Thomas was not only ambitious: he genuinely believed that he was equal, if not superior, to his brother. Thomas's subsequent behaviour both involving Catherine, and later, Elizabeth sought to level the playing field. Marriage to the Dowager Queen was just one step further towards reaching a particular goal. She was arguably the most important woman in the country and could be expected to use her influence to support her husband in gaining the King's favour, if he so required.
While he was wooing Catherine, Thomas was also in communication with some of the Councillors to see if they might match him with either of Edward VI's half-sisters, Mary or Elizabeth. He received a strong negative response, as sometime in April or May of he secretly married Catherine. When Edward VI took the throne, Thomas had tried to persuade the young King to sign a Bill to allow him to share the role of Protector, which Edward had refused.
By June, the marriage was common knowledge at Court and Thomas was living openly at Chelsea with Catherine and her household, which now included Elizabeth, but soon grew to encompass year-old Lady Jane Grey. Evidence for what happened next at Chelsea, and at Catherine and Thomas's houses at Hanworth and Seymour Place in London, came from statements given by witnesses in the enquiry into the treasonable actions of Thomas Seymour.
Somerset, though arrogant, grasping and unscrupulous, had some enlightened ideas of government. Seymour, on the other hand, had the total selfishness and irresponsibility of a criminal.
He bitterly resented the fact that the office of Protector was not shared equally between Somerset and himself; from the time of their nephew's accession, they behaved like a pair of brothers in some classical tragedy of fratricide.
Vain, reckless and unreasonable as Seymour was, he had the charm of a handsome man who is genial and high-spirited.
Ashley who thought the King himself had favoured the idea was disappointed that the matter came to nothing. But Seymour received an unequivocal rebuff from the Council, and immediately renewed his old suit. She married Seymour secretly, and received his clandestine visits at her house in Chelsea, where her porteress let him in at five in the morning. The situation was full of submerged danger, for by the Council's permission Elizabeth was now living with her stepmother.
Seymour, for all his geniality, was a man of ruthless ambition. He was twenty years older than Elizabeth, but as he was in his prime this meant only that he had the maturity a very young girl admires, and his attractions were of the kind to which she was susceptible all her life.
He had been put into her head already as a possible husband, and now he was coming and going in romantic secrecy, in the first light of the May mornings, as the husband of her still-youthful stepmother. Had Seymour left Elizabeth alone, no harm would have come of it; but one of his reasons for marrying the Queen Dowager was that Elizabeth had been consigned to her care.
His brother had control of the King: he himself would have control of the King's enigmatic young sister. It was true that if she were drawn into any entanglement it might be regarded as high treason, and that the penalty for this was, for a woman, beheading or burning alive. Seymour knew these facts, but he preferred to disregard them. The Queen Dowager's household was a charming one.
Beyond it, indeed, matters were stormy. Seymour was perpetually at variance with his brother, refusing to accept his authority or to carry out his own duties as Lord Admiral, while the situation between the brothers was the more embittered by the hostility of their wives. The Duchess of Somerset, eminently strong-minded and disagreeable, had once been obliged to treat Catherine Parr with ceremonious respect; she now took pains to show her that the Queen Dowager was merely the wife of the Protector's younger brother.
This occasioned anger abroad, but at home all was pleasure, ease and a delightful freedom from past restraints. The Princess's household formed a unit within the Queen Dowager's; it included Mrs. Ashley, the tutor, young Mr. Grindal, and several ladies-in-waiting. There was also attached to it a man who would seem to have had more sense than all the rest put together; this was the Princess's distant cousin John Ashley.
In the months after the King's death he gave his wife a warning "to take heed for he did fear that the Lady Elizabeth did bear some affection to my Lord Admiral". He had noticed that she looked pleased and sometimes blushed when Seymour was spoken of. His wife was coarser-fibred; either she saw no danger, or in the congenial atmosphere of ease and pleasure with the exciting undercurrent that Seymour's presence brought, she would not recognize it.
Seymour went openly to work. He began romping with the Princess, and his wife did what many women do in such a case: to prove to herself and everybody else that there was no harm in the romp, she joined it herself. There was no doubt as to Elizabeth's state of mind - Ashley had recognized it at once; but with the passion there was considerable fear.
Seymour's boisterous approaches were liable to be alarming to a girl of fourteen, and one with, who knows what buried dread of men? Seymour would come into her bedchamber in the mornings. If she were up "he would strike her familiarly on the back and buttocks".
If she were in bed he would open the bed curtain "and make as though he would come at her", while she "would go further into the bed". One morning he tried to kiss her in her bed, at which Mrs. Ashley, who slept in the Princess's room "bade him go away for shame". Elizabeth's bedroom, at Chelsea and at Seymour's town house, Seymour Place, was above the Queen Dowager's, and Seymour used to come up "in his nightgown, bare-legged in his slippers".
Ashley told him "it was a shame to see a man come so, bare-legged, to a maiden's chamber", but her protests were not taken seriously. The Queen Dowager, however, took to coming with her husband on his morning visits and one morning they both tickled the Princess as she lay in her bed.
The cowering under bedclothes, the struggling and running away culminated in a scene of classical nightmare, that of helplessness in the power of a smiling ogre. Seymour had possessed himself of a masterkey, and early one morning at Chelsea, Elizabeth heard the privy lock undo, and, "knowing he would come in" - Seymour, smiling in his long red beard - " she ran out of her bed to her maidens and then went behind the curtains of the bed, the maidens being there; and my Lord tarried a long time in hopes she would come out".
Afterwards, "she was commonly up and at her book", by the time Seymour came, and then he would merely look in at the door and say good morning. But he had overcome her initial resistance; the Queen Dowager, who was undergoing an uncomfortable pregnancy, could not bring herself to make her husband angry by protesting about his conduct, but she began to realize that he and Elizabeth were very often together; then one day in May, she went into a room unexpectedly and found Elizabeth in his arms.
There was no quarrel and no public appearance of her being sent away in disgrace, but it was decided she should remove with her establishment to the house of Sir Anthony Denny at Cheshunt. She and her train arrived there just after Whitsun, and Elizabeth wrote to her stepmother to say that at their parting she had been too much moved to thank her properly for her kindness, so sad was she to go away, leaving her "in doubtful health", and, she said, "albeit I answered little, I weighed it the more, when you said you would warn me of all evils you should hear of me, for if your Grace had not a good opinion of me, you would not have offered friendship to me that way".
The abrupt parting from Seymour, the disgrace and the contrition, and the warring of sexual excitement with deep-buried dread, all this coming upon her at the critical age of fourteen-and-a-half, coincided with, if it did not bring on, an illness.
In Mrs. Ashley's words: "She was first sick about mid-summer. Ashley said she herself had never been more than a mile from the house.
For the next few years, the Princess suffered from intermittent ill health; she developed migraine attacks and pains in the eyes, and by the time she was twenty, it was a matter of common rumour, of particular interest to ambassadors, that her monthly periods were very few or none, a condition often accounted for by shock and emotional strain. In Elizabeth's history, the events of her mother's death, and that of her mother's cousin, and the engaging of her own affections by Seymour's outrageous siege, seem to have done her nervous system and her sexual development an injury from which they never recovered.
But her loyalty in her affections remained unshaken. She wrote anxiously of her stepmother's condition, "so big with child and so sickly", and to Seymour she wrote a letter, brief and touching. She waived away an apology he made for not being able to fulfil some small promise:"I shall desire you to think that a greater matter than this could not make me impute any unkindness to you, for I am a friend not won with trifles, nor lost with the like.
In August the Queen Dowager's daughter was born, and in the delirium of fever, Catherine complained that those she had meant well to, and tried to be good to, stood around her bed, laughing at her pain. She died within a week, and was buried in the small chapel of Sudeley Castle. The chief mourner in the scene of sable draperies and attendants hooded in black was Lady Jane Grey, in deepest mourning, with a long mourning train upheld by another young lady.
Her parents now wished Lady Jane to return to them, but the child's body contained an infusion of the precious royal blood and Seymour did not intend to let her go.
He held out a dazzling prospect: "If I can get the King at liberty, I dare warrant you he shall marry none other than Jane. There was a second powerful and ambitious Seymour brother, who was to teach the teenage Elizabeth some malign lessons on the delusions of sexual desire and the snares of ruthless men who would be king.
Thomas Lord Seymour of Sudeley, at nearly forty years old, still cut a dashing soldierly figure having distinguished himself in diplomatic, naval and military campaigns under Henry.
Thomas Seymour had not only been admired by Henry, he had been loved by his queen. In marrying the King rather than this love, Catherine Parr had sacrificed her heart for the sake of duty. However, on Henry's death her sense of obligation was fulfilled and after only four month, of widowhood, Catherine married Seymour. This was considered in indecorous haste, especially for a queen - and for a couple well into Tudor middle-age.
But even more surprisingly the thirty-five year-old queen, who had remained childless throughout her first three marriages, now belatedly conceived. This could only enhance the self-confidence and reputation of an already proudly virile man. It seemed inevitable that such a man would have sired a son. Elizabeth was still only thirteen when her stepmother, of whom she was most fond, married for love.
Although not legally her step-father, Thomas Seymour assumed his role as head of the household and with his manly demeanour and exuberant animal spirits he became for the young Princess a charismatic figure of attraction and respect.
Some twenty-five years her senior, Seymour in fact was old enough to be her father and the glamour of his varied heroic exploits in war and diplomatic dealings brought a welcome worldly masculinity into Elizabeth's cloistered female-dominated life. Up until now, Elizabeth had never lived in daily proximity with a man other than her tutors and servants. Her father had been a distant, revered, almost superhuman figure to her, someone she strived to impress with something of her own talents and individuality, but it is unlikely that Henry offered her more than the scantiest recognition.
From the start, there was evidence that Seymour paid Elizabeth most gratifying attention. From a purely political point of view, Elizabeth was worthy of this attention for Seymour always had an eye for the main chance and this receptive young woman was a royal Princess, third in the line of succession. But Elizabeth was also attractive in her own right, tall with fair reddish-gold hair, fine pale skin and the incongruously dark eyes of her mother, alive with unmistakable intelligence and spirit.
Although I could not be plentiful in giving thanks for the manifold kindness received at your highness' hand at my departure, yet I am something to be borne withal, for truly I was replete with sorrow to depart from your highness, especially leaving you undoubtful of health. Since her marriage the Queen had undoubtedly moved steadily further towards Protestantism, and in the summer of her enemies at last saw an opportunity to pounce.
Unfortunately, there was to be an occasion towards the end of June when the Queen failed to follow this excellent advice - at least according to the story later told by John Foxe in his best-selling Book of Martyrs. Henry's dancing days were over now, and it was his wife's habit to sit with him in the evenings and endeavour to entertain him and take his mind off the pain of his ulcerated legs by inaugurating a discussion on some serious topic, which inevitably meant some religious topic.
On this particular occasion, Katherine seems to have allowed her enthusiasm to run away with her, and the King was provoked into grumbling to Stephen Gardiner: "A good hearing it is, when women become such clerks, and a thing much to my comfort to come in mine old days to be taught by my wife. This, of course, was Gardiner's cue to warn his sovereign lord that he had reason to believe the Queen was deliberately undermining the stability of the state by fomenting heresy of the most odious kind and encouraging the lieges to question the wisdom of their prince's government.
So much so, that the Council was "bold to affirm that the greatest subject in this land, speaking those words that she did speak and defending likewise those arguments that she did defend, had with impartial justice by law deserved death". Henry was all attention. Anything which touched the assurance of his own estate was not to be treated lightly, and he authorized an immediate enquiry into the orthodoxy of the Queen's household, agreeing that if any evidence of subversion were forthcoming, charges could be brought against Catherine herself.
Gardiner and his ally on the Council, the Lord Chancellor Thomas Wriothesley, planned to attack the Queen through her ladies and believed they possessed a valuable weapon in the person of Anne Kyme, better known by her maiden name of Anne Askew, a notorious heretic already convicted and condemned. Anne, a truculent and argumentative young woman who came from a well-known Lincolnshire family, had left her husband and come to London to seek a divorce.
Quoting fluently from the Scriptures, she claimed that her marriage was to longer valid in the sight of God, for had not St Paul written: "If a faithful woman have an unbelieving husband, which will not tarry with her she may leave him"?
Thomas Kyme was an old-fashioned Catholic who objected strongly to his wife's Bible-punching propensities. Anne failed to get her divorce, but her zeal, her sharp tongue and her lively wit soon made her a well; known figure in Protestant circles.
Inevitably she soon came up against the law, and In March she was arrested on suspicion of heresy, specifically on a charge of denying the Real Presence in the sacrament of the altar. Pressed by Bishop Bonner on this vital point, Anne hesitated and was finally persuaded to sign a confession which amounted to an only slightly qualified statement of orthodox belief.
A few days later she was released from gaol and went home to Lincolnshire - not to her husband but to her brother Sir Francis Askew. Throughout that spring the conservative counter-attack gathered momentum, and by early summer a vigorous anti-heresy drive was in progress. At the end of May Thomas Kyme and his wife were summoned to appear before the Council.
Although not proved, it's probable that the initiative for this move came from Kyme himself. Anne had refused to obey the order of the Court of Chancery to return to him, nor is it likely that he wanted her back. At the same time, he was in an invidious position, deserted-and defied by his wife and unable to marry again. It cannot have failed to occur to him that only Anne's death would finally solve his problems.
Armed with a royal warrant and backed up by the Bishop of Lincoln who had a long score to settle with Anne , Thomas Kyme forcibly removed her from her brother's protection and carried her off to London.
All through the following week determined efforts were made to wring from her a second and more complete recantation. The bishops were not anxious to make martyrs - retractions, especially from the better-known Protestants, would obviously be more valuable for propaganda purposes - but Anne was not to be caught a second time.
When Stephen Gardiner tried his charm on her, begging her to believe he was her friend, concerned only with her soul's health, she retorted that that was just the attitude adopted by Judas "when he unfriendly betrayed Christ". Any lingering doubts and fears had passed. She knew now, with serene certainty, what Christ wanted from her, and she was ready to give it. At her trial on 28 June she flatly rejected the existence of any priestly miracle in the eucharist. Lord Latimer had been married twice previously and had two children, a son and a daughter, to whom Catherine became an admirable stepmother.
Her second husband died in , leaving Catherine well provided for. No issue resulted from either marriage. Following the death of Lord Latimer, Catherine attracted the eye of Thomas Seymour, the brother of Jane Seymour , but when the king expressed an interest in her she was obliged to accept his proposal. Henry VIII, now a grotesquely bloated remnant of the vibrant and athletic young man who inherited the English throne in , was ageing fast and in failing health.
He suffered from a suppurating ulcer on his leg, which was extremely painful and had become vastly overweight. The new queen was a tall woman with auburn hair, she was not considered to be beautiful and contemporary descriptions describe her as 'pleasing' 'kind' and 'gracious'. Henry's fourth wife, Anne of Cleves exclaimed in surprise when she heard of their impending wedding that Catherine was 'not nearly as beautiful as she'. She described the king as 'so stout that three of the biggest men that could be found could get inside his doublet.
Catherine made efforts to foster good relationships with Henry's three children from his previous marriages, Mary, Elizabeth and Edward. She took a lively interest in their education and brought them to court attempting to create a family life for them, which had been conspicuously absent before her arrival.
As a mark of Henry's trust in her considerable abilities, she was appointed in the position of regent of England when he embarked on his last campaign to France. The Queen produced several written works, 'Prayers and Meditations' which was an anthology was published in November , and received enthusiastic comments from the scholars of the day. Her second book, 'The Lamentations of a Sinner,' discussing Christian behaviour, commented that married women 'learn of St.
Paul to be obedient to their husbands'. As the king visibly declined, the Catholic and Protestant factions struggled to obtain power during the long minority reign which would inevitably follow. Attempts were made to bring about the demise of the Queen, who had strongly Protestant sympathies and was not reluctant to eagerly expound her religious beliefs to her husband. Catherine's enemies pounced and a Bill of Articles, outlining her supposed heresies, was drawn up.
Catherine was forewarned of the danger and understandably terrified by the fate of her predecessors, threw herself on her husband's mercy. Katherine made a success of her marriage to Henry because she brought to it a combination of intelligence and passion — she spared no effort to make her marriage work.
We might well argue that she had no real option: to turn Henry down could have had dire consequences for herself and her family. Her narrow career path lay before her and all she could do was walk it with cautious steps. But Parr was no mere pragmatist — she enjoyed all the obvious perks of her exalted position and was careful not to jeopardise that position by putting a foot wrong. These writings reveal, first of all, that Katherine embarked on her marriage to Henry at great emotional cost: she was in love with someone else.
Katherine later wrote to Seymour to tell him that as soon as her husband Lord Latimer had died in February Howbeit, God withstood my will therein most vehemently for a time and, through his grace and goodness, made that possible which seemeth to me most unpossible… to renounce utterly mine own will and to follow His will most willingly.
Katherine asked Henry for time to consider his proposal and gave herself to earnest prayer. The modern historian runs into difficulties when explaining 16th-century attitudes to 21st-century readers. In the spiritual autobiography Queen Katherine published for all the world to read, she declared:. With the execution of Thomas Cromwell in July the Reformation had stalled.
The reactionaries had regained the initiative and a major part of their campaign was the removal from office of those they considered to be tainted with heresy. At the very time that Katherine was weighing her options, a witch hunt begun in Windsor had brought to the stake members of the royal household. More importantly, a widespread plot was underway aimed at destroying the leading reformer, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.
The intriguers had to tread carefully because the king was always wary of the purge getting too close to the court and his own personal attendants. Katherine, whose own sympathies lay firmly with the reformers, was well aware that, as queen, she would be entering dangerous territory.
One of them, Francis Goldsmith, compared her to Esther, the Old Testament Jewish heroine who became queen to the Persian King Ahasuerus and used her position to alleviate the sufferings of her people. And Thomas Seymour? The new queen certainly turned out to be a veritable Esther.
During the crucial three-and-a-half years the pair were married the balance swung in favour of the reformers. This was not entirely due to Katherine — for example, the plot against Cranmer collapsed largely because the plotters led by Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester overplayed their hand.
In her relations with the king Katherine was young enough to interest him sexually and mature enough to perceive and cater to his other needs.
But the queen went further — notably in reconnecting Henry with his children, whom he rarely saw. Mary who was 28 in , Elizabeth 11 and Edward 7 lived in various royal manors in the home counties. The girls had both been bastardised and were excluded from the court, while Edward, as the sole heir, was kept far away from the plague-ridden capital. Extant letters, written between and , bear witness to a very warm relationship between the royal children and their stepmother.
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