by David Field
‘Jane Grey, Henry Grey’s daughter?’
‘The very same. The only matter on which King Edward will converse with me is when she is to return to Court. He is obsessed with her, it seems, and we can forget any question of a match with the Scottish Mary for as long as Lady Jane is in his company.’
‘Think you that he sees her as a future Queen?’
‘I would not dismiss such a thought, John. She is certainly of considerable importance to him, and he has charged me with the duty of bringing her back to Court. But without somewhere suitable for her to lodge, her parents resist any such suggestion. I have hopes that she may join the household of the Queen Dowager in Chelsea, once it is suitably provided with a governess and perhaps a new husband for the Lady Catherine herself.’
‘It would seem that whoever has the keeping of the Lady Jane has the strings to the King’s heart.’
X
‘You must see how you have offended some very important people, including our nephew,’ Edward Seymour argued sternly as his brother Thomas stared back at him defiantly.
‘But how can our happiness be the cause of offence to others?’ Catherine pleaded.
Anne Seymour snorted derisively. ‘You are the Queen Dowager, the widow of the late King Henry and the stepmother of the current King. It behoves you to lead a less flamboyant life.’
‘How can getting married be deemed “flamboyant”?’ Catherine demanded. ‘And if we are discussing flamboyance, how does it for the wife of the convenor of the King’s Council — a mere servant of the King — to strut around in jewels that belong rightfully around the neck of a Queen?’
‘Which you are no longer,’ Anne observed cattily.
‘And you will never be,’ Catherine spat back, ‘for all that your husband seeks to usurp all power into his own hands!’
‘That’s enough!’ Edward yelled, then turned to Thomas with an angry snarl. ‘Since this lady is seemingly now your wife, perhaps you might wish to control her tongue!’
‘And you might wish to do the same with yours,’ Thomas retorted angrily as he turned and held out his hand for Catherine to take. ‘Come, my dear. We will take ourselves where our marriage is more of a cause for celebration.’
‘You may have to travel a good distance,’ Edward sneered.
Thomas stopped and turned in the doorway. ‘An excellent suggestion, brother dear. And since, in your kingly condescension, you supplied us with the very place, you may visit us with an apology in Sudeley.’
As they scurried, red-faced, towards their carriage, Catherine clung to Thomas’s arm and looked at him with concern. ‘Was that merely in jest, or should we really make plans to visit Sudeley?’
‘Why not?’ Thomas said. ‘Clearly we need to leave London until the dust settles and where better than a castle in Gloucestershire? I have only ever once visited it, but with our London household transferred down there, then swollen with locally acquired servants, will it not attract the Lady Elizabeth and after her the Lady Jane?’
The news of the wedding between Queen Dowager Catherine and the most eligible bachelor at Court, Thomas Seymour, rattled through Courtly circles like cannon fire from an armed merchantman. From there it spread out like an inkblot across the counties closest to London, until, after a week, it reached the Lady Mary in her Hertfordshire retreat of Hunsdon. She immediately called for pen and ink and fired off a bad-tempered vellum to her sister Elizabeth, who she suspected of being too friendly with the former Queen. In her sharply-worded missive, she strongly counselled Elizabeth against having any further association with ‘Madam Seymour’, as she tartly referred to her.
Less than a day’s ride away in Hatfield House, Elizabeth grinned at the angrily penned expression of pious indignation and called for her governess Kat Champernowne.
As the headstrong fourteen-year-old royal Lady and her intimate but more mature governess giggled over the deep scores in the vellum that betrayed the anger in Mary’s hand when penning what read like an imperious command, the governess expressed her reservation. ‘For all that she is too straight-laced, Lillibet, you should perhaps heed her words.’
‘Heed her words, certainly,’ Elizabeth replied, as she tossed back her shoulder length golden-red hair defiantly, ‘but obey them, certainly not. There would seem to be good sport to be had in Chelsea. Let us lose no time in seeking it out — have my bags packed for travel on the morrow.’
John Dudley bowed as he kissed Catherine Seymour’s hand and smiled across at Thomas as they stood by the fire to welcome him into their Chelsea house. ‘I hear that you have a new royal lodger, Thomas.’
‘Indeed we do,’ Thomas replied proudly, ‘and she has brought her own more intimate household, necessitating that we move to the more spacious Sudeley Castle without too much delay.’
‘Does that household include a governess?’
‘Indeed it does — Mistress Champernowne.’
‘Then you would seem to be well positioned to invite the Lady Jane to journey back to Court.’
‘Indeed we are,’ Thomas confirmed proudly. ‘It lacks only the time to undertake the three day journey to Bradgate.’
‘I have estates in Warwickshire, as you are of course aware,’ Dudley said disingenuously, ‘and from there the borders of Leicestershire are but a day’s ride. I should deem it an honour to be allowed to carry a despatch from you to Sir Henry Grey, inviting the young lady to reside in your household. Should agreement be forthcoming without inordinate delay, I could also undertake to provide her with a suitable armed escort for the journey back to London.’
Thomas looked enquiringly at Catherine, who smiled and nodded. ‘It would give us more time to get to know the Lady Elizabeth and prevail upon Mistress Champernowne to accept responsibility for a second charge.’
Thomas turned back to Dudley with a broad smile. ‘You are most accommodating and we accept your generous offer. Some wine ere you depart?’
An hour later, John Dudley clattered his horse out through the gates of the Chelsea house with a broad smile on his face. ‘They are all correct in their assessment of you, Thomas Seymour,’ he murmured. ‘All ambition and charm, but no brains.’
‘I’m not going without you,’ Jane insisted as she grabbed hold of Grace’s hand and clung to it, her face crumpling with impending tears.
‘But surely your parents won’t send you if you don’t want to go?’ Grace suggested by way of comfort.
Jane shook her head. ‘These new people who arrived yesterday sound very important and they told Father that the King has requested that I return to London. You can’t refuse a king, can you?’
‘I don’t know,’ Grace replied with disarming frankness, ‘since a king never asked me. But where will you stay this time? Is Lady Suffolk leaving her estate in Lincolnshire?’
‘No idea,’ Jane replied sulkily. ‘No doubt we’ll find out when we go in to dinner today. I’ve been told by Nanny Calthorpe to wear my best gown and be polite and “demure”, as she called it.’
They approached the front door of Bradgate House and saw Mary Calthorpe standing waiting for them with an anxious look on her face.
‘If my parents say I can’t go with you, then I can’t,’ Grace told Jane. ‘And unless I’m treated better than I was last time, I don’t want to go. You ignored me last time, remember?’
‘That was before,’ Jane insisted. ‘It’ll be different this time, I promise.’
Mary Calthorpe smiled appreciatively. ‘This must be the first time you two came back to the house looking almost clean and presentable. Now go and wash your hands, comb your hair and change into your best gowns. The guests are waiting for you and the dinner’s being held back until you take your places. At the high table this time, I’m told.’
Both girls groaned as they headed for Jane’s suite of rooms, where they would both be given their final grooming.
‘Here they come at long last,’ Henry Grey announced with a relieved smile as the two girls walked into the Great
Hall accompanied by Mary Calthorpe, who diplomatically fell two paces behind them, then made her way to the most senior of the servants’ tables.
‘Which of them is Jane?’ John Dudley enquired. ‘They look very similar.’
‘Jane’s the one in the blue gown, with the red hair showing under her cap,’ Henry Grey told him. ‘The other girl is her friend Grace Ashton, from the neighbouring estate of Sir Richard Ashton. If Jane is to journey back to London, then she insists on her friend accompanying her. They’ve been constant companions since the day they could walk.’
‘That shouldn’t be a problem,’ Dudley assured him. ‘The Chelsea house is quite spacious and they have plans to move to Sudeley Castle, which is even more commodious. And Mistress Champernowne is already there as governess to the Lady Elizabeth and can no doubt add them to her list of duties.’
He rose from his seat and walked towards a nervous looking Jane with a bow and a broad smile, as he indicated a vacant seat next to a boy of thirteen, who rose, along with his slightly older companion, as the two girls were led towards them.
‘Good day, Mistress Grey. I am Sir John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, and this young man is my son Guildford. You might wish to take the vacant seat next to his, while your companion may take the seat next to my squire, Master Bestwick.’
The two girls took the seats into which they had been directed and Jane looked sideways at the good-looking, dark-haired boy beside whom she was seated.
He turned to meet her gaze and smiled openly as he gestured towards the table with his dining knife. ‘Do you wish me to carve you some goose, Mistress?’
Jane shook her head with a faint grimace. ‘No, thank you — far too greasy for my palate. Perhaps some of that pie.’
‘As you wish,’ Guildford replied and set about penetrating its crust with his knife and scooping some of its contents onto Jane’s silver dish with the spoon that lay on the salver. He chose pork for himself and it fell silent.
His companion on the other side was having slightly more success in drawing Grace into conversation.
‘Do you reside here as Lady Jane’s companion, Mistress?’
‘Almost,’ Grace replied. ‘In truth, I live on my father’s estate of Knighton, half a day’s ride to the south of here.’
‘And your father is?’
‘Sir Richard Ashton.’
‘So you are Mistress Ashton?’
‘Grace,’ she told him.
The conversation seemed destined to end there, but at that point a serving girl reached between them with a wine jug.
‘Your fathers have instructed that on this special day you may have wine, Mistress, provided that it is half water.’
‘Thank you, Meg,’ Grace said, then eagerly took a mouthful, but all but spat it out and grimaced. ‘Another of life’s disappointments. I’ve waited almost ten years to taste wine and now I think I prefer small beer.’
‘It’s certainly a taste one has to get used to,’ her companion smiled. ‘I’m Allan, by the way.’
Further up the table, John Dudley was seated between Henry Grey and Richard Ashton, with their respective wives on either side so that they might listen eagerly to the conversation.
‘According to Thomas Seymour,’ Dudley was advising them, ‘the King was most insistent. He seems to value Lady Jane highly as a companion in his somewhat isolated youth, in which his daily activities are regulated and timed almost as if he were a monk in holy orders.’
‘Not too many of those left in existence,’ Richard said. ‘Is he being weaned off the old ways, in the manner of the new Church?’
‘Most certainly,’ Dudley replied, ‘since his tutors are chosen personally by Cranmer and they are all Reformist. By all accounts our young King is more inclined towards the Lutheran ways than his father ever was.’
‘Jane has been raised with a similar outlook,’ Henry Grey told them, ‘which is no doubt why King Edward prefers Jane’s company to that stern-faced older sister of his, who clings to her mother’s Catholic beliefs as if they were the breath of life.’
‘Who are we to know?’ Richard Ashton asked. ‘There was a time when we looked to priests for guidance in the matter of the avoidance of Hellfire, but now it seems that we are destined to walk the perilous road without signposts.’
‘Very poetic,’ his wife observed tersely, ‘but are we not here to satisfy ourselves as to the suitability of Grace’s next abode in London?’
‘You need have no fear in that regard,’ Dudley assured them. ‘Seymour has gone to great lengths to collect a household in which they may reside with perfect safety and honour. Even to the extent of marrying the Queen Dowager, Catherine. It has been a matter of some scandal in Courtly circles, but King Edward seems to have given the union his blessing and there are few left who point the finger of accusation. Except Edward Seymour, of course, and particularly his wife. She and Catherine were once close, but now it would seem that Anne Seymour — or “the Duchess of Somerset” as she now insists on being addressed — has taken ill to the fact that her former friend is now her sister-in-law. And this seems to have driven the brothers further apart.’
‘What else can you advise us regarding the household?’ Frances Grey persisted.
Dudley smiled as he leaned forward to look into her face. ‘There is already the finest governess in the land installed at the Chelsea house, since the Lady Elizabeth is in residence. Elizabeth is a few years older than your two daughters, but as a result Mistress Champernowne has considerable experience in restraining the intemperance to which young ladies are subject. She did so under the stern scrutiny of the Lady Mary for some years and anyone who can pass that exacting test is fit to be governess to anyone, I suggest.’
‘But if her primary concern is the Lady Elizabeth,’ Kate observed, ‘how then will she have the time to appropriately supervise our own two?’
Dudley smiled. ‘Seymour has thought of that also and has engaged two other ladies who Mistress Champernowne may train.’
‘Would Seymour consent to Mary Calthorpe accompanying them down to London?’ Kate asked. ‘Our only other child, Thomas, is now over five years of age and a boy has less need of a nanny than a girl. We could spare her, as no doubt could the Greys here, were Baron Seymour to engage her as governess for both Jane and Grace. She has carried out those duties beyond complaint for all the years during which they have been growing up together and she was once a nun. She is also my aunt and I would feel far happier knowing that she is with Grace, given her unfortunate experience on her last sojourn in London.’
‘And I likewise, in respect of Jane,’ Frances Grey added. ‘Mary has been a very good influence on our daughter and both girls are only happy when they are together. For my part I would consent to Jane returning to London, but she refuses to go without Grace and she can be very stubborn. If both Grace and Mary Calthorpe are to accompany her, then I have no doubt that she will be content.’
‘It shall be as you wish,’ Dudley agreed, ‘and you may leave it to me to satisfy Seymour on that score.’
XI
‘It will stamp out all remaining heresy, say you?’ King Edward demanded to know as Archbishop Thomas Cranmer sat by his side with sheaves of vellum on his lap.
‘Most definitely, Your Majesty, and by attaching your name to it you will be leading the cleansing of the Church of the worst excesses of idolatry. It is to be innocently entitled “The Revised Book of Common Prayer” and it will of course be printed in our own English tongue. It lays down the observances that are to be followed and does away with some of the mummery that appeals only to the ignorant, the credulous and the superstitious, such as the raising of the bread and wine and the absurd notion that it somehow becomes the blood and body of Christ. For too long your people have been held in thrall by such witchcraft and yours will be the hand that saves their souls from Purgatory, should you agree to sign the complete folio in due course. As Supreme Head of our Church you give the lead to others.’
‘An
d how will it be enforced?’
Cranmer smiled. ‘All parish clergymen will be ordered to adopt the new form, on pain of dismissal from office. Those who preach publicly against it will be accounted heretics and burned.’
‘And those in high Church office who oppose it?’
‘Only Gardiner and Bonner are likely to do so, Your Majesty, and the Tower would seem to hold the means of silencing them.’
‘What of my sister Mary?’
Cranmer was ready for this question, but waited for an appropriate few seconds before replying. ‘Should she speak out against it publicly, then of course we could use that as the ground for disinheriting her from the succession once again, rather than have her condemned as a heretic. At worst, a period in the Tower for treasonously speaking out against Your Majesty’s policies. But if I might make so bold, it might be better to allow her to worship in her own way in private, but threaten to take away that privilege should she prove troublesome.’
‘Excellent!’ Edward clapped his hands together in delight, but it was not so much in appreciation of Cranmer’s wise counsel as the fact that the chamber doors had swung wide open, to admit Thomas Seymour and Lady Jane Grey. ‘You may leave us and I will sign the document in due course,’ Edward told Cranmer brusquely and the Archbishop bowed to one side, then slunk out of the Audience Chamber.
King Edward rose from his throne seat and walked part way down the carpet with his hands extended to grasp those of Jane Grey, as she attempted to curtsy, but he held her up by her elbows. ‘No need for that nonsense among good friends such as ourselves. Uncle Thomas, you are now finally forgiven for your effrontery in marrying my stepmother without my leave. You kept this promise at least and, tell me, dearest Jane, does my uncle keep you in conditions appropriate to your station as a royal lady?’
‘His house is certainly well appointed, Your Majesty — sorry, Edward — and it must indeed be suitable for even better than I, since the Lady Elizabeth is also in residence there.’
