Читать книгу The Nine Days' Queen, Lady Jane Grey, and Her Times - Richard Davey - Страница 7

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No task is more congenial to the earnest student of history than that of tracing the origin of some important event, and following its gradual development from a trivial incident to its culmination in a great matter destined to alter the fortunes, and even change the faith, of an entire nation. If we would reach a thorough comprehension of the chain of events which led up to the proclamation of Jane Grey as Queen of England, we must now leave her to pursue her Greek and Latin studies and broider her samplers at Bradgate, while we trace the earlier fortunes of those who so ruled her destiny as to compel a simple-hearted and naturally retiring girl to accept a station which, by the time she was constrained to relinquish it, brought her to the lowest depths of misfortune and transformed the regal diadem which she herself had never coveted into a crown of martyrdom.

The Lady Latimer, better known in history as Queen Katherine Parr, influenced the fortunes of Lady Jane Grey more than is usually imagined, for it was to her care that the ten-year-old child was committed (after it had been proposed by the Seymour faction that she should become Queen-Consort of Edward VI and head of the Protestant party in England), in order that her education might be directed and her mind bent towards “the new learning” of which Katherine was secretly a supporter.

Born in 1513 at that lordly Kendal Castle whose ruins still command one of the loveliest prospects in Westmoreland, Katherine Parr, though a simple gentlewoman, could boast royal blood—that of our Anglo-Saxon kings, inherited from her paternal ancestor Ivo de Talbois, who married Lucy, the sister of the renowned Earls Morcar and Edwin. She was also of Plantagenet descent through her great-great-grandmother Alice Nevill, sister to Cicely Nevill, Duchess of York, a lineage that made her cousin four times removed to King Henry VIII himself. We will not enter in detail into the many alliances of the Parr family with the Nevills, Stricklands, Throckmortons, and Boroughs, but we are safe in describing it as a wealthy and honourable county stock, much looked up to in those days.

Katherine’s father, Sir Thomas Parr, married, when his bride was but little over thirteen, Maud Green, daughter of the rich Sir Thomas Green of Boughton and Greens-Norton in Northamptonshire. Lady Parr had a sister, Mary, who, when a mere child, married Lord Vaux of Harrowden, and, dying without issue, left her splendid fortune to her sister Maud. Lady Parr’s eldest son, born before his mother was fifteen, was the celebrated Sir William Parr, ultimately Earl of Essex and Marquess of Northampton. Her next child mated with Mr. William Herbert, who was raised to the peerage in 1551 by Edward VI as Earl of Pembroke six weeks before the death of his wife. Katherine, the third and youngest child of Sir Thomas and Lady Parr, was destined to occupy the perilous position of sixth Queen-Consort to King Henry VIII. When she was a mere child, the proverbial gipsy-woman predicted that “she should one day wear a crown, and not a cap; and wield a sceptre, not a distaff.”24 Sir Thomas Parr died in London in 1517, leaving very scant provision for his two daughters, the bulk of his fortune having been settled upon his wife and son; but both young ladies married wealthy men, and thus were not seriously affected by their lack of means. Anne married at fifteen; and Katherine, long before she was fourteen, was led to the hymeneal altar by Lord Borough of Cantley Hall, Gainsborough, Yorkshire. The bridegroom had already been twice married, and so great was the disparity of age between the couple that Lady Borough was wont to call her eldest stepdaughter “little mother.” Two years after her marriage Katherine became a widow with a very handsome dower. Much of her time of mourning was spent at Sizergh Castle in Westmoreland, the seat of her kinsfolk the Stricklands, where she left several fine specimens of her skill as a needlewoman—notably a gorgeous white satin quilt embroidered with gold—which are still preserved in an apartment known as Queen Katherine’s Room.

We are fortunate in possessing a good many portraits of this lady, and at least one wonderful miniature, formerly in the Strawberry Hill Collection, and which now belongs to Mr. Brocklehurst-Dent of Sudeley Castle. This contains a likeness of Henry VIII painted in a space not bigger than a pin’s head, on a tiny medallion suspended round the Queen’s neck. A strong magnifying glass is required to do justice to the beauty of this microscopic miniature within a miniature, probably the smallest ever executed. Judged by all these portraits and by contemporary descriptions, Katherine Parr must have been a pretty little woman with delicate features, an intellectual brow—too amply developed for beauty—fox-coloured eyes, and a rather cunning expression about the thin yet flexible mouth. When her body was disinterred in 178625 it was found not to be decomposed, and measured exactly five feet and three inches. The hair, very long and curling naturally, was of a fine golden auburn.

QUEEN KATHERINE PARR

AFTER THE PAINTING FORMERLY IN THE POSSESSION OF HORACE WALPOLE

History does not record the names of the tutors who assisted Katherine Parr to acquire her remarkable education and numerous accomplishments. We may suppose that some priest or monk chaplain at Kendal or Sizergh instructed her in Latin and Greek, in both of which languages she was proficient. She may have learnt French from Mr. Bellemain, French tutor to Prince Edward, a pronounced Huguenot, who, notwithstanding his unorthodoxy, was in high favour at Henry’s Court, received a pension from Edward after he ascended the throne, and walked in the young King’s funeral procession. She mastered the language sufficiently to be able to write it and speak it correctly, and even to record her sentimental impressions in tolerable verse. Amongst the MSS at Hatfield there is a curious French poem, partly written by Katherine and partly by another, probably her teacher. It opens with the following verse in the Queen’s handwriting:—

“Considerant ma vie miserable

Mon cœur marboin, obstine, intraitable,

Outrecuide tant, que non seullement,

Dieu n’estimoit ny son commandement.”

The concluding verse runs:—

“Qui prepare vous est devinement

Ainsi que le monde eust son commencement

Au Pere au Filz au Saint Esprit soit gloire

Loz et honneur d’eternelle memoire. Finis.”26

Katherine’s handwriting, though clear and legible, is not to be compared with that of Elizabeth, King Edward, and Jane Grey, who very probably took lessons in the then much esteemed art of caligraphy from Dr. Cheke, chief tutor to the Prince, or from Ascham, both famous for the beauty of their penmanship.

Although very worldly, Katherine Parr was much preoccupied with theological disputations, and a distinctly evangelical tone pervades her literary remains; it is nevertheless certain that during the lifetime of her second husband, Lord Latimer, she was, or pretended to be, a Catholic, and that during the few years of her married life with Henry VIII she was a schismatic or “Henryite.” Tact and prudence were her leading characteristics, and she was both amiable and conciliatory, though she could, when angered, be extremely vindictive. Thomas Cromwell’s downfall, usually attributed to the machinations of Katherine Howard, was in reality mainly due to those of Katherine Parr, for she it was, as we shall presently see, who opened Henry VIII’s eyes to the prodigious rapacity and unpopularity of his favourite chancellor.

Lord Latimer, the lady’s second spouse, like Lord Borough, had been twice married, and when he took her to wife was already the father of several children. The date of this marriage has not been handed down to us, but as Latimer lost his second wife in 1526, it could not have taken place earlier than 1527. He was a staunch Catholic of the belligerent sort, and a prominent leader of the Pilgrimage of Grace, an insurrection that broke out in the North of England in 1536 in consequence of the popular displeasure at the suppression of the monasteries and sequestration of church property. The peasants, suddenly deprived of the monks’ accustomed charity and driven to desperation, began a local crusade, which soon assumed large proportions, their ranks being joined by a great number of noblemen and gentlemen belonging to the old faith, amongst them the Archbishop of York, Lord Nevill, Lord Darcy, Lord Latimer, Sir Stephen Hamerton, Sir Robert Constable, a certain mysterious individual who called himself the “Earl of Poverty,” and Robert Aske, who though of mean extraction was nevertheless considered by the rest of his party as their nominal general. These motley pilgrims increased in numbers as they swept southwards in picturesque confusion; but despite the enthusiasm of their members, they seem to have been ill-disciplined and badly organised, and were presently dispersed at Dunstable, thanks to the conciliatory attitude of the Duke of Norfolk, whom the King had empowered to treat with these rebels and disband them. Latimer, who had been elected their spokesman, withdrew almost immediately and returned to London, where he soon afterwards resumed his post as Comptroller of the King’s Household. After this excursion into open revolt against his sovereign, Lord Latimer evidently deemed it prudent to keep himself very much in the background: he did not join the second Pilgrimage of Grace, which broke out in the following February (1537) and terminated in the execution by sword and fire of some seventy of its more prominent members, among them old Lord Derby, who was over eighty-three years of age.

When in London, Lord Latimer inhabited a house situated in the churchyard of the Charterhouse. The Chartreuse, as it was then called, was rather a fashionable place of residence, being not far distant from Clerkenwell, which in King Henry’s time was a sort of Court suburb, such as Kensington became in the eighteenth century. From a letter still extant, it would appear that Lord Latimer, like many a modern nobleman and gentleman, was in the habit of letting his mansion furnished when he himself was absent at Snape Hall, his country seat in Yorkshire. Sir John Russell, Lord Privy Seal, who looked meek enough27 but was popularly known as “Swearing Russell” on account of his profane language, wrote in January 1537 requesting Latimer to allow a friend of his to have the loan of his house in the “Chartreuse” during his absence. Latimer dared not refuse, but his answer betrays his reluctant compliance with the request and some temper at the favour having been asked:—

“Right Honourable and my especial good Lord—After my most hearty recommendations had to your good Lordship. Whereas your Lordship doth desire … [effaced] of your friends my house within Chartreuse churchyard, beside so … [effaced] I assure your Lordship the getting of a lease of it costs me 100 marcs, besides other pleasures [i.e. “improvements”] that I did to the house; for it was much my desire to have it, because it stands in good air, out of press of the city. And I do alway lie there when I come to London, and I have no other house to lie at. And, also, I have granted it to farm [i.e. “have let it”] to Mr. Nudygate,28 son and heir to serjeant Nudygate, to lie in the said house in my absence; and he to void whensoever I come up to London. Nevertheless I am contented if it can do your Lordship any pleasure for your friend, that he lie there forthwith. I seek my lodgings at this Michaelmas term myself. And as touching my lease, I assure your Lordship it is not here; but I shall bring it right to your Lordship at my coming up at this said term, and then and alway I shall be at your Lordship’s commandment, as knows our Lord, Who preserve your Lordship in much honour to His pleasure. From Wyke, in Worcestershire, the last day of September.—Your Lordship’s assuredly to command,

“John Latimer”

“To the right honourable and very especial good lord, my Lord Privy Seal.”29

Lord Latimer died in February 1543, a twelvemonth after the execution of Queen Katherine Howard, leaving his widow the manors of Nunmonkton and Hamerton for life, and his mansion in the Charterhouse for as long as she should remain a widow. As soon as her husband was safely buried in St. Paul’s Churchyard, Katherine began to indulge her leaning towards what was then known as the “new learning”; and her house became the resort of the leaders of a movement which was eventually to complete the Reformation in England. These gentlemen were wont, it is said, to assemble at regular intervals and hold conferences on religious subjects in the presence, not only of Katherine and her household, but of a select circle of great ladies, among them Katherine’s sister, Anne Herbert, and the charming Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, the fourth wife of Lady Jane’s singular grandfather, who were only too willing, notwithstanding the risk they ran, to sit at the feet of a Coverdale, a Latimer, or a Parkhurst. Religion, however, sat lightly on this clever Duchess, who—so brilliant, witty, and amusing are her letters—might well claim to be the precursor in the epistolary art of Madame de Sévigné. To these pious gatherings of the widow Latimer came likewise the haughty and turbulent Anne Stanhope, Countess 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 and gentleness most mete for His Highness, who never had such a wife more agreeable to his harte than she is.” Katherine herself informed her brother, Sir William Parr, that “it had pleased God to incline the King’s heart to take her as his wife, which was to her the greatest joy and comfort that could happen.” Wriothesley enclosed this letter in one of his own in which he entreated Parr to make himself worthy of such a sister as the new Queen. Chapuys wrote to the Emperor on 27th July: “My lady of Cleves has taken great grief and despair at the King’s espousal of this last wife, who is not, she says, nearly so beautiful as she, and besides that there is no hope of issue, seeing that she has been twice married before and no children born to her.” Richard Hills, “Heretic Hills,” as they called him, in a letter to Bullinger, the Swiss Reformer, who subsequently became the friend of Lady Jane Grey, and dated from Strasburg on 26th September, makes the following very characteristic comments on the King’s sixth marriage:—

“No news but that our King has, within these two months as I have already written to John Bucer, burnt three godly men in one day. In July he married the widow of a nobleman named Latimer, and, as you know, he is always wont to celebrate his nuptials by some wickedness of this kind.”

The victims alluded to are known as the “Windsor martyrs.” They were men in humble circumstances named Parsons, Testwood, and Filmer.35 A fourth, John Marbeck, who was organist at St. George’s Chapel Royal, was, it is said, reprieved at the instance of Dr. Casson, Bishop of Salisbury, and of the Queen, who is also credited with having saved the life of Dr. Haines, Dean of Exeter, of Sir Philip Hoby and his wife, and of Sir Thomas Carden, who had been denounced by Dr. London as spreading heresy even within the precincts of the palace. The result of the Queen’s action was that London and Simmonds, his coadjutor, were condemned for perjury, and sentenced to ride round Windsor with their faces to the horses’ tails—a humiliating punishment which is said to have caused Dr. London’s death—no great loss to humanity.

To save human life and to alleviate suffering is a meritorious act that brings its own reward; but in spite of this, and although the newly made Queen was thus enabled to realise her own influence, she must have found her honeymoon a season full of dread, revealing as it did the terrible insecurity of lives dependent on the fiat of so capricious a tyrant as her royal mate.