Henry VIII's Last Love: The Extraordinary Life of Katherine Willoughby, Lady-in-Waiting to the Tudors

by David Baldwin

  Those who remained close to the king in this last phase of his life must have felt that they were treading eggshells and could be arrested at any moment for the most innocent of deeds or comments. Perhaps the fundamental problem was that Henry’s religious revolution had gone further than he had originally intended and he feared that he was losing – or had lost – control of it. An autocratic king might grant his people certain liberties, but always on the implied understanding that they were a concession which remained subject to his approval and which could be withdrawn at any moment. The ‘people’ could never be allowed to take liberties or to set the agenda, and the outwardly capricious, often deadly game Henry was playing had in reality a very clear objective. He wanted unity and he demanded obedience; and any who overlooked this would soon feel his wrath.

  The question we must try to answer, of course, is of just how close Katherine Willoughby came to becoming King Henry’s seventh wife and queen. The evidence is slight and tantalisingly inconclusive, but there can be no doubt that she was on familiar terms with him and that the possibility of marrying her did enter his calculations. But perhaps, in the end, even Henry had to face the reality that he would have no more children – by his present wife or any other – and what had begun as a serious proposition became a game in which he toyed with some of his leading subjects’ emotions. The reality is that he would have found Katherine’s forceful Protestantism as disconcerting as Queen Catherine’s if he had allowed her to take Catherine’s position, and it made no sense to exchange one virago for another. The feistiness he admired in her as a subject could have made her less appealing as a wife.

  Katherine, for her part, could hardly have refused a proposal from her own sovereign, but other evidence suggests that she was in no hurry to remarry. Lady Cecilie Goff mentions a tradition that when the Polish ambassador failed to obtain the hand of the Princess Mary for his master King Sigismund, he paid court to Katherine; and Van der Delft thought that she was about to wed Lord Hertford’s brother Thomas Seymour at the beginning of May 1547.22 The Polish ambassador’s interest is feasible – he may well have considered other ladies after being denied Princess Mary – but Van der Delft was probably confusing his Catherines. It can hardly be coincidence that Thomas Seymour married the by then widowed Catherine Parr – with Katherine Willoughby’s blessing – towards the end of the same month.23

  Henry’s health began to worsen in 1546, although it was perhaps never as bad as some have suggested. He made his customary autumn progress only six months before he died, and to the end signed warrants and read and noted dispatches. He had become extremely large and needed mechanical devices to help him mount and ascend stairs; but there is no evidence that he was unable to pass through doors or that the efforts of several servants were required to literally wheel him from room to room. He was never the ‘mass of loathsome infirmities’ described by one writer, although it is likely that his ulcerated leg and high blood pressure – aggravated by the diet and remedies of the period – did nothing to improve his temper. He died on 28 January 1547, and Katherine, we must assume, took her place among the queen’s ladies at his magnificent funeral procession, which lasted from 14 to 16 February. Perversely, this great reformer, who had done so much to damage traditional Catholicism in England, desired that Masses be said for his soul ‘so long as the world shall endure’, and ensured that the heraldic displays which formed an essential part of the proceedings acknowledged only two queens, Jane Seymour and Catherine Parr. Katherine of Suffolk may have reflected that marrying a king like Henry was a dangerous undertaking, and felt relief tinged with disappointment that she had not had to tread that path.

  4

  TRAGEDY

  1547–1553

  King Henry’s death and his son Edward’s accession heralded a new dawn for Katherine and those of her religious persuasion. In his last years the king, fearing that his restructuring of the Church had gone too far, had reaffirmed some of the traditional tenets of Catholicism; but his son was a Protestant reformer after Katherine’s own heart. Quite how Henry had allowed Edward to be brought up in a tradition alien to his own is something of a mystery. The main ‘culprits’ were his tutors, Richard Cox and John Cheke, two of the best qualified teachers of their day, perhaps best described as ‘closet Protestants’. Catherine Parr knew of their reformist sympathies (she once referred to them as ‘Christ’s special advocates’), but they had publically deferred to Henry in matters of religion while he lived. Katherine Willoughby would look back on Edward’s short reign as a golden era, but it was an era tainted with tragedy nearer home.

  The king had made provision for his ten-year-old son’s guidance and government in the will he drew up in the closing weeks of his life. His sixteen executors would constitute a Council of Regency, while twelve others would be available to offer advice ‘when they or any of them shall be called’. No one individual was to have pre-eminence over the others, and all decisions were to be taken by a majority vote. Bishop Gardiner was excluded – Henry thought him ‘so stubborn … that no man would be able to control him’ – but the king failed to appreciate that some of the reformers he nominated were no less ambitious. One clause in the will – inserted, possibly, when he was no longer able to comprehend it and signed with his dry stamp – charged the executors to satisfy any promises relating to gifts or promotions which remained unfulfilled when he died.1 Its effect was to allow the councillors to award themselves whatever titles and grants of land they claimed they were about to be given, and Edward Seymour, Lord Hertford, made a mockery of Henry’s intentions when he secured his appointment as Lord Protector and Duke of Somerset. The earldoms of Warwick and Southampton bought the compliance of John Dudley and the conservative Thomas Wriothesley, William Parr (Queen Catherine’s brother) became Marquis of Northampton, and there were peerages for Richard Rich, Thomas Seymour, and Katherine’s cousin William (her uncle Sir Christopher’s son), among others.

  The coronation was fixed for Sunday 20 February, and Edward made his formal procession from the Tower to Westminster the previous day. A good number of young aristocrats were traditionally admitted to the order of the Bath on these occasions, and Katherine’s two sons, Henry, titular Duke of Suffolk, who was now aged eleven, and Charles, ten, were among the forty who kept vigil throughout Friday night before receiving their knightly swords and spurs from the king the following morning. The coronation ceremony and the banquet which followed it would normally have lasted for some twelve hours, but this was reduced to around seven so as not to unduly weary Edward. It may also have come as a relief to young Henry Brandon, whose principal duty that day was to carry the orb.

  Katherine was no doubt delighted that her Protestant friends had gained the ascendancy, but she may not have appreciated that routing their opponents would allow them to quarrel among themselves. Thomas Seymour was jealous that Somerset, his elder brother, had taken control of both the king and the government, and tried to persuade Edward to appoint him his personal governor. Edward decided – or was advised – not to take such a step, but Seymour proceeded to cultivate the support of other noblemen and began to pay court to Princess Elizabeth although he had only recently married Queen Catherine. Catherine died after giving birth to a daughter, Mary, on 30 August 1548, and although Seymour redoubled his efforts to charm Edward and wed Elizabeth he made little headway. His frustration finally boiled over when, on the night of the 16 January following (if we may entirely believe the Spanish ambassador’s account of what happened), he tried to kidnap the king only to be thwarted by Edward’s pet dog, whose barking roused the guards. It was a mad, desperate scheme – what he really hoped to achieve by it is unfathomable – and inevitably, he paid with his head.

  Katherine had returned to Grimsthorpe with her sons after the coronation ceremonies were over, and it was here that she learned of Catherine Parr’s death and of Seymour’s bizarre plot to gain control of Edward. In the last year of the queen’s life Katherine had encouraged her to pub
lish her exposition of her own religious beliefs and experience, and this appeared as The Lamentations of a Sinner in November 1547. It had a flattering preface by William Cecil, who was at this time a member of the Duke of Somerset’s household, and Katherine undoubtedly took pleasure in helping to promote it. In one of her letters to Thomas Seymour the queen remarked that ‘as my Lady of Suffolk saith, God is a marvellous man’, and their mutual admiration had doubtless fostered their commitment to the reformed faith.2

  But while Katherine was always happy to encourage the queen’s interest in religious matters, she proved decidedly less willing to provide for her late friend’s orphaned baby daughter. One of Thomas Seymour’s dying wishes was that little Mary should be brought up at Grimsthorpe, and she duly arrived there accompanied by her governess, Elizabeth Aglionby, a nurse, two maids, and other servants. The Duke of Somerset had led Katherine to believe that she would receive an allowance from the girl’s father’s confiscated properties to pay for her upkeep, but time passed and none was forthcoming. William Parr declined to share the responsibility in these circumstances, and in July she asked Cecil to use his influence to help her while being careful not to betray her request:

  I have so wearied myself with the letters that I have written at this present to my Lord’s Grace and to my Lady [the Duke and Duchess of Somerset], that there is not so much as one line could be spared for Cecil. But by that time I have made you the amends, you will be well pleased by another line; you shall have letters when they get none, That is to say, I will trouble you when I will not trouble them. So I trow you may hold you well repaid. In these my letters to my Lady, I do put her in remembrance for the performance of the promise touching some annual pension for the finding of the late queen’s child; for now she with a dozen persons lyeth all together at my charge, the continuance whereof will not bring me out of debt this year. My Lord Marquis Northampton, to whom I [page torn] deliver her, hath as weak a back for such a burden as I have. And he would receive her but more willingly if he might receive her with the appurtenances [property]. Thus groweth matters; you must help us beggars and I pray that you may. And then we will cease our importunities. But never a word that you are required by me. So fare you well, with my commendations to your wife.3

  Katherine’s hope was that the Duchess of Somerset would choose an appropriate moment to remind her busy husband of his obligation to little Mary, but still nothing happened. A few weeks later she again wrote to Cecil, describing her troubles as a ‘sickness’ which ‘increaseth mightily upon me’, not least because ‘the queen’s child hath layen, and still doth lie at my house, with her company about her, wholly at my charges’. She then informs him,

  I have written to my Lady of Somerset at large [again?], that there be some pension allotted unto her [Mary] according to my Lord Grace’s promise. Now, good Cecil, help at a pinch all that you may help. My Lady also sent me word at Whitsuntide, by Bertie [Richard Bertie, Katherine’s gentleman usher], that my Lord’s Grace, at her suit, had also granted [that] certain nursery plate should be delivered with the child. And lest there might be stay [delay] for lack of a present bill for such plate and stuff as there was in the nursery, I send you here enclosed of all such parcels as were appointed for the child’s only use, and that you may the better understand that I cry not before I am pricked. I send you also Mrs Aglionby’s letter unto me, who with the maid’s nurse and others, daily call one for their wages, whose voices my ears hardly bear, but my coffers much worse. Wherefore I cease, and commit me and my sickness to your diligent cure with my hearty commendations to your wife.

  At my manor of Grimsthorpe, your assured loving friend, K. Suffolk.4

  The list of ‘plate and stuff’ Katherine enclosed with her letter has survived, and is an interesting record of what was deemed necessary for a highborn infant at this period:

  First:

  2 pots of silver all white

  3 goblets of silver all white

  1 salt, silver and parcel gilt

  A ‘muster’ with a band of silver and parcel gilt

  11 spoons all white

  Item: A quilt for the cradle, 3 pillows, and 1 pair of fustians

  Item: 3 feather beds, 3 quilts, and 3 pairs of fustians

  Item: A tester of scarlet, embroidered, with a counterpoint of sail saye belonging to the same, and curtains of crimson taffeta

  Item: 2 counterpoints of imagery for the nurse’s bed

  Item: 6 pairs of sheets of little worth

  Item: 6 fair pieces of hangings within the inner chamber

  Item: 4 carpets for the windows

  Item: 10 pieces of hangings of the twelve months within the outer chamber

  Item: 2 cushions of cloth of gold

  Item: 1 chair of cloth of gold

  Item: 2 wrought stools

  Item: A bedstead gilt, with a tester, and counterpoint with curtains belonging to same

  Item: 2 ‘mellche beastes’ which were belonging to the nursery, the which it may please your Grace to write may be bestowed upon the two maids towards their marriage, which shall be shortly.

  Item: 1 lute

  Endorsed: To my loving friend, Mr Cecil, attendant upon my Lord Protector’s Grace.5

  Lady Goff says that Mary eventually married Sir Edward Bushel, a gentleman in attendance on James I’s wife Anne of Denmark, but this must be thought highly improbable. Anne did not marry James until 1589, by which time Mary would have been forty-one, and the clergyman-historian John Strype (1643–1737) thought she had died in infancy. Strype was perhaps better informed than we are, and her death would explain Katherine’s subsequent silence on the matter. She would surely have mentioned the girl in her later correspondence with Cecil if she had continued to reside with her, whether funds were provided or not.

  But was Katherine really embarrassed financially by the needs of a baby and a few servants, or was it more a case of not allowing others to shift the burden? Her late husband’s debts and the acquisition of her eldest son’s wardship must have drained her resources, but in May 1546 she was granted a licence to retain forty persons in her livery besides household servants, and had no fewer than ‘ninety horses and geldings of all ages … and thirty-five mares’ in her stables and pastures at Grimsthorpe.6 These figures hardly imply financial stringency, and there is no hint of economy in ‘an inventory of apparel and other things lent by the duchess to her sons, the Duke of Suffolk and Lord Charles Brandon, and bought by her’ drawn up five years later.

  In the list of articles lent to the Duke of Suffolk are – A black velvet gown furred with sables and ‘guarded with two passamour laces’; a pair of crimson velvet hose with nether stocks of crimson silk; a nightgown of black damask, furred with conie; a velvet cap with fourteen diamonds; another velvet cap with fourteen rubies; a diamond set in gold; a ‘tallet’ with four emeralds; buttons of pearl set in gold, a dial of bone, nine racketts and two rings ‘for the tylte’.

  Amongst Lord Charles Brandon’s things are – a suit of crimson satin embroidered with silver, given to the Duchess by the King, with buttons of gold; a night gown of grogram furred with jennet; a cape with seventeen pair of ‘agletts’ and sixteen buttons; and a taffeta hat with a broach.7

  Unfortunately we have no record of how much all these items cost, nor of the extent to which Katherine’s income covered – or failed to cover – her outgoings. But it is not without interest that when Sir William Sharington was arrested in January 1549 the inventory of goods and valuables found in his possession included ‘jewels of [the Duchess of] Suffolk, of great value’, left with him ‘for assurance of £11,000’. That funds were sometimes in short supply is indicated by her promise, made in December of that year, that ‘Dr Cornelius ‘shall have his money in a fortnight, or a little and [the rest?] later’, and there are hints that her properties were not always managed efficiently. Part of a letter she wrote to Cecil in October 1550 indicates that she had turned to commerce to help satisfy her ever pressing need for cash:
<
br />   I am content to become your partner as you promise me, and I will abide all adventures in your ship, be the weather fair or foul; and though I cannot help you with costly wares to furnish her, yet I shall ply you with my woollen stuffs which may serve her for ballast. If you marvel how that I am become so cunning in ship works, you shall understand that I am about the making of one here by me at Boston, or rather the passing of an old one; which gentle recompense I had for my wines herewith the Honor victualled the rebels in Norfolk last year; so that I am now become a merchant vintner. Thus, many ways, beggars seek their thrift; which having sought, I cannot find by land, and mind now to try my luck by water: and if I speed well, I promise you as liberally to divide with you as you promise me.

  Not every aristocratic family would have thought it appropriate to turn to ‘trade’, but Katherine, whose father had been allowed to deal in wool and to export malt and fifty tons of beer annually from Boston, had no such scruples. Caring for Mary would have been an additional, unwanted burden if she was overspent and already borrowing heavily, but the cost would have represented only a small part of the total upkeep of the whole establishment. The implication is that Katherine would go to any lengths to maintain appearances, but that caring for another’s child – even the child of a close friend – was quite another matter. In another of her letters to Cecil she again remarked that ‘all the world knoweth … what a very beggar I am’.8 But beggars are not all of one sort.

  Unsurprisingly perhaps, Katherine used the new political and religious climate to promote the cause of Protestantism within Lincolnshire. John Strype remarked that the reformed faith was greatly advanced ‘by the helping forwardness of that devout woman of God, the Duchess of Suffolk’, and added that

  she was very active in seconding the efforts of government to abolish superfluous Holy Days, to remove images and relics from the churches, to destroy shrines and other monuments of idolatry and superstition, to put an end to pilgrimages, to reform the clergy, to see that every church had provided, in some convenient place, a copy of the large Bible, to stir up the bishops, vicars and curates to diligence in preaching against the usurped authority of the Pope; in inculcating upon all the reading of the Scriptures, and especially the young, the Pater Noster, the Articles of Faith, and the Ten Commandments in English.9