FROM THE TIME of Henry Manners’s death in September 1613, life at Belvoir was dominated by the earl and countess’s anxiety about their surviving son. Although the contemporary account of the story implies that the boy had been suddenly struck down with a mysterious illness, his health had in fact long been precarious. Before the death of his elder brother, there are no recorded doctors’ visits to this sickly child: perhaps, given that he was the ‘spare heir’, his parents had been more relaxed about his welfare. Now, suddenly, everything possible was done to try to restore him to health.
From 1614 onwards, the family accounts include various payments to physicians who attended the young boy. Not all of them were conventional. One of the earliest to visit Belvoir was the celebrated ‘astrological physician’ and cleric Dr Richard Napier. By the time of his first consultation with the Manners in October 1614, Napier had a considerable number of clients among the aristocracy and gentry of the Midlands. This was thanks to his brother, a Levant trader who amassed enormous wealth, became a baronet, and won favour with George Villiers, the future Duke of Buckingham, one of the brightest stars of the court and soon to become closely associated with the Manners family. Napier was no less popular among the poorer members of society (to whom he offered reduced rates), and in the same month that he visited Belvoir, he treated more than 50 patients and cast horoscopes for 27.
A shy, studious and fiercely intelligent man, Napier was a true polymath. Physician, astrologer, alchemist and cleric, he mastered a number of contrasting – and contradictory – disciplines, and was widely revered as a result. Like most astrological physicians, he often made his diagnoses based purely on the stars and did not even see his patients. ‘It hath been many times experimented and proved,’ declared one authority, ‘that that which many physicians could not cure or remedy with their greatest and strongest medicines, the astronomer hath brought to pass with one simple herb, by observing the moving of the stars.’1
It may have been Napier’s reputation for treating the ‘falling sickness’ (epilepsy) which drew him to the attention of Earl Francis and his wife, for the evidence suggests that their youngest son displayed symptoms consistent with this most feared disease. These were set out in detail in one of the most influential witchcraft tracts of the day: A Guide to Grand Jury Men by Richard Bernard. The author described how:
Some will bite their tongues, and flesh. Some make fearefull and frightfull outcries and shreekings. Some are violently tossed and tumbled from one place to another. Some froth, gnash with their teeth, with their faces deformed, and drawne awry. Some have all parts pestered, and writhen into ougly shapes: as their heads forward, their faces backward, eyes rolling, inordinately twinkling, the mouth distorted into divers formes, grinning, mowing, gaping wide, or close shut. Some have their limbes and divers members suddainely with violence snatched up and carryed aloft, and by their owne weight suffered to fall againe. Some have an inordinate leaping, and hopping of the flesh, through every member of the body, as if some living thing were there.2
One can easily imagine how terrifying such violent symptoms must have been for those who witnessed them (not to mention for the sufferers themselves), and why the latter were often thought to be possessed. But although he was a firm believer in the possibility of bewitchment, Bernard counselled his readers not to confuse this with what was a natural affliction. ‘For when people come to see such supposed to be possessed by a Divell, or Divels; some are filled with fancyfull imaginations, some are possessed with feare; so, as they at first time, on a sudden, thinke they heare and see more then they doe, and so make very strange relations without truth, if they take not time, & come againe, and againe, to see and consider with judgement, and with mature deliberation such deceivable resemblances.’3
There was a bewildering array of suggested remedies for this frightening disease, but the sheer number of them suggests that none were effective. The mid-seventeenth-century manual on medicines, The Ladies’ Dispensatory, prescribed a host of bizarre and unpalatable natural remedies, ranging from the ‘Liver of an Asse rosted’, to the blood and ‘outward skin’ of a weasel, ‘Stones found in the belly of the Swallowes first brood, tyed in a peece of Buck-skin, worn about the neck’, and the ‘Gall of a Tortoise put in the nose’.4
Whether the earl and countess had tried any of these outlandish treatments is not known. Cecilia would certainly have been aware that, as the mistress of the household, she had a responsibility to ensure the health and well-being of her family. She may well have read the influential manual The English Hus-wife, which stated that one of her most important duties was ‘the preservation and care of the family touching their health and soundness of body’. Society expected that every woman should therefore ‘have a physical kind of knowledge; how to administer many wholesome receipts or medicines for the good of their healths, as well to prevent the first occasion of sickness as to take away the effects and evil of the same when it hath made seizure on the body’. Although the manual’s author Gervase Markham admitted that ‘the falling sickness be seldom or never to be cured’, he advised housewives: ‘If the party which is troubled with the same will but morning and evening during the wane of the moon, or when she is in the sign Virgo, eat the berries of the herb asterion, or bear the herbs about him next to his bare skin, it is likely he shall find much ease and fall very seldom, though this medicine be somewhat doubtful.’5
If the countess had made any attempts to cure her surviving son, then the fact that she and her husband were forced to call upon the services of expert physicians suggests that they had all been in vain. Napier was the first of many to minister to the young boy. As well as being an expert in the falling sickness, he was also renowned for treating victims of suspected bewitchments. He recorded more than 120 such instances in his casebooks.6 Among them was that of a patient who, ‘taken ill with mopishness’, sought help because he ‘feared he was bewitched or blasted by an ill planet’.7 Napier was outspoken in his belief that witchcraft was at the heart of many illnesses – in particular those consistent with the young Lord Ros’s symptoms. He remarked that the patients often suffered a similar torment to one who was ‘haunted or bewitched’, and described how they were beset with ‘plucking sensations or convulsions that made them look as if they were being manipulated by invisible creatures’.8
It is interesting to note that Napier was also known for treating women disturbed by the deaths of infants. Until recently, it was accepted among historians that because infant mortality was so high during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, parents did not develop the same attachment to their children as we do today. They invested little in them, neither recognising their individuality nor taking much trouble over their care. Although this may have been true in some cases, it was certainly not so in the majority. The fact that a tragically high number of children succumbed to sickness and disease did not make their parents immune to grief. Indeed, the overwhelming evidence is that they felt their deaths as keenly as any modern-day mother and father. Richard Napier’s casebooks include no fewer than 134 cases of grief so disturbing that it had led a husband or other family member to seek his help in treating the afflicted woman. They included Ellen Craftes, who ‘took a fright and grief that a door fell upon her child and slew it. Presently head, heart and stomach ill; eyes dimmed with grief that she cannot see well.’9 Meanwhile, Ralph Verney’s wife was said to be delirious for two days and nights when her baby died of symptoms similar to those suffered by the Manners children. It is possible that it was the earl, concerned as much for his wife’s grief over their eldest son as for the afflictions of their youngest, who had sought Napier’s services.
The earl and countess no doubt laid out a considerable sum to persuade the renowned physician to visit Belvoir, rather than carry out his diagnosis remotely. Upon being admitted to the young lord’s bedchamber, Napier would have carried out his accustomed rituals to diagnose his condition. First, he employed divination to ascertain whether the patient had been the victim of witchcraft. He sometimes conjured the Archangel Raphael, beseeching him to reveal whether a bewitchment had taken place, and whether the patient could be cured. His casebook records that in 1619, for example, he held a seance with the angel, during which Raphael confirmed that five of Napier’s patients were bewitched and only two would recover.10 He may also have given Lord Ros an amulet to protect against evil spirits, and would have written down prayers and charms to bolster its power. If he had considered this to be a particularly extreme case, he might have performed an exorcism. His treatment would also have included casting a horoscope and bleeding the foot of the afflicted boy. Perhaps not surprisingly, none of these outlandish methods produced a positive effect, and the earl and countess very soon sought help from elsewhere.
Dr Ridgley of Newark first appears in the accounts in the same month as Napier, and from then on he became a regular visitor to Belvoir. Unusually, Ridgley was himself descended from an ‘old and prominent gentry family’, which may have enhanced his credibility as a physician – certainly he was a favourite with the Manners family. A bill for ‘apothecarie stuffe and other chardges for my Lorde Roasse, beeinge not well’ accompanied the doctor’s charges, and the family was apparently concerned enough to summon another doctor, named Sandy, at the same time.11 In November 1614, Dr Ridgley was paid £7 for spending seven days at Belvoir ‘with my Lord Roasse’, and shortly afterwards he was summoned back to the castle for a further ten days.12 He returned in September 1615 when Countess Cecilia bade him attend her son at Garendon Hall, part of the Manners estate and some 20 or so miles from Belvoir, where the physician stayed for six days.13
Despite their increasingly frantic concern over their younger son, the earl and countess apparently still refused to heed the rumours circulating that the Flower women were to blame. According to the contemporary ballad inspired by the case, they believed the illnesses which they and their children had suffered to be little more than ‘natures troubles’ or a punishment from God, ‘which crosses patiently they bore, misdoubting no such deed, as from such wicked witches’.14 This is corroborated by a note in the Belvoir archives dated 16 April 1615 which records that ‘goodwyfe Flower’ was paid a shilling each for ‘2 hennes’.15 It is unlikely that the Mannerses would have been making payments to Joan Flower if they believed that she had bewitched their children. Although life must have been very difficult for Joan and her daughters in the local community during the two years since Margaret’s dismissal from the castle, they seemed to be keeping a sensibly low profile.
In August 1616, Dr Ridgley again features in the account books for ‘mynistringe phisicq to my Lord Roosse at Belvoir’.16 This took place just four days before the king paid a visit to Belvoir, on 28 August 1616. James showed a genuine concern for the Manners boy, and it was almost certainly at his suggestion that shortly after his visit the earl and countess decided to consult (by letter) Dr Henry Atkins. A physician of national renown, ‘famous for his practice, honesty and learning’, and several times president of the Royal College of Physicians, Atkins was already known to the Manners family and had treated them during their visits to London. He had also attended the king’s first son, Prince Henry, during his final illness, as well as Sir Robert Cecil and a number of other distinguished families.17
In a note written to the Countess of Rutland in December 1616, Atkins gave his opinion about the health of ‘the little Lord’ and enclosed a prescription.18 He reassured Cecilia: ‘the matter is not great that your Ladyship rigt of because I find not by your letter that the little lord hath any convulsions or fits that take away his sence or his motions but onely a jumping of his mouth by reason of some physicke gathering in his mouth & jawes or throte . . . making him sometime move his mouth some times a little more than ordinary’.19 These are consistent with the symptoms of epilepsy, which would tally with the ‘strange’ convulsions both Francis and his elder brother Henry were described as suffering. Atkins also made an intriguing reference to some other symptoms, but excused himself from passing judgement on the basis that ‘I for my part am not used to give opinions of things I have not [witnessed?] . . . therefore I pray you pardon me yf I pass that over for I love not to walk in the dark.’20
Had the earl and his wife asked Atkins about the possibility that their son had been bewitched? Given that he made only a discreet veiled reference to their request suggests that it was something he did not wish to commit to paper. Atkins seemed to be among the more enlightened of seventeenth-century physicians, and was reluctant to ascribe anything he could not understand or cure to witchcraft. This set him at odds with Francis and Cecilia, who seemed to have abandoned their former rationality.
The increasing desperation of the earl and countess to save their younger son is suggested by the appointment, in 1618, of one of the most controversial of all Jacobean physicians. Dr Francis Anthony was frequently in trouble with the Royal College of Physicians for using an alchemical remedy known as ‘essence of gold’, which he claimed could be ‘helpefully given for the health of Man in most Diseases, but especially available for the strenghning and comforting of the Heart and vitall Spirits the performers of health; as an Universall Medicine’.21 James I came to Anthony’s rescue in his long-running dispute with the Royal College, and as a result his remedy was more readily accepted by the medical establishment. Like the Earl of Rutland, he was apparently willing to explore medical practices on the periphery of acceptability. Two payments for this essence can be found in the Manners accounts, dated January 1618.
Francis and Cecilia’s frantic efforts make a lie of the account provided by the contemporary pamphlet that describes the Belvoir witch case. According to its author, the earl and countess interpreted the sickness that had befallen their household as ‘gentle corrections from the hand of God’ and resolved to ‘submit with quietnesse to his mercy, and study nothing more, then to glorifie their Creator in heauen, and beare his crosses on earth’.22 Its author was here toeing the official religious line, which dictated that God controlled everything that happened on earth. The victim of misfortune was thus expected to draw comfort from the thought that it had happened for a predetermined (or predestined) reason. Although this reason was known only to God, Christians naturally tried to second-guess his motives. Adversity tended to be interpreted either as punishment for a wicked act, or as a test of faith. Often, those affected desperately cast about to find an explanation. Upon the death of his infant son in 1648, the vicar and diarist Ralph Josselin concluded that he had been punished by God for his vain thoughts and unseasonable playing of chess.23
It is possible – likely, even – that, having exhausted the services of the country’s best physicians, it was at this point that the earl sought the help of Joan Flower. Desperate as she was to regain the Manners’s favour, Joan no doubt readily agreed. But in so doing, she was placing herself at great risk. Although many people still put their faith in cunning folk, with their extensive knowledge of natural remedies, the dividing line between these practitioners and witches had become dangerously blurred. As a result, if a patient sickened or died after being treated, physicians could find themselves accused of having bewitched them. To make matters worse, Joan and her daughters were already rumoured to have cast a spell on the Manners children. If Joan did attend the young lord, then her ministrations worked no effect. His health continued to worsen.
No matter how grave the situation had become at Belvoir, the earl could not neglect his courtly duties. In November 1618, with his only surviving son dangerously ill and the women suspected of bewitching him still at large in the community, he received a summons to attend the king at Newmarket. He stayed there for several weeks, and then moved with the court to Whitehall for the traditional Christmas celebrations. These were legendary. The Master of the Revels and his staff spent many weeks preparing for them, hiring professional companies of actors to perform plays, masterminding glittering court masques, setting up gaming tables, and devising ever more sumptuous banquets, at which the wine flowed so freely that the revelries frequently got out of hand. The Earl of Rutland could hardly have had much stomach for such entertainments. That he was prepared to endure them whilst in the midst of a personal crisis is a testament to how much he wished to court the king’s favour. It also suggests that he was a model courtier, adept at concealing his true feelings and motivations beneath a veneer of loyalty and obedience. ‘He that thryveth in a courte muste put halfe his honestie under his bonnet,’ observed Sir John Harington, a veteran of the institution, ‘and manie do we knowe that never parte with that commoditie at all, and sleepe wyth it all in a bag.’24
The king himself was hardly more enthusiastic. Now in the fifteenth year of his reign, he had long since abandoned any attempt to ingratiate himself with his English subjects, and had become increasingly short-tempered and intolerant. ‘The king . . . seems dissatisfied with his people, stays as little as possible in London, never shows himself in the city, and in entering and leaving always takes the least frequented routes,’ observed the Venetian ambassador on a visit to court in 1618. ‘In short in all his actions he does not conceal his dislike.’ As a more recent authority has noted, he was increasingly apt ‘to withdraw himself from a world which obstinately refused to dance to the tunes he piped’.25
The onset of old age had not improved the king’s humour. Although he was still energetic enough for the hunt – a pastime that continued to take precedence over official business – he was described as ‘somewhat heavy in person’ and with hair that was ‘beginning to turn white’. Sir Anthony Weldon remarked that he was ‘more corpulent through his cloathes then in his body, yet fat enough, his cloathes ever being made large and easie.’26 The Venetian ambassador noted that James ‘avoids difficult affairs and listens to troublesome news with impatience’.27 His only pleasure seemed to derive from his coterie of male favourites. Principal among these was George Villiers, the newly created Marquis of Buckingham, who joined the festivities at Newmarket and then Whitehall.
Charming, handsome and accomplished, Villiers was the very model of an ideal courtier – ‘a youth . . . whose personal beauty and spirit’ set him apart from other mortals, according to one contemporary.28 Others described him as ‘one of the handsomest men in the whole world’, and claimed that ‘from the nails of his fingers – nay, from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, there was no blemish in him’.29 ‘He had a very lovely complexion,’ observed Bishop Goodman, ‘he was the handsomest bodied man in England; his limbs so well compacted, and his conversation so pleasing, and of so sweet a disposition.’30 King James himself claimed that his favourite had ‘the face of an angel’.31 But if this was so, then it masked a nature as dark as the Devil’s.
Although merely a ‘threadbare but ambitious younger son’, Villiers had enjoyed a meteoric rise to power. His first appointment as royal cupbearer in 1614, when he was 22 years old, had given him regular, guaranteed access to the king, and he soon became James’s closest favourite.32 They had met at Apethorpe Hall in Northamptonshire during James’s summer progress earlier that year, and the king had been instantly captivated by the young man’s exquisite good looks. From that time onwards, Villiers became a regular fixture of the court, and it was said that he cemented his place in the king’s affections at the Twelfth Night revels that year. Bored with the conceited masque, the king suddenly cried: ‘Why don’t they dance? What did they make me come here for? Devil take you all! Dance!’ Whereat Villiers immediately leapt up, ‘cutting a score of lofty and very minute capers, with so much grace and agility that he not only appeased the ire of his angry lord, but rendered himself the admiration and delight of everybody’. In an astonishingly intimate gesture, James rewarded the young man’s gallantry by patting his face, kissing and embracing him ‘with marks of extraordinary affection’ in front of the entire court.33
Although his many liaisons with the ladies at court suggest that he was heterosexual, Villiers encouraged the king’s affections with flirtatious and suggestive banter, and once assured him that they enjoyed ‘more affection than betwene lovers in the best kind man and wife’. In another missive, he passionately declared: ‘I naturallie so love your person, and upon so good experience and knowledge adore all your other parts, which are more than ever one man had, that were not onelie all your people but all the world besids sett together on one side, and you alone on the other, I should, to obey and pleas you, displease, nay dispise all them.’ 34 These letters aside, there is evidence that strongly suggests there was a sexual nature to their relationship – even if only fleetingly. Among James’s many nicknames for his new favourite was ‘dog’, and a few years after he had first attracted the king’s attention, Villiers wrote to him wondering ‘whether you loved me now . . . better than at the time I shall never forget at Farnham, where the bed’s head could not be found between the master and his dog’.35
The difference in their ages (the king was some 26 years his senior) inspired Villiers to give his royal master the cheeky nickname of ‘dear Dad’. James, meanwhile, affectionately referred to his new favourite as ‘Baby Steenie’ (derived from St Stephen, who had angelic features), ‘Tom Badger’, ‘Sweete Hairte’, and ‘that naughty boy, George Villiers’.36 He once urged his favourite to hurry to court ‘so that the whiteness of his teeth might shine on him’ again.37
A rapid succession of honours followed for Villiers. Piero Contarini, the Venetian ambassador to England, remarked with some astonishment that Villiers’ ‘favour with the king increases daily, his Majesty showering upon him every possible mark of honour and greatness’.38 In 1615, he was knighted and appointed Gentleman of the Bedchamber, and the following year he was made Master of the Horse and Knight of the Garter at the same ceremony at which the Earl of Rutland was honoured. The court gossip John Chamberlain expressed some astonishment that not only should a ‘papist’ such as Manners be so honoured, but that Villiers should be too, given that he ‘is so lately come into the light of the world: and withal yt was doubted that he had not sufficient likelihoode to maintain the dignitie of the place according to expresse articles of the order’.39
But that was not the end of it. At the beginning of 1617, Villiers was created Earl of Buckingham, and a month later he was formally admitted to the king’s Privy Council. Upon the latter occasion, James made a very personal speech of recommendation for his dear Steenie. ‘I, James, am neither a god nor an angel, but a man like any other,’ he began. ‘Therefore I act like a man, and confess to loving those dear to me more than other men. You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anyone else, and more than you who are here assembled. I wish to speak in my own behalf and not to have it thought to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had his John, and I have my George.’40
Perhaps inevitably, given his dizzying accumulation of titles and offices, and the unrivalled influence that he exercised over every facet of court politics and patronage, Villiers had become the subject of intense jealousy and suspicion among his fellow courtiers. He rapidly acquired a reputation for corruption and vice which, although distorted, was not entirely without foundation. He was certainly ruthless and would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. Few men could oppose him. ‘The Marquis of Buckingham, the King’s favourite . . . at present exercises favour and authority over all things,’ reported the Venetian ambassador in early 1619. ‘The entire Court obeys his will.’41
There was one man in particular whom Buckingham wanted to bend to his will: Francis Manners, Earl of Rutland. By the dawn of the new year, 1619, the marquis had already resolved to marry Rutland’s daughter.
Now in her sixteenth year, Katherine had grown into ‘a daughter worthie of all reverence’, according to one leading courtier.42 But she was also headstrong and had a formidable temper – more than a match for any potential suitor. The Manners and Villiers families had long been well acquainted. Their estates lay in close proximity, and the families were already connected through marriage. That they were on close terms is suggested by the fact that the 5th Earl of Rutland, Francis’s brother, had bequeathed ‘to Mr Villiers all my hounds for the hare’.43 The evidence suggests that Katherine had been intended as Buckingham’s bride for some time. A prominent nobleman, Sir John Holles, shrewdly observed that ‘when the times shall be proper for marriage [the Earl] hath a daughter for him’.44 However, there is also some suggestion that Katherine’s father was strongly opposed to an alliance with what he considered to be a ‘family of upstarts’.45
Villiers was no doubt keenly aware of the advantages of marrying a well-born and well-connected young woman. But there were arguably greater catches at court for a man of his standing and influence – notably the Earl of Exeter’s granddaughter, Lady Diana Cecil, whom Villiers was encouraged ‘to cast an eye’ towards.46 Neither was Katherine renowned as a great beauty. Although her uncle, Sir Oliver Manners, had referred to her as ‘your pretty daughter Kate’ in a letter to his brother, contemporary portraits suggest that she was rather plain.47 She herself later admitted to Villiers: ‘You [might] have a finer and handsome . . . wife than your poor Kate is.’48 Buckingham, on the other hand, had no shortage of admirers thanks to his dashing good looks – and the fact that he was the king’s great favourite. One infatuated lady, Frances Shute, mistress of the Earl of Sussex, paid the princely sum of £50 as an annual retainer to a magician in an attempt to win Buckingham’s love.49 Mistress Shute was already well versed in the dark arts, according to a bill brought against her by Sussex’s wife, which stated that Frances had ‘caused and procured the Earle of Sussex to forsake & abandon the lawful society of his faithful wife . . . And by inchantment, charmes, witchcraftes, sorceries . . . hath procured the forsaking of his wife.’50
Katherine, meanwhile, was lacking in intelligence and wit. King James, who would have met her several times when visiting her father at Belvoir, once referred to her as ‘that poor fool’.51 Her later correspondence with Villiers reveals a credulous, even gullible, side to her nature. When he was sent to Spain to help bring about the betrothal of James’s son Charles with the infanta, he quipped that the prince had been kept so far away from his intended bride that he needed a telescope to see her. Upon receiving this, Katherine dutifully scoured London for ‘some perspective glasses, the best I could get’, solemnly adding: ‘I am sorry the Prince is kept at such a distance that he needs them to see her.’52
Their differences in character and looks aside, what made Villiers’ match with Katherine even more improbable was the fact that the Manners family were avowed Catholics and may have been closet papists. They could therefore offer no political advantage to a potential suitor. Why, then, was Buckingham so determined to marry her? Given the close connection between their families, it is possible that he had known her for some time and had either recognised in her the qualities that he wanted in a wife or had become emotionally attached to her. The sources hint that, despite the difference in their religious sympathies, Katherine at least had formed a passionate attachment to Villiers. Or perhaps her suitor wished to achieve as high a standing in provincial society as he enjoyed at court – an ambition that would certainly be realised if he were to marry into one of the greatest families in the Midlands. Moreover, a close alliance with an old landed family such as the Mannerses would help offset the widespread suspicion of Buckingham as a ‘new man’ at court, grown to greatness too quickly.
But Villiers had more in common with Katherine than contemporaries believed. Far from sharing the abhorrence felt by the rest of the court towards Roman Catholics, he was closely linked to the Catholic community in England. His indomitable mother, who had been created Countess of Buckingham in her own right the previous year, was a professed adherent of the old faith, and both she and her son counted many practising Catholics among their close friends. That Villiers respected and even espoused Katherine’s religious beliefs was not an incentive to marriage that he would have wished to make public, but it may have increased her value in his eyes. Nevertheless, it was inconceivable that such a close favourite of the king could marry a Catholic – and Buckingham was not a man to sacrifice political ambition on the sword of principle.
In fact, the most likely reason behind Villiers’ enthusiasm for the match was that it had the potential to make him the richest man in the country. Katherine Manners promised an attractive dowry to her future husband, for as well as inheriting the unentailed portions of the extensive Manners estates in Northamptonshire and Yorkshire, she was also heir to the Knyvett property which had passed to her late mother. If she had also been heir to her father’s principal estate of Belvoir, then her fortune would have been greater still – irresistible, indeed, for a man with Villiers’ aspirations. The fact that she had a half-brother who would inherit the lion’s share of the Rutland fortune was a serious bar to their union. But the whole court knew that the boy was of a sickly disposition, so the prospect of Katherine inheriting everything was a tantalising one.
However, any hopes that Villiers had of reaching a speedy agreement with Rutland were dashed when the earl was suddenly called back to Belvoir on business of the gravest nature.