‘She had but a russet nightgown’. Kat Ashley in the Tower of London, 24 February 1549.
How a tiny detail can change the narrative of events
Alongside my writing and research, I make sixteenth-century clothes, which I wear when I bring my unique combination of history, reenactment, and theatre to events throughout the west of England and beyond.
In creating my Tudor attire, I draw inspiration from garments mentioned in the historical record whenever I can. This is what I have created for my appearances as Katherine Champernowne, later the wife of John Astley. She’s perhaps better known as Kat Ashley, Queen Elizabeth 1’s governess and close confidante.
In designing Kat’s clothes, I’ve referenced what she tells us she was wearing when she was questioned in the Tower of London in 1549. Creating this garment has shown me how a minor detail can lead to a misunderstanding of events, and may even influence what we believe about characters from history.
We derive many of our impressions of Kat Ashley from what she herself said. People often dwell on her role in young Elizabeth’s dealings with Admiral Thomas Seymour, and the testimony she gave under duress.
Thomas was the younger of two Seymour brothers who hoped to gain prominence when their sister Jane married King Henry VIII. A third brother, Sir Henry Seymour, lived a quiet life away from the dazzling world of the Henrican court. After Jane died following the birth of King Henry’s longed-for son and heir, Edward was created Earl of Hertford. The seed of jealousy may have been sown then, for Thomas received less prestigious honours. After the king died, Edward took charge. He became Lord Protector, heading the council that would govern during the minority of his nephew, nine-year-old Edward, now King Edward VI. That made Edward Seymour the most powerful man in England. His elder brother’s elevation sparked intense resentment in Thomas Seymour.1
Thomas, a charismatic and ambitious man, was created Baron Seymour of Sudeley. He held an important position as Admiral of the Fleet. But he wanted more. Within months of the king’s death, he married Henry VIII’s widow, Catherine Parr. The king’s younger daughter, Elizabeth, who got on well with Catherine, moved in with her stepmother and her new husband. Elizabeth continued her studies with her tutor while under their roof. Kat, Elizabeth’s Lady Mistress, accompanied her.
A sudden change came in June 1548. Elizabeth went to stay with Kat’s sister, Lady Joan Denny, and her husband, Sir Anthony. Meanwhile, Catherine Parr and Seymour went to Sudeley Castle to await the birth of their child. Later that year, after his wife’s death in childbirth, rumours circulated that Thomas Seymour planned to marry Elizabeth. It was most unlikely that the king’s council, led by his brother, would approve the match.
Towards the end of the year, Thomas’s behaviour became increasingly erratic, raising suspicions. He was arrested on 17 January 1549 and soon after accused of 33 acts of treason. The charges included planning to kidnap the young king, bribery and corruption, conspiring with discontented noblemen to raise an armed party, and encouraging open rebellion. But it was the accusation that he had planned to marry King Edward’s sister without the council’s consent that caused suspicion to fall also on Elizabeth. Proving her complicity in those plans could have led to her being accused of treasonous intent.
The king’s council ordered an investigation. Sir Anthony Denny and Sir William Paulet escorted Kat and Thomas Parry, Elizabeth’s cofferer, to the Tower while Sir Robert Tyrwhitt interrogated Elizabeth at Hatfield. After Parry weakened and gave his account, Kat added her version of what happened in the queen dowager’s household at Chelsea and Hanworth. Kat’s testimony exposed Seymour’s behaviour towards Elizabeth, who was only fourteen years old.2 She gave all the salacious details: how he would visit the teenager in her bedchamber, ‘bare-legged and in his nightgown’, how he would tickle her in her bed and strike her upon the buttocks. On one occasion, she said, he even climbed into bed with Elizabeth. Kat also described an infamous occasion when he cut Elizabeth’s gown to shreds.
An older man paying such attention to a young girl in his care appears extremely inappropriate to us today. Even in the sixteenth century, Seymour’s apparent abuse of the trust of a king’s daughter would have raised eyebrows. This episode has influenced ideas not only about him but also about Kat.
Some have judged Kat negligent and lacking in judgement for not protecting her charge from Thomas Seymour’s advances. However, she was in an invidious position. Even though Catherine Parr was of higher rank, a Tudor husband ruled his wife. So Seymour was head of the household, and he was also the young king’s uncle. The power dynamic tipped heavily in his favour. In her depositions, Kat revealed that Seymour’s wife sometimes accompanied him, making it difficult for her to question his visits to Elizabeth’s bedchamber. Given her situation, Kat did all she could to protect Elizabeth. She even dared to challenge Seymour directly, but to no avail.
A seemingly insignificant detail in the additional statement Sir Thomas Smith took from Kat on February 24, 1549, could easily lead to a misunderstanding of events.3 Smith asked about a visit Kat made to London the preceding December, when she went to a meeting at Lady Berkeley’s house. Born Catherine Blount, Lady Berkeley had married Kat’s brother, John Champernowne. After John’s death, Sir Maurice Berkeley became her second husband. Other members of Kat’s family and associates also attended the meeting. Smith recorded of Kat,
‘And so she went, and Slayning’s wife, to my Lady Berkeley’s, and there she took horse. She did not go abroad into the town because she had but a russet nightgown, the which she hath on now in the Tower.’
People sometimes think that because she was wearing a nightgown in her prison cell, Denny and Paulet must have removed her and Parry from Hatfield at dead of night, without even permitting them to dress. That interpretation places Kat and Parry as powerless victims, Denny and Paulet as unfeeling men carrying out their orders with no thought for their prisoners’ comfort.
However, that dramatic scenario rests on a misunderstanding. In modern times, we think of a nightgown as night attire, often a flimsy garment, something you actually wear in bed. However, people in the sixteenth century did not use that word to describe what they wore in bed. Women slept in linen shifts (also called smocks or, later, chemises), like the one shown below, while men wore a similar linen nightshirt in bed.
A gift Kat presented to Queen Elizabeth inspired me when I made this shift and added the blackwork embroidery. At the 1564 New Year Gift Exchange, Kat Ashley, by then Chief Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber, gave ‘a smocke wrought with black silk … with a square collar’.4
The term ‘nightgown’ meant something very different in the 16th century; a loose-fitting over-gown designed for warmth, worn by both men and women when there was no need to dress to impress. Sometimes people compare them, somewhat misleadingly, to a modern-day dressing gown. However, fashion historian Janet Arnold explains that: ‘The term is nearer in meaning to the eighteenth-century '“dress” and “undress” and the modern “formal” and “informal”.5
Royalty and the nobility wore highly embellished, often fur-lined nightgowns on less formal occasions. As queen, Elizabeth often received visitors in her nightgown, as did her father. For example, when George Cavendish told Henry VIII of the death of Cardinal Wolsey, the king greeted him ‘in his nightgown.’ 6
Nowadays we think of russet as a colour. However, in Tudor times it was also a fabric; a coarse, narrow wool, which often remained undyed and unfinished. Kat’s over-gown was likely cloth of higher quality, but would not have been ostentatious. When she went to London, no one would have noticed her. It was also a sensible choice for incarceration in a freezing cell at the Tower. It would have kept her warm on her journey to London on horseback on icy roads on a bitter December day and again in January. This simple garment in sombre tones might also create an impression of a humble servant who had erred. Perhaps that was the character Kate wanted to present to her interrogators.
This minor detail changes the narrative. Sir Anthony Denny and Sir William Paulet did not snatch Kat and Parry from their beds at Hatfield at dead of night. They escorted them with due consideration, in warm clothing suitable for the journey.
There was undoubtedly some collusion between Kat, Denny and Parry. Sir Anthony Denny was, after all, Kat’s brother-in-law. Elizabeth had spent several months at his home at Cheshunt during the summer of 1548. As they travelled, they had ample time to agree on a strategy to protect Elizabeth. Kat’s deposition showed Thomas as the guilty party and strengthened the council’s hand as they moved at speed to use an Act of Attainder to seal his fate rather than proceeding through a traditional trial. In dwelling on his unacceptable behaviour towards Elizabeth, Kat successfully diverted focus from the graver accusation of conspiring to marry without the council’s approval. That relieved some of the pressure from Elizabeth, who, from her own statements under interrogation, likely knew all about the plan. As a frustrated Sir Robert Tyrwhitt wrote to Protector Seymour on 7 February, ‘ They all sing one song’. 7
This is a great example of how my costume work and wider research support each other and help me understand the lived experience of women like Kat. Dressing as she did has added another layer, revealing things I could not glean from the written record. I’ve used a rather heavy wool for my recreation, similar to the fabric Kat wore. 8 Wearing it brought home to me how successful that thick woollen over-gown must have been in keeping Kat warm. I was relieved that the weather was not too hot when I appeared as Kat for the first time at the Wolf Hall weekend on 7 June 2026.
How Kat must have cherished the warmth of that garment in her freezing cell. Yet, even wrapped in good English wool, she still suffered. She appealed to Sir Thomas Smith for a change of accommodation, saying,
‘For by my troth, it is so cold that I cannot sleep, and so dark that I cannot in the day see, for I stop the window with straw; there is no glass.’ 9
Her words conjure a vivid image of the conditions Kat endured. We can imagine the biting wind on her cheeks, the damp creeping up from the stone floor and seeping into the hem of her of her russet nightgown, as she struggled to see in the dimly lit cell, with the unyielding walls of her prison closing in on her. Despite this, Kat played her part bravely, putting her own life at risk, to protect Elizabeth. It was not the only time she would remain loyal. She faced imprisonment and house arrest twice more during even more perilous times while Elizabeth’s sister Mary ruled. Kat Ashley was a remarkable woman who played an important part during the formative years of one of England’s greatest monarchs. She deserves our further consideration.
Portrait of Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley ( 1508-1549, National Maritime Museum, sourced via Wikimedia Commons.
Haynes, State Papers, pp. 99-100
Marcus, Mueller and Rose, Elizabeth I Collected Works, p.27
The Elizabethan New Year’s Gift Exchanges 1559- 1603, edited by Jane A. Lawson, p.96
Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlocked, Janet Arnold, pp. 7-8
Norris, Tudor Costume and Fashion, pp.261–262
Haynes, State papers, p. 102
To create clothes for my portrayal of Kat, I used the pattern for a loose gown from The Tudor Tailor. Wills and inventories of the time frequently record loose gowns. They might be worn open and informally, as here, or with the addition of a belt or girdle. The fabric is from Herts Fabrics.
Marcus, Mueller and Rose, Elizabeth I Collected Works, p.27
Very interesting, thank you
I appreciate your research and insights into Kat so much!