24th September 2017
Today in 1561 Katherine Grey, Jane Grey’s younger sister, gave birth to her first son. The pregnancy forced Katherine to reveal her secret marriage to Edward Seymour and put her in the Tower. Elizabeth I wanted no rivals to her throne – especially not the young, pretty granddaughter of Henry VIII’s favourite sister Mary.
Katherine, now married to a Seymour with a baby boy in her arms, was too great a threat to Elizabeth’s position. Even locked in the Tower, Katherine must have hoped that her baby – Edward Seymour Viscount Beauchamp – would one day be king, following the succession according to Henry VIII's will. But Elizabeth had Katherine's marriage declared invalid, making Beauchamp illegitimate and ineligible to succeed to the throne.
Katherine is now largely forgotten but at the time was hugely politically significant, and has such a compelling personal story. As the English-born Protestant alternative to Mary Queen of Scots she could have been Elizabeth's successor had her treatment after her marriage been different. But she died after the grief of being separated from her husband and her elder son, and her claim fell into obscurity. This is from my novel The Last Tudor, written in her voice:
My baby, Viscount Beauchamp, is to be called Edward for his father and his forefathers. He can trace his line back to Edward III and beyond. Royal on both sides, his birth should be greeted with celebrations, with the salute of cannon and announcements all around Christendom, but they put me into my bed, and tuck him in beside me, and nobody even visits. They take him to be baptised in the chapel of the Tower and my poor little boy is christened in the font that stands over the tombs of his family. It is as if the mortuary of traitors at the Tower of London is our family chapel. His aunt is buried below the font, and his grandfather Grey. His grandfather Seymour is buried there, too. He is not even baptised by a minister, but by Sir Edward, the lieutenant of the Tower, his gaoler, because the god-forsaken Supreme Governor of the Church of England, Elizabeth, will not allow an ordained minister into the prison to bless the soul of her newborn cousin. This makes me cry. This is so low. She is so low. To forbid a priest to bless an innocent baby. She is below lowness.
Image: Lady Katherine Grey and her son Edward Lord Beauchamp, c.1562, via Wikimedia Commons