The Sisters Who Would Be Queen

by Leanda de Lisle

  Despite the horror of the mass deaths, the weeks Katherine spent in the former royal palace of Hanworth were to prove some of the happiest she would ever know. Katherine was almost eighteen and in the full bloom of youthful beauty: slim, blue-eyed, golden-haired, with a ripple in her nose like a Botticelli Venus. She attracted the attention immediately of Jane Seymour’s brother, the nineteen-year-old Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford. It was Hertford who, at age ten, had galloped with a message for Lord Herbert’s father, asking him for help against the coup gathering against his own father, the Protector Somerset. Herbert’s father had refused that help, and it must have given Hertford no small amount of pleasure to try and steal his girl. The teenage Hertford was attractive in an imperious way. His thin, high-bridged nose gave his face a similar aspect to his mother, the duchess Anne Somerset, who was known for her arrogance and good looks. Katherine, like many young women before her, was extremely taken with Hertford and appears to have soon forgotten about her former husband, Lord Herbert. But if the attraction between Katherine and “Ned”—as she called Hertford—was powerful, it was also dangerous to them both. Hertford’s mother was a junior descendant of Edward III, a genealogical detail that gave him no serious claim to the throne, but which raised him above the ranks of nonroyal aristocrats. It made him a highly suitable match for Katherine—as he might have been for her sister Jane, to whom his father had hoped to marry him. In this suitability lay the danger: for if Katherine were to marry Hertford, she could rival Elizabeth’s claim to the throne; and if she had a son, the threat to Elizabeth would be multiplied.

  It was unthinkable to anyone that a Queen should not marry, and whom she married was of crucial importance. Elizabeth’s half brother, Edward VI, had justified his leaving his throne to Lady Jane Grey in part by arguing that she had taken a suitable groom, while his sisters could yet marry a foreigner. The dangers of this had been reinforced by Queen Mary taking England into a war that was, essentially, her husband’s fight. The revolts against Mary had all been carried out with the intention of marrying Elizabeth to Edward Courtney—they did not intend simply that Elizabeth should rule alone. Courtney was now dead, and it was therefore uncertain whom Elizabeth would choose. If Katherine married the heir of the Protector who had brought “true religion” to England, it would make her a desirable alternative to the risky option of the unmarried Elizabeth. If they had a son, it was conceivable that there need be no female ruler at all—something particularly attractive to Protestants whose belief that female rule was against Scripture was hardening.

  Thomas Becon, a radical cleric who had visited Bradgate in the 1540s, had asserted as early as 1554 that in the Bible “such as ruled and were queens were for the most part wicked.” But the polemicist Christopher Goodman had since gone further, insisting that divine law excluded all women from rule. The same view would be restated more forcibly early the following year in John Knox’s infamous First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment [Rule] of Women, in which he argued that female rule was an insult to God. It seemed very possible that many Protestant supporters would prefer a male heir from parents of such impeccable Protestantism as that of Katherine Grey and Ned Hertford than an unmarried Elizabeth, if the option were presented to them. The romance that summer was, furthermore, proving no mere flirtation. Lady Jane Seymour, who was helping pass messages between the lovers, was asked by her brother “to break with the Lady Katherine touching marriage.” Did ambition play a role in his proposal? Perhaps, but that there was more to it than that would become evident. Meanwhile, before Katherine was able to give any formal reply to his proposal, his mother discovered what was going on.

  Anne Somerset had lived through enough mortal danger not to wish to see any more visited on her family. She had only recently remarried and in doing so had followed in the footsteps of the two Duchesses of Suffolk. Her new husband was her Steward, Francis Newdigate. The last thing she wanted was for her son to take the opposite course and destroy himself through a royal marriage. She pleaded with Hertford to forget about Katherine, but the nineteen-year-old earl informed his mother crossly that there was no reason why “young folk, meaning well” could not be in each other’s company, and that he intended to be in Katherine’s, “both in that house and also in the Court … being not forbidden by the Queen’s highness express commandment.”

  It was fortunate, perhaps, that the summer had come to an end. With the worst of the influenza over, Katherine and the other maids and ladies of the Privy Chamber were due back at court, at Whitehall, where there was to be little opportunity for Katherine and Hertford to see each other in the months ahead.

  The Queen’s Maid of Honor Jane Dormer—who had earlier been a playmate of King Edward—recalled an ominous conversation with Mary when the Queen greeted her at the riverside, on the young woman’s return to court. Mary asked her how she was. Jane Dormer, who like Jane Seymour had been ill, replied she was “reasonably well.” “So am not I,” the Queen returned sadly. Mary’s health had been poor for some time, but in August it had worsened markedly as she too, apparently, fell victim to the influenza. By October, despite the care of the ladies and gentlewomen of the Privy Chamber, it was accepted that the forty-two-year-old Queen was dying.

  Philip, caught up in the funeral arrangements for his father, Charles V, dispatched his anglophile Captain of the Guard, the Count of Feria, to London in his place. Feria arrived on 9 November. The Queen had by then retired to her house at St. James’s, where Feria found her still able to recognize him but little else. She had been pressed to name her half sister her successor before a parliamentary delegation two days earlier, and it was evident she had no more than days to live. What Feria needed to discover was whom Elizabeth was likely to appoint to her government, and whom she trusted. Fortunately, the count had excellent contacts. He was a charming individual who had made many friends in England during previous visits and, significantly, was betrothed to Queen Mary’s young favorite, Jane Dormer.

  Feria learned “for certain” that Katherine Grey’s kinsman Sir William Cecil “who was Secretary to King Edward, will be her Secretary.” Later described as “a sly and subtle shifter,” Cecil had survived the fall of his master the Duke of Somerset, and his role on Queen Jane’s Council, to make powerful Catholic friends at Queen Mary’s court. Efficient and hardworking, he also was a man who liked, and got on well with, clever women. His wife, Mildred Cooke, was one of the most impressively educated women of her generation. He was a friend of the formidable Anne Somerset, and still more so of Katherine Suffolk. But that Elizabeth respected and trusted him was unfortunate from Feria’s perspective. The thirty-eight-year-old Cecil was a ferocious Protestant ideologue whose enforced Catholicism during Mary’s reign had made him only a more determined enemy. He believed he was engaged in a war on evil in which Catholics represented the forces of darkness, and he was viscerally anti-Spanish. Just how dangerous he was to be to Spanish interests was not yet clear, however, and a more hopeful name was also mentioned to the count: that of Guildford Dudley’s married elder brother Robert Dudley. Lord Robert was one of those for whom Philip had earned a royal pardon—and Elizabeth was reputed to be very attached to him. They had known each other since childhood and had become closer after they found themselves imprisoned at the same time in the Tower. Lord Robert was tall and handsome, like Guildford, but as dark as Guildford had been fair. What other attributes in him Elizabeth favored, time would tell.

  In St. James’s Palace, meanwhile, for the first time in a long while, Queen Mary appeared happy. She told her attendants that she could see “little children like angels playing before her” and there was sweet music playing. She died during a final Mass on the morning of 17 November. Unlike Lady Jane Grey, England’s first, but brief, Queen regnant, Mary had the opportunity to develop a model of Queenship. In common with her predecessor, Mary had relegated her husband to the role of consort, but following Philip into a war in which England had no clear national interest ha
d negated the possible benefits to Elizabeth, for any husband Elizabeth married would be regarded as more than a mere spouse; as someone likely to have a direct influence in matters of state and therefore potentially dangerous to religious or national interests. Mary’s speech at the Guildhall, as Wyatt’s rebels threatened London, was more useful. She had claimed a role as the bride of her kingdom, responsive to its needs, and as the matriarch who ruled her subjects. These were ideas Elizabeth could build on.

  Katherine and the other gentlewomen laid out Mary’s body, and the apothecaries, wax chandlers, and carpenters were called. The Queen’s remains were cleaned and embalmed before her body was placed in a wooden coffin lined with lead, and brought into the chapel at St. James’s. There it remained for almost a month on its trestle, covered with cloth of gold, while the funeral arrangements were made.

  Many assumed Elizabeth would act vengefully toward Mary after the treatment she had received at her hands. But the twenty-five-year-old Queen ordered that the funeral book of their father, King Henry, be followed to the letter. She did not trust those who had been disloyal to Mary. The more forward Protestants were closely associated with treason, and Protestant though she was, Elizabeth believed that those who had rebelled against Mary might yet turn against her, as so many of them had in 1553 when they put Jane Grey on the throne. Elizabeth was not going to set any precedents in disrespect to a Tudor monarch. In the royal chapel Katherine Grey and the other ladies and gentlewomen of the Privy Chamber therefore took it in turns to keep watch, and Mass was said around the clock. The brilliantly painted walls and carved images in the chapel were shrouded in black, as they had been for Henry VIII; only the golden thread on the rich cloth covering Mary’s coffin flickered in the candlelight.

  The final ceremonies of the funeral began on 13 December, when Queen Mary’s body was processed from St. James’s to Westminster Abbey. The coffin was placed on a chariot surmounted by a carved and painted image of the dead Queen. The wooden body, which survives at Westminster Abbey, is about five foot five inches in length and jointed at the neck, shoulders, elbows, and knees. This made it simple to dress it in the state robes of crimson velvet; a scepter was placed in its hands. The plaster head had a wig nailed to the scalp and on this was worn a golden crown. Elizabeth had threatened to force the attendance of those who hinted they did not wish to pay any last respects at the funeral, and the ladies of the court all took part in the procession. Katherine was dressed in her funeral garb like the others, the black cloth trailing to the ground. At the church door the abbot, John Feckenham (who had attended Jane Grey on the scaffold), greeted Queen Mary’s body, and four bishops sanctified the coffin with incense. That night watch was kept for the last time, the chant of the rosary echoing in the abbey along with the ancient prayers for the dead: “Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. …” The next day the requiem was said not just for Mary, but also for Catholic England. When the funeral veils came down, the painted walls would be whitewashed once more, and the old prayers silenced.

  As the rituals drew to a close the Yeomen of the Guard in their scarlet coats lowered the Queen’s body into her tomb in the chapel Henry VII had built. Earth was scattered and Mary’s chief officers broke their wands of office on their heads, casting them into the pit to mark the end of her reign. The trumpets then blew and the Garter King of Arms proclaimed that the Queen lived, as Elizabeth I. England was now a “kingdom in the hands of young folks,” the Spanish ambassador reported, and governed “by a young lass”: Anne Boleyn’s daughter.

  All were anxious to see what would happen next, not least Katherine Grey, who anticipated the honor that would be paid to her as Elizabeth’s English, Protestant heir.

  XVI

  The Spanish Plot

  KATHERINE SAT IN ONE OF THE GREAT BARGES FOLLOWING Elizabeth up the Thames. The livery of scarlet velvet that the Queen had provided helped to keep out the bitter January cold. It was the first day of the four-day-long coronation ceremonies and the color and sound of the spectacle was overwhelming. The silvery notes of the flutes and the brass blast of trumpets competed with the bang and sparkle of fireworks. It reminded an Italian onlooker of the Venetian celebrations on Ascension Day in which an elaborately dressed figure of the Blessed Virgin was married to the sea: a prescient vision of a Queen older and sadder than the young Elizabeth who sat amid the tapestries of the royal barge, as it was towed forward by a galley of forty men, pulling on their oars in shirtsleeves.

  Queen Jane never enjoyed a coronation ceremony such as this, and her sister Katherine had never attended one. Their father had, however, not only attended that of King Edward, he had also followed the barge of Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn, in one of the two hundred twenty craft on the first day of her coronation in May 1533. Thousands had lined the banks to watch the spectacle on the river. Mechanical dragons belched smoke, and musicians played as the great barges were rowed down the river. The following night at the Tower, where his life was to end, he had served King Henry VIII at dinner, along with others to be appointed Knights of the Bath. They were then bathed and shriven in ceremonies that lasted until Saturday morning. The ceremony of the bath took place only on the eve of a coronation, but no Greys were to be elected by Elizabeth at the Tower, and neither Katherine, her mother, nor her thirteen-year-old sister, Lady Mary, attended on the Queen the following day. Frances’s health was poor, which may explain why she is not listed for the coronation livery; Mary Grey appears not to have been invited, and Katherine, who was, had been demoted from the Privy Chamber to the Presence Chamber: a public room to which all the upper gentry had access. Elizabeth had not forgotten that Katherine came from treasonous stock, and that her sister had been a usurper.

  Katherine did assemble with the rest of the court at the Tower on Saturday for Elizabeth’s state entry into London, but in the knowledge that she enjoyed no special mark of her royal status. It was three in the afternoon as Katherine sought out her reduced place, only a couple of hours before dark. There were flurries of snow, but a witness recorded that through the gloom it seemed “the whole court so sparkled with jewels and gold collars that they clear the air.” At the front of the procession the assembled City aldermen, knights, lords, chaplains, archbishops, ambassadors, and their servants led the way toward Westminster, with the “trumpeters in their scarlet gowns, and heralds in their coat armour.” Then, carried on a litter of white cloth of gold lined with pink satin, came the Queen. Her long hair hung loose in a symbol of chastity, over Queen Mary’s coronation mantle of silver and gold cloth, and she wore a gold crown studded with jewels. Elizabeth understood, as her ancestors had, how the power of the monarchy was rooted, in part, in awe-inspiring displays of majesty.

  “Ceremony, though it is nothing in itself, yet it does everything,” a nobleman reminded the restored King Charles II after the civil war and Commonwealth over a century later; “ceremony and order, with force, governs all … and keeps everyman and everything within the circle of their own conditions.” Walking alongside the Queen was an impressive “multitude of footmen in crimson velvet jerkins, all studded with massive silver gilt,” and Gentlemen Pensioners “with hammer in hand and clad in scarlet damask.” Elizabeth smiled to acknowledge the people as they pressed to see her. It was they, she believed, who had saved her, along with her sister Mary, from the pretensions of Queen Jane in 1553—despite the betrayals of the nobility and of their brother’s Privy Councillors. The people in turn were happy and grateful for her peaceful accession, but also wary of what the future held, since Elizabeth had brought onto her Council men like Cecil from the unpopular Edwardian regime.

  Directly behind the Queen rode her Master of the Horse, Robert Dudley, who had, perhaps, the most hated name of the Edwardian period. Mounted on a magnificent charger he cut a tall, muscular figure: his dark hair curling on a suit of deep red, woven with gold thread, as he led Elizabeth’s white hackney. It was easy to see what the Queen found attractive in h
im, but difficult to forget that his grandfather, father, and a brother had all been executed as traitors. Following Dudley came the ladies of the court, forty-five of them mounted sidesaddle on horses harnessed with red velvet saddles made for the occasion.

  Katherine Grey, however, was seated on one of the line of richly decorated chariots. Each was upholstered in striped satin of scarlet and gold and studded with gold nails. They had no springs to compensate for the rutted roads, but Katherine sat comfortably on a fat hassock of crimson damask, as she admired the adorned streets. The route, four miles long, passed from the Tower, through the City and along the Strand to Westminster. The railings from Blackfriars to St. Paul’s had been draped with silk, behind which stood the men of the Trade Companies, “well apparelled with many rich furs, and their livery hoods upon their shoulders in comely and seemly manner,” their guards to the front “in silks and chains of gold.” Katherine could see that windows and balconies were also festooned with needlework, cloth of gold, embroidered silks, and other brilliantly colored hangings.