Note 149 — Chapter X · THE LADY JANE GOES TO SEYMOUR PLACE

As to the unfortunate Seymour’s infant child, we learn that after his death it was carried to Somerset’s house at Sion, whence, after a short time, it was conveyed to the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk, at Grimsthorpe, in Lincolnshire. She had been at one time the dearest friend of Katherine Parr. Here the child had a governess, Mrs. Aglyonby, and was also attended by a nurse, two maids, and many other servants, in accordance with her high rank. The Duke of Somerset had promised that a certain pension should be settled on his niece, and that her nursery plate and furniture, which had been brought up from Sudeley to Sion House, should be sent after her to Grimsthorpe. He pledged his word on this point to the Duchess of Somerset’s gentleman, Mr. Bertie, who subsequently married his mistress, the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk; but the promise was never redeemed. The Duchess herself did not show much maternal tenderness to the child of her quondam friend. In the second year of Edward VI she wrote a curious letter to Cecil, begging him to relieve her of the guardianship of the child of the late Queen. She says: “The late Queen’s child hath lain, and yet doth lay in my house with her company about her, wholly in my charge.” Then she accuses Somerset of not sending money for the child’s maintenance, and adds: “And that ye may better understand that I cry not before I am pricked, I send you Mistress Glensborough’s [the governess’s] letter unto me, who, with her maids, nourice, and others daily call upon me for their wages, whose voices mine ears may hardly bear, but my coffers much worse.” She declares she is ill, and hopes that the child will be removed at an early date. There is a very long list in the Lansdowne MSS of plate, hangings, and even musical instruments, belonging to this child, which the Lord Protector took and never restored. Cecil paid little attention to the Duchess’s application. In all probability he never answered her letter at all. At a later date she wrote to the Marquis of Northampton, the infant’s uncle, and begged him to receive her. He behaved even more heartlessly than the Duchess, declaring he would neither receive the child nor her attendants at his house. Thus Katherine Parr’s own brother and the Duchess of Somerset, her old friend, whose life she had actually saved on one occasion from the fury of Henry VIII, besides spending considerable sums out of her private means to publish the ungrateful woman’s devotional writings, actually refused food and shelter to her orphaned child. It is impossible now to fully trace the child’s eventful history. Strype asserts that she died young, but there is much reason to believe that she lived and married Sir Edward Bushel, a gentleman of family, who was in attendance upon Queen Anne of Denmark, the Consort of James I. His only daughter married Silas Johnson, and their daughter married into the Lawson family, an old Suffolk house, which until quite recently possessed a number of Tudor relics, which, their proprietors alleged and amply proved, originally belonged to their ancestress, the daughter of Katherine Parr and the Admiral Seymour, a baby doubtless often caressed by the gentle Jane Grey. At the close of the seventeenth century some hundreds of papers belonging to the Lawson family were unfortunately destroyed by a thoughtless widow. However, an existing copy of the family pedigree proves almost beyond doubt that the Lawson version of the fate of Seymour’s daughter was accurate in every detail. One thing is evident, that the infant suffered a good deal of neglect in her childhood, and that she was passed on from one unwilling relative to another, until at last some kindly soul took compassion on her desolate state, and brought about a match between her and Sir Edward Bushel.