So for this time she was saved. She had seen death very close, and now there was a reprieve. But still there must be the eternal question: For how long?
IT SEEMED CLEAR to everyone except the King that his end could not be far off. His legs were now in such a state of decay that they could scarcely support him. He needed constant attention, and the Queen was essential to his comfort. We did not say it, but it was in everyone's mind that she was the luckiest woman on Earth, for it seemed possible that she was going to outlive him. He was beyond sexual desire now—another point in her favor.
Yes, said the Court—and, I have no doubt, the country—Katharine Parr is a very fortunate woman.
He was irritable in the extreme and his anger could boil up in an instant, so it was still very necessary to take care. As for Katharine she looked blooming, younger than she had for some time; she could see the end in sight.
Intrigue was rife. There would be a young King, and he was already in the hands of his Seymour uncles, who were supporters of the Reformed Faith. This was not at all to the liking of the Howards, who must have cursed fate which gave the heir to the Seymours and not the Howards, who had had two chances, one with Anne Boleyn and one with Catharine Howard.
The more feeble the King grew, the greater was the arrogance of the Seymours. Young Edward doted on them, and in particular on the younger uncle, Thomas; and everyone knew that the Seymour brothers were the two most ambitious men in the country.
The Duke of Norfolk and his son, the Earl of Surrey, stood on one side, and the Seymours on the other. I watched with interest. They were like carrion crows, fighting over the carcass before it was dead, while the King, who had always hated even to talk of death, went on pretending to himself that he had years before him.
It was certainly an anxious time. Edward would be King, and he was not ten years old. No wonder the uncles were rubbing their hands with glee. The government of the country—by grace of their sister Jane—would be in their hands.
Surrey was one of the most reckless men I have ever known. He was extremely handsome, proud, arrogant, a poet of some ability, a scion of a family which considered itself the highest in the land—so great, he implied, that the Tudors were upstarts in comparison.
On the other hand there were the Seymours, and Edward Seymour was, without doubt, one of the cleverest men at Court. I could not say the same for Thomas. Like Surrey, he was exceptionally attractive—and well aware of it. He had charmed Edward and, I fancy, little Jane Grey and even Elizabeth. He was very ambitious but a little lacking in wisdom, I always thought.
The younger Seymour was often in my thoughts, because I knew that the Queen was in love with him. Poor lady, had the King's eyes not alighted on her, she might have been Thomas Seymour's wife by now. I fancied I had seen his eyes on Elizabeth. I could not believe that he fancied her as a possible wife for himself. She was, after all, the daughter of the King, and she would be Protestant or Catholic, whichever the people desired. Seymour would recognize her qualities, and her position could be considered promising.
Uneasy days they were, with all eyes on the King. Serious-minded people willed him to live until his son was just a little older. It was not good for a country to be left with a minor for a king and a divided people.
Edward Seymour, Lord Hertford, with John Dudley, Lord Lisle, and Cranmer were preparing to rule through the new King. They—with the help of the Queen—had managed to instill in him a fondness for the New Learning. On the other hand there was Norfolk, with Surrey, and the Catholic supporters such as Gardiner and Wriothesley who might even attempt to return to papal authority.
It was an interesting situation, which it was feared, if the King were to die, might lead to civil conflict.
I wondered how Katharine felt when she saw death coming nearer and nearer to my father. Did she dream of days without the threat of death hanging over her? Did she dream of the marriage with Thomas Seymour which had been stopped by the King's preference for her? Was married bliss with the man of her choice to prove to be just a postponement?
That was how it was as my father's health deteriorated and it became obvious to all that his days on Earth were limited.
Surrey became more reckless. There were times when it seemed that his contempt for the Seymour brothers would bring about open warfare between them.
He referred to them as a low family which had been brought up solely because one of its women had happened to please the King.
The Seymours retaliated by demanding: What of the Howards? Had they not used their women to further their own ends?
The quarrel between the Howards and Seymours went on during the whole of the winter. Everyone knew that it could not be long before it flared into open warfare. The Howards were foolish and no match for the wily Hertford, who saw himself lord of all England when his nephew became King; and he was determined to rid himself of his enemies.
It was not difficult to bring a case against the Howards. They might have blue blood but they had very little common sense to go with it.
Edward Seymour was soon accusing them before the King. They were in communication with Cardinal Pole, the King was told, and there was little that aroused his fury more than the very mention of that name. He had regarded Reginald as his friend, and there was greater enmity in his heart for one whom he had trusted in years gone by and who had, as he said, turned traitor. Moreover the Howards had planned to make Mary Howard, Duchess of Richmond, who was, of course, Surrey's sister, the King's mistress so that she could influence him.
To tell the King that someone was going to influence him was the quickest way to arouse his fury.
Then there was the final outrage. Surrey had had the leopards of England emblazoned on one of the walls of his mansion at Kenninghall. Thus he proclaimed himself royal. He boasted that he had Plantagenet blood in his veins besides being descended from Charlemagne.
This was too much to be borne. Norfolk and his son, Surrey, were sent to the Tower.
IT WAS A BITTERLY COLD Christmas. The King was growing feeble. He was the only one who would not admit it.
In the January Surrey lost his head—a lesson to all. He had died from his own vanity. Was the setting up of the royal arms on a wall worth his life? For it was that which had really been responsible for his death.
Crowds had gathered to see Surrey die. There was silence as his head fell. It was such a handsome head and he such a proud man. He was so young to die, son of a noble house and one of the finest poets at Court; but a man of little sense, to barter his life for the sake of a witty quip, for the sake of parading his claim to royalty.
And his father was in the Tower. Norfolk was not much loved. He had been a meddler in affairs all his life. He had been callous to his poor, sad kinswomen; he had applauded them when they became Queens of England and turned against them as soon as they fell out of favor. When those two women had been condemned to death, they had not had a greater enemy than their noble kinsman—apart from Anne Boleyn, whose enemy was her own husband.
There had been a scandal when Norfolk left his wife for the laundress Bess Holland. Yet he had been loud in his condemnation of what he called his lewd and immoral kinswomen. I think everyone hates a hypocrite—so Norfolk was certainly not popular.
How bleak it must be in the Tower with the January winds buffeting the walls, seeping through every crack and crevice to make his prison more uncomfortable than it had been before. How did he feel, I wondered, knowing his son had lost his head … believing perhaps that in a few days he would be led out to meet the same fate?
Everyone about the King knew that he was dying. Wriothesley had said the King was rotting to death. Fortunately for him, not in the King's hearing. But it was an apt phrase. His legs were a mass of putrefying sores. The end could not be far off.