The Nine Days' Queen, Lady Jane Grey, and Her Times. Richard Davey
of Hertford, who in due time, as wife of the Protector, was to be Duchess of Somerset and Katherine Parr’s arch-enemy; Lady Denny,30 wife of Sir Andrew Denny, Privy Councillor to Henry VIII; the Lady Fitzwilliam,31 wife of Sir William Fitzwilliam, and acknowledged to be one of the ablest women of her time; and the Lady Tyrwhitt,32 who came very near martyrdom for her heretical opinions, in the last year of Henry’s life. The Countess of Sussex,33 second wife of Henry Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex, was likewise one of Lady Latimer’s intimes. This lady’s alleged familiarity with the black art eventually led to her being charged with witchcraft, in 1552, and imprisoned in the Tower, from which durance she was delivered six months later by order of the Duke of Northumberland. The Marchioness of Dorset may also have assisted at Lady Latimer’s religious exercises, which, although noticed by her contemporaries as matters of general knowledge, seem to have temporarily escaped the unpleasant attention of King Henry’s chief heretic-hunters. The Lady Frances was certainly on the most friendly terms with Lady Latimer, and so too was Princess Mary.
Another guest there was at the Charterhouse who probably came when the house was quiet, the voices of the preachers hushed, and the great ladies returned to their respective domiciles. This was Sir Thomas Seymour, the late Queen Jane’s second brother, who was considered the Adonis of the Court. Lady Latimer seems to have been deeply enamoured of his good looks and stalwart figure; but it is not unlikely that it was her rich dower, rather than herself, that tempted Sir Thomas. Be this as it may, the intimacy which began about this period, paved the way to the tragic close of the handsome courtier’s chequered career. Seymour appears to have proposed to the widow three months after Lord Latimer’s death, and she seems to have rejected him “pleasantly,” saying “some one higher than he had asked her to be his wife.” For all that, Sir Thomas had certainly made a deep impression on her heart, a fact all the more remarkable since he was in every way the opposite to herself: she was learned and sedate—he was gay and profligate; the lady loved rich but sober attire—the gentleman blazed with brilliant satins and silks and cloth of gold and silver, setting his brother courtiers the fashion as to the wearing of their jewels and the number of feathers they should sport in their caps. Still, the advantage of the alliance was obvious, for though not a rich man, he was a great favourite with the King, his potent brother-in-law, and further, he was the second member of the rising house of Seymour, which many predicted—in the event of any accident happening to His Majesty, whose health was fast declining—would at once assume a preponderating position at his successor’s Court.
But although Lady Latimer must have been acquainted with every detail of the conspiracy organised by the Seymours against the house of Howard, of which the first fruit was the revelation of the unfortunate Queen Katherine Howard’s misconduct, she does not seem to have hesitated for a moment in her determination to become Queen of England, even at the sacrifice of her passion for Thomas Seymour, which, all-absorbing as it was, never diverted her from the two great objects of her ambition: her own political influence, and the ultimate advancement of the Reformation. She cannot be described as a Protestant, for in her time that word was not yet coined. During her second husband’s lifetime she must have concealed her “advanced views,” and when she became Queen she was—outwardly at least—a schismatic, who attended as many as three and four Masses daily. Henry VIII rarely heard less than three, and sometimes as many as five Masses every day, and what is more, obliged every official of his Court and household, high and low, to do the same. How she first attracted his attention has never transpired; but as a great Court lady she must have been in frequent and immediate relations with the sovereign. The first mention of her personal dealings with King Henry is connected with trouble in the Throckmorton family. Owing to some dispute over their respective country seats, Coughton Court and Oursley, which were contiguous to one another, her maternal aunt’s husband, Sir George Throckmorton, had incurred Cromwell’s ill-will. Cromwell, with a view to ruining his opponent, went so far as to accuse him of conspiring against the King’s supremacy in ecclesiastical matters. According to an MS. ballad still preserved in the Throckmorton archives, Lady Latimer interceded with His Majesty for her uncle, and obtained full justice for him. At the same time she contrived the overthrow of Cromwell, whose title of Essex was eventually conferred upon her brother, Sir William Parr, who married Anne Bourchier, only daughter of the last Earl of Essex of the original branch.
The divorce—based on the futile plea that the King did not find Anne of Cleves physically attractive34—which followed six months after Henry VIII’s pompous marriage with that lady was accepted by the philosophical Dutchwoman in a spirit that proved her practical sense to be stronger than her sentiment. A noble mansion in the country, a dower of £4000 a year, and precedence over all the great ladies of the Court, the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth excepted, struck her as more desirable than an anxious and uncertain struggle to retain the crown matrimonial which, under somewhat similar circumstances, had proved so sorry a possession to Queen Katherine of Aragon. None the less, the Reformers took Anne’s humiliation—she was a Lutheran princess—in much the same spirit as that which possessed the Catholics at the time of the momentous divorce of Queen Katherine. The accommodating “daughter of Cleves,” as she now styled herself, continued to receive friendly visits from the King even in the halcyon days of his brief matrimonial alliance with Katherine Howard, and shortly after that wretched woman’s execution an influential party appears to have been bent, in Reformation interests, on reconciling King Henry with his repudiated spouse. Anne herself seems to have been not at all averse to the scheme; and Marillac, the French Ambassador, who favoured it, found her on one occasion quite hopeful—“in the best of spirits,” and “thinking only of amusing herself and of her fine clothes.” But when the matter of a reunion between the King and his discarded wife was formally proposed to Cranmer by the Duke of Cleves’ Ambassador, it met with a flat refusal. The Archbishop knew the good-natured lady’s character too well to doubt that she was never likely to influence the King or be of the least use in furthering the Reformers’ interests. In the meantime, Parliament had urged Henry, for his “comfort’s sake,” to take unto himself another wife; and at the same time, as if to keep him out of the way, Sir Thomas Seymour was sent on an embassy to the Queen of Hungary, and did not return to London until some days after Katherine Parr’s wedding.
The earliest intimation in the State Papers of the King’s connection with Katherine is in a letter from Lord Lisle, afterwards Duke of Northumberland, to Sir William Parr, dated Greenwich, 20th June 1543:—
“My lady Latymer, your sister, and Mrs. Herbert be both here in the Court with my Lady Mary’s grace and my Lady Elizabeth.” Quite a friendly party!
On 22nd June 1543 the gorgeous State barges streamed up the Thames from Greenwich to Hampton Court. On 10th July Cranmer issued a licence for the King to marry Katherine, Lady Latimer, “in any church or chapel without issue of banns,” and two days later Henry VIII led Lord Latimer’s widow to the altar of an upper oratory called “the Quynes Prevey closet” at Hampton Court Palace. After Low Mass, said by Bishop Gardiner, the consent of both parties was pronounced in English. The King, taking the fair bride’s right hand, repeated after the Bishop the words: “I, Henry, take thee, Katherine, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse (sic), for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part, and thereto I plight thee my troth.” Then, unclasping and once more clasping hands, Katherine likewise said, “I, Katherine, take thee, Henry, to my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health to be bonayr and buxome in bed and at board, till death us do part, and thereto I plight unto thee my troth.” The putting on of the wedding ring and offering of gold and silver followed, and after a prayer the Bishop pronounced the nuptial benediction.
At the wedding were present, amongst others, Lord Hertford and his Countess; Sir Anthony Browne; Joan, Lady Dudley; Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk; Lord John Russell; the King’s niece, the Lady Margaret Douglas; Mrs. Herbert, the Queen’s sister; and last but not least, the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, to whom their stepmother made handsome presents of money. There is no mention of the Dorsets attending the wedding, though both were in London at the time. Everybody seemed delighted, even Wriothesley, who went so far as to write to Suffolk, then with the army in the north, that “on Thursday last the King had married the Lady Latimer, a lady in his judgment for virtue and winsomeness