Please welcome author Susan Higginbotham to Passages to the Past today! Susan is here with a guest post in honor of the release of her latest novel Her Highness, the Traitor. And thanks to Sourcebooks I also have one copy up for grabs!
Chelsea: The Manor of Queens
Several important scenes in Her Highness, the Traitor take place at the royal manor of Chelsea in Middlesex. Now a vital part of London, the area of Chelsea in Tudor England was still a country retreat.
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| Jane Seymour |
The neighborhood had two residences strongly associated with the Tudors: the royal manor and Thomas More’s house. It was the latter house, not the royal manor, where Jane Seymour was brought on May 14, 1536, to await her marriage to Henry VIII while Anne Boleyn in the Tower awaited her trial and execution. The manor of Chelsea did not come to the crown until July 14, 1536, when William, Lord Sandys, granted it and other land to the king in exchange for other property.
Henry VIII is recorded as visiting his new acquisition only in May 1538. In May 1541, however, both Katherine Howard and her stepdaughter, the future Elizabeth I, went there by barge on several occasions. Henry did expend funds on the gardens at Chelsea, where cherry trees, red peach trees, damask roses, lavender, and rosemary were planted and tended.
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| Katherine Parr |
Katherine Parr is the queen most closely associated with Chelsea. She was granted the manor as part of her jointure in 1544 and moved there after Henry VIII’s death in 1547.
It was at Chelsea that Katherine carried on a love affair with the new king’s uncle, Thomas Seymour, detailed in a series of letters. In a letter written early in their courtship, Katherine apologized for writing Thomas sooner than expected, but explained, “Howbeit, the time is well abbreviated, by what means I know not, except the weeks be shorter in Chelsea than in other places.” In another letter, Katherine, now signing herself as “your humble, true, and loving wife,” instructed Seymour, “When it shall be your pleasure to repair hither, ye must take some pain to come early in the morning, that ye may be gone again by seven o’clock. And so, I suppose, ye may come without suspect. I pray you let me have knowledge overnight at what hour ye will come, that your portress may wait at the gate to the fields for you.”
The teenage Princess Elizabeth, known as the Lady Elizabeth, was living in the household of Katherine Parr and Thomas Seymour. It was while the household was at Chelsea that Thomas Seymour began indulging in sexually charged horseplay with Elizabeth: stealing into the princess’s chamber before she was up in the morning, striking her upon her back or buttocks, and pulling open her bed curtains and making as if he would come at her. To put a stop to this, Katherine Parr, now pregnant with Seymour’s child, finally sent the young Elizabeth to live elsewhere.
Tragically, Katherine Parr, having moved to Sudeley Castle to await her coming child, died of complications following childbirth. The royal manor of Chelsea returned to the crown.
The next occupant of Chelsea was John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. In November 1552, the ambassador Jehan Scheyfve wrote, ”The Duke of Northumberland keeps his room at Chelsea, in a little house belonging to the King about two miles from Westminster, on the Thames.” Northumberland spent the last Christmas season of his life, 1552-53, there. Often ailing and depressed in the last years of his life, Northumberland may have believed that Chelsea was conducive to his health. In a particularly gloomy letter written from Chelsea to William Cecil, he asked, “And now, by extreme sickness and otherwise constrained to seek some health and quietness, I am not without a new evil imagination of men. What should I wish any longer this life, that seeth such frailty in it? Surely, but for a few children which God hath sent me, which also helpeth to pluck me on my knees, I have no great cause to desire to tarry much longer here.”
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| Jane Grey |
In May 1553, Northumberland’s son Guildford married Lady Jane Grey. According to Jane, after hearing the unwelcome news from the Duchess of Northumberland that Edward VI had named her his heir, Jane got permission to go to Chelsea, where she fell ill. (Jane, who had been Thomas Seymour’s ward during and after his marriage to Katherine Parr, had likely stayed at Chelsea during Katherine Parr’s tenancy there, though she seems to have been insulated from the goings-on involving Seymour, the queen, and the Lady Elizabeth.) It was at Chelsea that Jane was summoned by Northumberland’s daughter Mary Sidney to go to Sion, where she heard of the death of Edward VI and accepted the crown.
Northumberland was executed on August 22, 1553, after Jane’s brief reign collapsed. The new queen, Mary I, allowed Northumberland’s widow, Jane Dudley, to live at Chelsea. The Duchess of Northumberland died at Chelsea in January 1555 and was buried in nearby Chelsea Old Church. The church was damaged during the Blitz, but it, and Jane’s tomb, survived the bombardment.
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| Anne of Cleves |
With the Duchess of Northumberland gone, Chelsea was free to receive another queenly tenant: Anne of Cleves, whose marriage to Henry VIII had been dissolved years before. Anne did not have long to enjoy Chelsea, for she died there on July 16, 1557, at about three in the morning. Her body was taken to Westminster for burial.
Anne of Cleves was the last queen to reside at Chelsea, although Elizabeth I visited the manor after it passed into the hands of Charles Howard, Lord Howard of Effingham. The Tudor palace known to Henry VIII, his wives, and his children was demolished between 1759 and 1765 and its site covered by the houses and gardens of 19-26 Cheyne Walk.
Publication Date: June 1, 2012
Sourcebooks
323p
{SYNOPSIS}
As Henry VIII draws his
last breath, two very different women, Jane Dudley, Viscountess Lisle,
and Frances Grey, Marchioness of Dorset, face the prospect of a boy
king, Edward VI.
For Jane Dudley, basking in the affection of her
large family, the coming of a new king means another step upward for
her ambitious, able husband, John. For Frances Grey, increasingly
alienated from her husband and her brilliant but arrogant daughter Lady
Jane, it means that she—and the Lady Jane—are one step closer to the
throne of England.
Then the young king falls deathly ill.
Determined to keep England under Protestant rule, he concocts an
audacious scheme that subverts his own father’s will. Suddenly, Jane
Dudley and Frances Grey are reluctantly bound together in a common
cause—one that will test their loyalties, their strength, and their
faith, and that will change their lives beyond measure.
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Giveaway ends on June 19th.
Thanks to Susan Higginbotham for the fabulous guest post and to Sourcebooks for sponsoring the giveaway! Good luck to all!
