Guest Post: Lady Katherine Grey : A Tragic Inheritance by Conor Byrne.

Conor Byrne studied for his Bachelor’s degree in history at Exeter University, and his Master of Arts in medieval and early modern history at the university of York. He is currently a PhD student at the University of Southampton research the history of executed queens. He has previously written on the life of Katharine Howard. Like his latest book, his revised version of his biography of this tragic queen was published by The History Press.

This article gives you a taste of what is included in Conor’s biography of Katharine Grey.

According to the last will and testament of Henry VIII when Elizabeth I died on 24 March 1603 technically she should have been succeeded by the forty-one-year-old Edward Seymour, Lord Beauchamp. Henry had decreed that in the event of his three children Edward, Mary and Elizabeth dying childless, the line of his elder sister, Margaret, Queen of Scots, should be passed over in favour of the descendants of his younger sister Mary, Dowager Queen of France & Duchess of Suffolk. Had Elizabeth followed her father’s wishes, then Katherine’s eldest son Edward would have become king of England.

However, the queen – in contrast to her father – favoured the claim of the Scottish line, represented in 1603 by James VI of Scotland, only child of the disgraced Mary, Queen of Scots because, in the eyes of the world Edward Seymour was illegitimate, his parents’ marriage having been declared null and void in 1562 by command of the queen. By refusing to honour her father’s wishes regarding the succession, Elizabeth arguably changed the course of English (and British) history. 

Lady Katherine Grey was the second daughter of Henry and Frances Grey, marquis and marchioness of Dorset (later duke and duchess of Suffolk). Her mother was the eldest daughter of Mary Tudor, formerly queen consort of France; thus, Katherine was a great-granddaughter of the first Tudor king, Henry VII. Katherine had an elder sister, Jane, and a younger sister, Mary. The royal blood of the three Grey sisters was to prove a curse for them all. All three lost royal favour and suffered dire consequences.

Born in 1540, Katherine is popularly remembered as the beauty of the Grey family. There is little evidence to suggest that she possessed the intellect or piety of her elder sister, while evidence of her relations with both of her sisters is similarly scarce. The marquis and marchioness of Dorset are occasionally described as abusive, tyrannical parents, but modern scholarship has questioned this assumption. Evidence pertaining to Katherine’s relationship with Edward Seymour, earl of Hertford indicates that she was close to her mother. We possess limited details about her childhood and Katherine first became prominent in 1553, a momentous year for the Grey family as a whole. She and Jane married on the same day in May, the thirteen year old Katherine to Henry Herbert, son of the earl of Pembroke and her older sister Jane to Guildford Dudley, son of the duke of Northumberland.

That spring, the ailing Edward VI barred both of his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth from the succession in his ‘Deuise’ and nominated the male heirs of Jane Grey to succeed him. When it became clear that the king was not long for the world, he changed the wording in the ‘Deuise’ so that Jane herself would inherit the crown; Katherine and her younger sister Mary were also named as heirs in the event that Jane died childless. Thus, when Edward died on 6 July Jane was proclaimed queen of England. Traditionally, this sequence of events has been viewed as the culmination of a plot masterminded by Northumberland to ensure that his son Guildford – husband of Jane – sat on the English throne, thus permitting the duke to preserve his political power, but historians have more recently emphasised Edward VI’s active involvement in disinheriting both of his half-sisters from the succession and nominating Jane as his heir.

However, a lack of support for Jane’s claim meant that her regime collapsed within days and the late king’s half-sister Mary, who had enjoyed considerable military support during her bid for the throne, was proclaimed queen of England. Northumberland was executed and Jane and her husband were found guilty of treason in November, with Jane held prisoner at the Tower of London, although the queen demonstrated no desire to put either Jane or Guildford to death. Although initially pardoned for his involvement in Jane’s elevation to the throne, Katherine’s father harboured considerable resentment against the new regime and was implicated in Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion of early 1554, thus sealing Jane’s fate. At the age of seventeen, Jane was executed immediately after her husband and Henry Grey went to the scaffold less than two weeks later. At the age of not yet fourteen, Katherine had lost both her father and sister. We have no evidence of how these losses affected her on a personal level. Despite the tarnishing of the Grey family with treason, the new queen was close to Frances and both she and Katherine resided at court. Katherine would later reveal that Queen Mary had favoured her with an appointment to the queen’s Privy Chamber: evidently, the queen did not bear any ill-will towards Katherine or her mother, despite the events of 1553 and later, Wyatt’s rebellion of 1554. 

With Elizabeth I’s accession in 1558 Katherine no longer enjoyed the royal favour she had grown accustomed to under Queen Mary. The new queen demoted Katherine to the Presence Chamber from the Privy Chamber, a snub that Katherine bitterly commented on to the imperial ambassador. According to both the 1543 Act of Succession and Henry VIII’s will, Katherine was Elizabeth’s heir presumptive. This fact was not lost on English Protestants, many of whom placed their hopes in Katherine and looked to her as a possible future monarch in the event of the queen dying childless. Foreign rulers were also interested in Katherine’s claim, including the queen’s former brother-in-law Philip of Spain. Rumours circulated that Philip intended to have Katherine spirited abroad and married to his son, Don Carlos.

Some historians have speculated that Elizabeth personally disliked Katherine. Undoubtedly, she regarded her with antipathy because of Katherine’s status as a potential claimant to the throne, while the queen would never have forgotten that Edward VI had disinherited both herself and her half-sister Mary in preference for the Grey claim.

Despite foreign interest in her hand in marriage, Katherine embarked on a love affair with Edward Seymour, earl of Hertford. The couple fell passionately in love and secretly married in late 1560 with the assistance of Edward’s sister Jane, having sought the assistance of Katherine’s mother and stepfather in approaching the queen to seek her approval for the couple to marry. Tragically, Frances Grey died before such an attempt could be made. Katherine fell pregnant shortly after her secret wedding. Unfortunately for the couple Edward’s sister Jane, who had witnessed the nuptials, had died in March 1561, while the priest that had married them could not be located. Thus, the legality of the marriage could not be proved.

During the summer progress Katherine’s obvious advancing pregnancy meant she was forced to confess to having been married to Edward Seymour (without the queen’s permission), which resulted in her being incarcerated in the Tower, the site of her father’s and sister’s deaths only seven years earlier. Elizabeth also ordered the imprisonment of Hertford, and both he and his wife were rigorously interrogated. Since no witnesses could be found their marriage was declared invalid and, when Katherine gave birth to a son, Edward, on 24 September of that year, the child was declared a bastard. Queen Elizabeth was determined Katherine should not succeed her as queen.

The queen’s hostility towards Katherine only increased when the countess gave birth to her second son, Thomas, in 1563. Elizabeth I’s unforgiving treatment of Katherine and Hertford was commented on both during her reign, and since. Technically the couple had committed treason because the Treason Act of 1536 had ruled that ‘It shall be high treason for any man to espouse, marry or take to his wife’ a relative of the monarch ‘or to deflower any of them being unmarried’ without having been granted ‘the King’s licence … under the Great Seal’. The Act also held that ‘the woman so offending shall incur the like danger’. Moreover, Elizabeth regarded herself as the guardian of her female attendants; thus sexual immorality on their part reflected badly on her because her own sexual reputation was affected by any stain on the reputation of a maiden of honour who lived in close proximity to the queen.

Katherine and Hertford were released from the Tower in 1563, but remained separated from one another and were placed under house arrest. Katherine never saw her husband or her eldest son again. The final years of her life were spent in house arrest at a succession of different residences, including at Pirgo, where she was placed in the custody of her uncle Lord John Grey. His letters, which sought to obtain mercy from the queen, testify to Katherine’s deteriorating mental state.

Katherine’s exile from court meant that she personally played no part in the succession debates of the 1560s, when a number of tracts were written discussing the competing claims of several candidates to the throne, chiefly Katherine and Mary, Queen of Scots. The MP John Hales was incarcerated as punishment for writing A Declaration of the Succession of the Crowne Imperiall of Ingland (1563), which recognised Katherine as Elizabeth’s successor. This tract went further than any of the other 1560s tracts in arguing for the legality of Katherine’s claim to succeed Elizabeth, endorsing it according to Henry VIII’s will and ‘the common Lawes of this Realme’. Hales also held that Katherine’s marriage to Hertford was valid and their sons legitimate.

Unlike Mary, Queen of Scots, who tirelessly campaigned to be recognised as Elizabeth’s heir, Katherine showed no interest in obtaining such recognition; instead, her letters reveal her longing to be reunited with her husband and eldest son. Sadly, such a wish was never to be granted. On 27 January 1568, Katherine died at the age of twenty-seven, perhaps of consumption, at Cockfield Hall in Suffolk. She was buried at Yoxford church.

It is somewhat ironic that it was in the reign of James I – son of Katherine’s leading rival for the English throne – that the marriage of Katherine and Hertford was declared valid. During the 1640s, Katherine’s grandson William Seymour, duke of Somerset, arranged for Katherine’s remains to be interred beside Hertford at Salisbury Cathedral.

A similar article has appeared on TudorsDynasty.com.