The Berties had seen the last of Brett and his letters, but by now there was another problem – money. It is unclear how many of the servants they had brought from England remained with them or who they had engaged since, but the cost of maintaining a family and perhaps a small retinue and moving them around Europe would have been considerable. Melissa Harkrider says that Katherine took ‘many’ of the exiles who joined her at Wesel into her service, and that when she relocated to Weinheim her entourage included the gentlemen John and Thomas Turpin, the merchants John Bodley and William Gosling (her one-time protector), and George Christopher, a former servant of the Marquis of Northampton, besides Bishop Barlow and others.17 They were perhaps all economically dependent on her to some extent.
The first hint of financial difficulty is found in a letter that Myles Coverdale sent to Strasbourg, to his ‘very delightful friend and brother’ Conrad Hubert, Martin Bucer’s former secretary, after he himself had moved to Bergzabern in the Palatinate on 20 September 1555. His language is oblique, but the emphasis on Katherine owing nothing implies that there were others who thought that she did:
With regard to the business, concerning which you requested me to enquire relating to the most illustrious Duchess of Suffolk, her very distinguished husband, whom I spoke to on this subject at Frankfort, assured me that her grace, as far as money was concerned, owed nothing at all either to our excellent father Bucer, or to any other persons. But when I shall return to Wesel, from whence I must now bring up my dear wife to this place, I will make a diligent examination into the whole business.18
Coverdale is quite clear that he met and spoke with Richard Bertie in Frankfurt, but what was the latter doing there and when did the conversation take place? Frankfurt is 175 miles from Wesel, so the implication is that Bertie, who now had little to do except send hopeful instructions to England, had decided to visit an old friend to relieve his boredom. Coverdale left Frankfurt for Bergzabern on 15 September, so was well placed to offer assistance when the exiles decided to abandon Wesel some months later.
Katherine had asked her cousin Francis Guevara to lend her £400 in May 1454 (before Bertie even left for the Continent),19 and would have taken a significant sum of money to Europe with her; but as her funds dwindled she relied increasingly on what she could borrow or obtain from England. In November, shortly before she went into exile, she entrusted her lands to Walter Herenden, a religious conformist who served her as an administrator, and her Catholic mother-in-law Alice Bertie, in the hope that they would not be sequestered and she would continue to receive an income from them. A bill that would have denied refugees access to their English revenues was defeated in the Commons by William Cecil and others, but the government continued to look for ways of stemming the flow of money to Europe.20 The Berties’ access to their funds was restricted, and to make matters worse, Katherine’s cousin, Lord William Willoughby of Parham (the son of her old nemesis Sir Christopher) had again claimed – just before she left England – that some of her manors were rightfully his. Fortunately she and Bertie had ensured that Herenden and their solicitor Cuthbert Brereton had access to their title deeds and other documents, and Lord William’s challenge ultimately failed.21
Katherine and her husband could not continue to live beyond their means indefinitely – something their opponents in London would have been only too aware of – but fortunately an Evangelical minister named John a Lasco (Jan Łaski), the son of a Polish nobleman who Katherine had aided financially during his years in England, heard of their plight. A Lasco explained their situation to the King of Poland (the same Sigismund who had reportedly wanted to marry Katherine years earlier),22 and to his brother-in-law, Nicholas ‘the Red’ Radziwill, the Protestant Count Palatine of Vilna (Vilnius in Lithuania), both of whom wrote to the Berties offering them what Foxe calls ‘large courtesy’ in their countries. ‘This provision,’ he says, ‘unlooked for, greatly revived their heavy spirits.’23
The English government’s attitude towards Katherine had undoubtedly hardened since she had been allowed to slip abroad virtually without hindrance, possibly because she had become a focus, a refuge, for many of the English Protestants who had chosen exile and who were now regarded as enemies of their country. More than ever, she and Bertie craved a safe, settled life for themselves and their children, but Poland was a distant country and they wanted to satisfy themselves that the offer was genuine and not merely a gesture. Perhaps it would be appropriate to let Foxe tell the next part of the story in his own words:
[Fearing that] the end of their journey should be worse than the beginning, they devised thereupon with one Master Barlow, late bishop of Chichester [sic],24 that if he would vouchsafe to take some pains therein, they would make him a fellow of that journey. So, finding him prone [willing], they sent with him letters of thanks to the king and palatine; and also with a few principal jewels (which only they had left of many], to solicit for them, that the king would vouchsafe under his seal to assure them of the thing which he so honourably by letters offered.
That suit, by the forwardness of the palatine, was as soon granted as uttered; upon which assurance the said duchess and her husband, with their family, entered the journey in April 1557, from the castle of Windsheim [sic], where they before lay, towards Frankfort: in the which their journey, it were long here to describe what dangers fell by the way upon them and their whole company, by reason of their landgrave’s captain, who, under a quarrel pretensed for a spaniel of master Berty’s, set upon them in the highway with his horsemen, thrusting their boar-spears through the waggon where the children and women were, master Berty having but four horsemen with him. In the which brabble it happened the captain’s horse to be slain under him.
Whereupon a rumour was sparsed [spread] immediately through towns and villages about, that the landgrave’s captain should be slain by certain Walloons, which incensed the ire of the countrymen there more fiercely against master Berty, as afterward it proved. For as he was motioned by his wife to save himself by the swiftness of his horse, and to recover [reach] some town nearby for his rescue, he, so doing, was in worse case than before; for the townsmen and the captain’s brother, supposing no less but that the captain had been slain, pressed so eagerly upon him, that he had [would have] been there taken and murdered among them, had not he (as God would), spying a ladder leaning to a window, by the same got up into the house, and so gone up into a garret in the top of the house, where he with his dagger and rapier defended himself for a space; but at length, the burgomaster coming thither with another magistrate which could speak Latin, he was counselled to submit himself to the order of the law. Master Berty, knowing himself clear, and the captain to be alive, was the more bold to submit himself to the judgment of the law, upon condition that the magistrate would receive him under safe-conduct, and defend him from the rage of the multitude. Which being promised, master Berty putteth himself and his weapon into the magistrate’s hand, and so was committed to safe custody, while the truth of his cause should be tried.
Then Master Berty, writing his letters to the landgrave, and to the earl of Erpach, the next day early in the morning the earl of Erpach, dwelling within eight miles, came to the town wither the duchess was brought with her waggon, Master Berty also being in the same town, under custody.
The earl, who had some intelligence [knowledge] of the duchess before, after he was come and had showed such courtesy as he thought to her estate was seemly, the townsmen perceiving the earl to behave himself so humbly unto her, began to consider more of the matter; and further, understanding the captain to be alive, both they, and especially the authors of the stir, shrank away, and made all the friends they could to master Berty and his wife, not to report their doings after the worst sort. And thus master Berty and his wife, escaping that danger, proceeded in their journey toward Poland …25
A tale of bold derring-do, then, but an extremely vague one. The town where the drama was played out is not identified, and the landgrave, his capt
ain, the burgomaster and the magistrate are all nameless. We appear to be on firmer ground with the Earl of Erpach or, more usually, Erbach (Mrs Read has Erbagh), but they seem to have had no recent contact with him until this moment even though Erbach is less than thirty miles from Weinheim. A glance at the map shows that they were not very far into their journey when this incident happened, still on what might be termed ‘friendly territory’; and while Foxe implies that the pet dog’s behaviour was merely an excuse for the aggression he does not tell us what the real reason was. Similarly, it is not apparent how news of the incident was able to reach the town and stir up the populace before Bertie himself had time to ride there, nor is it clear what happened to the four horsemen he abandoned or how Katherine extricated herself from the melee. It is possible that Bertie, a nearly forty-year-old administrator inclining to stoutness, really did have the makings of a D’Artagnan; but it is perhaps more likely that the story of his exploits had again grown with the telling.
Katherine was always straight-talking and not lacking in confidence, but it is surprising that even she dared to send Barlow to the king and the count to ask if their offer was to be taken seriously. Clearly, she wanted to know that she was on safe ground before embarking on a journey in excess of a thousand miles, but her request for a formal invitation under seal could – jewels or no jewels – have raised eyebrows in Poland. Fortunately, the king and the count did not take the view that their integrity was being questioned, and Barlow was able to inform his mistress that her request had (as Foxe puts it) been ‘as soon granted as uttered’.
Foxe’s narrative virtually ends at this point, and we can only assume that the rest their journey to Poland was largely uneventful. They reached Frankfurt without further mishap, then made their way over difficult and mountainous terrain to the plains of northern Germany from where they could turn eastwards. How they travelled and with whom, how long it took them and the places they rested, are now all lost to us, but their welcome met – and perhaps even exceeded – their expectations. Foxe says that they were ‘entertained of the king, and placed honourably in the earldom of the said king of Poland, in Sanogelia [Samogitia, now in Lithuania], called Crozen, where master Berty with the duchess, having the king’s absolute power of government over the said earldom, continued both in great quietness and honour, till the death of queen Mary’.26
The Berties cannot have reached Samogitia before July 1557 and presumably expected to remain there indefinitely; but Mary’s death, on 17 November 1558, changed everything. It would have taken some time for the news to reach them, but if the story that Katherine’s New Year presents to Elizabeth Tudor included ‘a cushion all over richly embroidered, and set with pearls [and] the Book of Ecclesiasticus, covered with purple velvet, garnished, and clasped with silver and gilt’ is accurate, it was apparently within a matter of weeks.27 She was certainly aware of it when she sat down to compose a long and congratulatory letter, full of religious imagery, to the new queen on 28 January, a letter expressing her hopes for the future and eagerly anticipating her return to an unashamedly Protestant England. ‘Wherefore now is our season,’ she wrote, ‘if any ever where, of rejoicing, and to say after Zachary, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,” which hath visited and delivered your Majesty, and by you us, His and your miserable and afflicted subjects. For if the Israelites might rejoice in their Deborah, how much we English in our Elizabeth, that deliverance of our thralled conscience … I greedily wait and pray to the Almighty to consummate this consolation, giving me a prosperous journey once again presently to see your Majesty, to rejoice together with my countryfolks, and to sing a song to the Lord in my native land.’28
Doubtless Katherine would have preferred to leave for England immediately, but she and Bertie had assumed responsibilities in the Polish lands and could not abandon their benefactors at a moment’s notice. She had apparently refrained from corresponding with William Cecil during Queen Mary’s reign (presumably because she did not wish to give his rivals in the government an excuse to question his nominal conformity), but now, in February 1559, she received what was to be the first of many letters from him. Sadly, these are all lost and their content must be deduced from Katherine’s answers, but it is clear that, on this occasion, some of what she read was not to her liking. Cecil, whom Elizabeth had appointed her principal secretary, informed Katherine that while the Church in England would again become Protestant, it would not be wedded to the exiles’ narrow Puritanism. Elizabeth wanted a Church that would be as inclusive as possible, a Church that retained some of the old familiar traditions; Katherine wanted one that was right-thinking – in her eyes – even if it left most people outside.
Her reply was as direct and to the point as ever. She had heard reports that Cecil was among those counselling the queen to be tolerant rather than proactive, and urged him to remember his old master the Duke of Somerset who ‘being plucked of the sleeve of [by] worldly friends, for this worldly respect or that, in fine gave over [abandoned] his hot zeal to set forth God’s true religion, and … lost all that he sought to keep, with his head to boot’. She expressed admiration for Mary’s commitment to the Mass – ‘wherein she deserved immortal praise seeing she was so persuaded that it was good’ – and urged Cecil to stand up for what he believed in even if compromise appeared to offer a quieter and more settled outcome. ‘There is no fear of innovation in restoring old good law and repealing new evil,’ she added, ‘but it is to be feared men have so long worn the Gospel slopewise that they will not gladly have it again straight to their legs. Thus write I after my old manner, which if I persuade you, take it as thankfully and friendly as I mean it … with my hearty prayer that God will so assist you with His grace that you may the first and only seek Him as His eldest and chosen vessel.’29
Cecil would not have taken offence at this – he knew Katherine too well by now – but unbeknown to her it was destined to be only the first of several disappointments. These still lay in the future, however, and in the meantime she and Bertie had to plan their return journey, a journey across Europe which would be less stressful than their earlier travels although still not without its dangers. Her four years on the run had at times taxed her endurance – and perhaps also her faith – to the uttermost, but throughout it all she had never faltered for more than a moment. Others had suffered similar tribulations, but her willingness to abandon her high social position and the risks she had taken had earned her a place in the history of her country. When Augustine Bernher dedicated a volume of Latimer’s sermons to her in 1562 he referred admiringly to the ‘excellent gifts of God bestowed upon your Grace, in giving unto you such a princely spirit, by whose power and virtue you were able to overcome the world, to forsake your possessions, lands and goods, your worldly friends and native country, your high estate and estimation with the which you were adorned, and to become an exile for Christ and His Gospel’s sake’. He reminds her of the ‘bitter morsels, which the Lord hath appointed and prepared for his chosen children and especial friends: of the which he did make you most graciously to taste, giving unto your Grace His spirit, that you were able in all the turmoils and grievances the which you did receive, not only at the hands of those which were your professed enemies, but also at the hands of them which pretended friendship and good will, but secretly wrought sorrow and mischief, to be quiet and patient, and in the end, brought your Grace home again’.30 Interestingly, he implies that some of Katherine’s troubles stemmed from failings on the part of those she had expected to help her, but does not choose to identify either the circumstances or the individuals concerned.
It could be argued that Bernher, who would have known Katherine when he served Hugh Latimer, was in no sense a neutral or unbiased commentator, but later writers who had had little or no contact with her continued the theme. In or about 1588 one Thomas Deloney composed a ballad entitled ‘The Most Rare and Excellent History of the Duchess of Suffolk and Her Husband Richard Bertie’s Calamity’ (to be sung to the tune of �
��Queen Dido’), while in 1623 a play, The Life of the Duchess of Suffolk by Thomas Drew, was staged at the Fortune Theatre in Cripplegate. It may be appropriate to end this chapter with Deloney’s euphoric concluding stanza:
For when Queen Mary was deceas’d,
The Duchess home returned again,
Who was by sorrow quite releas’d
By Queen Elizabeth’s happy reign,
Whose Godly life and Piety
We May praise continually.31
8
LADY OF THE MANOR
1559–1565
Katherine and Richard Bertie returned to England in the late spring or summer of 1559 and quickly re-established themselves at Grimsthorpe. All their lands and goods were restored to them, their debts to the Crown were cancelled, and their son Peregrine, now almost four, was naturalised on 2 August.1 But almost at once there was sadness. Katherine’s stepdaughter Frances had been ailing for some time, and died, aged forty-two, on 21 November. She was buried in St Edmund’s chapel in Westminster Abbey on 5 December, and Mrs Read thought that Katherine had acted as chief mourner: but the ‘Catherine’ who performed this office was the deceased’s eldest surviving daughter, Catherine Grey.2 The queen paid for the elaborate funeral, partly perhaps because Frances, who was indisputably legitimate, had never pressed her own claim to the throne.
Henry VIII's Last Love: The Extraordinary Life of Katherine Willoughby, Lady-in-Waiting to the Tudors Page 13
