Free The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor by Elizabeth Norton

never to marry, and break it when I have done, if I live two years’.
    Yet Catherine’s carefully prepared words remained unspoken. Instead, as she entered the chamber the ducal couple began to berate her. They dismissed any notion of a marriage between her and Thomas Seymour as ‘that hell’ – something that they earnestly prayed would never happen. Their words made the queen ‘warm’ with fury, her anger so hot that, had she been only a little closer to the Protector, she feared that she ‘should have bitten him’. Nevertheless, on being given the promise of a meeting with the king – probably the next day, or on Saturday at 3 o’clock at the latest – she backed down and returned to Chelsea. 32
    She was not done with her ‘new brother’, however, and meant to ‘utter all my choler’ when she saw him again with the king. That evening, she wrote to Thomas asking him to calm her down and tell her what to say. He found her anger erotic, writing of his pleasure that she ‘hath been warmed’ for him and that this would mean that she no longer spoke of keeping apart for two years. For all Catherine’s fury, she found the doors to the royal apartments firmly closed against her. 33
    For appearances’ sake, the Protector and his wife sent gifts to Catherine at Chelsea, including a pasty of venison, while one of the king’s servants sent her a book. 34 Yet, they had failed to give her what she really wanted. A different course of action was required. She had always been close to Princess Mary, who was only four years her junior, and now Thomas and Catherine resolved privately to approach her and request her support. Catherine had not seen her stepdaughter for some weeks when Thomas wrote to her at Wanstead, Essex, where the princess was staying, warily keeping her distance from London.
    Mary, who had been a pretty, promising child, had grown into a sad figure, moving purposelessly from house to house that spring and summer. Depressed and lonely she had resorted to begging the Imperial ambassador to visit. 35 But it was not Van der Delft who arrived one day in early June, for he was caught up with affairs in London. Instead, a servant dressed in the Lord Admiral’s livery trotted into the stable yard and made his way to the princess. Although Catherine had already thrown off her coarse black mourning clothes for dark silk and stylish French hoods, Thomas’s servant found the princess and her household still sunk in the deepest gloom. 36
    He passed no fewer than six private messages of his master’s support to the princess, before also handing her a letter in which Thomas asked for Mary’s help in persuading Catherine to marry him. 37 The princess was horrified by what she read. It was ‘strange news’ to her, for how could Catherine even consider forgetting the duty to her late husband, who, as Mary commented, ‘is yet very ripe in mine own remembrance’. No, she would not do as Seymour asked, not even for her ‘nearest kinsman and dearest friend alive’ since, surely, he should consider ‘whose wife Her Grace was of late’. Mary’s response was final and cutting. She would not be ‘a meddler in this matter’ for anything, and she trusted her stepmother to show better judgment. Besides, she wrote in response to Thomas, she was embarrassed by this insight into his love life since ‘I, being a maid, am nothing cunning’. She wanted nothing more than to be left alone by this troublesome man with whom her name kept being connected.
    Mary’s rebuff left only one recourse: the young king himself. A child king was still a king, and the mystique and aura of monarchy – even when embodied in a pale, freckled nine-year-old – possessed a unique authority. Somerset knew this, and so kept Edward on a tight rein and strictly monitored those who were brought into his presence. Even Thomas – the boy’s uncle – found admittance difficult. He had, though, already used his considerable charms to win the