CHAPTER II

A STRANGE WEDDING

ON the 10th (some say the 12th) of August 1565, there were gay doings at Mr. Sergeant-Porter’s lodgings. It was Mr. Henry Knollys’s[125] wedding-day, and after the ceremony, which was graced by Elizabeth’s presence, the wedding party, freed from the restraints of court etiquette, adjourned to Keyes’s apartment, and there feasted, danced, and romped till nine o’clock at night. Among the merry company were Mrs. Lettice Knollys and the Lady Mary Grey. One can only conclude Mr. Sergeant-Porter had drunk more wine than was good for him; otherwise he was surely the veriest fool that ever lived, for immediately the wedding guests had taken leave, he and Lady Mary Grey were married by candle-light, in the presence of a certain Mrs. Goldwell, an attendant on Lady Howard (who acted as a witness of the ceremony), the Sergeant-Porter’s brother, Mr. Edward Keyes, Mr. Martin Cawsley, a Cambridge student, and “Mr. Cheyney’s man.” A priest, described at the subsequent inquiry as “a little fat old man, who wore a very short gown,” was introduced upon the scene. No one knew his name, or seems to have cared to find it out. The persons present supposed he was a Swiss Reformer in exile, “but he said the marriage service in English, and according to the Book of Common Prayer.” Remembering the doubts cast upon the marriage of her sister Lady Katherine, the Lady Mary secured plenty of witnesses to assist at the ceremony; but it seems inconceivable, and seemed so even in those days, that any sane person should have ventured to mix themselves up in such a scandalous business. Of course these witnesses promised secrecy; and needless to say, every man and woman of them broke pledge.

Within the week, Queen Elizabeth was made aware of the whole matter. Lady Howard of Effingham, and her woman, Mrs. Goldwell, were among the first “to let the cat out of the bag,” for the earliest letters on the subject of the marriage are two which passed between Lord William Howard and Secretary Cecil, the first-named mentioning[126] that “the Queen’s Grace hath taken this matter of the Lady Mary Grey’s marriage very much to heart.” Cecil, in a letter to Sir Thomas Smith, clerk to the privy council, dated August 21, thus quaintly expressed his horror and indignation: “Here,” says he, “is the most unhappy chance and a monstrous. The Sergeant-Porter, being the biggest gentleman at this Court, hath secretly married the Lady Mary Grey, the least of all the Court.” It must be admitted that Queen Elizabeth had cause for anger this time. The Lady Mary, her near kinswoman, a mere girl, secretly married to a man of barely gentle birth, a widower to boot, with seven children, and entirely dependent for his livelihood on his menial position in the queen’s own service! Had her wrath exhausted itself in legitimate upbraiding of her servant, and temporary banishment of her indiscreet cousin, there would have been very little to say against it; but Elizabeth had other and more stringent views with regard to the disposal of the Lady Mary and her fortune. She was determined, she said, with one of her usual oaths, to “have no little bastard Keyes,” succeeding to her Throne, and she was evidently resolved to ignore Master Keyes’s distant kinship with herself, which was probably at the bottom of his audacious conduct, for he felt convinced that in consideration of this connection his august cousin would eventually pardon him. It was not to be; forthwith, like an eagle on its prey, Elizabeth swooped down on the luckless pair. On August 22, not a fortnight after the marriage, Master Sergeant-Porter Keyes was consigned to the tender mercies of the warden of the Fleet Prison. All the witnesses, including the loquacious Mrs. Goldwell, were arrested, and the wretched little bride herself made over to the fearsome functionary known as “The Mother of the Maids,” whose duty was to look after the more ill-conducted of the “Virgin Queen’s” juvenile attendants, and even, when necessary, to birch them soundly. Whether Lady Mary suffered under Mother Ansell’s rod we know not; but from the 19th to the 22nd of August, she was rigorously and continuously cross-examined by the privy council as to the facts about her marriage and the state of her fortune. Where she remained during these inquiries is not clear; Guzman de Silva, the Spanish ambassador, speaking of the matter in a letter from London, says “he [Keyes] is imprisoned in the jail here and she [Mary] is incarcerated at Windsor.” It is known that the queen and the court were at that castle about this time; and it is not unlikely that the Spaniard’s statement is correct; indeed it would seem to be confirmed by a command issued by Elizabeth to William Hawtrey, Esquire, of Buckinghamshire, that “he do forthwith repair to _Court_, and take into his charge and custody the Lady Mary Grey, and convey her forthwith to his house, ‘The Chequers,’ without permitting her to hold conference with any one, or to have liberty to go abroad, suffering only one waiting-woman to have access to her. For Mr. Hawtrey’s charges and expenses concerning the said Lady Mary, the Queen’s Majesty will see him satisfied in reason.”

The following is Lady Mary’s own account of the marriage, as elicited during the above-mentioned examination. Copies of her statement will be found in the Record Office (State Papers, Domestic Series, Elizabeth, vol. xxxvii., No. 71), together with other documents relating to the marriage of Lady Mary Grey with Mr. Keyes. The first paper, written in Cecil’s very clear hand, contains a list of questions put to the Lady Mary; and the second, in a secretary’s exceedingly illegible scrawl, gives her answers, more or less in her own words. Asked when the marriage took place, Lady Mary answered:

“The day of the marriage of Mr. Knollys—I was married about nine o’clock at night by candlelight.”

“Where?”

“In the Sergeant-Porter’s chamber.”

“Who were present?”

“The Sergeant’s brother, the Sergeant’s son, a gentlewoman, Mrs. Goldwell, and the priest, apparelled in a short gown.” She never knew his name.

“What was he like?”

“He was old and fat, and of low stature.”

“Did the Sergeant-Porter give you anything?”

“Yes, a ring.”

Continuing, she said she supped in her own chamber with Mrs. Arundell and two of Lady Stafford’s young daughters. Within a quarter of an hour after supper, she went to the privy-chamber with Mrs. Goldwell, and from thence to the council chamber—probably the most deserted part of the palace at that time of night—where she found Jones, his [Keyes’s] man, and sent him to the Sergeant to show him that her letter was ready.[127] On this, Keyes came up to the council chamber and thence they all went to his room over the Water-gate, where the marriage ceremony took place. Afterwards she returned to her own chamber, where she found Mrs. Arundell. The Sergeant gave her first two little rings, next a ring with four rubies, and a diamond and a chain, and a little hanging bottle of mother-of-pearl. Asked what her means were, the Lady Mary answered that she had £80 a year, paid out of the exchequer by the hands of my Lady Clinton, and £20 a year of her own, paid by the hand of one Artell.[128]

“Keyes, Sergeant-Porter,” was examined on August 19: he said the priest was one Thomas Withers. “Edward Keyes, Mr. Cheyney’s man, and Martin Cawsley, dwelling in Cambridge, did attend the wedding.

“The marriage was in the Sergeant’s chamber by the Water-gate at Westminster.

“The Lady Mary, being in the Council Chamber, sent him word by a messenger that her letter was ready. On this he came then and found her with one Mrs. Goldwell, a servant of the Lady Howard. He brought her to his chamber.

“He gave the Lady Mary at the marriage a little wedding-ring.

“The marriage was by candle-light.

“Mrs. Arundell was at the Water-gate, but was not let in before the marriage was over. The Sergeant had carried up the Lady Mary to his chamber before Mrs. Arundell came in.”

Then we have the examination of Frances Goldwell.[129] “She sayeth that one Robert Leonard, a servant of the L. Chamberlens, came from my Lady Mary, ‘to her coming from the cellar’ to ask her to come to her, and so she did finding her in a chamber next the Counsell Chamber, which was somewhat dark. Lady Mary told her that she must go with her to her own chamber, but instead she went by the gallery by the L. Chamberlain’s chamber, down by the winding stair, and so to a chamber which she knew not [this was evidently the room over the Water-gate], and there was eleven other people with the Sergeant Porter, one of them being in a black cloke read from a book, but what about she knoweth not. And they tarried not there past an quarter of an hower.

“She sayeth, moreover, the Sergeant Porter came with her as she remembered into the gallery before them and no further.

“The Lady Mary willed her to say that if she should be asked where she had been, she should say she had been with her in her chamber. She sayeth at her return to the Counsell Chamber that Lady Mary willed her to return to my Lady Howard’s chamber, but whither the Lady Mary herself went she knoweth not, unless it were into the Privy Chamber.” [She probably returned to Keyes’s room.]

As may be well imagined, the sagacious Mrs. Goldwell’s master and mistress, the Lord and Lady William Howard, were in a desperate state of mind when they discovered the nature of the business in which their “gentlewoman” had meddled. They therefore immediately addressed the following letter to Cecil:—[130]

“MR. SECRETARY,

“This daie being the xxth of this present, I receaved your letter of the xixth whereby I understand of a very fond and lewde [i.e. ‘silly and ill-advised’] matter fallen out betwixt my Lady Mary and the Sergeante-Porter, mencionyng a marriage to be made between them that daye, in the evening that my Cousyn Knowles was married. I am not a little sory to here of hit, bothe for their sakes and moche more, that the Quenes Ma^[ty] shuld have such occasion to troble her. And to you I write playnely. It greveth me to see (and hathe of longe tyme don) that men be in so little feare of the Prince [ss], that they dare think to enterprise so great a matter I dowt not hit wil be so ponished, as hit maie give suche a terror to all her Ma^[tes] subjectes, that they maie ever hereafter beware howe to enter in any kinde of matter that maye in any case stounde against their bounde[n] dutye of allegiance. And where you signifie to me in your letter, that the Quenes Ma^[tes] pleasure is, that I shoulde examine Ffrances my wyffes woman touching her knowledge in this matter: I have so don, and have sent you her confession hereinclosed, which is to small effect, and also the woman whom I thinke you shall find very symple, as one that hath ben allwaies brought upe in the countrey and of little knowledge, but synce she cam to my wief (being put to her by my Lady Mary) (and daughter as I here [hear] to my Ladie Maries Nurse) hath used her honestly and soberly, as my wief hath liked her for the tyme very well. And thus I bid you hartely farewell ffrom my house at Rigate the xxth of Auguste 1565.

“Yo^[r] most assured loving friend,

“W. HOWARD.”

(_Addressed_)

“To my loving friend Sir William Cycell, Knight.”

The enclosure runs as follows:—

“The Confesyon of francys Goodwell before me.

“The L. Wyllyam Howard the xxth of August.

“She being examyned of me wher she was all that day that my wyfe wayted on the Quenys Ma^[tie] at the maryage of Mayster Knollys she sayeth she was in my chamber at the Court with her felowes tyll the evenyng after supper wher was also another gentyll woman callyd mystres Hewdney, who my wyfe dyd newly put out of her sarvyce, and they beyng mynded to walke owt my Lady Mary sent for Ffrancys to wayte on her to her chamber and she accordyng to her commandement dyd so, and when she came thyther my Lady Mary entered in to the Chamber and franncys with her and she sayeth as sone as she was within the doure stood still and there she saw the Sergeant Porter whom she sayeth she knew not with iij other in blacke clokys and ther talkyd together and (a) lyttyll whyll and then my Lady Mary came out agayne bot for any maryage that was mayd ther to her knowledge she denythe it to the dethe but what they sayd she knowythe not nor she knowythe not any of them that was ther with hym (more than thys I can not by any meanys gete of her).

“After the wrytyng of this muche she sayd further to me that they dyd together as she cowled [could] perseve open a boke bot she hard [heard] not the wordys for they spake softly.

“W. HOWARD.”[131]

On September 1, the Lady Mary was removed to her place of exile, Mr. William Hawtrey’s mansion, “The Chequers,” even then a very old house, in a beautiful situation among the Chiltern Hills. She was accompanied by the aforesaid Mr. William Hawtrey, his serving-man, and one of her own maids, the procession being closed by some pack-horses. Magnificent as was Mr. Hawtrey’s garden at “The Chequers,” and beautiful the surrounding country, it does not seem to have in the least impressed Lady Mary Grey, whose only thought was to regain her freedom. She wrote to Cecil towards the end of the year 1565, in the following rather pathetic terms: “I did trust to have wholly obtained Her Majesty’s favour before this time, the which having once obtained I trust never to lose again. But now I perceive that I am so unhappe a creature, as I must yet be without that great and long-desired jewel till it please God to put into Her Majesty’s harte to forgive and pardon me my great and heinous crime.” It seems that Mr. Hawtrey cheerfully joined in the chorus of appeals, for he was considerably bored by his aggrieved and unwilling guest, and earnestly wished to be rid of her. Lady Mary was persuaded that she might appease the queen’s wrath, if she could but have an interview with her, and when Elizabeth was paying a visit to Lord Windsor at Bradenham, not far distant from the little captive’s abode, she again wrote to Cecil, begging that she, “The Queen’s prisoner and most poore wretche, might have access to Her Majesty’s Grace, for the purpose of pleading for herself in person.” Elizabeth, to use an everyday expression, was not going to be bothered with her, whilst Cecil was more interested in her sister Lady Katherine than in “the most poore wretche,” who was therefore refused her much desired boon.

The Lady Mary Grey remained at her retreat in the Chilterns more than a year. At last, however, Mr. Hawtrey, to his great relief, received orders to bring his prisoner up to London. It had been at first intended to consign her to the tender mercies of the Duchess of Somerset, but that lady dying before the negotiations were completed, Mary was handed over to her step-grandmother, Katherine, dowager Duchess of Suffolk. This inhospitable relation was anything but pleased when, one summer’s evening in 1567, Mr. Hawtrey, the Lady Mary, and her servants, knocked unexpectedly at the doors of her house in the Minories. The duchess, it may be added, had no right whatever to this mansion, which had been carved out of the stately convent of the Holy Trinity, which was granted by Edward VI to the Duke of Suffolk, whose legitimate successor, failing Lady Katherine Grey, was the unfortunate young lady now conducted to its door as to a sort of prison.

The duchess received her unwelcome guest with “dure countenance,” but attributed her annoyance to the score of her unpreparedness, for a few days later she wrote to Cecil asking him, “Where is the Lady Mary’s stuff? For that, indeed, I have nothing wherewith to furnish or dress up her chamber, as the Minories is totally unfurnished. I do not usually reside there. My dwelling is in Leicestershire; and when I am in town I myself borrow stuff of the Lady Eleanore.” If she had to receive Lady Mary, she protested, she would be “forced to borrow furniture from her neighbours of the Tower.” Probably Cecil communicated the duchess’s grievance to Mr. Hawtrey, for by way of answer to her letter, he sent all the Lady Mary’s goods in his possession to the Minories, at the same time pointing out that they had not hitherto been used; he seems, at least, to have provided his charge with a comfortable lodging during her stay at “The Chequers.” No sooner was the parcel of “stuff” opened, than the sarcastic dowager duchess wrote a letter to “Mr. Sekrettory” Cecil, describing the contents in a manner which reflects less credit on her heart than on her powers of derision. “She hath nothing,” she says, “but an old livery feather bed, all to [too] torn and full of patches, without either bolster or counterpaine, but two old pillows, one longer than the other, an old quilt of silk, so tattered as the cotton of it comes out, such a piteous little canopy of red sarcenet as is scant good enough to cover some secret stool.[132] Then there are two little pieces of old hangings, both of them not seven yards broad.” This letter was written at Greenwich Palace,[133] whither the Lady Mary had been removed by her step-grandmother very shortly after her arrival in London, perhaps the very same day; and the real object of this exposure of the Lady Mary’s poverty was to induce Cecil to persuade the queen to assign the duchess some of the furniture in the Tower store-houses; for she concludes by asking that Mary may be allowed to have some “silver pots to fetch her drink in, and two little cups for her to drink out of, one for her beer, the other for her wine. A silver basin and ewer were, I fear, too much to ask.” The dowager duchess promises to return all borrowed articles in as good condition as she received them. She says the Lady Mary is “very glad to be with her”(!); although “all she hath eaten now these two days is not so much as a chicken’s leg.” Very likely, the duchess’s sarcasms and her own grievances were making the poor little lady absolutely ill. However, these first difficulties having been surmounted, she lived on fairly happily with her kinswoman at the Minories and elsewhere, until June 1569. During this period she became godmother to a little girl, Jane Merrick, who eventually inherited some of her property. She also struck up a great friendship with Lady Mary Bertie or Bartie, wife of Mr. Peregrine Bertie, Duchess Katherine’s son, and heir to the barony of Willoughby d’Eresby: Lady Mary Bertie was of the family of De Vere, a daughter of the Earl of Oxford. In the beginning of the year 1568, Lady Mary Grey’s position was complicated by the death of her sister Lady Katherine, which exposed her to the danger of being chosen the figure-head of any party that professed belief in the legitimacy of Henry VIII’s will and Edward VI’s “Devise for the Succession.” There is reason to believe that Mary, warned by her sister’s fate, had made up her mind formally to renounce her right to the Throne, lest unscrupulous persons might force her, as they had forced her sister Jane, into this false position. Elizabeth, however, harried by her continual fear of an usurper or even of a successor, gave orders, in June 1569, that Mary Grey should be removed to the care of Sir Thomas Gresham, whose magnificent mansion occupied the space between Bishopsgate Street and Winchester Street, and was surrounded by the pleasant gardens of Crosby Hall and Winchester House. The Greshams used Osterley House, towards Hounslow, now the seat of the Earl of Jersey, as a country retreat; and also lived for a time at Mayfield in Sussex.

Meanwhile, Mr. Keyes was enduring a good deal of hardship in the Fleet, the foulest of the many foul prisons of those days. His grievances and annoyances were many and peculiar. He was apparently engaged in some suit, unconnected with his marriage, and his lawyers were allowed to visit him in the Fleet and talk to him in the presence of the warden. Moreover, there was some project for his being sent to Ireland, though whether as a prisoner we know not. There exists, however, a letter from Keyes, dated “Fleet Prison, July 16, 1566,” in which the imprisoned Sergeant-Porter begs Cecil to “give him instructions how to act, as to his going into Ireland.” The wording of this suggests that he was to have held some official position there. The scheme apparently came to nothing, for on July 25 of the same year, he prepared a petition to the effect that he would renounce his wife and have his marriage declared null and void, if only he might be allowed to leave the Fleet and retire into Kent, urging that, after all, “he had formerly done the Crown good service in suppressing insurrections”—a reference, no doubt, to some share he must have had in the defeat of the Wyatt rebellion. Dr. Grindal, then Bishop of London, refused, however, to annul the marriage, and referred the matter to the Court of Arches, which, so far as can be ascertained, also refused—at any rate Keyes was asking leave to cohabit with Lady Mary as late as in 1570. But his lordship’s Christian charity permitted him to suggest that the bulky captive might well be allowed to go into the country to take some open-air exercise, “for his bulk of body being such as I know it to be, his confinement in the Fleet putteth him to great inconvenience.” This suggestion was accepted, and for a few months Keyes was allowed to walk in the garden attached to the Fleet Prison; but a new warden was appointed in December 1566, and this slight solace was taken away; and further, instead of being allowed, as hitherto, to cook his own food, the ex-Sergeant-Porter was compelled to live on the horrible diet provided by the prison authorities. In this same December he complains to Cecil that “he had been given a piece of beef which had been dropped into some poison, prepared for a dog that had the mange!”

It did not kill him, if indeed that had been intended, but he fell so ill as to require the attentions of a certain Dr. Langford, who charged him a mark [i.e. 6s. 8d.] for his services. The prisoner lived on; to send another letter to Cecil, complaining that “they have taken away from me my stone-bowe wherewith I was wont to shoot at birds out of my prison-window, for the refreshment of myself sometimes; but even this little solace is denied me.” Probably the neighbours objected as much as the birds!

At last, when unkind wardens, poisonous food, and lack of fresh air had thrown the unfortunate Sergeant-Porter into a “languor,” he was relegated, in accordance with Dr. Grindal’s suggestion, to his native place, Lewisham, then a remote village, now a large town within half-an-hour’s journey of London—it probably took Mr. Keyes some hours’ hard riding to reach it on horseback. Thence he continued to appeal for the queen’s pardon, “if only for the sake of my poor children, who innocent as they are, suffer punishment with me for my offence.[134] If it were Her Majesty’s and your honour’s [Cecil’s] pleasure to fetter me with iron gyves, I could willingly endure it; but to bear the cruelty of this warden of the Fleet, without cause, is no small grief to my heart.” Evidently memories of the stern official haunted the poor fellow in his rural retreat. From Lewisham, Mr. Keyes went to Sandgate Castle on the Kentish coast. Thence, in May 1570, he addressed a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, beseeching his grace to intercede for him with the queen, “that according to the laws of God I may be permitted to live with my wife.” This is rather a change of feeling from the time, four years previously, when he expressed his willingness to have his conjugal fetters snapped, if only he might retire to Kent! The archbishop did not grant this prayer; and Mr. Thomas Keyes died—probably in September 1571, and very likely at Sandgate: his burial register is lost, and there is no proof that he returned to Lewisham—worn out by his manifold troubles and by the effect of his unhealthy existence in the Fleet Prison.