The Last Tudor

LAMBETH PALACE, LONDON,

WINTER 1562

I knew Archbishop Parker when he was all but chaplain to Jane’s father-in-law, John Dudley. He and other reformers met constantly to discuss the theology of the reformed Church of England, and Jane was in correspondence with their religious advisors. I daresay he never noticed me, I was so much the unimportant younger sister, but I remember him at Jane’s court when she was proclaimed queen, and I remember him fading away as fast as the others, sliding from the Protestant queen to the papist—despite all his promises. Then I didn’t think much of him as an advisor to a saint, and I don’t think much of him as an archbishop now.

He has the impertinence to keep me waiting in his privy chamber, and when he comes in, there is a dark-faced clerk with him, who sits down at a table without asking my permission, dips his nib in a pot of ink, and waits to write down everything that I am to say. If I had failed to observe that they sent a discreet barge to fetch me, which flew no standard, if I had overlooked the chilly anteroom, and the cool greeting from my sister’s onetime friend and coreligionist, I would know, from the poised nib of his clerk, that this is not a conversation between a spiritual advisor and a young woman who has had the misfortune to displease a bad-tempered queen. This is an interrogation, and he has been told exactly what to report. His difficulty—though he doesn’t know it yet—is that I am never going to deny my honorable marriage, forswear the man I love, or condemn my child the viscount to a new title of Ned Seymour’s by-blow.

Archbishop Parker looks at me gravely. “You had better tell me all about this pretended marriage,” he says kindly. “You had better confess to me, child.”

I take a breath to speak and I see the leap of hope in his face. If he can go back to Elizabeth and tell her that I have confessed to him that I am unmarried, that I was never married, then she will be pleased with him and continue to ignore the half-hidden presence of his own loyal wife, though she hates the idea of a married clergy. If he can tell her that I have a little ailing bastard in the Tower, then she need not feel rushed into marriage and childbed herself. If he can assure her that the reform cause has no son and heir, then she can promise Mary Queen of Scots that the inheritance of England is still unsettled, and dangle before that young woman the prospect of peace and inheritance.

“I will confess to you,” I say sweetly, and see the clerk dip the nib of his quill pen and wait, hardly breathing. “Though I believe, my lord, that you and my sister Jane agreed that a troubled soul should confess directly to God?” I give him a moment to note that; and then I continue: “However that might be, I confess that I loved a young man of noble birth and that both his mother and mine knew that we were in love and intended to marry. They were going to ask the queen for her permission when my mother died. I confess that we were betrothed before a witness, and then married before a witness, and by a minister, but without the permission of the queen. I confess that we laid together in the married bed and he used me as a wife. I confess that we have a handsome boy baby who is as copper-headed and willful as any Tudor. I confess that I cannot understand why I am imprisoned nor why you invite me to confess to you.”

It’s a robust start to a questioning that goes on all day, and the clerk scribbles page after page as the archbishop takes me through everything I have answered before. Clearly, there is nothing illegal about what we did. Their only hope is that I break down and lie for my freedom. After a day of questioning it is the archbishop who is drawn and pale, and I am flushed and furious. He demands that I lie on oath, and I refuse. More than this, I despise him for trying to force me, a young woman newly risen from childbed, to name my son as a bastard and my husband as a blackguard.

“We will stop for the day. I must go to pray, and you—madam—should consider your obstinacy,” the archbishop says weakly.

I give him a little nod of the head, as if I am dismissing him, and I turn for the door. “Yes, do pray,” I recommend to him.

“I will see you again the day after tomorrow, and I hope then you will give me a true account,” the archbishop says.

I pause at the door as my guard holds it open for me, and he can hear what I say and repeat it all over London if he wishes. “I have told you the truth today,” I say clearly. “I will tell you the same tomorrow or whenever you ask me. I was married in honor, and my son is Viscount Beauchamp.”