Lady Katherine and Mary Grey are briefly mentioned in an article in the April 2015 issue of BBC History Magazine.
(c) BBC History Magazine
The article, ‘Personal Politics in Elizabeth I’s Court’ by Susan Doran, looks at how ‘the Virgin Queen’s possessive treatment of her favourite advisors and maids of honour was driven by political motives than by petty jealousy.’
Susan Doran’s new book, ‘Elizabeth I and Her Circle’ was published in March.
‘Henry VIII’s Last Love: The Extraordinary Life of Katherine Willoughby, Lady-in-Waiting to the Tudors’ by David Baldwin added to the Other Biographies section of the bibliography.
Entries added to the following:
Primary Accounts – Birth, Captivity and Feckenham, Engravings – Stained Glass Window, and Writings of Lady Jane Grey – Letters – Letter to a Friend.
5 November – The King is Dead by Suzannah Lipscomb
‘On 28 January 1547, the sickly and obese King Henry VIII died at Whitehall. Just hours before his passing, his last will and testament had been read, stamped and sealed. The will confirmed the line of succession as Edward, Mary and Elizabeth; and, following them, the Grey and Suffolk families. It also listed bequests to the king’s most trusted councillors and servants.
Henry’s will is one of the most intriguing and contested documents in British history. Historians have disagreed over its intended meaning, its authenticity and validity, and the circumstances of its creation. As well as examining the background to the drafting of the will and describing Henry’s last days, Suzannah Lipscomb offers her own, illuminating interpretation of one of the most significant constitutional documents of the Tudor period.
Illustrated with portraits of key figures at Henry’s court, including the executors named by Henry in his will, THE KING IS DEAD is a Tudor gift book to cherish, as authoritative as it is beautiful.’
7 November – ‘Ambition and Vainglory’: Edward Seymour, Tudor Lord Protector of England by Margaret Scard
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
David Baldwin is the author of ‘Henry VIII’s Last Love: The Extraordinary Life of Katherine Willoughby, Lady-in-Waiting to the Tudors’, ‘Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of the Princes in the Tower’, ‘Richard III’ and ‘The Lost Prince: The Survival of Richard of York.’
You can buy ‘Henry VIII’s Last Love: The Extraordinary Life of Katherine Willoughby, Lady-in-Waiting to the Tudors’ from:
Thank you to David for answering my questions.
Why did you choose to write about Katherine Willoughby?
I wanted a subject who had led an interesting life, a life that people would want to read about, but who had not been ‘done to death’ already. Katherine Willoughby fitted this perfectly.
Do you think that that the sitter in the ¾ length ‘Grimsthorpe portrait’ is Katherine or Lady Jane Grey?
This is difficult because we have no authenticated portrait of Jane. All we can say in that the lady in the Grimsthorpe portrait closely resembles Katherine – note especially the similarity in the bone structure of the face and the eyes, nose and mouth.
Although they later differed in religion, do you think that Katherine inherited any traits from her Spanish mother?
Katherine’s mother, Maria de Salinas was a woman who did not take no for an answer – for example, when she undertook an arduous journey to visit Catherine of Aragon and then bluffed her way into the dying Queen’s bedchamber in direct contravention of Henry VIII’s orders. It would not be surprising if some of her daughter’s feistiness was inherited from her.
Is there any evidence of Katherine visiting her step-granddaughter, Jane Grey?
The evidence is inevitably patchy, but Katherine certainly spent the Christmas of 1551 with the Greys and, it is reasonable to assume, would have been a regular guest at Bradgate. She had known Frances, Jane’s mother, who was about two years her senior, since she had lived at Westhorpe (Suffolk) as Charles Brandon’s ward
Do you think Edward VI or John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland was the instigator of the ‘Devise for the Succession’?
If only we knew! My sense is that Northumberland was the guiding hand, but Edward was the willing tool.
Why was Katherine not arrested for her religious beliefs during the reign of Mary I and do you think she was allowed to escape abroad?
Katherine had been on good terms with Mary when they were both Roman Catholics, and Mary doubtless still appreciated Katherine’s mother’s devotion to hers. Undoubtedly, she could have been arrested along with other leading Protestants, but perhaps allowing her to escape into exile spared Mary a still more difficult choice..
How did Katherine react to becoming her step-granddaughter, Mary Grey’s custodian in 1567?
Not very well, unfortunately. She complained bitterly that Mary was ill-provided for, and feared that she was being ‘put-upon’ when others should have shouldered the burden. There was no permanent estrangement however – Mary left her step-grandmother her mother’s bracelets and a ‘mystic ruby’ thought to have magical properties, in her will.
You describe how Katherine wrote many letters to William Cecil over the years. Do you have a favourite quote from these?
Katherine was given to speaking her mind, and sometimes felt that she had gone too far and said too much. In one letter to Cecil she had to apologise for her ‘foolish choler and brawling’, begging his ‘forgiveness on my knees’, and Richard Morrison, the English ambassador to the Court of the Emperor Charles V remarked on her ‘heats’, regretting that ‘so goodly a wit waiteth on so froward a will’.
(c) Musee du Luxembourg
On Friday I visited the National Portrait Gallery and found that many of the most well known Tudor paintings are not on display. They have gone to Paris for ‘Les Tudors’ exhibition at the Musee du Luxembourg from 18 March until 19 July 2015.
One of the paintings included in the exhibition is the ‘Master John’ portrait of Queen Catherine Parr (once thought to be of Lady Jane Grey).
(c) Musee du Luxemboug
@manx_maid has posted a link to videos about the exhibition.
You can read more about the exhibition and buy tickets from:
