Mary and Elizabeth had each been left lands to the value of £3000 a year by their father, and the Admiral, who apparently would not be warned, now began to make detailed enquiries into Elizabeth’s finances. Her steward, or ‘cofferer’, Thomas Parry, came up to London shortly before Christmas and Tom Seymour took the opportunity to have several conversations with him. He wanted to know all about the state and size of the princess’s household; the whereabouts and profitability of her lands; what terms she held them on; and, especially, whether or not her title to them had yet been confirmed by Letters Patent. She could get her lands exchanged for better ones, he told Parry, and wished they were situated in Wales or the West Country, significantly where most of his own strength lay. He went on to ask about her housekeeping expenses and to compare them with ‘what was spent in his own house’.

  It was partly a question of houses which had brought Parry to town. Elizabeth wanted to visit her brother, but Durham House, where she had been accustomed to stay when she came up to London, was now being used as a Mint. When the Admiral heard about this difficulty, he was eager to help. The princess must have his own house whenever she wanted it. He would like to see her, too. Perhaps when she moved to Ashridge – it would not be far out of his way when he went into the country. As for Durham House, Elizabeth should go to the Duchess of Somerset and ‘make suit’ to the Protector to grant her a suitable town-residence, and agree to the exchange of her lands before her Patent was sealed.

  Parry was much impressed. When he returned to Hatfield, he told Elizabeth all about my lord’s ‘gentle offers’ and the suggested visit. As she seemed to take this ‘very gladly and to accept it very joyfully and thankfully’, Parry was emboldened to ask whether, if the Council approved, she would marry the Admiral? He got small satisfaction. ‘When that comes to pass,’ said Elizabeth, ‘I will do as God shall put into my mind.’ Then she wanted to know what Parry meant by asking her such a question, ‘or who bade him say so’. Nobody, the steward assured her hastily, nobody bade him say so – it was just that from the tone of the Admiral’s conversation it had seemed ‘he was given that way rather than otherwise’. As for his advice that she should go cap in hand to the Duchess of Somerset, Elizabeth would not believe it at first and, considering Tom’s freely expressed dislike of his sister-in-law, it does seem odd to say the least. But when Parry said yes, by his faith, she was annoyed. ‘Well, I will not do so,’ she exclaimed crossly, ‘and so tell him.’ No Tudor was going to be driven to ask favours of a Seymour. ‘I will not come there’, said the Tudor princess, ‘nor begin to flatter now.’ She asked if Mrs Ashley knew of the Admiral’s talk with Parry and ordered him to be sure to tell her. ‘For I will know nothing but she shall know of it. In faith, I cannot be quiet until ye have told her of it.’ The fifteen-year-old Elizabeth fully realised, even if nobody else did, the danger of becoming involved in anything that looked like secret negotiations.

  Mrs Ashley had also been on a trip to London. She saw John Cheke’s wife and Lady Tyrwhit, who told her it was being said that the Admiral was keeping the Queen’s maidens together to wait on the Lady Elizabeth after they were married. Mrs Ashley then had to endure a highly unpleasant interview with the Protector’s wife, during which the Duchess of Somerset ‘found great faults’ with her for having allowed Elizabeth to go with the Admiral in a barge on the Thames one night (this excursion must presumably have taken place the previous Christmas), and ‘for other light parts’. ‘She was not worthy to have the governance of a King’s daughter,’ said the Duchess, and threatened that ‘another should have her place’.15

  Mrs Ashley came back to Hatfield considerably subdued and began to tell Elizabeth that she might have to wait ‘till the King’s majesty came to his own rule’, for it looked as if ‘my Lord Protector’s grace nor the Council would not suffer a subject to have her’; and not to set her mind on the marriage ‘seeing the unlikelihood of it’.16 Mrs Ashley, in fact, was becoming a little frightened. She had not altogether liked the sound of the Admiral’s behaviour recently; if he was planning to do anything without the Council’s consent, it would be disastrous for all concerned, and especially for herself.

  But in spite of her newly acquired circumspection, Mrs Ashley presently enjoyed a cosy gossip with Thomas Parry on the subject uppermost in both their minds. This conversation took place on the day before Twelfth Night 1549 and, judging by its general tone, was accompanied by something guaranteed to keep out the cold and loosen the tongue.

  Parry remarked on the goodwill which he had noticed ‘between the Lord Admiral and her Grace’. Oh, said Mrs Ashley, it was true. ‘I would wish her his wife of all men living,’ sighed the governess. ‘Yes, he might bring it to pass at the Council’s hands well enough.’ But, she told Parry, she had had such a ‘charge’ from the Duchess of Somerset that she dared not speak of it; ‘and so fell again in praising the Admiral’.

  Parry observed that for all that he had heard much evil report of the Admiral, ‘that he was not only a very covetous man and an oppressor, but also an evil jealous man; and how cruelly, how dishonourably and how jealously he had used the Queen’. Nonsense, said Mrs Ashley, ‘I know him better than ye do, or those that so report him.’ No, he would make but too much of Elizabeth, and she knew it. As for the stories about the Admiral’s jealousy, ‘I will tell you,’ went on Mrs Ashley with one of those rare flashes which illuminate a landscape: ‘As he came upon a time up a stairs to see the Queen, he met with a groom of the chamber upon the stairs with a coal basket coming out of the chamber; and because the door was shut, and my lord without, he was angry and pretended that he was jealous.’

  The Admiral loved Elizabeth ‘but too well, and had so done a good while’ confided Mrs Ashley, and forgetting all discretion she proceeded to tell Parry about the Queen’s jealousy, how Elizabeth had been discovered in the Admiral’s arms and had had to be sent away to Cheshunt.

  Something in the steward’s reaction, perhaps the eagerness of his ‘Why, hath there been such familiarity indeed between them?’ brought Mrs Ashley up short, for she ‘seemed to repent that she had gone so far’ and begged him several times never to repeat what she had said, ‘for her Grace should be dishonoured for ever and she likewise undone’. Of course not, said Parry, of course not, he would ‘rather be pulled with horses’.17

  A couple of days later Parry was in London again and saw the Admiral briefly in his room at the court. It was an unsatisfactory interview, for it seemed to the cofferer that his lordship was either ‘in some heat, or very busy, or had some mistrust of me’.18 Tom Seymour had, in fact, come very nearly to the end of the road. The Protector had heard about his proposed visit to Elizabeth, and said with unwonted sternness that he would clap his brother in the Tower if he went anywhere near the princess. More serious was the fact that William Sharington’s malpractices were at last coming to light. Sharington’s house had been searched on 6 January and evidence discovered of his dealings with the Admiral. Tom was summoned to give an account of himself to the Protector in private, but with astonishing pigheadedness he refused to go until it should be more convenient for him.19

  After this there was nothing for it but to lay the whole matter before the Council. The Council had put up with a good deal from the Admiral, but reports of his ‘disloyal practices’ were growing too numerous and too circumstantial to be ignored any longer. Finally, after ‘divers conferences had at sundry times’ it was unanimously decided at a meeting held on 17 January 1549 ‘to commit the said Admiral to prison in the Tower of London, there to remain till such further order be taken with him as the case … shall require’.20

  At the last moment Tom seems to have come to some realisation of his danger. He told the Marquess of Northampton on the day before his arrest that the Council had been having great secret conferences, and, although he knew the matter touched him, he could learn nothing of it.21 Walking in the gallery of his house with Lord Dorset after dinner on 17 January, he said that the Earl of Rutland had accused him, and he showed himself ‘to be much afraid to go to the Council’. He would not go, he declared, without some pledge that he might return home again. Dorset’s brother, Thomas, who was also present, observed with irritating good sense: ‘Knowing yourself a true man, why should you doubt to go to your brother, knowing him to be a man of much mercy? Wherefore, if you will follow my advice, you shall go to him; and if he list to have you, it is not this house that can keep you, though you have ten times so many men as you have.’22

  In spite of having boasted that, by God’s precious soul, he would thrust his dagger into whosoever laid hands on him, when the Council’s agents came for him that night the Admiral went quietly, protesting his innocence and swearing that no poor knave was ever truer to his prince.

  Within the next couple of days John Harington, the Admiral’s confidential servant, William Sharington and the serviceable John Fowler of the Privy Chamber had followed him to the Tower, and a party headed by Lord St John, Great Master of the Household, Anthony Denny and Sir Robert Tyrwhit was despatched to Hatfield. Mrs Ashley and Thomas Parry were taken away for questioning, and Robert Tyrwhit was left behind to obtain a statement from the Princess Elizabeth concerning her own guilty knowledge of the Admiral’s subversive activities.

  When Elizabeth was told that her governess and her steward had been arrested, ‘she was marvellous abashed and did weep very tenderly a long time’ demanding to know whether they had confessed anything or not. This sounded promising, and Robert Tyrwhit was not anticipating any great difficulty in his assignment. But when the princess summoned him, saying she had forgotten to tell Lord St John and Denny of certain matters which she would now open to him, it turned out to be no more than a letter she had written to the Admiral requesting some favour for her chaplain and asking him to credit her trusty servant, Parry, her cofferer, in all other things. This, said Elizabeth, had only meant that she wanted the Admiral’s help in getting Durham House back. Oh, and there was one other thing. Mrs Ashley had written to the Admiral telling him he had better not visit the princess ‘for fear of suspicion’, and when Elizabeth heard about this she had been much offended and advised Mrs Ashley not to write so, ‘because she would not have her to take upon her the knowledge of any such thing’.

  Tyrwhit was disappointed. Elizabeth must clearly be made to realise that she was in no position to play games. ‘After all this,’ he wrote to the Protector, ‘I did require her to consider her honour and the peril that might ensue, for she was but a subject.’ Having allowed Anne Boleyn’s daughter to digest this ominous piece of advice, he continued,

  I further declared what a woman Mistress Ashley was … saying that if she would open all things herself, all the evil and shame should be ascribed to them and her youth considered both with the King’s Majesty, your Grace and the whole Council. But in no way she will not confess any practice by Mistress Ashley or the cofferer concerning my Lord Admiral; and yet I do see it in her face that she is guilty, and do perceive as yet she will abide more storms ere she accuse Mistress Ashley.

  Tyrwhit felt he had every reason to believe that Elizabeth was being deliberately obstructive, for when Thomas Parry had heard the ‘sudden news that my Lord Great Master and Master Denny, was arrived at the gate’ he had rushed to his chamber and said to his wife: ‘“I would I had never been born, for I am undone”’ and wrung his hands and cast away his chain from his neck and his rings from his fingers’.23 If that did not sound like guilt, reasoned Robert Tyrwhit, what did ?

  On the following day, 23 January, he wrote again to the Protector. He had had another interview with Elizabeth, but was obliged to admit: ‘All I have gotten yet is by gentle persuasion, whereby I do begin to grow with her in credit.’ The princess had told him how the Admiral had kindly offered to lend her his house in London ‘for her time being there to see the King’s Majesty’, and had repeated most of the conversation she had subsequently had with Parry. It was not much, but, wrote Tyrwhit hopefully, ‘this is a good beginning, I trust more will follow.’ All the same, he ended, ‘I do assure your Grace, she hath a very good wit, and nothing is gotten of her but by great policy’.24

  Elizabeth needed all the wit and self-control she could muster. She was in a tight corner and knew it. She was now not merely alone, she was surrounded by enemies and spies. She was being called upon to answer the kind of charge, based chiefly on backstairs gossip, which is always most difficult to refute. She faced continual interrogation, designed to trap her into admissions which would have ruined her good name for ever and probably cost her any chance of succeeding to the throne. Her liberty might well be at stake, and, for all she knew of the political situation in London, perhaps even her life. And she was still only fifteen years old.

  Robert Tyrwhit now resorted to that time-honoured device of showing Elizabeth a letter from the Protector, pretending ‘with a great protestation’ that he would not for a thousand pounds have it known that he had done so. Elizabeth thanked him for his kindness, but was not deceived. A false friend, Lady Browne, was introduced into the household in the hopes that the princess might be persuaded to confide in her sympathetic ear. But on 28 January, after more than a week of concentrated effort, Tyrwhit had nothing further to report. ‘I do verily believe’, he wrote to Somerset, ‘that there hath been some secret promise between my Lady, Mistress Ashley and the cofferer, never to confess till death; and if it be so, it will never be gotten of her, but either by the King’s Majesty, or else by your Grace.’25

  The Protector had now taken a hand in the game and written to Elizabeth himself. Tyrwhit was slightly cheered to note that she ‘hath been more pleasant since the receipt thereof than she hath been at any time since my being here’. Not surprisingly, for Elizabeth had seen her chance, and in her reply to Somerset she took it with both hands. His lordship had counselled her ‘as an earnest friend’ to declare all she knew of the matter and Elizabeth was perfectly willing to oblige. Out it all came again – the matter of her chaplain, the Admiral’s offer of his house, Parry’s report of his conversations with the Admiral, Mrs Ashley’s letter to the Admiral, some (though not all) of Mrs Ashley’s badinage. There had been no secret understanding of any sort. ‘As concerning Mrs Ashley, she never advised me unto it, but said always (when any talked of my marriage) that she would never have me marry, neither in England nor out of England, without the consent of the King’s Majesty, your Grace’s, and the Council’s.’ Elizabeth herself, of course, would never have agreed to such a thing without the Council’s consent. ‘And as for Katherine Ashley or the cofferer, they never told me they would practice it. These be the things which I both declared to Master Tyrwhit’, she continued, ‘and also whereof my conscience beareth me witness, which I would not for all earthly things offend in any thing; for I know I have a soul to save, as well as other folks have.’ But if she should remember anything else, she would either write it herself, ‘or cause Master Tyrwhit to write it’. Elizabeth ended with an indication of the sort of tactics which were being employed against her.

  Master Tyrwhit and others have told me that there goeth rumours abroad which be greatly against my honour and honesty (which above all other things I esteem), which be these; that I am in the Tower; and with child by my Lord Admiral. My lord, these are shameful slanders, for the which, besides the great desire I have to see the King’s Majesty, I shall most heartily desire your lordship that I may come to Court after your first determination, that I may show myself there as I am.26

  This famous letter, polite but businesslike, written in a beautifully neat schoolgirl hand, is by any standards a masterpiece of its kind. Elizabeth had wasted no paper on protestations of innocence or outraged modesty. She had defended herself and her servants against unwarrantable accusations with courage and dignity, and more than hinted that she would expect an apology.

  Unfortunately, however, not everyone possessed the qualities of Elizabeth Tudor. Parry and Mrs Ashley both made detailed confessions with which, on 5 February, Tyrwhit was able to confront the princess. ‘She was much abashed and half breathless,’ he reported, ‘and perused all their names particularly’, although, as Sir Robert added scornfully, she knew both Mrs Ashley’s hand and the cofferer’s ‘with half a sight’. Parry had been the first to break, he told her. Mrs Ashley would say nothing until she and Parry were brought face to face, when the steward stood fast to all he had written and ‘she seeing that, she called him false wretch and said that he had promised he would never confess it to death’. Then, commented Elizabeth simply, ‘it was a great matter for him to promise such a promise, and to break it’. Tyrwhit went on, ‘I will tomorrow travail all I can, to frame her for her own surety and to utter the truth.’27

  But by the next day Elizabeth had had time to recover from her embarrassment and to think. It had been acutely humiliating to see the details of those merry romps at Chelsea and Hanworth set out in writing for all to read. They made her look more like a giggling servant girl than a princess. That was bad enough, but it was not remotely treasonable. Parry and Mrs Ashley did not show up in a particularly good light either, but that was all. There was nothing in their statements to implicate any of them in actual treason; no evidence that either they, or Elizabeth, had ever been involved in a secret matrimonial plot. When Robert Tyrwhit returned to the attack, the princess allowed him to take down her formal ‘confession’ but, apart from a few additional details, it contained absolutely nothing new. ‘They all sing the same song,’ wrote the exasperated Tyrwhit, ‘and so I think they would not do, unless they had set the note before.’28

 

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