HENRY VIII.
From a portrait by Holbein in the possession of the Earl of Warwick
Katharine was equally amiable, though evidently now playing a political part, when four months later the aged and crippled Chapuys bade his last farewell to England. He was being carried in a chair to take leave of Henry at Whitehall one morning in May at nine o’clock. He was an hour earlier than the time fixed for his audience, and was passing through the green alleys of the garden towards the King’s apartments, when notice was brought to him that the Queen and Princess Mary were hastening after him. He stopped at once, and had just time to hobble out of his chair before the two ladies reached him. “It seemed from the small suite she had with her, and the haste with which she came, as if her purpose in coming was specially to speak to me. She was attended only by four or five ladies of the chamber, and opened the conversation by saying that the King had told her the previous evening that I was coming that morning to say good-bye. She was very sorry, on the one hand, for my departure, as she had been told that I had always performed my duties well, and the King trusted me; but on the other hand she doubted not that my health would be better on the other side of the sea. I could, however, she said, do as much on the other side as here, for the maintenance of the friendship, of which I had been one of the chief promoters. For this reason she was glad I was going; although she had no doubt that so wise and good a sovereign as your Majesty (i.e. the Emperor) would see the need and importance of upholding the friendship, of which the King, on his side, had given so many proofs in the past. Yet it seemed to her that your Majesty had not been so thoroughly informed hitherto, either by my letters or otherwise, of the King’s sincere affection and goodwill, as I should be able to report verbally. She therefore begged me earnestly, after I had presented to your Majesty her humble service, to express explicitly to you, all that I had learned here of the good wishes of the King.”[256]
There was much more high-flown compliment both from Katharine and her step-daughter before the gouty ambassador went on his way; but it is evident that Katharine, like her husband, was at this time (May 1545) apprehensive as to the intentions of Charles and his French allies towards England, and was still desirous to obtain some aid in the war under the treaty, in order, if possible, to weaken the new friendship with France and the Catholic alliance. In the meanwhile the failure of Gardiner’s policy, and the irritation felt at the Emperor’s abandonment of England, placed the minister somewhat under a cloud. He had failed, too, to persuade the Emperor personally to fulfil the treaty, as well as in his negotiations for peace with the French; and, as his sun gradually sank before the King’s annoyance, that of Secretary Paget, of Hertford, of Dudley, and of Wriothesley, now Lord Chancellor, a mere time-serving courtier, rose. The Protestant element around Katharine, too, became bolder, and her own participation in politics was now frankly on the anti-Catholic side. The alliance—insincere and temporary though it was—between the Emperor and France, once more produced its inevitable effect of drawing together England and the German Lutherans. It is true that Charles’ great plan for crushing dissent by the aid of the Pope was not yet publicly known; but the Council of Trent was slowly gathering, and it was clear to the German princes of the Schmalkaldic league that great events touching religion and their independence were in the air; for Cardinal Farnese and the Papal agents were running backward and forward to the Emperor on secret missions, and all the Catholic world rang with denunciation of heresy.
In June the new imperial ambassador, Van Der Delft, sounded the first note of alarm from England. Katharine Parr’s secretary, Buckler, he said, had been in Germany for weeks, trying to arrange a league between the Protestant princes and England. This was a matter of the highest importance, and Charles when he heard of it was doubly desirous of keeping his English brother from quite breaking away; whilst in September there arrived in England from France a regular embassy from the Duke of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, the Duke of Würtemburg, and the King of Denmark, ostensibly to promote peace between England and France, but really bent upon effecting a Protestant alliance. Henry, indeed, was seriously alarmed. He was exhausted by his long war in France, harassed in the victualling of Boulogne and even of Calais, and fully alive to the fact that he was practically defenceless against an armed coalition of the Emperor and France. In the circumstances it was natural that the influence over him of his wife, and of his brother-in-law Hertford, both inclined to a reconciliation with France and an understanding with the German Protestants, should increase.
Katharine, now undisguisedly in favour of such a policy, was full of tact; during the King’s frequent attacks of illness she was tender and useful to him, and the attachment to her of the young Prince Edward, testified by many charming little letters of the boy, too well known to need quotation here, seemed to promise a growth of her State importance. The tendency was one to be strenuously opposed by Gardiner and his friends in the Council, and once more attempts were made to strike at the Queen through Cranmer, almost simultaneously with a movement, flattering to Henry and hopeful for the Catholic party, to negotiate a meeting at Calais or in Flanders between him and the Emperor, to settle all questions and make France distrustful. For any such approach to be productive of the full effects desired by Gardiner, it was necessary to couple with it severe measures against the Protestants. Henry was reminded that the coming attack upon the German Lutherans by the Emperor, with the acquiescence of France, would certainly portend an attack upon himself later; and he was told by the Catholic majority of his Council that any tenderness on his part towards heresy now would be specially perilous. The first blow was struck at Cranmer, and was struck in vain. The story in full is told by Strype from Morice and Foxe, and has been repeated by every historian of the reign. Gardiner and his colleagues represented to Henry that, although the Archbishop was spreading heresy, no one dared to give evidence against a Privy Councillor whilst he was free. The King promised that they might send Cranmer to the Tower, if on examination of him they found reason to do so. Late that night Henry sent across the river to Lambeth to summon the Archbishop from his bed to see him, told him of the accusation, and his consent that the accused should be judged and, if advisable, committed to the Tower by his own colleagues on the Council. Cranmer humbly thanked the King, sure, as he said, that no injustice would be permitted. Henry, however, knew better, and indignantly said so; giving to his favourite prelate his ring for a token that summoned the Council to the royal presence.
The next morning early Cranmer was summoned to the Council, and was kept long waiting in an ante-room amongst suitors and serving-men. Dr. Butts, Henry’s privileged physician, saw this and told the King that the Archbishop of Canterbury had turned lackey; for he had stood humbly waiting outside the Council door for an hour. Henry, in a towering rage, growled, “I shall talk to them by-and-by.” When Cranmer was charged with encouraging heresy he demanded of his colleagues that he should be confronted with his accusers. They refused him rudely, and told him he should be sent to the Tower. Then Cranmer’s turn came, and he produced the King’s ring, to the dismay of the Council, who, when they tremblingly faced their irate sovereign, were taken to task with a violence that promised them ill, if ever they dared to touch again the King’s friend. But though Cranmer was unassailable, the preachers who followed his creed were not. In the spring of 1546 the persecutions under the Six Articles commenced afresh, and for a short time the Catholic party in the Council had much their own way, having frightened Henry into abandoning the Lutheran connection, in order that the vengeance of the Catholic league might not fall upon him, when the Emperor had crushed the Schmalkaldic princes.[257]
Henry’s health was visibly failing, and the two factions in his Court knew that time was short in which to establish the predominance of either at the critical moment. On the Protestant side were Hertford, Dudley, Cranmer, and the Queen, and on the other Gardiner, Paget, Paulet, and Wriothesley; and as Katharine’s influence grew with her husband’s increasing infirmity, it became necessary for the opposite party if possible to get rid of her before the King died. In February 1546 the imperial ambassador reported: “I am confused and apprehensive to have to inform your Majesty that there are rumours here of a new Queen, although I do not know why or how true they may be. Some people attribute them to the sterility of the Queen, whilst others say that there will be no change whilst the present war lasts. The Duchess of Suffolk is much talked about, and is in great favour; but the King shows no alteration in his behaviour towards the Queen, though she is, I am informed, annoyed at the rumours.”[258] Hints of this sort continued for some time, and evidently took their rise from a deliberate attack upon Katharine by the Catholic councillors. She herself, for once, failed in her tact, and laid herself open to the designs of her enemies. She was betrayed into a religious discussion with Henry during one of his attacks of illness, in the presence of Gardiner, much to the King’s annoyance. When she had retired the Bishop flattered Henry by saying that he wondered how any one could have the temerity to differ from him on theology, and carried his suggestions further by saying that such a person might well oppose him in other things than opinions. Moved by the hints at his danger, always a safe card to play with him, the King allowed an indictment to be drawn up against Katharine, and certain ladies of her family, under the Six Articles. Everything was arranged for the Queen’s arrest and examination, when Wriothesley, the Lord Chancellor, a servile creature who always clung to the strongest side, seems to have taken fright and divulged the plot to one of her friends. Katharine was at once informed and fell ill with fright, which for a short time deferred the arrest. Being partially recovered she sought the King, and when he began to talk about religion, she by her submission and refusal to contradict his views, as those of one far too learned for her to controvert, easily flattered him back into a good humour with her. The next day was fixed for carrying her to the Tower, and again Henry determined to play a trick upon his ministers. Sending for his wife in the garden, he kept her in conversation until the hour appointed for her arrest. When Wriothesley and the guard approached, the King turned upon him in a fury, calling him knave, fool, beast, and other opprobrious names, to the Lord Chancellor’s utter surprise and confusion.
The failure of the attack upon Katharine in the summer of 1546 marks the decline of the Catholic party in the Council. Peace was made with France in the autumn; and Katharine did her part in the splendid reception of the Admiral of France and the great rejoicings over the new peace treaty (September 1546). Almost simultaneously came the news of fresh dissensions between the Emperor and Francis; for the terms of the peace of Crespy were flagrantly evaded, and it began to be seen now that the treaty had for its sole object the keeping of France quiet and England at war whilst the German Protestants were crushed. Not in France alone, but in England too, the revulsion of feeling against the Emperor’s aims was great. The treacherous attack upon his own vassals in order to force orthodoxy upon them at the sword’s point had been successful, and it was seen to constitute a menace to all the world. Again Protestant envoys came to England and obtained a loan from Henry: again the Duke Philip of Bavaria, who said that he had never heard mass in his life until he arrived in England, came to claim the hand of the Princess Mary;[259] and the Catholics in the King’s Council, forced to stand upon the defensive, became, not the conspirators but those conspired against. Hertford and Dudley, now Lord Admiral, were the King’s principal companions, both in his pastimes and his business; and the imperial ambassador expressed his fears for the future to a caucus of the Council consisting of Gardiner, Wriothesley, and Paulet, deploring, as he said, that “not only had the Protestants their openly declared champions ... but I had even heard that some of them had gained great favour with the King, though I wished they were as far away from Court as they were last year. I did not mention names, but the persons I referred to were the Earl of Hertford and the Lord Admiral. The councillors made no reply, but they clearly showed that they understood me, and continued in their great devotion to your Majesty.”[260]
Late in September the King fell seriously ill, and his life for a time was despaired of. Dr. Butts had died some months before, and the Queen was indefatigable in her attendance; and the Seymours, as uncles of the heir, rose in importance as the danger to the King increased. The only strong men on the Council on the Catholic side were Gardiner, who was extremely unpopular and already beaten, and Norfolk. Paulet was as obedient to the prevailing wind as a weathercock; Wriothesley was an obsequious, greedy sycophant; Paget a humble official with little influence, and the rest were nonentities. The enmity of the Seymours against the Howards was of long standing, and was as much personal as political; especially between the younger brother, Sir Thomas Seymour, and the Earl of Surrey, the heir of Norfolk, whose quarrels and affrays had several times caused scandal at Court. There was much ill-will also between Surrey and his sister, the widowed Duchess of Richmond, who after the death of her young husband had been almost betrothed to Sir Thomas Seymour.[261] With these elements of enmity a story was trumped up which frightened the sick King into the absurd idea that Surrey aimed at succeeding to the crown, to the exclusion of Henry’s children. It was sufficient to send him to the Tower, and afterwards to the block as one of Henry’s most popular victims. His father, the aged Duke of Norfolk, was got rid of by charges of complicity with him. Stripped of his garter, the first of English nobles was carried to the Tower by water, whilst his brilliant poet son was led through the streets of London like a pickpurse, cheered to the echo by the crowd that loved him. The story hatched to explain the arrests to the public, besides the silly gossip about Surrey’s coat-of-arms and claims to the crown, was, that whilst the King was thought to be dying in November at Windsor, the Duke and his son had plotted to obtain possession of the Prince for their own ends on the death of his father. Having regard for the plots and counterplots that we know divided the Council at the time, this is very probable, and was exactly what Hertford and Dudley were doing, the Prince, indeed, being then in his uncle’s keeping at Hertford Castle.
At the end of December the King suffered from a fresh attack, which promised to be fatal. He was at Whitehall at the time, whilst Katharine was at Greenwich, an unusual thing which attracted much comment; but whether she was purposely excluded by Hertford from access to him or not, it is certain that the Protestant party of which she, the Duchess of Suffolk, and the Countess of Hertford were the principal lady members, and the Earl of Hertford and Lord Admiral Dudley the active leaders, alone had control of affairs. Gardiner had been threatened with the Tower months before, and had then only been saved by Norfolk’s bold protest. Now Norfolk was safe under bolts and bars, whilst Wriothesley and Paulet were openly insulted by Hertford and Dudley, and, like their chief Gardiner, lay low in fear of what was to come when the King died.[262] They were soon to learn. The King had been growing worse daily during January. His legs, covered with running ulcers, were useless to him and in terrible torture. His bulk was so unwieldy that mechanical means had to be employed to lift him. Surrey had been done to death in the Tower for high treason, whilst yet the King’s stiffened hand could sign the death-warrant; but when the time came for killing Norfolk, Henry was too far gone to place his signature to the fatal paper. Wriothesley, always ready to oblige the strong, produced a commission, stated to be authorised by the King, empowering him as Chancellor to sign for him, which he did upon the warrant ordering the death of Norfolk, whose head was to fall on the following morning. But it was too late, for on the morrow before the hour fixed for the execution the soul of King Henry had gone to its account, and none dared carry out the vicarious command to sacrifice the proudest noble in the realm for the convenience of the political party for the moment predominant.
On the afternoon of 26th January 1547 the end of the King was seen to be approaching. The events of Henry’s deathbed have been told with so much religious passion on both sides that it is somewhat difficult to arrive at the truth. Between the soul in despair and mortal anguish, as described by Rivadeneyra, and the devout Protestant deathbed portrayed by some of the ardent religious reformers, there is a world of difference. The accepted English version says that, fearing the dying man’s anger, none of the courtiers dared to tell him of his coming dissolution, until his old friend Sir Anthony Denny, leaning over him, gently broke the news. Henry was calm and resigned, and when asked if he wished to see a priest, he answered: “Only Cranmer, and him not yet.” It was to be never, for Henry was speechless and sightless when the Primate came, and the King could answer only by a pressure of his numbed fingers the question if he died in the faith of Christ. Another contemporary, whom I have several times quoted, though always with some reservation, says that Henry, some days before he died, took a tender farewell of the Princess Mary, to whose motherly care he commended her young brother; and that he then sent for the Queen and said to her, “‘It is God’s will that we should part, and I order all these gentlemen to honour and treat you as if I were living still; and, if it should be your pleasure to marry again, I order that you shall have seven thousand pounds for your service as long as you live, and all your jewels and ornaments.’ The good Queen could not answer for weeping, and he ordered her to leave him. The next day he confessed, took the sacrament, and commended his soul to God.”[263]
Henry died, in fact, as he had lived, a Catholic. The Reformation in England, of which we have traced the beginnings in this book, did not spring mature from the mind and will of the King, but was gradually thrust upon him by the force of circumstances, arising out of the steps he took to satisfy his passion and gratify his imperious vanity. Freedom of thought in religion was the last thing to commend itself to such a mind as his, and his treatment of those who disobeyed either the Act of Supremacy or the Bloody Statute (the Six Articles) shows that neither on the one side or the other would he tolerate dissent from his own views, which he characteristically caused to be embodied in the law of the land, either in politics or religion. The concession to subjects of the right of private judgment in matters of conscience seemed to the potentates of the sixteenth century to strike at the very base of all authority, and the very last to concede such a revolutionary claim was Henry Tudor. His separation from the Papal obedience, whilst retaining what, in his view, were the essentials of the Papal creed, was directed rather to the increase than to the diminution of his own authority over his subjects, and it was this fact that doubtless made it more than ever attractive to him. To ascribe to him a complete plan for the aggrandisement of England and her emancipation from foreign control, by means of religious schism, has always appeared to me to endow him with a political sagacity and prescience which, in my opinion, he did not possess, and to estimate imperfectly the forces by which he was impelled.
We have seen how, entirely in consequence of the unexpected difficulties raised by the Papacy to the first divorce, he adopted the bold advice of Cranmer and Cromwell to defy the Pope on that particular point. The opposition of the Pope was a purely political one, forced upon him by the Emperor for reasons of State, in order to prevent a coalition between England and France; and there were several occasions when, if the Pope had been left to himself, he would have found a solution that would have kept England in the orthodox fold. But for the persistence of the opposition Henry would never have taken the first step that led to the Reformation. Having taken it, each other step onward was the almost inevitable consequence of the first, having regard to the peculiar character of the King. It has been the main business of this book to trace in what respect the policy that ended in the great religious schism was reflected or influenced by the matrimonial adventures of the King, who has gone down to history as the most married monarch of modern times. We have seen that, although, with the exception of Katharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, each for a short time, the direct influence of Henry’s wives upon events was small, each one represented, and coincided in point of time with, a change in the ruling forces around the King. We have seen that the libidinous tendency of the monarch was utilised by the rival parties, as were all other elements that might help them, to forward the opportunity by which a person to some extent dependent upon them might be placed at the side of the King as his wife; and when for the purpose it was necessary to remove the wife in possession first, we have witnessed the process by which it was effected.
The story from this point of view has not been told before in its entirety, and as the whole panorama unrolls before us, we mark curiously the regular degeneration of Henry’s character, as the only checks upon his action were removed, and he progressively defied traditional authority and established standards of conduct without disaster to himself. The power of the Church to censure or punish him, and the fear of personal reprobation by the world, were the influences that, had they retained their force over him to the end, would probably have kept Henry to all appearance a good man. But when he found, probably to his own surprise, that the jealous divisions of the Catholic powers on the Continent made defiance of the Church in his case unpunishable, and that crafty advisers and servile Parliaments could give to his deeds, however violent and cruel, the sanction of Holy Writ and the law of the land, there was no power on earth to hold in check the devil in the breast of Henry Tudor; and the man who began a vain, brilliant sensualist, with the feelings of a gentleman, ended a repulsive, bloodstained monster, the more dangerous because his evil was always held to be good by himself and those around him.
In his own eyes he was a deeply wronged and ill-used man when Katharine of Aragon refused to surrender her position as his wife after twenty years of wedlock, and appealed to forces outside England to aid her in supporting her claim. It was a rebellious, a cruel, and a wicked thing for her and her friends to stand in the way of his tender conscience, and of his laudable and natural desire to be succeeded on the throne by a son of his own. Similarly, it seemed very hard upon him that all Europe, and most of his own country, should be threateningly against him for the sake of Anne Boleyn, for whom he had already sacrificed and suffered so much, and particularly as she was shrewish and had brought him no son. He really was a most ill-used man, and it was a providential instance of divine justice that Cromwell, in the nick of time, when the situation had become unendurable and Jane Seymour’s prudish charms were most elusive, should fortunately discover that Anne was unworthy to be Henry’s wife, and Cranmer should decide that she never had been his wife. It was not his fault, moreover, that Anne of Cleves’ physical qualities had repelled him. A wicked and ungenerous trick had been played upon him. His trustful ingenuousness had been betrayed by flatterers at the instance of a knavish minister, who, not content with bringing him a large unsympathetic Dutch vrow for a wife, had pledged him to an alliance with a lot of insignificant vassal princes in rebellion against the greater sovereigns who were his own peers. It was a just decree of heaven that the righteous wisdom of Gardiner and Norfolk should enable it to be demonstrated clearly that the good King had once more been deceived, and that Anne, and the policy she stood for, could be repudiated at the same time without opprobrium or wrongdoing. Again, how relentless was the persecution of the powers of evil against the obese invalid of fifty who married in ignorance of her immoral past a light-lived beauty of seventeen, and was undeceived when her frivolity began to pall upon him by those whose political and religious views might benefit by the disgrace of the party that had placed Katharine Howard by the King’s side as his wife. That the girl Queen should lose her head for lack of virtue before her marriage and lack of prudence after it, was, of course, quite just, and in accordance with the law of the land—for all that Henry did was strictly legal—but it was a heartrending thing that the good husband should suffer the distress of having once believed in so unworthy a wife. Still Katharine Howard was not sacrificed in vain, for, although the Catholic policy she represented suffered no check, for reasons set forth in earlier pages, the King’s sad bereavement left him in the matrimonial market and enhanced his price as an ally, for much of the future depended upon the wife and the party that should be in possession when the King died. As we have seen, the Protestants, or rather the anti-Catholics, won the last trick; and Somerset’s predominance meant that the Reformation in England should not be one of form alone but of substance.
The life of Katharine Parr after Henry’s death hardly enters into the plan of this book; but a few lines may be devoted to it, and to her pitiable end. The instant rise of the Protector Somerset on the death of Henry brought with it a corresponding increase in the importance of his brother Sir Thomas, then Lord Seymour of Sudeley, who was certainly no less ambitious than his brother, and probably of much stronger character. For a time all went well between the brothers, Thomas being created Lord Admiral, to the annoyance of Dudley—now Earl of Warwick—who had held the office, and receiving great grants of forfeited estates and other wealth. But soon the evident attempts of Lord Seymour to rival his elder brother, and perhaps to supplant him, aroused the jealousy of Somerset, or more likely of his quarrelsome and haughty wife.
Some love passages, we have seen, took place between Seymour and Katharine Parr before her marriage with the King, so that it need not be ascribed to ambition that the lover should once more cast his eyes upon the royal widow before the weeds for the King had been cast aside.[264] Katharine, with a large dower that has already been mentioned, lived alternately in her two mansion-houses at Chelsea and Hanworth; and to her care was consigned the Lady Elizabeth, then a girl of fourteen. As early as the beginning of May 1547, Seymour had visited the widowed Queen at Chelsea with his tale of love. Katharine was now thirty-four years of age, and having married in succession three old men, might fairly be entitled to contract a fourth marriage to please herself. There was no more manly or handsome figure in England than that of Seymour, with his stately stature, his sonorous voice, and his fine brown beard; and in his quiet meetings with the Queen in her pretty riverside garden at Chelsea, he appears to have found no difficulty in persuading Katharine of the sincerity of his love.
For a time the engagement was kept secret; but watchful eyes were around the Queen, especially those of her own kin, and the following letter, written by Seymour to her on the 17th May, shows that her sister, Lady Herbert, at least, had wind from Katharine of what was going on: “After my humble commendations of your Highness. Yester night I supped at my brother Herbert’s, of whom, for your sake besydes my nown, I receved good cheyre. And after the same I received from your Highness by my sister Herbert[265] your commendations, which were more welcome than they were sent. And after the same she (Lady Herbert) waded further with me touching my being with your Highness at Chelsey, which I denied; but that, indeed, I went by the garden as I went to the Bishop of London’s howse; and at this point I stood with her for a time, till at last she told me further tokens that made me change colour; and she, like a false wench, took me with the maner. Then, remembering what she was, and knowing how well ye trusted her, I examined her whether these things came from your Highness and by that knew it to be true; for the which I render unto your Highness my most umbell and harty thanks: for by her company (in default of yours) I shall shorten the weeks in these parts, which heretofore were three days longer in every of them than they were under the planets at Chelsey. Besydes this commoditye I may ascertain (i.e. inform) your Highness by her how I do proceed in my matter....” Seymour goes on to say that he has not yet dared to try his strength until he is fully in favour, this having reference apparently to his intention of begging his brother to permit the marriage, and then he proceeds: “If I knew by what means I might gratify your Highness for your goodness to me at our last being together, I should not be slack to declare mine to you again, and the intent that I will be more bound to your Highness, I do make my request that, yf it be nott painfull to your Highness, that once in three days I may receve three lynes in a letter from you; and as many lynes and letters more as shall seem good to your Highness. Also I shall ombeley desyr your Highness to geve me one of your small pictures yf ye hav one left, who with his silence shall give me occasion to think on the friendly cheere I shall have when my sawght (suit?) shall be at an end. 12 o’clock in the night this Tewsday the 17th May 1547. From him whom ye have bound to honour, love, and in all lawful thynges obbey.—T. Seymour.”
The Queen had evidently pledged her troth to her lover at the previous meeting; and it would appear that when Katharine had promised to write to him but once a fortnight her impatience, as much as his, could ill suffer so long a silence. Either in answer to the above letter, or another similar one, Katharine wrote: “My Lord, I send you my most humble and hearty commendations, being desirous to know how ye have done since I saw you. I pray ye be not offended with me in that I send sooner to you than I said I would, for my promise was but once a fortnight. Howbeit, the time is well abbreviated, by what means I know not, except weeks be shorter at Chelsey than in other places. My Lord, your brother hath deferred answering such requests as I made to him till his coming hither, which he sayeth shall be immediately after the term. This is not the first promise I have received of his coming, and yet unperformed. I think my lady (i.e. the Duchess of Somerset) hath taught him that lesson, for it is her custom to promise many comings to her friends and to perform none. I trust in greater matters she is more circumspect.”[266] Then follows a curious loving postscript, which shows that Katharine’s fancy for Seymour was no new passion. “I would not have you think that this, mine honest good will toward you, proceeds from any sudden motion of passion; for, as truly as God is God, my mind was fully bent the other time I was at liberty to marry you before any man I know. Howbeit, God withstood my will therein most vehemently for a time, and through His grace and goodness made that possible which seemed to me most impossible: that was, made me renounce utterly mine own will, and follow His most willingly. It were long to write all the process of this matter. If I live I shall declare it to you myself. I can say nothing; but as my lady of Suffolk saith: ‘God is a marvellous man.’—Katheryn the Quene.”[267]
The course of true love did not run smoothly. Somerset, and especially his wife, did not like the idea of his younger brother’s elevation to higher influence by his marrying the Queen-Dowager; and the Protector proved unwilling to grant his consent to the marriage. Katharine evidently resented this, and was inclined to use her great influence with the young King himself over his elder uncle’s head. When Seymour was in doubt how to approach his brother about it, Katharine wrote spiritedly: “The denial of your request shall make his folly more manifest to the world, which will more grieve me than the want of his speaking. I would not wish you to importune for his goodwill if it come not frankly at first. It shall be sufficient once to require it, and then to cease. I would desire you might obtain the King’s letters in your favour, and also the aid and furtherance of the most notable of the Council, such as ye shall think convenient, which thing being obtained shall be no small shame to your brother and sister in case they do not the like.” In the same letter Katharine rather playfully dallies with her lover’s request that she will abridge the period of waiting from two years to two months, and then she concludes in a way which proves if nothing else did how deeply she was in love with Seymour. “When it shall pleasure you to repair hither (Chelsea) ye must take some pains to come early in the morning, so that ye may be gone again by seven o’clock; and thus I suppose ye may come without being suspect. I pray ye let me have knowledge overnight at what hour ye will come, that your portress (i.e. Katharine herself) may wait at the gate to the fields for you.”
It was not two years, or even two months, that the impatient lovers waited: for they must have been married before the last day in May 1547, four months after Henry’s death. Katharine’s suggestion that the boy King himself should be enlisted on their side, was adopted; and he was induced to press Seymour’s suit to his father’s widow, as if he were the promoter of it. When the secret marriage was known to Somerset, he expressed the greatest indignation and anger at it; and a system of petty persecution of Katharine began. Her jewels, of which the King had left her the use during her life, were withheld from her; her jointure estates were dealt with by Somerset regardless of her wishes and protests; and her every appearance at Court led to a squabble with the Protector’s wife as to the precedence to be accorded to her. On one occasion it is stated that this question of precedence led in the Chapel Royal to a personal encounter between Katharine and proud Ann Stanhope.
Nor was Katharine’s life at home with her gallant, empty-headed, turbulent husband, cloudless. The Princess Elizabeth lived with them; and though she was but a girl, Seymour began before many months of married life to act suspiciously with her. The manners of the time were free; and Seymour might perhaps innocently romp suggestively, as he did, sometimes alone and sometimes in his wife’s presence, with the young Princess as she lay in bed; but when Katharine, entering a chamber suddenly once, found young Elizabeth embraced in her husband’s arms, there was a domestic explosion which led to the departure of the girl from the Chelsea household.[268] Katharine was pregnant at the time; and Elizabeth’s letter to her on her leaving Chelsea shows that although, for the sake of prudence, the girl was sent away, there was no great unkindness between her and her stepmother in consequence. She says that she was chary of her thanks when leaving, because “I was replete with sorrow to depart from your Highness, especially leaving you undoubtful of health, and, albeit I answered little, I weighed more deeper when you said you would warn me of all the evils that you should hear of me.”
When the poor lady’s time drew near, she wrote a hopeful yet pathetic letter to her husband, who was already involving himself in the ambitious schemes that brought his head to the block. Both she and her husband in their letters anticipated the birth of their child with a frankness of detail which make the documents unfitted for reproduction here; and it is evident that, though they were now often separated, this looked-for son was to be a new pledge to bind them together for the future. In June 1548 Seymour took his wife to Sudeley Castle for her confinement; and from there carried on, through his agents with the King, his secret plots to supersede his brother Somerset as Protector of the realm. He and his wife were surrounded by a retinue so large, as of itself to constitute a menace to the Protector; but Katharine’s royal title gave a pretext for so large a household, and this and her personal influence secured whilst she lived her husband’s safety from attack by his brother.
At length, on the 30th August, Katharine’s child was born, a daughter, and at first all went well. Even Somerset, angry and distrustful as he was, was infected by his brother’s joy, and sent congratulations. But on the fourth day the mother became excited, and wandered somewhat; saying that she thought she would die, and that she was not being well treated. “Those who are about me do not care for me, but stand laughing at my grief,” she complained to her friend Lady Tyrwhitt. This was evidently directed against Seymour, who stood by. “Why, sweetheart,” he said, “I would you no hurt.” “No, my Lord,” replied Katharine, “I think so; but,” she whispered, “you have given me many shrewd taunts.” This seems to have troubled Seymour, and he suggested to Lady Tyrwhitt that he should lie on the bed by the Queen’s side and try to calm her; but his efforts were without effect, for she continued excitedly to say that she had not been properly dealt with. These facts, related and magnified by attendants, and coupled with Seymour’s desire to marry Elizabeth as soon as his wife died, gave rise to a pretty general opinion that Katharine was either poisoned or otherwise ill treated. But there are many circumstances that point in the contrary direction, and there can be no reasonable doubt now, that although in her inmost mind she had begun to distrust her husband, and the anxiety so caused may have contributed to her illness, she died (on the 5th September) of ordinary puerperal fever.
She was buried in great state in the chapel at Sudeley Castle, and her remains, which have been examined and described several times, add their testimony to the belief that the unfortunate Queen died a natural death. The death of Katharine Parr, the last, and least politically important, of Henry’s six wives, took place, so far as English history is concerned, on the day that heralded the death of her royal husband. From the moment that Somerset and his wife sat in the seats of the mighty there was no room for the exercise of political influence by the Queen-Dowager; and these latter pages telling of her fourth marriage, this time for love, form but a human postscript to a political history.