The Nine Days' Queen, Lady Jane Grey, and Her Times. Richard Davey
of Gardiner and of Bonner. She must often have heard the sick King, who had lost his own fine voice, accompany his favourite fool, Will Somers, on the lute, in some song or hymn of his own composition. She must have been familiar with the two Seymour brothers; with the dreamy face and austere manner of the Earl of Hertford, and the bluff good-nature of Sir Thomas. She may even have been tossed in the strong arms of John Dudley, at this time Lord High-Admiral of England and Viscount de Lisle, reputed a “magnificent gentleman,” but otherwise of secondary importance. Wriothesley, Rich, and foredoomed Surrey and his father, old Norfolk, must often have watched her run along, clinging to her portly mother’s trailing brocades as she passed on her way to and from the King’s cabinet, and may even have whispered one to the other that the little damsel would surely be as good a match for young Prince Edward as the Scottish Queen’s daughter, Mary Stuart. In the apartment of her grand-aunt the Queen, where that busy little lady nestled like a sultana among her innumerable soft pillows and cushions,48 encased in cloth of gold and silver, the child Jane must have heard much evangelical counsel from the erstwhile widow Latimer, who found some consolation in the gorgeousness of her thraldom for the loss of her handsome lover, Sir Thomas Seymour.
The Queen’s lodgings were parted from the King’s by a short corridor, and nearly all her windows overlooked the Thames. Here Katherine Parr played the housewife, and in the midst of her tapestries and brocades and her “stretches” of silver and gold cloth, made poultices for Henry’s ulcered legs, wrote her pious treaties on probity and prayers, and probably counted the hours till the Lord in His mercy should deliver her royal spouse from his sore sufferings. In these rooms, perhaps, Jane Grey sat for her miniature to Lavinia Tyrling; Bartolomeo Penni may here have limned her diminutive but very pretty features; and we fancy we can see Mr. Crane or Mr. John Heywood, His Majesty’s chief virginal players, teaching her the notes upon the King’s “favourite virginal,” the one “enlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl.” In the last months of Henry’s life, when Lady Jane is known to have been much with Katherine Parr, the little girl may have listened with delight to the wonderful warbling of the King’s Italian singers, Alberto of Venice, Marc Antonio Galiadello of Brescia, or Giorgio da Cremona, as they vainly endeavoured to soothe the sufferings of the dying monarch by their elaborate cadenze.
Queen Katherine soon made her influence felt at Court. She could not control the violent passions of her wayward lord, but she did in a measure modify them, and steered her own course amid the shoals of regal existence with consummate skill. No breath of scandal ever sullied her fair name, though Thomas Seymour, back from his convenient mission to Hungary, was appointed her Chamberlain, and must have been a good deal in her company. Even her worst enemies never ventured on that track. When at a later date they planned a blow, which they hoped would prove fatal to the Queen, they selected her religious leanings, not her love affairs, as their fell weapon. Katherine Parr, to her credit, lost no time in reconciling the King with his hitherto neglected daughters. Princess Mary was near her own age, and had been intimate with her when she was Lady Latimer. The Emperor’s Ambassadors praise “the new Queen for her kindness to the daughter of Katherine of Aragon,49 who now takes her proper place at Court.” Elizabeth, too, was summoned from her suburban retreat, but had not been many weeks under her father’s roof ere he became so exasperated by her pert obstinacy that he summarily ordered her back to Enfield. In a few weeks, however, Katherine patched up the quarrel, and on 24th July 1544 Elizabeth wrote Her Majesty, in Italian, a most graceful letter of thanks for her good offices.50 Edward was too delicate to be much in London, but none the less his stepmother looked after his health with so much “gentleness” that she soon won his sincere affection and lasting goodwill. He wrote her letters in Latin, French, and Italian, addressed to his charisima Mater, and full of praise for her beautiful penmanship, which, on comparison, proves greatly inferior both to his own and to that of either Elizabeth or Jane Grey. Katherine induced her stepdaughter Mary to assist in the translation of Erasmus’s Paraphrase of the Four Gospels. The Princess selected that of St. John, and when the work was finished, an amusing correspondence ensued as to the propriety of the future Queen of England placing her name, as translator, on the frontispiece. “I see not why you should reject the praise deservedly yours,” argued the Queen; and the Princess at last allowed the editor of the work, the learned Dr. Udall, to allude to the fact that “the most noble, the most virtuous and the most studious Lady Mary” had a hand in its success.51
To occupy her own leisure, Queen Katherine devoted herself to the composition of a quaint book entitled The Lamentations of a Penitent Sinner, a pious work which gives us, at least in one passage, a lucid idea of the methods employed by Her Majesty to keep her hold over her extraordinary husband, among which gross flattery was by no means the least. A copy of this work was once in the possession of John Thelwall, and was sold at the death of his second wife. It contained a curious autograph, indicating that it had been given by the Queen to her “dear cosyn, Jane Grey,” who no doubt read it with veneration and delight. In this tiny volume Henry had the satisfaction of being likened unto Moses leading the Children of Israel out of bondage. “I mean by Moses, King Henry VIII, my most sovereign favourable lord and husband, one (if Moses had figured any more than Christ) through the excellent grace of God, meet to be another expressed verity of Moses’ conquest over Pharaoh (and I mean by this Pharaoh the Bishop of Rome), the greatest persecutor of all true Christians than ever was Pharaoh of the Children of Israel.”
As may well be imagined, Queen Katherine Parr did not fail to use her influence to obtain prominent positions about the Court for her own kith and kin. Her uncle and Chamberlain, Sir Thomas Parr, was created Lord Parr of Horton; her brother was raised from the rank of Baron Parr of Kendal to be Earl of Essex, in lieu of the lately decapitated Thomas Cromwell; and her brother-in-law, William Herbert, was knighted. These gentlemen received their new dignities in the Chapel Royal, but were not entertained in one of the apartments spread with Persian carpets. Their dinner was served in the choir-boys’ mess-room, in which a fresh litter of rushes was strewn for the occasion—a curious fact, which leads one to conclude that the acting master of ceremonies expected the party to indulge in libations which might result in some injury to Oriental rugs but were not likely to do much damage to fresh rushes costing 3s. 6d. the litter. Parr had to pay 40s. for his new paraphernalia, and the choir-boys got 10s. for singing after the dinner.52
On 14th July 1544 King Henry sailed from Dover for France to superintend in person the approaching siege of Boulogne. He left our shores in a vessel with sails made of cloth of gold, the glitter of which does not appear to have added to the ship’s speed, for the King did not get to Calais for nearly twenty-four hours, although the weather was fine, and the sea calm—probably too calm. The last time he had crossed the Channel, on his way to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, Henry had acted the part of pilot, garbed in nether garments of cloth of gold, and had blown the pilot’s whistle as loud as any trumpeter. This time he was too anxious and enfeebled to play at all. His Majesty was attended by his brother-in-law, the Duke of Suffolk, also a very sick man; by Sir William Herbert, who acted as his spear-bearer, by the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Surrey, the Spanish Duke of Alberqurque, John Dudley, the Lord High-Admiral, afterwards Duke of Northumberland, and half the English nobility. Before his departure he appointed the Queen Regent of England and Ireland, with power to sign all official and State documents, this being almost the first occasion on which a Queen-Consort of England held so responsible a position. The Earl of Hertford was to be Her Majesty’s constant attendant, but should he chance to be temporarily absent, Cranmer was to remain with her, and with these two, Sir William Petre and Lord Parr of Horton, her Grace’s uncle, Wriothesley, and Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, were to sit in council.
During this regency Katherine kept aloof from politics and occupied herself principally with assisting the University of Cambridge and with the royal children, who were left in her charge. Princess Mary, who was an almost constant guest during the King’s absence, and Princess Elizabeth, were both invited to join the circle at Oatlands, where Prince Edward was residing, and whither, owing to an outbreak of the plague, the Queen herself soon retired. From the various suburban palaces in which she was residing, Katherine addressed letters almost daily to the King, giving him accounts of the health and the doings of his children; and the monarch vouchsafed in return to write most approvingly of all she did. Towards the middle of August the Lady Dorset and her daughter, the Lady Jane Grey, came to Oatlands for a few days’ visit.