Tudor? I Hardly Knew Her! : Lady Katherine Grey, part two
That's the thing about illicit affairs/ And clandestine meetings and longing stares
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Lady Katherine Grey couldn’t just run off at any time to get secretly married; she had to be clever about it. With the help of her BFF Lady Jane “Not That One” Seymour, they hatched a plan. When they got to London, Queen Elizabeth I announced she was going on a hunting trip. Katherine claimed at the last minute, she had a toothache and couldn’t go. Jane offered to stay behind with her, and Elizabeth was like, “Great, one less Grey girl for me to worry about” and headed off on a business trip with the other ladies in waiting. Ned, who had been there for dinner, was like, “Great, come by my house first thing tomorrow morning.”
The next morning, Ned gave his servants the day off so they wouldn’t see what he was doing. Katherine and Jane snuck out of the palace and made their way on foot along the River Thames to Ned’s house. It was late November and super cold. Ned greeted them at his house, where a few servants (on their way out for their day off) also saw them arrive. Jane ran out into the street to grab a random priest to perform the ceremony because Lady Jane Seymour was a fantastic friend and sister.
She soon returned with a random Protestant priest, who performed the wedding ceremony for them in Jane’s bedroom. Ned gave Katherine a puzzle ring (!!!) engraved with a poem he had written for her:
As circles five by art compact show but one ring in sight, So trust uniteth faithful minds with knot of secret might,
Whose force to break (but greedy death no wight possesseth power),
As time and sequels well shall prove, my ring can say no more.
Jane paid the priest ten pounds, which is around $5000 US dollars in today's money and was way more than the priest would have ever expected to be paid for a bedroom wedding ceremony. Jane had some “banqueting meats” prepared for them to eat, but Katherine and Ned had more amorous things on their mind, so Jane left the room while they consummated their marriage. The lovers, now aged twenty (Katherine) and twenty-two (Ned) had sex for hours, until finally Katherine had to go because she and Jane had dinner plans. The servants in Ned’s house, back from their day off, were well aware of what had happened in that bedroom, and Ned kissed his wife goodbye when she and Jane had to go.
Now (secretly) married, Katherine and Ned had sex as often as they could, wherever they were able to. Jane continued to help them meet up, and Katherine’s servants quickly learned to politely leave the room when Ned arrived. The newlyweds couldn’t spend a whole night together, but clearly glowed with love and adoration for one another such that everybody started to figure out that they were involved. William Cecil, Elizabeth’s minister, disapproved of their affair but even he had no idea that the two had been married already. In order to try and keep them apart, to protect Elizabeth’s interests, Cecil arranged for Ned to go on an extended holiday in Europe.
Ned, frankly, was not great at communicating with Katherine because she had to find out about his European holiday plans from Jane. She was like, “I’m sorry, what? What happens if I’m pregnant, for instance, and you aren’t around when the shit hits the fan?” And Ned was like, “Well, I guess you’ll have to hope the Queen is nice to you,” and she was like, “I’m sorry, what??” And then Ned was like, “If you’re pregnant, I’ll stay,” and Katherine was like, “I don’t know, maybe??” And then tragically, just when she needed her BFF the most, Lady Jane Seymour fell ill again, this time with tuberculosis. Lady Jane Seymour died at age nineteen on March 29, 1560. And with her left, the only witness to Katherine and Ned’s marriage ceremony (because nobody knew the random priest’s name or how to find him).
Ned really, really wanted to go to Europe. And Katherine honestly did not know if she was pregnant or not (her BFF was dead! Her mother was dead! She didn’t know who to ask for advice!), and finally they agreed he could go, but he’d leave her with a letter saying, “In case Katherine is pregnant, please note that we are totally married and also she should inherit my lands in case I die in Europe!”
But Katherine lost the letter in an excessively horrible coincidence/mistake. She also was very pregnant.
As you might expect, Katherine kept the pregnancy hidden for as long as she could because this was an extremely dangerous situation for her. The baby she was carrying had a strong claim to be the next King or Queen of England (from her Tudor pedigree and Ned’s royal ancestry). If the baby was a son, all bets were off because everyone was still desperate for a potential male monarch to replace Elizabeth.
Once she realized she was pregnant, Katherine wrote numerous letters to Ned in France, but none of them had reached him* (*potentially because she addressed them all to My Beloved Husband instead of using his name?? Remember how your marriage is secret, Katherine?? How did the couriers know who to give the letters to**???) (**Also, my theory is that William Cecil or one of his other spies was intercepting the letters for scheme-related reasons).
Now, psychologically, this is a 20-year-old woman who had seen her sister, father, brother-in-law and numerous other people she knew and/or loved be executed for treason-related things and who was now carrying a Treason Baby, and her husband was MIA. Plus, Elizabeth had started being cruel to her again. Life was not great for Lady Katherine Grey at the moment. If she couldn’t get in touch with Ned, she needed to find someone else to pose as her husband/baby daddy, and she settled on her childhood-annulled husband, Herbert.
Katherine was once again on progress with the Queen, spending a summer now without Ned. She exchanged letters with Herbert while on the road, and he was pleased to hear from her, and she was like, “So our marriage from childhood is still valid, right??” And he was like, “Aw, that’s a nice idea,” and began courting her. But then she passed along word that she was currently with child, and Herbert knew that babies don’t gestate for ten years and called things off because her motives were so obvious and so distasteful to him. Boo, Herbert! You could have saved the day, you asshole.
And so Katherine, by now eight months pregnant, continued travelling as a lady-in-waiting, and everyone must have noticed she was pregnant, right?? Finally, she realized she had to tell somebody. After considering her options, the person she chose to confide in was her childhood friend Elizabeth St. Loe (sister-in-law of Katherine’s friend, Bess of Hardwick), who was one of the Queen’s gentlewomen of the Privy Chamber. This was not a good choice, as St. Loe wept inconsolably and was like, “Why did you tell me this? This is a disaster!” She was also not great at secret-keeping as, by the next morning, everyone at church was whispering about Katherine’s secret pregnancy.
Undeterred, Katherine next turned to Robert Dudley, which was quite a decision. Robert Dudley was her former brother-in-law, but he was also Elizabeth’s boyfriend. He also kind of hated the Greys because of how the Lady Jane Grey scenario had led to the execution of so many Dudley family members. But, she hoped, the tenuous family bond would hopefully outweigh the other stuff. And Robert was like, “Know what? Sure. I’ll go talk to Liz about this.” His plan was, likely, that news of Katherine’s pregnancy might cause Elizabeth to finally agree to marry his wife-murdering ass as the Queen would need a child now more than ever. But surprise! Except not a surprise! Elizabeth freaked the fuck out in the worst possible way. And: understandably.
Firstly, as the Queen, all of her Ladies-in-waiting had to get her permission to marry anyone. And secondly, Katherine was Elizabeth’s heir and a possible future Queen, so she couldn’t just marry anyone. But for her to marry Ned? A man with his own claim to the throne? Thereby meaning the Katherine/Ned baby would have a stronger claim to be King or Queen than literally anyone else in England?? Elizabeth suspected this marriage/baby situation was part of a plot, maybe the Spanish, maybe the Scottish, maybe homegrown, but someone was trying to take over the country, and she did not have it!!! So, for all of the above reasons, Elizabeth had Katherine imprisoned in the Tower of London and recalled Ned from Europe so he could be thrown in jail, too. She also had Elizabeth St. Loe dismissed from the Privy Chamber and sent to the Tower for six months for failing to inform the Queen of the secret intel.
Elizabeth, and everyone, assumed that this was part of a more complex political strategy than just two young people falling in love. Everyone was constantly scheming, and Katherine’s pregnancy with a potential new heir was a majorly serious political move. But the thing is, it wasn’t a scheme. It’s just that when everyone is scheming, they can’t wrap their heads around that sometimes a 20-year-old woman marries her true love and gets knocked up.
And so it was that Katherine, now nine months pregnant, was subjected to interrogation in the Tower of London as they tried to get her to implicate other people in this “scheme.” Now, being held in the same place where her sister and father had been executed, she behaved bravely. Like her older sister, Lady Jane Grey, she had a strong, stubborn streak and refused to be intimidated.
Meanwhile, Ned’s mother distanced herself from his “wildness” even as he was being dragged back to England from his European holiday for his questioning. Rumours were flying that the young couple would be executed, and he (and his mother, in her way) were doing their best damage control to try and at least stay alive. When he arrived at the Tower, he arranged to have flowers sent to Katherine and sought to find out from his jailers how she was doing. Historian Leanda de Lisle hypothesizes he was also working to ensure that his and Katherine’s testimony would line up so that their marriage was recognized and their child would be considered legitimate.
Because that was the first and most important thing for Elizabeth to deal with. If Katherine and Ned’s marriage was declared legitimate (which would be tricky, with Jane Seymour dead and nobody knowing the random priest's name), their baby was also legitimate. That would also make the baby, if a boy, an incredibly dangerous threat to the Queen. But Katherine and Ned’s only defence against charges of illegal fornication was to explain that, yes, actually, they were married, and so the fact she was pregnant was not a problem. Only one side could win; the marriage would be legally recognized or not. While Katherine was having a miserable time being nine months pregnant and having to undergo days-long interrogations, Elizabeth was also doing poorly. Like her sister Mary I, she lost her appetite when distressed. A courtier who saw her around this time described the Queen as looking “extremely thin and the colour of a corpse.”
So, nobody was having a good time with any of this. Then things got worse for everyone when Katherine gave birth on September 24th to a boy. This is perhaps the one time in Tudor history when everyone was hoping very hard for a baby girl, and the arrival of a boy would cause everyone to despair. Katherine named her son Edward Seymour, Viscount Beauchamp. Two days later, baby Edward was baptized in the Tower chapel, feet away from where his aunt Lady Jane Grey, both grandfathers and other relatives had been interred following their executions. There was finally a Protestant male heir to the throne of England, and this boy was potentially the new heir to the throne of England. At this point, the only thing in his way was the question of the legitimacy of his birth.
While Elizabeth, Robert Dudley, and everyone were running around scheming and screaming, Katherine recovered from childbirth. She had been moved to live within the mansion of the Tower’s Lieutenant, so at least she had a nice place to stay. She could also keep her pet spaniels and monkeys (???) with her. (I do not know when she acquired pet monkeys, but it’s nice she had them with her). Ned was kept in a separate apartment about ten feet away in the same mansion. The couple couldn’t see each other, but through bribery and sympathy, they could exchange notes via their guards. Ned was determined to appeal if their marriage was found invalid, but for now, they could only wait.
Elizabeth ordered an official Church commission to investigate the legality of Katherine and Ned’s marriage. Of course, the whole point was for them to find the marriage invalid, no matter what it took, but they had to give the appearance of actually investigating. The tricky thing is that the only requirement for the marriage to be found legal was for the bride and groom to consent to marry in front of witnesses. Katherine and Ned both said, again and again, that they had done this. But Jane’s death and the mysterious identity of the priest (Katherine and Ned both said if they saw him in person, they probably wouldn’t recognize him) worked against them.
Ned bribed the guards to let him visit Katherine, which he did on May 25th, and did they have sex? Of course, they had sex! He managed to sneak in and see her again four days later, and again they had sex. Do you see where this is going? Because it is going to: Katherine became pregnant again. And now it’s all even more complicated because by now, they had both declared they were married in front of numerous witnesses (e.g. the interrogators). So this second child would be 100% legitimate, no question about it. Katherine now knew intimately what pregnancy was like, and when she figured out she was pregnant again, she had a letter sent to Ned. He was thrilled! She was also happy! Their little jail family would soon get one new member.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth’s issues with Mary, Queen of Scots were taking up much of her attention. And then Elizabeth came down with smallpox! Everyone was like, “It sucks you’re so sick, but who is your heir?? Mary, Queen of Scots? Katherine Grey? Baby Edward? Who???” And Liz was like, “I won’t tell you because I refuse to die!!!” And she was right; she survived. And she was like, “I’m twenty-nine years old and might have a child one day and will not tell you who my heir is!” And her councillors were like, “But what if we told you that Katherine Grey is pregnant again?” And Elizabeth was like, “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME???”
She was incredibly upset about this for all of the above reasons. She had the Lieutenant of the Tower thrown in jail for allowing the couple to hook up. Katherine and Ned were brought in for new interrogations. However, not even Elizabeth could stop nature, and on February 10, Katherine gave birth to a second son, Thomas Seymour. And although Elizabeth was freaking out, public opinion was very much on the side of Katherine, Ned, and their little family. Of course it was! Because this is an incredibly romantic love story, and if not for the political angle, everyone knows that the pair would have been considered married in the first place! Elizabeth wouldn’t allow a priest to attend Thomas’s baptism, but two of the prison guards agreed to stand up as his godparents because the jailers were total #KatheriNed shippers and loved their babies.
Elizabeth, of course, had to do something about all of this. The more people sided with Katherine, the more likely her supporters might try and depose Elizabeth. It wasn’t possible to declare Thomas illegitimate. Still, Elizabeth did what she could: put Ned publicly on trial for 1) “seducing a virgin of the blood royal,” 2) conspiring with the Lieutenant to see her again, and 3) sneaking out of his jail cell. He was found guilty of all charges and fined £5,000 apiece for each crime. Remember how Jane Seymour paid the random priest £10, worth $5,000 in modern-day US dollars? £15,000 back then would be worth (checks notes) an infinity of modern-day dollars. It was not an amount that Ned would be expected to repay; the point was to punish him forever and show everyone that Elizabeth was not someone to be messed around with.
England was coming up to the tenth anniversary of Lady Jane Grey’s death, and her story was becoming trendy again. Rumour had it that Jane had been pregnant at the time of her execution (she was not), but this connected her with her sister Katherine, now in jail with a baby and a toddler and facing her possible execution. Support for Katherine’s claim continued, much to Elizabeth’s chagrin. The image of pretty Katherine, a married woman with two sons, was the ideal foil to Elizabeth’s unmarried childlessness. Around this time, a portrait was made of Katherine with her son Edward, which was duplicated and spread around as propaganda to support her against the Queen. (It is also apparently the oldest known image of an English woman with her baby).
Later that same year, there was an outbreak of plague in London. Elizabeth (like her father before her) fled for the countryside. Katherine, trapped in the Tower with two sons (and monkeys and dogs), was desperate to avoid the disease. Her advocates begged the Queen to let her move elsewhere, and finally, Elizabeth relented, allowing Katherine to be moved into house arrest. But there was a catch: Katherine was to be separated from her husband and one of her children. Ned and baby Edward were sent to live with Ned’s mother. Katherine and Thomas were sent to stay with her uncle, Lord John Grey. Katherine was forbidden to contact Ned, or her sister Mary Grey (who was still a Lady in Waiting), or to visit with anyone while she was in her uncle’s house/jail.
Less than a month after her arrival, Katherine was reported to have fallen into a depression. I mean, understandably, given her postpartum status and literally everything that had happened in her life to date. She missed Ned and Edward, cried constantly, ate little, and said things like, “I would to God I were buried.” William Cecil still supported her as a potential heir and helped her compose a plea to the Queen to relent. Robert Dudley agreed to deliver the letter because he was the only person who could safely do so without incurring the Queen’s wrath. Katherine was hopeful that this petition would free them all and wrote a letter to Ned sharing her hopes and goal of them getting to reunite soon. But Elizabeth rejected her appeal. The lovers were to remain apart.
Katherine’s misery was complete. She wrote to Cecil, “I rather wish of God shortly to be buried… than in this continual agony to live.” Her uncle John Grey was implicated in some scheming in support of Katherine, and when Elizabeth found out, he and the other conspirators were thrown in jail, where John died, perhaps by suicide. Katherine and Thomas were moved to a different house/jail, where they remained for the next three years. This time, her jailer fell ill, necessitating her relocation. She continued communicating via letter to Ned, who replied to her letters with gifts and tokens.
Another major blow to both Elizabeth and Katherine occurred when, in 1566, Mary, Queen of Scots gave birth to a son. Katherine was no longer the only Tudor heiress married with a son, and Mary (a literal Queen) had much more power than the depressed, imprisoned Katherine. Elizabeth secretly preferred Mary as her heir and worked (at this point) to protect her interests while simultaneously punishing Katherine and her sister, Mary Grey (who, at this point, had been jailed for her secret marriage; more on her next week).
But then the whole thing happened where Mary, Queen of Scots’s husband Lord Darnley, was found murdered, and his house exploded, and it looked like Mary had conspired to murder him. Katherine’s supporters all spread the rumour that Mary was responsible for her husband’s murder, and Elizabeth was unable to continue protecting her. Meanwhile, Katherine herself (and her sister Mary Grey) posed no personal threats; it was just the people working in their names who threatened Elizabeth. Elizabeth instructed Katherine’s jailers not to let her interact with anyone to keep Katherine from becoming a figurehead to these rebels. Katherine was moved again to her fifth prison in seven years. When her new jailer saw her, he was shocked at how poorly she looked: pale and thin, shoulders bowed, not a hint of her former vitality or joie de vivre. The various descriptions of her throughout this period sound like those of prolonged depression. She had low energy, ate little, and spoke of wanting to die.
On January 26, 1568, a doctor was sent for. He found there was little to be done for her. She seemed to have starved herself and would no longer eat. Katherine recited prayers and had psalms read to her. The household servants surrounded her, one encouraging her that she could yet live a long life. Katherine replied, “No, no. No life in this world; but in the world to come I hope to live ever. For here is nothing but care and misery, and there is life everlasting.” After several hours, Katherine passed along her final requests. She asked for a message to be sent to the Queen, begging forgiveness for marrying without permission; she also wished the Queen be asked to be good to her children and Ned. Katherine then asked that Ned be sent tokens: the pointed ring he gave her upon their betrothal, her wedding ring, and a third memento mori ring. This third was engraved with a message for Ned: While I Lived, Yours.
Katherine’s final words were, “Lord Jesus receive my spirit.” She then closed her eyes with her hands. Her death was recorded at 9 o’clock that morning. She was twenty-eight years old.
Four-year-old Thomas Seymour was moved to live with his father, Ned, and six-year-old brother, Edward. Queen Elizabeth ordered Katherine’s final jailer to oversee her cousin’s internment and burial. Katherine was buried in a chapel near her final prison home in Yoxford, rather than in Westminster Abbey as her royal relations (including her mother) had been. However, much as Elizabeth wanted to downplay Katherine’s importance, she was a Tudor, and specific protocols had to be followed. Just as had been done for Mary I, Katherine’s body was embalmed and set out for a round-the-clock vigil, watched over by servants. Seventy-seven official mourners were dispatched from London and arrived with an impressive entourage. Elizabeth did not attend the event but was said to have unconvincingly performed grief back at home. Nobody bought her act. Katherine’s death was a relief to her as the Queen had long been afraid of Lady Katherine Grey.
Two years after Katherine’s death, Ned was freed from house arrest. He would go on to marry twice more, weirdly both of them secret elopements, landing back in prison once more for this odd habit of his. Throughout his life, he worked to try to have his sons Edward and Thomas restored to the royal succession. They never were.
When Edward was nineteen years old (coincidentally, staying in the same house where his parents had first met), he fell in love with a gentlewoman named Honora Rogers. Queen Elizabeth happily permitted this marriage, as this would prevent Edward from ever being King because his wife wasn’t grand enough. One less heir for her to worry about.
When Elizabeth died in 1603, she named James Stuart (the son of Mary, Queen of Scots) as her heir. However, a faction continued to believe that Katherine’s sons were the true heirs. This bothered James nearly as much as it had bothered Elizabeth.
Ned lived until 1621, dying at age eighty-four. In 1625, James was succeeded by his son, King Charles I. Charles didn’t worry much about Katherine Grey, meaning that finally, her descendants could have her remains reinterred next to Ned in Salisbury Cathedral, where their joint tomb can still be viewed. The Latin inscription on their tomb translates to:
Incomparable consorts
Who, experienced in the vicissitudes of changing fortune
At Length, in the concord that marked their lives,
Here rest together
Through her son Edward, Katherine’s Grey’s descendants included Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Elizabeth II’s mother, aka The Queen Mother. Through her, Katherine Grey’s descendants include Queen Elizabeth II and all of her heirs, including Prince William and Prince Harry.
But what about the youngest Grey girl? Next week, we get into the ever less well-known saga of Lady Mary Grey.
Read other essays in the Tudor? I Hardly Knew Her! series on Substack
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References
The Sisters Who Would be Queen: Mary, Katherine, and Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Tragedy by Leanda de Lisle
Elizabeth’s Women: Friends, Rivals, and Foes Who Shaped the Virgin Queen by Tracy Borman
Crown of Blood: The Deadly Inheritance of Lady Jane Grey by Nicola Tallis
Devices and Desires: Bess of Hardwick and the Building of Elizabethan England by Kate Hubbard
The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots: Elizabeth I and her Greatest Rival by Kate Williams
https://www.britain-magazine.com/carousel/tudor-of-the-month-katherine-grey/
https://tudortimes.co.uk/guest-articles/love-and-loss-lady-katherine-grey
https://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.com/2012/03/born-in-tower-crimes-of-lady-katherine.html