After the sermon was over Gardiner was ‘merry and quiet’ on his way back to Southwark in his barge. When his chaplain heard a rumour that he would be committed to the Tower the bishop replied that ‘it was but tales for he thought that he never pleased the Council better in all his life’. On the following day he was arrested and, on the charge of ‘wilful disobedience’, was sent to the Tower of London where he was kept in close confinement for the next five years.
Somerset, even in the midst of these controversies, was preoccupied with Scotland. Early in 1548 he issued ‘an epistle or exhortation’ to the Scottish people in which he pleaded for a bond of common interests ‘united together in one language, in one island’ which should be given ‘the indifferent old name of Britaines again’; the names of England and Scotland would therefore be abolished. Once more he insisted on the marriage of Edward and Mary as the ground for this unity but, once more, the Scots were not listening. It came as a deep shock, therefore, when it was confirmed that Mary, queen of Scots, was in fact to be betrothed to the dauphin, the French king’s eldest son. So began the public career of the young princess whose troubled life cast its shadow over English affairs for the next thirty-nine years; even at the age of ten it was said that ‘her spirit is already so high and noble that she would make great demonstration of displeasure at seeing herself degradingly treated’. Mary of Guise from Lorraine, the widow of James V, became effectively the dowager queen of Scotland in her daughter’s absence in France, where the young girl was to be raised with her future husband. France now brooded on the northern borders of England.
The French king was still eager to regain Boulogne, but the overwhelming victory of the protector’s forces at Pinkie Cleugh gave him pause. It was also in the interest of England to avoid war with France; any military campaign would prove ruinously expensive. In February 1548 the French ambassador was gracefully received by the young king at Greenwich, where they witnessed a mock siege; they spoke together in Latin, for mutual ease of intercourse. Four months later a French force landed at Leith in order to aid their Scottish allies; sallies and counter-sallies were launched about the town of Haddington in East Lothian, but large-scale fighting was avoided. Nevertheless the presence of French troops on Scottish soil was an irritant, and emphasized the flaws in Somerset’s policy of subjugation by means of garrisons.
The younger brother of the protector, Thomas Seymour, had not abandoned his schemes of advancement. Further evidence of his incapacity emerged at the time when the young Lady Elizabeth entered the household of Katherine Parr; she was at the time fourteen but her young age did not deter the man who delighted to be called her ‘stepfather’. He would appear in her bedchamber dressed only in his nightgown and slippers; he would engage in playful romps with her, smacking her on the back or buttocks. It was evident, too, that the princess had become infatuated with the handsome lord high admiral. It is said that eventually Katherine Parr found them in each other’s arms. Elizabeth left the household. When it was rumoured that the princess was indeed pregnant with Seymour’s child, the privy council was obliged to question members of her entourage; there was no truth to the reports, but the foreign ambassadors were happy to pass on any titillating news of Anne Boleyn’s daughter. The episode also served to materially increase Elizabeth’s natural wariness and secretiveness.
When Katherine Parr died in the early autumn of 1548, six days after giving birth to an infant girl, Seymour found himself with another opportunity of bolstering his state. It soon became clear that he still had designs upon Lady Elizabeth. He asked one of her household servants, Thomas Parry, ‘whether her great buttocks were grown any less or no’? More pertinently, perhaps, he began to make enquiries about ‘the state of her grace’s houses, and how many people she kept’. What houses she had and what lands? Were they good lands or not, and did she hold them for life?
A courtier was out riding with him one day, en route to parliament. ‘My lord admiral,’ he said, ‘there are certain rumours of you that I am very sorry to hear.’
‘What are they?’
‘I am informed you make means to marry either with my Lady Mary or my Lady Elizabeth. And touching that, my lord, if you go about any such thing, you seek the means to undo yourself, and all those that shall come of you.’ When Seymour denied any such intention, the courtier replied that ‘I am glad to hear you say so – do not attempt the matter’. He warned Seymour that the two previous kings had been highly suspicious of over-mighty subjects; might not the new king have the same infirmity? Seymour’s own brother, Protector Somerset, might also be moved to act against him.
Yet Seymour shook off any such warnings, and decided that it was time to act upon Edward himself. ‘Since I saw you last,’ he told him, ‘you are grown to be a goodly gentleman. I trust that within three or four years, you shall be ruler of your own things.’ When the king reached sixteen, he might be able and willing to rule of his own accord and thereby dismiss the protector; Seymour might then rise high in royal favour. Yet at this juncture the king simply said ‘no’.
Seymour still plotted. He fortified his dwelling, Holt Castle in Worcestershire, and brought in a great store of beer, beef and wheat; by some means or other he obtained the ‘double key’ that would grant him access to the privy garden and the king’s lodging. He made the journey from Holt Castle to Whitehall many times with a company of his followers. He said that ‘a man might steal away the king now for there came more with me than is in all the house besides’. Then, on the night of 16 January 1549, he was surprised by Edward’s dog just outside the royal bedchamber; he shot the dog and, as cries of ‘Help! Murder!’ rang out, he was apprehended by the king’s guard. It seems likely that he intended to kidnap the king and raise a civil war in his name. It was alleged later that he had made provision to recruit a private army and that he had planned to take over the royal mint at Bristol; these were also clear tokens of treasonable attempts.
He was arrested on the day after his discovery in the king’s quarters and taken to the Tower; soon enough he came to trial for his life on the charge of treason. The protector was now in the unenviable position of prosecuting his younger brother to the death. ‘They cannot kill me,’ Seymour said, ‘except they do me wrong.’ But then, a little later, he complained of his ‘friends’ on the royal council that ‘I think they have forgotten me’. The young king himself also turned against him. His recorded words were that ‘it were better for him to die before’. It was better for him to be dead.
In the inquiry against him, his designs on Elizabeth were also formally investigated. The young princess herself was questioned together with the more prominent members of her household. ‘They all sing one song,’ their interrogator wrote to the protector, ‘and so I think they would not do, unless they had set the note before.’ It seems likely, therefore, that Seymour’s advances had gone further than was considered permissible and may have verged on treason. ‘There goeth rumours abroad’, Elizabeth complained, ‘that I am in the Tower, and with child by my lord admiral.’ The rumours were false, but three of her entourage were dismissed. There had been smoke, and perhaps there had also been fire.
Even while he remained in the Tower Seymour engaged in more schemes. He made a pen from the point of an aiglet plucked from his hose and, according to Hugh Latimer, fabricated an ink ‘with such workmanship as the like has not been seen’; with pen and ink he then wrote two letters, to the princesses Mary and Elizabeth, ‘tending to this end, that they should conspire against my lord protector’s grace’. He concealed these letters within his shoe but, on his prison lodging being searched, they were discovered.