The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor by Elizabeth Norton Read Free Book Online Page A

house? Harington shook his head, saying ‘he durst not tell what it was’, although Jane ‘were as like in his master’s house to have a greater and better turn, than he would think’. To Dorset, who was kept even further from power than Seymour, such a prospect seemed highly likely. He gave the order for his daughter to pack her things. She was going to join Thomas Seymour’s household.

    Jane Grey’s marriage was not the only one that Thomas Seymour was pondering in the early months of 1547. He was still a bachelor at almost forty and a desirable one at that. His own marriage could lead him to greatness – and his thoughts turned to Princess Mary, the thirty-year-old heir to the throne. The daughter of Catherine of Aragon was slight, with reddish hair and pale skin. Henry VIII, who had declared her illegitimate, never troubled himself to arrange a marriage for her. There had been offers, most notably from Don Luis of Portugal, who renewed his addresses before the old king was even buried. 24 Yet Mary’s cousin, the Emperor Charles V, who kept a fatherly eye on the princess, was under few illusions that she would be permitted to marry during her brother’s minority. 25 She was still the best match in England, as England’s most eligible bachelor realized.
    Although he was frantically busy, Somerset agreed to meet with his younger brother in private one day at Westminster. He was shocked when Thomas got straight to the point, boldly asking for consent to his marriage to Princess Mary, as though it were a foregone conclusion. 26 The certainty with which he spoke would have thrown a less self-assured man; but the duke kept his composure, merely declaring reproachfully that ‘neither of them was born to be king, nor to marry king’s daughters; and though God had given them grace that their sister should have married a king, whence so much honour and benefit had redounded to them, they must thank God and be satisfied’. Somerset must have found Thomas’s proposition laughable; for good measure he added that ‘besides which he knew the Lady Mary would never consent’.
    Somerset had good reason to know that Mary had little love for the new regime. The pair had clashed over religion, the Catholic princess dismissing the Protector’s reformed beliefs as ‘new fangledness and fantasy’. 27 While Mary heard two, three or even four masses a day, Somerset was in the process of stripping the churches of their ornaments to push ahead with his planned programme of Protestant reform. He had also offended the heir to the throne when he failed to pay her a courtesy visit after her father’s death. 28 She recognized that ‘in the end everything will depend upon the good pleasure and unfettered discretion of the Protector’, but she had no desire to marry his brother. Thomas declared to Somerset that ‘he had merely asked for his brother’s countenance, and he would look after the rest’. The Protector, his anger rising at his younger brother, chided him even more sharply and indicated that the matter was finished. As Somerset stomped away, even Thomas must have recognized the hopelessness of his cause. When told of his suit, Mary merely laughed.
    Princess Mary kept herself away from the festivities surrounding King Edward’s coronation on 20 February, at which the Protector insisted on being at the centre of things. In the coronation procession he rode alongside the Earl of Warwick, both vying for the place closest to the king. 29 To cap an awkward day, during which the Imperial ambassador’s invitation was mislaid, the boy-king was so nervous that he forgot both his French and Latin. His ignorance was gleefully reported to his counterparts across the Channel. Little Edward, who had previously survived black magic and other attempts on his life during his apprenticeship as Prince of Wales, showed the world the child that he still was, rather than the great king he so wanted to be. *3 By contrast, Thomas Seymour