To Lady Jane the trial and subsequent execution of her guardian must have been a matter of intense and painful interest. She was still his guest at Seymour Place when he was arrested, and she must have witnessed the tragic parting of the unhappy mother from the son so remorselessly torn from her aged arms to meet his doom. Whatever his crimes and faults, the Lord of Sudeley had been a good son, and the old Lady Seymour mourned him deeply till she died of her sorrows, on 18th October in the following year. She was buried with scant pomp. The King, her grandson, and his Court did not even put on the customary mourning, on the plea that black gowns did not really signify respect to the dead, who were best remembered in the hearts and prayers of those who survived them--certainly not a popular or contemporary belief, for on the day following Lady Seymour’s death two State funerals were celebrated with all those honours which were denied to the remains of the grandmother of the reigning sovereign. There was probably a political motive at the back of this want of respect, which may perhaps be ascribed to the evil influence of Warwick, who, in his desire to humiliate the Somersets, refused the honours due to the corpse of the Protector’s mother. Meanwhile, the destruction of Thomas Seymour was being prepared with skill and secrecy. Whilst the foredoomed Admiral had been boasting all over London of his immense influence, his foes, now that he was in their power, subtly compassed his ruin by buying witnesses against him and securing the goodwill of his numerous and venomous enemies. They had long been spreading a rumour that he had poisoned the late Queen Katherine in order to make an even higher alliance with one or other of the heiresses to the throne. His scandalous proceedings with regard to the Princess Elizabeth at Chelsea and Hanworth, and the unbecoming manner in which he had regained possession of Lady Jane, were brought up against him. Lady Tyrwhitt, one of the bedchamber ladies of the late Queen his wife, was called to give certain damaging evidence, pointing to a strong suspicion that Seymour had not only been most unkind to the deceased lady, but had actually poisoned her food during the last few days of her life, and set up the fever which carried her off within a week of her child’s birth. Lord Latimer stated that Seymour, when Queen Katherine had prayers said in his house morning and afternoon according to the order of the Reformed Church, would get out of the way, and swear on his oath that “The Book of Common Prayer was not God’s work at all.” There was a merciless raking up of misdeeds, true or false, of the man’s earliest youth--as, for instance, “that, in 1540, a woman who was executed for robbery and child-murder had declared that the beginning of her evil life was due to her having been seduced and desolated by Lord Thomas Seymour.” The Dorsets were summoned from Bradgate to give evidence in the matter of the wardship of their