Behind the Palace Doors by Michael Farquhar Read Free Book Online

Pregnant and sick at the time, Katherine sent Elizabeth away with a stern warning about the dangerous effects of scandal. She also promised the mortified girl that she would report to her if her reputation had already been compromised in any way.
    A deeply chastened Elizabeth assured her stepmother in a letter from her new residence that she was “replete with sorrow to depart from your Highness, especially seeing you undoubtful of health; and albeit I answered little, I weighed it more deeper when you said you would warn me of all evilness that 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 at all, meaning the contrary.”
    Though the breach with Katherine Parr was quickly healed,the episodes with Seymour would come to haunt Elizabeth and taint her with treason. After he was arrested and imprisoned for having tried to kidnap King Edward (see Chapter 2 ), Elizabeth was left to answer the charge that he had conspired to marry her. The danger was acute, especially if the princess was found to have cooperated in Seymour’s scheme. And all the more distressing, her devoted governess, Kat Ashley, who had been like a mother to her, and her servant Thomas Parry were sent to the Tower as co-conspirators. Anything Elizabeth said while being interrogated could put the lives of these beloved companions in danger as well.
    Sir Robert Tyrwhitt, sent by the council to question Elizabeth, was pleased to report that she was “marvelously abashed, and did weep very tenderly a long time,” upon hearing of Ashley and Parry’s imprisonment. But behind those tears was the fierce determination and superior intelligence that would thwart and frustrate Tyrwhitt throughout his relentless interrogation.
    “She hath a very good wit, and nothing is gotten of her but by great policy,” Tyrwhitt conceded. Nevertheless, he remained convinced that he could break the princess. By using “gentle persuasion,” he reported that he had already coaxed Elizabeth into admitting that her cofferer, Thomas Parry, had returned from a financial meeting with Thomas Seymour and had discussed the
possibility
of the Lord Admiral’s marrying her.
    Despite all his threats and cajoling, that was about all Tyrwhitt could get from Elizabeth or her servants. “I verily do believe,” he confessed in frustration, “that there hath been some secret promise between my lady [Elizabeth], Mistress Ashley and the cofferer, never to confess to death.” The interrogator was reduced to informing Elizabeth of the rumors then in circulation that she was in the Tower and pregnant with Seymour’s child. The princess’s composure temporarily broke upon hearing this; her honor was at stake.
    “My Lord, these are shameful slanders,” she wrote furiously to Seymour’s brother, Somerset. “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 as I am.”
    Elizabeth’s plea to vindicate herself publicly was ignored. Meanwhile, Tyrwhitt continued his assault, to no avail. “I … have practiced with my lady’s grace by all means and policies to cause her to confess more than she hath already done,” he lamented, “wherein she doth plainly deny that she knoweth any more than she hath already opened to me.”
    Having been outwitted by the crafty teenager, Tyrwhitt settled on a new policy. If Kat Ashley could be made to talk, that would shatter Elizabeth and “make her cough out the whole.” As it turned out, Mrs. Ashley had long fantasized about a marriage between her royal charge and the charming Seymour, rhapsodizing about it endlessly. “If all the Council did agree, why not?” she had asked Elizabeth in the period following Katherine Parr’s death. “For he’s the noblest man unmarried in this land.” Parry, too, shared in the chatter after his