Whatever may have been Seymour’s intentions towards Elizabeth during his wife’s life, he left them in no doubt as soon as she died. For a conspirator, indeed, he was the most open-mouthed person imaginable. By the confessions, early in 1549, of Wightman, Sharington, Dorset, Harrington, and Parry, it would appear that he had openly expressed his discontent with his brother’s supremacy and made no secret of his pretensions to the guardianship of the young King and the hand of Elizabeth. His accomplice, Sharington, master of the Bristol mint, was coining testoons out of the national treasure, and hoarding vast sums of coin for his use; noblemen were advised by him to retire to their estates and raise forces to support him; and the seizure of himself and his friends was a mere movement of self-defence on the part of the Protector. With regard to the match with Elizabeth, Parry appears to have been the first person approached directly. He was closely attached to the person of the Princess, and had been sent to Seymour ostensibly to ask for the use of Durham Place as a temporary town residence for her. Seymour said this could not be, as the house was to be made into a mint, but she could have his own house to stay in until she could see the King. Parry confesses that Seymour asked him many questions about Elizabeth’s pecuniary means; and when he got back to Hatfield the cofferer asked the young Princess whether she would be willing to accept Seymour for a husband if the Council were agreeable. She asked Parry sharply who told him to put such a question to her, to which he answered that “nobody had done so, but he thought he perceived by Seymour’s inquiries that he was given that way.” “She said that she could not tell her mind therein.”[5] When the Master of the Household and Denny suddenly arrived at Hatfield to interrogate the household as to their communications with Seymour Parry quite lost his head, “went to his own chamber and said to his wife, 'I would I had never been born, for I am undone,’ and wrung his hands, cast away his chain from his neck and his rings from his fingers.” Elizabeth’s profound diplomacy and quick intelligence were shown even thus early at this critical juncture. Sir Robert Tyrwhitt and his wife were sent by the Protector to worm out of her all she knew of the plot. Threats, cajolery, forged letters and invented confessions, were all tried upon her in vain. She would tell nothing of importance. “She hath,” says Tyrwhitt, “a very good wit and nothing is gotten of her but by great policy.” She bitterly resented the imprisonment of her governess, Mrs. Ashley, and the substitution of Lady Tyrwhitt; and said that she had not so behaved that they need put more mistresses upon her; wept all night and sulked all day, but withal was too much for Tyrwhitt, who avowed that “if he had to say his fantasy he thinks it more meet she should have two governesses than one.” [Illustration: _Thomas, Lord Seymour of Sudeley._]