The Other Tudors (31 page)

One possible candidate is a lady called Joan Parker. A reference to her can be found in a lease of land made in 1546, the same year as the gift made to Etheldreda, to ‘Thos. Parker of London and Joan, his wife, late wife of Jas. Dingley and of Mich. Asshefelde, dec.’ of ‘Northlatche Manor, Glouc.’
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In the
Visitation of Worcestershire
Joan (or Jane), daughter of John Moore, is listed as having married James Dingley, and after the name of Dingley is the word ‘Douklin’, which may refer to the place that the Moores came from. In a list of Charters printed for Lord Sherborne, there occurs the entry, ‘Letters patent 27 May 1586 to Thomas Parker, Gent., and Richard and Michael his sons, the site of the Manor of Northleach in tenure of William Dingley, Esq., James his son and Jane, Daughter of John Moore of Dunkelyn, co. Worster’.
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In the uncertain calligraphy of the time, Douklin/Dunkelyn could easily have been written as Dobson on the grant to Etheldreda, which would ideally have read ‘Joan Dyngley alias Douklin/Dunkelyn’, Douklin being used instead of Moore as her maiden name. The spelling of any person’s name was idiosyncratic – Shakespeare, for example, has every spelling from Shakespear to Shagsper. The mother of Etheldreda could be Jane, Joan, Joanne or Joanna, with the spelling varying from reference to reference.

Since Joan was the daughter of Sir John Moore, and she had married an Ashfield and a Parker, kinsmen to each other and to Abbot Parker, a friend and supporter of the King, Joan would have been in a position to meet Henry VIII. She was a member of the minor nobility by birth, and a member of the ecclesiastical meritocracy by marriage. This was an age when, like Wolsey, a man from a modest background could rise through the church to achieve the favour of the King himself.

Abbot Thomas Parker (also known as Malvern) was a monk at St Peter’s, Gloucester, in 1510, and Abbot in 1514. He took his seat in the House of Lords during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and supported the King. When he saw how the wind was blowing, he leased monastery lands at Northleach to his nephew, also Thomas Parker (married to the twice-widowed Jane Moore) who lived at Notgrove, and leased land at Farmington to another relative, Michael Ashfield. Abbot Parker died in 1539, just failing to achieve the position of Bishop of Gloucester, created after Gloucester Abbey was surrendered in January 1540. On Abbot Parker’s tomb are carved Tudor roses in honour of King Henry, and the pomegranate, emblem of Catherine of Aragon.
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If Joan Moore is indeed Etheldreda’s mother, she would have been married to James Dingley (or had just become a widow) when she had her affair with Henry, perhaps in 1534; thus it is by the name of Dingley that she is listed on the document relating to Etheldreda’s property. Whoever made Malte’s will may have copied the reference to Etheldreda and her mother from the previous grant of land, and put ‘now wife of one Dobson’ because they had read ‘alias Dobson’, not because they had any firm knowledge of the current marital status of the lady. By 1540 she was married to Michael Ashfield, who in that year bought the manor of Farmington, previously the property of the monastery of Edington, after the Dissolution, only to die in the following year. His lands passed to his son, Robert Ashfield, who sold Farmington in 1608.

Thus, by 1546 Joan was married to Thomas Parker of Notgrove, and was to become the mother of his three sons, Edmund, Thomas and Michael; the Parker land eventually went to Thomas (who lived to be 100) and his children. It may have been on her mother’s remarriage that Etheldreda was placed in the care of John Malte, so that she would remain in her father’s orbit, while her mother made a new life in distant Gloucestershire.

As to when Joanna Dingley came into Henry’s life – in spring 1534 Henry set up a ‘new mistress’. The editor of the ‘Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic’, describes her: ‘[King] Henry was in love with another lady (not Jane Seymour, I rather think, but who she was must, for the present at least, remain uncertain), whom he refused to send away at Anne’s request.’
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Anne Boleyn was reported to have complained bitterly about this mistress, and Henry is said to have told her to mind her own business and that she should remember how he had raised her. He stated that he could lower her just as quickly and that he might not choose to raise her again, given the choice. George Boleyn’s wife, Jane Parker, tried to get Joanna sent away, but the King refused, and Jane herself was banished for interfering.

At that time, the Spanish Ambassador recorded that the life of the Princess Mary, made so wretched under the rule of Anne Boleyn, had improved and he mentioned the mysterious mistress. He wrote in a letter dated 27 September 1534: ‘Since the king began to doubt whether his lady [Anne Boleyn] was enceinte [pregnant] or not, he has renewed and increased the love he formerly had for a very beautiful damsel of the Court.’
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His next letter of 13 October records Jane Parker’s banishment from court for interfering. He describes the mistress as one ‘whose influence increases daily, while that of the Concubine [Anne Boleyn] diminishes … The said young lady has lately sent to the Princess [Mary] to tell her to be of good cheer … and that … she would show herself her true and devoted friend.’
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If the new mistress was indeed sympathetic to Mary’s cause, and persuaded the King to be kinder and make her life easier, she would have found Mary I a devoted friend. Mary never forgot those who supported her before she became queen.

On 18 October, another letter was sent from the Count de Cifuentes to Charles V, reporting that Henry VIII was ‘milder’ towards Catherine of Aragon. Anne Boleyn was less popular: ‘The King was entertaining another lady and many lords helped him with the object of separating him from Anne.’
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The final letter is dated 24 October and says one might doubt the King’s love for his eldest daughter ‘were it not that the king is of amiable and cordial nature, and that the young lady his new mistress who is quite devoted to the Princess, has already busied herself on her behalf.’
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The dates and the fact that she is unknown all suggest that this could be Joanna Dingley. Even the date for the conception and birth of Etheldreda is possible. The editor of the state papers is right to be dubious that Jane Seymour is the lady referred to. Jane Seymour was well connected, and once Henry began to notice her, there was no bar to her being mentioned by name and their relationship recorded. To add to this, the mistress is described as being ‘beautiful’, an epithet that is never used to describe Jane Seymour, whose charm lay in her compliant and quiet prettiness. If Joanna is the mystery mistress, that would place their affair in mid to late 1534, and Etheldreda’s birth in the following year, perhaps on 23 June. Thus in 1546 when she received her lands and passed into the care of John Malte, she would have been 11 years old, and 12 when Malte died.

In 1547, after Malte’s death, Etheldreda would have continued living with Bridget Scutte in Malte’s house, until she married John Harrington. Geoffrey Strutt, in his
History of St Catherine’s Court
, wrote, ‘At Malte’s death, Etheldreda became a rich woman and in 1548 she married John Harrington of London.’
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Etheldreda would have been about 13 years old. Given that she is unlikely to have arranged her own marriage, John Harrington must have approached her new guardians with the proposal, which they accepted.

At this time, Harrington must have appeared to be quite a good husband for the bastard daughter of a tailor, no matter how well endowed. He had been a servant to the late Henry VIII, he was related to the noble family of Harrington, and to the Greys (one of whom, Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, had married Henry VIII’s niece, Frances Brandon). He was the servant of Thomas Seymour, Lord High Admiral and favourite uncle to the young Edward VI. He would be able to give Etheldreda the position in life that she deserved, at least in theory. The couple had several houses to choose from for their residence, including Harrington’s house in Stepney, London. Their principal home outside London was the manor house of St Catherine’s Court.

John Harrington came from a prolific and well-connected family. However, John’s father was Alexander Harrington, believed to be the bastard son of James Harrington, Dean of York. Since Alexander is not mentioned in the Dean’s will, it is possible that he was the bastard of James’s cousin John, who was himself illegitimate. Illegitimacy did not have the same social stigma then as it did later. Marriages were usually arranged, at most social levels, and divorce was extremely difficult. This meant that love and marriage were not thought of as being necessarily connected, although each couple hoped love, or at least affection, would be part of their relationship. Love flourished, in and out of wedlock, and the presence of ‘love children’ was not uncommon. A good and responsible father would recognise all his offspring and make provision for them, regardless of their mother’s formal status.

Alexander Harrington lived at the Prebendary House at Stepney, which became the home of the child John, probably born around 1520. The boy showed a musical talent, and was taught by Thomas Tallis, the great organist and composer and the father of English cathedral music. John Harrington was also a poet, and would go on to produce notable verses. His family background was a trifle confused, partly because of his father’s disputed parentage (although he was definitely a Harrington), so when John applied for a coat of arms in 1546, a regnant of arms was issued to ‘John Harrington of Kelston … son of Alexander Harrington, descended of a younger brother of the Harringtons of Brierley in the County of York … and yet, not knowing in what manner he ought to bear his arms, the time being now so long since his ancestors first descended from out of the said house of Brierley.’

Young John’s career began at Court late in the reign of Henry VIII. By October 1538, the year after the birth of Prince Edward, he was an 18-year-old Gentleman of the King’s Chapel,
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and was brought to the King’s attention by his musical talent. He wrote a song called ‘The Black Sanctus, or Monk’s Hymn to Satan’, which ‘King Henry was used in pleasant mood to sing’.
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Henry still appreciated anyone who could entertain him with their own musical composition. A letter written by Sir John Harrington ( John’s son) to Lord Burghley in 1595 gives an interesting piece of information about John’s early life. He writes, ‘My father, who had his [King Henry’s] good countenance, and a goodlie office in his Courte, and also his goodlies Esther to wife, did sometime receive the honour of hearing his own song …’
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This indicates that John had a wife called Esther during the lifetime of the King, which may explain the choice of the name of his daughter. Henry Harrington suggests that Esther is one and the same as Etheldreda, but she and John only married after the death of King Henry, and Esther is not a corruption of Etheldreda; the alternative version of the name is Audrey. Sir John must have been well aware of the name of his father’s previous wife, and was unlikely to mistake Etheldreda for Esther. The first wife, Esther, would have been married when John Harrington was a young man. She was neither nobly born nor wealthy, and died before they could have a family. This left him free to marry Etheldreda in 1548, when John was 28 years old.

John’s marriage to Etheldreda has given rise to various unsupported statements, like those of Margaret Irwin, who wrote a romantic novel about Elizabeth I, and set one of her scenes in the Tower. Princess Elizabeth, her servant Isabella Markham, Robert Dudley and John Harrington are meeting together (which never happened). Irwin writes of John, ‘He had been married to a bastard daughter of King Henry and had not much liked it, for Etheldreda (what a name!) had something of her father’s temper and nothing of his charm.’
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F. J. Paynton, in his
Memoranda of Kelston
, perpetuated this idea when he wrote, ‘She [Etheldreda] who founded the fortune of the Harringtons of Kelston aroused no strong emotion in the passionate poet she married.’
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All descriptions of Henry VIII’s mistresses agree that they had to be at least pretty, if not beautiful. Thus Etheldreda’s mother was probably beautiful, certainly not plain or dull. Henry’s children were all handsome – his sons Edward VI, Richmond, Henry Carey, John Perrot and Thomas Stukeley looked a great deal like him. His daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, were good-looking; his sisters, Margaret and Mary, were both beauties. It follows that any child of two such handsome parents would tend to be attractive; Etheldreda was probably pretty, possibly beautiful, and intelligent. This may have been one reason why John Harrington married her; her dowry may have been another incentive. It is a great pity that the only known portrait of Etheldreda has disappeared.

The couple spent much of their married life apart, serving the various households of which they were a part. It was common practice for couples like the Harringtons to attach themselves to patrons, in whose households they would act as superior servants, the equivalent of the modern-day personal assistant. The Harringtons served their noble masters and mistresses just as they, in turn, served the king or queen. Harrington was a servant to Thomas Seymour; on 27 April 1546, Edward Seymour (later Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector under Edward VI) wrote to Henry VIII, ‘Here arrived yesternight Harrington, my brother’s servant with letters.’
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Harrington was one of the group who negotiated with Sir Henry Grey to arrange for Seymour to have the wardship of his daughter, Lady Jane Grey. Jane had gone to the household of Catherine Parr when she married Seymour, but had returned to her father’s house on the Dowager’s death in childbirth.

Seymour had promised Jane Grey’s family that he would arrange a marriage between Jane and Edward VI. He therefore approached her father on two further occasions. At the first, Harrington had escorted Jane from Bradgate, her home, to Seymour at Hanworth, although she shortly returned to her parents when nothing happened in respect of the promised marriage. Seymour had praised Jane, saying ‘She is as handsome a lady as any in England’, to which Harrington added a comment about ‘her excellent beauty.’
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