The reading of the king's will did something, however, to soothe her bitter recollections, for it placed her in the position which was hers by right, heiress of the kingdom should her brother die childless, and in like manner Elizabeth was to succeed her. Meanwhile, they both had three thousand a year to live on—quite a large sum in those days—and ten thousand pounds as dowry, if they married with the consent of the young king and his council. --------------------- The moment that Henry was dead Katharine Parr left the palace and went to her country house at Chelsea—close to where Cheyne pier now stands; and here she was immediately joined by Elizabeth, at the request of the council of regency. Katharine had been in every way a good wife to Henry, and had nursed him with a care and skill shown by nobody else during the last long months of his illness. He depended on her entirely for the soothing of his many pains, yet it was at this very time that he listened to the schemes of her enemies, who were anxious to remove her from the king's presence, and consented to a bill of attainder being brought against her, by which she would have lost her head. Accident revealed the plot to Katharine, and by her cleverness she managed to avert the danger—though she never breathed freely again as long as the king was alive. The old friendship between Katharine and her stepchildren was destined to receive a severe shock, and in this matter the two princesses were in the right, and the queen wholly wrong. It came about in this way. As far as we can gather from the rather confused accounts, sir Thomas Seymour, Katharine Parr's old lover, a man as greedy and ambitious as he was handsome, had taken advantage of Henry's affection for him to try to win the heart of the princess Elizabeth, not long before the king's death. As she was at that time living at Hertford, under the care of a vulgar and untrustworthy governess, Mrs. Ashley, it would have been easy for Seymour to ride to and fro without anyone in London being the wiser. Certain it is that, from whatever motive, he was most anxious to marry her, and a month after her father's death wrote, it is said, a proposal to the princess in person—a very strange thing to do in those days, and one which would assuredly bring down on him the wrath of the council. But Elizabeth was quite able to manage her own affairs, and answered that she had no intention of marrying anybody for the present, and was surprised at the subject being mentioned so soon after the death of her father, for whom she should wear mourning two years at least. ---------------------