Her Highness, the Traitor

2

Frances Grey

December 1555





It is dangerous to speak of my daughter Jane today, at least here in England. Men can die, and have died, for holding the beliefs she held. Nonetheless, people sometimes turn up at my house to tell me of their admiration for my daughter. Some ask me for a memento of Jane. I hand them the few things I can—a hair fastening, an old pen—while hoarding a few such mementoes myself. As I do, I sometimes ask myself, are these things really much different from the relics of the saints these people scorn? Are they not pilgrims of another sort?

Whatever I give them, however, my visitors leave disappointed. The mother of an extraordinary daughter, they think, must surely be extraordinary herself. How wrong they are! For wherever my daughter got her great gifts, I know it was certainly not from me. As a young woman, I could embroider beautifully, carry a tune respectably, play a pretty melody upon my virginals—but I could barely speak French, much less the ancient languages. Indeed, my French was atrocious, which was a matter of some embarrassment for me, because my mother, Mary, had been that country’s queen.

How my sister, Eleanor, and I loved hearing my mother tell about her days in the French court! Her brother, King Henry VIII, had married her at age eighteen to Louis XII, a man in his fifties. Not a robust man, and nearly three times her age, Louis had nonetheless done his best to make the wedding celebrations as lively and festive as possible for his vivacious new queen. There had been tournaments, dancing, and feasting, and while it all delighted my young mother, it had proven the undoing of poor Louis, who, after just a few months of all of this, dropped dead from sheer exhaustion, leaving his son-in-law Francis as the king and my mother fair game to be married off to some French nobleman or the other. But having married one aging man for policy, Mother was not inclined to do so again.

Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, an Englishman, was a fine jouster and a handsome man and the king’s closest friend; he was also, it was noted, an upstart duke who had not a jolt of noble blood in him. But he had caught my mother’s eye long before she married the King of France, and when King Henry sent Suffolk to England to check on his newly widowed sister, my mother wasted no time in renewing her acquaintance with the duke. My mother had the rare ability to look pretty while she cried, and when she turned her tears upon Charles Brandon, they were so effective that in just days, the pair were secretly married, to the scandal of the French court and the fury of King Henry. But in those days, the king did not bear a grudge for long, and soon all was right once again between the king and my parents.

My nurse loved to tell my younger sister and me about this runaway match, so naturally, I would dream of making a romantic marriage like that of my mother and father. But what my parents had practiced in their own case was very much different from what they practiced in mine. At age thirteen, I was dangled before the Duke of Norfolk, who to their great chagrin (and mine, for I could not help hearing about it) thought my dowry too meager for his son. Then my father turned to the young Marquis of Dorset. There was an impediment in that the marquis was already contracted to the Earl of Arundel’s daughter, but this obstacle was quickly surmounted for the benefit of the king’s close friend, my father. So a couple of months before my sixteenth birthday, I was married to Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, who was just a few months my senior.

I had heard that my new husband was careless with his money and fond of gaming, which I had expected, and that he had a strong interest in the New Learning, which I had not. The first I could cope with readily, as my father was such a man; the second I found more daunting. My husband had been educated in the household of the late king’s natural son, the Duke of Richmond, and there had learned Latin and Greek. Though in many ways we were compatible, he scoffed at the handful of English books, prettily illustrated and teeming with romance and chivalry, which I brought to our marriage. To them, he would not even grant space in his study.

But my Jane—my poor, dear Jane—surpassed him. By the time she was four, she was well beyond the instruction I could give, and my husband was obliged to get a master just for her. Her special gifts, I think, were what reconciled him to God calling our little son to Him. For our younger daughters, though they were loved by my husband, are pretty, ordinary creatures.

Much, as those pilgrims who came to Sheen years later would discover, like me.

February 1547

By the time Jane was almost ten, our household had divided into two unacknowledged but distinct sets: my husband and Jane, and me and my two younger daughters, Katherine and little Mary. That was how it was in the days after God called my uncle, Henry VIII, out of the world.

There was but one aspect of Jane’s studies upon which I was qualified to instruct her—sewing. Every day at the appointed time, Jane would take out her hated workbasket and join me and her younger sister Kate in my chambers, where she alternated between pricking her finger and casting baleful looks at Kate, who, despite being more than three years younger than Jane, already exceeded her as a needlewoman. Even my Mary, who at a year and a half was too young to do more than empty my workbasket of the bright cloth it contained and then fill it again, showed more promise, I thought.

As Jane sat beside me, frowning as she sewed a shirt that would surely have to go to the poor, as it was by no means worked well enough to grace my husband, the door to the chamber opened slowly. In walked my husband, Harry, clad in black and pulling a long face. At a funereal pace, he plodded from one end of our solar to the other, then turned to Jane and Kate, sitting side by side on the window seat. “Well, chickens, do you think I’ll pass muster as chief mourner?”

“Oh, yes!” Jane clapped her hands together, letting her work fall to the ground. Kate dutifully applauded in turn. “You’ll be splendid, Father.”

“I am relieved to hear that.” He nodded toward me. “Now, take yourselves off, chickens. I have something I must discuss with your mother.”

“Really, Harry,” I said as the girls dropped a curtsey and left, “I wish you would treat my uncle’s death with more solemnity.”

“I am merely practicing for my role. As it’s the only role of substance I’ve been given in living memory, I must perform it well, don’t you agree?”

“More will come, Harry, with this new reign.”

“Well, we shall see. In any case, that brings me to what we need to speak about.”

Inwardly, I groaned, expecting yet another diatribe about ceasing to hear Mass. In the past few months, Harry had become almost as bad as my friend and stepmother, Katherine Brandon, who could not so much as look at an innocuous loaf of bread without holding forth on the sheer stupidity of the doctrine of transubstantiation. The Mass was still heard in our household, but I knew its days were numbered. “What is it, Harry?”

“King Henry’s will. Quite interesting. He lays out the order of succession, as Parliament allowed him to do by testament a couple of years back. There aren’t any surprises in the first part. If King Edward dies without heirs, the crown should go to the lady Mary, and then to the lady Elizabeth.”

“And then to Queen Margaret’s line?” Margaret, King Henry’s older sister, had married King James IV of Scotland. Her little granddaughter, Mary, was now that country’s queen.

“No. That’s where it concerns us. He knocked that line out altogether. Didn’t want a little Scottish lass on the throne, I suppose.”

I did a quick calculation. “So that means I am next in the succession?”

“No, it means Jane is. King Henry passed you over, but he willed that if the lady Elizabeth died without heirs, the crown will pass to your heirs.” Harry forestalled my next question. “I don’t know why he chose to skip over you, but my guess is that he preferred not to have a woman on the throne, and was hoping you’d have a son by the time that contingency came to pass. But for now, that leaves our Jane as third in line to the throne.”

“Such a thing might never come to pass. It is bound never to come to pass. King Edward will certainly marry and have children, as will the lady Elizabeth. The lady Mary—well…”

“She’s missed her chance,” Harry said bluntly. “She might yet get a husband, but a child at her age?”

“It hardly matters, with a healthy young brother and a healthy young sister.” I resumed my sewing. “Jane’s chances are as remote as mine ever were. And I am glad of it. A woman should not rule.”

“Spoken like a good niece of King Henry,” Harry said. “But I am surprised to hear you hold your own sex in such low regard. And Jane is a brilliant girl. Perhaps most women could not rule, but she could be an exception.”

“I pray it never comes to that.”

“But with Mary a Catholic, and both she and the lady Elizabeth still officially bastards…”

“Harry! Men have died for saying such foolish thoughts aloud.” I looked around to make sure we were alone.

Harry stared out the window. “Well, it’s very remote, as you say,” he said briskly, with the appearance of pulling himself back to earth. “But I do know this: a girl with as good a claim to the throne as our Jane should be able to make a very good marriage. A very good one.”

“That idea, I like,” I confessed.

“I thought you would. Now, let me tell you what else I have heard. The Earl of Hertford—or the Duke of Somerset as we must begin to learn to call him—is giving consideration to ceasing to hear the Mass. Don’t you think it’s time we thought more seriously about doing the same ourselves, my dear?”

***

The old king had been buried; the new king had been crowned. A few days after the latter event, Harry came to me again. “Tom Seymour’s man has been to see me.”

“Since when did Tom Seymour become too important to come himself?”

“Since he asked for our Jane to come live with him. He wants to broker a good match for her.”

“What match could he broker that you could not broker yourself?”

“One to the new king.”

I stared at my husband. “He is offering to make Jane Edward’s queen?”

“That’s the sum of it, my dear. Think of it. They’re the same age, they’re well educated, and they’re Protestant. And then there’s the matter of the succession. What better bride for King Edward than the girl who’s third in line to the throne?”

“What does the Duke of Somerset have to say about it?”

“Oh, nothing, because Tom hasn’t mentioned it to him. No doubt he’d disapprove if Tom did, just by dint of the fact of Tom being the one to mention it.”

“Tom Seymour is unmarried. Is he suitable to care for a young girl?”

“Why not? We’d be sending her suitably attended. But why not express your concerns to him yourself? He has asked us to meet him at his place.”

***

Seymour Place, as Tom Seymour had renamed Hampton Place when it was granted to him several years before, was just a short ride down the Thames from our own house, Dorset House. The smile Tom bestowed upon me far exceeded the one he gave to my husband. “Doubly blessed! My friend Harry and his lovely lady. I suppose your lord has told you why we are here, my lady?”

I nodded. “Yes. You wish to marry my daughter to the king.”

“Can you think of a worthier bride, my lady, than your fair daughter?”

“No, but there will surely be others pushing a foreign bride upon the king.”

“The king will remember that his own mother was an English bride, as were his grandmother Elizabeth of York and his great-grandmother Elizabeth Woodville.” Tom Seymour turned another smile upon me. “And believe me, I shall be active in reminding him. Mind you, I don’t plan to push your daughter upon him, as he’s so young; I want to ease them into marriage slowly. Give the young people a chance to get better acquainted, for the king to see your daughter’s fine points, so he naturally thinks of her as his first choice. That shouldn’t be hard. After all, she’s a brilliant girl, and a pretty one, too. She takes after her mother in that respect.”

I took the wine cup that was offered to me, embarrassed to find myself actually blushing at this compliment. Though I had never matched my own mother in beauty, and was approaching my thirtieth year, I knew myself to still be comely, with reddish-gold hair and a slender figure, and it was pleasant to be reminded of it occasionally by a man not my husband. But Tom Seymour, I reminded myself, was no doubt profligate in paying his compliments, as he was rumored to be in other matters, as well.

“And, of course, she is third in line to the throne,” said Harry. “And indisputably legitimate, not to mention having received a godly upbringing. That can only increase her appeal to the king. He has decided views as to religion, I understand.”

“Indeed he has,” said Tom Seymour rather gloomily.

“What of the Protector?” I asked.

“What of him?” Seymour’s good-natured face darkened, and I realized I had made a conversational misstep. “He can’t rule the king, as much as he’d like to. Or England.” His face cleared, and he said more lightly, “He might be the king’s protector, but I’m the king’s favorite uncle. Always have been. That counts for a great deal, whatever Ned might say.”

“Ned?” I asked. “You are still speaking of the Protector?”

“Yes. It’s what they called him at home when he was a boy.” He anticipated my next question. “No one calls him that now but me.”

“I am surprised he tolerates it.”

“Oh, he hates it,” Seymour said breezily. “So what of it, my lady? Will I have the privilege of welcoming your daughter into my house?”

***

“I think it’s a fine idea,” Harry reiterated as we rode back to Dorset House.

I pulled my cloak closer around me. “I know. You all but agreed to it.”

“So what’s the harm? Our Jane’s of the right age to go to another household, after all. The worst that can happen is that the king marries someone else. Even if Seymour can’t bring it off, it’s bound to lead to a good match.”

“Harry, have you considered that Tom Seymour might mean to marry her himself?”

“You would think that, with your father’s history,” Harry said, grinning at me. Just three months after the death of my mother, my father, nearly fifty, had shocked his family by marrying fourteen-year-old Katherine Willoughby, whose wardship he had acquired. Katherine, to whom I’d become close after she had joined our household, had been intended for my brother. Father, on due consideration, had decided that matching himself with the young heiress was too advantageous to be passed up, especially as my brother had long been ailing (and indeed died not long afterward). If he had thought to have the upper hand in the marriage, he was sorely mistaken. Katherine, as Duchess of Suffolk, had used her status to fill the house with clergymen who shared her reformist religious views. Poor Father had eventually found himself surrounded by them. “But in this case, you’d be wrong.” Harry lowered his voice. “I have it on good authority that Tom plans to marry, but it’s not to our daughter.”

“So who is the bride-to-be?”

“The queen.”

I gasped. I was well familiar with the gossip that, years before, Seymour had set his cap at Catherine Parr, only to have his suit curtailed by the king’s own interest in her—but back then she’d only been a baron’s widow, quite suitable for Seymour. “On whose authority?”

“Tom Seymour’s own authority. And she’s not at all unwilling.” Harry gave me another grin. “Think of the advantages to Jane from being in the queen’s household.” Harry winked. “After all, your mother stooped to marry your father.”

He was a duke, at least, I thought to myself, albeit one who owed his dukedom solely to the late king’s affection for him. But I knew when I was beaten. “Very well. We shall send Jane to his household.”

***

“What are you translating?” I said, looking at the open book on my daughter’s desk.

“Latin.”

“Well, I guessed that much. What author?”

Ten-year-old Jane gave me a pitying look, knowing as she did that one was the same as the other to me. “Cicero.”

Harry, standing next to me, nodded approvingly, and I knew if he had been alone, my daughter would have elaborated. Sparing me the embarrassment of asking who Cicero was, he said, “We have news for you, Jane. You are to go live in Sir Thomas Seymour’s household.”

“It will be a great opportunity for you, and you will be able to visit us regularly,” I put in. “I think you’ll like it there.”

“When am I to leave?”

Even Harry seemed nonplussed by my daughter’s matter-of-factness. “Why, as soon as it can all be arranged, I suppose. Sir Thomas stands ready to receive you at any time.”

“Might I bring my books?”

“Yes.” My second daughter, Kate, would have asked whether she could bring her pets.

“Then I shall write him and thank him for his gracious invitation,” Jane said, as usual anticipating me.

***

My daughter had seemed perfectly content as we parted from her at Seymour Place. In the days after our parting, it was I who paced the halls at Dorset House, wondering how the absence of one quiet girl could make them seem so empty.