CHAPTER III

THE PROGRESS OF LADY KATHERINE’S LOVE AFFAIRS

THE happiest years of Lady Katherine’s life were, according to her own account, those spent at the court of Queen Mary. She was too well versed in the politics of the time not to recognize that the queen’s action with respect to her sister Jane was not a matter of private revenge but of public policy, approved and indeed endorsed by her Parliament. She bore witness, in after years, to the kindness and consideration she had received from Queen Mary, and the precedence accorded to her on all state occasions as a princess of the blood, allowing her to walk before any of the other great ladies of the court, excepting the Princess Elizabeth, the Lady Frances, and Henry VIII’s fourth wife and only surviving widow, Anne of Cleves. Queen Mary, unlike her successor Elizabeth, insisted upon her ladies and maids of honour paying the utmost attention to their religious duties, and was, moreover, very vigilant as to their manners and their morals. So long as her health permitted, together with all her court, she heard Mass every morning in the palace chapel, or in her bedroom, when she was