But in the solarium our mother made us see Hever again with its moat and portcullis and the courtyard and the hall where the King had often dined and the long gallery where he had courted our famous relative, the enchanting Anne. Our mother used to sing the songs which had been sung by the minstrels there—some composed by the King himself—and when she strummed on her lute, her eyes would grow glazed with the memories of the brief and dazzling glory of the Boleyns.

Now great-grandfather Thomas Boleyn lay buried in the church at Hever, but our grandmother Mary came to see us now and then. We were all fond of our grandmother. It was sometimes hard to imagine that she had once been the old King's mistress. She was not exactly beautiful, but she had that certain quality which I have mentioned before and which she had passed on to me. I very quickly learned that I possessed it and it delighted me, for I knew it would bring me much of what I wanted. It was indefinable—a certain appeal to the opposite sex which they found irresistible. In my grandmother Mary it had been a softness, a promise of easy yielding; not so with me. I would be calculating, watchful for advantage. Yet it was there in both of us.

In time we learned of that sad May day at the Greenwich joust when Anne had been taken to the Tower with her brother and her friends, and from which she had only emerged to be led to the scaffold. We knew of the King's immediate marriage thereafter to Jane Seymour and the birth of the King's only legitimate son, Edward, who became our King in the year 1547.

Poor Jane Seymour, dying in childbirth, had no chance to enjoy her triumph, but the little Prince lived and was the hope of the nation. Then had followed the King's brief marriage with Anne of Cleves, and after its abrupt dissolution the ill-fated union with Catherine Howard. Only his last wife, Katharine Parr, survived him and it was said she would have gone the same way as Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard if she had not been such a good nurse and the King's ulcerous leg so painful and he too far gone in years to care much for women.

So we entered a new reign—that of Edward VI. Our young King was only ten years old at the time of his accession—not much older than I; and the paragon, Elizabeth, was four years his senior. I remember my father's coming down to Rotherfield Greys, rather pleased with the turn of events. Edward Seymour, the young King's uncle, had been made Protector of the Realm, the title of Duke of Somerset having been bestowed on him; and this now all-important gentleman was a Protestant who would instill the new faith into his young nephew.

My father was leaning more and more towards Protestantism, and as he remarked to my mother the greatest calamity which could befall the country—and incidentally the Knollys family-would be the accession to the throne of Catholic Mary, the King's elder daughter by Catherine of Aragon.

"Then," prophesied my father, "the scaffolds would be stained with the blood of good Englishmen and women, and the dreaded Inquisition which flourishes in Spain would be introduced into this country. So let us thank God for the young King and ask that through His clemency and loving care, Edward VI may long reign over us."

So we knelt and prayed—a custom which I already felt was followed too zealously in our family—while our father thanked God for His goodness to England and asked Him to go on looking after that country, keeping a particular eye on the Knollys family.

Life went on as usual for a few years while we lived as country gentry do, continuing with our studies. It was a tradition in our family that even daughters of the household must be well educated; special attention was paid to music and dancing; we were taught to play lute and harpsichord, and whenever a new dance was introduced at Court we must try it. Our parents were determined to make us ready in case we should suddenly be called to Court. We used to sing madrigals in the gallery or play our instruments there.

We dined at eleven of the clock in the main hall, and when we had visitors we would sit over our meal until three in the afternoon, listening to the talk which enthralled me, for during young Edward's reign, I was growing up fast and taking a great interest in what was happening outside Rotherfield Greys. Then we would sup at six. There was always a good table and a certain amount of excitement because we could never be sure who would arrive to join us. Like most families of our standing we kept open house, for my father would not have had it thought that we could not afford hospitality. There would be great joints of beef and mutton and meat pies of all kind flavored with herbs from our gardens, venison and fish accompanied by sauces as well as conserves of fruit, marchpane, gingerbread and sugar bread. If anything was left the servants would finish it, and there were always beggars at the gates—that community, my mother was constantly remarking, had increased a thousandfold since King Henry had dissolved the monasteries.

There were celebrations at Christmas when we children amused ourselves by dressing up and performing plays. There was great excitement among us as to which one should find the silver penny in the big cake which was made for Twelfth Night and be King— or Queen—for the day; and innocently we believed it would go on like that forever.

Of course, had we been wise we should have seen the portents. Our parents did, and that was why my father often looked very grave. The King was delicate and if anything should happen to him, the heir to the throne was that Mary whom we feared—and we were not the only ones. The most powerful man in the country shared my father's apprehension. This was John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who had made himself virtual ruler of England. If Mary came to the throne it would be the end of Dudley, and as he did not relish spending the rest of his days in prison, nor yet surrendering his head to the ax, he was making plans.

I heard my parents discussing this and it was clear to me that they were very uneasy. My father was essentially a law-abiding man and, try as he might, he could not but accept the fact that the majority of the people would say that Mary was the true heir to the throne. It was an extraordinary situation because if Mary was legitimate, Elizabeth could not be. Mary's mother had been displaced when the King, eager to marry Anne Boleyn, decreed that his marriage of more than twenty years to Catherine of Aragon, was not legal. It was simple logic that if his marriage to Catherine was legal, then his marriage to Anne Boleyn was not, and Anne's child, Elizabeth, a bastard. My family—out of Boleyn loyalty and self-advancement—must of course believe that the King's first marriage was illegal; but because my father was a logical man in most matters, I guessed he had a certain difficulty in preserving his belief in Elizabeth's legitimacy.

He told my mother that he believed Northumberland was going to try to put the Lady Jane Grey on the throne. She had a certain claim, it was true, through her grandmother, Henry VIII's sister, but it was one which few people would accept. The strong Catholic factions throughout the land would stand firmly behind Mary. So it was small wonder that young King Edward's sickness gave my father great misgiving.

He did not, however, put himself oft the side of Northumberland. How could he, married to a Boleyn, support anyone but the Princess Elizabeth? And Elizabeth, as the King's daughter, surely came before Lady Jane Grey. Unfortunately there was Mary—daughter of the Spanish Princess—a fierce Catholic and the King's elder daughter.

Those were days when it was necessary to be watchful. The Duke of Northumberland had staked everything on Jane Grey by marrying her to his son, Lord Guildford Dudley.

That was the state of affairs during the last year of the young King's reign. I was then twelve years old. My sisters and I were more interested in the gossip we heard through the servants, particularly that which concerned our illustrious cousin Elizabeth. Through this we acquired a different image of her from that which our mother had instilled of the scholar of Greek and Latin, a shining example to her less virtuous and less intellectual Knollys cousins.

After the death of King Henry VIII, she had been sent to live with her stepmother, Katharine Parr, at the Dower House in Chelsea, and Katharine Pan had married Thomas Seymour, who was one of the handsomest and most attractive men in England.

"They say," one of the servants told us, "that he has a fancy for the Princess Elizabeth."

I was always interested in what the anonymous "They" said. Quite a lot of it was, of course, conjecture and should perhaps be dismissed as idle gossip, but I think there was often a germ of truth in it. However "They" said that there were exciting "goings on" at the Dower House and that there was some relationship between Elizabeth and her stepmother's husband which was inappropriate to her station as well as her character. He crept into her bedroom and tickled her when she was in bed; she ran screaming with laughter from him, but it was the kind of screaming which was not without an invitation. Once in the garden when Elizabeth was wearing a new silk gown, he, urged on by his wife, took scissors and playfully cut it to shreds.

"Poor Katharine Parr," said "They." Did she know the true nature of these frolics. Of course she must, and to give them that air of respectability which could cover the impropriety of it all, she joined in them.

I liked to think of the scholarly Elizabeth being chased around her bedroom or having her gown slashed to pieces, being tickled by the jovial Seymour with the glint in his eyes while his pregnant wife tried to pretend that the jollity was a family affair.

Then finally Katharine Parr had caught her amorous husband kissing the young Princess in a far from avuncular manner so that even she could no longer pretend, and the result was that Elizabeth left the Dower House. Naturally scandal followed her. "They" were at it again, and a rumor was spread that the Princess had been delivered of a fair young lady who was Thomas Seymour's daughter.

There were stout denials of this and indeed it seemed highly unlikely, but how interesting it was to us girls who had lived in the shadow of her virtues all those years.

It was not long afterwards when Thomas Seymour, involved in ambitious political schemes for his own advancement, was brought to trial and beheaded. Meanwhile the sad little King's health was declining. Dudley induced the dying boy to make a will passing over both Mary and Elizabeth and naming Lady Jane Grey sole heir to the throne. She had by this time married Lord Guildford. I often pondered on that in the days to come. It might so easily have been Guildford's brother Robert who was the chosen bridegroom. Robert, though, had already committed the folly —if so it could be called in view of what happened later—of marrying at the age of seventeen the daughter of Sir John Robsart. He soon tired of her, of course—but that is another story. It often appalled me later to contemplate that, but for Robert's marriage, my life—and Elizabeth Tudor's—would have been drastically different. Robert would certainly have been considered more suitable than Guildford, who was weak and far less handsome, for Robert must have been outstanding even in his youth. Heaven knows he later quickly became the brightest star at Court at the Queen's accession and remained so till his death. However, fate was looking after Robert—as she so often did—and it was poor Guildford, his younger brother, who became the husband of the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey.

As everyone knows, when the King died Northumberland put Jane on the throne, and, poor girl, she reigned for only nine days before Mary's Catholic supporters were triumphant.

My father did not join in the conflict. How could he? Mary's accession, whether legitimate or not, would be disastrous for him, but neither could he support Protestant Jane. She had no just claim in his eyes. There was one and one only whom he wanted to see on the throne. So he did what wise men do at such times. He removed himself from Court and did not take sides.

When it became clear that Jane's brief reign was over and she, with Guildford Dudley, his father and his brother Robert, were lodged in the Tower, we were summoned to the great hall and there our father told us that it was no longer safe for us to remain in England. These were not going to be good days for Protestants; the position of the Princess Elizabeth was very precarious indeed, and as it was known that we were her kinsfolk, he had come to the conclusion that the wisest steps to be taken were those which would lead us out of England.