains “being upheld,” as

was then the etiquette for ladies of the highest rank.

Lady Mary was in her sixteenth year, when, two years later (1561), Lady

Katherine Grey was arrested for the unpardonable offence of choosing

her husband without reference to Queen Elizabeth’s desires. Though

dwarfish in stature (she was only four feet in height, and the Spanish

ambassador describes her as being “little, crookbacked,—deformed—and

very ugly,”) freckled and red-haired, like her sisters, Mary was a

thorough Tudor; for she, too, not only fell in love, but resolved to

marry the object of her passion on the earliest possible opportunity,

and this in spite of the dreadful punishment that befell her sister for

a similar misdemeanour.

There was, in those days, an official at court—the post did not fall

into abeyance, indeed, until the middle of the seventeenth century—who

bore the title of the “Porter of the Royal Water-gates.” Each of

the palaces on the Thames possessed a river-gate and stairway, and

as Westminster was in times gone by the most frequented of all the

royal residences—the Tower being only used on occasions of extreme

state, and very rarely at all by Queen Elizabeth—Master Thomas Keyes,

the Sergeant-Porter at this particular gate,[122] was a personage of

considerable importance; and even a remote connection of the queen’s,

for he was descended from the Knollys family, into which Katherine

Carey, daughter of Mary Boleyn, Queen Anne’s sister, had married.

Master Thomas Keyes, therefore, was a notability of a kind, with his

right to boast kinship with the great queen’s nearest and dearest

relatives; and Elizabeth, whatever may have been her faults, never

ceased to favour her mother’s tribe of connections, not a few of whom

were in very humble positions indeed. When he first met Lady Mary Grey,

Thomas was in his prime, a widower of some years’ standing, a good

deal over forty, and moreover the father of six or seven children. He

was the tallest and biggest man[123] about the court, being six feet

eight inches without his shoes, but so stout, we are assured, that he

“did not look near so tall as he really was.” How and when the Lady

Mary formed this giant’s acquaintance is never likely to be known, but

she must have seen him almost daily when her royal mistress was in

residence at Westminster, for she had to attend upon the queen on her

various water excursions up and down the Thames, in those times the

chief thoroughfare of the city, teeming with boats and barges of all

kinds, just as the Strand and Piccadilly now teem with motor-omnibuses

and motor-cars. Almost every one of note, and many, indeed, who were

of no note at all, kept a boat of some sort, and found it as useful as

we find a wheeled conveyance. So numerous and gorgeous were the craft

floating upon the Thames, especially of a summer afternoon, that

foreigners averred there was nothing in the whole world to compare

with it, except on the Grand Canal at Venice. Whenever that “imperial

Votress, Gloriana,” and her attendants moved to and fro between

Westminster and Greenwich, or Richmond, or Hampton Court, the royal

train passed down the stairs of the Water-gate to the queen’s barge,

into which sumptuous, if somewhat cumbrous, vessel Master Keyes, as in

duty bound, handed Her Majesty and her ladies.[124]

Above this particular Water-gate there was a fair and comfortable

apartment, consisting of several large rooms, overlooking the

enchanting panorama of the Thames, a thousand times more picturesque

at this epoch than at the present. Here Mr. Sergeant-Porter dwelt in

solitary state, waited on by his cook and valet—for although, when on

his trial, he himself mentioned the existence of his numerous progeny,

no member of it was living with him at the period in question. Keyes,

who seems to have been convivially disposed, was in the habit of giving

what we should now call afternoon parties, to which he invited some of

the young people about the court, and these gatherings, his own cousin,

Lettice Knollys, one of the most beautiful young women of the day, and

at this time greatly favoured by Queen Elizabeth, was wont to attend.

With Lettice, we may rest assured, came the little Lady Mary, to enjoy

the cool breezes that were wafted through the Gothic windows of Keyes’s

water-mansion, whilst she munched his marchpanes and sipped his dainty

coloured canary. Somewhere in the apartment, probably, there was a

virginal, lute, or mandoline, out of which one of the fair girls would

contrive to extract melody, either to accompany a ballad, or set nimble

feet a-moving in some lively jig or stately pavan. Be this as it may,

certain it is, that during the summer of the year 1565, the Lady Mary

was in Keyes’s apartment more often than was either seemly for so young

a maiden, or prudent for one so closely connected with the queen.

CHAPTER II

A STRANGE WEDDING

ON the 10th (some say the 12th) of August 1565, there were gay doings

at Mr. Sergeant-Porter’s lodgings. It was Mr. Henry Knollys’s[125]

wedding-day, and after the ceremony, which was graced by Elizabeth’s

presence, the wedding party, freed from the restraints of court

etiquette, adjourned to Keyes’s apartment, and there feasted, danced,

and romped till nine o’clock at night. Among the merry company were

Mrs. Lettice Knollys and the Lady Mary Grey. One can only conclude Mr.

Sergeant-Porter had drunk more wine than was good for him; otherwise

he was surely the veriest fool that ever lived, for immediately the

wedding guests had taken leave, he and Lady Mary Grey were married

by candle-light, in the presence of a certain Mrs. Goldwell, an

attendant on Lady Howard (who acted as a witness of the ceremony),

the Sergeant-Porter’s brother, Mr. Edward Keyes, Mr. Martin Cawsley,

a Cambridge student, and “Mr. Cheyney’s man.” A priest, described

at the subsequent inquiry as “a little fat old man, who wore a very

short gown,” was introduced upon the scene. No one knew his name, or

seems to have cared to find it out. The persons present supposed he

was a Swiss Reformer in exile, “but he said the marriage service in

English, and according to the Book of Common Prayer.” Remembering the

doubts cast upon the marriage of her sister Lady Katherine, the Lady

Mary secured plenty of witnesses to assist at the ceremony; but it

seems inconceivable, and seemed so even in those days, that any sane

person should have ventured to mix themselves up in such a scandalous

business. Of course these witnesses promised secrecy; and needless to

say, every man and woman of them broke pledge.

Within the week, Queen Elizabeth was made aware of the whole matter.

Lady Howard of Effingham, and her woman, Mrs. Goldwell, were among the

first “to let the cat out of the bag,” for the earliest letters on

the subject of the marriage are two which passed between Lord William

Howard and Secretary Cecil, the first-named mentioning[126] that “the

Queen’s Grace hath taken this matter of the Lady Mary Grey’s marriage

very much to heart.” Cecil, in a letter to Sir Thomas Smith, clerk

to the privy council, dated August 21, thus quaintly expressed his

horror and indignation: “Here,” says he, “is the most unhappy chance

and a monstrous. The Sergeant-Porter, being the biggest gentleman at

this Court, hath secretly married the Lady Mary Grey, the least of

all the Court.” It must be admitted that Queen Elizabeth had cause

for anger this time. The Lady Mary, her near kinswoman, a mere girl,

secretly married to a man of barely gentle birth, a widower to boot,

with seven children, and entirely dependent for his livelihood on his

menial position in the queen’s own service! Had her wrath exhausted

itself in legitimate upbraiding of her servant, and temporary

banishment of her indiscreet cousin, there would have been very little

to say against it; but Elizabeth had other and more stringent views

with regard to the disposal of the Lady Mary and her fortune. She

was determined, she said, with one of her usual oaths, to “have no

little bastard Keyes,” succeeding to her Throne, and she was evidently

resolved to ignore Master Keyes’s distant kinship with herself, which

was probably at the bottom of his audacious conduct, for he felt

convinced that in consideration of this connection his august cousin

would eventually pardon him. It was not to be; forthwith, like an

eagle on its prey, Elizabeth swooped down on the luckless pair. On

August 22, not a fortnight after the marriage, Master Sergeant-Porter

Keyes was consigned to the tender mercies of the warden of the Fleet

Prison. All the witnesses, including the loquacious Mrs. Goldwell,

were arrested, and the wretched little bride herself made over to the

fearsome functionary known as “The Mother of the Maids,” whose duty was

to look after the more ill-conducted of the “Virgin Queen’s” juvenile

attendants, and even, when necessary, to birch them soundly. Whether

Lady Mary suffered under Mother Ansell’s rod we know not; but from

the 19th to the 22nd of August, she was rigorously and continuously

cross-examined by the privy council as to the facts about her marriage

and the state of her fortune. Where she remained during these inquiries

is not clear; Guzman de Silva, the Spanish ambassador, speaking of

the matter in a letter from London, says “he [Keyes] is imprisoned in

the jail here and she [Mary] is incarcerated at Windsor.” It is known

that the queen and the court were at that castle about this time; and

it is not unlikely that the Spaniard’s statement is correct; indeed

it would seem to be confirmed by a command issued by Elizabeth to

William Hawtrey, Esquire, of Buckinghamshire, that “he do forthwith

repair to _Court_, and take into his charge and custody the Lady Mary

Grey, and convey her forthwith to his house, ‘The Chequers,’ without

permitting her to hold conference with any one, or to have liberty to

go abroad, suffering only one waiting-woman to have access to her. For

Mr. Hawtrey’s charges and expenses concerning the said Lady Mary, the

Queen’s Majesty will see him satisfied in reason.”

The following is Lady Mary’s own account of the marriage, as elicited

during the above-mentioned examination. Copies of her statement will be

found in the Record Office (State Papers, Domestic Series, Elizabeth,

vol. xxxvii., No. 71), together with other documents relating to the

marriage of Lady Mary Grey with Mr. Keyes. The first paper, written in

Cecil’s very clear hand, contains a list of questions put to the Lady

Mary; and the second, in a secretary’s exceedingly illegible scrawl,

gives her answers, more or less in her own words. Asked when the

marriage took place, Lady Mary answered:

“The day of the marriage of Mr. Knollys—I was married about nine

o’clock at night by candlelight.”

“Where?”

“In the Sergeant-Porter’s chamber.”

“Who were present?”

“The Sergeant’s brother, the Sergeant’s son, a gentlewoman, Mrs.

Goldwell, and the priest, apparelled in a short gown.” She never knew

his name.

“What was he like?”

“He was old and fat, and of low stature.”

“Did the Sergeant-Porter give you anything?”

“Yes, a ring.”

Continuing, she said she supped in her own chamber with Mrs. Arundell

and two of Lady Stafford’s young daughters. Within a quarter of an hour

after supper, she went to the privy-chamber with Mrs. Goldwell, and

from thence to the council chamber—probably the most deserted part of

the palace at that time of night—where she found Jones, his [Keyes’s]

man, and sent him to the Sergeant to show him that her letter was

ready.[127] On this, Keyes came up to the council chamber and thence

they all went to his room over the Water-gate, where the marriage

ceremony took place. Afterwards she returned to her own chamber, where

she found Mrs. Arundell. The Sergeant gave her first two little rings,

next a ring with four rubies, and a diamond and a chain, and a little

hanging bottle of mother-of-pearl. Asked what her means were, the Lady

Mary answered that she had £80 a year, paid out of the exchequer by

the hands of my Lady Clinton, and £20 a year of her own, paid by the

hand of one Artell.[128]

“Keyes, Sergeant-Porter,” was examined on August 19: he said the priest

was one Thomas Withers. “Edward Keyes, Mr. Cheyney’s man, and Martin

Cawsley, dwelling in Cambridge, did attend the wedding.

“The marriage was in the Sergeant’s chamber by the Water-gate at

Westminster.

“The Lady Mary, being in the Council Chamber, sent him word by a

messenger that her letter was ready. On this he came then and found her

with one Mrs. Goldwell, a servant of the Lady Howard. He brought her to

his chamber.

“He gave the Lady Mary at the marriage a little wedding-ring.

“The marriage was by candle-light.

“Mrs. Arundell was at the Water-gate, but was not let in before the

marriage was over. The Sergeant had carried up the Lady Mary to his

chamber before Mrs. Arundell came in.”

Then we have the examination of Frances Goldwell.[129] “She sayeth

that one Robert Leonard, a servant of the L. Chamberlens, came from my

Lady Mary, ‘to her coming from the cellar’ to ask her to come to her,

and so she did finding her in a chamber next the Counsell Chamber,

which was somewhat dark. Lady Mary told her that she must go with her

to her own chamber, but instead she went by the gallery by the L.

Chamberlain’s chamber, down by the winding stair, and so to a chamber

which she knew not [this was evidently the room over the Water-gate],

and there was eleven other people with the Sergeant Porter, one of them

being in a black cloke read from a book, but what about she knoweth

not. And they tarried not there past an quarter of an hower.

“She sayeth, moreover, the Sergeant Porter came with her as she

remembered into the gallery before them and no further.

“The Lady Mary willed her to say that if she should be asked where she

had been, she should say she had been with her in her chamber. She

sayeth at her return to the Counsell Chamber that Lady Mary willed

her to return to my Lady Howard’s chamber, but whither the Lady Mary

herself went she knoweth not, unless it were into the Privy Chamber.”

[She probably returned to Keyes’s room.]

As may be well imagined, the sagacious Mrs. Goldwell’s master and

mistress, the Lord and Lady William Howard, were in a desperate state

of mind when they discovered the nature of the business in which their

“gentlewoman” had meddled. They therefore immediately addressed the

following letter to Cecil:—[130]

“MR. SECRETARY,

“This daie being the xxth of this present, I receaved your letter of

the xixth whereby I understand of a very fond and lewde [i.e. ‘silly

and ill-advised’] matter fallen out betwixt my Lady Mary and the

Sergeante-Porter, mencionyng a marriage to be made between them that

daye, in the evening that my Cousyn Knowles was married. I am not a

little sory to here of hit, bothe for their sakes and moche more,

that the Quenes Ma^[ty] shuld have such occasion to troble her. And

to you I write playnely. It greveth me to see (and hathe of longe

tyme don) that men be in so little feare of the Prince [ss], that

they dare think to enterprise so great a matter I dowt not hit wil

be so ponished, as hit maie give suche a terror to all her Ma^[tes]

subjectes, that they maie ever hereafter beware howe to enter in any

kinde of matter that maye in any case stounde against their bounde[n]

dutye of allegiance. And where you signifie to me in your letter, that

the Quenes Ma^[tes] pleasure is, that I shoulde examine Ffrances my

wyffes woman touching her knowledge in this matter: I have so don, and

have sent you her confession hereinclosed, which is to small effect,

and also the woman whom I thinke you shall find very symple, as one

that hath ben allwaies brought upe in the countrey and of little

knowledge, but synce she cam to my wief (being put to her by my Lady

Mary) (and daughter as I here [hear] to my Ladie Maries Nurse) hath

used her honestly and soberly, as my wief hath liked her for the tyme

very well. And thus I bid you hartely farewell ffrom my house at

Rigate the xxth of Auguste 1565.

“Yo^[r] most assured loving friend,

“W. HOWARD.”

(_Addressed_)

“To my loving friend Sir William Cycell, Knight.”

The enclosure runs as follows:—

“The Confesyon of francys Goodwell before me.

“The L. Wyllyam Howard the xxth of August.

“She being examyned of me wher she was all that day that my wyfe

wayted on the Quenys Ma^[tie] at the maryage of Mayster Knollys she

sayeth she was in my chamber at the Court with her felowes tyll the

evenyng after supper wher was also another gentyll woman callyd

mystres Hewdney, who my wyfe dyd newly put out of her sarvyce, and

they beyng mynded to walke owt my Lady Mary sent for Ffrancys to wayte

on her to her chamber and she accordyng to her commandement dyd so,

and when she came thyther my Lady Mary entered in to the Chamber and

franncys with her and she sayeth as sone as she was within the doure

stood still and there she saw the Sergeant Porter whom she sayeth she

knew not with iij other in blacke clokys and ther talkyd together and

(a) lyttyll whyll and then my Lady Mary came out agayne bot for any

maryage that was mayd ther to her knowledge she denythe it to the

dethe but what they sayd she knowythe not nor she knowythe not any of

them that was ther with hym (more than thys I can not by any meanys

gete of her).

“After the wrytyng of this muche she sayd further to me that they

dyd together as she cowled [could] perseve open a boke bot she hard

[heard] not the wordys for they spake softly.

“W. HOWARD.”[131]

On September 1, the Lady Mary was removed to her place of exile, Mr.

William Hawtrey’s mansion, “The Chequers,” even then a very old house,

in a beautiful situation among the Chiltern Hills. She was accompanied

by the aforesaid Mr. William Hawtrey, his serving-man, and one of her

own maids, the procession being closed by some pack-horses. Magnificent

as was Mr. Hawtrey’s garden at “The Chequers,” and beautiful the

surrounding country, it does not seem to have in the least impressed

Lady Mary Grey, whose only thought was to regain her freedom. She wrote

to Cecil towards the end of the year 1565, in the following rather

pathetic terms: “I did trust to have wholly obtained Her Majesty’s

favour before this time, the which having once obtained I trust never

to lose again. But now I perceive that I am so unhappe a creature, as

I must yet be without that great and long-desired jewel till it please

God to put into Her Majesty’s harte to forgive and pardon me my great

and heinous crime.” It seems that Mr. Hawtrey cheerfully joined in the

chorus of appeals, for he was considerably bored by his aggrieved and

unwilling guest, and earnestly wished to be rid of her. Lady Mary was

persuaded that she might appease the queen’s wrath, if she could but

have an interview with her, and when Elizabeth was paying a visit to

Lord Windsor at Bradenham, not far distant from the little captive’s

abode, she again wrote to Cecil, begging that she, “The Queen’s

prisoner and most poore wretche, might have access to Her Majesty’s

Grace, for the purpose of pleading for herself in person.” Elizabeth,

to use an everyday expression, was not going to be bothered with her,

whilst Cecil was more interested in her sister Lady Katherine than in

“the most poore wretche,” who was therefore refused her much desired

boon.

The Lady Mary Grey remained at her retreat in the Chilterns more

than a year. At last, however, Mr. Hawtrey, to his great relief,

received orders to bring his prisoner up to London. It had been at

first intended to consign her to the tender mercies of the Duchess of

Somerset, but that lady dying before the negotiations were completed,

Mary was handed over to her step-grandmother, Katherine, dowager

Duchess of Suffolk. This inhospitable relation was anything but pleased

when, one summer’s evening in 1567, Mr. Hawtrey, the Lady Mary, and

her servants, knocked unexpectedly at the doors of her house in the

Minories. The duchess, it may be added, had no right whatever to this

mansion, which had been carved out of the stately convent of the Holy

Trinity, which was granted by Edward VI to the Duke of Suffolk, whose

legitimate successor, failing Lady Katherine Grey, was the unfortunate

young lady now conducted to its door as to a sort of prison.

The duchess received her unwelcome guest with “dure countenance,”

but attributed her annoyance to the score of her unpreparedness, for

a few days later she wrote to Cecil asking him, “Where is the Lady

Mary’s stuff? For that, indeed, I have nothing wherewith to furnish

or dress up her chamber, as the Minories is totally unfurnished. I

do not usually reside there. My dwelling is in Leicestershire; and

when I am in town I myself borrow stuff of the Lady Eleanore.” If

she had to receive Lady Mary, she protested, she would be “forced to

borrow furniture from her neighbours of the Tower.” Probably Cecil

communicated the duchess’s grievance to Mr. Hawtrey, for by way

of answer to her letter, he sent all the Lady Mary’s goods in his

possession to the Minories, at the same time pointing out that they had

not hitherto been used; he seems, at least, to have provided his charge

with a comfortable lodging during her stay at “The Chequers.” No sooner

was the parcel of “stuff” opened, than the sarcastic dowager duchess

wrote a letter to “Mr. Sekrettory” Cecil, describing the contents in

a manner which reflects less credit on her heart than on her powers

of derision. “She hath nothing,” she says, “but an old livery feather

bed, all to [too] torn and full of patches, without either bolster

or counterpaine, but two old pillows, one longer than the other, an

old quilt of silk, so tattered as the cotton of it comes out, such

a piteous little canopy of red sarcenet as is scant good enough to

cover some secret stool.[132] Then there are two little pieces of old

hangings, both of them not seven yards broad.” This letter was written

at Greenwich Palace,[133] whither the Lady Mary had been removed by her

step-grandmother very shortly after her arrival in London, perhaps the

very same day; and the real object of this exposure of the Lady Mary’s

poverty was to induce Cecil to persuade the queen to assign the duchess

some of the furniture in the Tower store-houses; for she concludes by

asking that Mary may be allowed to have some “silver pots to fetch her

drink in, and two little cups for her to drink out of, one for her

beer, the other for her wine. A silver basin and ewer were, I fear,

too much to ask.” The dowager duchess promises to return all borrowed

articles in as good condition as she received them. She says the Lady

Mary is “very glad to be with her”(!); although “all she hath eaten

now these two days is not so much as a chicken’s leg.” Very likely,

the duchess’s sarcasms and her own grievances were making the poor

little lady absolutely ill. However, these first difficulties having

been surmounted, she lived on fairly happily with her kinswoman at the

Minories and elsewhere, until June 1569. During this period she became

godmother to a little girl, Jane Merrick, who eventually inherited some

of her property. She also struck up a great friendship with Lady Mary

Bertie or Bartie, wife of Mr. Peregrine Bertie, Duchess Katherine’s

son, and heir to the barony of Willoughby d’Eresby: Lady Mary Bertie

was of the family of De Vere, a daughter of the Earl of Oxford. In the

beginning of the year 1568, Lady Mary Grey’s position was complicated

by the death of her sister Lady Katherine, which exposed her to the

danger of being chosen the figure-head of any party that professed

belief in the legitimacy of Henry VIII’s will and Edward VI’s “Devise

for the Succession.” There is reason to believe that Mary, warned by

her sister’s fate, had made up her mind formally to renounce her right

to the Throne, lest unscrupulous persons might force her, as they had

forced her sister Jane, into this false position. Elizabeth, however,

harried by her continual fear of an usurper or even of a successor,

gave orders, in June 1569, that Mary Grey should be removed to the care

of Sir Thomas Gresham, whose magnificent mansion occupied the space

between Bishopsgate Street and Winchester Street, and was surrounded by

the pleasant gardens of Crosby Hall and Winchester House. The Greshams

used Osterley House, towards Hounslow, now the seat of the Earl of

Jersey, as a country retreat; and also lived for a time at Mayfield in

Sussex.

[Illustration:

[_To face p._ 278

SIR THOMAS GRESHAM

(_From a contemporary engraving_)]

Meanwhile, Mr. Keyes was enduring a good deal of hardship in the Fleet,

the foulest of the many foul prisons of those days. His grievances and

annoyances were many and peculiar. He was apparently engaged in some

suit, unconnected with his marriage, and his lawyers were allowed to

visit him in the Fleet and talk to him in the presence of the warden.

Moreover, there was some project for his being sent to Ireland, though

whether as a prisoner we know not. There exists, however, a letter from

Keyes, dated “Fleet Prison, July 16, 1566,” in which the imprisoned

Sergeant-Porter begs Cecil to “give him instructions how to act, as

to his going into Ireland.” The wording of this suggests that he was

to have held some official position there. The scheme apparently came

to nothing, for on July 25 of the same year, he prepared a petition

to the effect that he would renounce his wife and have his marriage

declared null and void, if only he might be allowed to leave the Fleet

and retire into Kent, urging that, after all, “he had formerly done the

Crown good service in suppressing insurrections”—a reference, no doubt,

to some share he must have had in the defeat of the Wyatt rebellion.

Dr. Grindal, then Bishop of London, refused, however, to annul the

marriage, and referred the matter to the Court of Arches, which, so

far as can be ascertained, also refused—at any rate Keyes was asking

leave to cohabit with Lady Mary as late as in 1570. But his lordship’s

Christian charity permitted him to suggest that the bulky captive might

well be allowed to go into the country to take some open-air exercise,

“for his bulk of body being such as I know it to be, his confinement

in the Fleet putteth him to great inconvenience.” This suggestion

was accepted, and for a few months Keyes was allowed to walk in the

garden attached to the Fleet Prison; but a new warden was appointed

in December 1566, and this slight solace was taken away; and further,

instead of being allowed, as hitherto, to cook his own food, the

ex-Sergeant-Porter was compelled to live on the horrible diet provided

by the prison authorities. In this same December he complains to Cecil

that “he had been given a piece of beef which had been dropped into

some poison, prepared for a dog that had the mange!”

It did not kill him, if indeed that had been intended, but he fell so

ill as to require the attentions of a certain Dr. Langford, who charged

him a mark [i.e. 6s. 8d.] for his services. The prisoner lived on; to

send another letter to Cecil, complaining that “they have taken away

from me my stone-bowe wherewith I was wont to shoot at birds out of my

prison-window, for the refreshment of myself sometimes; but even this

little solace is denied me.” Probably the neighbours objected as much

as the birds!

At last, when unkind wardens, poisonous food, and lack of fresh air

had thrown the unfortunate Sergeant-Porter into a “languor,” he was

relegated, in accordance with Dr. Grindal’s suggestion, to his native

place, Lewisham, then a remote village, now a large town within

half-an-hour’s journey of London—it probably took Mr. Keyes some hours’

hard riding to reach it on horseback. Thence he continued to appeal

for the queen’s pardon, “if only for the sake of my poor children, who

innocent as they are, suffer punishment with me for my offence.[134]

If it were Her Majesty’s and your honour’s [Cecil’s] pleasure to

fetter me with iron gyves, I could willingly endure it; but to bear the

cruelty of this warden of the Fleet, without cause, is no small grief

to my heart.” Evidently memories of the stern official haunted the poor

fellow in his rural retreat. From Lewisham, Mr. Keyes went to Sandgate

Castle on the Kentish coast. Thence, in May 1570, he addressed a letter

to the Archbishop of Canterbury, beseeching his grace to intercede

for him with the queen, “that according to the laws of God I may be

permitted to live with my wife.” This is rather a change of feeling

from the time, four years previously, when he expressed his willingness

to have his conjugal fetters snapped, if only he might retire to

Kent! The archbishop did not grant this prayer; and Mr. Thomas Keyes

died—probably in September 1571, and very likely at Sandgate: his

burial register is lost, and there is no proof that he returned to

Lewisham—worn out by his manifold troubles and by the effect of his

unhealthy existence in the Fleet Prison.

CHAPTER III

THE LAST YEARS OF LADY MARY

LADY MARY GREY’S life with the Greshams was more uncomfortable by

several degrees than it had been with the dowager duchess. Sir Thomas

seems to have disliked her heartily, and his wife, Lady Gresham—who,

by the way, had been a milliner, and who still, notwithstanding her

husband’s wealth, occasionally made caps for Queen Elizabeth—called the

poor little woman the “heart sorrow of her life.” The couple therefore

strained every nerve to get their unwelcome guest removed. Letter after

letter did Gresham send to Cecil and to Leicester, not complaining of

any particular ill-conduct on Lady Mary’s part, but merely putting

forward reasons for her departure. First, his wife wants to ride into

Norfolk to see her old mother, and the Lady Mary is some sort of

hindrance to her journey; then, one of his servants at Osterley has the

plague and they want to get into the country. In all these compositions

the writer reckons up, to a day, the time Lady Mary has been in his

house, to his wife’s “bondiage and harte sorrow.” Sometimes he even

offers to pay well for her removal; but the powers that were, gave no

heed to these agonized complaints and appeals. Hence Lady Mary was

still at Gresham House when, early in September 1571, Dr. Smythe, her

doctor, came to inform Sir Thomas that the obnoxious ex-Sergeant-Porter

had passed out of the reach of “this warden of the Fleet” for all

eternity. The poor little widow was deeply distressed; “his death she

grievously taketh,” wrote her host-jailer to Cecil; “she hath requested

me to write to you to be a mean to the Queen’s Majesty to be good to

her, and that she may have Her Majesty’s leave to keep and bring up

his poor children.” This care for her step-children is a pleasant

side-light on Lady Mary’s kindness of heart. “As likewise,” continues

Sir Thomas, “I desire to know Her Majesty’s pleasure, whether I shall

suffer her to wear any black mourning apparel or not.” Then he recurs

to his old bone of contention: “Trusting that now I shall be presently

[soon] despatched of her by your good means.” Shortly after this,

Mary, having retired to Osterley Park, wrote to Cecil that “as God had

taken away the cause of Her Majesty’s displeasure [i.e. Mr. Keyes] she

begged to be restored to her favour.” This letter was signed “Mary

Keyes,” which apparently gave offence, for the next letter was from

plain “Mary Grey,” and she never repeated the obnoxious appellation of

Keyes. Still she was not removed, and still the Greshams importuned:

at length, after a final appeal (for “the quietness of my poor wife”),

Sir Thomas rode up to London to make a personal request. Mary would

seem to have been as anxious to leave her unwilling host and hostess,

as they were to get rid of her, and greatly desired to take up her

residence with her step-father, Adrian Stokes, Esq., then living in the

Charterhouse at Sheen, who had kindly offered to receive her. But Sir

Thomas’s personal efforts were not crowned with success, and the young

widow had to spend the winter of 1571-72 with her inhospitable hosts at

Mayfield in Sussex, where they had a country seat.

In March 1572, a letter from Sir Thomas Gresham to Cecil, then

Lord Burleigh—or as he calls him “Lord Bowerly”—indicates that his

oft-expressed desire for the removal of his charge was now nearing

accomplishment, and he proceeds to clinch the matter by an offer

which is nothing less than bare-faced bribery. “And whereas,” says

he, “I have allowed my lord of Oxford [Cecil’s son-in-law] for his

money but after the rate of ten per centum, I shall [now] be content

to allow him after twelve per centum with any other service I can do

for him or you.” This offer of increased interest was too good to be

neglected, and before June of the same year, Mary was free to go where

she would—liberty had come at last. In a pathetic letter dated May 24,

1572, the released prisoner describes herself as “destitute of all

friends—only God and Her Majesty,” and only possessing £80 allowed her

by the queen, and £20 per annum of her own. Her “father-in-law”—meaning

of course Adrian Stokes, her step-father—will give her nothing, for he

has married again. She had expectations which would slightly better her

actual income: by a reversion of the dowager Duchess of Suffolk she

was to receive £333 6s. 8d. and the same sum at the death of Adrian

Stokes.[135] By the summer of this year (1572), Lady Mary was settled

with her step-father in the Charterhouse; and Sir Thomas Gresham wrote

to express his heartfelt thanks to Cecil for his “delivery [i.e.

deliverance] from the Lady Mary.”

After this, Master Keyes’s widow seems to have dwelt in peace till the

end of her days. She addressed no further complaints to Cecil, and her

will proves that her financial position was a fairly good one. Her

name figures no more in the State Papers: she seems to have dropped

completely out of sight and out of mind. We know, however, that she

eventually either returned to the dowager duchess at the Minories, or

occupied that lady’s house in the Barbican;[136] and that on New Year’s

Day 1577 she presented the queen, then at Hampton Court, with “four

dozen buttons of gold, in each of them a seed pearl, and two pairs of

sweet [i.e. perfumed] gloves,” a gift acknowledged by Elizabeth, who

gave her kinswoman a silver cup and cover, weighing eighteen ounces:

apparently Mary occasionally went to court, and enjoyed the royal

favour, at least to some extent.

An entry in the royal household books for 1576 states that Lady Mary

Grey stood sufficiently well in the queen’s graces to be at Hampton

Court during the great revels held there at Christmas time. The list

of guests who presented gifts to Her Majesty opens with the names of

her two cousins, the Lady Margaret Lennox and the Lady Mary Grey. The

latter presented a gold cup; Leicester, a carcanet glittering with

diamonds, emeralds and rubies; Burleigh, a purse of £30; and the Lady

Derby, “a gown of satin broidered with peacocks’ feathers in silk.”

Even the humblest servant gave some trifle to the greedy queen, who

by this means generally obtained something like £10,000 per annum,

as voluntary contributions—we will not vouch much, however, for the

sincerity of the “voluntary.” The queen’s gifts generally amounted to

less than £2000, and, with the exception of those given to members of

the royal family, were the merest trifles in silver. She was, however,

fairly generous, as a rule, to the poorer menials, giving them warm

clothing and blankets.

Lady Mary died, of what complaint we do not know, on April 20,

1578, aged thirty-three, her death being hastened, no doubt,

by her griefs and miseries. She may have been buried at St.

Botolph’s-without-Aldersgate, but some authorities think otherwise,

and even state that her place of burial is Bradgate Church. In Stowe’s

_Survey_ occurs an entry to the effect that the Lady Mary Grey shares

her mother’s tomb in Westminster Abbey.

Lady Mary’s will is not only a fine specimen of sixteenth-century

orthography, but proves that she possessed more property than is

generally supposed. The document (which is in the Lansdowne MSS. at

the British Museum, xxvii. 31) begins: “In the name of God Amen.

The xvij daye of Aprill in the yeare of our lord god 1578. And in

the xxth yeare of the Raigne of our Soveraigne Lady Elizabethe.”

Lady Mary Grey describes herself as “of the p’ishe of St. Botolphe

w^[th]out Aldersgate,” a “widowe of wholl minde and of good and perfect

remambraunce laude and praise be unto Almightie God.” She commits her

“soull” to the care of its Maker, trusting in salvation through Christ

“without any other waies or meanes.” Her body is “to be buried where

the Quens Ma’tie should think most meete and convenient.” This seems

to suggest that she was still under royal supervision. To the dowager

Duchess of Suffolk, her step-grandmother, she bequeathes “one paere of

hand Bracelettes of gould with a jacinte stonne in eatche Bracelette

wh Bracelettes were my ladie grace my late mothers or els my Juell of

unycornes horne wchsoever herr grace refusathe I geave and bequeathe

to my verie good ladie ye lady Susanne Countesse of Kente.”[137] It

is curious that she should “geave to my verie frend Mrs. Blaunche a

Parr a little gilt bowlle w^{th} a cover to it.”[138] It was possibly

thanks to Blanche Parry that Lady Mary obtained some measure of favour

and liberty in her last years. She leaves to the “Fair Geraldine,”

now Countess of Lincoln, a girdle of goldsmith’s work and some gold

buttons. To Lady Mary Bertie—she spells it “Bartye,” even as it is

still pronounced—and to her husband, Mr. Bertie, she leaves her best

gilt cup and the best silver and gilt salt-cellar. She bequeathes to

Mary, Lady Stafford, a “tablet of gould with an aggett in it”; and to

Anne, Lady Arundel, a “tankarde of sylver.” To a certain Lady Margaret

Nevill, she leaves a number of gowns of velvet and satin; to Lady

Throckmorton, a “boulle” of silver, with a cover; to her god-daughter,

Jane Merrick, she leaves “one good fethered bedde and a boulstere to

the same and the three peres of hangings which I have of myne owne and

a cowple of covered stoolles.” Were these the identical objects that

had excited the dowager duchess’s scorn? Lady Mary next disposes of the

lease of “my house wherein I now dwell,” which she wishes to be sold,

the purchase money being assigned to “Marrie Merrick my goddaughter” in

trust of Edmund “Haull my cowsen.” This plainly indicates that at the

time of her death she was in a house of her own, and not at the Duchess

of Suffolk’s; and the will also proves her to have been rich enough to

keep her coach. Mary Merrick must have been a sister of the testator’s

godchild, Jane Merrick, since she is expressly stated to have been not

yet twenty-one years of age. After various bequests to divers persons,

she leaves to Anne Goldwell, evidently the witness of her unhappy

wedding, “half a dozen silver spoones and twoe trenchers plattes of

silver.” “Henrie Gouldwell,” very likely that lady’s husband, receives

“my baie coatche geldings.” The residue “of all my goods and catteles

[chattels] both moveable and immoveable,” are to be applied to the

payment of her debts. Finally, Mr. Edmund Hall[139] and Mr. Thomas

Duport—the latter her cousin by marriage—are appointed executors.

There is no authentic portrait of this poor little princess extant;

she was possibly never in a position to have one taken. Nor do we know

much of her personal appearance or character. There is no evidence of

her having been accomplished in any particular way; still, Gresham,

even at the height of his desire to be rid of her, brings against

her no accusation of bad temper or undue haughtiness. Most likely

she was merely peevish and melancholy, which is not surprising when

we remember that she was separated from her husband of a week, and

deprived of her freedom. Her very dismal library, which she possessed

to the time of her death and had carted about with her wherever she

went,[140] suggests that she was acquainted with French and Italian,

and greatly interested in religious matters, being a strong Protestant.

Her library includes Palgrave’s French Dictionary and Grammar, and an

Italian Commentary on the Scriptures, as well as the following works

of sombre old-world philosophy and theology: _Mr. Knox, His Answer to

the Adversary of God’s Predestination_; _Mr. Knewstubbe’s Readings_;

_The Ship of Assured Safety_, by Dr. Cradocke; _Mr. Cartwright’s First

and Second Reply_; _The Second Course of the Hunter and of the Romish

Fox_; _Godly Mr. Whitgift’s Answer_; _Mr. Dearing’s Reply_; _Dr.

Fulkes’ Answer to the Popish Demands_; _Dr. Fulkes’ Answer to Allen

touching Purgatory_; _The First Admonition to the Parliament_; _The

Image of God_, by Hutchinson; _The Duty of Perseverance_; _The Edict

of Pacification_; _The Book of Martyrs_, in two volumes; Latimer’s

_Sermons on the Four Evangelists_; _A Treatise of the Deeds of the True

Successors of Christ_; _The Life of the Countie Baltazer Castiglione_,

and _A Treatise of the Resurrection of the Dead_; also three editions

of the Bible—the Geneva Translation, the Bishops’ and the French—and a

Common Prayer Book!

Poor little woman! When Gresham literally turned her out of his house,

with one man and a cartload of her belongings, her sacred library was

amongst her greatest treasures. “She hath taken all her bookes and

rubbish,” writes the great man to the greater Cecil; but provided he

and his wife were rid of Lady Mary, they did not much care where she

and her “bookes and rubbish” went.

LADY ELEANOR BRANDON, AND HER HEIRS

THE reader may be interested to know something of the story of the Lady

Eleanor, Countess of Cumberland, younger sister of the Lady Frances

Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, and another of the many claimants to

Elizabeth’s succession, whose name has been frequently mentioned in

these pages.

The queen-duchess, Mary Tudor, it will be remembered, had only two

daughters who survived her, the Ladies Frances and Eleanor, by her

second husband, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Many considered

the Lady Eleanor’s claim to the Throne superior to that of her

elder sister, because at the time of her birth, Lady Mortimer,

Suffolk’s second wife,[141] was dead; whereas she was still living,

and clamouring for her rights, when the Lady Frances came into this

world. Henry VIII’s will, however, mentioned the Lady Frances and her

children, for he had long since refused to question the validity of

his sister’s marriage with Charles Brandon, or in any way to recognize

the position of the Lady Mortimer, who, it should be remembered,

remarried with a certain Mr. Hall—according to Dugdale—and thus placed

herself out of court.

The Lady Eleanor Brandon was a better-looking woman than her sister

Frances. When her tomb in Skipton Church was disturbed, in the

seventeenth century, her skeleton, which was in perfect condition,

proved her to have been “very tall and large boned,” whereas the

Lady Frances was of medium stature. Lady Eleanor, if we may judge by

her portrait, which hangs at Skipton Castle, was pretty, rather than

beautiful. The writer confesses that the portrait at Skipton did not

impress him as that of one who could have put forward the slightest

pretensions to good looks; the cheeks are high, the forehead abnormally

broad, the eyes, however, are fine, and the hair, fair; but the

complexion, according to this venerable picture, must have been quite

ghastly. The portrait is very badly painted—a poor thing, worth little

as a work of art, but none the less interesting.

On the same day that her sister Lady Frances married Henry Grey,

Marquis of Dorset, in March 1533, occurred the betrothal of the

Lady Eleanor to Lord Henry Clifford, the eldest son of the Earl of

Cumberland, who was remotely related to Henry VIII; his grandmother,

Anne St. John of Bletsoe, being cousin once removed to Margaret,

Countess of Richmond, the king’s grandmother. The marriage took place

in the summer of 1537 at Suffolk Place, probably in the Church of St.

Mary Overies—now incorporated in the recently created Cathedral of

Southwark—and in the presence of Henry VIII and his court. In honour of

the wedding, the Earl of Cumberland built two towers and a gallery at

Skipton Castle; and we are told that these additions to the princely

old mansion were completed in less than four months—a surprisingly

short time, when the exceeding roughness of the implements and

machinery then used for building purposes, is taken into consideration.

This ancient mansion is still in existence and happily in excellent

preservation.

The bride and bridegroom spent most of the early part of their married

life at Skipton; but during the disturbances that accompanied the

“Pilgrimage of Grace,” the Lady Eleanor, with her attendants and

one of her children, a boy, were removed to Bolton Abbey, some ten

miles distant from Skipton, a beautifully situated monastery, which

had been presented to the young Earl of Cumberland shortly after

its suppression. Here the Lady Eleanor was in sore danger, for the

insurgents, having attacked the castle, informed the young earl that

they would hold the Lady Eleanor and his child—who were entirely

without defence at Bolton—as hostages if he did not surrender. They

even threatened to place them in front of the storming party, and if

the attacks on the castle were repelled, to hand them over to the

lowest camp-followers. Luckily, however, assistance arrived in time,

and the danger was thereby averted. Both Clifford and his wife owed

their safety to young Christopher Aske, brother to Robert Aske, one of

the leaders of the rebellion. This brave youth succeeded in passing,

almost single-handed, through the rebel camp, and contrived, thanks

to his knowledge of the country, to bring relief to the earl at the

castle, and, going on to Bolton, carry the ladies out of the abbey and

conduct them, in the dead of night, to a place of safety some miles off.

On the death of the old Earl of Cumberland, in 1542, his title passed

to Eleanor’s husband, but very shortly after this accession of rank, he

successively lost both his sons; the eldest, christened Henry after his

father, died when he was two or three years of age, and was buried in

the Clifford family vault in Skipton Church, near his brother Charles,

who also died in infancy. The inconsolable young mother did not long

survive her loss. She retired to Brougham Castle, and died there in

November 1547, being buried at Skipton Church. The most interesting

fact connected with her brief and (for those days) uneventful history,

is that her husband took his bereavement so much to heart, that “on

learning he was a widower, he swooned and lay as one dead.” His

attendants, believing he had really passed away, stripped his body, and

were preparing to embalm it, when, to their consternation, he suddenly

revived and struggled into a sitting position in his coffin. Although

the attendants were terribly frightened, they soon realized what had

happened, and very sensibly placed him in a warm bed, gave him a strong

cordial to drink, and fed him, for some days, on a diet of warm bread

and milk. He recovered his health, and, a few years later, married a

second time. He died in 1570 and is buried in Skipton Church, between

his two wives, the Lady Eleanor Brandon and the Lady Anne Dacres.

The Lady Eleanor is mentioned as the frequent recipient of Henry VIII’s

New Year and other holiday gifts, which leads one to presume that she

was perhaps a greater favourite than her sister. She seems to have had

little or nothing to do with the Greys, but there is mention in the

Leicester archives of her visiting Bradgate in 1546; and, if we may

credit Burke, there was an intimacy between her kinswoman, the Lady

Philippa Clifford, and Lady Jane Grey.[142] With her step-mother, the

wily Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, she was evidently on good terms.

The eldest daughter of Henry Clifford and the Lady Eleanor Brandon was

the Lady Margaret Clifford, who survived her parents and had a very

troubled career.

Of the childhood of this Lady Margaret little or nothing is known, but

in all probability it was spent like that of her young cousins, the

Greys. In the writer’s life of Lady Jane Grey, mention is made of a

certain Mistress Huggins, who foolishly boasted that she had heard it

repeated about London that the Duke of Northumberland intended to marry

his son, Guildford Dudley, to the Lady Margaret Clifford. The publicity

thus given to his schemes seems to have induced the duke to change

them; and shortly afterwards, Northumberland made an effort to secure

the heiress for his brother, Andrew Dudley, instead of Guildford, who,

as all know, married Lady Jane Grey. Luckily for both parties, however,

the project fell through; and the Lady Margaret thus escaped the fate

that overwhelmed the Dudley family.

Lady Margaret is next heard of as one of the ladies of the bedchamber

at the court of Queen Mary; and in 1555, with Her Majesty’s consent,

she was married, in Westminster Palace, with great pomp, to Lord

Strange, eldest son of the Earl of Derby. Mary was too ill to attend

her cousin’s wedding, but the two Ladies Grey, and the queen’s

unpopular consort, Philip of Spain, were present, and a great banquet

was held in Westminster Hall in honour of the bride and bridegroom,

after which the king displayed his prowess to much advantage in a tilt

in the Spanish style.

Although the Lady Margaret very often and imprudently asserted her

prior right to the Throne over her cousins, the Ladies Katherine and

Mary Grey, she does not seem to have given umbrage to Mary Tudor, and

continued, until that queen’s death, to take precedence of all the

great ladies of the court, her aunt, the Lady Frances, Duchess of

Suffolk, and her cousin Margaret, Countess of Lennox, alone excepted.

Nor was her position greatly altered after Elizabeth’s accession. Her

husband, Lord Strange, enjoyed the “Great Eliza’s” favour until his

death, but he seems to have entertained little affection or regard for

his wife, whom he left to her own devices.

The death, in 1570, of the Earl of Cumberland, the Lady Margaret’s

father, brought her a great accession of wealth; and the subsequent

demise (in 1572) of her father-in-law, increased her rank, for her

husband then became Earl of Derby and titular King in Man. After this

event, Margaret’s husband, who had been living separated from her,

seems to have become more friendly, and the illustrious couple removed

to Latham House in Westmorland, where they kept up almost royal state.

It was not until after Elizabeth’s systematic cruelty had broken

the hearts of the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey that she seems to

have conceived it possible that the Lady Margaret Clifford’s claims

might, like those of Lady Katherine, threaten her sovereign security.

She had received Lady Margaret’s eldest son, Fernando Strange, into

her household, and had treated him with much kindness—he was, it is

significantly asserted, very good looking—but at the same time the

wily queen kept a strict watch on his movements, lest the male heir

of Lady Eleanor should display the least inclination to encroach on

her prerogatives. Fernando, however, never gave her the least cause

for uneasiness. In 1594 he met with a singular and sudden death,

wherein witchcraft was mixed up with a good deal of mystery of a very

suspicious and purely political kind.

Towards the middle of the year 1578, Elizabeth—for some reason or other

which has never transpired, but not improbably at the suggestion of

Lord Derby, who was then high in her favour, and who heartily detested

his wife—began to look upon Lady Margaret with disfavour. The poor lady

had been suffering from a sort of low fever, and was recommended to try

the skill of a certain Dr. Randall, a famous physician, who was also

popularly held to be a wizard. Elizabeth sent spies to Latham, and was

soon informed that the Lady Margaret and her soothsayer were conspiring

by magic arts against her, and were also entertaining Jesuits, and

other suspected persons.

Acting upon these evidently trumped-up charges, Elizabeth ordered both

the doctor and his patient to be conveyed to London. In less than a

week, the wizard was arraigned, tried, condemned, and hanged. The

countess was handed over to the strict custody of one of her kinsmen, a

Mr. Seckford, who resided in the then fashionable suburb of Clerkenwell

and held the office of “Master of Requests”—a position which, if the

duties at all fitted in with the title, must have entailed a great

deal of hard work, in an age when about half the aristocracy spent

their lives in petitioning or requesting mercy or other favours for

their imprisoned relatives. For all this, the gentleman seems to have

been interested in what we should call the building or house-property

business, for the Lady Margaret’s numerous letters are full of

references to the many houses, not only in Clerkenwell, but even at

Hampstead and Hackney, which he desired to sell or to let. He seems to

have treated the poor lady very kindly; and, so far as possible under

such circumstances, she lived comfortably enough; but she was never

allowed to go out unaccompanied, and then only within the precincts

of the gardens or to make purchases in shops in the neighbourhood.

In her correspondence she frequently mentions a court jeweller named

Brandon, presumably an illegitimate son of Charles Brandon, Duke of

Suffolk. This tradesman was in favour with Elizabeth, who employed

him in mending and mounting her innumerable watches, jewels, and

clocks, and he appears to have been on almost friendly terms with the

queen, and with the Lady Margaret, who, if the above supposition is

correct, was his cousin once removed. He may have interceded for her

with the queen, as Walsingham, Cecil, and Hatton undoubtedly did,

but without the slightest result. The Lady Margaret remained a close

prisoner, precisely as the Ladies Grey had been, being quartered

with Mr. Seckford until her death, though not always at his house in

Clerkenwell, for she generally spent the summer months at Hampstead,

in a mansion rented by her from the said Mr. Seckford. It seems she

was never allowed to live with her very unfaithful husband, which was

probably not considered a very great deprivation by him. Elizabeth,

with whom he was in high favour, had appointed him Lord High Steward of

England, Judge for the trial of the Earl of Arundel for treason, and

Lord High Chamberlain of Chester. When he died, in 1593, Lady Margaret

was given a sort of holiday, being allowed to attend his funeral at

Ormskirk in Lancashire; their union had been blessed with four sons and

a daughter. On the Earl of Derby’s death, his son, Fernando, assumed

that title, as well as that of King in Man, but did not enjoy these

honours long. In the spring of 1594, he was suddenly taken ill, and

died in a few hours. As already hinted, a suggestive air of mystery

hung over his end. Some time in that year, he was seized with fearful

and sudden intestinal pains which were popularly attributed to the

occult practices of one Dr. Hacket, in whose house was afterwards found

a small waxen figure said to represent the young earl, and stuffed with

hair of the same colour as that of the supposed victim. Accordingly as

this wax image was maltreated, so, in the opinion of the credulous,

did the person it resembled suffer, and since it was stuck as full

of pins as any pincushion, there could be no doubt as to the cause of

young Strange’s prolonged torments and terrible death! Hacket was, of

course, after having been duly tortured, hanged as a wizard. The Lady

Margaret survived her eldest son by two years, dying, in 1596, at the

house in Clerkenwell, which she had rented from Mr. Seckford before his

death. She is buried in St. Edmund’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, near

her aunt, the Lady Frances. After the death of Earl Fernando, the title

of Earl of Derby and King in Man passed to Lady Margaret’s youngest

son, Lord William Stanley, who married a De Vere, youngest daughter of

the Earl of Oxford, by his wife, Cecil’s second daughter. This William

Stanley was the father of that loyal Earl of Derby who was beheaded by

Cromwell after the battle of Worcester, and whose wife, Charlotte de la

Tremoïlle, has been immortalized by Sir Walter Scott, who introduces

her into a short but marvellously effective and impressive scene in

_Peveril of the Peak_.

INDEX

Alva, Duke of, 114, 115, 249

Amy Robsart, 148, 149 and _footnote_, 155;

her death, 156, 157, 172, 210

Anne Boleyn, Lady, 36 and _footnote_, 60 and _footnote_

Anne Boleyn, Queen, 24, 36 _f.n._, 60 _f.n._, 65 _f.n._, 68;

her coronation procession, 69, 72, 258, 262 _f.n._

Anne Brown (second wife of Charles Brandon), betrothed to Brandon, 13;

betrothal annulled, 14;

her relationship to Lady Mortimer, Brandon’s other wife, 15 and

_footnote_;

married to Brandon, 16;

her children, her death, 16;

her children legitimized, 62;

their marriages, 63

Anne of Brittany, Queen of France, 22 _f.n._, 47

Anne of Cleves, Queen, 72

Ascham, 94

Aylmer, 95, 96 _f.n._

Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 213, 246

Baynard’s Castle, 97, 98

Bertie, Mr., 19 _f.n._;

marries Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, and flies from England, 79;

106;

Mr. Stokes and Hertford consult with him, 136-137

Bess of Hardwick (Mrs. Saintlow), her marriage, 85-86,

her origin, etc., 87, 88, 89, 90, 129, 170, 174

Blanche Parry, 144 and _footnote_, 145, 288 and _footnote_

Boulogne, 7, 29;

Church of Notre Dame at, 30-31, 76, 77 and _footnote_, 33, 75

Bradgate Hall, 83, 93, 298

Brandon, origin of the family of, 7-8

Brandon, Charles, Duke of Suffolk, his extraordinary resemblance to

Henry VIII, 3-5;

his appearance, 4;

his powerful imagination, 5-6;

his parentage, 11;

his education, 12-13;

goes to sea, 13;

is betrothed to Anne Browne, 13;

betrothal annulled, marries Lady Mortimer, 14, 14-15 _f.n._;

his marriage with Lady Mortimer annulled, 16;

marries Anne Browne, 16;

tries to marry Elizabeth Grey, Lady Lisle, 16;

assumes title of Lisle, but relinquishes it, 17;

goes to Flanders, 17;

created Duke of Suffolk, 18;

list of lands bestowed on him, 18 and _footnote_;

makes game of Margaret of Savoy, 20-21;

courts Mary Tudor, 21, 22 _f.n._, 25, 26, 39;

fights in a tournament, 42-43;

Mary Tudor declares her affection for him, 48;

his interview with Mary Tudor, who wishes to marry him, 49-50,

50 _f.n._;

his clandestine marriage with Mary Tudor, 50-51;

letter to Wolsey, 51-52;

received by Henry VIII, remarried to Mary Tudor, 54;

verses by, 56;

attitude of Wolsey towards, quarrels with Wolsey, 56-57;

his London residences, 58;

fights in a tournament, 59;

Lady Mortimer claims connubial rights, 61;

reaffirmation of the dissolution of his marriage with her, 61;

Pope Clement publishes a bull dissolving this marriage, and

legitimizing Anne Browne’s children, 62, 63 _f.n._, 64,

65;

his mistress, and illegitimate offspring, 66 and _footnotes_;

neglects Mary Tudor, 67;

attends Anne Boleyn’s coronation, 68, 69;

behaves rudely to Katherine of Aragon, 68, 71, 72, 74, 75;

writes to Wolsey, 68;

not present at Mary Tudor’s funeral, 70;

his abominable behaviour to Anne Boleyn, Anne of Cleves, and

Katherine Howard, 72;

marries a fourth time, 73;

his children by his fourth wife, Katherine Willoughby, 74 and

_footnote_;

his public career, French campaigns, etc., 75-77;

his last illness and death, 77-78;

his last portrait, 78;

funeral, 78;

his tomb, 78;

his bequests, 78, 244 _f.n._, 293, 294

Brandon, Geoffrey, 8, 302

Brandon, Lady Eleanor, Countess of Cumberland, her birth, 60, 61, 64;

betrothed to Henry Clifford, 69, 295;

attends his mother’s deathbed and funeral, 70, 71;

attends her father’s death-bed, 78, 293;

her appearance, portraits of, 294;

marries Henry Clifford, 294-295;

in peril during the “Pilgrimage of Grace”, 295-296;

rescued, 296;

death of her sons, 296;

her death and burial, 297, 298

Brandon, Lady Frances, Marchioness of Dorset, Duchess of Suffolk

(mother of the Ladies Jane, Katherine and Mary Grey),

15 _f.n._;

her birth, 59;

her baptism, 60, 64;

her marriage, 69;

attends her mother’s death-bed and funeral, 70, 71;

attends her father’s death-bed, 78, 84, 86, 93, 96;

her marriage with Adrian Stokes, 103, 255-256;

portrait of her, 104;

reasons for her marriage, 105-106;

her rights of precedence restored, 107-108, 126;

approves of Lady Katherine’s proposed marriage, falls ill, 132;

is still ill, sends for her daughters, 135;

wishes Lady Katherine to marry Hertford, 136, 138;

her death and burial, 140, 257;

her tomb, 141;

her will, 141, 212, 244 _f.n._, 256, 293, 294, 299, 304

Brandon, Richard, 66 and _footnote_

Brandon, Sir William (father of Charles Brandon), 11;

his marriage, and death at Bosworth, 11

Brandon, son of Charles Brandon (jeweller to Queen Elizabeth), 66 and

_footnote_, 302

Brandon, Thomas, 12

Brandon, William, 9, 10 and _footnote_

Browne, Sir Anthony, 131

Bruyn, Sir Henry, 11 and _footnote_

Cecil, William, Lord Burleigh (Queen Elizabeth’s Chief Secretary),

142, 157;

favours Lady Katherine Grey’s claims, 158-159, 221;

questions Hertford about his courtship of Lady Katherine, 161-162;

questions Lady Katherine, 162-163, 169;

his connection with Lady Katherine’s marriage, 172;

his enmity with Robert Dudley, 172, 187, 213-214;

letters to Cecil, 173 _f.n._, 190-192, 196-197, 199 _f.n._, 200,

201, 203 and _f.n._, 204 and _footnote_, 211, 216, 218, 226

_f.n._, 228 _f.n._, 231, 249, 270-271, 273, 274, 275, 278,

279, 280, 281, 283, 284, 285, 292;

attempts a _coup d’état_, 187-188; 192, 194, 208;

is implicated in Hales’s book in favour of Lady Katherine’s claims,

213, 215, 240, 245;

supports her sons’ claims, 246, 247 _f.n._, 252, 263, 264, 266, 276,

282, 285, 286, 302, 304

Charles, Archduke of Castile and Austria, 17, 19, 21, 26, 47, 49

Claude, Queen of France, 36 _f.n._, 47 and _footnote_

Clement VII, Pope, 62 and _footnote_

Clifford, Henry, Earl of Cumberland (husband of Lady Eleanor Brandon),

69, 70, 295, 296, 297, 298

Clinton, Lady (the “Fair Geraldine”), 130, 131, 204, 257, 268, 288,

300

Cockfield Hall, 227, 229, 230, 231 and _footnote_

Dacre, Lady Magdalen, 115, 123

Darcy, Elizabeth, 11 and _footnote_

Dee, Dr., 144 and _footnote_

De Guaras, Antonio, 246, 247

Derby, Earl of, 286, 299, 303

Dorset, Henry Grey, Marquis of (father of the Ladies Jane, Katherine

and Mary Grey), 15 _f.n._, 43, 69, 70, 76, 83, 86, 91, 93 and

_footnote_, 96, 244 _f.n._, 294

Dorset Place, 83

Dudley, Edmund, 17

Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester, rumours about his relations with

Queen Elizabeth, 146, 148, 156;

death of his wife, 156-157;

rumours of his desire to murder her, 156, 157, 158 and _footnote_,

160;

Lady Katherine’s nocturnal visit to, 171;

reveals her marriage to the Queen, 171, 172;

favours the Earl of Huntingdon’s claim, to the Throne, 184, 185,

187;

opposes Lady Katherine’s claim, 193, 203, 208, 209;

correspondence with Hertford about some gloves for the Queen, 210;

plots for Cecil’s downfall, 213-214, 215, 216, 218, 223;

offers to support Hertford, 224, 240, 245, 249, 251, 282, 286

Edward VI, 76, 77, 94, 95, 96, 98, 104, 188, 244 _f.n._

_See_ Will of Edward VI

Eleanor Brandon, Lady. _See_ Brandon, Lady Eleanor

Elizabeth, Queen, 103, 104, 109, 110;

her reception of Lady Katherine Grey, and fear of her, 133;

her court, her dress, appearance, etc., 134, 137, 138;

pretends great affection for Lady Katherine, 142;

her loss of popularity, 146, 149;

rumours about her relations with Robert Dudley, 146, 148, 156;

believes she will have offspring, 146-147;

unwilling to marry, 147;

refuses King Philip and other Princes, 147-148;

her passion for Dudley, 148, 149;

her dislike of Lady Katherine, 151, 152, 153, 161;

speaks to the Spanish Ambassador about a marriage with Dudley, 155,

156;

hears of his wife’s death, 157-158;

her connivance at Amy Robsart’s murder, 158;

her rumoured marriage with Dudley, 158 _f.n._, 159, 160, 161;

goes on a progress, 165;

learns of Lady Katherine’s marriage, her anger thereat, 171;

her orders to Sir Edward Warner touching Lady Katherine, 174, 175,

182;

falls ill with smallpox, 183;

her recovery, and request to the Council, 185;

her orders for Lady Katherine’s removal from the Tower, 194 and

_footnote_;

Lady Katherine’s petition to, 202;

her indignation at Hales’s pamphlet, 212-214, 220;

Parliament tries to coerce her into naming a successor, 221-223;

she refuses to do so, 221 _et seq._, 250;

her orders to Mr. Roke Green, 226-227;

her orders to Sir Owen Hopton, 227-228;

Lady Katherine’s dying request to, 233, 247;

her treatment of Lady Katherine and Hertford considered, 235-236,

240, 241;

entertained by Hertford, 241;

her kindness to his wife, 242;

wishes to kill Prince James, and place Lady Katherine’s son on the

Scotch Throne, 246;

takes charge of her children, 247;

falls ill, 248;

mention of an alleged illegitimate daughter of, 251;

refuses to name Lady Katherine’s son her successor, 252;

seizes the Greys’ property, 256, 257, 258, 262 and _footnote_, 268

_f.n._;

learns of Lady Mary Grey’s wedding, her anger thereat, 263-264;

her orders to William Hawtrey, 265-266, 273, 274, 276 and

_footnote_, 277;

her gifts to Lady Mary and others, 286-287; 300, 301, 303, 304

Feria, Count de (Spanish Ambassador in England), 102, 129;

his influence over Lady Katherine Grey, 130, 133, 147, 148, 152, 153

Feria, Countess de (Jane Dormer), 115, 130, 152, 153, 195 _f.n._

Francis I, King of France, 40;

falls in love with Mary Tudor, 44-45, 46;

tries to court her, and is refused, 47-48, 50;

tries to propitiate Henry VIII, 51, 53, 76

Gardiner, Stephen, Bishop of Winchester, xxix, 61, 116, 126

Goldwell, Mrs., 262, 263, 265, 267, 268-272, 290

Gosfield Hall, 216, 219 and _footnote_, 220, 225, 229

Green, Mr. Roke, 226, 228, 229

Gresham, Sir Thomas, 278, 282, 284, 285, 290, 292

Grey, Henry, Marquis of Dorset. _See_ Dorset

Grey, Lady Jane, xxviii, 15 _f.n._, 39, 59, 83, 85, 86, 90, 94, 95,

96, 97;

her last letter, to Lady Katherine, 98-101, 98 _f.n._, 120, 122,

153 _f.n._, 175, 188, 235, 255, 256 _f.n._, 298 and

_footnote_