Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/327

A.D. 1547.] extremely fascinating to ladies, and as ambitious as any man that ever lived. As he did not seem to succeed in his desire of rising to a station as lofty as that of his brother, the Protector, through the Council and political alliance, he sought to achieve this by means of marriage. There were several ladies on whom he cast his eyes for this purpose. The Princesses Mary and Elizabeth were the next in succession, and he did not hesitate to aim at securing the hand of one of them, which would have realised his soaring wishes or plunged him down at once to destruction. He seems then to have weighed the chances which a union with Lady Jane Grey might give him; but, as if not satisfied with the prospect, he suddenly determined on the queen-dowager. He had, indeed, paid his addresses to Catherine Parr before her marriage with Henry VIII., and Catherine was so much attached to him that she at first listened with obvious reluctance to Henry's proposal. No sooner was Henry dead than Seymour seems to have renewed his addresses to Catherine, and, with all her piety and prudence, the queen-dowager seems to have listened to him as promptly and readily. Though Henry only died at the end of January, 1547, in a single month, according to Leti, she had consented to a private contract of marriage, and she and Seymour had exchanged rings of betrothal. According to King Edward's journal, their marriage took place in May, but the courtship had been going on long before, and was only revealed to him when it was become dangerous to conceal it any longer, and they were privately married long before that. The marriage was publicly announced in June—a rapidity for such a transaction as strange as it was indecorous.





On the king's death Catherine went to live at her fine jointure house at Chelsea, on the banks of the Thames, which; with its gardens and extensive grounds, occupied Cheyne Pier. There Seymour used to visit her in the night, and so cautiously that Catherine, in one of her letters, discloses the fact that she herself waited at the park-gate, when all others had retired to rest, to let him in. "When it shall be your pleasure to repair hither, you must take some pain to come early in the morning, that you may be gone again by seven o'clock, and so I suppose you may come without suspect. I pray you let me have knowledge over-night at what hour you will come, that your portress may wait at the gate to the fields for you."

But such an affair could not long escape attention, and though they were married, Seymour began to take steps for soliciting the king's consent to the alliance. First he wrote to the Princess Mary, entreating her to break it to her brother Edward, and to plead for it; but Mary declined so delicate a commission, saying, "Wherefore I shall most earnestly require you, the premises considered, to think none unkindness in me, though I refuse to be a meddler anyways in this matter; assuring you that, wooing matters set apart, wherein, being a maid, I am nothing cunning, I shall most willingly aid you, if otherwise it shall lie in my power."

Failing here, a plan was laid for inducing Edward, not merely to consent to the marriage of his step-mother with his uncle Seymour, but for his own asking her to accept Seymour, which he did; and was made to believe that the match actually proceeded from his own suggestion. Catherine Parr played a part in this scheme—as appears by King Edward's own letters and journal—which shows that with all her piety and reputation for discreetness, and even wisdom, she was not averse on occasion to practise all the art of the diplomatist. She went on professing her deep love and devotion to the memory of his father long after she was secretly the wife of Seymour, till the young unsuspecting king was completely wrought over to her wishes. Yet that he did not interfere in this affair without a good deal of repugnance, or without good advice against it,