owager; and the Protector proved
unwilling to grant his consent to the marriage. Katharine evidently
resented this, and was inclined to use her great influence with the young
King himself over his elder uncle's head. When Seymour was in doubt how to
approach his brother about it, Katharine wrote spiritedly: "The denial of
your request shall make his folly more manifest to the world, which will
more grieve me than the want of his speaking. I would not wish you to
importune for his goodwill if it come not frankly at first. It shall be
sufficient once to require it, and then to cease. I would desire you might
obtain the King's letters in your favour, and also the aid and furtherance
of the most notable of the Council, such as ye shall think convenient,
which thing being obtained shall be no small shame to your brother and
sister in case they do not the like." In the same letter Katharine rather
playfully dallies with her lover's request that she will abridge the
period of waiting from two years to two months, and then she concludes in
a way which proves if nothing else did how deeply she was in love with
Seymour. "When it shall pleasure you to repair hither (Chelsea) ye must
take some pains to come early in the morning, so that ye may be gone again
by seven o'clock; and thus I suppose ye may come without being suspect. I
pray ye let me have knowledge overnight at what hour ye will come, that
your portress (_i.e._ Katharine herself) may wait at the gate to the
fields for you."

It was not two years, or even two months, that the impatient lovers
waited: for they must have been married before the last day in May 1547,
four months after Henry's death. Katharine's suggestion that the boy King
himself should be enlisted on their side, was adopted; and he was induced
to press Seymour's suit to his father's widow, as if he were the promoter
of it. When the secret marriage was known to Somerset, he expressed the
greatest indignation and anger at it; and a system of petty persecution of
Katharine began. Her jewels, of which the King had left her the use during
her life, were withheld from her; her jointure estates were dealt with by
Somerset regardless of her wishes and protests; and her every appearance
at Court led to a squabble with the Protector's wife as to the precedence
to be accorded to her. On one occasion it is stated that this question of
precedence led in the Chapel Royal to a personal encounter between
Katharine and prou