The first Elizabeth Read online

  Early in 1548 a new complication arose. Catherine became pregnant. Her age (she was in her mid-thirties) gave some cause for concern, but the child might well strengthen the marriage and turn Seymour's affections back on course. When his son and heir was born Elizabeth would become less important, almost an intruder, in fact, in the Seymour family circle. Or so Catherine may have hoped.

  Yet jealousy and doubt ate at her. As her pregnancy advanced Seymour seemed to be spending more time in Elizabeth's company, not less. Kat could not be relied on to chaperone them; mortifying though it was, Catherine made up her mind to be her own warder. "Suspecting the often access of the admiral to the Lady Elizabeth's Grace," Kat said to Parry afterward, Catherine "came suddenly upon them, where they were all alone."

  What she saw undeceived and pained her, and after a moment made her violently angry. Seymour had Elizabeth in his arms.

  It was a maid of Islington and her wheell ran very rounde; And many a wanton web she spun and it cost her many a pound. Alas! said she, what hap had I, run round, run round, my whele! I fere a mayden I shall die, before my web I rele.

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  he sight of her husband embracing her stepdaughter so unnerved Catherine that she was beside herself. She shouted at Seymour, at Elizabeth, and at Kat Ashley too when she found her. The household was in turmoil, with the young redheaded girl at the center of it all. Before long Elizabeth and her servants left for Sir Anthony Denny's house of Cheshunt —possibly at Catherine's insistence, or possibly because Elizabeth took the initiative and "parted from the queen," her outward dignity served. 1

  In what emotional ferment Elizabeth left can only be imagined. She had disgraced and compromised herself, and she had probably fallen in love. Catherine, who had served as a mother to her, had been alienated utterly; there could never again be trust between them. As for Seymour, just as what passed between him and Elizabeth cannot be known for certain, so his reaction to their parting is undiscoverable. If he wrote in amorous terms to Elizabeth after she went to Cheshunt there is no surviving record of it. They may have communicated nonetheless. Kat admitted later having talked with Seymour on the way to Cheshunt, though she claimed she could not remember what was said. 2

  All this happened in the late spring of 1548. Through the summer, in the quieter atmosphere of Cheshunt, Elizabeth could turn her full attention to her studies. Until now there had been too many distractions. She

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  had worked dutifully under Ascham's tutelage for several months, but her thoughts were elsewhere. Now, only too glad to throw herself into mental labors, she began to benefit fully from the guidance of her remarkable teacher.

  A pen-and-ink sketch of Roger Ascham shows a beefy, hearty man with curling black hair and beard, full lips and cheeks, and intelligent eyes. He was a Yorkshireman from the tiny village of Kirby Wiske in the remote North Riding, and though his years at St. John's College made him an erudite classicist he retained the air of an ingenuous countryman all his life. Ascham was by nature an affable, mellow man, accepting of others and generous with his praise. Intellectually he was opinionated but unassertive, preferring comfortable moderation to driving accomplishment, and his works, though sane and rich with nuanced observations on human nature and his times, lacked originality.

  He was truly at home with the ancients, referring to "my old masters Plato, Aristotle and Cicero," and liked nothing better than to reread their works with a quick-witted student at his side, taking his time and devoting patient hours to unraveling the secrets of their style and matter. His was not an aesthetic temperament. The subtleties of the poetic imagination were beyond him—"I had never poetical head," he confessed, and his extant poems confirm it—but so was the contentiousness of the intellectual combatant. Theological controversy in particular he deplored as a waste of mental energy. Of a contemporary who was continually enmeshed in debating points of belief he wrote that he was "sorry to see so worthy a wit, so rare eloquence, wholly spent and consumed, in striving with God and good men." If only the scholar would put his time into translating Demosthenes, his eloquence would become sublime. 3

  Ascham's own recent experience had brought a departure from this peaceable attitude, however. Early in Edward's reign the pulse of religious reform quickened, and at Cambridge a lively debate began over a crucial reform issue: the Roman mass versus the Protestant lord's supper. Ascham wrote an irreverent satire upholding the Protestant view, denouncing contrary doctrines as "filths of the Roman cesspool" and turning the language of the mass against itself. "Behold the mass of the pope," he wrote, "that taketh away the supper of the lord. Behold the foxes of the pope, that devoureth the lamb of God. Behold the heathen idol of the pope, that addeth to the sins of the world." 4 The agitation backfired, and Ascham was disciplined by the master of St. John's. A more contentious man might have been fired to stronger assaults, but Ascham was crushed. The chastisement, he wrote to the master, "caused me greater bitterness of mind than either you can conceive or I can describe." 5 Within weeks he had left the college

  to take up his position in Elizabeth's household. He made no further forays into the theological arena.

  Compared to Cambridge, Ascham found in the society of Kat and John Ashley a haven of congeniality. With the latter—himself a scholar—he read Aristotle and Livy, while the three of them, perhaps joined by Elizabeth on occasion, spent hours "in free talk, mingled always with honest mirth." For all his straitlaced moral views Ascham was an easygoing companion. By his own admission he liked "a merry, pleasant, and playful nature," and found the "friendly fellowship" of the Ashleys much to his liking. Nor was the talk all lighthearted. The instability of the times— political and social unrest, the court and its intrigues, religious change— was often discussed, and Ascham later reminded John Ashley of "our trim conferences of that present world, and too true judgments of the troublesome time that followed."

  But Ascham's chief delight was in his royal pupil. In the morning they read the New Testament together in Greek, then the orations of Isocrates and Demosthenes, and the plays of Sophocles. All these texts Ascham chose with care, as "best adapted to supply her tongue with the purest diction, her mind with the most excellent precepts, and her exalted station with a defence against the utmost power of fortune." Then came religious instruction—the Bible, the works of Saint Cyprian and of Luther's disciple Me-lanchthon (who on Anne Boleyn's death had declared himself convinced of her innocence). Finally they read together Ascham's beloved Cicero and "a great part of Livy," followed by Italian and French texts. As Elizabeth's capacities expanded she became more and more adept at the narrow art of double translation—turning Greek and Latin into felicitous English, then back again, in an effort to arrive once more at the original wording—highly exacting proof of stylistic mastery.

  Elizabeth surprised him by the rigor of her mind, "exempt from female weakness," and especially by its "masculine power of application." "No apprehension can be quicker than hers," he wrote, "no memory more retentive." Her Italian and French were as fluent as her English, her Latin excellent and considered, her Greek moderately good. Her handwriting was truly outstanding. Ascham perfected her command of the Italian, or italic, script—the romanesque-based humanist style which was beginning to supersede the secretary, or gothic, style—and surviving examples of her writing show real artistry.

  To Ascham eloquence was the touchstone of true learning, and he took much satisfaction from his pupil's literary discrimination. She was a good judge of tone, and could pick out cliches and poor expressions at a glance. She "greatly admired metaphors, when not too violent, and antitheses

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  when just, and happily opposed," and so strong was her sense of quality that she knew unerringly which texts ought to be rejected with disgust and which welcomed and savored. 6

  There is no doubt that Ascham was proud of Elizabeth's learning, and respected her capabilities. Yet his praise ought to be set in context. In fact Elizabeth was only one among several hi
ghly intelligent students he encountered, and she took second place to Mildred Cooke, who Ascham said "understood and spoke Greek like English," and even to the wan and diligent Jane Grey with her cherished Plato. All the children of Henry VIII were strikingly intellectual, Mary in particular, and though Elizabeth followed in her sister's footsteps she did not overtake her. Elizabeth's mature writing style, moreover, was heavy-handed and pedantic, full of labored, overelaborate metaphors and weighed down with long words. She had little affinity for music (though she "composed measures" for dancing and played them on the virginals) and probably lacked the finely tuned ear that often makes a gifted musician a graceful writer and clever linguist as well.

  Above all Ascham, however sincere and well intentioned toward his royal pupil, was inclined to exaggerate his praise, not only because Elizabeth was the king's sister but because he found her achievements doubly remarkable considering her sex. He thought of her as he did of all learned women, as a sort of freak of nature whose accomplishments were different in kind from those of learned young men. It was partly for that reason that he found his other pupil John Whitney so rewarding to teach. Whitney studied along with Elizabeth, and was phenomenally eager and apt. The shortage of sleeping accommodations made the boy and his tutor bedfellows, and they developed so close a bond that when Whitney suddenly died in August, Ascham grew despairing for a time and speculated about returning to Cambridge before long.

  If the first few months of Elizabeth's study with Ascham had been hampered by the distressing domestic triangle the summer at Cheshunt was interrupted by illness. Elizabeth began to suffer from "rheums"—head colds—and other pains in the head which sometimes confined her to bed and generally reduced her capacity for concentrated study. It could be that study itself had brought them on, for she was nearsighted and may have suffered eyestrain. Or, more likely, the recent emotional upheaval had begun to take its toll.

  She had not been able to put Catherine or Seymour out of her mind. Catherine's sharp rebuke was still fresh to her, along with her promise to warn Elizabeth "of all evils she should hear of her." This may well have been a threat, but Elizabeth, in a letter to Catherine, decided to look on it as a gesture of conciliation, and thanked her for it. Nonetheless, she

  admitted, "all men" judged them to be bitter enemies, and the most she could do under the circumstances was to say she had been sorry to leave, especially as Catherine was "undoubtful of health," and to assure her stepmother that though she had made small answer to her warning she had not taken it lightly. 7 The time of Catherine's delivery was approaching, and in another letter—its tone belying any strain between the two women— Elizabeth commiserated with Catherine, who was sickly and whose pregnancy had been a difficult one. "If I were at his birth," she said of the child, "no doubt I would see him beaten, for the trouble he hath put you to." 8

  The queen's "good hour" came, and the child proved to be a girl. Catherine languished, and as she grew weaker her mind was disturbed and she became deluded and lucid by turns. Elizabeth Tyrwhitt, Catherine's stepdaughter by her first marriage and among the most intimate of her ladies in waiting, described her final anguished hours. Shortly before her death, she wrote, Catherine told her "she did fear such things in herself, that she was sure she could not live." The bedchamber was full of attendants as she spoke, and Seymour sat beside Catherine holding her hand. Despite the evident finality of the scene Lady Tyrwhitt tried to give a hopeful reply, and said "she saw no likelihood of death in her." Then Catherine became distracted, and burst out, "I am not well handled, for those that be about me careth not for me, but stand laughing at my grief. And the more good I will to them, the less good they will to me."

  "Why, sweetheart," Seymour said at once, "I would you no hurt."

  "No, my lord, I think so," she replied, her tone biting even though her voice was weak. And in a whisper she added, "My lord, you have given me many shrewd taunts."

  Catherine's mind was "far unquieted," Lady Tyrwhitt noted, yet this accusation was made "with good memory, and very sharply and earnestly." Then followed an hour of caustic recrimination, with Catherine accusing her husband—who was lying on the bed beside her, trying to "pacify her unquietness with gentle communication"—and blaming him for her extremity. It was his fault, she said, that she had not been able to speak at length with her physician right after her delivery—a thing that might have saved her life. Seymour tried to deny this soothingly, but before he had spoken three or four words she "answered him very roundly and smartly, saying my lord, I would have given a thousand marks to have had my full talk with [Dr.] Huick, the first day I was delivered, but I durst not, for displeasing of you."

  She went on and on in the same vein, the embarrassed attendants wishing the stream of abuse would end even as they pitied poor Catherine. Lady Tyrwhitt found the grotesque scene too painful to bear. "I perceived

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  her trouble to be so great," she wrote, ''that my heart would serve me to her no more." 9

  Catherine's ravings ceased between three and four in the morning on September 5, 1548, two days before her stepdaughter Elizabeth's fifteenth birthday. Jane Grey, who had been living for some time in Seymour's household, performed the office of chief mourner, watching hour after hour beside the candlelit bier and making the traditional offerings of money to the alms box at the funeral. The obsequies were uncompromisingly Protestant, with psalms and the Te Deum sung in English and an admonitory sermon by the reformer Coverdale advising the worshipers not to interpret the ceremonies in the old superstitious way but as acts of commemoration honoring Catherine's life. Catherine herself had been known to hold strong views against mourning the dead. To grieve, she once wrote, was to protest God's ordinances, since the death of a loved one was part of a divine plan. "Such as have doubted of the everlasting life to come, doth sorrow and bewail the departure hence; but those which be persuaded that to die here is life again, do rather hunger for death and count it a felicity than to bewail it as an utter destruction." 10

  That she evidently had not welcomed her own imminent death as a gateway to eternal life only fueled the gossip that Catherine had been poisoned. The circumstances were highly suspicious. Seymour had become enamored of Elizabeth—many said that he had seduced her—and within months his unwanted wife died, cursing him for his cruelties. He was clearly preparing to marry Elizabeth; otherwise why had he kept on the queen's dozens of women—not only her personal servants but the ceremonial household of gentlewomen of the privy chamber and waiting maids—as if in anticipation of a new royal mistress? Both Lady Tyrwhitt and her husband warned Kat Ashley of the admiral's apparent designs, cautioning her to remember that no lawful marriage could be made without the council's prior assent. There was a more practical issue as well. If Kat valued Elizabeth's peace of mind, could she really see her brought to Sudeley Castle to be served by Catherine's partisans—women who, having been witness to all the turbulent events of the past year and a half, whispered that their mistress had been "hastened to her death" on Elizabeth's account and believed that Elizabeth had allowed Seymour to seduce her?

  According to the widower himself, the loss of his wife had at first left him "so amazed, that he had small regard either to himself or to his doings," and it was several weeks before he could begin to sit down and work out just where he stood. He had seen to it that Catherine left him all her substantial wealth in a deathbed will, and he had plans to acquire more. He realized he could afford to keep the late queen's servants—not

  only the women but the hundred-odd gentlemen and yeomen who had attended her—and that in Catherine's absence his mother would look after Jane Grey with as much solicitude "as if she were her own daughter." Catherine's death, in fact, gave him a chance to show how extensive his own influence was. Now that he was no longer in her shadow his true stature would be revealed. When the earl of Rutland remarked to him that since his wife's death "his power was much diminished," Seymour scoffed. "Judge, judge," he cautioned the earl, "the cou
ncil never feared me as much as they do now!" 11

  Beneath his bluster Seymour was anxious, and his anxiety lent added urgency to the bold gamble he now undertook. Not that his intended coup was unpremeditated: on the contrary, he had been building toward it for many months. But the timing caught him by surprise (always assuming he did not in fact "hasten" Catherine's death). If he was to gather his forces, marry Elizabeth, and win over the king and council then he had to act quickly, before Elizabeth was married to someone else and while he still enjoyed the protection of King Edward's favor. Above all, he had to act before his brother or Dudley realized the full extent of his ambition and challenged him with a show of force. That might come in time, but with haste enough he would be ready for it.

  Soon after Catherine's funeral Seymour rode off to the West Country to rouse his sworn followers and bind others to his cause. His methods were proven and effective. He had shared them with Rutland, when he thought the earl was among his allies. "Make much of the gentlemen," he had advised, "but more of such honest and wealthy yeomen as are ringleaders in good towns." Gentlemen may waver, but yeomen never. "Making much of them, and sometimes dining like a good fellow in one of their houses," Seymour had said, would "allure all their good will," and bind them fast. 12

  To the admiral the terrain of England was a vast campaigning ground, and he liked nothing better than to lay out a map he carried with him and sweep his hand across it, saying "All that be in these parts be my friends," "this is my Lord Protector's, that my lord of Warwick's [Dudley's]." As he reckoned it, with his own ten thousand tenants and servants, and the supporters he could count on elsewhere, he had "as great number of gentlemen that loved him, as any nobleman in England"—certainly many more than his brother and Dudley. 13 And where friendship failed, pounds and pence could buy loyalty. Seymour had an invaluable accomplice in Sir William Sharington, gentleman of the king's chamber and master of the mint at Bristol, who supplied him with the money he needed to finance his takeover. "God's faith, Sharington," the mint master recalled the admiral saying, "if we had ten thousand pounds in ready money, that were well.