Catherine, younger sister of the nine-day queen Jane Grey, paid with her liberty for marrying without Elizabeth's leave: the Virgin Queen took the marriage of a maiden of the Tudor line for an attempted coup

Catherine, younger sister of the nine-day queen Jane Grey, paid with her liberty for marrying without Elizabeth's leave: the Virgin Queen took the marriage of a maiden of the Tudor line for an attempted coup. All the more so since Catherine Grey had, in Elizabeth's lifetime, been recognised as her heir. And all the more so since she had carried and borne a healthy son.

Grey-Seymour was packed off to the Tower, where a little later her husband Edward Seymour, whom the Crown did not recognise as such, also landed on returning from France; he was obliged to pay a fine of 15,000 marks for the seduction of a maiden of royal blood.

Strange to say, in confinement the lovers contrived to conceive a second child, another son. After which they were dispatched to their respective homes, he to his mother, she to her uncle. One would have thought that the position of an heiress who had managed to bring into the world such rarities among the Tudors as healthy male children was immeasurably strengthened, but she very soon fell ill with tuberculosis and died at only 27.

The queen rejected the legality of the secret marriage, sealed by an anonymous Catholic priest and with no surviving witnesses. The children were declared illegitimate. They would receive the status of heirs and lawful offspring only with the accession of James I.

A stern sovereign, as they say, was Elizabeth.