The Sisters Who Would Be Queen

by Leanda de Lisle

  As Katherine and Hertford rejoiced, new clouds were gathering over the hopes of Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth. A bloody religious war had broken out in France. Cecil had always connected “the affections and dispositions of the Queen of Scots” and that of her French relations, the house of Guise, to the overthrow of Protestantism in Europe, and he feared a coming apocalypse for his coreligionists. He was confirmed in this view, as were many others, when news reached England of a massacre of Protestants in France by the followers of one of Mary’s Guise uncles. Mary Queen of Scots wrote immediately to Elizabeth disassociating herself from what had happened. But as Malice triumphed in France so it destroyed hopes of friendship between the two queens of the British Isles. On 15 July, only nine days after Elizabeth had issued her formal invitation for the September meeting in Nottingham, she sent word to Mary that the meeting had to be postponed until the following year. Mary wept in disappointment; Elizabeth was equally miserable. Her hopes of a political marriage with Mary were no more likely to be realized than a marriage with Robert Dudley. She remained utterly alone, and a brush with death would soon renew pressure on her to name Katherine her heir.

  XX

  Parliament and Katherine’s Claim

  QUEEN ELIZABETH WAS AT HAMPTON COURT ON 10 OCTOBER 1562, when she began to feel unwell. She felt inexplicably tired; her head hurt and her back ached. She decided to have a bath and take a short walk. When she returned to her chambers, however, she began to feel hot, then cold, as a fever set in. A physician was called and diagnosed the potentially deadly smallpox. Elizabeth refused to accept it. There were as yet no blisters, and her half brother’s terrible death had left her with a contempt for physicians. But sickness and diarrhea soon followed and she became delirious. Dudley’s sister Mary Sidney—who had been Jane Grey’s closest sister-in-law—nursed Elizabeth tenderly. On the seventh day, however, the fever was so violent that she was given up for lost.

  As Elizabeth became unconscious the Privy Council met in urgent session to discuss the succession. But like the nobles in Norton and Sackville’s play, Gorboduc, the Council could not agree on a candidate. Some Councillors wanted King Henry’s will followed and Katherine to be declared Elizabeth’s heir. Others claimed that the will was fraudulent. They pointed out that it had not been signed with the King’s own hand but only endorsed with a dry stamp. Of this group a few favored the candidature of Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon. Pembroke, who remained bitter about Katherine’s humiliation of his son, was one such. Robert Dudley, who was Huntingdon’s brother-in-law, was another. But Huntingdon had only his gender and adulthood to recommend him, and a far larger group of Katherine’s opponents backed the claim of Mary Queen of Scots, or her English-born aunt Margaret Douglas, the Countess of Lennox. It was suggested that “jurists of the greatest standing in the country examine the right of the claimants.” But with the Queen’s death possibly imminent there was no time for that.

  As the arguments on the Council grew more intense, Elizabeth woke up. Believing she was dying she asked for Robert Dudley to be made Lord Protector with an income of twenty thousand pounds a year. She swore that although “she loved and had always loved Lord Robert dearly, as God was her witness nothing improper had passed between them.” Her Councillors promised her wishes would be fulfilled, but without any intention that they would be.

  That night, as the frantic discussions on the succession continued, the pox blisters began to appear. The pustules broke first in Elizabeth’s throat and mouth, then spread outward to her face and body. But she began to feel better. The smallpox had done its worst. In a week the blisters began to heal and, to her great relief, the scars did not prove disfiguring. Dudley’s sister Mary Sidney was less fortunate in this respect. She fell ill a fortnight later, only to survive, her husband recorded, “as foul a lady as the smallpox could make her.”

  As Elizabeth’s strength returned, the Council remained determined to settle the controversy of the succession once and for all. The ideal platform for thrashing out the arguments was Parliament. As England was then ruled by the monarch, Parliament was only called as and when the monarch needed to raise taxes or hear grievances. Elizabeth was in a situation that obliged her to call one, as she needed to raise money for England’s intervention in the civil and religious war in France.

  When the writs went out early in November, the Spanish ambassador, de Quadra, picked up reports of leading figures holding secret meetings. They were using the cover of dinner parties to discuss strategy in support of their favored candidates. Norfolk, who attended a dinner of the Earl of Arundel’s until two in the morning, was once again strongly supportive of Katherine’s claim. De Quadra believed Norfolk hoped Katherine’s son could be married to one of his young daughters. But the fact that John Foxe was overseeing the forthcoming publication of the first English edition of his Book of Martyrs from Norfolk’s house was also a daily reminder to the duke of the iconic status of the Grey name to Protestants. When Elizabeth learned about the dinner, she wept tears of rage, and had Arundel sent for. But the earl refused to be intimidated and told her sternly that if she intended to be governed by passion, he would ensure his fellow nobles prevented it. As it was commonly said that women were ruled by emotion rather than reason, the insult carried a particular edge.

  Arundel also complained angrily to the Queen about the support being given for Huntingdon’s claim. It was believed that Dudley was pressing his brother-in-law’s case in the hope of making himself a more attractive groom for the Queen. It would be possible to argue that the match would solidify the succession, ensuring that Elizabeth’s consort (Dudley) had an investment in her heir, to whom he was personally related. Elizabeth assured Arundel that she did not approve of Huntingdon’s claim either, but to weaken Huntingdon she needed to empower another male heir. Since she had no intention of helping Katherine’s cause, or that of her son, Elizabeth now turned to Margaret Tudor’s daughter by her second marriage, the Catholic Countess of Lennox. She had two sons, the elder of whom was the spoilt but beautiful teenager Henry, Lord Darnley. Since the death of Francis II, the countess had been pushing Darnley as a suitable husband for Mary Queen of Scots. Not only was he second in line to the Scots throne, he had the advantage of being English-born. This would go some way to answering the argument against Mary’s succession that those born outside the realm of England were precluded under a statute dating back to the reign of Edward III. The Lady Margaret’s amateurish intrigues from her base in the heart of Catholic Yorkshire had not escaped Cecil’s attention, however. The previous winter her husband had been sent to the Tower, while she and her family were placed under house arrest. Elizabeth now had them released and young Darnley was invited to court.

  Elizabeth made a great fuss of the new arrival, and listened avidly to Darnley’s lute playing. Come the New Year, however, Katherine Grey was eight months into her second pregnancy and Cecil was preparing to flex Parliament’s muscles on her behalf. The Queen opened the session on 12 January, dressed in her scarlet robes. She looked magnificent, all golden hair, velvet, and ermine. But her new MPs were largely Protestant and had no intention of supporting her preference for any Stuart claimant. Thanks to the careful planning of Cecil and his allies, only twenty-seven Catholics had managed to get seats, despite large swaths of northern and western England and Wales being largely Catholic in religion. The Commons began discussing the succession almost immediately and a petition to the Queen was planned. On 26 January, Thomas Norton, the coauthor of Gorboduc, acting as Cecil’s agent, read the text before assembled MPs. The petition recalled Elizabeth’s recent illness and drew attention to the supposed dangers posed to religion by Mary Queen of Scots. With assurances of love and affection it humbly requested the Queen to marry. It made clear, however, that even if she did marry, this would no longer be enough to satisfy the requirements of national security.

  The petition demanded the succession be settled on a named heir. The Commons promised to uphold the Act of Succes
sion of 1544, which had nominated Mary and Elizabeth as Edward’s heirs despite their illegitimate status and, in return, asked that a definitive statement be made on the validity of her father’s will. Once that was done the rightful heir could be declared. The alternative was described to Elizabeth in the familiar hues of the play Gorboduc. It painted a harrowing picture of civil war and foreign invasion, the destruction of noble houses, and the slaughter of innocent people. “We fear a faction of heretics in your realm,” the petition declared; “contentious and malicious papists.” The Protestant faith, as well as peace, was at stake.

  When the Commons petition was presented to Elizabeth she told the MPs only that their request required consideration. To the Lords, however, who were considered her “natural councillors” by reason of their hereditary status, she expressed anger. Did they not know “that the marks they saw on her face were not wrinkles but the pits of small-pox”? Although already twenty-nine, God could still grant her children, as he had the aging St. Elizabeth, she reminded them. They would also do well to “consider what they were asking as, if she declared a successor, it would cost much blood in England.” It was at this juncture, with Elizabeth struggling desperately not to be cornered into naming her own replacement, that she learned—along with everybody else—that the twenty-two-year-old Katherine Grey was about to have her second child. No need here for a miracle pregnancy, such as St. Elizabeth required. Elizabeth promptly had the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Edward Warner, locked up in his own prison for the lapse of security that had allowed Katherine and Hertford to enjoy their conjugal rights. But the general mood in London was one of elation. The aging Sir John Mason reported to Cecil that “broad speeches” were being made in the couple’s favor, “both in the City and in other sundry places in the realm,” with people demanding, “Why should man and wife be [prevented] from coming together.”

  Ordinary people saw clearly the injustice of making a child a bastard when the parents had declared themselves married. It would not have happened if it were not for the political imperatives. But those in more elevated positions, such as Mason, condemned Hertford’s defiance as “presumptuous, contemptuous and outrageous.” Mason, who had been one of the first in Queen Jane’s Privy Council to betray her in 1553, thoroughly disliked this rebellious young man. “There is not a more outrageous youth, neither one that better likes himself, neither that promises himself greater things,” Mason raged to Cecil. He had, he said, to be taught a severe lesson: “His imprisonment fattens him, and he has thereby commodity rather than hindrance.”

  Elizabeth demanded that the couple undergo interrogation once more. The details of their late-night liaisons in May emerged. But no amount of huffing and puffing from Elizabeth, or the irate Mason, could prevent Katherine’s new baby being born. In the Tower at 10:15 on the morning of 10 February 1563, Katherine delivered a second son, Thomas. His elder brother, Lord Beauchamp, was still less than eighteen months old. “Dieu le donne sa gran Benediction paternelle” (God grant him His great paternal blessings) wrote Hertford in the family Bible. At the christening, two of the warders played godfather, but there was no time for prolonged celebrations. Hertford was hauled before the Star Chamber later that same day to face his punishment.

  A large number of noblemen arrived to watch the proceedings, but they were told to give up their usual places to the Council. Most of the noblemen stayed anyway, and listened at the bar. Hertford’s visits to Katherine in the Tower were detailed and, at the conclusion, he was found guilty of three offenses. The first was impregnating Katherine, a kinswoman of the Queen, with her first child; the second was conspiring with the Under Keeper of the Tower to have access to her and impregnating her again; and the third was breach of his imprisonment. He was fined the ruinous sum of five thousand pounds for each offence, and jailed during the Queen’s pleasure. Hertford was returned to the Tower under close watch, but he remained unrepentant. He believed he could yet prove his marriage to Katherine was valid and knew they had many powerful people on their side.

  The intense revival of interest being shown in the story of Jane Grey’s life and death may be linked to support for Katherine, as well as to the publication of Foxe’s hugely popular Book of Martyrs. The ballad written in 1560 in which Jane lamented how she and Guildford were dying because of the ambitions of their fathers, was republished. Roger Ascham wrote The Schoolmaster, with its description of his meeting Jane at Bradgate, and her complaints about her bullying parents. Sir Thomas Chaloner, a friend of Cecil and the Gorboduc author Thomas Sackville, also composed an elegy praising Jane’s learning as superior to all others, and claiming that her death was the consequence of the cruelty of Queen Mary. Although the two latter works were not published for many years, the theme of Jane’s innocence of ambition, and Chaloner’s description of her as a flower of the reformation destroyed in the bud, resonated with Katherine’s situation. But Katherine and Hertford also had more direct support. While Katherine tried to care for her newborn son, as well as her toddler, in the Tower, moves were being made in Parliament against the claims of her principal rival, Mary Queen of Scots.

  De Quadra heard reports of a proposition in the Lords to limit the succession to four English families: that of Katherine Grey, her cousin Lady Margaret Strange, the Earl of Huntingdon, and the Countess of Lennox. Mary Queen of Scots’ emissary, Maitland of Lethington, returned from Scotland to protect his mistress’s interests from any further such moves and soon found Elizabeth his best ally. She argued to the Council that nothing should be done to drive Mary into the arms of a European ally.

  But no sooner was the idea of limiting the succession to four English families batted away than another emerged. Discussions were held on a future parliamentary bill that would propose that after Elizabeth’s death the Privy Council would rule England, with the addition of appointees named in her will, until such time as Parliament was called and declared a successor. This neorepublican proposal goes beyond—but was, perhaps, inspired by—the proposal in King Edward’s original will that Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, rule as governor with a Council appointed by him until a King was born—and it has the fingerprints of Edward’s former Secretary of State, Sir William Cecil, all over it. While he believed passionately in a Protestant monarchy, he also believed that its survival could not be left safely to the Queen. Such a bill would, however, have sent a piercing light into the dark mysteries of royal power, exposing it for what it was—not something supernatural, but mortal and functional, that could carry on without a monarch at all. To Elizabeth’s relief the bill fell through at an early stage, reportedly spiked by Katherine’s rivals. But behind the scenes, other plans she knew nothing about were being laid in Katherine’s favor.

  An MP and friend of Cecil called John Hales intended to write a book clarifying Katherine’s rights to the succession. He was a colorful and controversial figure who had known Cecil since the days of the Protectorship. Easily identified at the House of Commons by his limp (his nickname was “Club-foot Hales”), he had advocated to Elizabeth in an oration on the occasion of her coronation the benefits of a “mixed monarchy” in which royal authority was shared by the institutions of government. Hales’s research began with him approaching Katherine’s uncle Lord John Grey and asking if he could confirm that her mother, Frances, had been legitimate. Katherine’s grandfather, the old Duke of Suffolk, had a somewhat checkered marital history. He was always dumping brides when a better offer came along and had, in fact, been betrothed to some unlucky heiress when he had married Katherine’s grandmother. Lord John assured him that Frances’s legitimacy had been proven both in the ancient Church court known as the Arches and in the Star Chamber. Hertford’s stepfather, Francis Newdigate, gave Hales further evidence to this effect. Hales then moved on to investigate Henry VIII’s will. Thanks to an unnamed friend, he had access to a copy of the will made during the reign of Edward VI. The will supported strongly Katherine’s claim. Hales sealed the arguments against the Queen of Scots by d
rawing attention to a law dating back to the reign of Edward III that excluded all those born outside the realm of England.

  When Hales’s tract was ready, Lord John Grey and Francis Newdigate were both shown it, along with at least two other MPs. It was, in effect, the basis for a secret parliamentary motion to name Katherine the heir to Elizabeth. Newdigate was concerned, however, that even with the tract MPs would be loath to name Katherine while her sons were illegitimate. What was needed, the men decided, were “sentences and counsels of lawyers from beyond seas,” who could confirm the legality of the marriage. While this monumental task began, with Hertford’s financial support, Elizabeth was coming up with a plan of her own. The Queen still wanted desperately to find a basis of trust with Mary. Her solution was to marry her to a man in whom she had complete confidence: Robert Dudley. She floated the idea first to Maitland of Lethington, coyly informing him that if his mistress wished to marry safely and happily, then she recommended Dudley. There is no reason to doubt Elizabeth’s sincerity. Her proposal was not dissimilar to later Protestant efforts to arrange a marriage between Mary and Norfolk: it would encourage Mary to become a Protestant and secure an English dynasty for an English throne. But Elizabeth’s love for Dudley had always blinded her to his unsuitability as a royal spouse.