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

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СКАЧАТЬ from Bradgate towards the end of November 1549 - Mary and Katherine Grey still riding their horses with a servant sitting behind them, holding them tight so they didn’t fall when they tired; Jane treated as an adult, sitting side-saddle with a foot rest to keep her secure. Nurses, grooms and gentlemen servants also rode in the train, while other servants were carried in carts along with the baggage and mail. It was a spectacular sight on the quiet roads and bells rang in the villages and towns ahead to warn people of their arrival. Crowds came out to stare at the passing celebrities, or to offer fresh horses, food and places to rest.

      The sisters enjoyed several days playing with their cousins at Tilty. Little Mary Grey, although much smaller than her friend Margaret, was equally strong-willed, and there must have been some impressive battling for dominance in their games. Then, after breakfast on 26th November, the sisters were mounted again on their horses, and travelled with their mother to the Princess Mary’s house Beaulieu, also in Essex.⁷ They recognised the turreted palace as it came in view, with its great gateway carved with King Henry’s arms in stone. The sisters had visited the princess many times before. Their grandmother, the French Queen, and Catherine of Aragon had been friends as well as sisters-in-law, while their mother had served in Mary’s household when Jane was a baby.

      The princess - small and of ‘spare and delicate frame’ - was now thirty-three. She had suffered with menstrual problems and depression for years, and was regularly bled for them. But her fragile appearance belied a strong voice, ‘almost like a man’s’, and ‘piercing eyes’. She struck a formidable figure, and an unusually independent one. It was very unusual for a woman of her age and wealth to remain unmarried. But she was simply too good a catch to be free to take a husband. Her father had executed men he feared were plotting to marry their sons to his daughter. He didn’t want Edward to have any dangerous rivals. Now, Edward’s Privy Council would have regarded anyone seeking her hand with similar suspicion, and they had the legal veto on any choice she might have made. So she had to remain alone, watching her youth pass, resting her love only in God.

      Mary Tudor must have seemed like a spinster aunt to the Grey sisters: intimidating, but also kindly. She enjoyed giving them presents of necklaces, beads and dresses. She gambled at cards with their mother, and played her lute for them all. It was said that Mary ‘surprised even the best performers, both by the rapidity of her hand and by the style of her playing’.⁸ Jane, who had learned so much about music from Catherine Parr, would have been impressed. But the Mass that the sisters had been taught to despise remained at the heart of Mary’s daily routine: she maintained no fewer than six Catholic chaplains in her household, in the face of government objections. Life had not been easy for Mary since Whit Sunday 1549, when the new Prayer Book came into force. But she had not expected it to be so. She had demonstrated her contempt for the government’s decree by having a high Catholic Mass said that day at her chapel at Kenninghall in Norfolk. The Council had tried subsequently to link her to the Devonshire rebels. When that had failed they demanded she cease having Mass said publicly in her chapels. She refused, arguing she had broken no laws, unless they were new laws of their own making: and she did not recognise these since the King, her brother, was not yet of an age to make them. For the time being her Hapsburg cousin, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (the nephew of Catherine of Aragon), protected her from retribution. But Mary was pessimistic about the future. Warwick had used conservative support to overthrow Somerset, and had looked to Mary for backing for his coup; but she had not, and did not, trust him. ‘The conspiracy against the Protector has envy and ambition as its only motives,’ she warned the imperial ambassador, François Van der Delft; ‘You will see that no good will come of this move.’⁹ Indeed, Dorset was at court, hoping that Northumberland would, in the end, prefer to side with evangelicals such as himself, who shared the developing religious beliefs of the King.

      It may seem surprising that Frances maintained her closeness to Mary despite their religious differences. It was usual, however, for court women to keep open channels of communication between warring parties and sustain friendships across political and religious divisions. William Cecil’s fiercely evangelical sister-in-law, Anne Cooke, would serve in Mary’s household a few years later. Frances was simply performing a family duty in maintaining a good relationship with the heir to the throne. The cordial visits Frances and her daughters made to Beaulieu were, however, about to become more difficult. Three days after the Greys’ arrival at Beaulieu, the question of whether Warwick was going to base his regime with the religious conservatives was answered resolutely in the negative with Dorset’s appointment to the Privy Council. As the imperial ambassador observed, Dorset was ‘entirely won over to the new sect’. The most ‘forward’ of the evangelicals rejoiced at his success.¹⁰ But for Mary his appointment spelled real danger. Dorset’s ambitions for his daughter, Jane, were matched, or even exceeded, by his enthusiasm for religious reform. The rediscovery of the New Testament through Greek seemed to the evangelicals to mark the beginning of the breaking of a code through which Satan’s puppets in the Vatican had kept religious Truth hidden. Nothing could be more important to Dorset than overthrowing ‘the vain traditions of men’ expressed through the Church’s teaching, in favour of what God willed, as revealed through his Word - and Mary presented an obstacle.

      Within weeks of Dorset’s promotion, remaining conservatives on the Council were expelled and the imperial ambassador was expressing fears for Mary. Dorset, Northampton and Herbert were the dominant figures in Warwick’s ‘crew’, he said, and all were men who would ‘never permit the Lady Mary to live in peace…in order to exterminate [the Catholic] religion’.¹¹ Mary would eventually be driven out of England, he believed, forced to change her faith, or even killed. While the political situation remained unsettled the Grey sisters continued to come and go from their father’s houses in London and Leicestershire to his half-brother’s house in Essex. On 2nd December, Katherine and Mary returned to Tilty, arriving with their attendants and ‘a great many gentlemen’. Katherine, in particular, was a light-hearted girl who enjoyed such parties, and little Mary Grey took her cue from her older sister in this regard. But the more serious Jane also joined them at Tilty, on 16th December, with her parents and uncle, Lord John Grey.

      The family enjoyed a huge party at Tilty on Christmas Day and further celebrations on the 26th and 27th. The plays and festivities continued until almost the end of January 1550, broken only by a visit Katherine made to the sisters’ sole surviving aunt, Elizabeth, the widow of Lord Audley, at nearby Walden Abbey. Lady Audley’s only child, Margaret Audley, was a playmate, and also being raised as an evangelical.¹² There were no further journeys recorded to see the Princess Mary at Beaulieu that month. But it is probable the princess continued occasionally to welcome Frances and her daughters in the troubled years ahead. The cousins knew how quickly things could change in politics, and that the time could come when they might need the help of the other.

      By February 1550, as the immediate political situation stabilised, the Grey sisters were settled at Dorset House on the Strand with their Willoughby cousins. For their father the rewards of office were already proving plentiful. Over the previous month he had been made Steward of the King’s Honours and Constable of Leicester Castle, as well as being granted lands, lordships and manors in Leicestershire, Rutland, Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire, and the Duchy of Lancaster.¹³ This vast increase in wealth ensured his wife and children could afford the finest new gowns for court functions where he was in daily attendance on the King.

      Edward’s day was a busy one. He rose early and was dressed by his four Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, who remained on their knees throughout. He then enjoyed some exercise: ball games, dancing, riding, shooting the bow or other sports. Breakfast was followed by a morning prayer, and then two hours’ tuition in Greek or Latin. Before and after lunch there could be meetings with Councillors. СКАЧАТЬ