Sisters of the Queen?: Katherine and Mary Grey

hello and welcome back to the channel if you're new here hi you're very welcome this is reading the past and i'm dr kat last year i made a video looking at jane gray which i will leave linked in a card and also below i think we can all agree that the way her story plays out is pretty unenviable but hers is not the only unfortunate tale in the family as we've touched on previously jane grey had two sisters and while they may have dodged the headsman that certainly didn't mean their lives were plain sailing let's look at them [Music] the sisters grey were the children of henry gray and his wife francis francis was the daughter of charles brandon and mary tudor who were henry viii's best friend and sister respectively i'll be leaving the relevant videos linked jane grey was the eldest sister born in 1537 she was followed by first catherine in around 1540 and then mary in around 1545. thus the grey sisters were the great-granddaughters of king henry vii and according to the last will of king henry viii they were placed to follow their mother in the line of succession to come after henry's own children edward mary and elizabeth in that order early in 1553 the 15 year old king edward vi fell ill as the months wore on and his condition worsened the young king or some argue those advising him principally john dudley duke of northumberland were not keen on following the succession set down by his father in edward's own device for the succession his half-sisters mary and elizabeth were to be ignored his cousin francis would be skipped in favor of the heirs male of jane and then her sisters well it became clear that however swiftly each of these sisters could be married off there would simply not be time to wait for any such male to be cooked and then hatched the phrase lady james heirs mail was amended to read lady jane and her heirs mail with a few strokes of the quill jane's fate was sealed king edward vi died on the 6th of july 1553 but we're here to talk about jane grey's sisters in both henry and edward's wills they follow jane in the line of succession thus they had the unenviable and frequently dangerous fortune of being recognized as being close to the throne by blood a few months before edward's death on the 21st of may 1553 which was the date of jane grey's marriage to the duke of a fumble and son guilford dudley her sister catherine gray aged about 13 was married or possibly just betrothed to henry herbert heir to the earth pembroke he was around 15 years old at the time henry's father was supportive of northumberland's regime but that was not the end of the matchmaking on this day the 21st of may because jane and catherine's sister mary aged around eight was betrothed to arthur lord gray of wilton he was her cousin and his father was another supporter of northumberlands during the following july after edward's death jane grey was queen for a matter of days until support swung almost unilaterally behind mary tudor jane's queenship ended and she was confined where she was the tower of london her family's position was a perilous one but was not yet unquestionably terminally traitorous that was until the so-called wyatt rebellion in the first months of the next year 1554. catherine and mary gray would lose their sister and brother-in-law jane and guilford on the 12th of february 1554. their father henry would follow on the 23rd of february 1554. they were all executed for treason in the immediate aftermath katherine gray's marriage or betrothal to henry herbert was swiftly annulled as was mary gray's betrothal to lord gray of wilton it was not only their marital but their financial prospects that were devastated by the families tied to treason any part of the traitorous duke of suffolk's wealth and property that remained or that was returned to his family would only be there at the queen's discretion and as such was dependent on a continued show of fidelity and obedience however catherine and mary both had royal blood which would turn out to be i would argue both a blessing and a curse catherine as a young woman in her mid-teens was old enough to be welcomed at mary the first court where her royal blood was certainly recognized i imagine that it would have been a sumptuous life of near total surveillance any devotion that she may have felt to the protestant faith would need to be set aside and any suggestion of a right to rule studiously ignored it must have been like the textbook example of a gilded cage i think mary the first death on the 17th of november 1558 brought to her protestant half-sister elizabeth the first to the throne according to the will of henry viii until elizabeth married and produced an heir the surviving grey women were her successors catherine and mary's mother francis died in november 1559. francis had remarried five years earlier in 1554 so although catherine and mary inherited land from her the income from those lands went to their stepfather adrian stokes for the rest of his life he would survive until 1585. spoiler alert this does mean that he will outlive his stepdaughters however catherine and mary would have the opportunity to provide for themselves in a way befitting their birth they were both welcomed as maids of honor at the court of queen elizabeth the first as it had been when mary the first welcomed catherine to her court i can only assume that the luxury of the lifestyle would have been scant compensation for the surveillance and connected threat that came with being elizabeth de facto if unacknowledged air rumors of plots to marry catherine off started to circulate swiftly in 1559 and 1560. it was said that for one elizabeth's former brother-in-law and erstwhile suter philip ii of spain hoped to encourage catherine to come and marry his son and heir carlos the scottish council wanted her for the earl of aaron's bride while william herbert had looped back around to try to get her married off to his son henry once again apparently catherine had her own plans fearing she would not get the legally required permission from the queen as a person of royal blood to marry in the later months of 1560 catherine aged around 20 undertook a secret marriage to edward seymour earl of hartford who was among other things the late queen jane seymour's nephew her husband was around 21 years old in the following may 1561 young enough to be sent abroad to france for his education catherine had fallen pregnant before he left she must have known by the august that hopes of concealing both pregnancy and marriage were increasingly fleeting catherine disclosed her condition to a gentleman of elizabeth's privy chamber elizabeth centlow later better known as bess of hardwick she also told elizabeth's favorite and her own late sister's former brother-in-law robert dudley perhaps she hoped that these two might soften elizabeth the first into forgiveness because as we know when looking back at elizabeth's track record people close to her getting secretly married was one of her least favorite things catherine had illegally and officially treasonously married without the monarch's consent the child in her belly was evidence of her transgression and potentially part of a plot to create yet more rivals to elizabeth's throne catherine was now an heir carrying an heir it's easy to see how it might look like a play for the throne to some elizabeth was decisive catherine was confined to the tower of london edward seymour was recalled from france and both were called upon to answer for their behavior as if to compound any perceived threat to elizabeth the child that catherine gave birth to in the tower in september 1561 was a boy the first male heir to the english throne since edward vi he was named edward seymour for his father and was baptized in the tower with this elizabeth set her archbishop of canterbury matthew parker to work catherine edward had as we know married in secret the officiant somehow became untraceable and remains unknown to this day but there was one witness edward's sister jay the seymour family really liked the names jane and edward which makes things quite confusing but this jane unfortunately had died in the march of 1561 and as such was unable to testify to the marriage having taken place with no evidence no living witness no traceable efficient and a furious elizabeth it was essentially a foregone conclusion that archbishop parker's ecclesiastical high commission would determine on the 12th of may 1562 that there had been no official marriage this made their son legitimate and thus neutralized him as a lawful claimant to the throne the officially unmarried couple were to remain in the tower of london and it's unclear who if anyone gave these orders but the couple were allowed to meet because catherine edwards second son thomas was born in the tower in february 1563. elizabeth was incandescent catherine would remain in a series of house arrests for the rest of her life she would never see the father of her children again elizabeth was unlikely to soften to catherine's plight when people were still pushing elizabeth to recognize catherine as her heir but catherine did not do well under these conditions in fact it's thought that she began to exhibit symptoms of what would today be diagnosed as anorexia it suggested that this condition may have been the thing that proved fatal for her catherine died on the 27th of january 1568. she was around 27 years old if you were expecting the fate of katherine gray to act as a cautionary tale for her younger sister you will be disappointed because in july or august of 1565 so while her sister was well into her incarceration mary gray made her own unsanctioned marriage mary's choice fell upon one thomas keys he was the queen's sergeant porter he was a minor gentleman far beneath mary in the social order and more than twice her age they also would have it seems have looked like a mismatched pair mary was pretty cruelly described in the letters of the spanish ambassador as being quote little crook-backed and very ugly well her new husband was apparently around six foot eight inches tall this gray sister's marriage was discovered within weeks of being made by the 19th of august 1565. mary and thomas were arrested and interrogated he was sent to the fleet prison she was to be held at checkers in buckinghamshire mary wrote pleading letters to william cecil and robert dudley in the hope that they would secure her pardon from the queen meanwhile her loving husband was petitioning unsuccessfully to a null his marriage to her elizabeth allowed thomas to leave prison in 1568. he was however prevented from living with his wife he died in kent in 1571. elizabeth also eventually softened towards mary and granted her liberty to live where she wanted in 1572 but by this point mary however was out of funds friends and options so she remained with her last jailer sir thomas gresham who had housed her with much complaint since june 1569. in 1573 she went to live with her stepfather adrian stokes until she was able to set up her own separate household near aldersgate london during 1577 and the first part of 1578 mary visited lisbon's court during this period the pair even exchanged new year's gifts with each other but any chance at a prolonged rapprochement between elizabeth and her first cousin once removed would be cut short by mary's death on the 20th of april 1578. mary was around 33 years old but what do you think of catherine and mary's stories of the oddly similar choices they made and the royal response to those choices why do you think they made the marriages they did was it for love was it an attempt at shaping a dynasty to succeed or perhaps even dethrone elizabeth do they simply hope to find some way to take charge of their own lives as always i'm looking forward to reading your conversations in the comment section underneath this video or you can find me on social media i'll be leaving links to the other place you can find me on the internet in my description box which is currently instagram twitter clubhouse and tiktok i've enabled the q a feature over there so give me a follow and we continue this and many other conversations i do hope you enjoyed this video and found it useful if you did why not share it with your friends please also let me know you liked it by hitting the thumbs up please subscribe to the channel if you think you're subscribed now is the time to have a check make sure youtube hasn't mysteriously unsubscribed you while you're there checking subscribing maybe re-subscribing why not also hit the bell icon beside the subscribe button so that youtube tells you when i've next uploaded i hope you can have a great day whatever you're doing and i look forward to speaking to you in my next video take care of yourselves bye for now [Music]

Channel: Reading the Past

Views: 50,177

Keywords: Education, Literature, Culture, History, Early Modern, Renaissance, Jane Grey, Katherine Grey, Mary Grey, Bess of Hardwick, Robert Dudley, Elizabeth I, Mary I, Tudor, Henry VIII, Henry VII, Treason, Tower of London

Id: a45oa_VEUzM

Length: 17min 48sec (1068 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 23 2021