The Sisters Who Would Be Queen: The tragedy of Mary, Katherine and Lady Jane Grey. Leanda Lisle de

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СКАЧАТЬ By July they had asserted the evangelical belief that salvation was not attainable by man through his own efforts, such as charitable works, but was the gift of God for an elect few. By August the use of the rosary was abolished and the Mass was under attack, with ‘much speaking against the sacrament of the altar, that some called it Jack in the box, with divers other shameful names’.⁸ Stained-glass windows in churches were smashed and the carved figures of Christ torn down. The iconography of God was now idolatry, but that of the King and the nobility remained everywhere. Indeed the arms of the King were now being painted on church walls. Bishop Gardiner questioned the logic of this to the Privy Council. He also warned it was surely illegal to break Henry VIII’s religious settlement during Edward’s minority, but such pleas and arguments fell on deaf ears.

      The Bible did not raise any objections to heraldic symbols, but to objects worshipped as God. Praying before a statue or image might not be to worship it, but it could appear close to it. As for the illegality of changing the national religious culture, Somerset and his allies believed that Edward would learn to applaud their actions before he came to his majority. Images of saints, with which Edward had been surrounded, were removed from his rooms, and his mind was being as cleansed of the past as his environment. Edward’s reformist tutor, the gaunt John Cheke, was ‘always at his elbow’ whispering to him in his chapel, ‘and wherever else he went, to inform and teach him’. Edward responded eagerly, but the evangelicals needed to project Edward as the font of reform, not merely as an obedient pupil. It was claimed, therefore, that his ability to absorb what he was taught was such that, ‘it should seem he were already a [spiritual] father’ rather than a boy, ‘not yet ten years old’.⁹ The radical Dorset would have liked to see still faster progress in religion than was being made, but he also had more earthly matters to consider. In particular he had concerns that Sudeley was proving unable to develop Jane’s friendship with the King.

      Somerset had barred Catherine Parr and Sudeley from access to Edward. This was miserable for the boy. Catherine was the only mother Edward had ever known, his Mater Carissima, who, he had once said, held ‘the chiefest place in my heart’. In getting Edward to write a letter giving them permission to marry, however, Sudeley had proven how dangerous their access to the King could be. The ability to shape the King’s mind, to fill it with carefully coloured opinions and edited information that favoured one’s own interests and condemned one’s enemies, was central to the operation of politics in an autocratic monarchy. While the King’s mind was young and impressionable, as Edward’s was, it was all the more important to control access to him. Sudeley was therefore kept well away from him. But he assured Dorset that he nevertheless remained the King’s favourite uncle. Edward had complained, he said, ‘divers times’ that ‘his uncle of Somerset kept him very straight’ and would not let him have money when he asked for it.¹⁰ Sudeley explained he was thus able to earn Edward’s gratitude with gifts of £10, £20, even £40, slipped to him through John Fowler, one of the Grooms of the Privy Chamber. While Edward was fond of him, however, Sudeley knew that the truth was he had to place new and higher stakes if he was to achieve the power he wanted.

      Katherine and Mary Grey were used to their sister leaving them to spend periods at court. But Jane’s leaving for Seymour Place was of a different order and surely more deeply felt. The ordinary memories of everyday life, such as the dancing horse, taken from Bradgate by one of the servants to entertain the townsfolk of Leicester, were less often shared.¹¹ For Frances also, it must have been hard. Jane was still very young and, no matter how commonplace it was to send a child away, she had to overcome her natural instincts to do what was considered best for her eldest daughter. Even when Frances was away at court, or staying with friends, she knew her children, whether at Bradgate or Dorset House, were being cared for in an environment she had some control over. Giving that up to a known womaniser like Sudeley was a cause for anxiety. But things were far worse at Seymour Place than she ever suspected.

      If there was one thing that would have advanced Sudeley’s ambitions more effectively than marrying a King’s widow, it would be to have married a King’s daughter. Jane’s enquiring mind and sharp eyes could not fail to have noticed how especially friendly Sudeley was with the Princess Elizabeth. Whenever the Queen dowager and her stepdaughter visited them at Seymour Place he was always up first and, still in his nightshirt and slippers, he would breeze down the corridors to the door of Elizabeth’s chamber, look round and wish her good morning. Elizabeth’s governess Kate Astley warned Sudeley that it was ‘an unseemly sight to go to a maiden’s bedchamber barelegged’ and was causing gossip amongst the servants. But Sudeley retorted that he was doing nothing wrong. Soon he was going into Elizabeth’s room. Sometimes she was still in bed and he would ‘put open the curtains, and bid her good morrow, and make as though he would come at her’.¹² Elizabeth did not dare reprove him. She had not forgotten Sudeley was the brother of the Protector: as he made his advances she simply shrank under her covers.

      Increasingly Elizabeth’s feelings towards her stepfather became confused. Having a powerful figure show her so much attention was exciting and, at just fourteen, it was not easy to distinguish predator from protector. There may have been an element too, of wanting to revenge herself on her stepmother for her betrayal of her father in marrying so quickly after his death. There is only one time, however, that Elizabeth’s emotions are recorded as having come to the surface, during this period. This was when, to her great distress, her young tutor, William Grindal, died of plague at the end of January. Sudeley and Catherine were anxious to choose his replacement, but here, outside the complex parameters of the adult, sexual arena, Elizabeth’s natural self-assurance could show through, and she insisted on making her own choice: a man she could trust. She picked the thirty-three-year-old Roger Ascham, who had taught Edward alongside John Cheke and been Grindal’s tutor at Cambridge.

Jane also liked Ascham. He was easy-going with a taste for good wine and gambling at cards. He got on particularly well with the Astleys, with whom he recalled enjoying ‘free talk, always mingled with honest mirth’, and Jane would later write a letter commending him to a future employer.^* Outside the schoolroom, however, Sudeley’s reckless familiarity with Elizabeth was beginning to cause tensions in his marriage. Sudeley and Catherine enjoyed a passionate, but volatile relationship. He was a jealous lover and Catherine was sometimes frightened of his rages. But she was now pregnant and had her own anxieties. At thirty-six she was old for a first-time mother and feared Sudeley saw Elizabeth as a potential replacement, were she to die in childbirth. There were even rumours, which she may have heard, that Sudeley had expressed an interest in marrying the princess before he had begun to woo her.¹³

      Kate Astley’s complaints about Sudeley’s behaviour with Elizabeth had resulted in the Queen dowager deciding to accompany Sudeley on his early morning perambulations. But she couldn’t be with him all the time. The final straw for Catherine came in May when she was six months pregnant. Elizabeth and Sudeley had disappeared and Catherine went looking for them. When she found them Elizabeth was in her husband’s arms.¹⁴ Catherine and Sudeley had a furious row. The embrace does not seem to have been overtly sexual, but Catherine later explained to a shocked Elizabeth the grave risk she had taken with her reputation. As the daughter of an infamous adulteress, Elizabeth had more reason than most to be careful with her good name. To prevent any further opportunity for scandal or for some misdeed on Sudeley’s part, Catherine suggested Elizabeth stay for a while with Astley’s sister, Joan Denny. The chastened Elizabeth left a week after Pentecost, ashamed and shaken by what had occurred.

      It was Jane alone who accompanied Catherine Parr to her guardian’s Gloucestershire estate at Sudeley for the summer. The orphaned Elizabeth must have reflected bitterly that СКАЧАТЬ