And it really was as simple as that, I think: that’s why I’m here – that’s why it’s me who’s here – upriver of that woman and the swordsman.
No block for her, no axe: she’ll die with her head up. She was a mistake of the king’s but the king never makes a mistake, so she’ll be struck out with such speed that no one sees it happen and then the blood will slide in a single wipe from so sharp a blade. For not even three years did England have a pretend-queen. Blink and you’ve missed it.
Thirteen Mays ago, Katherine Filliol stepped across our threshold and for just under three years she was my brother’s wife. When she went, something of her lodged in my heart. Sometimes I’ve thought of it as jewel-like and sometimes malign, but now I see that it has simply been biding its time. Because from tomorrow, there’ll be no one who can stop me going to find her, if, in the end, I decide that’s what I want to do.
All that is known of Katherine Filliol (Filioll/Fillol) from the historical record is that by the time her father’s will was written in 1527, her marriage to Edward Seymour had broken down. Her father left her forty pounds per annum for as long as she remained in an ‘honest house of Relegion of wymen’. Neither she nor Edward were left anything else, although Edward disputed the will and had its terms set aside in 1530, whereby he then inherited various manors and lands. In 1534/5, he married Anne Stanhope, and in 1540 had Parliament grant that his second son by Katherine – Edward – should succeed him only if there were no male heirs by Anne or any subsequent wife. There was no mention of the first son, John.
Edward had ten children with Anne Stanhope, nine of whom survived infancy. Edward’s second wife was evidently a forceful character, alienating more than a few of his colleagues over the years.
There is no record of what happened to Katherine. The widely believed story that she was repudiated by Edward because she had had an affair with his father comes from a marginal note in Vincent’s Baronage, which was added well after the lifetime of the protagonists: ‘ repudiata quia pater ejus post nuptias earn cognovit’.
Jane Seymour was betrothed to Henry VIII on 20 May 1536, the day after Anne Boleyn’s execution, and married him ten days later. During their marriage, she was instrumental in the rehabilitation of Henry’s eldest, estranged daughter, Mary; and in October 1537, she gave birth to a son, Edward, but then died a week and a half later. She was the only one of Henry VIII’s consorts to receive a queen’s funeral. On All Saints’ Day, her embalmed body was borne through black-draped Hampton Court to the chapel, from whence it was moved in a great procession twelve days later to Windsor Castle for burial in St George’s Chapel, in the tomb that Henry intended for himself. Their son became king – Edward VI – at the age of nine.
Jane’s brothers Edward and Thomas went on to make glittering careers for themselves at court, albeit in very different ways, but both ended up on the block. During the remainder of Henry VIII’s reign, Edward had distinguished himself as a soldier and member of the Privy Council, and although the king’s will stipulated that a council should rule collectively for the boy-king, Edward was, within days of the new king’s accession, elected by that council to be Lord Protector of the Realm. He created himself Duke of Somerset.
As for Thomas, he married the late king’s widow – Katherine Parr, dowager queen of England – in 1547 with what was widely viewed as unseemly haste, and then, the following year, when she was pregnant, caused a scandal by his over-familiarity with her fourteen-year-old stepdaughter, Princess Elizabeth. At the time, thanks to Katherine Parr’s good sense, disaster was averted, but after she had died in childbirth Thomas was soon back in trouble on this and many other counts, not least his conspicuous efforts to curry favour with the young king at the expense of his brother. Despite his considerable charm (Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, a contemporary, said of him that he was ‘fierce in courage, courtly in fashion, in personage stately, in voice magnificent, but somewhat empty of matter’), many councillors tired of his antics and in January 1549 he was arrested, whereupon he refused to answer the thirty-three charges of treason and demanded an open trial.
Keen to avoid that, the council moved against him with a Bill of Attainder, which Edward found impossible to sign at its first presentation. Edward was placed in an extremely difficult position by his brother’s arrest, not just in the sense of the personal conflict that he undoubtedly felt, but in the eyes of the world. If he moved against Thomas, he would be guilty of murdering his own brother, but if he didn’t, he’d be guilty of favouring a traitor. He would have been painfully aware that some councillors would be glad to see him so compromised and, indeed, it was this faction that ensured that the two brothers didn’t meet again after Thomas’s arrest, fearing that Edward would be swayed by a personal plea.
In the end, Edward did sign. Thomas was executed in March, refusing to make the usual confessional speech on the scaffold but instead using the opportunity to try to smuggle via his servant two letters for the princesses, warning them that his brother was aiming to estrange their brother from them. When told of his death, Princess Elizabeth is reputed to have said, ‘This day died a man of much wit and little judgement.’
During Edward Seymour’s time as de facto ruler of England (1547–9), far-reaching reforms occurred on religious and social fronts, earning him a great deal of affection among common people, particularly in London, but the period was marred by considerable unrest elsewhere and costly war, as well as his own ostentatious profiteering. Eventually the council, under the increasing influence of John Dudley, moved against him. He was arrested and stripped of the protectorate, but later released and to some extent rehabilitated before being re-arrested and condemned on twenty-nine counts (commonly regarded as trumped-up) of treason. He was executed in 1552.
Of the rest of Jane’s family: her brother Henry married again after the death of his first wife, Barbara, and had children either by Barbara or the subsequent wife, before living into old age. Jane’s sister Elizabeth’s second husband (of three) was Gregory Cromwell, son of Thomas Cromwell, with whom she had several children, and her sister Dorothy also married and had children; both Seymour sisters are believed to have lived into their fifties. Jane’s father, Sir John, lived to see her become queen, but died later that year; his wife outlived him by many years.
Jane’s own son, Edward VI, in whose short reign much of the Reformation was effected, died aged fifteen in 1553, and was succeeded (after the Lady Jane Grey debacle) by his much older half-sister, Mary (‘Bloody Mary’), who then initiated the Counter-Reformation.
After Edward Seymour’s execution, his wife, Anne Stanhope, married the household’s steward and lived a long life. It is recorded that Katherine Filliol’s two sons were with Edward Seymour in the Tower before his execution. The elder, John, died there a few months later, but the younger, Edward, went on to become High Sheriff of Devon and to live to a good age. After the failure of the line with the death of the 7th Duke of Somerset in 1750, the line of descendancy reverted so that it is from Katherine Filliol’s son that the current Duke of Somerset (the 19th) is descended.
Acknowledgements
It’s very good indeed to be at Little, Brown and to be able to continue working with my editor, Clare Smith: many thanks to those who made the move possible for me, principally my agent, Antony Topping, and Clare herself, and David Shelley, each of whom, in his or her own way, saw me expertly and patiently through what was a difficult time for me.
And then, as if that wasn’t enough, Antony and Clare had to tackle the book itself: Antony, first, incisively, and then Clare, at length but always with her characteristic wisdom and grace. Thank you, you two, and you know I mean it.
Thanks, too, for being so welcoming and for doing sterling work on my behalf, to Richard Beswick, Susan de Soissons, Stephen Dumughn, Charlie King, Hollie Smyth, Duncan Spilling, Victoria Pepe and Zoe Gullen.
And thanks as ever to Jo Adams and Carol Painter for the generous, cheerful lend on numerous occasions of Bird
combe Cottage. I was about to say that a lot of this book was written there, but actually, upon reflection, it occurs to me that I spent most of my time there, over the past couple of years, staring at the walls. Lovely walls, though.
THE MAY BRIDE
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Copyright © 2014 by Suzannah Dunn
First Pegasus Books cloth edition 2014
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