The lord admiral, who had found it difficult to keep out of danger during the life of his wife, partly through his own rash ambition, and partly through the malice of his near relatives, soon fell into it after her death. In July of 1548, he had been called before the Council on the charge of having endeavoured to prevail on the king to write a letter, complaining of the arbitrary conduct of the Protector, and of the restraint in which he was kept by him. He was seeking, in fact, to supersede the Protector, and was threatened with imprisonment in the Tower; but the matter for that time was made up, and the Protector added £800 per annum to his income, by way of conciliating him.
But with Catherine departed his good genius. He gave a free play to his ambitious desires, and renewed his endeavours to compass a clandestine marriage with the Princess Elizabeth, as he had done with Catherine. Finding, however, that such a marriage would annul the claims of Elizabeth to the throne, he next devised means to extort from the Council a consent, which he was well aware it would never yield voluntarily. For this purpose he is said to have courted the friendship of the discontented portion of the nobility, and made such a display of his wealth and retainers as was calculated to alarm the Protector and his party. The Protector was now resolved to get rid of so dangerous an enemy, though his own brother. Sharington, master of the mint at Bristol, being accused of gross peculation by clipping the coin, issuing testoons, or shilling pieces, of a false value, and making fraudulent entries in his books, was boldly defended by the admiral, who owed him £3,000. But Sharington ungratefully, to save his life, betrayed that of his advocate. He confessed that he had promised to coin money for the admiral, who could reckon on the services of 10,000 men, with whose aid he meant to carry off the king and change the government. This charge, made, no doubt, solely to save his own life, was enough for Somerset: Seymour was arrested on the 16th of January, 1549, on a charge of high treason, and committed to the Tower.
There was no lack of charges against him, true or false. It was stated that he had resolved to seize the king's person, and carry him to his castle of Holt, in Denbighshire, which had come to him in one of the Royal grants; that he had confederated for this purpose with various noblemen and others, and had laid in great store of provisions and a great mass of money at that castle. He was also charged with having abused his authority as lord admiral, and encouraged piracy and smuggling, and with having circulated reports against the Lord Protector and Council too vile to be repeated. But the most remarkable were the charges against him for endeavouring, both before and after his marriage with the queen-dowager, to compass a marriage with the king's sister, the Lady Elizabeth, second inheritor to the Crown, to the peril of the king's person and danger to the throne.
Mrs. Catherine Ashly, the governess of Elizabeth, who was brought before the Council, and made what are called her confessions, certainly opened up a curious course of conduct which had been going on in the household and lifetime of the prudent Catherine Parr, in which she figured remarkably herself. She stated that at Chelsea, where the princess was living under the care of the queen-dowager, being then about sixteen years of age, the admiral used to go into Elizabeth's chamber before she was dressed, and sometimes before she was out of bed. "At Seymour Place, when the queen slept there, he did use awhile to come up every morning in his nightgown and slippers. When he found my Lady Elizabeth up, and at her book, then he would look in at the gallery door, and bid her good morrow, and go on his way; and the deponent told my lord it was an unseemly sight to see a man so little dressed in a maiden's chamber, with which he was angry, but left it."
This highly imprudent and discreditable conduct at length proceeded to such an extreme, that Catherine Parr had cause to repent having suffered it. Elizabeth herself told Thomas Parry, the cofferer of her household, that she feared the admiral loved her too well, and had done so a long while; that the queen was jealous of them both, insomuch that, coming suddenly upon them when they were all alone, he having her in his arms, the queen severely reprimanded both the admiral and the princess. She also scolded Mrs. Ashly for her neglect of her charge, and took instant measures for having Elizabeth removed to her own household establishment.
Elizabeth herself was subjected to inquiry, and as to whether Mrs. Ashly had encouraged her to marry the admiral, which she declared she had never done, except by the consent of the Protector and the Council. Elizabeth wrote to the Lord Protector from Hatfield, stating that the vilest rumours regarding her were in circulation, namely, that she was confined in the Tower, being "enceinte" by the lord admiral; which she protested were shameful slanders, and demanded that, to put them down, she should be allowed to proceed alone to Court, that she might show herself as she was.
It may be supposed what consternation and mortification these scandals and examinations gave to a girl of sixteen; but Elizabeth displayed no small portion of that leonine and sagacious spirit on the occasion which so greatly characterised her afterwards. Sir Robert Tyrwhitt, the husband of Lady Tyrwhitt, already mentioned, was sent by the Protector to Hatfield to interrogate her. He informed Somerset that when Lady Browne communicated to her that Mrs. Ashly and Parry were sent to the Tower, she was greatly confounded and abashed, and wept bitterly for a long time, and demanded whether they had confessed anything or not; that on his arrival, he assured her what sort of characters Ashly and the others were, and said that if she would open all things herself, she should wholly be excused on account of her youth, and all the blame should be laid on them. But Elizabeth replied that she had nothing to confess; "and yet," asserts Tyrwhitt, "I see it in her face that she is guilty."
Presuming on this consciousness of guilt, Tyrwhitt the next day asked her if she would have married the lord admiral if the Council had given their consent. She fired up, and astonished him by telling him that she was not going to make him her confessor; demanded what he meant by such a question to her, and who bade him ask it. Tyrwhitt was soon made aware that "she hath a very good wit, and nothing is gotten of her but by great policy." A few days after, however, the politic agent had the opportunity of trying both her wit and her fortitude,
