Her Highness, the Traitor - By Susan Higginbotham Page 0,120

in the Tower, was completely without judgment. Told what to do by others for all of his formative years, he had no difficulty in following the commands of the tricksters, whores, and flatterers who collected around him once he was free and at last had money to spend. Yet he was an Englishman and a great-grandson of Edward IV, which for many was enough to make him an ideal husband for the queen. For my part, I suspected Courtenay would be a disaster for Mary: a Katherine Howard in breeches.

Philip of Spain was a different proposition. Already a widower with a young son, he had been helping to govern his father’s vast domains for several years. Simon Renard, the imperial ambassador, had been pressing him upon Mary as a husband since the very day the ambassador had arrived to Beaulieu to meet with her. By mid-November, I and the rest of the people learned what had already been known to those at court: Mary had decided to marry Philip.

My, what a furor that caused! The Londoners’ imaginations ran wild with tales of Philip emptying the treasury and sending its contents to Spain, of Mary herself being dragged screaming from Westminster and hauled (sometimes in a sack) to be imprisoned abroad as Philip put the crown on his own head, of Philip’s son by his first wife being made the Prince of Wales, of Englishmen being thrown out of their houses in the dead of the night to make way for the hordes of Spaniards who would be coming over with the king. And this was all before the details of the marriage treaty had even been negotiated.

I was one of the few people I knew who did not regard the Spanish marriage with dread. By all accounts, Mary had had no desire to marry one of her subjects, even if a mature man of the suitable rank could have been found. Philip was the son of the man to whom Mary had been betrothed as a young child and to whom she had never ceased to regard with warm feelings. A happy marriage for the queen could only bode well for my sons, for surely then she would be more kindly disposed toward me, who had been so happy in my own marriage. And if Philip could get Mary with child despite her relatively advanced age, then that augured even better for the future, for I would be able to appeal to the queen’s maternal instincts.

So I continued to haunt the court and to shower Susan Clarencius with gifts, and to pray each day that the marriage the queen desired so much would soon come about. In the meantime, on November 13, three of my sons and the lady Jane went to trial at London’s Guildhall. Jack already had a judgment of death upon him, and Robert’s trial had not yet taken place.

With Ambrose’s and Hal’s wives, I sat on a bench that gloomy November morning, waiting for the prisoners to be brought from the Tower. In addition to Jane and my sons, there would be a fifth defendant: Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He had quarreled with John over a revision to the canon law and had been but a reluctant supporter of Jane, so it was generally believed the queen was finally exacting revenge for Cranmer’s long-ago support for the marriage of King Henry to Anne Boleyn. The archbishop had not helped matters, however, by circulating a letter denunciating the Mass.

As we waited, I saw Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, making her way to our bench. Apparently the Duke of Suffolk had been unable to come, or perhaps had not trusted himself to keep his temper at his daughter’s trial. Frances had two escorts: the ubiquitous Adrian Stokes, and Jane’s former Italian tutor, Michelangelo Florio. How many good-looking men did the woman need around her? Reluctantly, I moved down to allow her and her swains to sit, and the duchess gave me a tremulous smile of acknowledgment, which I failed to return.

Never could I forgive the woman for not saying anything to Mary in favor of John, futile as I knew it would have been.

With the Duchess of Suffolk settled into place at last, it was time for the prisoners, who had been led on foot from the Tower through the streets of London, to make their entrance, preceded by a man bearing an axe. At the forefront of the dismal procession was the Archbishop of Canterbury, followed