Princess
.”
It was an act of defiance. I was stating clearly that in my opinion his marriage to
Anne Boleyn was no true marriage, and as I was legitimate, Elizabeth was a bastard.
As soon as I had dispatched the letter, I realized the enormity of what I had done.
Both my mother and the Countess would have been horrified.
The result was to bring the Duke of Norfolk down to Beaulieu with Lord Marney,
the Earl of Oxford and the Duke's almoner, Dr. Fox. Their purpose was, I think, to warn
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me of the folly of continuing in my stubborn mood, to administer the breaking up of my
household and to see me on my way.
I knew from the attitude of the Duke toward me that I could expect no sympathy
from him or any of his henchmen; and that was an indication of my father's feelings
toward me.
The Husseys would remain in my household, and I might take two personal
maids. I had to say goodbye to all the rest. Even now I cannot bear to brood on my
parting with the Countess. It was one of the most harrowing experiences through which I
had passed. When my mother had been separated from me, she had handed me over to
the Countess and we had been able to mourn together.
I had never felt so alone, so bereft, as I did when I left Beaulieu behind and made
my way to Hatfield.
News traveled fast and spread through the neighborhood. The people of Beaulieu
knew I was leaving and those of Hatfield that I was coming.
Courtiers are subservient to their masters; not so the people. They have means of
expressing their feelings which are often denied those in high places.
They were on the road…groups of them… cheering me.
“Long live our Princess Mary! Long live Queen Katharine! We'll have no Nan
Bullen!”
That was music to my ears—particularly when they called me Princess.
I smiled, acknowledging their greetings. I hoped my father would hear of the
people's attitude toward me. I was sure it would give him a few qualms of uneasiness.
All too soon the journey was over. I had arrived at Hatfield Palace, and I felt as
though I were being taken into prison.
MISERY DESCENDED UPON ME. Lady Shelton was anxious to let me know
that I was a person of no importance and that if I gave myself airs it would be the worse
for me.
I treated her with a cold contempt which so aroused her anger that she told me
that if I persisted in my stubborn ill behavior she had been advised to beat me.
“Advised by whom?” I asked.
She did not answer but I knew. She was so proud of the fact that she was related
to the woman they called the Queen.
During the first days of our encounter I knew that she would never lay hands on
me. When she insulted me, I would draw myself up to my full height and merely look at
her. I was royal and perhaps that was apparent. I could see little lights of apprehension in
her eyes. What was she thinking? “One day this prisoner could be Queen of England? It
would be wise not to antagonize her too much. To strike her would be quite
unforgivable.”
I found just a slight elation in the midst of my gloom to know that, although she
might make me uncomfortable in a hundred ways and abuse me verbally, she would
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never lift her hand against me.
Hatfield is a beautiful place, but I was alone and desolate, deserted by my father
and separated from my beloved mother and the Countess.
All the attention in the household was for the baby. The Princess, they called her.
I would not call her that. To me she was sister, just as the Duke of Richmond was
brother. There was no difference. They were both the King's illegitimate children.
Sometimes I dream of those days. They are remote now but I can still conjure up
the infinite sadness, the deep loneliness, the longing for my mother and the Countess, the
abject misery. I felt then that whatever happened I could never be truly happy again.
Sometimes I thought the object of the household was to humiliate me. The Duke
of Richmond had a fine household; the King made much of him. But, of course, it was
different with me. I was a continual reproach to him. I was there at the back of his mind,
jerking that mighty conscience of his so that it refused now and then to do his bidding.
Hatfield! The very name means blank misery, a certain feeling of hopelessness which is
what comes to those in prison with no indication of how long their incarceration will last,
wondering if only death can release them from the wretchedness of their days.
But I suppose nothing is complete gloom. Although in the beginning I had
resented the Husseys, I was now rather glad that they were with me… particularly Lady
Hussey, who, I was sure, had great sympathy with me. Once or twice she had addressed
me as Princess. It may have been deliberate. On the other hand she had been accustomed
to referring to me thus before it had been forbidden to do so. But so bereft was I of
friends that I was grateful for that little show of sympathy.
Then I had the two maids who had come with me to Hatfield. They served me
loyally and showed in a hundred ways that they regarded me as their Princess.
There was another blessing. It so happened that Elizabeth's governess was Lady
Bryan, who had held the same post to me during my early years.
There seems to be a bond between a motherly woman and a child to whom she
has been close in infancy. It may have been because Margaret Bryan was a kindly
woman, or it may have been because there was that early bond between us, but it soon
became clear that she deplored the way in which I was treated under Lady Shelton's rules.
Looks were exchanged between us, and then we found opportunities of talking. She
brought me some comfort, and I shall always be grateful to Margaret Bryan.
A great deal was happening. I suppose that year was one of the most momentous
in history.
The Nun of Kent had been arrested soon after I arrived at Hatfield. She was sent
to the Tower with some of her associates. When they were brought before the Star
Chamber, they all confessed to fraud, and Elizabeth Barton was accused of trying to
dethrone the King, which was, of course, treason.
Christmas came—the most dreary I had ever spent. It was cold. It was long since I
had had new clothes, and I saw no means of getting any. I was not allowed to have my
meals served in my room. If I wished to eat, I had to go down to the hall and seat myself
where I could; and if I did not go, nobody seemed to care. Except, of course, Margaret
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Bryan, who surveyed me with some anxiety. She assumed the role of nurse and talked to
me as though I were a wayward child.
“What good is this doing?” she demanded. “It is hard for you but you must make
the best of it. Going without food is not going to help you.”
I said, “You and my two maids are the only friends I have. Perhaps Lady Hussey
is…in a way.”
I saw the tears in her eyes. I knew it was difficult for her to speak to me, for she
might be noticed, and if she were she would be sent away. But as she saw I was growing
more and more wan, she became reckless. I had once been her charge and she could not
forget it. Moreover as any good woman would be, she was appalled at the manner in
which my mother was treated.
She said to me, “If I came to your room after the household has retired, we could
talk.”
I was overcome with emotion. I felt as though a light had appeared in a dark
room, and it brought with it a glimmer of comfort.
It was Margaret Bryan who kept me sane during that long time. Sometimes I felt
an urge to throw myself out of a window. It was a sin to take life…even one's own. It was
that thought which restrained me. My great comfort was in prayer. I was sustained by
reading the holy books, by remembering the sufferings of Jesus and trying to emulate his
example. At least I had managed to subdue Lady Shelton sufficiently to escape the
humiliation of physical punishment.
And there was Margaret Bryan.
When the house was quiet, she would come to my room. I was terrified at the risk
she was taking, for I knew that, if Lady Shelton discovered, she most certainly would be
sent away; she might even be imprisoned. I was sure both the King and Anne Boleyn
were very much afraid of the people's feelings for my mother and me.
She was helped in this by one of the maids who was a sweet girl and wanted to do
more for me. I was afraid her devotion would be noticed and she sent away; I told her
that would sorely grieve me.
There was a secret understanding between us that she should pretend to be
brusque with me, in common with the others around me. It was very important to me that
she should stay near me, and although she thought of me as the Princess, it was necessary
that she did not show this.
It was little incidents like this which sustained me. Later she became bolder, and it
was through her, with Margaret Bryan's help, that letters from my mother and even
Chapuys, the Emperor's ambassador, were smuggled in to me.
One day Margaret told me that the King was coming to Hatfield to see the
Princess.
Now was my chance. If I could speak to him face to face, surely he would not fail
to be moved by my plight. I would plead with him. I would make him understand. I must
see him, I told myself.
98
The house was in tumult. The King was coming! I wondered whether
she
would
be with him. Surely she would, for it was the baby they would come to see… her baby. If
she came, there would be no hope of my seeing him. I was sure of that.
I thought of what I must do. I would throw myself at his feet. I would beg him to
remember that I was his daughter.
The great day came.
My little maid was agog with excitement. “They say Queen Anne is not coming to
Hatfield because you are here,” she told me.
“Surely she will come to see her own child.”
“They say she will not.”
“If he comes alone …” I murmured. The girl nodded. She knew what I meant.
And at length he came. It was true that Anne Boleyn had stayed some miles away
and he would rejoin her after the visit.
I could smell the roasting meats; I was aware of the bustle of serving men rushing
hither and thither in the last throes of preparation for the royal visit. And at last there he
was, riding into Hatfield.
I was in my room… waiting. Would he send for me? Surely he must. Was I not
his daughter? He had come to see one; surely he must see the other, too.
The hours wore on. Margaret came to tell me that he had been with Elizabeth and
seemed mightily pleased with her. Margaret glowed with pride every time she mentioned
Elizabeth. “He is now feasting in the hall,” she went on.
“They are in a panic in the kitchens lest anything go wrong.”
Surely he must ask: Where is my daughter Mary? Why is she not here?
But I could not go unless he sent for me.
The hours were passing. He was preparing to leave and he had not sent for me.
Perhaps he had not asked about me. I must see him, I must.
But he was not going to send for me, and already they were riding out of the
palace.
I dashed to the balcony. There he was. I stood there, looking down at him.
I did not call his name. I just stared and stared, my lips moving in prayer.
Father…your daughter is here… please… please…do not leave without seeing me. Just a
look…a smile… but look at me.
And then something made him turn, and for a few seconds we looked full at each
other. He did not smile. He merely looked. What thoughts passed through his head, I did
not know. What did he think to see this palefaced girl who had once been his pretty child,
shabbily clad, when once she had been in velvet and cloth of gold, an outcast in his
bastard daughter's household… what did he think?
He had passed on. He did lift his hat, though, in acknowledgment of my presence
99
as he turned away.
All the gentlemen around him did likewise.
I had been noticed. And that was all his visit meant to me.
I WAS HEARING NEWS of my mother through Margaret and my maid.
When they moved me to Hatfield, they had tried to move her from Buckden to
Somersham, at the same time dismissing part of her household. I had been worried about
her being at Buckden which is a most unhealthy place, but Somersham is worse. It is in
the Isle of Ely and notoriously damp, and as she was suffering from excruciating pains in
her limbs, I was sure that would have been disastrous for her. I often marvelled at my
mother's indomitable spirit and the manner in which she clung to life. She must have
known that she could not live long in Somersham, and the thought occurred to me that
my father—lured on by his concubine—might have thought it would kill her to stay there
long. Her death would make things easier for them, and I was sure it was what the
concubine desired—if not my father.
My mother had defied the commissioners sent to carry out my father's orders; she
had shut herself in her room and sent word down to them that if they wished to remove
her they must break down her door and carry her off by force.
They could have done this, of course, but there was a rumor that the people in the
neighborhood were bringing out their scythes and other such implements implying that, if
the Queen were taken, her captors would have to face the people, and this made them
hesitate.
The result had been that my mother had remained at Buckden.
I heard what her life was like there. She found great comfort in prayer. I did too,
but she was more intensely involved. Religion was all-important to her. It was becoming
so with me, as it does with people who have nothing else to cling to. She, however,
would never rail against her misfortunes, but meekly accept them. That was the
difference in us. She passed her time in prayer, meditation and sewing for the poor. There
was a window in her room from which she could look down on the chapel, and there she
spent a great deal of her time. I was thankful that she had a loyal chamberwoman who
cooked for her. Several new servants had been assigned to her, and naturally she must
feel suspicious of them.
It is a terrible state when someone you once loved can be suspected of trying to
poison you. I understood so well what she was suffering. After all, I was undergoing
something similar myself.
She was constantly in my thoughts. I worried about her and the Countess. I often
thought of Reginald and wondered what he was doing now. All I knew was that he was
on the Continent and that he had further enraged the King by writing to advise him to
return to my mother. Should we ever see each other again? Would that love between us
which had begun to stir ever come to fruition?
I thought then what little control we have over our destinies. It was only the all-
powerful like my father who could thrust aside those who stood in their way—but even
they came up against obstacles.
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In January of that momentous year 1534, anticipating the verdict of the court of
Rome, my father ordered the Council to declare that henceforth the Pope would be
known as the Bishop of Rome, and bishops were to be appointed without reference to the
See of Rome. It was the first step in the great scheme which he had devised with the help
of Cranmer and Cromwell. It was to have far-reaching effects which must have been
obvious to everyone.
Very soon after, the Rome verdict was announced. My father's marriage to my
mother was legal, and the Pope advised the King to put Anne Boleyn from him
immediately.
My father retaliated by announcing that the children of Queen Anne were the true
heirs to the throne and that all those in high places must swear on oath to accept them as
such. All over the country preachers were instructed to applaud the King's action and
revile the Pope.
It could not be expected that this would be received quietly by everyone, and
there were naturally those who were ready to risk their lives and stand in opposition to
the King's command. Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More were two of those who were
sent to the Tower.
There were murmurings of revolt throughout the country. People continued to
blame Anne Boleyn.
I was more frustrated than ever. It was maddening to receive only news which
was brought to me through Margaret Bryan and my maid. I often wondered how true it
was. Could it really be that the country was in revolt, that they were calling for the
restoration of Queen Katharine and the religion they—and their ancestors before them—
had known throughout their lives?
How could the King suddenly sever his country from Rome? And just because the
Pope would not grant him the right to put his good wife from him and set up his
concubine in her place?
I think he must have been very disturbed. He had always courted popularity so
assiduously; he had revelled in it, sought it on every occasion; and now when he rode out
he was met by sullen looks, and when that woman was with him there were some bold
spirits who dared give voice to their disapproval. He must fear that we were trembling on
the edge of disaster… perhaps even civil war.
There were rumors that the Emperor was going to invade England, to rescue the
Queen, depose the King and set me up as Queen. It was frightening to be in the midst of
such a storm.
Attention was turned on Elizabeth Barton, the Nun of Kent. Cromwell had made
much of her confession—and those of her adherents. He wanted the whole country to
know of the deception. I supposed that was why she had not been executed at the time of
her arrest. I think they were trying to incriminate others… all of those who were making
things difficult for the King. Sir Thomas More had once listened to this woman's
prophecies with interest, and he was incriminated, but, clever lawyer that he was, he was
able to extricate himself from the charge, although he was still in the Tower because he
refused to agree that my father's marriage to my mother was invalid and he would not
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accept that Anne Boleyn's children were the true heirs to the throne. Panic was spreading
all over the country; people were discovering that their bluff and hearty King could be
cruel and ruthless. They did not yet know how cruel, how ruthless—but they were
beginning to suspect.
All those who had professed interest in the Nun—and there were some in high
places—now wished to dissociate themselves from her.
However, the King was determined to show the people what became of those who
opposed him; but in spite of all the trouble she had caused him, the Nun's confession was
gratifying to him. She said, before the crowds who had come to witness her last hours at
Tyburn, that she was a poor wretch without learning who had been made to believe she
had special powers by men who encouraged her to fabricate inventions which brought
profit to themselves.
Poor creature, she was hanged with those who had been her close associates.
Each day we waited to hear what would happen next. Lady Bryan was very
fearful on my account. She tried to hide it but she asked my chambermaid to take special
care with my food.
If I was in this dangerous situation, I asked myself, what of my mother? How was
she faring? If only I could have seen her, if only we could have been together, I could
have borne this. I was growing thinner and very pale; I suffered from headaches and
internal periodic pains and difficulties. I would find myself babbling prayers and asking
Heaven to come to my aid.
My little maid came in one day and said, “Madam…Princess… there are two
cartloads of friars being taken to the Tower. People watch them. They stand in the cart,
their hands together in prayer. People are asking, is that going to happen to us all?”
Later Margaret told me that the Franciscan Order had been suppressed. Then I
knew that the King's attention had turned on me, for his commissioners came to Hatfield.
They searched the rooms of all those about me; and to my horror they took Lady Hussey
away with them.
I was appalled. She had not been a great friend to me in the way that Margaret
Bryan had but she had shown a certain sympathy for me. She had always treated me with
respect and had on occasion called me Princess. I trembled lest they should take
Margaret. She had been very careful, but I could not think of any misdemeanor Lady
Hussey had committed.
Later I learned that she had been imprisoned because she had been heard to
address me as Princess and on one occasion had said, “The Princess has gone out
walking,” and on another asked someone to take the Princess a drink.
What a pass we had come to when a woman could be in fear of losing her life
because she had made such a remark!
I worried a great deal about her; I prayed for her; and I was delighted when I
heard later that, after a humble confession and a plea to the King for mercy, she was
released.
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There was a change in my household. Everyone was terrified. It says a great deal
for Lady Bryan's courage that she continued to visit me and bring messages, taking mine
in return. It would have been certain death for her if she had been discovered.
My mother might hear of Lady Hussey's arrest. What anguish that would cause
her, for her fears would not be for herself but for me.
I was fortified by messages from Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador. My maid,
being in a humble position, was not watched as some like Margaret would be; she had
sources outside the palace, and through her I kept in touch with the ambassador.
I had his assurance that the Emperor was watching events with the utmost care. If
it had been possible, he would have come to rescue my mother and me. He could not do
this. François was now an ally of my father and the Emperor had to be watchful and
could not leave his own dominions. I understood this, and it was comforting to know he
was aware of what was going on.
Chapuys wrote that he had information of a plot to execute my mother and me
because we refused to accept Anne as the true Queen. That was what others were
suffering for, and the King could never be at peace while we lived.
There were times when I thought death would be a way out of my miseries; but
when one comes close to it, one changes one's mind.
Now, I hesitated every night before lying down; I searched my little room for an
assassin; I paused before taking a mouthful of food. I found I would tremble at a sudden
footfall. I was eating scarcely anything. I prayed for guidance. And then suddenly, the
idea came to me that I might escape.
Could I do that? I had friends to help me. Would they be prepared to risk their
lives for me? Perhaps my father would be glad to see me go and rejoice…even reward
those who helped me get away. Oh no, wherever I was, I should be a menace to him, and
particularly so in the care of the Emperor, my cousin. It was dangerous but I needed some
stimulation at that time.
So I planned my escape. I had a letter smuggled out to Chapuys. He must help
me. I could no longer endure this way of life.
Chapuys was considering what could be done and, I supposed, how my escape
would affect the imperial cause. That was always a first consideration. But I imagined the
Emperor would not find me an encumbrance, and if I were in his care I should be a
continual anxiety to my father, which would please my cousin. So … there seemed a
possibility that the escape might be arranged.
It was at this time that all the months of anxiety, the lack of food and my deep
depression took their toll of me. I awoke one morning and was too ill to lift my head.
Lady Shelton came to me. She was in a panic. They wanted me dead but everyone
was afraid of being accused of killing me.
There was much activity in the house. Vaguely I was aware of it.
Then I found myself being carried out in a litter. By this time the fever had taken
such a hold on me that I was not aware of what was happening to me.
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They took me to Greenwich.
I learned about this later when people were more ready to talk to me. The King
was in a dilemma. He must have been hoping for my death and at the same time afraid of
the stir it would raise. For six days I lay at Greenwich, unseen by a doctor, while the
fever took a greater hold on me. I was delirious, they tell me, calling for my mother.
My father sent for Chapuys, to tell him that I was dangerously ill and that he
wanted the ambassador to select doctors to send to me. If he would do so, my father told
him, they should be sent to me with the royal doctors.
Chapuys was uneasy. If he sent doctors and they failed to cure me, how would
that affect the Emperor?
It amuses me now to imagine those men all watching me on my sickbed and
wondering what my life or death would mean to their politics.
My father was surely hoping for my death and thought I could not live long when
Dr. Butts announced that I was suffering from an incurable disease. Chapuys, on the
other hand, had said that Dr. Butts' words were that I was very ill indeed but good care
might save me, and that if I were released from my present conditions the cure would be
quick.
I was now under the sole care of Lady Shelton. I had been robbed of Margaret,
who of course remained with Elizabeth; and my little maid had been suspected of
working for me. She had been threatened with the Tower and torture if she did not
confess, so, poor child, she admitted to a little. It was enough to bring about her
dismissal. So there I was, sick until death and friendless.
I kept calling for my mother, but there was no one to hear me or care if they did.
I owe a great deal to Chapuys. He may have used me as a political pawn for the
advancement of his master's cause, but he saved my life. If the King was sending out
rumors of my incurable illness, Chapuys had his own way of refuting that. There were
hints of poison.
My mother sent frantic messages to the King. “Please give my daughter to me.
Let me nurse her in her sickness.”
The requests were ignored. But the people heard of them and they did not like
what they heard.
My mother had at this time been sent to Kimbolton Castle—a grimly
uncomfortable dwelling in the flat Fen country where the persistent east winds I feared
would greatly add to her discomfort.
People gathered about the castle as they did at Greenwich where I lay. They
mumbled their displeasure; they cried, “God save the Princess!” in defiance of those who
declared that I no longer had a right to that title.
There was an uneasy atmosphere throughout the land. The King was now
Supreme Head of the Church in England, and the break with Rome was complete; so it
was not only the treatment of my mother and myself which was threatening revolt all
over the country.
104
I often wondered whether my father paused to think what he had done when his
desire to marry Anne Boleyn had possessed him. He would have visualized an easy
divorce, marriage to his siren and a succession of sons. And how differently it had turned
out! The break with Rome, the cruelty to his wife and daughter and still the longed-for
son had not arrived. What he had done could not possibly endear him to his people.
And there was I—expected to die. Then at least one of the causes for disquiet
would be removed. It was a realization I was forced to face. My father must be praying
for my death. Nevertheless he dared not withhold help from me entirely, and Dr. Butts
was attending me. He was a man whose loyalty to his profession came first. I was his
patient now and he was determined to save my life. He knew the cause of my illness. It
was not the first time that I had been ill, though I was not fundamentally weak. I had been
made to suffer deprivations and such anxieties as I hope few people have to endure; and
these had had their effect on me. My mother was ill, too, but her ailments were more of a
physical nature—rheumatism, gout, chest complaints brought about by cold and
uncomfortable dwelling places. She was saintly and her religion sustained her; she was
made for martyrdom. Not so myself. I too had suffered from deprivations but it was not
they alone which had brought me to my sickbed. I suffered from a smouldering
resentment, a hatred against my persecutors. Mine was more an illness of the mind. If I
could have been with my mother, if I could have taken the example she set, I would
recover, I knew.
Now I must lie in my bed, sickly and alone, longing to be with her that we might
comfort each other. If Lady Salisbury could have come to me, that would have helped.
But my father did not want me to be helped… unless it was to the grave.
He did come to visit me because of the grumbling discontent in the country. I was
vaguely aware of him at my bedside.
I heard him mutter to Lady Shelton, “There lies my greatest enemy.”
Afterward I discovered that he had not asked to see me but that the good Dr. Butts
had forced himself into his presence and told him how ill I was and that he knew the
cause and begged him to send my mother to me; whereupon the King rounded on him,
calling him disloyal and declaring that he was making too much of my illness for political
reasons.
The doctor was abashed but nothing could shift him from his ground. He insisted
that if I could be with my mother that would do more for me than a hundred remedies.
Why did I want to go to Kimbolton? demanded the King. So that I and my mother
could plot against him, raise armies against him? “The Dowager Princess Katharine is
another such as her mother, Queen Isabella of Castile,” he said; and he went on to rave
about my stubborn behavior, which was part of a plot to raise people against him.
Already people in high places were turning to us.
Yes, he was certainly afraid.
I wondered if he knew then that certain nobles in the North were intimating to
Chapuys that they would be ready to support the Emperor if he invaded England in an
attempt to bring the Church back to Rome and restore my mother to her rightful place and
make me the Queen after dethroning my father.
105
A story was being circulated about a girl of seventeen or so—my age— who
impersonated me in the North of England, where it was unlikely anybody had seen me.
She went from village to village telling a sad story of the persecution she had suffered,
explaining that she had escaped and was trying to reach the Emperor. Her name turned
out to be Anne Baynton and she collected a fair amount of money, so she did succeed in
deceiving people. It showed their sympathy to me that none attempted to betray her and
instead were willing to help her on her way.
Meanwhile I lay sick in my bed, hovering between life and death.
At length I did begin to recover, for Dr. Butts was determined that I should. He
had to prove that my sickness was not incurable. I had always known that he was the best
doctor in the kingdom. He was aware of the cause of my illness, and although it was due
to a certain extent to illnourishment, it was the sheer misery which I had suffered which
was the chief cause.
And as I returned to health there was born in me a determination to live to fight
for my rights. I had been through so much that there was little worse that could happen to
me. I was denied the company of those I loved; those of my friends who would visit me
were turned away. I was kept from my mother; I was deprived of the company of my dear
Countess; and Lady Bryan was no longer with me. I told myself I had touched the very
nadir of my suffering.
I was very weak and scarcely able to walk across the room; but at least I was
alive.
To my surprise, one day I had a visitor.
I was astonished when Lady Shelton came to my room. She said, “Her Grace the
Queen commands you to her presence.”
I felt suddenly very cold, and my hands began to tremble.
Lady Shelton was smiling at the prospect, I presumed, of a royal princess having
to obey the command of that woman.
I said, “You know my condition. I am unable to walk across the room without
help.”
She smiled secretively with a lift of her shoulders.
“Her Grace the Queen commands your presence,” she repeated.
“If she wants to see me, she will perforce have to come to me.”
With a smirk, Lady Shelton nodded and disappeared.
I sat down on my bed, putting my hand to my heart. It was beating wildly. What
had I done? I had shown my contempt for her. What would be the punishment for such
conduct? Should I be sent to the Tower?
The door of my room was opened. I stared in surprise, for it was the woman
herself. I could not believe it. I half rose.
She shook her head and signed for me to remain seated.
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She was impressive, I could not deny it. She had an air of distinction. In that
moment I could almost understand my father's obsession with her. She was most
elegantly attired—not flamboyantly and yet more outstanding for the sheer elegance, the
cut of her clothes and her style of wearing them.
I noticed the band about her neck which many had copied but none wore as she
did. I noticed the long hanging sleeves to cover the sixth nail. Marks of the devil, I
thought, which she has exploited to add to her grace.
Her enormous dark eyes held mine. I was trembling, unable to believe this was
really happening. It must be something in a dream. I had thought of her so much. I had
conjured up this vision. But there she was. She had seated herself on the bed facing me.
She smiled. It changed her face. She was dazzling.
She said in a gentle voice, “You have been very ill.”
I did not answer and she went on, “But you are better now. This rift… it has gone
on too long. I do not want it to continue. I understand your feelings, of course, and I have
come to talk to you, to make a proposition. If you will come to Court I will do all in my
power to restore your father's love for you.”
I listened dazed, becoming more and more convinced that I was dreaming.
She smiled graciously. What did it mean? I reminded myself that I hated her.
There was some ulterior motive in this… some evil purpose. She must be thinking that I
was overwhelmed by this show of friendship. Did she expect me to fall on my knees and
thank her?
I remained silent. I could find no words to answer her.
She went on, “There must be an end to these differences between you and your
father. It is not good for the King, for you or for the country. So let us put an end to
them.”
I heard myself stammer: “How?”
She smiled confidently. “You will return to Court. I promise you, you will be well
treated. There shall be no discord. Everything that you had before will be yours. Perhaps
it will be even better. There is only one thing you must do to achieve this.”
“And what is that?” I asked.
“You must honor me as the Queen. You must be respectful … and accept that this
is now a fact.”
I could listen to no more. I saw it all. She and my father wanted me there to tell
the people that I was not being shut out and ill treated. They did not want
me
. They would
not accept me as the Princess Mary. I was not to be a princess. That title was reserved for
this woman's bastard.
I said to her, “I could not acknowledge you as Queen because you are not Queen.
I know of only one Queen of England, and that is my mother.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You are a fool,” she said. “A stubborn little fool.”
“I can only speak the truth,” I retorted. “If you would speak to my father on my
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behalf … if you would persuade him to allow me to join my mother…I should appreciate
that.”
“You know that is not what I meant. I am suggesting that you come to Court. All
you must do is accept the fact that there was no true marriage between the King and your
mother, that I am the King's wife and Queen of this realm and that my daughter,
Elizabeth, is the Princess of England.”
“But I accept none of this. How can I when it is not true?”
“Do you know you are in danger?” she said. “You incur the wrath of the King. Do
you realize what could happen to you? I am giving you a chance to save yourself…to
leave all this …”—she looked round the room with contempt—“… all this squalor. You
shall have a luxurious apartment. You shall have all that is due to you as the King's
daughter.”
“As the King's bastard, you mean.”
“There is no need for you to stress the point.”
“I stress it only to show its absurdity. I am the King's legitimate daughter. It is
your daughter who is the bastard.”
She had risen. I thought she was going to strike me.
“I see that you are determined to destroy yourself,” she said.
“It is others who will try to destroy me,” I replied. “They have already tried
persistently, God knows, but they have not succeeded yet.”
“I see I have made a mistake,” she went on. “I thought you would have more
sense. You are stupidly blind. You do not see the dangers of your situation. You
carelessly provoke the King's wrath. That can be terrible, you know.”
I took a shot in the dark. I had heard life was not running smoothly for her and the
King, that he looked at other women now and then and was perhaps beginning to regret
the hasty step he had taken. I said, “As we both know.”
It is true, I thought. I noticed the sudden color in her cheeks, the glint in her
magnificent eyes.
She turned to me. “You will regret this,” she said. Then she shrugged her
shoulders.
“Well, I have given you a chance.”
After that she left me. Lady Shelton was hovering.
I heard Anne Boleyn say, “The girl is a stubborn little fool. I will see that her
Spanish pride is brought low.”
It had been a shattering experience. I sat on my bed, my limbs trembling so
violently that I could not move.
WE WERE INTO ANOTHER new year, 1535. Could there ever be another like
that which had gone before, when my father had shocked the whole of Europe by the
unprecedented action of breaking with Rome?
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I could not believe that even he could look back with equanimity on what he had
done. He was never one to admit himself wrong, but surely he must suffer some disquiet
in the secret places of his mind. How could he not? He was a religious man, a sentimental
man. Oh yes, if he paused to think, he must suffer many an uneasy qualm.
The rumors about the differences between him and the concubine were growing.
Life had not gone smoothly for her since her marriage. She had failed again. The longed-
for boy had not appeared. There had been great hopes of him until she—as my mother
had so many times—miscarried. There seemed to be a blight on my father's children.
Even that golden boy, the Duke of Richmond, was very ill at this time and not expected
to live. If he died, as he surely would soon, there would only be two of the King's
children left—and both girls.
People's attitude toward me changed at the beginning of that year. Even Lady
Shelton was less insolent. It may have been that she feared she had gone too far. This was
because the concubine was falling out of favor. She had a fierce temper; she was
dictatorial. I daresay she found it hard to believe that she, who had kept a firm hold on the
King's affection all those years, could so quickly lose it. He was becoming enamored of a
lady at the Court who it seemed had decided to champion me. Whether she did this to
strike a blow against Anne Boleyn or whether she was genuinely shocked at the manner
in which I was treated, I could not tell. The outcome was that people were beginning to
wonder whether they ought to take care how they behaved toward me.
I was allowed to walk out now. I could even take my goshawk with me. I was
feeling a little better, recuperating, and when I left Greenwich and went to Eltham, I was
allowed, because I was so weak, to ride in a litter.
And how the people cheered me along the route!
“Good health and long life to the Princess!”
Those words were music in my ears.
IN THE EARLY PART of that year there was indeed danger of revolt. There was
nothing weak about my father. He was every inch a king. Everyone would grant him that;
and when he was confronted by danger, those qualities of leadership were very much in
evidence. All that happened had changed him visibly. I could hardly recognize the jovial
fun-loving man in the ruthless autocrat who was now emerging.
Those who were not with him were his enemies—as had been seen in the case of
his own wife and daughter.
His peace would be destroyed by the rumblings of discontent throughout the
country; he knew that if my cousin Charles, the Emperor, had not been so deeply
involved in Europe, he might have attempted to invade England. So he took action and,
being the man he was, it was drastic. There were no half measures with him.
In April of that year the first proceedings were taken against those who refused to
accept the fact that he was Supreme Head of the Church. Five monks—one of them the
Prior of the London Charterhouse—were condemned as traitors and submitted to the
most brutal of executions: they were hanged, drawn and quartered. There were many to
witness this grisly scene, which was what my father intended. It was to provide a lesson
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to all those who opposed him. I was reminded of the masques my father had so loved
when he appeared among the company in disguise. Now he had thrown off his mask, and
in place of the merry, jovial bluff Hal was a ruthless and despotic monarch who would
strike terror into all those who thought they could disobey his command.
Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More were in everyone's thoughts. Those two
noble men had done exactly what the monks had. What would their fate be? The King
had been a close friend of Sir Thomas More. He had loved the man—as many did; he had
often been seen walking in Sir Thomas's riverside garden, his arm about his shoulders,
laughing at one of those merry quips for which Sir Thomas was renowned.
What will happen to Sir Thomas? people wondered. The King must find some
excuse to save him. One thing was certain: Sir Thomas was a man of high principles. He
was not one to deny what he believed merely to save his life.
All over the country bishops were ordered to insist that the King's supremacy
should be preached.
The Pope intervened. He created Bishop Fisher a cardinal. I could imagine my
father's fury. He retorted that he would send the bishop's head to Rome for his cardinal's
hat.
That seemed significant. Nothing could move the King.
On the 22nd of June Bishop Fisher went out to Tower Hill and was beheaded. On
the 6th of July Sir Thomas followed him. A silent sullen crowd looked on.
This was the King's answer. No matter who disobeyed him, they should die.
The execution of Sir Thomas More sent a shiver through the country and waves of
indignation abroad. The Emperor was reputed to have said that he would rather have lost
his best city than such a man. The Pope—a new one now, Paul III—declared that Sir
Thomas More had been excellent in sacred learning and courageous in his defense of the
truth. He prepared a Bull excommunicating my father for what he called the crime. The
King, of course, snapped his fingers at the Pope. He was nothing now. He could send out
bulls for excommunication as much as he liked. They meant nothing in England, which
was now free of his interference.
Even François Premier was shocked and remarked on my father's impiety and
barbarism…as did the Emperor, but the former needed him as an ally, and political power
came before pious indignation. There were nobles all over the country who would have
welcomed the Emperor if he came in arms, but he could not do that. He was engaged in
the conquest of Tunis, and he could not start a war on another front.
So these monarchs of Europe could do nothing to prevent my father's keeping a
firm hold on his power and changing the course of religious history in England.
The country had submitted to the new Head of the Church and he had given
examples of what would happen to those who acted against him. They had seen his
treatment of his wife and daughter; and they had seen the execution of his friend, Sir
Thomas More.
They knew their master.
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EVERYONE WAS AWARE that the King's passion for Anne Boleyn was fast
waning, and he made no attempt to hide it. She was a woman who could never be
humble; it seemed that she had complete belief in herself. And who would not, after the
lengths to which he had gone to get her?
I had passed into a new phase, for, as the concubine's star waned, mine…well, not
exactly rose but it began to show a faint light below the horizon; for if the King should
discard Anne Boleyn, what excuse would he make for doing so? If he should decide that
his marriage with her was no marriage, might he not discover that that with my mother
was?
It was all wild speculation, but when a man breaks with the Church of Rome he is
surely capable of anything.
If it should so happen that I be taken back in favor, it would be unwise for people
to treat me scurvily. I was sure this was the thought in many minds and I had suffered
such hardship that I could only rejoice in the change.
Many of my women talked freely now, and I began to learn more of what was
going on.
Then there was a change again. The concubine was pregnant. It was a setback to
those who had been hoping to see the end of her. Everything depended on the child. If it
should be a boy she would be safe forever.
Disquieting news was brought to me of my mother. It was December and bitterly
cold. I used to lie in bed wondering what it was like at Kimbolton with that icy wind
blowing over the fens. I could visualize her on her knees praying. She would not stop
doing that. I could picture the comfortless room, the inadequate clothing, and I would
think of her as I knew she would be thinking of me.
The news was whispered to me by one of my women. “Madam…my lady… the
Emperor's ambassador is going to the Queen, your mother.”
“What?” I cried. “But how? It is forbidden for her to have visitors.”
“Madam, the King is permitting it because…”
I felt sick with fear.
“Because… the Queen is very ill?”
She nodded.
A terrible despondency descended on me. This was what I had feared for so long.
I was avid for news. I asked everyone who might know something, and there were
several who were eager to please me now. There was nothing to comfort me.
Christmas had come—a joyless season for me now.
My mother's health was a little improved, for she had seen Chapuys, and there
was something else which had cheered her. My women told me all they knew of it.
The Emperor's ambassador went to Kimbolton on New Year's Day, and later that
day there appeared at the castle gates a woman begging for shelter. She was cold and had
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fallen from her horse and was in dire need. Because she was clearly a lady of noble
bearing, she was allowed to enter the castle.
“Who do you think she was, Madam?” asked my woman.
I shook my head.
“Lady Willoughby, the lady who came with your gracious mother from Spain.
The Queen and Lady Willoughby embraced and swore that they would never be parted
again. Lady Willoughby said she would die rather. That and the visit of “the ambassador
cheered her mightily.”
I was greatly relieved.
She has spirit, I told myself. She will recover.
IT WAS THE 11TH of January…a date I shall never forget. Lady Shelton came
to my room. She said, “I have come to tell you that your mother is dead. She died four
days ago.”
Her face was a mask. She had lost a little of her truculence now but she managed
to convey her dislike of me. Perhaps it was more intense for being subdued, now that her
mistress Anne Boleyn was no longer sure of her position.
I was stunned. I had been expecting this for so long but now that it had come I
was deeply shocked. I wanted desperately to be alone with my infinite sorrow.
“Leave me,” I said and I must have spoken imperiously for she obeyed. Dead! I
should never see her again. For so long I had been parted from her but I had always
hoped to. And now she was gone and there was no hope. Never again…
Oh, the cruelty of life…of people who satisfy their wanton desires by trampling
on the lives of those about them.
How had she been at the end? There would be no more pain for her. I should
rejoice that she was safe in Heaven and far from her miseries. I should have been with
her. I thanked God that Lady Willoughby had found a way of getting to her. That would
have been a great comfort to her.
My woman came in. She stood looking at me, her eyes brimming with sympathy.
I shook my head at her. “I wish to be alone,” I said.
She understood and left me, and I was alone with my grief which was what I
wanted.
How had it been at the end? I asked myself. I wondered if I could see Lady
Willoughby, who could tell me how she died. But I should not be allowed to, of course.
I sat in my room. I could face no one. I dressed myself in black and thought of all
we had been to each other. I recalled endearing incidents from my childhood—some of
them when my father had been present. We had been a loving, happy family then.
I was horrified when I learned that, hearing of my mother's death, my father's first
words were, “God be praised! We are now free from all fear of war.” Did he remember
nothing of those happy days? Had he not one morsel of tenderness left for her?
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He was justifying himself, of course. He wanted to believe that my mother's death
was a reason for rejoicing. There was no court mourning. Instead there were
celebrations—a grand ball and a joust. The people must remember that her death had
delivered them from war. In the tiltyard at the joust he performed with great skill. He was
the triumphant champion. He was telling the people that he was the leader, the one they
could trust to take them away from the devious Church of Rome. At the ball he dressed in
yellow—yellow jacket, yellow hose and yellow hat with a white feather. The concubine
was dressed in yellow too.
How could he care so little for one who had never harmed him and who had
always been a dutiful wife?
I became obsessed with the idea that my mother had been poisoned. It would have
been so easy and, as they made no secret of their delight in her death, my suspicions
might be well founded. I could think of nothing but that. How had she died? I must
discover. I asked that my mother's physician and apothecary should come to see me.
When he heard this, my father asked why I should need a doctor. He could
understand that I felt a little low in the circumstances, but I should get over that.
Chapuys, however, talked to my father and, to my surprise, at last he agreed to allow me
to see them. No doubt he was softened by his pleasure in my mother's death; moreover he
knew there would be silent criticism of his treatment of her, and he did not want to show
more harshness toward me at this time.
One of my maids brought me a letter from Eustace Chapuys in which he advised
me to be brave and prepared for anything that might happen, for I could be assured that
there would be changes. He also sent me a little gold cross which my mother was most
anxious that I should have.
I was deeply moved and I was in a state of indifference as to what might happen
to me. There were times when I wished with all my heart that I was with my mother.
In due course the physician arrived, with the apothecary, and from them I learned
the details of my mother's last days, and of how delighted she had been at the arrival of
Maria de Salinas, so much so that briefly her condition improved. The two friends had
not been parted for an hour since Maria arrived, and my mother was in better spirits than
she had been for a long time. Her talks with the ambassador had cheered her also. Eustace
Chapuys had departed on the morning of the 5th of January. He had left her in a mood of
optimism, believing that, if she could continue with the companionship of Lady
Willoughby, she would recover.
“It was in the early hours of the morning of Friday the 7th that it became obvious
that she had taken a turn for the worse,” said the physician. “At daybreak she received the
sacrament. Lady Willoughby was, of course, with her. Her servants came to the chamber,
for they knew the end was near. Many of them were in tears. She asked them to pray for
her and to ask God to forgive her husband. Then she asked me to write her will, which I
did. She told me that she wished to be buried in a convent of the Observant Friars.”
I said, “But the King has suppressed that order.”
“Yes, my lady, but I did not tell her. It would have distressed her. It was ten
o'clock when she received Extreme Unction and by the afternoon she had passed away.”
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“Was there anything… unusual about her death?”
“Unusual, my lady?”
“Did you have any reason to suspect it might have been something she had eaten
or drunk?”
He hesitated and I shivered perceptively.
“Yes?” I prompted. “There was something?”
“She was never well after she had drunk some Welsh ale.”
“Do you think…?”
He took a deep breath and said quickly, “She was not ill as people are when they
are poisoned by something they have taken. It was just that she seemed… feeble after
taking the beer.”
“Did the thought occur to you that her condition might have something to do with
the beer?”
“Well… there have been rumors…Yes, the thought did occur to me that it might
have had something to do with the beer. But it would have been an unusual substance …
not one which would be recognized as a poison.”
“Ah,” I said. “So the thought did occur to you.”
He was silent.
Then he went on, “After she died …” He paused. Evidently he was trying to
decide how much he should tell me. He seemed to come to a decision. “Eight hours after
she died she was embalmed and her body enclosed in lead. I was not allowed to be
present… nor was her confessor.”
“It seems as though they were in something of a hurry.”
He lapsed into silence.
I wanted to ask him outright if he believed she had been poisoned, but I could see
how uneasy he was. One simple remark could lose him his life.
I felt I could ask no more; but the suspicion remained in my mind.
How had she died? Had she been poisoned? Heaven knew her health was in a
sorry state, and those who wanted to be rid of her would surely not have had to wait very
long.
The thought hung over me, and I felt it always would. I should never know the
truth now.
I was angry and desperately unhappy. I had lost the one I loved most in the world,
and I should never recover from that loss. But she would be happy now. She had lived a
saintly life; she would be at peace in Heaven. It was what she had been craving for over
the last years.
ONE OF MY MAIDS came to tell me the news. My father had had an accident. It
was at Greenwich during a joust. He had been riding a great warhorse when suddenly the
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creature had fallen to the ground, taking my father with him.
There was terrible consternation. Everyone present thought my father had been
killed, for he lay unconscious on the ground. They carried him to his bed and gathered
round it. It would seem that this was the situation which had been most feared. The King
dead… and no heir to take his place except the baby Elizabeth. And might there not be
some to think that she was not the true heir to the crown?
He was not dead and very soon recovered but this incident did stress the need for
the King to live a good many more years until a healthy son could appear to take over
from him. At such a time as this, his death would cause great trouble in the country.
No one would have thought that my father could be near to death. He was strong
and could still outride all his friends; he was always the champion of the games—though
perhaps there was a little contriving to reach that result, and the most agile always
managed to fall in just behind him. To win in a paltry game would be foolish if by doing
so the winner risked the King's displeasure. But this did bring home the fact that even one
as hale and hearty as my father could be struck down at a moment's notice.
There had been the usual murmurings. This was God's revenge for the manner in
which he had treated his wife. This was his punishment for raising up his harlot and
living in sin with her while his poor wife was neglected and left to die.
But that was soon over. Within a day or so he was his exuberant self again.
My mother was given a dignified funeral. My father dared not further offend the
Emperor by giving her anything less. It had to be remembered that after all she was the
daughter of the late King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.
I longed to go, though I knew it would be a harrowing experience; but that was
not permitted.
She was to be buried at Peterborough, in the abbey church there, and three weeks
after her death her body was conveyed there by two stages. I should have been there. I
was the one who mourned her more than any. I wished that I could have shared my grief
with the Countess of Salisbury, but I was denied that comfort. The daughter of Mary
Tudor and the Duke of Suffolk were the chief mourners in my place. The King's sister
had always been a friend to my mother and had deplored the manner in which my father
had put her from him. It seemed fitting therefore, that if I could not be there, her daughter
should take my place. The procession rested for a night at Sawtry Abbey before
proceeding to Peterborough; and there my mother was solemnly laid to rest.
Perhaps it was better that I should not be there, for the bishop who delivered the
funeral sermon stated that on her deathbed my mother had admitted that her marriage to
the King was no true marriage.
All those who had been close to her were shocked by this, for they knew it was a
lie. I was deeply hurt that my father could do this. Was it not enough that she was dead,
brought to an early grave through his cruelty?
It was almost like a sign from Heaven. First my father had his accident, which
some would say was a warning to him; and on the very day of my mother's funeral Anne
Boleyn miscarried. And to make matters worse, the three-month fetus was proved to be a
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boy.
How did she feel, I wondered, lying there? All her hopes had been on this boy.
And it had happened again. It was a sign of Heaven's displeasure, I was sure. Anne
Boleyn was doomed from that moment.
There were many to report the King's reception of the news that he had lost his
longed-for son. He had not been able to hide his fury and disgust. He blamed her, of
course. That was because now he wanted to be rid of her, as once before he had wanted to
be rid of my mother.
It was emerging as a terrifying pattern. I exulted. The concubine would be put
from him… just as my mother had been.
He had told Anne Boleyn, as she lay there exhausted from her ordeal, weighed
down as she must have been with anxiety and fear of the future, “You will get no more
boys from me.”
Everyone knew we were on the edge of great events and were waiting to see what
would happen next.
LADY SHELTON WAS no longer insolent but mildly placating. I treated her
coolly but I was not so foolish as to reject my new concessions. Her attitude told me a
great deal about the rapidly declining importance of Anne Boleyn.
Eustace Chapuys came to see me. I was amazed that he had been allowed to do
so, and my delight was profound.
He told me that there would almost certainly be a change in my position. He
understood my deep sorrow at the death of my mother, but that event had made my
position safer. There were rumors about Anne Boleyn. She would be removed in some
way, there was no doubt of that. The King was working toward it.
“We do not know,” went on Chapuys, “what method the King will choose. Anne
Boleyn has no royal relations to make things difficult for him. Her family owe their
elevated position to the King's favors through Anne and her sister Mary before her. They
will be put down as easily as they have been raised up. Her fall is imminent. The
Seymours are promoting their sister. Edward and Thomas are a pair of very ambitious
gentlemen, and Jane is a quiet, pale creature … a marked change from Anne Boleyn. But
rest assured, events will move fast and we must be prepared.”
“Yes,” I answered.
“If the King puts Anne Boleyn from him, his next move will be to marry again. If
his plan is to declare the marriage to Anne invalid, then his marriage to Queen Katharine
was a true one and you are his legitimate daughter. We cannot guess how he will do it,
but in any case it seems your status must change. There is a rumor that he had been
seduced by witchcraft and now is free from it. We must hold ourselves in readiness for
whichever way he turns.”
The intrigue was helpful to me in a way. It lifted me out of my overwhelming
sorrow and imposed itself on the despondency which had enveloped me.
It was action … and whatever happened seemed preferable to sitting alone in my
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room brooding on the death of my mother.
I was now hearing more because I could have visitors
Anne Boleyn blamed her miscarriage on her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, because
he had broken the news of the King's accident to her too suddenly. She had been so
worried about the King that the shock had brought on the premature birth of her child.
It did not help her. Nothing could help her now. The King was as determined to
be rid of her as he had once been to possess her.
I had thought the last two years, when I had been more or less a prisoner, were the
two most eventful through which I had lived. But there was more to come.
It was a relief to me to be able to talk to Chapuys and to learn that the Emperor's
concern for me had been great and that he had always been eager to seize an opportunity
to help me.
Now it seemed there was a chance.
“If you were out of this country, in Spain or Flanders … under the Emperor's care,
he would be happier,” said Chapuys. “The King, your father, has shown himself to be
capable of any rash act which momentarily serves his purpose. He broke with Rome so
that he might marry Anne Boleyn. To take such an unprecedented step for such a reason
must give us all some concern. Whether Queen Katharine was poisoned—and poisoned
at his command, we cannot be sure, but it is a possibility which we must not lose sight of.
The Emperor would feel happier if you were out of the country.”
“My father would never let me go.”
“Certainly he would not. It would be a great blow to him if he thought you were
with the Emperor, for if he declared his marriage to Anne Boleyn nall and void, you are
the heir to the throne.”
“But he has declared his marriage to my mother was no true one, and it was said
by the bishop at her funeral service that she admitted it, which was a lie, I know … but it
was all done at my father's command.”
“That was before he knew that Anne Boleyn had lost the child. All is different
now. Her reign is over.”
“They say that he plans to put another in her place.”
He nodded. “We cannot be sure which way events will turn but you must be
prepared.”
“What do you suggest?”
“This is highly secret. If it were mentioned outside these walls, it could cause
trouble…great trouble. It would cost you your life and there would be little I could do to
save it. I should immediately be sent back to Spain. You understand the importance of
secrecy?”
“I do.”
He nodded. “My plan is to get you out of this place. There will be horses waiting
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to take us to the coast, and there we shall cross to Flanders.”
“I shall be taken to my cousin?”
He nodded.
“Now, we must plan. Could you get away without your women's knowledge?”
“I have few servants now, you know.”
“That is good.”
“There are some whom I can trust.”
Chapuys shook his head. “Trust no one. You must slip away unseen. No one must
know that you have gone until you are on the sea.”
“They are here. They would see me leave. Unless I gave them a sleeping
draught.”
“Would that be possible?”
“I think so…if I had the draught.”
“That would be an easy matter.”
“I should have to avoid Lady Shelton.”
“Would that be difficult?”
“Less so now. She is not so watchful as she once was. She no longer acts like my
jailer.”
“This sounds plausible. We should have horses waiting. We could get to
Gravesend easily from here… and there embark. You will be hearing more of this from
me.”
After he had gone, I lay in my bed thinking of it. I should be taken to my cousin. I
remembered so well that occasion—years and years ago it seemed now—when my
mother had held my hand and we had stood on the steps at Greenwich while the barge
came along. I could see my dazzling father and beside him the young man in black velvet
with the gold chain about his neck… the young man with whom I had been told I was in
love.
He had broken our engagement, but I had forgiven him that now. I understood
that monarchs such as he were governed by expediency. I forgave him for that and for not
coming to my rescue as a knight of chivalry and romance would have done, however
difficult.
I was no longer romantic. Events had made me cynical, yet still there was a
softness in me. I was capable of loving deeply, which was clear by the sorrow the loss of
my mother was causing me.
SO WE PLANNED and Chapuys visited me often. Lady Shelton made no
objection. Chapuys was deeply anxious that all should go well, for if it did not, there
would be dire consequences.
He told me that he was making arrangements with the utmost secrecy and would
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bring the sleeping draught to me when it was to be administered. I had practiced what I
must do. I had made a careful study of how I should go without passing Lady Shelton's
window. We must wait for a moonless night when all would be ready.
Lady Shelton came to me the day after I had had a visit from Chapuys and he had
told me that, as soon as the moon waned, we would put our plan into action.
She said; “Madam, my lady, we have orders. We leave tomorrow for Hunsdon.”
“But …” I cried, “why?”
She lifted her shoulders. “Orders,” she said tersely.
After she had gone, I sat on my bed and stared at the window. This would change
everything. We could not go tonight for the moon was too bright. Someone would almost
certainly see me creeping across the garden. Besides, the horses would not be ready.
Everything had to be perfect. Had someone heard? How could I be sure? There were
spies everywhere. I could not believe that it would be someone in my household.
Chapuys came to see me in some consternation.
“Hunsdon,” he said.
“Hunsdon! It will be too difficult from Hunsdon. We could not do it in a night.
We should have to ride through the countryside. We should have to change horses. We
should be detected. Everything depends on the closeness to Gravesend.”
“What do you suggest that we do? That we give up the plan?”
“Not give it up. Postpone. You will be moved again perhaps. Let us hope it will
be back here. One thing I am certain of: we cannot do it from Hunsdon.”
I was not sure how disappointed I was. Now that I had lost my mother, I often
thought I had lost my interest in life and my reason for living.
So the plan was set aside and in due course I came to my home at Hunsdon.
I HAD CEASED to brood on what my fate would have been if the escape plot had
proceeded, for events were moving very fast at Court. The rift between the King and
Anne Boleyn was widening; his feelings for Jane Seymour were deepening; and people
were rallying to the Seymour family as before they had to the Boleyns. Chapuys was
excited. He believed that the marriage was about to be declared invalid, and he
considered what that would mean to me. But if my father was enamored of Jane
Seymour, his desire would be to get a son from her; he could still do that if he divorced
Anne, for now that my mother was dead he would be free to marry, even in the eyes of
the Pope—though my father did not have to care for his opinions now. We all knew that
he could without much difficulty cast off Anne Boleyn. He only had to trump up a charge
against her. Adultery was the most likely for, according to reports, she was always
surrounded by admiring young men, and her attitude was inclined to be flirtatious with
them.
Chapuys was watching the situation closely, and his visits to me were more
frequent. He told me that my father had people looking into the possibility of a divorce.
“There seem to be some difficulties,” said the ambassador. “All the proceedings
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were so closely linked to his marriage with your mother, and he does not want that
brought out again. It will remind people of his quarrel with the Pope. He just wants to rid
himself of Anne Boleyn as simply and speedily as possible.”
“What do you think he will do?”
“He might try charging her with adultery, which would have farreaching effects.
Treason to himself… foisting a bastard on the nation as the King's child… all good
reasons for getting rid of her.”
It was long since I had thought of the child Elizabeth. How I had resented her
when we were both at Hatfield and I was more or less a member of her household. Poor
baby, it was no fault of hers. Yet I had hated her. That was just because I had been
insulted by her taking precedence over me. Now I thought: Poor child, is she to be treated
as I was? What will become of her?
The winter was over, and spring had come; and my father was still married to
Anne Boleyn. I heard rumors of the quarrels between them, how she had discovered him
with Jane Seymour behaving like lovers, how she had raged and ranted against him and
had been told she must take what her betters had before her. So he remembered my
mother and admitted the anguish he had caused her. And the proud, brazen Anne Boleyn,
how would she take that?
Everyone knows what happened on that May Day, how they were together at the
joust at Greenwich, how the King did not speak to Anne as she sat beside him in the royal
lodge, how she took out a handkerchief, wiped her brow and allowed it to flutter to the
ground, how one of the courtiers—Norris, I think—picked it up on his lance and held it to
her with a bow, how the King suddenly turned away in anger and so the joust ended.
That was the beginning. My father must have staged it, for he had already set
Cromwell to question those about her. He had decided that, as it would be difficult to
arrange a divorce, he would accuse her of adultery. His love had been intense, and no
doubt that made his hatred the more fierce. Greatly he had disliked my mother but never
with the same venom that he turned on Anne Boleyn. He was going to accuse her of
adultery, treason to the King, which carried the penalty of death.
Cromwell wrung a confession from Mark Smeaton, one of her musicians, through
torture, most people thought; the young men closest to her— Norris, Francis Weston and
William Brereton—were all arrested and sent to the Tower. Most shocking of all, her
brother George was accused of incest with her, and there was even a suggestion that
Elizabeth was his daughter.
I had always hated her, as she had hated me. We had been the bitterest of
enemies; but when I thought of all the indignity and humiliation which had been heaped
on my mother, and realized that Anne Boleyn was now the object of my father's fury, I
could feel sorry for her.
She was found guilty with those who were accused with her. Of course she was. It
was intended.
Norris, Weston and Brereton were taken out to Tower Hill and beheaded. George
Boleyn and his sister would follow.
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The day before her execution, Lady Kingston, in whose care Anne Boleyn had
been placed in the Tower, came to me.
She said, “The Queen has sent me to you, my lady.”
I was always a little taken aback to hear Anne Boleyn referred to as the Queen,
even now, though Heaven knew I had heard that title used often enough to describe her. I
was about to retort: You are referring to the concubine. But something restrained me. For
all her sins, she was suffering acute anguish now.
“What would she want of me?” I asked.
“Forgiveness, my lady,” she replied. “She made me sit in her chair… the Queen's
chair… for they have not taken that away from her… and she knelt most humbly at my
feet. She said to me, ‘Go to the Princess Mary and kneel to her as I kneel to you. My
treatment of the Princess weighs heavily on my conscience. I was cruel to her and I regret
that now. For everything else I can go to my Maker with a clear conscience, for I have
committed no sin save in my conduct toward the Princess and her mother. I cannot ask
forgiveness of Queen Katharine but I humbly beg the Princess to grant me hers. Let her
know you come in my name and that it is I who kneel to her through you.'”
I was astounded. I thought: Poor woman, she is indeed brought low.
But she remembered me in her darkest moments and she was now asking my
forgiveness.
It was hard to forgive her, but an image of my mother rose in my mind and I knew
what she would have me do.
I said, “Tell her to rest in peace. I forgive her on behalf of myself and my
mother.”
The next day she went to Tower Green and laid her head on the block.
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NO SOONER WAS ANNE BOLEYN DEAD THAN MY FATHER WAS
betrothed to Jane Seymour. I am not sure how many days elapsed before he married. It
could not have been more than ten. I heard that it had taken place on the 30th of May in
the Queen's Closet at York Place. Anne Boleyn had died on the 19th.
I often wondered about my father and whether his nights were disturbed by the
ghosts of those who had fallen foul of his will. For so many years Anne Boleyn had been
the center of his life. How could he have tired of her so quickly? I wondered about Jane
Seymour. I had seen her on one or two occasions and found her gentle and unassuming.
She had always been pleasant to me.
The story was that about a month before Anne's death my father had sent her a
purse of sovereigns, telling her of his passion for her and hinting that she should become
his mistress. Her reply had been that she could be no man's mistress, not even the King's.
It was the familiar pattern. Anne Boleyn had started it. I wondered Jane Seymour did not
have a few qualms about following her predecessor along such a dangerous path.
Of course she had ambitious brothers and, from what I heard of her, I imagined
she would not be one to put up much resistance. In that of course she was the exact
opposite of Anne. In fact, she seemed to be so in many ways. Perhaps that was why the
King was attracted by her.
Elizabeth was at Hunsdon. She was now three, old enough to recognize the chilly
change which was passing through the house and was to affect her.
She was no longer the pampered princess. Poor motherless little creature, I
wondered how much she understood. She was a bright child with reddish hair almost
exactly like her father's. She resembled him in many ways and had his fondness for her
own way. Lady Bryan adored her. It was pleasant to be with my old friend again. I would
always be grateful to her for her kindness to me when I was so alone.
Several of my old servants came to me… people I had not seen for several years.
That was a joyous reunion. I was above all delighted to see Susan Clarencieux, who had
been in my household when I was at Ludlow. I had always been especially fond of her.
I had thought that my circumstances would change with the departure of Anne
Boleyn from the scene, and I was proved right.
Chapuys came to me. He was gleeful.
“You could very easily be received back at Court,” he said. “That is what we must
work for. The new Queen is ready to be your friend.”
“I do remember meeting her in the past.”
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“She has sentimental reasons about the family. The King is amused by them and
apt to be indulgent at the moment. I am sure she will speak to him with regard to bringing
you to Court.”
“A change from her predecessor!”
“A great change indeed…in all ways. The point is…I wonder how long it will
take the King to tire of this shy violet. However, I feel sure it will not be long before you
are back at Court. There must be no hitch. It is imperative that you come out of your
exile.”
“Do you think the King will admit now that he was truly married to my mother?”
“I think he has gone too far with that to retreat with ease.”
“Still, he now hates Anne Boleyn so much.”
“And blames her for all that has happened. He is saying that it was through
witchcraft that he became enamored of her and now that is removed he sees clearly. The
people cheer you when you go out, do they not?”
“Yes, more so than ever now.”
“That is good. The King will have to respect the people's wish which is that you
be reinstated. It might be advisable for you to write to him and ask his blessing and
forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness… for what? For saying what is true… what I meant… for defending
my mother?”
Chapuys raised his hand admonishingly. “A little compromise might be
necessary.”
“I shall never deny my mother's marriage.
She
never did and was incapable of
lying.”
“We shall see…we shall see,” murmured Chapuys.
“The King is in a mellow mood just now. He has a new wife and she pleases him.
He has convinced himself that Anne Boleyn was evil, a witch…so his conscience is at
rest on that score.”
“Do you think he will return to Rome?”
“I fear not. He has come too far to turn back.”
“So we are doomed for ever.”
Chapuys looked at me slyly. “It is unwise to talk of these matters, but it is not
inconceivable that one day England will return to the true faith.”
“But if the King never would…”
He was looking at me intently. “You are no longer a child. Princess Elizabeth is
now proclaimed to be a bastard. Fitzroy might have presented a threat but he cannot live
more than a few months. He has death written on him. And the King's fall affected him
more than was realized.”
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“You mean his fall from the horse just before my mother died?”
He nodded.
“He has not ridden in the joust since. He has aged considerably. I have heard that
there is an ulcer on his leg which is very painful. There is a possibility…But perhaps I
should say no more. Indeed, it might be unwise to…”
I knew what he meant. My father was ageing. He had not been spectacularly
successful in begetting children. What if he could get no more? Then who would follow
him? Elizabeth? She was out of favor now, judged a bastard, for the King did not accept
his marriage with Anne Boleyn. Nor did he accept his marriage to my mother. So there
were two of us. Young Richmond—Henry Fitzroy—could not be counted because he
would not be here much longer. I was the elder, and I would find greater favor with the
people than the daughter of Anne Boleyn.
Chapuys was pointing to a dazzling prospect. Queen of England! A queen with a
mission, which was to bring England back to the Holy Catholic Church.
Something happened to me then. I was lifted out of my despondency. I had a
reason for living.
God would smile on me, surely. He would approve. My father had sinned against
the Church. If ever I were Queen of this realm, I would repair the damage he had done.
Everything had changed. I was a woman with a mission.
I MUST RETURN to Court. I had been long enough in exile. I was not sure how
my father felt about me, but I did know that he had been very angry about my loyalty to
my mother. I had stood firmly for her against him and what had especially infuriated him
was that the people were on my side. He would remember those cries of “Long live the
Princess Mary!” when he had declared that I was no princess. Even now they were
shouting loyally for me, and he could not have liked that.
I dared not write to him direct. Instead I addressed myself to Cromwell.
I did humble myself. I hoped my mother would understand if she could look
down and see what I was doing. If I continued to be obstinate, I should be in exile
forever, always wondering when someone would consider it necessary to make an end of
me. Chapuys had now endowed me with a new ambition. I would succeed. I must
succeed. I should have Heaven on my side, for I should be the one to bring England back
to the true religion.
And if to do so I must humble myself, then humble I must be.
So I wrote asking my father's forgiveness, and I said how sorry I was to have
disobeyed his wishes.
I waited for some response. There was none.
I wrote to him again and, having written, my conscience smote me. How could I,
even as I stepped toward that dazzling future, deny the legality of my mother's marriage?
Whatever the result, I knew that could only give her pain; and she, with her Catholic
Faith, her unswerving devotion to the Church of Rome, would never wish me to deny my
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faith…no matter what good it brought to England.
On impulse I wrote a separate note to Cromwell, telling him that, while I wished
him to give my letter to the King, I feared I could not deny the validity of my mother's
marraige and I could not agree with the severance from Rome.
In spite of this, Cromwell seemed determined to do all he could to bring me into
favor with the King. He was fully aware that the people expected it and wanted it and that
the King should do it for that reason. He must have been uneasy as to the effect my
father's conduct was having on the people, who had clearly shown their support for us;
true, they had hated Anne Boleyn when she was puffed up with pride, but people are apt
to change their minds when those about them fall from grace. There was no cause now to
envy Anne Boleyn, and envy is often at the roots of hatred.
Cromwell was first and foremost a politician and he would see that I must be
received back at Court, which was the safest place for me to be… not for myself so much
as for him and the King. He wanted no supporters gathering round me, seeking to right
my wrongs.
My father must have realized that it could be dangerous to refuse to bring me
back. I was, after all, no longer a child, being twenty years old— old enough to be a
figurehead, old enough for those who deplored the break with Rome to rally to me.
It may be that the wily Cromwell persuaded him but the fact was that the Duke of
Norfolk and the Earl of Sussex headed a small party who came to visit me. They brought
with them a document in which I was referred to as a monster—a daughter who had acted
disobediently toward her father. It was only due to the generous and gracious nature of
the King that I was still here to ask his forgiveness.
It was difficult for me. I kept thinking of my mother. How could I deny her? She
had always been adamant, even though she had believed her enemies were trying to
poison her and would possibly use other means to kill her. Always she had stood defiant
against them. But Chapuys had shown me my mission.
Even so I could not bring myself to accept the verdict that my mother had never
been truly married to my father, that I was bastard and the Pope was not the Vicar of
Christ but just another bishop.
I tried to keep that glittering future in mind. I prayed for guidance. If God meant
to lead me to my destiny, He would help me.
But I could not do it. I said I would obey my father in all things save his denial of
his marriage with my mother and his break with Rome.
They were very angry—in particular Norfolk, who was a violent man and not of
very good character, as his Duchess could well confirm. Both he and Sussex were
abusive. I was understanding more of people now and I guessed that they were afraid.
They would have to go back to the King and tell him that I stood firm on the two very
issues which had caused all the contention between us. He would have to face the fact
that he had a rebellious daughter and that many of his subjects, who were already
murmuring about the state of the Church, would agree with her. I could see that I was a
danger and that my father wished to have me back in the fold. He wanted to ride out with
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me and the new Queen, showing the people that I was his beloved daughter—though
illegitimate—and that all was well between us. And these men would have to go back and
tell him that they had failed.
Messengers bringing ill news were never popular; and the King's moods were
variable and could be terrible. He had changed with the failing of his health. “Bluff King
Hal” peeped out only occasionally now and then, when years ago this had been the face
his courtiers saw most frequently.
Sussex shouted at me, “Can it be that you are the King's daughter? I cannot
believe this to be so. You are the most obstinate woman I ever knew. Surely no child of
the King could be as wayward … as stubborn… and as foolish as you are.”
I looked at him sardonically. He might have known that what he called my
stubbornness had been inherited directly from my father.
Norfolk was even more explicit.
“If you were my daughter, I should beat you.”
“I am sure you would attempt to, my lord,” I replied. “I believe your conduct
toward your wife, simply because she objected to your mistresses, has been especially
brutal.”
His eyes narrowed and his face was scarlet. “I would beat you … to death,” he
muttered.
“I am of the opinion that, if you attempted to do so, the people in the streets
would set upon you and you would suffer a worse fate.”
He knew there was truth in my words and he shouted, “I would dash your head
against the wall until it was as soft as a baked apple!”
“Threats worthy of you, my lord. And they affect me not at all. You would not
dare lay a hand on me. And I should be glad if you would remember to whom you
speak.”
Lady Shelton had complained of my regal manners, so I suppose I possessed
them; and now, with Chapuys' prophecy before me, perhaps they were even more
apparent.
They slunk away, those irate commissioners, like dogs with their tails between
their legs.
CHAPUYS CAME TO see me.
He was very grave, although there was a hint of amusement in his gravity.
“The commissioners were ill received when they returned to the King. He is
convinced that you are in touch with the rebels. There is a party forming in the North and
murmurings throughout the country. Your name is often mentioned. The King is most
uneasy. But you have seen how obstinate he is… and we must get you to Court. I fear he
may take some drastic action against you on the spur of the moment. Do not forget, he is
allpowerful in this country. Now that he has broken with Rome, the Church has no hold
on him. Who would have believed this possible?”
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“But we shall come back one day.”
“I beg of you, do not speak of it now.”
“But that is our eventual aim.”
“To be put away until the time is ripe. It is something to think about but never to
be spoken of. If it were…your life would not be worth much. Remember. The Church
relies on you. Your day will come. And until it does we must play this game as deviously
as is demanded.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you cannot stay in exile. We have to do anything… simply anything…to
get you to Court. Cromwell goes in fear of his life because he first told the King that you
would be ready to bow to his will. The King is in such a mood of anger that no one is
safe. But this is good, for it shows the extent of his uneasiness. Queen Jane pleads for you
with the King. She is simple and clearly does not know the man she has married. She was
heard to say that it was natural that you should defend your mother and she thought it was
a noble thing to do. She was abruptly told not to meddle in matters beyond her powers of
understanding and to remember that her predecessor meddled and what happened to her.
It is the first time the King has been heard talking to her thus, and it shows how anxious
he is.”
“Then we should be pleased.”
“Not entirely. He is capable of drastic action when aroused to anger, and his anger
has its roots in uncertainty. Those about the King, including Cromwell, have to act
regarding you. They are preparing a document. It is headed ‘The Lady Mary's
Submission.' In it will be set down all that the King will require you to agree to.”
“That will include…”
He nodded. “Your agreement that your parents were never legally married, that
you are illegitimate and accept the King, your father, as Head of the Church in England.”
“I will never do it.”
“Have you thought of the alternative?”
“What do you mean?”
“You forget that Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More lost their heads because
they would not sign the Oath? You are doing the same.”
“You mean that I should lose my head?”
“I mean that you could be tried for treason… and the punishment for treason is
death.”
“My father would not dare.”
“He has dared a great deal. He fears a rising in your favor. But he is the most
powerful man in the country. He could put down a revolt, and then what would happen to
the Princess Mary? What of the plans for the future of England?”
I said, “What must I do?”
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“There is only one thing you can do. You sign.”
“Deny my mother's marriage! Deny Holy Church!”
“There could be a papal absolution which would relieve you from the sin of
perjury,” said Chapuys.
“The Emperor and the Pope will know the reason why you signed. I advise you to
do it. This is the only way. If you do not, I would not give much hope for the chances of
your survival.”
“I would not do it for the fear of what would happen to me.”
“I am aware of that, as you are of your destiny. It would be folly now to refuse to
sign.”
I knew he was right, but I had to quieten my conscience. My mother would
understand. Those who cared for me, who knew that I had a duty to perform… they
would all understand why I had to sign.
So, with a firm hand and a strong purpose in my heart, I put my name to the
document.
NOW THAT I HAD given way, my life changed. I was treated with the respect
due to the King's daughter—though not a legitimate one. I enjoyed more freedom than I
had known for years. I was no longer treated with suspicion. I could write to whom I
pleased and receive visitors.
I was still grappling with my conscience. I had committed perjury. I had agreed to
that which in my heart I abhorred. I prayed constantly. I talked to my mother as though
she were with me.
“Understand, please, dear Mother. I did this because I believe that in time it will
have been proved to be the right action to have taken at this time. They would have tried
me for treason if I had refused. They would have trumped up some charge against me. If
the King could kill his wife, why not his daughter? Chapuys knew it. I acted on his
advice and one day, I swear on all that is sacred to me, that when the opportunity comes I
shall bring England back to the Holy Church.”
That was the motive I kept my eyes on. And I began to believe fervently that what
I had done—however much it had been against my principles— was the only way in
which I could have acted.
Elizabeth was at Hunsdon, still under the charge of Margaret Bryan. I was with
her a great deal. All my enmity toward her had gone. How could one dislike a three-year-
old child? Her mother might be evil but what crime had the child committed? Lady Bryan
never ceased to marvel at her. She was the most perfect child it had ever been her joy to
know, she told me. She was so bright and eager to learn.
“Nose into everything,” said Margaret fondly.
“If it is there, she must know what and why. Questions… all through the day. And
she remembers, too. To see her skip and dance… and hear her little voice singing…She
can already handle a lute, you know.”
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Then she would express her fury at the manner in which her little darling was
being treated now.
“Look at this kirtle! I have darned and patched it. I need new clothes for her. I
keep asking but none come. It is a shameful way to treat a princess.”
“Hush, Margaret,” I cautioned her. “Do you want to be charged with treason?”
She shook her head sadly, “I know not what we are coming to.”
I took her hand and pressed it.
“I know. I understand your feelings. It happened to me… just like this. At least
Elizabeth is too young to understand.”
“There you are mistaken. That child is old for her years.”
“That is well. She will have need of her good sense, I doubt not.”
“My poor innocent lamb! I suppose I must go on with this patching. She asked for
her mother. ‘When will she come to see me?' It breaks my heart. At least it seems a little
brighter for you, my lady. Perhaps you can put in a word for your little sister.”
“I will… when I can.”
“Bless you. There has been such suffering, but none should hold that against this
little one.”
“I do not,” I said. “Nor would my mother.”
Margaret nodded. She was too moved for words.
There was a great deal of talk about what was happening throughout the country.
During the previous year my father had set Thomas Cromwell to make a report on the
conditions of the monasteries. This had sent a ripple of unease throughout the land. The
monasteries were devoted to the Church of Rome, and everyone knew that this was no
ordinary survey. It was a further gesture of defiance toward the Pope; and Cromwell was
prepared to give my father what he wanted, knowing full well that he dared do nothing
else.
The result was the Black Book in which were set down all the evils which were
said to be practiced within those walls. I could not believe it. There were sinners
everywhere, I knew, but according to Cromwell the monasteries he visited were hotbeds
of vice. We heard stories of orgies between monks and nuns, of riotous and lewd
behavior, of unwanted babies being strangled at birth and buried in the grounds.
It was time, said my father, in his most pious tones, that these matters were
brought to light and given close examination.
There was a great deal of wealth in the monasteries, and the royal exchequer,
which had been so well stocked by my shrewd and careful grandfather, had become much
depleted during my father's extravagant reign. A great deal of money had been spent on
his lavish entertainments, his splendid journeys, his magnificent jewels, and latterly on
bribery all over Europe in the hope of getting agreement on his divorce. The exchequer
needed bolstering up and the spoils from the monasteries could play a good part in doing
that.
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An Act had now been passed for the suppression of all monasteries whose
incomes were less than £200 a year.
I wondered whether that was an experiment to see how the people reacted to it.
The larger monasteries were left unmolested; but I could imagine that many an abbot was
trembling in his sandals.
Then I was told that I was to meet the King, and everything else was banished
from my mind.
My feelings were mixed. I wanted to see him. Part of me could not forget those
days of my early childhood when he had loomed so large in my life—a god, all-powerful
and gloriously benign. I had been so proud that he should be my father; and although I
loved my mother more dearly than any living person, it was he who filled me with awe
and admiration. His smile of approval had made me sublimely happy, and no matter how
cruelly he behaved to me and those I loved, I still had the same special feeling for him
which I was sure could never be entirely eradicated.
He would not come to Hunsdon; nor should I go to Court …yet. He wanted to see
me first and he did not want too much noise about it. He must have felt a little uncertain
about meeting a daughter who had for so many years defied him and had only just signed
her submission most reluctantly.
I was to be taken at an appointed time to a country house where he would receive
me.
I could not eat. I could not sleep. I hovered between excitement and apprehension.
I prayed for guidance. I talked to my mother, begging her, once more, to understand why
I had betrayed her in words, although in my heart I would always be true to her.
I talked to Susan Clarencieux of my fears.
She reassured me. “My lady,” she said, “you need have no fears. You are
royal…as royal as the King.”
I put my finger on her lips. “Hush, Susan. I do not want to lose you. Such things
as you say could be construed as treason.”
“It is true.”
“Truth can sometimes be treason, Susan. There. I am worse than you. We must
guard our tongues. Let's talk of other things. What am I going to wear?”
For so long I had had few clothes and what I had were mended; but recently new
garments had been sent to me and now I believed I could dress so that I would not look
too shabby for the occasion.
Command came that I was to leave the following morning. Margaret Bryan came
to me on the night before. She sat by my bed and held my hand as she used to in those
long-ago days when my trials were just beginning.
“Have no fear,” she said. “All will be well. Remember, you are his daughter.”
“He forgot that once.”
“Nay. A man does not forget his daughter. He was plagued by other matters.”
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“And I would not say what he wished me to. And now, I have, Margaret. God
forgive me.”
“Hush, hush,” she said. “Everything will be understood. Try to rest. Be yourself…
and all will be well.”
At the door she paused and looked at me.
“Do not forget the child,” she said. “She is only a baby. Speak for her… if there is
a chance.”
I said, “I will, Margaret. But I must go carefully. He is so full of hatred for her
mother now … as once he was for mine.”
“They are both gone now, God rest their souls,” said Margaret. “It is the poor
children who remain.”
She then left me and I tried to compose myself and prepare for the next day's
ordeal.
AT DAWN WE SET out and by mid-morning had reached our destination.
There I met the father whom I had not seen for five years. With him was his new
Queen.
For a few moments we stood looking at each other. I wondered what he thought
of me. When he had last seen me I had been a thin, spindly-legged girl of fifteen. Now I
was a woman. I knew I had gained in dignity, especially so since I had been aware of my
destiny. But I was so shocked by the change in him that I could think of little else.
When I had last seen him he had been the most handsome man I had ever known.
He had stood taller than most men; he had always been recognized by his height and
width at all those masques where he had delighted in trying to disguise himself. His
complexion had been florid, but healthily so. Now it was purplish rather than pink. His
weight had increased enormously. His was no longer an athletic figure. “Corpulent”
would be a more accurate way of describing it. But it was his face in which the greater
change had taken place. In the past there had been an engaging aspect. Could I call it
innocence? Hardly. Perhaps rather a boyish delight in the world and himself which at that
time had seemed endearing. Even in those days we had dreaded to see his mood change,
which it had done now and then, and the small mouth would become a thin, straight line
and the little eyes points of light almost disappearing into his full face. Much of the old
benignity had departed. New lines had appeared to rob him of that quality. To look at him
now, so large in his surcoat with the puffed sleeves barred with strips of fur and built-up
shoulders which increased his size and made him a figure of splendor, completely over-
awed me. I felt very small and insignificant beside such a glittering figure and I knew that
I could never do what I had thought during my journey here that I might, which was to
throw myself at his feet and beg him not to ask me to deny my mother and the Church of
Rome.
To see him there, powerful and formidable in the extreme, I knew that I should
never do it even if I could.
And beside him was his new Queen—slender, pretty, looking frail beside his great
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girth, gentle, welcoming, a little hesitant, but endeavoring to tell me she was pleased to
see me.
I went to him and knelt. He gave me his hand, which I kissed. Then he made a
gesture for me to stand up, so I did so.
“At last,” he said. “I rejoice to see you, daughter.”
I was trying to overcome my emotion and he sensed this. It pleased him. He saw
me as the repentant daughter, asking for forgiveness because of her foolish behavior
which had caused him pain.
I would have knelt to the Queen but she had taken my hands. She must have been
about the same age as Anne Boleyn… but she seemed younger and I felt older in
experience.
There was nothing false about the greeting she gave me. She smiled tremulously.
“Oh welcome…welcome,” she said. “I have so wanted this meeting.”
The King smiled at her indulgently.
“The Queen speaks for us both,” he said.
He dismissed everyone so that we should be alone together, he said, and talk as a
family should.
So we were alone and he spoke of his sufferings, of how he had been mistreated,
but now that he had his good Jane beside him, all that was behind us.
He sat in the chair which had been provided for him, and Jane brought up one for
me so that I could sit beside him.
“Your Grace must not wait on me,” I said.
“But it is what I want,” she told me with her rather girlish smile. “I am so happy. I
have always wanted you to be at Court, and now you are going to be there.”
The King was evidently enamored of her. She was so gentle and seemed to me
guileless. She was as different from Anne Boleyn as one woman can be from another.
Therein, I supposed, lay her attraction.
Jane sat close to the King, who from time to time patted her knee. I thought she
was like a little kitten, and I could not suppress the question which rose in my mind: How
long can he be content with her?
Meanwhile she was eager to show herself my friend.
“We shall arrange for you to come to Court … in time,” said the King.
“Yes,” added Jane, “and it shall be soon.”
“I shall be leaving for the hunting season shortly,” said my father. “Perhaps after
that.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” I said. Recently he had given himself the title of
“Majesty” which was now generally used instead of the old “Your Grace.” After all,
dukes could be Graces, but only the King—and Queen— Majesties.
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“You are uneasy, daughter,” he said. “Do not be so. Now that you have confessed
your faults, I forgive you freely. She who did you much harm has now reaped her just
deserts. Witchcraft is a fearsome cult. It must be crushed wherever we find it. And now
… if you will be my good child, I will be father to you.”
“You will be welcome at Court,” said Jane. “We shall be friends…we shall be as
sisters.”
The King laughed at her. I thought her charming in her rather simple way.
He asked about my household at Hunsdon. I said that of recent date it had begun
to grow.
“You shall have the comforts you once enjoyed before you were misguided
enough to oppose my will.”
“I thank Your Majesty.”
“Aye… and you will find there will be much for which to thank me.”
Jane laughed happily. I thought she was really a good creature and was genuinely
rejoicing in my changed fortunes.
I wondered whether I could mention Elizabeth but the dark look which had come
into his face when he had spoken of her mother made me hesitate. Not yet, I thought, I
must tread very carefully.
“Yes,” my father went on. “Be a good daughter and you will find me not
ungenerous. I am giving you a thousand crowns so that you can indulge yourself. Get
some little comforts, eh? I'll swear you could use them.”
“You are most gracious…”
His face had become soft and sentimental, as I remembered it from the past.
“Aye… and ready to be more so…as you will find, will she not, Jane?”
Jane smiled from me to him. “The most generous King in the world,” she said
ecstatically.
I thought how different she was from my mother as well as from Anne Boleyn.
Could it be possible that this one could give him what he wanted? If she could provide a
son, yes. And if not…I found myself looking at that white neck.
She had taken a diamond ring from her finger and held it out to me.
“It would make me very happy if you would wear this for me,” she said simply.
Then she took my hand and slipped the ring on my finger.
“You are so good to me,” I told her.
My father watched us, his eyes glazed with sentiment. How quickly his moods
changed! I wished that I did not see him quite so clearly. Part of me wanted to go on
believing in the image I had created in my childhood; but I kept thinking of my mother.
On whose order had the Welsh beer been produced? Had she been poisoned? I thought of
Anne Boleyn, the one for whom he had sacrificed his religious beliefs and had run the
risk of losing his crown; and yet there had come the day when she had been taken out to
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Tower Green and her head had been cut off with a sword specially sent from France.
What could I think of such a man? How could I love him? And yet, in spite of all I knew
of him, in a way I did.
Poor little Jane Seymour, what would become of her?
The mood passed. Jane, with her simple reasoning, had an effect on us. She saw
this as a family reunion and she made us see it as such. I lost some of my qualms; my
father forgot that he was King; in that brief moment we were father and daughter, and
Jane's presence, with her simple faith in the goodness of human nature, had created this
scene in her imagination and, briefly, we accepted it.
It was a pleasant half hour. There was laughter: I was delighted to be with my
father, for after all he had done, he was still my father, and such was the aura which
surrounded him that I could suppress my fears of him. Whether it was love, I do not
know; but it was something akin to it. And while we were together, I forgot that I was
deceiving him, that I had lied to him; and he seemed to forget the past when he had had it
in his mind to poison me or take my life in some way.
Jane was there, rejoicing that the dissension in the family was over; and
everything was as it should be; in the future we should all love each other.
Such is the power of innocence.
I DID NOT SEE my father for some time. He went off with the Court for the
hunting season. My household at Hunsdon was growing, as was customary for a person
of my rank. People were sending me gifts. Thomas Cromwell had taken me under his
wing and had sent me a horse as a present.
The newly elevated brother of Jane Seymour was now Lord Beauchamp and
Chamberlain. He wrote to ask me what clothes I needed.
I was delighted. I was able to ask for some materials which Margaret could make
into clothes for Elizabeth. I was getting quite fond of my little half-sister. She was such
an engaging child, and our friendship gave great pleasure to Margaret. My reconciliation
with my father delighted her, and that helped to ease my conscience. She was fond of me
but the darling of her heart was young Elizabeth, and she was so pleased because she
thought I should be able to do something about the neglect from which the poor child was
suffering.
Then there was trouble in the North which gave me some uneasiness for, in my
vulnerable position, I could so easily be implicated.
The appearance of the Black Book, containing its accusations against monks and
nuns, and the suppression of the smaller monasteries, had been the cause of this unrest.
The first sign of trouble was in Lincolnshire but this was quickly suppressed by the Earl
of Shrewsbury, who assured the objectors that everything that had happened had been
sanctioned by Parliament.
It was not long before a more serious revolt broke out in Yorkshire. The people
were against the break with Rome and they wanted the Supremacy of the Church to be in
the hands of the Pope as it always had been. A man called Robert Aske led the people on
what he called the Pilgrimage of Grace. They marched with banners depicting Christ on
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the cross on one side and on the other a chalice and wafer. They did not accept the King
as Supreme Head of the Church. The Pope had been for them and their fathers Christ's
Vicar on Earth and still was. No Acts of Parliament could change that. They wanted the
true religion brought back to England.
The revolt quickly spread through the North. These men were ready to fight for
the religion they wanted. But there were rumors. If they succeeded, the King, who had set
himself up as Head of the Church, would naturally be deposed. He had in their eyes one
legitimate heir, for they had always believed that my mother was the true Queen of
England and legally married to the King. That heir was the Princess Mary; and although
their main aim was to restore the true religion, it was hinted that it was also their plan to
set me on the throne.
I was in acute danger. Chapuys was soon on the spot to advise me.
“Keep out of sight,” he warned me.
“Do not be seen in any public place. Keep to the house and the gardens. We will
watch events closely.”
The King was very disturbed, as he always must be when some of his subjects
were in revolt, and as it was an uprising of this size there was something to be really
anxious about.
He sent an army up to the North. I was certain that the rebels would not be able to
stand against it and there would be terrible slaughter. However, the rain was heavy and
prolonged and the land became so water-logged that the two armies could not approach
each other.
There were many who were ready to interpret this as a sign from God. He was
working a miracle to save the rebels. My father was loth to go to war with his own
subjects and after discussions with those close to him, he sent a message to say that he
would pardon all rebels, and if they would prepare a list of their grievances he would
study them carefully.
The insurgents, no doubt feeling they had made their point, returned to their
homes. The King had suggested that their leader Robert Aske should come to London,
where he would be received and differences discussed.
Just after this I was surprised to receive a visit from the King.
It was one morning when I returned from riding to find the household in a flutter
of excitement. The King, out hunting, had called and was in the house. He was
impatiently waiting to see me, and I had better go to him with all speed.
I found him pacing up and down in the salon. He was alone.
I went to him and knelt. He took my hands and kissed them with a show of
tenderness.
“I trust I find Your Majesty in good health,” I said.
“Yes…yes… and you, daughter?”
I thanked him for his gracious enquiry and told him that I was well.
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He shook his head impatiently. “There has been trouble with these rebels in the
North,” he said.
“I trust it is settled to Your Majesty's pleasure.”
“Yes…yes. That was soon put to rights. There'll be no more trouble from them.
There were some who would have it that you were involved in it.”
“I swear I knew nothing about them.”
He lifted a hand. “I know it. I know it. But when these fools start meddling in
matters of which they know nothing… they will speak of you.”
“It is my earnest regret that they should do so.”
“You are a loyal subject then?”
“I am, Your Majesty. I do not forget that I am your daughter.”
He nodded. “Methinks you speak truth. Do you know, there is one thing I abhor…
and I will do all in my power to stamp it out. It is dishonesty.”
I was beginning to tremble.
“Myself…I am a stranger to that vice,” he went on. “You may think that there are
occasions when a king must speak what is an untruth…for the sake of diplomacy, eh?”
“I am an ignorant woman, Your Majesty. I know nothing of these matters.”
He grunted, suggesting approval of my attitude. “I will not do that. Nay!” He
began to shout. “Even though I am told it is expedient and it is not dishonesty in the
normal sense…‘This is for the country,' they may say, but no: I am an honest man.”
I lifted my eyes and tried to look admiring; but I could not stop thinking of all he
had done and how he had talked of his conscience, how he had made it work for him, so
that all his deeds were wrapped in a covering of righteousness. It was hard to hide my
feelings when he talked of dishonesty—but I must.
This was one of those occasions when he believed himself, and he saw no reason
why I should not believe him either.
“I want to be sure of your sincerity,” he said.
I felt my knees would not support me, and I was afraid he would see my hands
trembling and would regard my fear as evidence of my guilt.
“You signed the Act of Submission,” he said. “You agreed that my marriage to
your mother was invalid, and you accepted me, as did my loyal subjects, as Head of the
Church.”
“Yes,” I said faintly.
“Will you give me a truthful answer?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” I said even more quietly.
“You had much to gain from signing, had you not?”
“I yearned for Your Majesty's favor.”
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“Aye. Your fate depended on it, did it not? You would have been a fool not to
sign, and I do not think you are a fool, daughter. Your mother would not give in. It would
have been easier for her if she had. But you are made of different stuff.”
Yes, I thought, common clay. I could never be the martyr she was. I lack her
goodness, her saintliness.
“But tell me this,” he went on. “Did you agree with your heart as well as your
pen?”
I dared not hesitate. To do so would be fatal. I had my mission, my destiny.
I answered, “Yes, Your Majesty.”
He gave me an expansive smile and took me in his arms.
“Then, daughter,” he said, “we are in truth good friends. You have told me that
you signed the submission in good faith, and that pleases me. There are some who would
suggest that you were forced to do this. You and I, daughter, know that this is not so. But
there are those doubters, and I would have them know the truth. You will help me to
dispel their doubts, good daughter that you have now become. There are two of these
doubters to whom I would have you address yourself. One is the Emperor Charles; the
other is the Pope.”
I was appalled. Was it not enough that I had signed his document? Must I deny
my love for my mother, my adherence to the Faith? Must I tell this to the whole world?
Refusal trembled on my lips. I saw myself languishing in the Tower, tried for
treason, brought out to Tower Hill as his beloved, the ill-fated Anne Boleyn, had been.
Where was that shining dream? I must bring England back to the Faith.
I was not merely a devoted daughter: I was a woman fighting for her future,
perhaps her life, but my life was of little importance beside what I must do for the Faith.
He was looking at me intently; his little eyes were benign at the moment, but I
knew how quickly they could change.
I heard myself say, “Yes, Your Majesty, I will write to them. I will tell them that I
am in agreement with everything that has been done and will be done.”
He could be charming when pleased. I could see why men followed him. He was
like the father I had known in my childhood. He seized me in his arms and held me
against his jewel-encrusted jacket. I felt the stones pressing into my heart. I despised
myself. I murmured apologies to my mother; but I knew this had to be done.
“Now,” he said, “all is well, and this is a delight to me. I like it not when there is
discord in families. From now on you are my dear daughter. You shall come to Court. All
shall be as it should be between a father and his daughter.”
He was in an excellent mood, and I was fighting to hide my despondency. He
would prepare drafts for me to send to the Emperor and the Pope. All I needed to do
would be to sign them and the matter would be most happily settled from his point of
view.
I was becoming devious. I was playing my own games as carefully as he played
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his; only perhaps I had more of the quality which he so much admired: honesty—and
with myself. I despised myself and yet I knew that what I was doing was necessary. I
could honestly say I was not doing it to preserve my life or to bring myself a comfortable
style of living. Always I had the main object in mind; and it was for that I lied and
dissembled.
I was thankful that I could see people freely now; and when Chapuys visited me I
gave him an account of my interview with my father.
“You did what was right,” he told me.
“But I have lied. I have denied my legitimacy and dishonored my mother.”
“Sometimes it is necessary to act against one's conscience if the matter is great
enough.”
“I do not wish the Emperor to regard me as a weakling who has given way to save
her life.”
“The Emperor knows well your purpose.”
“I wish to write to him personally to tell him that what I have officially sent to
him is untrue.”
“Do so,” he said, “and I will see that the letter reaches him.”
“If it did not and was discovered, that would be the end of my hopes… and of
me.”
Chapuys nodded gravely. “It shall not be discovered. All the hopes of the Church
rest with you. I swear to you that your letter will be delivered safely into the Emperor's
hands.”
“I must also write to the Pope.”
“Do that. They will be sure then that you are working for God and the Church.”
He smiled at me and went on, “You are anxious. You fear that you have betrayed
your mother. Rest assured that she understands. This country of England will have reason
to thank you. You are going to bring it back to the Faith when the time comes.”
He took my letters. I had visions of their falling into the hands of my father. I
dared not dwell on what my fate would be if they did. But I could trust Chapuys, and my
cousin Charles would know that I was no traitor to the Faith.
Thus I was able to still my conscience.
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I WAS SUMMONED TO JOIN THE COURT AT RICHMOND FOR the
Christmas festivities. This meant that I was received back in favor. My letters to the
Emperor and the Pope had sealed the matter.
Queen Jane, realizing that after my exile I might not have the clothes I would
need and the means to come to Court, thoughtfully sent me money. “A little gift” she
called it; and it came with a message that she was so much looking forward to greeting
me.
The weather was bitterly cold, and I was glad of the fur-lined wrap which I had
been able to acquire through her thoughtfulness.
It seemed strange, after so many years, to be back among the grandeur that was
my father's Court. He had stamped his personality upon it, and it was glittering, splendid
and outwardly merry, all laughter and song; and yet, I wondered, how many of those
seemingly carefree courtiers lived in terror of offending him? I fell to thinking what it
must have been like in my grandfather's day. How he would have deplored the
extravagance as he watched the dwindling effect it must be having on the exchequer. But
this was my father's day, and the perversity of men is such that they loved him more, with
all his tantrums, extravagances and adventurous marital life, than they ever did my
solemn, careful grandfather. Parsimonious, they had called him, when, if he were so, it
was for their betterment.
It was Jane, the Queen, who helped me through those days. There was something
very gentle about her. I wondered if she ever considered the perilous nature of her
position. Did she ever give a thought to what had happened to Anne Boleyn, so
passionately loved at one time and, not so long after their marriage, sent to the block? If
she did think of her, she gave no sign of it. She did give a good deal of thought to the
comfort of others; she was far from clever; indeed, she was something of a simpleton, but
she was able to understand how I was feeling, and she did everything possible to put me
at my ease.
Now that I had begun to live a double life, as it were, hiding my true motives
under a cloak of deceit, I felt a little ashamed in the company of Jane, who was so
straightforward and guileless. But sometimes I asked myself whether she, too, was
playing her own little game? How did it feel to be the third wife of a man who had
destroyed the two who had gone before? Was Jane assuming the role of docile, loving
wife? One might say: Why had she married? Poor girl, what chance had one of her
temperament against two ambitious brothers and a monarch who desired her?
However, she did help me over those first difficult days at Court.
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My father was tender with her, liking her submissiveness. What a contrast to
Anne Boleyn! But I fancied there were times when I saw a little impatience creeping
through, and I found myself guessing how long it would take him to tire of her.
I remember one occasion particularly. Jane was so eager to make our
reconciliation complete and did everything to smooth things between us, and one day she
remarked how pleased he must be to have me at Court: his own daughter, who was so
beloved by the people and so important in their eyes.
He looked at her with faint contempt and said, “You are a fool, Jane. You should
be thinking of the sons you will have… and not seeking to bring forward others.” He
touched her stomach and went on with a touch of coarseness, “That is where your hopes
should lie.”
Poor Jane looked abashed. Was she really beginning to suffer from that anxiety
which had plagued the lives of both my mother and Anne Boleyn? Was it six months she
had been married and no sign of pregnancy yet?
There were times when I gave myself up to the pleasures of being at Court. Jane
saw that I had new gowns. I chose bright colors. I felt I needed to because, although I was
not ill-favored, I was not startling in any way. My once fresh-colored complexion had
grown pale—probably from the privation I had suffered. My features were regular. I
suppose I should have been considered quite ordinary outside royal circles; but at least I
was the King's daughter, and that set me apart—particularly as he had recognized me as
such.
I encountered a certain amount of adulation and secret congratulations, for most
knew that I had come through some hazardous times and still managed to survive.
I was twenty-one, so perhaps a little frivolity could be forgiven me. I danced—as
I loved to—and I joined in the festivities with a gusto due to long abstinence. I was, in
fact, delighted to be back at Court.
Jane noticed this, and it pleased her. “We shall see that it is just as it used to be
long ago,” she told me. “I believe you were then the darling of the Court.”
“That was when I was a little girl … and all was well between my parents.”
Jane nodded and changed the subject. I noticed that she avoided any talk which
might be controversial; so perhaps she was not quite so simple after all.
Secure in her friendship, I began to talk more freely.
I told her about my dear Lady Salisbury and how, since she had left me all those
years ago, I had not seen her. I wished to hear of her and longed to see her.
Jane understood. “She is well, I think,” she said. “But she does not come to
Court.”
“No. I suppose her friendship with me over all those years has debarred her.”
“The King is displeased with her son, Reginald Pole.”
“Yes, I know,” I said. “Do you think that, now all is well between us, my father
might allow me to see the Countess?”
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She said she would see what could be done.
Poor Jane. Her endeavors brought down the wrath of the King on her head.
She came to me in some distress. “He was quite angry. He shouted at me. Had he
not warned me not to meddle? ‘No,' he said. ‘The Countess of Salisbury may not come to
Court. Her son is a traitor. I'd have had his head if he had not been skulking abroad
spreading malice about me. As for the lady in question, she would do well to take care.'
He was really angry.”
I said, “I am sorry you did it for me.”
She said, “I know how one feels about the companions of our young days. They
pass all too quickly, don't they, and then… one grows up.”
Poor Jane! She was striving so hard to be the docile wife, remembering no doubt
the horrific fate of Anne Boleyn, perhaps giving a thought to the tribulations of my
mother. She was in a position as dangerous as any in the country, without my mother's
stern resolution and strong character and Anne Boleyn's fire and sharp wit to help her
face the onslaught when it came.
Jane was already learning that—as with those two—everything depended on her
ability to produce a son. I was indeed sorry that she had aroused the King's anger through
me.
I did remember, though, Margaret Bryan's concern for Elizabeth, and I talked to
Jane about the little girl.
“She is bright, intelligent and very attractive,” I told her.
Jane nodded. She would have liked to bring Elizabeth to Court. I was there, and
Elizabeth should be. Jane longed for a happy family atmosphere. The little one was not
responsible for her mother's misdeeds. Jane's eyes filled with tears when I told her how
the child was being neglected, no money being sent for her clothes, and how Lady Bryan
was at her wits' end wondering if in a few months' time she would have any clothes at all.
“There is a very small allowance for her food,” I said. “It is so sad. She is after all
the King's daughter.”
Jane listened and sympathized.
“I shall bring her here,” she said. “It will be possible later but just now the King is
so angry at the mention of her mother's name that I dare not.”
I understood, of course. She had risked his displeasure when she had talked to him
of the Countess. She could not do it again by mentioning Elizabeth.
“It will change,” she assured me. “But as yet I dare not.”
I was liking her more every day.
She told me I must stay at Court. We had become such good friends that we
should not be apart.
This was gratifying. Jane might be a mild creature but she was the Queen and
might have a little influence on the King. It was an indication of how my character had
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changed that I could work out the advantages which could ensue from such a friendship.
But on the other hand, I was fond of her. It was impossible not to be fond of Jane. I had a
strong urge to protect her. She seemed to me like a lamb among wolves, unsuspicious of
danger because, for the time being, they were not preparing to harm her.
So I did want her friendship and not only because of the advantages it might bring
me. I even thought that at some stage I might be able to help her, for, one day, God knew,
she might need any help she could get.
In the meantime she went on in her own sweet way and we were often together.
The King was pleased to see the friendship between us, though there were times
when a tremor of fear ran through me because I thought I caught a gleam of suspicion in
his eyes.
But Jane continued to delight in my company, and she confided to me that she
very much wanted to bring Elizabeth to Court. “In time,” she assured me, “the King will
forget her mother, and his attitude will change toward the child.”
I hoped so. But at the moment I must rejoice in my own return to favor.
All through that January I was with the Court. Jane whispered to me with great
delight that she thought she was pregnant, and I rejoiced with her. By the beginning of
March she was sure.
The King was absolutely delighted. At last he was going to get his son. When he
did, he would know that Heaven approved of everything he had done to reach that happy
state.
He talked continually of his son; he would pat Jane's stomach “Good girl,” he
said. “This is the first of many.”
Jane was happy and at the same time fearful. She must have been feeling what the
others had in their turn.
Would she produce the all-important son? And if not, what would happen to her?
SOON AFTER CHRISTMAS Robert Aske, the leader of the Pilgrimage of Grace,
had come to London to see the King. My father received him and listened carefully to his
complaints. They should have consideration, he told him, and shortly he would make a
visit to Yorkshire and visit the city of York, where his Queen might be crowned.
Robert Aske must have felt the visit was a great success, and he returned to his
native Yorkshire. But of course the King was not going to give up the supremacy of the
Church in favor of the Pope; he was not going to accept the Pope's judgement on his first
marriage and declare me his legitimate daughter. I supposed he was just trying to show
his benign nature to the people and hoped the revolt would simmer down.
But the people of the North were serious, and no sooner had Aske returned than a
new revolt broke out. Sir Francis Bigod led this. The King marched north, and this time
there was no miracle to save the rebels. They had no chance against the King's army. The
leaders were caught and hanged in the cities where they had raised the revolt. Robert
Aske came to London. This time he was sent to the Tower.
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My father was done with peaceful negotiations. He was going to show these
northerners who was their master.
Robert Aske was taken to York and hanged in chains, where his body was left for
the crows and that all might see what happened to those who opposed the King's will.
The Pilgrimage of Grace was over, and the people, he hoped, had learned their
lesson.
IT WAS AN ANXIOUS time for me because now I knew that every time there
was an insurrection I should be in danger. There would always be a hint that the King
was to be deposed, and I was the one who would be put in his place.
It was, of course, what I was working for; but it must come about in a natural
manner. I was only twenty-one. Time was on my side. I felt in my heart that one day I
was going to be Queen of this country and, when I was, my first mission would be to
bring it back to Rome.
I was not yet ready for the task. I was too young. I had lived too far from the
Court for too long. I had much to learn, and I must prepare myself. I must worship as my
mother had—wholeheartedly. Religion must come first with me as it had with her; and
the only reason why I could think and plan as I did, with a good conscience, was if I
made it my first concern, my whole reason for living. I could believe that I had been sent
on Earth for this one purpose: to bring the Church of England back to the true Roman
Catholic fold.
So I could watch the decline of my father's health with mixed feelings. I was fond
of him—odd as it may seem—but it is difficult to describe that unique temperament. One
could hate what he did but not entirely hate him. One was warmed by his smile, though it
might be fleeting; and to bask in his approval, uncertain as it was, brought a glow of
happiness, a gratification, a delight that one had earned it. I cannot explain his
charismatic charm; I can only think that it was that which kept men faithful to him—
even those against whom he had committed the most outrageous and often barbaric acts.
With the Pilgrimage of Grace over and Jane pregnant, he was a happy man during
those waiting months.
I was at odds with myself. I had become so fond of Jane. She admitted once her
fear that the child might be a girl; it seemed unfair that she should suffer such anxiety
over a matter in which she had no choice. Life was so unfair. If, through no fault of her
own, she produced a girl, she would be despised, dubbed no better than her predecessors,
and perhaps it would be the beginning of the end for her; on the other hand, if the child
were a boy, she would be praised and fêted… good Queen Jane.
And my own position? As I said, I was fond of the girl. I wanted her to be happy;
yet if she produced the boy, what of my hopes of achieving my mission?
It was not that I coveted the crown for myself. I wanted it for God and the true
religion. It was a crusade, and I was to lead it. I was to bring this country back to the true
Faith, which surely must find favor with God.
Now, long after, when I look back on all that happened, I can see why I did the
things I did later. I had lived so much of my life on a precipice from which at any
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moment I could be hurled to disaster. That has an effect on people. Human life can seem
of little value; it is the cause that is important. Yes, perhaps that is why I acted as I did.
Am I trying to find excuses? Perhaps. But excuses there are, for our characters are surely
formed by the events in our early years.
At this time I was fêted at Court, the dear friend of the Queen; and I had my
father's favor—but how transient that favor could be everyone knew. The Pilgrimage of
Grace had brought that home to me. Men's bodies were now rotting in the great cities of
the North, reminding the King's subjects of what happened to them if they disobeyed
him. I was his subject, and whenever there were risings of any sort, my name would be
bandied about. They had known of my mother's unswerving faith, and they would believe
that her daughter shared it. There would always be suspicions. I was not safe. At any
moment the King's wrath could be turned on me.
I walked a dangerous path and, looking back, I see that it was even more perilous
than I realized at the time.
The Pilgrimage of Grace and its outcome, the suppression of the monasteries…
these matters hung over me, for I could not be free of them. In spite of the Queen's
friendship and the King's newly discovered affection for his daughter, I lived in fear
during those days when the Pilgrimage of Grace was remembered.
I traveled with the Court to Greenwich and back to Richmond and then to various
other houses as the Court moved round for sweetening and visiting. And all the time my
friendship with Jane was growing. I had not mentioned the Countess of Salisbury again,
but I did talk to Jane now and then of Elizabeth; but, with the memory of the Pilgrimage
of Grace still in his mind, the King was in no mood for listening to the plight of his young
daughter.
The months passed. The Queen's pregnancy was becoming obvious, and never
was there a more welcome sight. The King was tender toward her, certain that she bore
the son he wanted. Seers prophesied the sex of the child to please him; they would have
to make themselves scarce if they were proved wrong.
I was torn between my desire for Jane's happiness and my own need to
accomplish my mission, for the two were incompatible. I told myself that, if it were
God's will that Jane should bear a son who would be the future King and, on account of
his age and mine, my plans would be frustrated, I must not complain.
I was ready and waiting if wanted. I could leave this in God's hands.
Jane was so eager that Elizabeth should be brought to Court that she plucked up
courage and mentioned this to the King, and he, eager to pamper her and perhaps fearing
what adverse effect there might be on her child if she were crossed, agreed that Elizabeth
might come; but he did imply that he did not wish to see her.
I knew how delighted Lady Bryan would be if there was some recognition of her
darling, and I wanted to take the news to them and help the child prepare. So I left the
Court at the end of summer and went to Hunsdon.
There was a great welcome for me. Margaret was delighted to see me. As for
Elizabeth, when she heard she was going to see Queen Jane, she was overjoyed.
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Her face was alight with pleasure and anticipation, her red curls bobbed up and
down as she jumped, for she found it difficult to keep still, and Margaret was always
admonishing her about this. She was four years old but her manner and way of speech
were more fitting to a child of eight or nine. She was exceptionally bright and very
forward. Margaret said she had never seen a child so full of vitality and yet so eager to
study her books. I only half believed Margaret, for I knew her darling was perfect in her
eyes. But it was true that Elizabeth was a most unusual child—the sort that one might
have expected the King and Anne Boleyn to produce between them. It was over a year
now since the little one had lost her mother. I wondered if she still thought of her.
Margaret was anxious about the child's clothes. She could not go in patched shifts,
she declared. I was no longer poor. Gifts had been showered on me since my
reinstatement, and I had an income and money from both the King and Queen. So
between us we were able to equip the child for Court.
Her delight was infectious. I forgot to wonder what would be the outcome of my
mission. I was caught up in the excitement of taking Elizabeth to Court.
IT WAS SEPTEMBER. The birth was expected during the following month.
There were no more appearances in public for Queen Jane. She was to have a month of
quietness at Hampton Court. It is, I suppose, with its courtyards and towers, one of the
most magnificent buildings in England. I could never be in it without thinking of Thomas
Wolsey. There he must have experienced great anguish when he realized that he, who had
risen so high, was soon to fall. How had he felt when he had handed this palace over to
the King? My father had questioned whether it was right that a subject should live in
greater splendor than his king, and Wolsey, with that immediate perception which had
brought him to his elevated position, had remarked that a subject should only have it that
he might present it to his king. With that remark he may have given himself a few weeks'
grace, but it had lost him his palace.
And now here we were, while Jane awaited the birth of her child.
She was, as I had known she would be, enchanted by Elizabeth. Brighteyed, with
reddish curls and that amazing vitality, she possessed that charisma which I had never
seen in any other person except my father in his youth. She must have inherited it from
him. How could any of her mother's enemies suggest for a moment that she was not his
child? He was there in her gestures, in her very zest for life. I thought, if he would only
allow himself to see her, he would be completely beguiled.
But he did not see her. He did receive me. He told me that he had heard from Dr.
Butts that I was well and that if I would not get over-excited I would cease to be
tormented by my headaches.
“You should live more peacefully,” he told me, giving me one of those suspicious
looks as though to ask: What are your aspirations? What is it that over-excites you? You
are only a bastard, remember.
I shall never forget Jane during those weeks before her confinement. I wondered
if she had a premonition of what was to come. It was only natural that she must have
been overcome with dread—not only because of the ordeal of childbirth but by what the
outcome might be if she gave birth to a stillborn child or one of the despised sex. There
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were dismal examples of what had happened to others, and I guessed she could not
dismiss them from her mind.
I can see her now, standing with me in the great banqueting hall which had only
just been completed. She had gazed at the entwined initials—her own and those of the
King: J and H. It was a custom of his to have his initials entwined with those of the wife
who happened to please him at the moment. They were all decorated with lovers' knots
and cast in stone, which was ironical because it was so much more enduring than his
emotions, and so remained long after his passion had passed away.
Jane was looking pale and by no means well. I thought a little fresh air would be
good for her, such as a quiet walk in the gardens or to sit awhile under one of the trees
and enjoy the autumn sunshine. But it was forbidden. The King feared there might be
some minor accident which would bring about a premature birth. She was reminded at
every turn that she carried the country's—and the King's—hopes for a male heir.
Elizabeth was with us, and she created a diversion. There was no doubt that Jane
found pleasure in her company. Elizabeth was completely sure of herself and did not
seem in the least concerned because her father would not see her. I was sure she believed
that when he did he would fall victim to her charm, as almost everyone else did. I thought
it was strange that she, who wanted an explanation of everything she saw or heard, never
mentioned her mother. It seemed to me that it was an indication that she knew what had
happened to her. Margaret would never have told her, but the sharp ears would be
constantly alert for information; and I felt she knew. What would a child of four think of
a father who had murdered her mother? What did I think, for he had as good as murdered
mine? It says a good deal for his personality that neither of us hated him. It may have
been largely due to the aura of kingship which was so much a part of him. But it was
more than that. He had something in his nature which enabled him to act most cruelly—
barbarously, in fact—and still people would forgive him and seek his approval.
At last the day arrived. The Queen's pains had started. There was a hushed
expectancy about the palace. All were afraid to approach the King. The next few hours
would be decisive. Either we should have a happy monarch or a furious, raging tyrant to
contend with.
We were all in a state of tension. “A boy!” prayed the King and all those about
him. Not surprisingly I was unsure of what I wanted. A boy would mean the end of all
hope for me. I should lose that great chance which I had believed Heaven was holding
out for me if the child were a boy. And yet… a boy would make life easier for us all.
Suspicion would shift from me. No one could doubt that the King's marriage to Jane was
legal, for both his previous wives had been dead at the time he married. A boy in any case
would come before me… and Elizabeth.
I should be praying for a girl…or, more to my advantage, a stillborn child. But
how could I? I could not bear to think of the troubles which had beset my own mother
falling on Jane.
I said to myself, “God moves in a mysterious way. If it is His will that the task of
bringing England back to the true Faith shall be mine, then it will be so.” And I believed
that.
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The vigil was long. I was in the ante-room with those in high places who must be
present at the birth. The time was passing. No child yet…The anxiety was growing. Was
something wrong? Was it possible that the King could not get healthy children?
The doctors came out. They must see the King at once. It was clear that the birth
was not going as it should. It seemed possible that both the child and the mother could
not live. There might have to be a choice. The King must make the decision.
I was glad that Jane was too ill to know his reply, to realize how deeply he desired
a son, how frail was his love for her.
His reply was typical of him—brusque and revealing. “Save my son. Wives are
easily found.”
My poor, poor Jane!
It was Friday the 12th of October of that year 1537 when the child was born. It
was the longed-for boy.
The King's delight was unbounded. At last he had that for which he had so long
prayed.
His own son, and meek little Jane had given it to him.
THE BOY WAS RECEIVED with such acclaim that little thought was given to
Jane. She was exhausted and very ill but she still lived.
I talked to Margaret about it.
“Poor lady,” she said. “Her ordeal was terrible and she was never strong. Keeping
her shut up like that…it was all wrong. I said it from the first. Fresh air would have done
her the world of good.”
“But she did it, Margaret. She has produced the son. Both my mother and Anne
Boleyn would have given everything they had to do that.”
Margaret nodded. “What she needs now is rest… not all this coming and going.”
“She is happy now, Margaret. She has been so worried.”
“I can believe that! Well now, she must have a good rest … rest and quiet and no
more children for a long time.”
“The King's appetite is whetted. She has given him a son. He will want more.”
“He will have to wait. He's got one. Let him be satisfied with that.”
There must be no delay. The baby must be baptized. He was to be called Edward.
The King was in a mood of exuberance. He carried the boy in his arms and had to be
restrained from bouncing him up and down in his excitement. He smiled good-
humouredly at the nurse who stopped him. The baby was very precious.
It was a Friday when he was born and he was to be baptized on the Monday night.
“Too soon for the Queen,” commented Margaret.
“She will be in her bed.”
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“There'll be too much fuss round her.”
“I think she must be very happy, Margaret.”
But Margaret looked grim. She bore a great grudge against the King; she could
never forget what he had done to her darling's mother and all the subterfuge she had had
to practice to keep it from the child.
The baptism of little Edward was to take place in Hampton Court Chapel, and I
was to play an important part in the ceremony. My father would feel less anxious about
my position now for he had a true heir to replace me. He was therefore inclined to bring
me forward a little. Perhaps this was why I was chosen to present the baby at the font.
The procession would begin in the Queen's chamber. Jane, of course, could not
rise from her bed; she was far too weak. It was this which angered Margaret so much.
She thought rules and customs should be set aside if people were not well enough to
partake in them. These men did not realize what it was like, giving birth to a child, she
said; it was a pity some of them didn't have to do it sometimes, then they would have
some idea of what it was like. Even if everything had gone smoothly, the Queen would
have needed rest at such a time.
However, Jane, in accordance with custom, was to be removed from her bed to a
state pallet, a type of couch. This was very grand, being decorated with crowns and the
arms of England worked in gold thread. The counterpane was of scarlet velvet lined with
ermine.
As they lifted her from the bed, Jane was hardly aware of what was happening.
She did not seem to see us as we crowded into the chamber and the trumpets blared forth.
In his benign mood, the King had decided that Elizabeth might be present. She
had been brought from her bed and put into ceremonial robes. She was to carry the
chrisom and, as she was just four years old, this would have been too big a task for her,
so Edward Seymour, one of the Queen's ambitious brothers, carried her in his arms.
How she loved the ceremony! It was nearly midnight but she was wide awake,
smiling at everyone, so happy to be a part of the procession.
I saw her grandfather, Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire, in the chapel; he had a
towel about his neck and was carrying a wax taper. I felt a wave of revulsion toward the
man. How could he take part in a ceremony which could never have come about but for
the murder of his daughter? I supposed his head was more important to him than his
principles.
The sight of the man brought home to me a reminder of the perilous times in
which we were living and that, because of my position, I was more vulnerable than most.
The baby was carried by the Marchioness of Exeter, under a canopy borne by four
noblemen, to a small corner of the chapel, and there he was baptized.
“God, in His almighty and infinite grace, grant good life and long to the right
high, the right excellent and noble Prince Edward, Duke of Cornwall and Earl of Chester,
most dear and entirely beloved son of our dread and gracious lord, Henry VIII.”
The trumpets rang out. Elizabeth took my hand, and together we walked in the
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procession back to our stepmother's bedchamber.
It was midnight, and the ceremony had lasted three hours.
The King was beside himself with joy; he smiled on all. He was certain that God
had shown His approval for the match with Jane. I wondered if he felt a twinge of
conscience, for what he had done to his once-loved Anne. He would be assuring himself:
She was a witch. She set a spell on me, and I was not to blame.
God was confirming this. Had He not given him a son!
THE NEXT DAY Jane was very ill. The ceremony had completely exhausted her.
Her priests were at her bedside. She rallied a little but she had caught a bad chill
on the night of the baptism and she could not recover from this, so weak was her state.
The King was to go to Esher. He always avoided being near the sick. Illness
reminded him that he was not immune. He had never been the same since his fall, and the
ulcer in his leg would not heal. It gave him great pain, and the doctors were reticent about
it, as though they feared it might be a symptom of something else; so it must not be
mentioned.
He was a little irritated. It was absurd that Jane, who had given the nation—and
him—the most important gift of a son, should now be too ill to enjoy all the honors he
had prepared for the occasion. She must make an effort to get well, he said.
Poor Jane was beyond making efforts. She grew worse, and the King finally
decided that he must wait a while before leaving for Esher. He was now expressing
concern for the Queen's health as she grew steadily worse.
On the 24th of October, twelve days after she had given birth to Edward, she
became very gravely ill. Her confessor was with her. He administered Extreme Unction
and at midnight she died.
So the rejoicing for the birth of a son was turned into mourning for the death of
the Queen.
THE DAY AFTER Jane's death they embalmed her, and in her chamber Mass
was said every day until they took her away. Tapers burned all through the night and
ladies kept a watch. I was chief mourner, so I was present, and as I sat with others at the
side of her dead body, I thought of her youth, her simplicity and her fears…Jane, who
was the tool of ambitious men. I wondered if my father would ever have noticed her if
her brothers had not thrust her forward. I was angry that women should be treated so…
angry for my mother and myself… and yes, even Anne Boleyn.
And the nights passed thus in meditation and, in spite of the birth of the child, the
feeling was strong within me that God had chosen me to work for Holy Church in my
country.
It was on the 12th of November when we set out from Hampton for Windsor. In
the hearse was Jane's coffin, and on it was a statue of her in wax, so lifelike that one
could believe she was really there. The hair fell loose about the shoulders, and there was
a crown on the head.
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She was buried in St. George's Chapel.
I FELL ILL that winter. I suffered from acute headaches and dizziness and could
not rise from my bed. My ladies rallied round me and served me well, and my father sent
Dr. Butts to me. I recovered sufficiently to spend Christmas at Court. It was dismal. How
could there be the usual feasting with the Queen so recently dead. My father wore
black—a great concession. He had not worn it for his two previous wives. He was not his
exuberant self, and I began to wonder whether he had cared for Jane. But I soon
discovered that he was already putting out feelers to replace her.
His greatest joy was in his son. He would send for the child to be brought to him
and hold him gently in his arms. He would look at him with wonder and talk to him.
“You must get strong and big, my son. You have a realm to govern one day. A long time
yet… but one day.” He would turn to those standing by. “See how he looks at me? He
understands. Oh, he is a wonderful boy, this. He is the son I always wanted.”
He was almost boyish in his enthusiasm. Perhaps that was at the root of his
charm. He seemed to be saying, “I did this…I murdered my wives… I have caused
grievous suffering to monks…I have killed those who were my best
servants…Wolsey…Sir Thomas More…Fisher… but I am only a boy really. My heart is
warm and loving, and those barbarous acts… well, they were for the good of the
country.”
And they seemed to believe him. I half did so myself.
And while he was making a show of mourning for Jane, he was looking for her
successor.
He would regard me cryptically. Twenty-two years of age. That was mature for a
princess…or should I say a king's daughter, for he would not allow me that title.
I had my household now. I was comfortable. But I did often feel a longing for
children. There was Elizabeth. I could have wished she was my daughter; and there was
now Edward. What would I have given for such a boy!
And here I was—a spinster, a virgin, to wither on the branch, unloved,
unfulfillled—and all because I was branded with the taint of illegitimacy.
But it was a good life compared with what I had known. I had good friends; my
servants were loyal to me; they were more than servants; they cared for me; they all
believed that I should be proclaimed princess. I was never frivolous. I tried to lead a good
life. They all knew I was deeply religious because I was my mother's daughter. My house
was open to all the needy. We never turned any away. I had my income from the Court,
and a great deal of it was spent on charity. I liked to walk about three miles a day, and it
was pleasant to be able to go where I chose; and I always had pennies in my purse to give
to those who, I thought, needed it.
The people were fond of me. They always called a loyal greeting when I passed.
I had my books, my music and now beautiful garments to wear. I was well
educated. I could talk to any diplomats who came to Court. I was a good musician—
excellent with the lute and the virginals.
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But I was a woman, and I felt that I was missing the greatest blessing in life. I
wanted a child.
Yet the days continued pleasant. I lived the life of a royal person in my own
household. My father had even sent me a fool. She had always been a favorite of his. In
fact, I think Will Somers was a little jealous of her. It was rare to have a woman as a fool,
but Jane was good. Her very appearance set one laughing before she came out with her
merry quips. She would dress exactly like a court lady but her hair was shaved off, and
the result was ludicrous. She could sing well, and she had a repertoire of comic songs and
a host of tricks with which to divert us. Evenings with Jane the Fool amused us all and
were very welcome indeed.
So there was little of which to complain, but I wanted the normal life the poorest
woman might expect—that I should be allowed to justify my purpose and help replenish
the Earth.
There had been one or two propositions. My father would never have let me go
abroad before the birth of Edward. That would be asking for some ambitious man,
married to the daughter of the King of England, to set about claiming the throne. But now
there was a male heir perhaps it would be different.
There were feelers from both France and the Hapsburgs… each eager to form an
alliance against the other. There was Charles of Orleans, the son of François, King of
France, and Dom Luiz, the Infante of Portugal, who was put forward by the Emperor.
For a few weeks I lived in a state of excitement. I was assured that either of these
gentlemen would make a perfect husband. They were both handsome, charming princes.
It was just a matter of which it should be.
Then came the stumbling block which had not, as I had hoped it would be, been
removed because of the favor my father was showing me.
The King of France intimated that there was no one he would rather have for his
son than myself. Yet there was the stain of illegitimacy. If that could be removed … well,
then he would welcome none with the same ardour which he would bestow on me.
It was the same with the Portuguese. Yes, the match would be very desirable but
there was, of course, this little matter.
The King was furious. He would not give way. To do so would be to undermine
the supremacy of the Church—a matter which was already causing him a great deal of
trouble.
So these matches were abandoned.
There was a certain rumor which gave me pleasure. I remembered how my
mother, since I could not marry the Emperor Charles, had expressed a desire that I should
marry Reginald Pole.
In the quietness of my room I talked with Susan Clarencieux, who had become
one of my dearest friends. I could talk to her of my dreams and aspirations more openly
than anyone else.
She understood my desire for marriage.
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She said, “I saw your fondness for the little Elizabeth, although for a while you
seemed to fight against it.”
“I hated her mother. She ruined mine. And I am afraid at first I passed my hatred
on to the child. That is something one should never do…to blame the children for their
parents' sins of which they are entirely innocent. It was cruel and wicked.”
“And the young Elizabeth is such an enchanting creature.”
“I often wonder what will become of her. I fear she will take everything she
wishes or, failing to, bring herself to some terrible end.”
“I have a feeling that she will somehow survive.”
“Her position is even worse than mine. The King at least acknowledges me.
Sometimes I think he tries to tell himself that she is not his daughter.”
“Could he look at her and doubt it?”
“Perhaps that is why he does not wish to look at her.”
“I have heard certain rumors lately. I believe that at one time you were very fond
of him.”
“Of whom do you speak?”
“Of Reginald Pole.”
“Oh.” I was smiling. Memories were coming back. How young I had been, and he
had seemed so wonderful…so much older than I was…so much wiser… and yet I had
loved him and believed he loved me.
“What did they say of him?” I asked.
“That he has only taken deacon's orders… not those of a priest…so that, when the
time comes…he will not be debarred from taking a wife. You and he could be married.”
“Do you think there is any truth in this?”
“It is what some people would like.”
“You mean… those whom the King would call his enemies?”
“Yes.”
“But Reginald is a cardinal now.”
“He remains free to marry.”
“Oh, Susan, I wonder if it could ever be…”
She lifted her shoulders. “The King hates him now, you know. He regards him as
an enemy who can do him a great deal of harm on the Continent.”
“Yes, I do know. Oh, Susan, why are things never as they should be?”
She smiled at me fondly. “You would welcome a marriage with him,” she said,
more as a statement than a question.
I nodded. “It would be suitable in every way. He is a Plantagenet. Our rival
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houses would be joined. Besides, I know him well.”
“It is long since you saw him.”
“But he is not a man to change. Susan, there is no one I should rather have for my
husband.”
And so we talked.
But I was no nearer to marriage for all that. Sometimes I thought I never should
be.
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EVER SINCE THE DEATH OF JANE, MY FATHER HAD BEEN looking for a
new bride. He was obsessed by the idea. Why he did not take a mistress, I cannot
imagine. There might have been several prepared to accept that honor. But marriage?
Any woman would look askance at that. The whole world knew what had happened to his
first two wives. And the third? Had she escaped a similar fate by dying?
He had his eyes on several women at the French Court. The Duke of Guise had
three daughters, François Premier one. All were eligible. My father wrote enthusiastically
to François. Perhaps the ladies could be sent to England and he would promise to choose
one of them to be the next Queen of England.
François' retort was typical of him. “Our ladies are not mares to be paraded for
selection,” he said.
The fact was that none of the ladies was eager for marriage. Perhaps my father
had forgotten that he was no longer the eligible bridegroom he had once been. He was
ageing. His handsome looks were no more; he had grown fat; his once-dazzling
complexion had turned purple. Since his fall he walked with a limp, and there was a
fistula on his leg which refused to heal. There were times when it was so painful that he
could not speak, and his face would grow black in his efforts to prevent himself calling
out loud. There were some who said it was an incurable ulcer, others—though only a few
bold ones said this—that it was the outward sign of some horrible disease. In addition to
all this, it was remembered what had happened to his first two wives.
He was restive and angry; he flew into rages. On one hand fate had sent him his
longed-for son and on the other it had turned life sour for him.
He wanted to be young again; he wanted to be in love, as he had been with Anne
and Jane—and perhaps in the early days with my mother.
There was a spate of killings. Anyone who spoke against the King's supremacy in
the Church was found guilty of treason. Many monks were butchered in the most
barbarous way. Hanging was not enough. They were submitted to the most horrifying of
all deaths, cut down from the gallows while they still lived, their bodies slit open and
their intestines burned before their eyes; the object being to keep them alive as long as
possible so that they might suffer the greater pain.
The more opposition there was to my father's rule, the more despotic he became.
He was reaping great wealth from the monasteries, and for some time he had had
his eyes on that shrine which was perhaps the most splendid of them all. He must have
known that to touch it would arouse great indignation, for the whole country revered
Thomas à Becket. Ever since the death of the martyr, people had brought precious jewels
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to lay on his shrine while they prayed for him to intercede for them in Heaven. My father
asked why there should be such worship for a man who had been the enemy of his king?
He did not care for traitors, and that was what Becket had been. There should be an end
to this idolatry. Becket had been a traitor. He should have been despised rather than
idolized.
Becket's bones were burned and, as the belongings of traitors were forfeit to the
King, my father took all that was in the shrine at Canterbury. He even wore Becket's ring
on his own finger as a gesture of defiance to all those who questioned his behavior.
A tremor of horror seemed to run through the country. I was sure many were
waiting for the wrath of Heaven to strike the King dead. For three years the threat of
excommunication had hung over him. Not that he took any notice of it. Now the Pope
signed the sentence. My father laughed. Who was the Bishop of Rome to tell him what to
do? Foreign bishops had nothing to do with the Church of England over which the King
was now Supreme Head.
But I think he must have been a little shaken and perhaps in his secret thoughts
had a few qualms about his bold actions. He would not fear the wrath of God. My father
always made his own peace with God, who was a part of his conscience; he would have
already given God his very good reasons for acting as he did. The Church of Rome was
corrupt. It extorted bribes. He was a religious man and would see that his subjects were
too. God could have no quarrel with him.
But there were other forces. For instance there were signs of growing friendship
between Charles and François; and what if they, with the Pope, looked for someone to
replace him?
The Tudors' hold on the throne had not existed for very long, and there were still
those who boasted of their Plantagenet blood. I knew that he often thought of Reginald,
who had done the King's cause no good from the moment he had left the country.
It was on the Poles that my father turned his anger.
The Poles were troublemakers, he said. He could not touch Reginald because he
kept out of his way, and he was the real enemy. However, there were other members of
the family, and they were within range of his displeasure.
I was horrified when I heard that Sir Geoffry Pole had been arrested and sent to
the Tower. Geoffry was the youngest of the Pole brothers and the most vulnerable. He
was accused of being in correspondence with his brother the Cardinal, and he had been
heard to make remarks in which he showed his disapproval of the King.
I was extremely anxious. My friendship with the family was well known. The
Countess of Salisbury, mother of Geoffry, had been my dearest friend. As she and my
mother had often talked of the desirability of a marriage between Reginald and myself,
she might still be hoping for it. It was strange that that ardent churchman, the Cardinal,
had kept himself in a position to marry.
I could see danger creeping close to me, ready to catch up with me. Of course my
father was anxious. There were murmurings in the Court against him. The spoliation of
the shrine of Canterbury, the dissolution of the monasteries to the great profit of the King
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and his friends, the severance from the Pope whom they had looked upon as the Vicar of
Christ all their lives… this could turn many against him.
And now the Pope had excommunicated him. Reginald Pole was circulating evil
gossip about him. He was without a wife and the ladies of France were not eager to marry
him; even though he might offer them the crown of England, they did not want it since
they had to take him with it. The pain in his leg was cruel; the wretched ulcer seemed to
get better and then would flare up again. My father was an angry man.
He gave orders that Sir Geoffry was to implicate his brothers and his friends. At
any cost this must be achieved.
As my father must have guessed, Sir Geoffry was not able to stand out against the
rigorous questioning and as a result broke down and said all that was required of him.
As a result his eldest brother, Lord Montague, and Henry Courtenay, Marquis of
Exeter, among others, were arrested and put in the Tower.
My father now had in his power the Plantagenet Poles and Courtenay whose
mother was the youngest daughter of Edward IV and therefore in the Plantagenet line. If
he could have arrested Reginald at the same time, he would have been overjoyed. As it
was, he must leave it to him to wreak his mischief abroad. But he would see that the
others did not continue to plague him.
It was tragic. There could not have been a family in the country who had been
more ready to support the King when he had first come to the throne; but they were a
devout Catholic family; they could not accept first the divorce from my mother and
secondly the break with Rome. It was revealed that they and the Marquis of Exeter had
expressed approval for what Reginald was doing abroad. They had been in
communication with him, and Montague had said there would be civil war in the country
because of outraged public opinion on what was being done; and if the King were to die
suddenly, it would be certain.
My father could never bear talk of death—and he had always considered mention
of his own treasonable.
Lord Chancellor Audley and the jury of peers knew what verdict my father
wanted and they gave it.
I was deeply distressed. My thoughts were for the Countess. What anguish she
must have suffered. Her sons on trial for their lives, and in the present climate facing
certain death.
For some reason Geoffry was pardoned. Perhaps the King was too contemptuous
of him to demand the full penalty and possibly believed that more information might be
extracted from him. But on the 9th of December Lord Montague and the Marquis of
Exeter were beheaded on Tower Hill.
They went bravely to their deaths. Geoffry was released; his wife had pointed out
that he was so ill that he was nearly dead. Poor Geoffry—his, I suppose, was the greater
tragedy. How did a man feel when he had betrayed his family and friends whom he
loved? Desperately unhappy, I know, because a few days after he was released he tried to
kill himself. He did not succeed and lived on miserably.
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All I could think of was the Countess. How I longed to see her, but I guessed that,
in view of the suspicions under which her family now lived, that would never be allowed.
Then, to my horror, I learned that the Earl of Southampton and the Bishop of Ely
had been sent to her home to question her and as a result she was taken to Southampton's
house at Cowdray and kept a prisoner there. What was my father trying to prove? It was
years since the Countess had been snatched from me, but I wondered if he were trying to
implicate me.
He was in a vicious mood. Many people were against him, and that was
something he could not endure. I heard, too, that his leg, far from improving, was
growing more painful. He had always been watchful of those of royal blood. I waited for
news in trepidation.
An attainder was passed by Parliament against Reginald and the Countess, among
others, including Montague and Exeter who were already dead. Southampton had found a
tunic in the Countess's house which had been decorated with the arms of England—the
prerogative of royalty.
She was taken to the Tower.
I could not stop thinking of her plight. I knew how bitterly cold it could be within
those stone walls when one had no comforts at all, no heat, no warm clothing; and she
must be in her late sixties. How could she endure it?
I wanted to go to my father. I wanted to ask him what harm an old lady like that
could do.
It was not so much that I feared to face his wrath but that if I attempted to plead
for her I would not only arouse his suspicions against myself but make things worse for
her. But if I could have helped her, I would have done anything. I found I did not greatly
care what became of me, but my instinct told me that to plead for her would only increase
his anger against her. He had destroyed Montague and Exeter…royal both of them.
Geoffry Pole was too weak to be a menace; Reginald, whom he regarded as the arch
conspirator, was out of reach. And, apart from that, the Countess was the last of the
Plantagenet line. But how could he really believe that she would harm him?
How precariously we all lived!
Chapuys came to see me.
“You must act with the utmost caution,” he said.
I replied that I was worried about my very dear friend who had been as a mother
to me.
He shrugged his shoulders. “The Countess will remain in the Tower, whatever
you do.”
“It is ridiculous to say that she is a traitor. She would never harm the King. She is
guilty of no crime.”
“She is guilty, Princess, of being a Plantagenet.”
I turned away impatiently.
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“Listen,” he said. “The King is fearful of revolt. Those who would take up arms
against the King look for a figurehead. He is pursuing a perilous path. I cannot believe he
fully understood what he was doing when he proclaimed himself Head of the Church of
England.”
“He is determined to remain so.”
Chapuys looked over his shoulder and whispered, “It could cost him his throne.
And little Edward is too young. A baby cannot rule a country.” He looked at me steadily.
“The King greatly fears the influence of Cardinal Pole. He has hired assassins and sent
them to Italy to kill him.”
“Oh no!” I cried. “Will this nightmare never end?”
“In time it will. Have no fear. We are aware of what is happening. The Cardinal
will take care. He believes it is his duty to live, to play his part in righting this wrong. He
always travels in disguise. None could recognize him as the Cardinal.”
“What are his plans?”
“Perhaps to gather together the foreign princes and force England back to Rome.”
“You mean war?”
“The King will never admit that he is at fault. He will never come back to Rome.
It would have to be a new king…or queen…”
I caught my breath.
Chapuys lifted his shoulders. “We can only wait. But for the state of affairs in
Europe this would have been done long ago. But … François is unreliable, and my master
has many commitments.”
“The times are dangerous.”
“It would be well, my lady Princess, if you remembered that. Lie low. Say
nothing that could have any bearing on what is going on.”
“But I am so wretchedly unhappy about the Countess.”
“Curb your grief. Remember… silence. It could be your greatest friend at this
time.”
MEANWHILE MY FATHER was becoming restive. He had been a widower far
too long and he wanted a wife. He had been very set on the beautiful Mary of Guise and
was furious when she was promised to his nephew James V of Scotland. He raged and
demanded what they thought they were doing, sending the woman to that impoverished,
barbarous land when she could have come to England?
No one said that the lady might be remembering that the King of England had had
three wives—one who was discarded and might have been poisoned; another who was
blatantly beheaded; and the third who had died in childbirth; and that he had been heard
to say when her life was in danger, “Save the child. Wives are easily found.”
Now, it seemed, not so easily.
Thomas Cromwell, always looking for political advantage, had turned his eyes to
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the German princes. They were Protestant—a point in their favor; moreover François and
the Emperor were now behaving in a friendly fashion toward each other. So …Protestant
Germany seemed to offer a possible solution.
The Duke of Cleves had recently died and his son, William, had succeeded him.
Alliance with England and the possibility of his sister Anne becoming Queen of England
would be a great honor for his little dukedom.
My father was very eager to have a young and beautiful girl for his wife. He
remained furious with Mary of Guise who was going to Scotland. It was a slight hard to
forgive, and he needed to be soothed by a bride younger and more beautiful than Mary of
Guise.
He was interested in Cromwell's schemes for the new alliance: it would give him
particular satisfaction to snap his fingers at those two old adversaries, Charles and
François; alliance with the Germans would give them some anxious qualms. He could
attain two desires at one blow—disconcert them and get a beautiful bride for himself.
But she must be young, she must be beautiful, and she must match Anne and Jane
in physical attraction and at the same time be docile, loving and adoring…everything he
would ask for in a wife.
He sent Hans Holbein to Cleves to make an accurate portrait, and when the artist
came back with an exquisite miniature, my father was entranced. The contract was signed
at Dàsseldorf and with great impatience he awaited the arrival of his bride.
Cromwell had learned his lessons from Wolsey, who had always sought to
strengthen alliances through marriages; and now Cromwell concerned himself with mine.
Perhaps he should have paused to remember poor Wolsey's humiliating end and that
some of the easiest projects to disappoint were these proposed marriages. At first he
decided that the brother of Anne of Cleves would be just right for me, but before the plan
could be put into action, he had discovered a man who, he felt, would be a more powerful
ally than William of Cleves. He would have the alliance with Cleves through the duke's
sister Anne, so why not strike out in another direction? The aim would still be among the
German princes. Philip of Bavaria was a nephew of Lewis V, the Elector Palatine, so by
this alliance we could have allies in two places instead of one.
Moreover Philip of Bavaria would be coming to England with the embassy which
was to arrive for the wedding of the King and his new wife.
For so long I had been the victim of frustration. I had reached the age of twenty-
two, which is old for a princess to remain unmarried; and when I came to think of all the
prospective bridegrooms I had had, I had come to believe that there would never be a
marriage for me.
And now…Philip of Bavaria was here and I was to meet him and, as Cromwell
was anxious to forge the bonds between our country and his, it really did seem as though
my marriage might be imminent.
I shall never forget that meeting. My heart leaped with pleasure at the sight of
him. I could hardly believe what I saw. He was tall and fair, with Nordic good looks; his
manners were easy and pleasant; he was a very attractive man.
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He took my hand and kissed it and raised his blue eyes to my face. They were
such kind blue eyes. I warmed toward him, and I felt he did toward me.
The manners of the Court of Bavaria were different from those of ours, and I was
taken by surprise when he leaned forward suddenly and kissed my lips.
I had no German and he no English, so we must speak in Latin.
He told me how great was his pleasure in beholding me, and I replied that I was
glad I pleased him.
I wondered how truthful he was. I knew I was not one of the beauties of the
Court; I was small and thin and in spite of this I was lacking in that very desirable quality
of femininity, for I had a rather deep voice. People often said that when I spoke I
reminded them of my father; but I do admit that he had a rather high voice for a man,
while mine was somewhat low for a woman.
I must regret—as I always would—that my prospective bridegroom was not
Reginald; but I was growing old, and it was long since I had seen him. My father would
never consent to
that
match, and Philip of Bavaria was an exceptionally attractive man.
I enjoyed our conversation. It was somewhat stilted, being in Latin, and very often
caused us to smile; but I was gratified and content when he told me that he was falling in
love with me.
He presented me with a diamond cross on a chain which he said I must wear for
his sake.
Such an adventure was a novelty to me, and I enjoyed it without giving a great
deal of thought to what a match with Bavaria might entail.
Chapuys came to see me. He was most disturbed about the Cleves betrothal but
far more so with the proposed marriage of myself and Philip of Bavaria.
“You will be expected to embrace the Protestant Faith,” he said.
I stared at him.
“Had that not occurred to you?” he asked in shocked tone.
What a fool I had been! I might have known nothing could go smoothly for me.
How could I expect to have the joy of a perfect marriage? I liked Philip. When I
considered the kind of bridegrooms who were presented to some princesses, I had reason
to rejoice. If only that were all. He was handsome, charming, a man whom I could like.
But, of course, he was a heretic.
Chapuys was regarding my horror with some satisfaction.
“You could never marry a heretic,” he said.
“Never,” I agreed. “And yet … my father has allowed Cromwell to arrange this
marriage.”
“My master will be greatly displeased.”
I might have pointed out that his master had done little to help in a practical way,
being always too immersed in his own political schemes. They did not seem to realize
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that I was a poor desolate young woman with little power to act in the way she wanted,
even though she might have the inclination.
“This marriage will be disastrous.”
“What of the King's?”
“The King's is not good. But you are the hope …” He did not finish but his words
made me tremble. I was the hope of the Catholic world. Mine was the task to bring this
country back to the true Faith.
How could I have been so blind as to rejoice because Philip of Bavaria was a
young and presentable man… when he was a heretic?
I could not marry him. Yet it might be that I must. I prayed. I called on my mother
in Heaven to help me. But what could I do? If my father—and Cromwell—desired this
marriage, I was powerless to prevent it.
My dream of possible happiness was fading away. I was weak. I was helpless—
and I was about to be married to a heretic. I did think about him a good deal. I had
wanted this marriage…I was tired of spinsterhood. I had dreams of converting him to the
true Faith. I encouraged that dream because I wanted to marry, and it was only with such
a project in mind that I could do so with a good conscience.
ON THE 27TH of December Anne of Cleves left Calais to sail for England.
When she landed at Deal, she was taken to Walmer Castle and, after a rest there, she
proceeded to Dover Castle where, because the weather was bitterly cold and the winds
were of gale force, she stayed for three days. Then she set out for Canterbury, where she
was met by a company of the greatest nobles in the land, including the Duke of Norfolk.
She must have been gratified by the warmth of her welcome and perhaps looked forward
with great pleasure to meeting the man who was to be her husband.
Poor Anne! When I grew to know her, I felt sorry for her; and I often pondered on
the unhappiness my father brought to all the women who were close to him.
He forgot that he was ageing, that he was no longer the romantic lover. He was
excited. Pretending to be young again, going forth to meet the lady of Holbein's miniature
and to sweep her off her feet with his passionate courtship. He had brought a gift for his
bride: the finest sables in the kingdom to be made into a muff or a tippet.
It was at Rochester where they met. Unable to curb his impatience any longer, my
father rode out to meet her cavalcade. He sent his Master of Horse, Anthony Browne, on
ahead to tell Anne that he was there and wanted to give her a New Year's present.
I wished that I had seen that first meeting. I will say this in his favor. He did not
convey to her immediately his complete and utter disappointment. He curbed his anger
and made a show of courtesy. But she must have known. She was never a fool.
I did hear that, when he left her, he gave vent to his anger. There were plenty who
heard it and were ready to report it. He was utterly shocked. The woman he saw was not
in the least like Holbein's miniature, he complained. Where was that rose-tinted skin?
Hers was pitted with smallpox scars. She was big, and he did not like big women. She
was supposed to be twenty-four, but she looked more like thirty. Her features were
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heavy, and she was without that alluring femininity which so appealed to his nature.
He did not stay long with her. It would have been too much to keep up the
pretense of welcome when all the time he wanted to shout out his disappointment.
Lord Russell, who witnessed the scene, said he had never seen anyone so
astonished and abashed. As soon as he left her, his face turned purple with rage and he
mumbled that he had never seen a lady so unlike what had been represented to him. “I see
nothing… nothing of what has been shown to me in her picture. I am ashamed that I have
been so deceived and I love her not.”
He could not bring himself to give her the sables personally but, as he had
mentioned a New Year's gift, he sent Sir Anthony Browne to give them to her.
Meanwhile he raged against all those who had deceived him. She was ugly; her
very talk grated on his ears. He would never speak Dutch—and she had no English. They
had brought him a great Flanders mare.
I wondered what she thought of him. His manners might have been courtly
enough during that brief meeting; his voice was musical, though of a high pitch. But he
was now overweight, lame and ageing; though he still had a certain charm; and he would
always retain that aura of royal dignity.
It is well known now how my father tried to extricate himself, how he sought to
prove that Anne had a pre-contract with the Duke of Lorraine and was therefore not free
to marry.
Nothing could be proved. Anne swore that there had been no precontract. Glaring
at Cromwell as though he would like to kill him, the King said, “Is there none other
remedy that I must needs, against my will, put my neck in this yoke?”
A few days after Anne's arrival, my father invested Philip of Bavaria with the
Order of the Garter. It was a moving ceremony, and Philip looked very handsome and
dignified. I was proud of him. People commented on his good looks and his reputation
for bravery. I was learning more about him. He was called “Philip the Warlike” because
he had defended his country some years before against the Turk and scored a great
victory. And…I was liking him more every day.
There were many opportunities of meeting him, and Margaret Bryan said I was
fortunate. It was not many royal princesses who had the blessing to fall in love with their
husband before their marriage.
Margaret was now looking after Edward and, as she had Elizabeth with her, she
was happy. Moreover, my position had improved so considerably that she no longer felt
the anxieties she once had with her charges.
How I wished that the Countess could be with me! I should have loved to visit her
in the Tower and take some comforts to her, but that of course was out of the question. I
could not get news of her, much as I tried. She was constantly in my thoughts though.
Young Edward's household was at this time at Havering-atte-Bower. He was quite
a serious little boy, already showing an interest in books. He adored Elizabeth, who was
so different from himself. Full of vitality, she was so merry and constantly dancing; she
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was imperious and demanded Edward's attention, which he gave willingly.
“You should see his little face light up when his sister comes in,” said Margaret
fondly.
I did see what she meant. There was that quality about Elizabeth.
I was happy to be part of this family, scattered as it was, and living, as I often
thought, on the edge of disaster. Neither Elizabeth nor I knew when we would be in or
out of favor.
The New Year was a pleasant one, apart from those recurring memories of the
Countess and a slight apprehension about my prospective bridegroom and his heresy…
though I had to admit that, so charming was he, I was lulling myself into an acceptance of
that. I would convert him to the true Faith, I promised myself, which helped me indulge
in daydreams of what marriage with him would be like.
I enjoyed being with the family that Christmas and New Year.
Elizabeth was always short of clothes, and Margaret was in a state of resentment
about this; she was constantly asking for garments for her and grew very angry when
there was no response. So, for a New Year's gift, I gave the child a yellow satin kirtle. It
had been rather costly but I was glad I had not stinted in any way when I saw how
delighted she was. I have never known anyone express her feelings so openly as
Elizabeth did. Her joy was spontaneous. She held the kirtle up to her small body and
danced round the room with it. Edward watched her and clapped his hands; and Margaret
fell into a chair laughing.
For Edward I had a crimson satin coat, embroidered with gold thread and pearls.
He was just past two at this time and a rather solemn child, completely overpowered by
Elizabeth. Elizabeth declared the coat was magnificent. She made him put it on and,
taking his hands, danced with him round the chamber.
Margaret watched with some apprehension. Everyone was perpetually worried
that Edward might exert himself too much. If he had a slight cold they were all in a panic.
They feared the King's wrath if anything should happen to this precious child.
Elizabeth was very interested to hear about the new Queen.
“I want to meet her,” she said. “She is, after all, my stepmother, is she not? I
should meet her.”
I often wondered how much she knew. She was only a child—not seven years old
yet; but there was something very mature beneath the gaiety— watchful almost. She was
certainly no ordinary six-year-old.
When I was alone with Margaret, she told me that Elizabeth had begged her to ask
her father's permission to see the new Queen. The King had replied that the Queen was so
different from her own mother that she ought not to wish to see her; but she might write
to Her Majesty.
And had she done this? I asked Margaret.
“She never misses an opportunity. I have the letter here but I have not sent it yet. I
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suppose it is all right to send it as she has the King's permission; but I should like you to
see it and consider that it is the work of a child not yet seven years old.”
She produced the letter.
“Madam,” Elizabeth had written, “I am struggling between two contending
wishes—one, my impatient desire to see Your Majesty, the other that of rendering the
obedience I owe to the King, my father, which prevents me from leaving my house until
he has given me permission to do so. But I hope that I shall shortly be able to gratify both
these desires. In the meantime, I entreat Your Majesty to permit me to show, by this
billet, the zeal with which I devote my respect to you as my Queen, and my entire
obedience to you as my mother. I am too young and too feeble to have power to do more
than felicitate you with all my heart in this commencement of your marriage. I hope that
Your Majesty will have as much good will for me as I have zeal for your service…”
It was hard to believe that one so young could have written such a letter.
“Surely someone helped her,” I said.
“No…no…it is not so. She would be too impatient. She thinks she knows best.”
I marvelled with Lady Bryan but she told me that she had ceased to be surprised
at Elizabeth's cleverness.
Later, when they did meet, Anne was completely charmed. I daresay she had been
eager to meet the six-year-old writer of that letter. Her affection for the child was
immediate, and she told me that if the Princess Elizabeth had been her daughter, it would
have given her greater happiness than being Queen. Of course, being Queen brought her
little happiness, but she did mean that she had a very special feeling for Elizabeth, and as
soon as she was acknowledged as my father's wife she had the girl seated opposite her at
table and accompanying her at all the entertainments.
It was decreed that I should spend some time with her. I was to talk to her in
English and try to instruct her in that language. I should acquaint her with our customs.
This I did and came to know her very well; I grew fond of her and, during that time when
she was wondering what would become of her, because it was quite clear that she did not
please the King, having suffered myself, I could sympathize with her.
I was wondering whether my father would actually marry her. But there was no
way out. It had been proved that Anne had entered into no contract with any man and
therefore was perfectly free. My father's three previous wives were all dead. There was
no impediment.
My father must have been the most reluctant bridegroom in the world. He said to
Cromwell just before the ceremony, “My lord, if it were not to satisfy the world and my
realm, I would not do what I have to do this day for any earthly thing.”
Words which boded no good to Cromwell, who had been responsible for getting
him into this situation—nor to his poor Queen, who was the victim of it.
I was present at the wedding. My father looked splendid in his satin coat, puffed
and embroidered and with its clasp of enormous diamonds; and he had a jeweled collar
about his neck. But even the jewels could not distract from his gloomy countenance.
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Anne was equally splendid in cloth of gold embroidered with pearls; her long
flaxen hair was loose about her shoulders.
And so the marriage was celebrated.
There was feasting afterward. I soon learned that the marriage had not been
consummated. It was common knowledge, for the King made no secret of it. In his own
words, he had no heart for it, and he was already looking for means of ridding himself of
Anne.
Because I was close to her at that time, I knew of her anxieties. The King was no
longer trying to hide the revulsion she aroused in him. She was quite different from all
his other wives. She was not learned like my mother; she was not witty and clever like
Anne; she was not pretty and docile like Jane.
I sensed the speculation in the air. What did he do with wives when he wanted to
be rid of them? Would he dare submit her to the axe? On what pretext? He was adept at
finding reasons for his actions. Was her brother, the Duke of Cleves, powerful enough to
protect her? Hardly, when the Emperor Charles had not been able to save his aunt.
I knew what it felt like to live under the threat of the axe. I myself had done so for
a number of years. We were none of us safe in these times.
When we sat together over our needlework, she would ask me questions about the
King's previous wives. I talked to her a little about my mother, and it was amazing to me
that there could be such sympathy between us, because she was a Lutheran; yet this made
little difference to our friendship.
I think she was most interested in my mother and Anne Boleyn—the two
discarded wives. Jane had not reigned long enough for her to meet disaster; and she had
been the only one to produce a son. I knew what was in her mind. The King wanted to be
rid of her, and we had examples of what he did with unwanted wives.
At times there was a placidity about her, as though she were prepared for some
fearful fate and would accept it stoically; at others I glimpsed terror.
There was something else I noticed. It was at table. There was a young girl
there—very pretty, with laughing eyes and a certain provocative way with her, and the
King often had his eyes on her.
I asked one of the women who she was.
“She's the old Duchess of Norfolk's granddaughter, Catharine Howard.”
“She is very attractive.”
“Yes…in a way,” said the other.
I thought if she was related to the Howards she must be a connection of Anne
Boleyn. There was something about these Howard women.
I put the matter out of my mind. After all, the King had always had an eye for a
certain type of woman.
I did not realize then how great was my father's passion for this girl. She was
small, young and childlike—very pretty in a sensuous way, with doe-like eyes and
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masses of curly hair. There was a look of expectancy about her, a certain promise, which
I understood later when I learned something of what her life had been.
As for Anne of Cleves, she had none of that quality about her at all; she was
pleasant-looking; she was tall, of course, and perhaps a little ungainly; her features were a
trifle heavy, but her eyes were a beautiful brown, and I thought her flaxen hair charming.
However, my father would have none of her, and his growing passion for
Catharine Howard made him determined to be rid of her.
They were uneasy days. Philip had gone back to Bavaria after taking a loving
farewell and telling me we should soon be together. I was sorry to see him go. I had liked
to have him near me. I had had so little of that attention he bestowed on me, and it made
me feel attractive and desirable like other women; and as one day I planned to convert
him back to the true Faith, I was able to still my conscience about his religious views.
Cromwell was created Earl of Essex in April. I wondered why, for my father was
blaming him more and more for his marriage.
Politics were changing, too. Chapuys told me with some amusement that my
father's interest in the German princes was waning, and he was veering now toward the
Emperor. My cousin was a man of whom my father was afraid more than of anyone
else—and with good reason, too. Charles was proving himself to be the most astute
monarch in Europe; his power was increasing, and it was not good to be on bad terms
with him. My mother being dead meant that there was no great reason for contention
between them. I was being treated with a certain respect, so there was no quarrel on that
score. Of course, the Emperor would not approve of my betrothal to Philip of Bavaria any
more than he had liked the alliance with Cleves, but my father did not like it either—so
he and the Emperor were in agreement about that.
Who had forged the German alliance? Cromwell. Who had brought the King a
bride he disliked? The same.
The King had never liked Cromwell, and, like Wolsey's, Cromwell's swift rise
from humble origins had angered many at Court; moreover, Cromwell's enemies were as
numerous as those who had helped Wolsey to his fall.
There were two things my father ardently desired: to rid himself first of all of his
wife, and secondly of Cromwell And those who looked for favors would help him to
attain both those ends.
The alliance with the petty German princes had been a mistake; and Cromwell
had made that mistake. He had, it was said, received bribes; he had given out
commissions without the King's knowledge; he had trafficked in heretical books. There
was rumor that he had considered marrying me and setting himself up as king, an idea
which shocked me considerably, even though I did not, for one moment, believe it.
He was tried, and as all those present knew what verdict the King wanted, they
gave it.
I was horrified. Whatever else Cromwell had done, he had worked well for the
King. It appalled me that he could have come to this. I knew that Cromwell's vital
mistake was to have arranged the marriage with Anne of Cleves. But was it his fault that
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her physical appearance did not please the King?
I felt sorry for the man…to have risen so high and to fall so low. There was only
one to say a good word for him and that was Cranmer. Cranmer, though, was not a bold
man. He asked the King for leniency but was abruptly told to be silent, and immediately
he obeyed.
Cromwell languished in prison, not knowing whether he would be beheaded or
burned at the stake. He did implore the King to have mercy, but my father was intent on
one thing, and that was to bring his marriage to Anne of Cleves to an end.
Norfolk was sent to visit Cromwell in the Tower, and there Cromwell revealed to
him the content of several conversations he had had with the King disclosing intimate
details of the latter's relationship with Anne of Cleves which made it clear that the
marriage had not been consummated.
As a result it was declared null and void.
I was with Anne at Richmond when the deputation arrived. She went to the
window and saw Norfolk at the head of it. She turned very pale.
“They have come for me,” she said. “They have come as they came for Anne
Boleyn.”
I stood beside her, watching the deputation disembark at the stairs and come
toward the palace.
“You should leave me,” she said.
I took her hand and pressed it firmly. “I will stay with you,” I told her.
“No, no. It is better not. They would not allow it … Better to leave me.”
I knew her thoughts. She was seeing herself walking out to Tower Green as her
namesake had gone before her. She must have thought during the last months of this
possibility, and she had considered it with a certain calm, but when it was close…
seeming almost inevitable, she felt, I believe, that she was looking death straight in the
face.
I could see that my presence distracted her. So I kissed her gently and left.
I learned that when the deputation was presented to her, she fainted.
THEY HAD GONE.
I went to her apartments. I had already heard of the faint and was surprised when
she greeted me with exuberance.
“I am thanking God,” she said.
“But you were ill…”
“I am well now. I am no longer the Queen.”
I stared at her, as she began to laugh.
“I …” she spluttered. “I am the King's sister!”
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I could see that she needed to recover from the shock she had suffered when the
deputation had arrived, for she had been sure they had come to conduct her to the Tower.
But no… they had come to tell her that she was no longer the King's wife. In future she
would be known as his sister.
“How can this be?” I asked.
“With the King,” she said, still hovering between laughter and tears, “they do
anything he wishes. I was his queen and now he has made me his sister. How can that be?
you ask me. It can be because he says it is so.”
“And you…you are safe.”
She gripped my hands, and I knew how great her fear had been.
“I am no longer the King's wife,” she said soberly. “And that is something to be
very happy about. Ah, I must be careful. They would call that treason. But you will not
betray me, dear Mary.”
“Be calm, Anne,” I said. “You have been so wonderfully calm till now.”
“It is the relief,” she replied. “I did not know how much I wanted to live. Think of
it! I am free. I do not have to try to please him. I wear what I like. I am myself. I am his
sister. He is no longer my husband. Can you imagine what that is like?”
“Yes,” I told her. “I believe I can.”
“That poor woman… think of her…in her prison in the Tower, waiting for the
summons… waiting for death… she was Anne…as I am. I know what it is like.”
“I understand, too.”
“Then you rejoice with me.”
“I rejoice,” I told her.
“I am to have a residence of my own and £3,000 a year. Think of that.”
“And he has agreed to this?”
“Yes…yes…to be rid of me. If only he knew how I longed for him to be rid of
me. Three thousand a year to live my own life. Oh, I am drunk on happiness. He is no
longer my husband. There is a condition. I am not to leave England.” She laughed loudly.
“Well if I tell you the truth, my dear Mary, it is that I do not want to leave England.”
“Shall you be content to stay here always?”
“I think so.”
“He does not want you to go out of England for fear you marry some foreign
prince who will say you are Queen of England and have a right to the throne.”
She laughed again. “I am happy here. I have my little family … my sweet
Elizabeth and you, dear Mary. To be a mother to you, Elizabeth and the little boy… that
is to me greater happiness than to be a queen.”
I never saw a woman so content to be rid of a husband as Anne of Cleves was.
My father was at first delighted by her mild acceptance of her state, but later he began to
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feel a little piqued at her enjoyment of her new role. How-ever, by this time he was so
enamored of Catharine Howard that he could not give much thought to Anne of Cleves.
The alliance with the German princes was at an end; and that meant that there was
no question of a betrothal to Philip of Bavaria.
THE YEAR 1540 was a terrible one for death. My father was filled with rage
against those who defied him. He was probably worried now and then about the enormity
of what he had done; it was not only that he had denied the Pope's supremacy and set
himself up in his place in England; he had suppressed the monasteries and taken their
wealth. His rule became more despotic and those about him obeyed without question,
anticipated his desires and did everything possible to avoid offending him. But it was
different with the people; and when those men who called themselves holy had the
effrontery to deny him and to suggest that he was not the head of his own country's
Church, his rage overflowed.
He wanted vengeance and would have it. Respected men were submitted to
humiliating and barbarous torture on the scaffold, men who, the people knew, had led
blameless lives, like Robert Barnes the divine and Thomas Abell, were submitted to this
horrible death with many others.
I thought of these things and shuddered. My father had indeed changed. Where
was the merry monarch now? He was irritable, and the pain in his leg sometimes sent him
into maddened rages.
When I heard that Dr. Featherstone had been treated in the same manner, I was
deeply distressed and I was glad that my mother was not alive, for she would have been
very distressed if she knew what was happening to her old chaplain. He had taught me
when I was a child, and I could well remember his quiet kindliness and his pleasure when
I learned my lessons. I could not bear to think of such a man being submitted to that
torture. And all because he had refused to take the Oath of Supremacy. How I admired
those brave men, and how I deplored the fact that it was my father who murdered them.
People were burned at the stake in such numbers that in the streets of London one
could not escape from the smell of martyrs' flesh and the sight of martyrs' bodies hanging
in chains to feed the carrion crows.
Rebellion was at the heart of it. My father had broken with Rome but that did not
mean he was no longer a Catholic. The old religion remained; the only difference was
that he was head of the Church instead of the Pope. He wanted no Lutheran doctrines
introduced into England. People must watch their steps … particularly those in
vulnerable positions. I was one of those.
Cromwell lost his head on the very day my father married Catharine Howard; that
changed him for a while. How he doted on the child…she was little more. They looked
incongruous side by side—this ageing man with the purple complexion and the bloodshot
eyes, fleshy and irascible, biting his lips till the blood came when the fistula in his leg
pained him. And she … that dainty little creature with her wide-eyed innocence which
seemed somehow knowledgeable, with her curls springing and feet dancing, a child in
her teens… and yet not a child, a creature of overwhelming allure for an ageing,
disappointed man.
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But he was disappointed no longer; he was rejuvenated; he had regained
something of his old physical energy: he was dotingly, besottedly in love.
I felt sickened by it. I remembered his treatment of my mother and Anne of
Cleves; to those two worthy women he had behaved with the utmost cruelty, and yet,
here he was, like a young lover, unable to take his eyes from this pretty, frivolous little
creature whose doe's eyes had secrets behind them.
A horrifying incident happened that year. I shall never forget my feelings when I
heard. Susan, whom, happily, I had been able to keep with me, came to me one day. I
guessed she had something terrible to tell me and was hesitating as to whether it would be
better to do so or keep me in the dark.
I prevailed on her to tell me. I think I knew beforehand whom it must concern
because she looked so tragic.
“My lady,” she said when I insisted, “you must prepare yourself for a shock.” She
looked at me with great compassion.
I stared at her, and then my lips formed the words, “The…Countess… what of the
Countess?”
She was silent. I tried to calm myself.
She said, “It had to come. It is a wonder it did not come before.”
“Tell me,” I begged.
“She is dead…is she not?” “She had been suffering all these months in the Tower.
She was wretched there. It is best for her. Cold, miserable, lacking comfort.
Heartbroken… grieving for her sons…”
“If only I could have gone to her.”
Susan shook her head. “There was nothing you could have done.”
“Only pray for her,” I said.
“And that you did.”
“I always mentioned her in my prayers. Why… why? What had she done? She
was innocent of treason.”
“That insurrection of Sir John Neville… such things upset the King.”
“I know. He wants the people to love him.”
“Love must be earned,” said Susan quietly.
I went on, “But there have been so many deaths…so much slaughter… fearful,
dreadful deaths. And the Countess… what had she done?”
“She was a Plantagenet…”
I covered my face with my hands as though to shut out the sight of her. I could
see her clearly, walking out of her cell to East Smithfield Green, which is just within the
Tower precincts.
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“She was very brave, I know,” I said.
“She did not die easily,” Susan told me.
“I would I had been with her.”
“You would never have borne it.”
“And she died with great courage. She… who had done no harm to any. She who
had had the misfortune to be born royal.”
“Hush,” said Susan. “People listen at times like this.”
“Times like these, Susan. Terrible … wicked times. Did she mention me?”
“She was thinking of you at the end. You were as a daughter to her.”
“She wanted me to be her daughter in truth…through Reginald.”
“Hush, my lady,” said Susan again, glancing over her shoulder.
I wanted to cry out: I care not. Let them take me. Let them try
me
for treason.
They have come near enough to it before now.
“She did mention you. She asked all those watching to pray for the King and
Queen, Prince Edward … and she wanted her god-daughter, the Princess Mary, to be
specially commended.”
“So she was thinking of me right to the end.”
“You can be sure of it.”
“How did my dear Countess die?”
Susan was silent.
“Please tell me,” I begged. “I want to hear of it from you. I shall learn of it later.”
“The block was too low, and the executioner was unaccustomed to wielding the
axe.”
“Oh … no!”
“Do not grieve. It is over now, but several blows were needed before the final
one.”
“Oh, my beloved Countess. She was my second mother, the one who shared my
sorrows and my little triumphs during those early years. Always she had been there,
comforting me, wise and kind…”
I could not bear the thought of her dear body being slaughtered by a man who did
not know how to wield an axe.
All through the years I had not seen her I had promised myself that we should
meet one day.
The realization that we never should again on Earth filled me with great sorrow
and a dreadful foreboding. How close to death we all were.
MY FATHER WAS in a merry mood those days. He was delighted with his fifth
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wife. He watched her every movement, and he did not like her to be out of his sight. He
took a great delight in her merry chatter. I thought she was rather silly.
When I remembered my father's turning from my mother, from Anne of Cleves,
even from Anne Boleyn, I marvelled. All of them were endowed with qualities which this
silly little girl completely lacked. Yet it was on her that his doting eyes turned again and
again.
Queen of England she might be, but I could not treat her with respect. To me she
was just a frivolous girl. It could only have been her youth which appealed to him. He
was fifty and she was about seventeen; and he was desperately trying to share in the
radiant youth which was hers.
I was five years older than she was. I wonder now why it was that I disliked her
so much. She was mild enough, and I daresay if I had shown some affection she would
have returned it. She was stupid; her education had been neglected, although she was the
daughter of Sir Edmund Howard, a younger son of the Duke of Norfolk. He had been the
hero of Flodden Field but his services to his country had never been recognized and
consequently he was desperately poor. There were ten children and it was a strain on his
resources to care for such a large family and he was constantly trying to elude his
creditors. He was, therefore, glad to send young Catharine off to her grandmother to be
brought up in that rather disreputable household—which was what set her on the road to
disaster.
But that was to come. At this time, there she was… the uneducated little girl who
had suddenly found herself the King's petted consort, his little Queen.
It was not that she gave herself airs. She certainly did not. She was just
overwhelmed by all that had happened to her. She behaved like a child but she was quite
experienced in certain ways of the world, as was to be revealed. I realized—only, I must
admit, later, when I knew something of her past— that she was a girl of lusty sexual
appetites and even if her good sense—of which she had very little—had warned her that
she must not act in a certain way, she would have been unable to resist doing so.
I suppose she was just the girl to appeal to the jaded senses of an ageing man who
had been bitterly disillusioned in his hopes of a beautiful bride.
I was surprised that she was aware of my dislike. I should have thought she was
not intelligent enough to sense it. It was not a habit of hers to complain, but she did about
my attitude to her, so she must have felt it deeply.
My father was annoyed that I had offended his little darling.
He said of me, “It is those women about her. She has too many of those
whispering cronies. There is too much chatter in those apartments…too much brooding
on this and that and rights and wrongs. She shall be taught a lesson.”
The lesson was to rob me of two of my women.
I was angry. I was fond of the women about me, and ours was a very happy
household. I needed all the friends I could get. Fortunately Susan remained with some
others of my closest comrades, but I did miss those two who were sent away.
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I was about to protest when Chapuys came to see me.
“You must patch up this quarrel with the Queen,” he said.
“That stupid little creature!”
He laughed. “She pleases the King.” He gave a little smirk. “They say he has
never been so pleased since he set eyes on the girl's cousin all those years ago. There
must be a similarity to Anne Boleyn there.”
“Anne Boleyn was a clever woman,” I said. “This one is a fool.”
“None the less, one must beware of fools if they have power.”
“This one has power?”
“Through her devoted lover, of course. You are not entirely out of favor with the
Court. Don't forget. You are next… after Edward.”
“Edward is so young.”
Chapuys looked at me slyly. “Who can say?” he murmured. “However, there
must be no further estrangement between you and your father, and there will be if you
continue to offend the Queen.”
“I did not think to offend her.”
“Yet you have shown disrespect for her in some way.”
“She is so silly.”
“Silly to you, but delectable to His Majesty, and it is His Majesty who has the
power over us, remember. Find some means of making up the quarrel. The breach
between you must not widen.”
I saw his point. There was always sound thinking behind Chapuys' words.
It was not difficult. When I was next in her presence, I admired her gown. She
flashed her smile at me. She was really very pretty, and she had been so unused to having
beautiful clothes that she was childishly delighted with her wardrobe. I admired her
beautiful curls.
A few days after I had spoken to her, I made some progress. I learned that, while
the Countess was in the Tower, Catharine had sent some clothes to her; and because his
wife had wished it so ardently, the King had allowed her to do this.
I think that helped matters a great deal between us.
I mentioned to her that I knew she had done this, and I wanted to thank her for it.
“I heard that she was to die,” she said, “and it seemed terrible in that cold place. I
hate the cold. It was cold in my grandmother's house in winter… and we were so poor, I
hadn't any warm clothes… and I thought of the poor Countess…”
I said with feeling, “It was so good of you. I wanted to thank you for what you
did…”
She gave me her dazzling smile.
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“I sent her a nightgown of worsted, furred and lined… and I sent her some hose
and shoes.”
“It was so kind…so very kind…”
“You loved her dearly,” said the Queen softly.
I nodded, too moved for words.
“She took the place of your mother. I had my grandmother… but she never took
much notice of me.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” I said.
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you did for the Countess.”
It was the first time I had brought myself to call her “Your Majesty.” There were
tears in her eyes; she was easily moved. I could not really like her or feel close to her as I
had to Jane and Anne, but I knew she was goodhearted and generous, and if she was a
little stupid, it was not for me to be annoyed because she had wormed her way into my
father's affections.
After my speaking to her of the Countess, we were on better terms and I felt my
relationship with her should no longer cause Chapuys any anxiety.
The King might be in a state of euphoria now that he had found the perfect wife,
but the country was still in turmoil. It was when Sir John Neville had headed a revolt in
the North that my father had decided that the Countess must die. The country was now
more or less split into two. There were those who wanted to cling to Rome and those who
saw the advantage of a break; there were those for the King and those against him. But
the issue was not as clear cut as that. The Protestant Church had begun to grow, and there
were some in England who were ready to embrace it. The King was not one of these. The
break with Rome did not mean a break with the old religion; all the King wanted was to
give the Church in England a new head. That was all he sought. It was due to the rival
factions that the King had his great power, for neither was big enough to overcome the
other, and the King stood apart from them and yet remained the great despotic ruler. It
seemed strange that there had been two living Queens, Katharine and Anne; and now we
were left with two different queens with similar names. There would be many people in
the country who believed that, since the King had gone through a ceremony of marriage
with Anne of Cleves, his marriage with Catharine Howard was no true marriage—just as
in the days when my mother was alive, some had believed he could not be married to
Anne Boleyn.
The tangle of his matrimonial affairs would be discussed for many a year, and I
suspected there would always be different opinions. He was aware of this, and it irritated
him… just as did the conflict in his realm which had in so many ways resulted from his
involvement with his wives.
My father was infuriated by rebellion. He wanted his people to love him and
when they showed signs of not doing so, he was more hurt than alarmed.
The John Neville rebellion had enraged him. He uttered threats against Reginald
Pole—that devilish mischief-maker, as he called him—roaming the Continent stirring up
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trouble. He gnashed his teeth because he could not lay his hands on him and do to him
what he had done to other members of his family.
He decided to go to Yorkshire to settle matters for himself. The Council he left in
London to take care of affairs was well chosen—Cranmer, Audley and one of Jane
Seymour's brothers—all men who accepted the King's supremacy in the Church and
enemies of Rome.
Seymour had gained a good deal of power; not only was he the brother of the
King's late wife—the only one not to be discarded—but also the uncle of Edward, the
future King. I think the Howards were casting suspicious eyes on the Seymours, as
undoubtedly the Seymours were on the Howards. The Howards were at the moment in
the ascendancy, having just provided the delectable Catharine for the King's pleasure.
Chapuys had said we must be watchful of the growing power of the Seymours and
the Howards.
Everywhere on his travels the King was received with acclaim. How much of it
was genuine, I did not know. The people had seen so many dead men hanging in chains;
they had caught a whiff of the smell of burning flesh. They would be careful how they
acted toward this powerful monarch.
Meanwhile my father became more and more enamored of his Queen. He was an
uxorious, adoring husband; she soothed him and pleased him in every way. If only his
people would stop being contentious, he remarked, he could be a very contented man.
It is strange how one does not recognize important events when they occur. The
Court was at Pontefract Castle when Catharine admitted a new secretary into her
household. This was a goodlooking young man of rather dashing appearance. His name
was Francis Dereham.
Poor Catharine! She would have been quite unaware of the storms which were
blowing up around her. She would know nothing of the intrigues which were
commonplace in the life of the Court. She was the adored Queen of an ageing King; she
would not have believed that any harm could come to her.
She did not know that there were men watching the King's besotted attitude
toward her; she did not know that the Catholic Howards were rubbing their hands with
glee; she did not guess that the ambitious Protestant Seymour brothers were furiously
noticing the King's devotion to the Howard Queen. The Seymours had risen from
obscurity because their sister had married the King; now it was the turn of the Norfolk
Howards.
It could not go on.
By the time the Court returned to Windsor, the plot was in progress. From
Windsor the Court went to Hampton Court, and it was there that the storm broke.
I joined my brother's household at Sion, where Elizabeth was also. It was ironic
but the day we arrived—it was the 30th of October, I remember—the King and Queen
went to church to receive the sacrament, and my father made a declaration in the church.
There were many to hear it, and it expressed his utter contentment with the Queen.
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“I render, O Lord, thanks to Thee,” he announced in ringing tones at the altar,
“that after so many strange accidents that have befallen my marriages, Thou has been
pleased to give me a wife so entirely conformed to my inclination as her that I have
now.”
How many wives had received such public acclamation of their virtues? She stood
beside him, smiling with pleasure, acting in just the way he wished her to. He was a man
of some intellect, a man of foresight, and of all the clever women who surrounded him it
was this nonentity who pleased him!
Of course, he had always been one to deceive himself. Therein lay his weakness.
He had a conscience but that conscience worked according to his will, so he was
completely in control of it. He saw everything in the light of what good it could bring to
Henry Tudor. And this little girl who said “Yes, my lord,” “Yes, my lord,” all the time,
who titillated his ageing senses and aroused in him the desire of a young man pleased him
because he drew on her dazzling youth and felt young again.
How deeply he must have felt about her for, having made that public declaration
at the altar, he asked the Bishop of Lincoln to prepare a public ceremony. It would be a
thanksgiving to Almighty God for having at last blessed him with a loving, dutiful and
virtuous wife.
Fate is ironic. It was the very next day when the blow was delivered.
Susan told me about it.
“The King was in the chapel, my lady. The Queen was not with him. It may be
that that was why Cranmer chose that moment. He handed a paper to the King and
begged him to read it when he was alone.”
“Why? What was in this paper?”
“They say that it is accusing the Queen of lewd behavior before her marriage.”
I was astounded, yet I suddenly realized what it was about her that I had noticed.
It was wrapped up in the fascination she had for the King. Of course, she was pretty—but
so were others; there was something more than that about Mistress Catharine Howard.
She was lusty, and lustiness such as she had, accompanied by fresh, youthful, dainty
prettiness was irresistible. Before anything was proved, I guessed the accusations against
her were true.
“What do they say?” I asked.
“That she had lovers.”
“They will never prove it. The King won't believe it.”
“The King, they say, is very unhappy.”
“Then if he does not want to believe it, he will not.”
“It may not be as easy as that. There are strong men surrounding him…
determined men.”
“So you think it is a matter of politics?”
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“Is that not generally the case?”
I had to agree.
We waited for news. These cunning men had collected evidence against her. They
could produce her lovers; they had an account of what her life had been like in the
household of the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. There were young people… all sleeping
together in one large room, living intimately. The Dowager Duchess herself was too old
or too lazy to care what was happening to her wayward granddaughter. A girl like
Catharine Howard, brought up in such a household, could hardly be expected to emerge
as an innocent maiden.
I had not liked her and I had thought my father had demeaned himself by doting
on her so blatantly. Perhaps I was angry because he had treated my own mother so
shamefully, humiliating a great princess of Spain and becoming so foolishly enslaved by
this ill-bred little girl. But when I heard the state the poor child was in and how she had
taken the news, I felt an overwhelming pity for her.
She had almost gone into a frenzy. She had seen the axe hanging over her head. It
was what all my father's wives must have felt when they offended him. The ghost of
Anne Boleyn would haunt them all as long as they lived.
And this one was really only a child, in spite of her knowledge of the needs of
men. She would not know how to defend herself. She would only think of what had
happened to her own beautiful, clever cousin who had found herself in a position similar
to that which now confronted her. The difference might be that Anne Boleyn had been
innocent; but was Catharine Howard? On the other hand, the King had wished to be rid of
Anne that he might marry Jane Seymour. He certainly did not wish to be rid of Catharine
Howard.
The shadow of the axe would hang over every bride of my father's from the day
of her wedding. Catharine must have felt secure in his love—so petted, so pampered, she
was the pretty little thing who knew so well how to please. Had it never occurred to him
that she might have learned her tricks through practice?
They told me about her, how she had babbled in her anguish, how she had worked
herself up to a frenzy and to such an extent that they feared for her sanity.
How could she help it? Poor girl, she was so young, so full of life. She enjoyed
life to such an extent that she could not bear the thought of having it snatched from her.
She believed, naturally, that if she could speak to the King, if she could cajole
him, if she could, by her presence, remind him of the happiness she had brought him and
still could…he would save her. He would cherish her still. But the wicked men would not
allow her to see him. They would keep them apart because they knew that, if she could
but speak to him for a moment, this nightmare for her would be over.
They said that when she heard he was in the Hampton Court chapel she ran along
the gallery calling his name. But they stopped her before she reached him. They dragged
her back to her chamber and set guards on her so that the King should not be aware of her
terrible distress. They must have believed, as she did, that if he saw her, he would forgive
her.
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Susan and I discussed the matter. I suppose everyone was discussing it. We
learned many things about the life Catharine Howard had lived before the King set eyes
on her and made her his Queen. We heard details of the establishment of the Dowager
Duchess of Norfolk, of the young people who had been under her care… only there was
no care.
It was a sordid little story. I could picture it all… the long dormitory, those high-
spirited young people. For a girl of Catharine's temperament there would be temptations,
and she was not a girl to resist them. Therein lay her great attraction. There would have
been many to enjoy what had so pleased the King.
I remembered that she had taken Francis Dereham into her household at
Pontefract. What a little fool she was to do so. She was foolish not to see the danger
which would have been obvious to a more worldly person. Her knowledge of sexual
adventuring might be great but she had no understanding of human nature. It would never
occur to her that, for some to see the little Catharine Howard—the poor girl who had
scarcely been able to clothe herself—now reveling in the silks and satins which she
loved, would arouse great envy, and envy is a most destructive passion.
It all came out… the flirtations with Manox, the musician, the familiarities she
allowed Francis Dereham, who wanted to marry her and claimed her as his wife. It had
been as though they were married. And she, as Queen, had brought this man, the lover of
her humbler self, into her household!
How easy it must have been to build up evidence against her!
There was one other case which was even more damning. Her cousin, Thomas
Culpepper, was in the King's household, and many had noticed the soft looks which had
passed between him and the Queen. It was soon discovered that there had been interviews
between them when they had been alone in a room together.
Lady Rochford's name was mentioned as one who had helped arrange the
meetings with Culpepper and to make sure that the pair were not disturbed during them.
I had never liked Lady Rochford. The fact was that I had never liked anyone
connected with the Boleyn family overmuch. I had seen Anne Boleyn as the one who had
killed my mother. I was not sure that she had plotted to poison her, but I felt she had
killed her all the same; but for Anne Boleyn, my father would have remained married to
my mother, and I believe she would have been alive still.
Lady Rochford had been the wife of George Boleyn, and it was she who had
given credence to the story that he and Anne were lovers. I had never believed that, much
as I hated them, and I had always wondered how a wife could give such evidence against
her own husband. And now she was accused of helping to further an intrigue between the
Queen and Thomas Culpepper. I believed that such a mischievous and unprincipled
woman could do just that.
I wished I could go to my father and comfort him. Of course, I could never have
done so.
I wondered how deep his affection went and whether it would be strong enough to
save her. She had pleased him so much. He had recently given thanks to God for
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providing him with a wife whom he could love. Surely he would not want to lose her,
merely because she had had a lover—or two… or three—before her marriage to him? I
sometimes felt an anger against men who, far from chaste themselves, expect absolute
purity in their wives. If Catharine had not had some experience before her marriage, how
could she have been the mistress of those arts which seemed to please him so much?
I wondered what he would do. I did not talk of this to Susan. I feared I would be
too frank about him. He was my father and he was the King. I thought about him a great
deal. I had seen him in his moods, when he was preoccupied with his conscience. I had
judged him in my mind but I could not do that before others. So I said nothing of these
intimate matters.
Susan said one day, “They have arrested Dereham.”
So, I thought, it has started. He will not save her. His pride will have been too
hurt. He did not love her more than his own pride.
“On what charge?” I asked.
“Piracy,” she replied.
“He was involved in that in Ireland where he had gone to make his fortune, some
say, that he might come back and marry Catharine Howard.”
I nodded. I knew what would happen. They would question him, and he would be
persuaded to answer them. Persuaded? In what way? How strong was he? I had thought
him a dashing fellow—but one can never tell who can stand up against the rack.
We heard later that he confessed that, when they were together in the Duchess's
household, the Queen had promised to marry him. They had thought of themselves as
husband and wife, and others had considered them as such; they had exchanged love-
tokens. They had lived together in the Duchess's household as husband and wife.
They tried to force him to admit that when he returned and was taken into the
Queen's household the relationship between them had been that which they had enjoyed
in the Duchess's. This he stoutly denied. There had never been the slightest intimacy
between him and Catharine since her marriage to the King.
We heard that the King shut himself in his apartments, that he had burst into tears,
that he had raged against fate for ruining his marriage. There was great speculation.
Would the King waive her early misdemeanors and take her back?
Even I, who knew him so well, was unsure of what he would do. I wished that I
could have seen him, talked to him. I could imagine his tortured mind. He wanted to
believe her innocent and on the other hand he wished to know the worst.
I think he might have relented. He could usually be relied on to adjust what he
considered right with what he wanted; and he wanted Catharine Howard. There was no
doubt of that. I think he would have taken her back if it had not been for Culpepper.
It is not easy for people in high places to act and no one know what they are
doing. Catharine had received Culpepper in her chamber, and Lady Rochford had helped
her arrange the meetings.
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It was all coming out. There were men like Thomas Wriothesley who were
determined to ruin the Queen and make reconciliation with the King impossible.
How I hated that man! There was cruelty in him. He sought all the time to bring
advantage to himself, and he cared not how he came by it.
All those connected with the early life of Catharine Howard were now in the
Tower—even the poor Duchess of Norfolk, sick and ailing, and a very frightened old
woman.
My father must have tortured himself. He could not believe that his dear little
Queen, his “rose without a thorn,” could possibly have had a lover when she was his
wife. That was something he found it hard to forgive. That was the charge he had brought
against Anne Boleyn, but I think he never believed it. It was treason for a Queen to take a
lover, for it meant that a bastard could be foisted on the nation. And the thought of that
charming, passionate little creature going off to her lover… perhaps laughing at the King
because he was no longer so young and lusty as Master Culpepper…was more than my
father could bear.
He summoned Cranmer. “Go to the Queen,” he said. “Tell her that if she will
acknowledge her transgression … even though her life might be forfeit to the law, I
would extend to her my most gracious mercy.”
I understood his feelings. He had to know … though he did not want to.
Poor Catharine! I heard that when his message came to her she was almost out of
her mind with fear. She was so terrified that the fate which her cousin had suffered would
be hers. She was too distraught to speak; words would not come. Cranmer believed that if
he questioned her she would go into a frenzy, so he said he would leave her with the
King's gracious promise and when she had composed herself he would come back and
hear her confession.
It was some time before she was ready to do that. Every time she was approached
she was ready to fall into what they called a frenzy. They feared she was losing her
senses. But in the end she was ready to talk.
She did admit that she had believed at one time that she was going to marry
Francis Dereham. They had kissed many times.
She broke down and it was impossible to get any more information from her;
when they attempted to, she became frenzied and was overcome with such terrible
weeping that they feared she would do herself an injury.
Culpepper was the son of her uncle, and they had known each other since they
were children; they had always been very friendly.
There were those who were ready to give evidence against her. They wanted to
prove that she had been guilty of adultery. She had been reckless, indiscreet, there was no
doubt of that.
A certain Katharine Tilney of her household told how she and another maid had
wondered why the Queen sent strange, enigmatic messages to Lady Rochford and why
sometimes they were dismissed before the Queen had retired. They reported secret
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whisperings with Lady Rochford and the fact that sometimes the Queen would not retire
until two of the morning. Thomas Culpepper was seen in her apartments and Lady
Rochford kept watch.
It was all very incriminating.
There was a hush over Sion House. Elizabeth, who was now nearly nine years
old, was very concerned about what was happening. Could she be remembering how
similar was the fate of this Queen to that of her mother? She had only been three years
old when Anne Boleyn had been beheaded, but she had always been ahead of her years.
Edward was aware, too. He was always susceptible to Elizabeth's moods. There
was a puzzled look on his face.
Elizabeth sought me out when I was alone and asked me what was happening to
the Queen.
I said, “She is in the Tower.”
“What are they going to do to her?”
“I don't know.”
“Will they kill her as they did…?” I looked at her steadily. She blinked and went
on, “As they did my mother?”
It was rarely that I heard her speak of her mother. What happened to Anne Boleyn
was something she kept to herself and brooded on. Not even Margaret Bryan knew how
she felt about her mother. Whether she remembered her and mourned her, I do not know.
It was always difficult to tell with Elizabeth. Anne Boleyn was not a person who could be
easily forgotten, and she was Elizabeth's mother.
“I like her,” she said.
“She is a sort of cousin to me.”
“Yes, I know.”
“She is very pretty.”
I nodded.
“My father loved her dearly.” She frowned.
“Why does he no longer do so? And what will happen to her now?”
I could only fall back on those often-repeated words: “We shall have to wait and
see.”
Edward came in. “What are you talking about?” he asked.
“The Queen,” Elizabeth replied.
“Why don't we see her now? She is in disgrace, is she not?”
“She is in prison,” Elizabeth told him.
“In the Tower.”
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“In the Tower. That is for wicked people.”
“The King puts his wives there when he doesn't like them any more,” said
Elizabeth, and she turned away abruptly and ran from the room. I think she was going to
cry and did not want us to see her do so.
I thought: She does remember her mother. Perhaps also she was crying for
Catharine. Elizabeth was resolute and strong and she had already come to terms with an
uncertain existence such as we all must who relied on the favor of the King.
THEY WERE BRINGING CATHARINE to Sion House, and we had orders to
move. We were going to Havering-atte-Bower. I was sad. I should have liked to be near
the Queen. So would Elizabeth. We might have comforted her a little.
How sordid this was! How dreary! Why did they pursue it? It was clear that
Catharine had behaved freely with certain men. They were tortured, but Dereham would
admit only that he had loved Catharine as his wife because he had once regarded her as
such. Was that a sin, for there was no question then of her marrying the King? He was a
brave man, this Dereham; they tortured him cruelly and tried to make him admit that
there had been impropriety between him and the Queen since her marriage, but he would
not do so.
Catharine had denied any sexual involvement at first but after a while she broke
down and confessed to it.
I know my father was suffering in his way. There was no proof that she had
committed adultery in the case of Culpepper. I daresay she had flirted a little with him. It
was in her nature to flirt with men—particularly those who admired her—and most did.
I went on wondering whether the King's obsession with her would override his
pride. I think it might have done—and if it did, men like Sir Thomas Wriothesley and
perhaps Cranmer would find themselves out of favor.
They had seen what happened to Thomas Cromwell over Anne of Cleves. He had
died, it would seem, more because he had provided the King with a bride he did not like
than for the foreign policy he had pursued with the German princes and the charges
which had been brought against him.
So there were powerful men who would find a reconciliation an embarrassment to
themselves, and they made sure that the story of Catharine's misdemeanors was circulated
abroad. François, King of France, forever mischievous, wrote his condolences to his
brother of England. That was the deciding factor. My father could not take back a wife
who had humiliated him, however much he wanted her.
I wished that I could have gone to her. Elizabeth did, too. The child was deeply
upset. She had been fond of Jane Seymour; she was even closer to Anne of Cleves; and
now Catharine Howard was to die.
She became very thoughtful. I guessed she was thinking of the precarious lives we
all led.
How brave they were, those two men. Neither Dereham nor Culpepper would
implicate Catharine; and surely what had happened before her marriage could not be
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construed as treason. But the verdict had already been decided. Norfolk turned against his
kinswoman just as he had against Anne Boleyn. He had wanted to make the most of the
advantages which came from their being in favor, but as soon as they lost that favor he
became their most bitter enemy. I despised such men—just as I had Thomas Boleyn for
meekly presiding at the baptism of Edward. Self-seekers, all. They had no feeling, no
heart. They made me despair of human nature.
That December Dereham and Culpepper were condemned to death. The court
judged them traitors. The sentence was to be carried out with that barbarous method of
execution which had been seen too frequently in these last years.
How did they feel when they—surely for no crime which could have been proved
against them—were condemned to die? How did the Queen feel…if she knew? Poor girl.
They said she was in such a state that she was hardly aware of what was happening about
her.
Culpepper was of noble birth, and therefore the horrendous sentence would be
commuted to beheading. So he, poor man, was merely to lose his head for a crime he had
not committed. It was different with Dereham, whose birth did not entitle him to such a
privilege. He must suffer the dreadful fate of hanging, drawing and quartering.
He petitioned against it, and the petition was taken to my father. He must have
been enraged at the thought of someone's enjoying Catharine's charms before him. He
should have known that she was not the girl to have come through her early life without
some amatory adventures. If he had wanted an entirely chaste woman, he should have
stayed with Anne of Cleves. He wanted everything to be perfect, and if it were not, those
who denied it to him must pay with their lives.
So at Tyburn the terrible sentence was carried out on Dereham. He died protesting
his innocence, as did Culpepper, who was beheaded at the same time.
The heads of both men were placed on London Bridge—a terrible warning to
those who offended the King. People might ask how Dereham could possibly have
known he was offending the King. Was no man to love a woman or to speak of marriage
to her… for fear the King might fancy her?
Perhaps people were asking themselves a good many questions during those
terrible times.
IT WAS A MISERABLE Christmas. I was glad I was not at Court. I could not
imagine how my father could celebrate it. It would be a mockery. Catharine was still at
Sion House. I wondered if she still thought the King would pardon her. The uncertainty
must be terrible. I expect she had been fond of Dereham once; I believe she still was of
Culpepper; and she would know that these two had died because of her. Doubtless she
would have heard how they stood up to torture and had tried to defend her to the end.
February came—a dreary, desolate month. There was mist over the land until the
cold, biting winds drove it away. They brought the Queen from Sion House to the Tower.
I guessed that meant her death was inevitable.
I heard she was a little calmer now. She seemed to have accepted the fact that she
was to die. Lady Rochford was in the Tower, condemned with her. She was accused of
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contriving meetings between Catharine and Culpepper; she was therefore guilty of
treason.
I kept thinking of Catharine's youth. Such a short time she had been on Earth, and
she had been such a merry creature, relishing life in the Duchess's household, reveling in
that sexuality which pleased the men. And then the King's devotion, which, they said, she
believed to the end would save her.
Susan and I talked of her. We could think of nothing else. I supposed the whole
nation was talking of her. She would be the second of my father's wives to be beheaded—
but that had not yet become commonplace.
It was the thirteenth day of February when she was taken out to die. Young, so
pretty, her crime being that she had been too free with her favors before the ill-fated
choice had fallen on her.
At Havering we heard that she had died with dignity. When she knew there was
no hope and that the King, who had professed his love for her, was going to leave her to
her fate, she accepted it meekly.
What seemed to worry her more than anything was that she might not know what
she had to do on the scaffold, and she asked for a block, which would be exactly like the
one on which she would have to lay her head, to be brought to her so that she might
practice on it. She did not want to stumble on the day of her death. This was done. Later
she went out bravely, and before she died she declared that she would rather have been
the wife of Thomas Culpepper than a queen.
Lady Rochford died with her. I felt no compassion for that woman. In spite of my
hatred for the Boleyn clan, I could not believe in the incest between Anne and her
brother, and I thought how depraved she must be to have accused them.
Her last words were reputed to be that she deserved to die for her false accusation
of her husband and sister-in-law and not for anything she had done against the King; for
she was guiltless of that.
So perished the King's fifth wife, Catharine Howard, on that same spot where his
second, Anne Boleyn, had died before her.
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THE KING CAME TO VISIT US AT HAVERING—OR PERHAPS not to visit
us especially, but it happened to be on the route he was taking to somewhere else.
Edward was always uneasy when the King was under the same roof as he was.
“I am not the son he wants,” he told me, his pale face anxious, his blue eyes a
little strained, as Margaret said, from too much reading.
I told him he was wrong. “You are everything he wants,” I assured him.
“Elizabeth and I…we are only girls and a great disappointment to him. You are the son
for whom he has longed for many years. Of course you are what he wants.”
“He would like someone big like himself.”
“You have a long way to grow as yet.”
“He said when he was my age he was twice as big as I am.”
“Big people are not always the best.”
“But they can ride and hunt without getting tired.”
I studied him carefully. He was a delicate child; his attendants had always fussed
over him, terrified that something would happen and they be blamed for it.
“I would like to be able to dance and jump and run like Elizabeth,” he said.
“Oh, there is only one Elizabeth.”
He laughed. He agreed with me. He was completely in her thrall.
When the King arrived, we all had to make our respectful bows and curtsies, and
when he looked at his son, I could see he did not like the boy's pale looks; he tried to stop
himself looking at Elizabeth but she had a way of pushing herself forward, even in the
royal presence, and at times I saw him giving her a furtive glance. She looked more than
a little like him. If he would have allowed himself, he could have been very pleased with
her. She was the one among us most like him.
To my surprise, shortly after his arrival he sent for me, and when I entered his
presence I found that he was alone.
“Come and sit beside me, daughter,” he said.
I was amazed at such condescension and obeyed with some apprehension.
He saw this, and it seemed to please him. “There, there,” he said. “Do not be
afraid. I wish to talk to you. You are no longer a child… far from it.”
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“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“How long is it since you were born?”
“Twenty-six years, Your Majesty.”
“And no husband! Well, these have been tragic times for me. I have been
disappointed in my wives… though Jane was a good wife to me. It would seem that there
is some curse upon me. Why has God seen fit to punish
me
thus?”
I felt myself growing stiff with anger, as I always did when anyone said a word
against my mother. I wanted to shout at him: You had the best wife in the world and you
cast her off for Anne Boleyn.
I think he sensed my feelings and, as he was favoring me at the moment and
meant to continue to do so, he was mildly placating.
“I was under the spell of witchcraft,” he said. “I was bewitched.”
I did not answer. His eyes had grown glazed. He was seeing her, I imagined, the
black-eyed witch with all her enchantments, seducing him … turning him from a virtuous
wife and the Church of Rome. It was necessary to see her thus now. It was the only
excuse for murder.
“And Jane,” he went on. “She died…”
“Giving Your Majesty your son,” I reminded him.
“How is the boy? Does he seem weak to you, Mary?”
“He is not strong like Elizabeth, but Lady Bryan says that delicate children often
become stronger as they grow older.”
“
I
did not have to grow out of weakness.”
“Your Majesty cannot expect another to have your strength and blooming health,
not even your own son.”
“I do expect it, daughter, and methinks I do not expect too much… only what is
due to me. I am too trusting. You see how I am treated. I believed that girl was sweet and
innocent…”
I thought: Then you can have had little experience of women. It was strange to be
with him like this—answering in asides remarks which I dared not say aloud.
He made a self-pitying gesture, and I tried to look sympathetic, but I kept seeing
that poor child running along the gallery at Hampton Court. I kept thinking of her terror
as she realized that the axe which was poised above her head was about to fall on her as
the executioner's sword from France had on her cousin—his second wife.
“Daughter,” he was saying, “I want you to be beside me. I have no Queen now. I
need someone beside me … someone who can play the Queen. We will have a banquet
and a ball. We will set aside our gloom. We must, for the sake of our subjects. They like
not this sadness. The people must be amused. So …you will come to Court. You will be
beside me.”
He was beaming at me, expecting me to express my joy.
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I was uncertain of my feelings. I was finding life dull and monotonous. I wanted
to be at Court. I wanted to know what was happening, to
see
events at first hand, not
learn of them through hearsay.
And here was a chance.
Yet to be near the King was dangerous. Well, I had lived with danger for most of
my life.
He was looking at me steadily.
“I see the idea pleases you,” he said.
He leaned over and patted my hand in a fatherly gesture.
Not since I was a very little girl had he shown me such affection.
MY POSITION HAD CHANGED. I was now in high favor. The King would
have me beside him. He made it clear that he recognized me as his daughter.
The loss of Catharine Howard had had its effect on him. He looked much older;
even he could no longer deceive himself that he was a young man. His legs were swollen
and very painful; his appetite had not diminished, and now that he had less exercise he
was beginning to grow very fat. His glinting eyes and his petulant mouth often seemed
almost to disappear in the folds of flesh about them. He was melancholy and irascible.
People feared him more than ever. I was amazed at his gentle attitude toward me. His
health was clearly not good. That running sore on his leg was an outward sign of the state
of his body; for some time he had tried to conceal it, but now it was impossible.
Naturally there were spies about the Court whose intention was to report
everything that happened, and it was soon known throughout Europe that the King was
not in good health, that Edward was frail—and at that only five years old; and it would
seem significant that my father had brought me to Court and was treating me with more
affection than he had shown toward me since he had decided to discard my mother.
It was not long before King François of France was putting out feelers. His son
Charles of Orleans was in need of a bride, and there was none he would welcome as he
would the Lady Mary.
I was not very pleased. I had almost become reconciled to being a spinster, to
living on the fringe of the Court; after all, there was a great deal to be said for a certain
obscurity. One did not have to suffer those alarms every time trouble with which one
could be connected sprang up somewhere.
I had settled into a routine, where I could read, write to my friends, occasionally
receive them, walk a good deal—I was fond of fresh air, be with my ladies in the
evenings by the fire or perhaps, in summer, sit out of doors with dear old Jane the Fool to
enliven the hours. It might be a little dull and unadventurous but it was not without its
pleasure, and peace of mind was something to treasure when one had had little of it.
How should I know what would be waiting for me at the French Court?
Moreover, Chapuys would be against it. If there was to be a union—and I could not have
Reginald; that seemed impossible now for he was getting quite old—I would have liked it
to bring me closer to the Emperor.
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In fact, I found the whole matter rather distasteful, particularly when I discovered
that French spies had been questioning my bedchamber women. It was well known that
throughout my life I had had bouts of severe illness, and these spies asked delicate and
embarrassing questions. They wanted to assure themselves that I was capable of bearing
children. They would be considering the many miscarriages my mother had had; my
father's children— apart from Elizabeth—were not strong. The Duke of Richmond had
died young; Edward was fragile, and I was plagued with illness from time to time. Did
that mean that I might not be capable of bearing children?
How serious the negotiations were, I am not sure. The political situation on the
Continent was never stable for long; friends became enemies overnight, and that had its
effect on proposed marriages. It might have been that it was never intended that there
should be a marriage.
The fact that there was a great deal of squabbling over the dowry suggested to
me—now experienced in these matters after so many proposals which had come to
nothing—that the proposed marriage was a gesture to give the Emperor some
apprehension, as the last thing he would want would be an alliance between France and
England. My father offered a dowry of 200,000 crowns and François demanded 250,000.
Charles of Orleans was only a second son, it was pointed out; I do not know what the
response was, but it might have been that the doubts of my legitimacy were referred to.
As the haggling went on, I guessed nothing would come of it, but I was in a state
of uncertainty. I had so wanted to marry happily and most of all to have children. I
thought this must be the greatest joy on Earth. How wonderful to have a child who would
be to me as I had been to my mother! The longing for such a life was with me always
I think it was due to this uncertainty—another proposed marriage which was to
end in nothing—that made me ill. There were some doctors who thought my illnesses
were due not so much to an affliction of the body as one of the mind. Not that I was in
any way unbalanced; but I was often melancholy; and I had suffered so much in my
youth, living as I had on the edge of death, that it had affected my health. I was different
from my sister Elizabeth. She, too, was in a precarious position, but she seemed to thrive
on it. But she was not in such danger as I was, for throughout the country I was seen as
the figurehead for those people who wished to deny the King's supremacy in the Church
and to lead them back to Rome.
I was very ill this time. Every time I lifted my head from the pillow, I suffered
such dizziness that I could not leave my bed. My head ached and I was seized with
trembling fits.
I believe those about me thought I would die.
My father visited me. He was most concerned.
“You must get well,” he said. “You shall come to Court. You shall take the place
beside me which the Queen would have. You shall be my right hand.”
I smiled wanly. I was too tired and listless to care whether he favored me or not.
He sent Dr. Butts to attend to me—a sign of his favor; Dr. Butts was the only one
who seemed to understand my illness and with his care I began to recover.
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Susan told me that he thought that if I were happily married and had children I
should cease to be tormented by these bouts of illness.
“The Lady Mary has nothing wrong with her body,” he told her. “If she could live
in peace and ease…live naturally…I would be ready to wager that she would gradually
cast off these periodic bouts of illness.”
He appeared to know how to treat me, and the very presence of Dr. Butts in the
household had an effect on me.
My health was improving.
The King came to see me and said I must come to Court as soon as possible,
where I could be sure of a welcome.
I always seemed to recover quickly after my illnesses, and I took a week or so to
get completely well—taking walks, playing the virginals, chatting with my ladies and
laughing at Jane the Fool.
Then I was ready to return to Court.
My father had been right when he said I should be welcomed. As I rode into the
city with my household, the people came into the streets to cheer me. They had always
been my friends. I did wonder whether the attention I was receiving now was partly to
placate them. But as, recently, he had often acted in a manner to make himself unpopular,
perhaps it was not that. It might be that he really did feel the need to have his family
about him and wanted to have a happy relationship with his daughter.
The cheers of the people were always music in my ears.
It was Christmas, which was being celebrated at Hampton Court.
My father himself took me to the apartments which had been specially prepared
for me and my ladies. They were splendid.
There was a happy smile on his face as he watched me examine them; he looked
almost young, so delighted was he in my pleasure.
“You shall take the place of a queen,” he said. “I need a queen to be beside me.”
Ominous words, but they passed over my head at that time. I thought it was just
his way of welcoming me.
I was courted now and treated with the utmost respect by those who had
previously thought me unworthy of notice. It amused me; but it pleased me also.
I felt better than I had for a long time. I wanted to be at Court; I wanted to see at
first hand what was happening. There was something extremely exciting in it, and I began
to think that Dr. Butts might well be right that my illness grew out of melancholy and
boredom.
My father never did anything half heartedly. His affection for me, which hitherto
had not seemed to exist, now overflowed. There were jewels for me; fine clothes were
sent for me to choose from. He expressed his delight to see me looking better. He treated
me more like a mistress than a daughter. I think perhaps he did not know how to be a
father.
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In any case, I was delighted.
Chapuys was rubbing his hands with glee. Then I understood. We were once more
in conflict with the French, and my father was seeking the friendship of the Emperor.
Nothing would please my cousin more than to see me brought back into favor. He
would be well aware of my father's state of health and the frailty of Edward. The outcome
seemed obvious. My dream did not now seem impossible, and it might well be that I was
destined to bring England back to Rome. I must not betray for one moment that this was
in my mind. It would be treason in the extreme; but one cannot help one's thoughts; and
the need for friendship with the Emperor did explain to some extent my sudden rise to
favor.
My father had cast off his gloom. He seemed better. He was at the center of the
revels. He could not dance as he once did, but no one called attention to this; everyone
behaved as though he were the handsome King he had once been—standing head and
shoulders above all other men; it had never been difficult to deceive him in matters like
that.
He was happy. He was keeping his enemies and friends on the Continent guessing
which way he would turn—secretly jeering at François who had haggled over 50,000
crowns. Perhaps he wished he had not been so parsimonious now! The King of England
would not have wanted to go to war with the family into which his daughter had married;
and now war seemed imminent and the King of England stood with the Emperor.
I was still the tool of their political schemes; but on the other hand my father did
seem fond of me.
He talked to me now and then, and there was real affection between us. My father
had acted in a manner which had seemed very shocking to me; his actions had been
responsible for my mother's sufferings; yet such was his nature that I could forget that
while I was with him, and be happy because he seemed fond of me. He had great charm
when he cared to exert it; I had seen the effect he had on people, and I think it was not
entirely due to his power and that aura of royalty. It was something in his personality. My
sister Elizabeth had inherited it, and I sometimes saw it in her.
He said, “I am happy now, daughter, that all is well between us. We have been the
victims of evil influences… both of us. They have contrived to keep us apart. But now,
praise God, right has prevailed.”
It was yet another facet of his personality that I almost believed him when I
listened to him. I suppose I
wanted
to shut my eyes to the truth which should have been
clear enough and to accept the verdict which was his alone. It was no use reasoning with
such a man. He saw only one viewpoint—that which was made to fit his ideal of himself
in order to keep that conscience of his in the chains he had forged for it to keep it in
restraint.
He said to me one day, “Methinks I owe it to my people to marry again.”
I was alarmed. So he was contemplating taking another wife.
He nodded regretfully. “It is a duty, you know, daughter. A king should have
many sons. I have Edward … and I have my good daughter…” He patted my knee
190
affectionately, “… but I should give my people more sons.”
I could see that the cosy period was over. There would be another woman led to
the sacrificial altar. I could tremble for her. Who would be brave enough to be the next?
“I am no longer young, Mary,” he went on. “This leg… this devil of a leg…you
have no idea what I suffer.”
“I have, Your Majesty,” I replied. “And I am deeply sorry for the pain it causes
you.”
He pressed my knee again. “I know, I know. It is a trial. I need a good woman…”
I was silent, fearing to speak lest I chose the wrong words.
“I need someone who will not plague me … someone not too young …” Thinking
no doubt of that fresh, sensuous face of the girl who had been no coy virgin and had
doubtless pleased him because of that for which she had been taken away from him—
though I never believed that it was his will that she had been. Left to himself, he would
have found some means to reinstate her, but her enemies had been astute enough to get
the story circulated abroad. He could not have endured to think of François laughing at
the poor old cuckolded King of England. “Yes,” he went on, “a mature woman … of
good looks … experienced of life. No doll … a woman of some intellect… tender and
loving…to be a comfort to me.”
“Where could such a woman be found, Your Majesty?”
“Ah, there you speak wisely. And mayhap I shall never find her.”
I guessed then that it would not be long before we had a new Queen.
THE NEWS CIRCULATED round the Court. The King was looking for a wife.
This time, it was whispered, he would not have some foreign bride who was sent to him
to strengthen a treaty, someone he had never seen before. He would choose her himself
and by so doing make sure that he was not plagued further in his mature years.
I went to visit Anne. She was deeply disturbed.
“My brother is hoping that the King will take me back,” she said.
I stared at her. Could that be possible? In spite of the King's original revulsion for
her, she was quite a good-looking woman. She no longer wore the hideous Dutch
fashions which she had arrived in, and in our softer clothes she was almost handsome.
Moreover the peaceful life she had been living agreed with her.
The King visited her now and then. He had made her his dear sister, and since she
had ceased to be his wife he had grown quite fond of her.
Yes, I thought, she has reason to be afraid.
“I could not bear it,” she said to me. “I like so much my life here. I have my
home…my income…my friends. I see Edward, and he is glad to see me… and my dear
Elizabeth. To be with her makes me happy. I am not denied their company. I see you, my
dear Mary. You are my friend. I have this family I have inherited. I do not want to go
back to Cleves. I want to go on living here in my nice house with my nice servants… and
my dear family close. I want no change.”
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“Do you really think he might want to take you back as his wife?”
She looked alarmed and then, as though she were trying to convince herself, she
said, “No … he did not like me when I came…Surely he cannot have changed. But I do
know he likes to talk to me. He respects my views. He is fond of his dear sister. There is
just a fear …” She put her hand to her heart. “A little fear in here. But I could not bear it,
Mary. Sooner or later…”
She put her hand to her throat.
“I understand,” I said. “Oh, my dear Anne, I hope it never comes to that.”
“Sometimes I wake in the night. I think they have come for me. I am not sure
what I dreamed. Have they come to take me to the Palace or to the Tower? I think of that
young girl… who followed me. I remember how enamored he was of her… and yet that
did not save her.”
I said, “I cannot believe he will want to take you back. Not after all that has gone
before.”
“But my brother wishes it.”
“Anne, try not to think of it. I am certain it will not come to that.”
“No,” she said slowly. “He did not like me when I came. He did not like me at all.
He could not want me like that…now.”
“I am sure that is so,” I reassured her.
But I could well understand her terror; and it would be so with any woman he
chose to be his wife.
IT SEEMED TO ME that my father expected his ideal woman to emerge from all
the banquets and balls which were now taking place at Court.
I noticed him watching and assessing them. It was interesting to see that any
woman who caught his eye on her would seek to efface herself. One thing was certain: no
woman at Court—or in any foreign Court—was eager to become the King's sixth wife.
I marvelled that he was not aware of this. It did not seem to occur to him that the
fact that he had beheaded two wives would be held against him. Those two wives, he
would have told himself, had been traitors, and death was the penalty for that crime.
Anne of Cleves had been honorably treated. As he was not pleased with her as a wife, he
had made her his sister. My mother…well, that was a matter between him and his Maker.
It was no fault of his that he had made a marriage which was no marriage and he had had
to set her aside—reluctantly, he would assure himself.
I congratulated myself that I was outside the range of his choice, but I could well
understand the apprehension of those within it.
I had made the acquaintance of Lady Latimer; she had had two elderly husbands
and was now a widow. She was good-looking in a rather unspectacular way, wealthy,
kindly and of an intellectual turn of mind. Her conversation was rather erudite, and it was
a pleasure to join in discussions with her.
She was the daughter of Sir Thomas Parr who had at one time been Comptroller
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of my father's household. I never knew him. He had died a year after I was born, leaving
a son and two daughters, one of whom was Katharine.
Katharine had married Lord Borough of Gainsborough when she was little more
than a child. I do not know what difference there was in their ages, but I did know that
Lord Borough's son's wife was fourteen years older than Katharine, so I should imagine
she was quite a little girl.
On the death of Lord Borough, she was given to another old man. This was John
Neville, Lord Latimer, who had taken part in the Pilgrimage of Grace. After his original
foray into danger, from which he was lucky enough to emerge with his head still on his
shoulders, Katharine, who was always wise and far-seeing, had persuaded him to have
nothing to do with rebellion and to keep himself clear of trouble.
He had recently died, and there was Katharine, about thirty years of age, good-
looking, clever and wealthy. She was her own mistress now. She had been the wife of
two old husbands; if she wished to marry again, the choice should be hers.
I thought I knew on whom her choice would fall. I had noticed the looks which
passed between her and Thomas Seymour. He was a dashing figure at Court—a great
favorite of the King. He was just the type to appeal: flamboyant, adventurous, good-
looking—and of course he was the King's brother-in-law and uncle of young Edward
who adored him. He was the little boy's favorite uncle. He was about four years older
than Katharine—a man in his prime—overambitious, I should say, like his brother
Edward. It was these two brothers who had determined that their sister Jane should be
Queen of England. Jane would never have done it on her own. Naturally the Seymours
had received great favors since the marriage of their sister. The Duke of Norfolk had tried
to ally himself with them through marriage, but Norfolk's son, Thomas, Earl of Surrey,
had been so opposed to an alliance between the two families that the matter had been
dropped.
Now it seemed that Seymour had his eyes on Lady Latimer, and she was more
than willing to encourage him.
Then, to my horror—and certainly to hers, I noticed that the King's eyes rested on
her often.
I heard him say one day, “Come and sit beside me, Lady Latimer. I overheard
your discussions on Erasmus. I should like to hear your views on the Dutch scholar. You
must tell me what you think of
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