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

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СКАЧАТЬ and golden beard, like some heavenly princeling, encapsulates his self-image perfectly. Harry Dorset was not, however, the only member of the extended royal family, to resent Somerset’s power and arrogance. King Edward’s younger uncle, Thomas Seymour, was already looking to Dorset for a political alliance against his older brother. Described by his servant, Sir John Harington, as a fine soldier and a dashing courtier, Thomas Seymour had a magnetic voice, ‘strong limbs and manly shape’. Women fell for him, and men admired him: indeed, once they had succumbed to his charm they never forgot him. Even thirty years after his death his former entourage was bound in friendship by his memory, and ‘the best of them disdained not the poorest’.⁵ In common with the protagonists of Greek tragedy, however, Thomas Seymour also possessed a fatal flaw: greed and of the most dangerous kind - the greed for power. Somerset had tried his best to engage Seymour’s support for his Protectorship. The younger brother had been brought on to the Privy Council, given the title Baron Seymour of Sudeley, and made Lord Admiral. What the new Baron Sudeley had hoped for most, however, was the post of Governor of the King’s Person, which would have allowed him to share the power of the Protectorship. And in this he was thwarted. Few others wished to see such a division of authority, and so in March, a month after the coronation, Somerset took the post for himself. A furious Sudeley was now determined to block any further advance by his brother, while continuing to seek power for himself. But to achieve this he needed first to raise his profile within the royal family.

      Since January Jane and her sisters had seen a new and increasingly regular visitor to Dorset House on the Strand. Jane would have recognised him as a man about court: he was Sudeley’s gentleman servant, John Harington. A landowner and man of considerable subtlety and intelligence, Harington had been sent to prepare the ground for what Sudeley called a ‘friendship’ with Dorset.

      Sudeley, meanwhile, was wooing Henry VIII’s widow. Catherine Parr had been in love with Sudeley before she had married Henry and now she was free to make her own choice she clearly found him irresistible. Within weeks of the King’s death the handsome Lord Admiral had the Queen dowager ‘under the plummet [duvet]’ at her manor in Chelsea. They married in secret in May 1547, shortly after she was given the care of her stepdaughter, the Princess Elizabeth. Over the following weeks, as Sudeley saw the huge influence his new wife had over Elizabeth, it struck him that the wardship of the next in line to the throne, Lady Jane Grey, would also be valuable. Notably, Edward’s heirs were all female. The entire political system, the stability of England depended on a series of women and girls and, whether adult, like Catherine Parr and the Princess Mary, or children, like the Princess Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey, they were, to Sudeley, beings to be used and manipulated.

      Sudeley had often noticed Jane Grey about the court. She appeared rather small, but her dark brows and eyes, which were ‘sparkling and reddish brown in colour’, suggested a lively spirit. He now began to watch her with closer interest, observing her playing and talking with the new King. An audience with Edward was always a formal affair, but as Jane Grey’s cousin, Jane Dormer, recalled, it was still possible to spend many happy hours with him, ‘either in reading, playing or dancing’. Edward was universally considered ‘a marvellous, sweet child, of very mild and generous condition’, and Dormer recalled how he would call her ‘my Jane’, and, when she lost at cards, he would comfort her: ‘Now Jane, your king is gone, I shall be good enough for you.’⁶

      As similar scenes were played out under Sudeley’s gaze, he realised that Lady Jane Grey, with her royal blood, could one day be more than a playmate for Edward. She could become the King’s wife, a possibility that served his purposes well. Sudeley knew, or suspected, that Somerset hoped to see Jane Grey married to his eight-year-old son, Edward Seymour, the Earl of Hertford.⁷ He hoped that if he could persuade Jane’s father to make her his ward, he would be able to thwart his brother’s ambitions in this regard and gain some control over whom Jane did marry. There would be many powerful people who would want her as a bride - all useful allies in the struggles ahead.

      As Sudeley knew, Dorset had not been treated well by the Protector. When Catherine Parr’s courtly brother, William, had been made Marquess of Northampton it was said it had been done not so much to promote Northampton as to demote Dorset, who was, until Northampton’s election, the only marquess in England. This view appeared to be confirmed in March, when Northampton had been raised to the Privy Council, and Dorset had not. Harington was instructed to assure Dorset that, as the King’s second uncle, Sudeley was well placed to do him the favours the Protector denied him.⁸ When, during one of his subsequent visits to his London home, Dorset confirmed his willingness to be Sudeley’s friend and ally, Harington seized his opportunity. The most appropriate mark of this future friendship, he said, would be if Dorset were to send Jane to live in Sudeley’s household as his ward. At that, however, Dorset balked.

      It was usual for aristocratic families to send a daughter approaching adolescence to live with a well-connected family. The tradition served a number of useful purposes, binding, as it did, parents as allies and children as friends. The contacts made were used often in the arrangement of a future marriage. For a girl of noble birth it was virtually unthinkable that her marriage should be left to chance, but Jane, at ten, was rather young to be ‘put out’, as it was termed. And there were other considerations. We do not know the precise timing of Harington’s visit, but if it took place before Sudeley’s marriage to Catherine Parr became public, Harington was asking Dorset to send his daughter to the household of an unmarried man. If, as is more likely, it took place after, then it was to a man whose marriage was considered a scandal. Catherine Parr had destroyed her reputation by marrying so soon after the King’s death. Virtue, in a woman, was associated almost entirely with chastity, that is, unimpeachable sexual morality and continence. It was believed that the female sex drive was stronger than the male (since women were creatures of feeling rather than reason) and therefore the likely explanation for Catherine Parr’s behaviour was assumed to be unbridled lust. Sudeley, meanwhile, was judged guilty of selfish ambition. If his wife became pregnant it would be uncertain whose child it was. This was potentially dangerous to the stability of the country. Since Henry VIII had introduced a law requiring the monarch’s assent to any royal marriage, their actions might even have been judged treasonous, had Sudeley not persuaded Edward to write a letter that made it appear the marriage was made at his suggestion.

      Harington had anticipated that Dorset’s reaction to the proposed wardship might not be favourable and assured Dorset that Sudeley would see to it that Jane was placed in a most advantageous marriage. ‘With whom?’ Dorset demanded. ‘Marry,’ Harington replied, ‘I doubt not but you shall see him marry her to the King; and fear you not but he will bring it to pass.’ Dorset was stunned by Harington’s remark. He listened, however, as Harington continued, describing how Sudeley, watching Jane about court, had declared that she was ‘as handsome a Lady as any in Christendom, and that, if the King’s Majesty, when he came to age, would marry within the realm, it was as likely it would be there than in any other place’.⁹ Dorset began to consider the possibilities: maybe Sudeley’s idea was not an unrealistic one? Henry VIII had taken English wives. His daughter was an intelligent, highly educated, evangelical princess: the perfect bride for Edward. For the Greys, it would also be a better match than either his grandfather, or he himself, had made. Dorset agreed to discuss the matter of Jane’s wardship with Sudeley as soon as possible.

      While the royal children played their innocent games, the adults began moving the pawns on the political chessboard. Within a week of Harington’s approaches, Dorset was at Seymour Place along the Strand, talking with Sudeley in the privacy of his garden. The banging and clattering of builders echoed across the hedges and herb beds. Next door, the Protector was clearing the local parish church of St Mary and the Holy Innocents to make way for a vast Italianate palace. It was the first building of its kind in England, a suitable monument to Somerset’s burgeoning status as alter СКАЧАТЬ