The Nine Days' Queen, Lady Jane Grey, and Her Times
by Richard Davey · English · Gutenberg #50427 · 948,427 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Nine Days' Queen, Lady Jane Grey, and Her Times
Author: Richard Davey
Editor: Martin A. S. Hume
Release date: November 10, 2015 [eBook #50427]
Most recently updated: October 22, 2024
Language: English
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Transcriber’s Note
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ROMANTIC HISTORY
GENERAL EDITOR: MARTIN HUME, M.A.
THE NINE DAYS’ QUEEN
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE PAGEANT OF LONDON
THE SULTAN AND HIS SUBJECTS
[Illustration: LADY JANE GREY
FROM THE PAINTING BY LUCAS DE HEERE AT ALTHORP]
THE
NINE DAYS’ QUEEN
LADY JANE GREY
AND HER TIMES
BY
RICHARD DAVEY
EDITED, AND WITH INTRODUCTION, BY
MARTIN HUME, M.A.
WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published in 1909_
TO
MY DEAR WIFE
ELEANORA DAVEY
AUTHOR’S NOTE
My object in writing this book has been to interest the reader in
the tragic story of Lady Jane Grey rather from the personal than the
political point of view. I have therefore employed, more perhaps than
is usual, what the French historians term _le document humain_ in my
account of the extraordinary men and women who surrounded Lady Jane,
and who used her as a tool for their ambitious ends. The reader may
possibly wonder why in several of the earlier chapters Lady Jane Grey
plays so shadowy a part, but I deemed it impossible for any one who
is not very familiar with our History at this period to understand,
without having a complete idea of the chain of conspiracies that
preceded and rendered possible her proclamation, how a young Princess,
not in the immediate succession to the Crown, came to be placed, if
only for nine days, in the towering position of Queen of England. These
conspiracies were four in number. The first was that of the Howards
and the Catholic party against Queen Katherine Parr. The second, the
conspiracy of the Seymours against the Howards, which ended in the
downfall of the great House of Norfolk, whereby Edward Seymour was
enabled to proclaim himself Lord Protector of the Realm. The third
plot was that of Thomas Seymour to cast down his brother Edward from
his high station, and, if possible, to usurp the same for himself--a
strange story of folly and intrigue and overvaulting ambition which
ended in one of the most terrible fratricidal tragedies to be found
in the history of the nations. Fourthly, the removal of the brothers
Seymour from the scene enabled John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland,
to work his own will and to prepare the way, during the last days of
Edward VI, for his daughter-in-law, much against her will, to usurp the
throne.
I have consulted every available document, as well in our national
archives and private libraries as in those of foreign countries,
concerning Lady Jane and her friends and foes, the better to paint as
vivid a picture as possible of the times in which they lived.
I need scarcely add how greatly I appreciate the honour Major Martin
Hume has conferred upon my work by his scholarly Introduction, which
gives so succinct and deeply interesting an account of our foreign
politics at a most momentous period of English history. To him, to Dr.
Gairdner, to Earl Spencer, to Earl Stamford and Warrington, and to many
other gentlemen and friends, including the officials at the State Paper
Office and the British Museum, I beg to tender my sincere thanks for
their courtesy and for the valuable information with which they have
helped me to complete my picture of one of the most interesting periods
in our national history.
I cannot, moreover, allow this opportunity to pass without recording,
with sincere gratitude and affection, the aid which I received, when I
first thought of writing this life of Lady Jane Grey, from the kindness
of my old valued and lamented friend, Dr. Richard Garnett.
RICHARD DAVEY
200 ASHLEY GARDENS, LONDON, S.W.
_5th September 1909_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION xiii
CHAP.
I. BRADGATE HALL AND THE GREYS OF GROBY 1
II. BIRTH AND EDUCATION 14
III. THE LADY LATIMER 28
IV. THE KING’S HOUSEHOLD 42
V. MRS. ANNE ASKEW 58
VI. THE HOWARDS AND THE SEYMOURS 73
VII. HENRY VIII 100
VIII. CONCERNING THE LADY JANE AND THE QUEEN-DOWAGER 115
IX. THE QUEEN AND THE LORD HIGH-ADMIRAL 136
X. THE LADY JANE GOES TO SEYMOUR PLACE 147
XI. THE EDUCATION OF LADY JANE 168
XII. JOHN DUDLEY, EARL OF WARWICK 190
XIII. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF SOMERSET 208
XIV. THE LADY JANE MARRIES THE LORD GUILDFORD 221
XV. ON THE WAY TO THE TOWER 238
XVI. THE LADY JANE IS PROCLAIMED QUEEN 249
XVII. THE NINE DAYS’ REIGN 256
XVIII. THE LAST DAYS OF NORTHUMBERLAND 289
XIX. THE TRIAL OF QUEEN JANE 310
XX. THE SUPREME HOUR! 328
XXI. THE FATE OF THE SURVIVORS 348
APPENDIX 359
INDEX 365
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LADY JANE GREY _Frontispiece_
From the Painting by LUCAS DE HEERE at Althorp.
(Photograph by HANFSTAENGL)
FACING PAGE
HENRY GREY, DUKE OF SUFFOLK 12
From the Painting by JOANNES CORVUS, in the National
Portrait Gallery
QUEEN KATHERINE PARR 30
After the Painting formerly in the possession of
Horace Walpole
HENRY VIII IN 1547 48
From an old Engraving
ROGER ASCHAM’S VISIT TO LADY JANE GREY AT BRADGATE 172
After the Painting by J. C. HORSLEY, R.A.
JOHN DUDLEY, DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND 192
From an Engraving by G. VERTUE
EDWARD SEYMOUR, DUKE OF SOMERSET 208
From an Engraving after the Painting by HOLBEIN
SUPPOSED PORTRAIT OF LADY JANE GREY 224
Formerly in the Collection of Col. Elliott of Nottingham,
and now at Oxford University. From an Engraving after
the Painting by HOLBEIN
EDWARD VI 246
From an Engraving by G. VERTUE
LADY JANE GREY BY WYNGAERDE 270
The earliest engraved Portrait of her, from a Picture
said to be by HOLBEIN, now lost
QUEEN MARY AT THE PERIOD OF HER MARRIAGE 322
From the Painting by ANTONIO MOR, in the Prado Museum.
(Photograph by R. ANDERSON)
PORTRAIT OF THE LADY FRANCES BRANDON, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK,
AND HER SECOND HUSBAND, ADRIAN STOKES, ESQ. 352
Probably by CORVINUS, property of Col. Wynn Finch
INTRODUCTION
The tragedy of Lady Jane Grey is unquestionably one of the most
poignant episodes in English history, but its very dramatic
completeness and compactness have almost invariably caused its wider
significance to be obscured by the element of personal pathos with
which it abounds. The sympathetic figure of the studious, saintly
maiden, single-hearted in her attachment to the austere creed of
Geneva, stands forth alone in a score of books refulgent against
the gloomy background of the greed and ambition to which she was
sacrificed. The whole drama of her usurpation and its swift catastrophe
is usually treated as an isolated phenomenon, the result of one man’s
unscrupulous self-seeking; and with the fall of the fair head of the
Nine Days’ Queen upon the blood-stained scaffold within the Tower the
curtain is rung down and the incident looked upon as fittingly closed
by the martyrdom of the gentlest champion of the Protestant Reformation
in England.
Such a treatment of the subject, however attractive and humanly
interesting it may be, is nevertheless unscientific as history and
untrue in fact. An adequate appreciation of the tendencies behind
the unsuccessful attempt to deprive Mary of her birthright can only
be gained by a consideration of the circumstances preceding and
surrounding the main incident. The reasons why Northumberland, a weak
man as events proved, was able to ride rough-shod over the nobles
and people of England, the explanation of his sudden and ignominious
collapse and of the apparent levity with which the nation at large
changed its religious beliefs and observance at the bidding of assumed
authority are none of them on the surface of events; and the story
of Jane Grey as it is usually told, whilst abounding in pathetic
interest gives no key to the vast political issues of which the fatal
intrigue of Northumberland was but a by-product. To represent the
tragedy as a purely religious one, as is not infrequently done, is
doubly misleading. That one side happened to be Catholic and the other
Protestant was merely a matter of party politics, and probably not a
single active participator in the events, except Jane herself, and to
some extent Mary, was really moved by religious considerations at all,
loud as the professions of some of the leaders were.
Mr. Davey has given in the vivid pages of this book a striking picture
of the Society in which the drama was represented and of the persons
who surrounded Lady Jane Grey in the critical period of her unhappy
fate; and this of itself enables a wider view than is usual to be taken
of the subject. But, withal, I venture to think that an even more
extended prospect of it may be attained and the whole episode fitted
into its proper place in the history of England, if supplementary
consideration be given to international politics of the time, and
especially to the part which England aspired to take in the tremendous
struggle for supremacy which was then approaching the end of its first
phase on the Continent of Europe; a struggle in which not only the two
most powerful nations in Christendom were engaged and the two greatest
monarchs in the world were the leaders, but one in which the eternally
antagonistic principles of expansion and repression were the issues.
It is too often assumed that the system of political parties in
English Government dates only from the rise of Parliament as the
predominant power in the State in the seventeenth century, since, by
the open opposition and the public discussion of rival policies in
the Legislature, the existence of different groups of statesmen then
became evident to the world. But at least it may be asserted that,
from the time when the two first Tudor kings sought the aggrandisement
of England by placing their power in the balance between the great
Continental rivals, two schools of English politicians surrounded
their sovereign, each intent upon forwarding the alliance which
seemed to them wisest in the interests of the country and their own.
When, however, the political rivalry of France and the Emperor was
accentuated by the introduction of religious schism in the contest, by
the bold defiance of Luther and the spread of the reformed doctrines,
the political parties in the English Court were divided more distinctly
than ever by the new element introduced; and, despotic as the Tudor
sovereigns were, the apparently personal and fickle character of
their policy, which proves so puzzling to students, really arose in
nearly every case from the temporary predominance in their counsels
of one or the other school of thought represented in their Court. It
is only by recognising this fact that the strange and sudden changes
which took place in the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI can be made
comprehensible, and by it also the rise and fall of Lady Jane Grey can
be seen in its true light.
During the last twenty years of the reign of Henry VIII his bewildering
mutations of policy and of wives were the result of efforts on the
part of rival sets of politicians to utilise his brutal sensuality
and inflated pride to their respective ends. With him, as with the
most of them, religion was a mere stalking horse for other interests.
The traditional and more Conservative party, which usually leant
towards the imperial alliance, naturally took the Catholic side,
the established nobility such as the Howards backed by the Catholic
bishops being contrasted with the more recently ennobled men, aided
by bureaucrats like Cromwell and by the reforming churchmen. Thus it
came to be understood before the end of Henry’s reign that the men in
the English Court most favourable to emancipation from the Papacy were
generally speaking the advocates of a French alliance, whilst those
who clung to the orthodox view of religion favoured the traditional
adherence to the house of Burgundy. It is true that the men on both
sides were equally eager to participate in the plunder of the Church
and in filching the commons from the people of England; and that both
parties included men who were ready to profess themselves faithful
Catholics or ardent reformers as their interests demanded at the time.
But the political aims of the respective parties were quite distinctly
divided, notwithstanding religious affinities, for the Emperor was
just as desirous of having Protestant friends in England as the King
of France was willing to accept Catholic support there. The object of
the English sovereigns, it must be recollected, was usually somewhat
different from that of their bribed councillors who had their own
interests to serve. The aim of Henry VII and Henry VIII, and especially
of Elizabeth, who alone was successful in attaining it, was so to
distribute the weight of England’s influence as to avert any coalition
of the two great Continental powers against her, rather than to become
the permanent tool of either; the efforts of Charles V, and his French
rival being respectively directed towards preventing England from
throwing in her lot with their enemies.
Until religious bitterness infinitely complicated the question, and
finally led to the long state of war with Spain, the side which
commanded most sympathy amongst the English people at large was
unquestionably that which favoured a cordial understanding with
the sovereign of Flanders and Spain. The country had been in close
antagonism with France on and off for centuries, the proximity of
the coasts and the aspirations of the French to dominate the Channel
represented a constant danger and source of anxiety, and it was
instinctively felt in England that the time-honoured policy which
bound her to the monarch who was able when he pleased to divert the
aggression of the French by threatening any of their land frontiers,
was the safest friend of this country. The English merchants who found
their richest markets in Flanders and Spain, and who were in chronic
irritation at the French piratical attacks upon their commerce, were
equally anxious for a friendship which they looked upon as the best
assurance against a war which they dreaded; so that the chief English
advocates of the French connection were usually those whose adherence
to the reformed religious doctrines overbore their political interests,
and the newer nobility and politicians who found themselves at enmity
on social and other grounds with the traditional conservatives.
It must not be forgotten that both France and the Emperor strove
ceaselessly to gain friends amongst the English councillors. Immense
bribes found their way into the pockets of ministers and secretaries
of State, in many cases regular yearly pensions being settled upon
influential political supporters, and by means of flattery, social
attentions, and promises, the ambassadors in England of the rival
powers became centres of intrigue to influence English policy in
favour of one or the other. The goal to which both the rivals directed
their eyes was one in which, curiously enough, England had no interest
whatever, namely, the hegemony over Italy; but England which by
activity on the northern coasts of France or on the Scottish border
could weaken the French power for harm in other directions, could
enable the Emperor at any time to check his enemy’s Italian ambitions;
whilst with England as her friend France could brave the imperialists,
certain that she would not be taken in the rear, especially when, as
she usually managed to do, she had enlisted on her side the Turks on
the Hungarian frontier and the Lutheran princes and towns of Germany.
The marriage of Henry VIII with Jane Seymour was looked upon by the
Imperialist Conservative party in England as a victory for their cause.
Her brother, Sir Edward Seymour, had been in the Emperor’s service,
and Jane had supplanted the hated Anne Boleyn, whose sympathies were,
of course, entirely French. It is true that later Seymour, a parvenu
noble, be it recollected, was driven into the anti-papal camp mainly by
the antagonism of Norfolk and the older nobles who led the Conservative
party, but, notwithstanding his Protestantism, he never wavered in
his attachment to the imperial alliance and his opposition to French
interests.
When the death of Henry VIII made Seymour, as Duke of Somerset and
Protector, virtually ruler of England with Paget as his principal
minister, both of them were almost servile in their professions of
devotion to the cause of the Emperor; and made no secret of their
distrust of France with which a hollow and temporary peace had only
been recently patched up. Somerset harried the Church and changed
religious forms ruthlessly; his greed was insatiable and the devotional
endowments were looted without compunction, the Catholic bishops were
treated with stern severity, and even the schismatic Catholicism of
Henry VIII was cast aside in favour of an entirely new creed and
ritual. Norfolk was kept in the Tower, Wriothesley was disgraced
and the Catholic Conservative nobles were warned not to stand in
the Protector’s way. But through it all Somerset and Paget were
politically the sworn servants and friends of the Emperor, pledged
to discountenance any attempts of the French to injure him: whilst
Charles V on his side, much as he deprecated the religious changes,
could no more afford to quarrel with Somerset than he could with
Henry VIII, twenty years before when he contumeliously repudiated his
blameless Spanish wife and scornfully threw off the papal supremacy
which was the keystone of the imperial system.
Submissive as were the words of Somerset and Paget to their imperial
master[1] not by words alone but by acts also they sought to serve
him as against France. The strong policy adopted by Somerset towards
Scotland, and his defiant attitude at Boulogne, then temporarily
held by the English against the payment of a great ransom, served
the Emperor’s turn excellently at a period when he was at grips with
his Lutheran subjects, at issue with the Pope and faced by a series
of dangerous French intrigues in Italy. That the French themselves
understood this perfectly well is seen by the desperate efforts they
made to conciliate Somerset and win him to their side. Early in July
1547, only five months after his accession to power, Somerset told
the imperial ambassador in strict confidence, when the latter was
complaining of his religious innovations, that the special French
envoy, Paulin--“immediately after the death of King Henry had striven
to win him, the Protector, to the side of France by means of a large
annual pension, which, as was only right, he had always declined.
Notwithstanding this, however, Paulin, the last time he came hither,
was instructed to offer him the assignment of the pension, which
he had brought with him already signed and sealed. But with all
these offers and grand promises of the French to divert the English
Government from their alliance with your Majesty (the Emperor), he
said he would always remain constant and loyal to you, knowing well
that the strict preservation of the ancient alliance was so important
for both parties.” Even a month previous to this Somerset had informed
the ambassador that the French had greatly scandalised him by offering
him as an inducement to join France, in an offensive and defensive
alliance, the cession of the Emperor’s Flemish province to England when
it had been conquered by the allies, Boulogne at the same time to be
restored to France.
What wonder that the Emperor’s reply to this was to send flattering
autograph letters to Somerset, assuring him of his unalterable regard,
but saying not a word about his Protestant proceedings. “Of course,”
continues the Emperor, writing to his ambassador, “the Protector would
naturally refuse to accept the pension from the French, if only in the
interests of duty and decency. The goodwill he displays towards us
must be encouraged to the utmost by you on all occasions, and you must
lose no opportunity of confirming the Protector in these favourable
sentiments.” Somerset and Paget were therefore from first to last
“Emperor’s men” and opponents of French interests, that is to say
advocates of the same policy as that identified with the older nobles
and Catholics, most of whom were now under a cloud in consequence of
their religion or in consequence of their personal enmity to Somerset
whom they regarded as a greedy, unscrupulous interloper.
From the first days after the death of Henry VIII, it had been
seen by close observers that personal and not political rivalry
alone was likely in the future to bring about a split in Somerset’s
Government. The imperial ambassador, writing less than a fortnight
after Henry’s death, says that whilst Hertford (Somerset) and Warwick
(Northumberland) would apparently be supreme in authority, “it is
likely that some jealousy or rivalry may arise between them because,
although they both belong to the same sect, they are nevertheless
widely different in character: the Lord-Admiral being of high courage
will not willingly submit to his colleague. He is in higher favour with
the people and with the nobles than is the Earl of Hertford, owing to
his liberality and splendour. The Protector, on the other hand, is not
so conspicuous in this respect, and is looked down upon by everybody
as a dry, sour, opinionated man”: the sequel to this being that both
these nobles with Paget and Wriothesley should, in the opinion of the
ambassador, be “entertained” by the Emperor “in the usual way.”
Before many months had passed, as we have seen, it was recognised by
the Imperialist party that Somerset and Paget were their fast friends
and that the rising personal opposition of Dudley had adopted, not
unnaturally, as its policy that of a _rapprochement_ with France. It
would, of course, be untrue to say that Dudley’s attack upon Somerset
had for its sole object the substitution of one international policy
for another. Dudley, like his rival, was in the first place ambitious
and self-seeking; but it was necessary for both of them, in order
to serve their ends, that they should obtain the cooperation and
support of one or other of the two main currents of public opinion,
the adhesion of both rivals to the advanced Protestant practices in
religion being dictated in the first place by their need for the money
and patronage that the religious confiscations provided, and, secondly,
by the great predominance of the reformed doctrines in and about
London. But Somerset having embraced the Conservative or Imperialistic
policy, and infused, under the influence of Catholic Paget, some
consideration for the professors of the old faith into his reforming
zeal, it was incumbent upon Dudley, who wished to overthrow him, to
adopt in both respects an entirely opposite policy.
It is the fate of most Governments to be judged by results, and it was
a comparatively easy matter for Dudley to pick holes in Somerset’s
management of affairs. The debasement of the coinage and the consequent
dislocation of business and the terrible distress it caused, the
enclosures of the commons and the process of turning customary
copyholds into tenancies at will, had reduced the people of England to
a condition of misery such as they had never seen before. The cruel
confiscation of the monastic properties had deprived the sick and
the poor of their principal source of relief, the drastic changes in
religion had produced indignation in the breasts of many citizens,
whilst slackening the hold of authority generally and promoting
lawlessness. When to all this is added the grasping selfishness of
Somerset personally, and above all the success of the French arms
before Boulogne, attributed to the parsimony of the Protector, it
will be seen that Northumberland had a large area of discontent upon
which to work for support against his unpopular rival. But even so, it
is improbable that he would have ventured to take so bold an action
against the Protector as he did, but for the consciousness that he had
behind him the support, moral and financial if not military, of France
and the Lutheran enemies of the Emperor.
When the loss of the English forts protecting Boulogne made
negotiations for peace necessary, a French Embassy was sent to London,
and a keen observer present at the time[2] thus records what was
evidently the public impression of events--“It was suspected that the
principal object of this embassy was to bribe them (_i.e._ the English
Government) to make war on the Emperor. Whilst these ambassadors were
there they were greatly feasted by the Earl of Warwick (Northumberland)
and the Grand Master (Paulet, Marquis of Winchester) much more than any
other of the lords; for it appears that the French ambassadors could
not gain the ear of the others--The King of France found out from his
ambassadors which of the English lords showed more leaning towards
France and against the Emperor. These were the Earl of Warwick and the
Grand Master (of the Household), and it is believed that the King (of
France) wrote to them warning them against the Protector and the Earl
of Arundel who were plotting their destruction.” If this contemporary
belief was well founded, as it probably was, the overthrow of Somerset
is proved to a great extent to have been an international intrigue
promoted and probably well paid for by France.
As the observer already quoted remarks, the sequel of the Embassy
which thus ensured Northumberland’s neutrality in favour of France was
the almost immediate declaration of war by the French King against
the Emperor, and the wholesale plundering of the imperial subjects at
sea. Seen in this light, therefore, Northumberland’s complete change
of England’s policy, his truckling to France, his merciless measures
against Catholics, although, as events proved he was a Catholic at
heart himself, his imprisonment of Paget the Emperor’s humble servant,
and his ostentatious disregard for the imperial friendship, his whole
attitude indeed, assumes a new aspect. His ambition was boundless for
himself and his house; but it must have been evident to him that it
could only be successfully carried into effect if he had behind him a
strong body of public opinion in England itself, and the countenance of
one of the great continental powers. Both these desiderata he had in
the earlier months of his domination; and if Edward VI had died or had
been despatched late in 1551, or in the earlier weeks of 1552, it is
quite possible that Northumberland might have carried through his great
conspiracy successfully.
But the eighteen months that elapsed between the execution of Somerset
and the death of Edward were fully sufficient to prove to the people
of England that they had cast off the yoke of a King Log to assume
that of a King Stork--Northumberland’s overbearing arrogance and
roughness had offended everyone with whom he came into contact: his
colleagues dreaded and hated him, especially after the marriage of his
young son Guildford to a lady of the Royal house in the direct line of
succession had to some extent opened the eyes of men to the magnitude
of his aspirations. The condition of the country, moreover, instead
of improving under his rule was considerably worse even than it had
been under Somerset. The coinage had now reached its lowest point of
debasement, the shilling containing only one quarter of silver to three
quarters of copper, and even was ordered by decree to be only valued
at half its face value. The gold had all left the country and foreign
trade was killed by the lack of a decent currency. Labour, driven from
the land by the wholesale conversion of the estates from tillage to
pasture, crowded the towns clamouring for food, and the disgraceful
treatment of the Princess Mary by the ruling minister had aroused a
strong feeling against his injustice and tyranny.
The Emperor was at war with France and the Lutherans, and was obliged
to speak softly to Northumberland. Again and again he tried to win
him over to his side, and the ruler of England knew full well that,
whatever he might do he was safe from any overt interference from the
imperial power. But for this fact it is certain that Northumberland
would not have attempted the bold stroke of disinheriting Mary and
placing Jane Grey and his own son upon the throne of England. When
Edward VI was known by him to be sick beyond recovery Northumberland,
with an eye to the near future, endeavoured to conciliate the Emperor
somewhat and to bring about peace upon the Continent. His object in
doing so was twofold--first to persuade Charles that he was still a
potential friend; and, secondly, to set his French friends free from
their war with the Emperor, and so enable them at the critical moment
he foresaw to come to his aid in England if necessary. The English
trading classes were by this time in a fever of indignation against
the French for their piratical interference with English shipping, and
Northumberland must have known that with this and the fear aroused by
the French successes in the Emperor’s Flemish dominions--always the
key of English policy--even he could not for very long withstand the
demand of the English people to help the Emperor against his enemies.
It was Northumberland’s misfortune that he was obliged to deliver
his blow against the legitimate English succession in this state of
public affairs. The Emperor and his ministers were keenly alive to
the situation, and although they were of course not yet aware of the
details of Northumberland’s intended _coup d’état_, they feared that
the Princess Mary might by his influence be excluded from the throne.
This of course would have been a serious blow to the imperial cause;
for it would in all probability mean the permanent adhesion of England
to the French alliance. But Charles had swallowed so much humiliation
to keep England friendly in the past that he was not disposed now to be
too squeamish. He did not know how far his enemies the French had gone
in their promises of support to Northumberland when Edward should die,
but if by blandishments and conciliatory acquiescence he could win the
friendship of England he was willing to smile upon any occupant of the
throne or any power behind it who would keep to the old alliance and
turn a cold shoulder to the French.
As soon as it was known in the imperial court that Edward was
approaching his end the Emperor’s ambassadors hurried over to England
with instructions to conciliate Northumberland at all costs, and to
assure him that the Emperor’s affection for England and its young King
was much greater than that of the King of France. “But,” continues the
Emperor’s instructions, “if you arrive too late and the King is dead,
you must take counsel together and act for the best for the safety of
our cousin the Princess Mary, and secure, if possible, her accession
to the Crown, whilst doing what you judge necessary to exclude the
French and their intrigues. You must endeavour also to maintain the
confidence and good neighbourship which it is so important that our
States should enjoy with England ... and especially to prevent the
French from getting a footing in the country, or of gaining the ear
of the men who rule England, the more so if it be for the purpose of
embarrassing us.”
News had already reached Flanders of Northumberland’s intention to
exclude Mary from the throne on her brother’s death, and although
the Emperor saw that in such case the life of his cousin would be in
grave peril, especially if French aid, as was feared, were given to
Northumberland, the principal efforts of the imperial envoys were
to be directed to assuring the English government in any case that
the Emperor was their friend and not France; Northumberland was to
be persuaded that the Emperor had no thought of proposing a foreign
husband for Mary; and that any match chosen for her by the ruling
powers in England would be willingly accepted by her imperial kinsman.
In short, the envoys were to promise anything and everything to secure
the throne for Mary, even to endorsing the religious changes effected
under Edward. But failing success in this it is made quite clear that
the Emperor was willing to accept Jane Grey or any other sovereign who
would consent to regard him as a friend and exclude French influence
from the country.
The French were just as much on the alert to serve their own interests,
and Northumberland, knowing how unpopular the French were at this
juncture, and how much his supposed dependence upon them was resented,
was extremely careful not to show ostensibly any leaning towards
them. But as soon as he heard, late in June, that the imperial envoys
were coming to London he came specially from Greenwich to the French
ambassador’s lodging at the Charterhouse to inform him that the Emperor
was sending an embassy. “I doubt not,” writes the French agent to his
King, “that they will do their best to interrupt the friendship that
exists between your Majesty and the King of England. I will keep my eye
upon them and will leave no effort untried to subvert them.”
Edward died on the very day that the imperial ambassadors arrived in
London, though the death was kept secret for some days afterwards, and
it soon became evident, both to the French and the Imperialists, that
Northumberland had prepared everything for the elevation of Jane Grey
to the throne. At this juncture, which called, if ever one did, for
prompt and bold action, only one of the several interests took a strong
course, the Princess Mary herself. It is quite evident that everyone
else had deceived himself and was paralysed in fear of action by
another. Again and again the French ambassador expressed a belief that
the coming of the imperial envoys portended an active interference on
the part of the Emperor in favour of Princess Mary; and Northumberland
and his council, notwithstanding all the protestations of the imperial
envoys, were of the same opinion; whereas we now see that the Emperor
was quite willing to throw over Mary, and even the Catholics, if only
he could persuade Jane Grey and her government to join him against
France.
When Mary’s bold defiance of the usurper was announced, the Emperor’s
envoys, whom many believed to be forerunners of a strong foreign armed
force to aid her, had nothing but shocked condemnation for her action.
They considered her attitude “strange, difficult and dangerous”;
and predicted her prompt suppression and punishment. In reference
to the suggestion of her Catholic friends, that imperial aid should
be sent to her, the envoys, who were supposed to be in England for
the purpose of forcing her upon the throne, could only say to their
master, “Considering your war with the French, it seems unadvisable
for your Majesty to arouse English feeling against you, and the idea
that the Lady will gain Englishmen on the ground of religion is vain.”
Serious remonstrances were sent to Mary herself by the imperial envoys,
pointing out the danger and the hopelessness of her position in the
face of Northumberland’s supposed strength, and they laboured hard to
dissuade the Duke from his idea that they had been sent to England to
sustain Mary’s cause.
Nor was the Emperor himself bolder than his envoys. He instructed the
latter to recommend Mary, “with all softness and kindness,” to the
mercy of Jane’s government, but they were to make it quite clear that
he would strike no blow in her favour, and would receive with open
arms any sovereign of England who would not serve French interests.
Mr. Davey has indicated in the present book the eagerness with which
the great imperial minister, Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, greeted
Guildford Dudley as King of England. That Mendoza, one of the most
trusted and ablest of the Emperor’s councillors, could take such a step
without knowing that it would not, at least, be against his master’s
policy is inconceivable: and all through it is clear that, if Mary had
waited for effective help from her imperial cousin, Jane Grey might
have reigned for a long lifetime.
Just as the Emperor was paralysed in his action by the fear that he
might alienate England from his side, so France allowed discretion
to wait upon valour for fear of driving the English government
irretrievably into the arms of the Emperor. When the news of Mary’s
rising came to London the French ambassador bitterly deplored
Northumberland’s want of foresight in not having seized the person of
the Princess in time to prevent it. He confessed that Northumberland
was excessively unpopular, but believed that his possession of the
national forces would enable him to crush Mary and her malcontents. But
he took care not to pledge himself too deeply to Jane, and whilst full
of sympathy and good wishes for Northumberland’s success always kept in
touch with some of Mary’s friends. Neither the French ambassador nor
the English council really understood the Emperor’s attitude. When the
council communicated to the imperial ambassadors Jane’s succession,
they haughtily told them that it was known they were here to force Mary
upon the throne, and that a new sovereign now having been successfully
proclaimed, the sooner they left England the better. The French
ambassador, writing to his king at the same time, remarked that the
imperial ambassadors had informed the English council, that rather than
submit to Jane’s wearing the crown to Mary’s deprivation his master
would make friends with the French on any terms and would deal with
Jane in a way which she would not like.
It is almost amusing, now that we have the correspondence of all
parties before us, to see how they all deceived themselves. The
Emperor, as has been said, would not lift a finger to help Mary, even
when she was in the field with a strong armed force, for fear of
alienating hopelessly the sovereign of England whoever he might be;
the King of France, whilst giving the same sort of hesitating implied
support to Northumberland and Jane as Charles held out to the Princess
Mary, would give no effective help for the same reason that tied the
Emperor’s hands. Both sides, indeed, were waiting to greet success
without pledging themselves to a cause which might fail.
But the person who miscalculated most fatally of all was Northumberland
himself. He had been during the whole time of his rule the humble
servant of France. He had violated the treaty of 1543, by which England
was bound to side with the Emperor in case his territory was invaded by
France, and he stood between the throne and Princess Mary who it was
known would serve the cause of the Emperor and her mother’s country to
the utmost. He was obliged, as has been shown, to cast his hazard when
the public opinion was strongly against him, the commercial classes
of England well nigh ruined, the labourers in a worse condition than
had ever been known before, and the nobility jealous and apprehensive.
Knowing this, as he did, it is difficult to believe that he would
have dared to take up the position he assumed unless he had persuaded
himself that, as a last resource, French armed aid would support him.
That such a thing was not remotely probable is now evident from the
correspondence of the French ambassadors. They were only full of sorrow
for “this poor Queen Jane” and feared for the fate of their unfortunate
friend the Duke of Northumberland. And yet London itself was in a
panic, born of the conviction that 6000 French troops were on their
way to keep Jane upon the throne; Northumberland, in fact, presumably
believing that his past services to France had deserved such aid, had
actually sent and demanded it of the King. If it had been afforded in
effective time the whole history of England might have been changed.
We know now, although none knew it then, that the Emperor would have
greeted with smooth assurances the victorious Jane and Northumberland,
and would have deserted his cousin Mary until a turn of the wheel gave
her hopes of success again. There was, indeed, nothing to prevent
Henry of France, but groundless fear of his rival, from sending to
England the small force necessary to keep Jane upon the throne and
defeat Mary. But time-serving cowardice ruled over all. The edifice
of Northumberland’s ambition crumbled like a house of cards under
the weight of his unpopularity alone, and when Mary the victorious
entered into the enjoyment of her birthright, the Frenchman who had
plotted and intrigued against her in secret, vied with the imperial
ambassadors who had stood by, unsympathetic in the hour of her trial,
in their professions of devotion to her and her cause. The people of
London, overwhelmingly Protestant as they were, greeted the Queen with
effusion and had few words of pity for poor Jane, not because they
loved the old observance but because they dreaded the French, and hated
Northumberland the tyrannous and unjust servant of France. In the
country districts, too, where Catholicism was strong, the enthusiasm
for Mary was not so much religious, for all the people wanted was quiet
and some measure of prosperity, as expressive of joy at the hope of a
return to the national policy of cordial relations with the sovereign
of Flanders, which in past times had ensured English commerce from
French depredations and the English coast from French menaces, with
freedom from the arrogant minister who had harassed every English
interest and had reduced to ruin all classes in the country.
The unhappy Jane, a straw upon the rushing torrent, was not raised
to her sad eminence that the Protestant faith might prevail, though
that might have been one of the results of her rule, nor was she
cast down because Catholicism was triumphant, but because the policy
which her dictator, Northumberland, represented was unpopular at the
time of Edward’s death, and the English sense of justice rebelled at
the usurpation and its contriver. Mary, in addition to her inherent
right to the succession, which was her strong point, had only her own
boldness and tenacity to thank for the success which she achieved. The
Emperor, notwithstanding all his sympathy and the enormous importance
to him of her success, did nothing for her until she was independent
of him, and only promised her armed aid then in case the French should
attempt to overthrow her by force.
Northumberland fell, not because the country at large and London above
all, was yearning for the re-submission of England to the Pope, but
because the eighteen months of his unchecked dictatorship had made him
detested, and because he overrated the boldness and magnanimity of the
King of France. The English public, by instinct perhaps more than by
reason, believed in the ideal policy of Henry VII: that of dexterously
balancing English friendship between the rival continental powers,
making the best market possible for her moral support, keeping at
peace herself and adhering mostly to the more prosperous side without
fighting for either. Such a policy required statesmanship of the
highest order, and Elizabeth alone was entirely successful in carrying
it out. Somerset and Northumberland both failed because they were
unequal to it. Each of them took the minister’s view rather than that
of a monarch. They were party leaders, both of them, and incapable of
adopting the view above party considerations which marks the successful
sovereign. They pledged themselves too deeply to the respective foreign
alliances traditional with their parties; and in both cases, as a
penetrating statesman would have foreseen, their allies failed them at
the critical moment.
Mary’s tragical fate was the result of a similar short-sighted policy.
When she determined against the wishes of her people and the advice
of her wisest councillors, Catholics to a man, to hand herself and
her country, body and soul, over to Spanish interests, she ceased to
be a true national sovereign; the nice balance upon which England’s
prosperity depended was lost, the love and devotion of the people
turned to cold distrust, and failure and a broken heart were the
result. Not until Elizabeth came with her keen wit and her consummate
mastery of the resources of chicanery was England placed and kept
firmly again upon the road to greatness which had been traced for her
by the first Tudor sovereign.
MARTIN HUME
THE NINE DAYS’ QUEEN
CHAPTER I
BRADGATE HALL AND THE GREYS OF GROBY
There is no more picturesque spot in England than Bradgate Old Manor,
the birthplace of Lady Jane Grey. It stands in a sequestered corner,
about three miles from the town of Leicester, amid arid slate hillocks,
which slope down to the fertile valleys at their feet. In Leland’s
_Perambulations through England_, a survey of the kingdom undertaken
by command of Henry VIII, Bradgate is described as possessing “a fair
parke and a lodge lately built there by the Lorde Thomas Grey, Marquise
of Dorsete, father of Henry, that is now Marquise. There is a faire and
plentiful spring of water brought by Master Brok as a man would judge
agyne the hills through the lodge and thereby it driveth a mylle.” He
also informs us that “there remain few tokens of the old castelle,”
which leads us to believe that at the time of Lady Jane Grey’s birth
Bradgate was a comparatively new house. The ruins show that the
mansion was built of red brick and in that severe but elegant form of
architecture known as the “Tudor style.” Worthy old Leland goes on to
say that Jane’s paternal grandfather added “two lofty towers at the
front of the house, one on either side of the principal doorway.” These
are still remaining.
In Tudor times the park was very extensive and “marched with the forest
of Chartley, which was full twenty-five miles in circumference, watered
by the river Sore and teeming with game.” Another ancient writer
tells us, in the quaint language of his day, that “here a wren and
squirrel might hop from tree to tree for six miles, and in summer time
a traveller could journey from Beaumanoir to Burden, a good twelve
miles, without seeing the sun.” The wealth of luxuriant vegetation in
the old park, the clear and running brooks, that babble through the
sequestered woods, and the beautifully sloping open spaces, dotted
with venerable and curiously pollarded oaks, make up a scene of sylvan
charm peculiarly English. Here cultivation has not, as so often on the
Continent, disfigured Nature, but the park retains the wild beauty
of its luxuriant elms and beeches that rise in native grandeur from
amidst a wilderness of bracken, fern, and flags, to cast their shadows
over heather-grown hillocks. On the summit of one of the loftiest
of these still stands the ruined palace that was the birthplace of
Lady Jane Grey. The approaches to Bradgate are beautiful indeed,
especially the pathway winding round by the old church along the banks
of a trout-stream, which rises in the neighbourhood of the Priory of
Ulverscroft, famous for the beauty of its lofty tower. When Jane Grey
was born, this Priory had been very recently suppressed, and the people
were lamenting the departure of the monks, who, during the hard winter
of 1528, had fed six hundred starving peasants.
Bradgate Manor House was standing as late as 1608, but after that
date it fell into gradual decay. Not much is now left of the original
structure, but its outlines can still be traced; and the walls of the
great hall and the chapel are nearly intact. A late Lord Stamford and
Warrington roofed and restored the old chapel, which contains a fine
monument to that Henry Grey whose signature may be seen on the warrant
for the execution of Charles I.
A careful observation of the irregularities of the soil reveals traces
of a tilt-yard and of garden terraces; but all is now overgrown by
Spanish chestnut trees, wild flowers, nettles, and brambles. The
gardens were once considered amongst the finest in England, Lord Dorset
taking great pride in the cultivation of all the fruits, herbs, and
flowers then grown in Northern Europe. The parterres and terraces were
formal, and there was a large fish-pond full of golden carp and water
lilies. Lady Jane Grey must often have played in these stately avenues,
and there is a legend that once, as a little girl, she toppled into the
tank and was nearly drowned--a less hideous fate than that which was to
befall her in her seventeenth year.
“This was thy home, then, gentle Jane!
This thy green solitude; and here
At evening, from thy gleaming pane,
Thine eyes oft watched the dappled deer
(Whilst the soft sun was in its wane)
Browsing beside the brooklet clear.
The brook yet runs, the sun sets now,
The deer still browseth--where art thou?”
These sentimental lines were written in the eighteenth century, when
deer still browsed in Bradgate Park, whence they have long since
departed. Many curious traditions concerning Lady Jane are even now
current among the local peasantry. Some believe that on St. Sylvester’s
night (31st December) a coach drawn by four black horses halts at the
door of the old mansion. It contains the headless form of the murdered
Lady Jane. After a brief halt it drives away again into the mist. Then
again, certain strange[3] stunted oaks are shown, trees which the
woodmen pollarded when they heard that the fair girl had been beheaded.
The pathetic memories of the great tragedy, reaching down four slow
centuries, prove how keenly its awful reality was felt by the poorer
folk at Bradgate, who, no doubt, had good cause to love the “gentle
Jane.”
The Manor of Bradgate was settled upon the Lady Frances Brandon, Henry
VIII’s niece, when she espoused Henry Grey. It had been inherited by
the Greys of Groby, Lady Jane’s paternal ancestors, from Rollo, or
Fulbert, said to have been chamberlain to Robert, Duke of Normandy, who
gave him the Castle of Croy in Picardy, the ruins of which are still
to be seen not far from Montreuil-sur-Mer. It was hence he derived
the surname of de Croy, afterwards anglicised to de Grey. This Rollo
accompanied William the Conqueror into England, and was settled, soon
after the Conquest, at Rotherfield, in Oxfordshire. The first of the
family to be noticed by Dugdale is Henry de Grey, to whom Richard
I granted the Manor of Grey’s Thurrock, in Essex, which grant was
confirmed by King John in the first year of his reign. The descendant
of this nobleman, Edward de Grey, was summoned to Parliament in 1488
in right of his wife’s barony of Ferrers of Groby, and his son John,
afterwards Earl Rivers, who was slain in the battle of St. Albans,
married the beautiful daughter of Sir John Woodville, subsequently the
Queen of Edward IV. Bradgate is thus associated with two of the most
unfortunate of England’s Queens: Elizabeth Woodville, who passed much
of her life in its leafy glades; and Lady Jane Grey, who first saw the
light in the stately red brick Manor House of which the crumbling ruins
are now so beautiful in their decay.
Jane Grey’s grandfather, Thomas, the eldest son of Elizabeth Woodville,
was summoned to Parliament on the 17th October 1509 as Lord Ferrers
of Groby, his mother’s barony, and to the second Parliament in 1511
as Marquess of Dorset. He was a man of great note. In the third year
of Henry VIII’s reign he had charge of the army of 10,000 men sent
into Spain to assist the forces invading Guyenne under the Emperor
Ferdinand. This force returned to England without doing service. We
next hear of the Marquess figuring at the jousts with Charles Brandon,
Duke of Suffolk, Lady Jane’s maternal grandfather, on the occasion
of the latter’s adventurous journey to France to bring back Mary
Tudor, widow of Louis XII of France, whom he subsequently married.
The Marquess was also sent to Calais to attend Charles V to England;
indeed, he was very conspicuous throughout the early years of Henry’s
reign. King Hal paid him the compliment of calling him “that honest
and good man”--a title which he thought he richly deserved, since he
signed the celebrated letter to Pope Clement VII touching the King’s
divorce. He died in 1530, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Henry,
Lady Jane’s father. The inheritance of this nobleman included the
Marquisate of Dorset and the baronies of Ferrers,[4] Grey, Astley,
Boneville, and Harrington, besides vast estates in Leicestershire and
other parts of England. Henry Grey, though his portraits show him to
have been a very good-looking man, did not enjoy a good contemporary
reputation for ability or strength of character. During the brief
reign of Edward VI he became the patron of the Swiss Reformers and was
adulated by Bullinger and Hill. His name will be found attached to many
of Henry VIII’s anti-papal decrees, and so long as that monarch lived,
he was a staunch “Henryite” or schismatic, professing belief in all
the doctrines of Rome save and except papal supremacy. In 1531, when
the clergy were threatened with _præmunire_ and mulcted in a fine, as
a punishment for their too close attention to pontifical interests,
young Henry of Dorset, who had just come to his own, displayed great
energy in carrying out the King’s wishes and supporting his attempt to
get himself acknowledged supreme head of the English Church. He also
evinced considerable courage in connection with Henry VIII’s resistance
to the excommunication of the Pope, launched against him after his
marriage with Anne Boleyn. Such zeal in his sovereign’s service
undoubtedly led to his advancement and paved the way to his marriage
with the King’s niece, the Lady Frances Brandon. He may have owed much
to the counsels and influence of Cromwell, to whom he carried a letter
of introduction from his mother,[5] when he first went to London as a
lad of seventeen, immediately after his father’s decease. The Dowager
recommended her son very earnestly to “Master Cromwell,” pleaded his
youth, and besought that worthy, then all-powerful, not to take heed
of certain ill-natured reports concerning alleged wilful damage to the
priory buildings of Tylsey, where she was then residing.[5]
The good lady couches her letter in very humble terms, but does not
enlighten us fully about the nature of the “damage” to which she
refers, or by whom it was done. She seems, at any rate, to be in
a terrible fright lest the tale should injure her son’s prospects
with the all-powerful Chancellor. Some little time afterwards the
Marchioness wrote another letter to Cromwell complaining of her son’s
undutiful behaviour to her. It is dated from the “House of Our Lady’s
Passyon”[6] (the Priory of Tylsey), and begins:--
“MY LORDE,--I beseeche you to be my good lorde, consyderyng me a
poor wydo, so unkyndly and extreymly escheated by my son.”
This curious epistle, now in the British Museum, is much defaced and
in parts illegible. The name of the person to whom it is addressed
is undecipherable, but, taken in conjunction with two other letters
previously addressed to Cromwell by the same correspondent, there can
be little doubt as to its destination. Her son had evidently withheld
some property intended for her under her husband’s will. Whether he
mended his manners and paid her the money, we know not; but as the
Dowager is occasionally mentioned as attending Court functions in
company with her daughter-in-law, it seems probable that the ultimate
issue of the difficulty, whatever it was, was satisfactory to her.
Margaret, Dowager Lady Dorset, became one of the greatest ladies of
the Court in the latter years of the reign of Henry VII and during a
part of that of Henry VIII. She was in much request, it seems, at royal
christenings, for not only was she specially invited to that of Mary
Tudor, afterwards Queen Mary I, but she enjoyed the signal honour of
carrying the infant Elizabeth to the font. She was invited to perform a
like office at the baptism of Edward VI, but this time she was unable
to be present, and wrote to make her loyal excuses, pleading that
some of her household at Croydon had been attacked by the “sweating
sickness.” It is probable that she had no desire to attend, for she had
been the intimate friend of Anne Boleyn, and could hardly have felt
kindly towards Jane Seymour.[7] Her place was filled by the Marchioness
of Exeter, who eventually, after the execution of her luckless husband,
was sent to the Tower on a flimsy charge of treason, and kept there
until Mary I’s time.[8]
A singular point in the history of Jane Grey’s forbears is that her
father, in his hot haste to marry into the royal family, set aside,
without the slightest scruple, his legitimate wife, Lady Katherine
Fitzalan, daughter of the Earl of Arundel. Some writers say he was
simply “contracted,” not married, to this lady, who never demanded
her marriage rights, but retired into a dignified obscurity. None the
less her family resented the affront offered their kinswoman, and it
was Thomas, Earl of Arundel, this discarded lady’s brother, who acted
as Dorset’s Nemesis, and at last betrayed him into the hands of his
enemies.
Lady Jane Grey’s maternal grandfather was, as he wrote himself in the
famous quatrain referring to his marriage with the King’s sister,
descended from “cloth of frieze.” He was the grandson of a London
mercer who had married a lady allied to the great houses of Nevill,
Fitzalan and Howard, and his father had fought and fallen at Bosworth
Field in the cause of Henry VII. In recognition of his services, Henry
attached young Charles Brandon to the person of his younger son, Prince
Henry, who was of similar age to himself. Thus began a friendship which
was only severed by death. In appearance the Prince and his comrade
were singularly alike: both were tall and stalwart, both with red hair
and fair complexions, and they were equally skilful and agile in sport
and manly pastimes. Charles was more intellectually gifted than Henry,
but there was little to choose between them as regards their execrable
views of moral responsibilities and their laxity in respect of their
marriage vows.
As this last characteristic of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk,
touches somewhat upon the legitimacy of Lady Jane Grey’s descent, a
short summary of his matrimonial vagaries may be pardoned here. He was
contracted in marriage early in life to Anne Browne, a daughter of
Sir Anthony Browne, Governor of Calais, by his wife Lady Lucy Nevill,
daughter of George Nevill, Duke of Bedford, brother of Richard, Earl
of Warwick, “the King maker.” In 1513 he was bold enough to flirt most
outrageously with, and seek in marriage, one of the greatest ladies
in Europe, Margaret of Austria, the widowed Duchess of Savoy, aunt
of the Emperor Charles V. But though Margaret fell in love with him,
such a match was soon seen to be impossible, even by the lady herself,
and Brandon came out of the affair most ungallantly. For this or some
other reason never clearly explained, Brandon set aside his contract
with Anne Browne, notwithstanding that by the laws of the period it
was considered as binding as the completed marriage ceremony. We
next learn that a probable reason for his unchivalrous conduct was
a chance that suddenly offered itself to him of marrying the Lady
Margaret, the rich widow of Sir John Mortimer of Essex. Charles and
his mature consort--there was a difference of nearly thirty years
between them--did not abide long together, for he presently endeavoured
to annul this marriage on a plea of consanguinity, the Lady Margaret
being sister to the mother of his neglected bride, Anne Browne, and
consequently her aunt, a complication which surely ought to have been
discovered at an earlier stage of the proceedings. Having settled this
matter for the time being to his own, but certainly not to the lady’s,
satisfaction, he remarried his discarded wife, Anne Browne, in the
presence of a great concourse of relations and friends. By this lady
he had two daughters: Mary, who became the wife of Lord Mounteagle;
and Anne, who married a connection of the Greys, Viscount Powis. Their
mother died in 1515, and Brandon soon afterwards contracted himself
in matrimony with the Lady Elizabeth Grey, daughter and heiress of
Viscount de Lisle. Whether through the interference of Lady Mortimer
or not it is impossible to say, but it is certain that Lady de Lisle
refused to carry out her side of the contract, and the match was broken
off. Brandon, with the consent of Henry VIII, filched from the poor
lady her title of Lisle, which he forthwith assumed. In due time the
lady gave her hand to Edmund Dudley, father of the fateful Duke of
Northumberland. It was probably when in France, and in attendance upon
King Henry, at the time of the negotiations for the marriage of the
King’s youngest and most beautiful sister, Mary, to the prematurely
aged Louis XII, King of France, a hideous victim to elephantiasis,
that Charles made so strong an impression upon that ardent Tudor
princess that she swore by all the saints that she would not wed the
French King unless it was thoroughly understood she was to marry whom
she chose after his death, which took place within eighteen months
of the marriage. The romantic story of how Brandon, now created Duke
of Suffolk, wooed and married the royal widow within a fortnight of
the King’s death, and whilst she still wore the white widow’s weeds
of a French King’s Consort, is too well known to need recapitulation
here, nor need we enter into the details of the gorgeous ceremonies
of remarriage that took place at Greenwich, in the presence of King
Henry, Queen Katherine of Aragon, and their Court, soon after Mary
and Suffolk had landed in England. The Duke of Suffolk took his bride
to spend their honeymoon in his magnificent mansion in Southwark,
known as Suffolk Place, which he had recently inherited by the death
of his uncle, Sir Thomas Brandon. It must have been about this time
that the friends of the Lady Mortimer, and probably that lady herself,
began to spread rumours abroad that made both Charles and his consort
anxious as to the validity of their marriage and the legitimacy of
their offspring. Indeed, even at the time of his clandestine wedding
in the Chapel of the Hôtel de Cluny (now incorporated in the Museum of
that name), he had felt very uneasy about the matter, and, foreseeing
his peril, wrote to Wolsey, beseeching his assistance and advice on
a matter of such vital importance, which, however, was not decided
so easily as Charles expected. It was not until 1528 that Wolsey
dispatched a somewhat garbled account of the matter to Pope Clement
VII, then in exile at Orvieto, where he received Cardinal Campeggio
and the English envoys who came to him with the first negotiations for
the divorce of Henry VIII from Katherine of Aragon. Trusting in the
evidence which Wolsey sent him, the Pope, by a special Bull (dated 12th
May 1528), annulled the marriage of Brandon with the Lady Mortimer,
on the plea of consanguinity, and at the same time declared valid
that of her niece, Anne Browne, and legitimized her two children. The
Bull further stated that Lady Mortimer and her friends were “liable
to ecclesiastical censure if they made any attempt to invalidate
the decree” making valid Brandon’s marriage to Anne Browne and Mary
Tudor. The importance of this decree, which was first read out to the
people in Norwich Cathedral in 1529 by Bishop Nyx, can readily be
imagined when we remember that it was not delivered until after the
Queen-Duchess had given birth to two children. Her only son, the Earl
of Lincoln, died in infancy, and the Lady Frances became in due time
the Marchioness of Dorset and mother of Lady Jane Grey. On the other
hand, the legitimacy of the Lady Eleanor Brandon, the younger daughter,
who was born after the publication of the papal decree, was never
disputed, and moreover, before she entered upon her sorrowful career,
the Lady Mortimer was dead. That considerable doubt was entertained as
to the validity of Brandon’s marriage with the Queen-Dowager is proved
by a variety of facts too numerous to be detailed, but one of which is
very significant. Late in the first half of Queen Elizabeth’s reign,
the validity of the claims of the Lady Mounteagle and her sister, the
children of Brandon and Anne Browne, to be considered legitimate,
was ventilated in the Court of Arches, and after much deliberation
confirmed. Although the legitimacy of these ladies, both of whom were
long since deceased at the time of this trial, had nothing to do with
the legal position of Mary Tudor as the wife of the Duke of Suffolk, it
was none the less an indirect test of the right to the throne of her
granddaughters, the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey.
From these briefly resumed facts it is not difficult to understand that
although King Henry VIII highly approved of his bosom friend’s conduct,
his subjects held Charles to be an arrant rascal. His treatment of
his beautiful royal wife was on a par with his low conception of his
moral obligations. He neglected her, spent her money, and lived openly
with a notorious woman known as Mrs. Eleanor Brandon, by whom he had
an illegitimate son, Charles, who is said to have been the well-known
jeweller to Queen Elizabeth, and whose son, or grandson, Gregory
Brandon, was, according to tradition, the headsman who executed Charles
I.
Lady Jane’s grandmother, Mary Tudor, was a most amiable and
long-suffering princess, who after a somewhat secluded life in
Southwark withdrew to Westhorpe Hall. Here she died on 24th June
1533. Her two daughters--the Lady Frances, who had recently married
the Marquess of Dorset; and the Lady Eleanor, soon to be the bride of
Henry, Lord Clifford, eldest son of the Earl of Cumberland--were with
her at the time of her death, but the Duke was absent in London, and
so too was the Marquess of Dorset, her son-in-law, attending at the
coronation of Anne Boleyn. The Queen-Duchess was interred in Bury St.
Edmunds, Henry VIII and Suffolk paying the expenses of a gorgeous
alabaster monument to her memory, “full of little saints and angels,”
which was destroyed soon after, during the wreck of the glorious Abbey
Church at the time of the suppression of the monasteries. The remains
of the Queen were then removed to the parish church, where they still
rest, a marble tablet put up in the early nineteenth century being the
only memorial of Mary Tudor, Dowager Queen of France and Duchess of
Suffolk.
Within three months of the Queen’s death (September 1533) Suffolk
married a fifth wife, the Lady Katherine Willoughby d’Eresby, who,
it seems, was his ward and only fifteen years old. She was a great
heiress, and what made her marriage all the more singular was the fact
that she was a daughter of that Doña Maria de Sarmiento who, as Lady
Willoughby, was the friend and attendant of Queen Katherine of Aragon.
It must also be remembered that Queen Katherine had no more bitter
enemy than Suffolk. This Duchess developed into a very pretty woman, of
great wit and character, and a staunch supporter of the doctrines of
the Reformation.
The Lady Frances Brandon was born at Hatfield, then a palace of the
Bishop of Salisbury, who had afforded her mother hospitality; for it
seems that the Queen-Duchess was obliged to halt here, for reasons
easily understood, on her way to Walsingham Priory, whither she was
bound on a pilgrimage. There is still extant a very curious account
of the baptism of the Lady Frances in the parish church of Hatfield,
which was hung with garlands for the occasion. The Lady Anne[9] Boleyn,
aunt of the ill-fated Queen Anne of that ilk, stood proxy for Queen
Katherine of Aragon as sponsor.
In 1533-4 the Lady Frances was married, notwithstanding his
afore-mentioned “contract” to the Lady Fitzalan, to Henry Grey,
Marquess of Dorset. The wedding took place at Suffolk Place, Southwark,
and the religious ceremony in the Church of St. Saviour, now the
cathedral of the new diocese. No very great pains seem to have been
taken with the lady’s education, except in the matter of what we
should call “sports,” in which, it seems, she was very proficient.
The Lady Frances was a handsome woman, however, but somewhat spiteful
and wholly unscrupulous. In a well-known portrait, dated after
her second marriage, she is represented as a buxom, fair-haired,
well-featured matron, with a very sinister expression in her light
grey eyes. Her eldest child was a son who died of the plague when a
baby, and the three children who survived were all girls--the Ladies
Jane, Katherine, and Mary Grey. Lady Jane Grey, as we shall see, had
little cause to feel deep affection for either of her parents, but
least of all for her mother. The Lady Frances seems to have been
cast, so far as her heart went, in a mould of iron. Even the bloody
deaths of her husband and her eldest daughter, and the wretchedly
precarious existence of her two remaining children, did not affect
her buoyant spirits, since she enjoyed her life to the end. It would
be difficult to define her religious opinions. She was a schismatic
under Henry VIII, and under Edward VI she appeared a zealous Protestant
and so intimate with the famous Reformer Bucer that when he died she
petitioned Cranmer to obtain a pension for his widow. She became a
pious Papist in Queen Mary’s time, and died a prominent member of the
Church of England as by law established, under Elizabeth.
The Lady Eleanor Brandon, Henry VIII’s niece and Lady Jane Grey’s only
maternal aunt, married, as we have said, Henry, Lord Clifford, to whom
she was united in 1537 at the Duke of Suffolk’s palace in Southwark.
The Lady Eleanor gave birth to two sons and a daughter. At the time
of the Pilgrimage of Grace (in 1536) she was staying at Bolton Abbey,
which Henry VIII, after confiscating it from the Church, had presented
to Lord Clifford; and had it not been for the chivalry and bravery of
Christopher Aske, the rebel leader’s brother, she would have suffered
at the hands of the infuriated “pilgrims.” By dint of a bold night
ride, Aske aided Lady Eleanor to fly from Bolton Abbey and reach a
place of safety. In 1542 her husband succeeded to the Earldom of
Cumberland on the death of his father, and five years later (November
1547) Lady Eleanor passed away at Brougham Castle and was laid to rest
in Skipton Church.
[Illustration: HENRY GREY, DUKE OF SUFFOLK
FROM THE PAINTING BY JOANNES CORVUS IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY]
It will be seen by this rapid sketch of her forbears on both sides
that Lady Jane Grey might, without exciting surprise, have developed a
character strongly sensual and unscrupulous. That she did not do so,
apart from the fact that her early death perhaps prevented the full
development of her character at all, was probably owing to the rigid
and severe nature of the education to which she was subjected. The
influence of Erasmus and the fashion of the newly revived classical
learning had in the childhood of Jane Grey firmly seized upon the
higher classes of England; and the ladies of royal and noble birth,
schooled in the stern pietism of _The Instruction of a Christian Woman_
of Luis Vives, which they all studied in Latin or in English, and,
steeped in the classic moralities, they became prim and self-suppressed
in expression and behaviour. It is likely enough, indeed, that in
most cases this prudishness of attitude was but skin deep; but in the
case of the hapless Jane, who was little more than a child when she
was sacrificed, no other impression of her personality than this was
left upon the world. We may picture the tiny demure maiden pacing the
green alleys and smooth sward of Bradgate, with her Latin books and her
exalted religious meditations, a fervent mystic, with no knowledge of
the great world of greed, ambition, and lust, of which she, poor child,
was doomed to be the innocent victim.
CHAPTER II
BIRTH AND EDUCATION
Lady Jane Grey was born at Bradgate Old Manor[10] in October 1537, most
probably in the first days of the month, for Prince Edward, her cousin,
came into the world on the 12th,[11] St. Edward’s Eve, and three days
later Henry, Marquess of Dorset, attended the royal christening, which
he would scarcely have done if his own wife, a member of the royal
family, had not been safely delivered. His presence in London can be
traced in the State Papers from the date of Prince Edward’s birth until
the first week in November. Lady Jane’s christening took place, as was
then the custom, within forty-eight hours of her birth, in the parish
church, with all the ancient rites. Some writers state that the babe
was carried to the font by her grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness;
but this good lady, as we have already seen, was unable at the time to
leave her sick household at Croydon. She sent her new granddaughter a
rich bowl with a chiselled cover. It was the custom at that time, when
a baptism took place, for the whole family, godfathers and godmothers
and guests, to walk in procession from the mansion to the church. As
is still the case in Catholic countries, the number of sponsors in
pre-Reformation times was unlimited. All these worthy people brought
gifts of more or less value, according to the nearness of their kinship
and the length of their purses. The Marquess, if he was present, would
certainly have worn his robes of state and “carried the salt.” At
the church door the christening company was met by the clergy, and
after a short prayer the child was named.[12] The officiating priest
on this occasion was either Mr. Harding, then chaplain at Bradgate,
or else Mr. Cook, Rector of the parish. After being named, the child
was carried to the font, which stood in the middle of the church
under an extinguisher-like canopy, richly carved and painted, which
pulled up and down, so as to keep the holy water clean. In those days
the back of the head and the heels of the infant were immersed in
the water,[13] the present ceremony of sprinkling having only been
introduced into this country from Geneva by the Reformers during
Elizabeth’s reign. The infant was also anointed with chrism on the
back and breast, a very ancient ceremony, the abolition of which
caused considerable controversy and some persecution in the reign of
Henry VIII. This anointing, or unction, which was performed within
the sacred edifice, was followed by the presentation of the gifts of
the various sponsors.[14] Abundant hospitality in the shape of sweet
wafers, comfits, spiced wine, or hippocras was dispensed in the porch,
not only to the invited company, but to the promiscuous village crowd
that elected to attend the function; and at last the procession, with
the infant wrapped in a sort of shawl of rich brocade, returned to the
mansion, where a dinner was served to the guests and to the members of
the household.
The life of an English child in olden times, especially in the upper
classes, was by no means the ideal existence it has now become. A
careful study of contemporary records proves that the barbarous
and filthy system of swathing or “swaddling” an infant was almost
universally practised. We may take it for granted that the baby
Jane Grey was swathed or “swaddled” according to the prevailing
English fashion, from her armpits to her knees, and was thus able at
all events to move her tiny hands and feet, a privilege denied her
infant contemporaries on the Continent. So late as 1684, Madame de
Maintenon, writing to Madame de Présné, who had just been delivered
of a son, beseeches her to “adopt the English method of allowing her
infant’s limbs free play,” and stigmatises the French custom of “tight
swaddling” as “abominably dirty and unhealthy.”
The Lady Frances certainly did not nurse her own baby; it would have
been considered most indecent for a woman of her rank to suckle her
offspring. A foster-mother was engaged, and it is likely enough that
the good woman who supplied little Jane Grey with the sustenance
nature had intended her to derive from her parent, was that Mrs. Ellen
who, seventeen years later, attended her beloved foster-child on the
scaffold.
In her eighteenth month the child was weaned, and this was attended
by some considerable ceremony. In the morning Mass was said in the
presence of the whole family, including the foster-mother and the
child, who was blessed with holy water. This finished, the company
returned in procession to the hall and forthwith sat down to a copious
banquet.
The archives of Sudeley Castle contain an interesting description of
an aristocratic nursery in the first half of the sixteenth century.
Queen Katherine Parr, having married Admiral Lord Thomas Seymour, lived
at Sudeley, where she died in September 1548, after giving birth to a
child, for whom was provided an apartment very elaborately furnished
with tapestry, and containing everything a modern infant of the highest
rank could possibly want, all in silver or pewter, and, moreover, a
“chair of state” hung with cloth of gold.
The Lady Frances’s nursery was, no doubt, fitted up quite as
luxuriously as that prepared for the infant of Queen Katherine Parr;
but no inventory of its contents has been handed down to us. Nearly
all the toys commonly used in England at this period were made either
in France or Holland, and closely resembled those grotesque playthings
which were our grandparents’ delight: wooden dolls with roughly painted
heads and jointed limbs, hobby horses, hoops, and even toy soldiers
mounted on movable slides. Jane must have had an abundance of these
nursery treasures, besides an oaken cradle with rockers and also a
sort of little perambulator, wherein she might be carried to take the
air in the park and gardens. She had a complete household, consisting
of Mrs. Ellen, two under-nurses, a governess, two waiting women, and
two footmen. Sometimes, but very rarely, the voice of nature may
have prompted her mother and father to play with her and enjoy those
exquisite moments of purest love common alike to prince and peasant.
Her babyhood may have been fairly happy, but when that ended, the stern
training which prevailed in every aristocratic family of the period
began in all its severity: long prayers, tedious lessons, and that
terrible “cramming” system which as often as not engendered premature
physical decline and even imbecility. The tiny princess, from her
third year upwards, was dressed like a little old lady, in miniature
reproduction of her mother, coif and all complete, an exceedingly
irksome garb for so very small a child. Even when full-grown, Jane,
like her sister Katherine, was of very diminutive stature; and their
youngest sister, Mary, was an actual dwarf, “not bigger, when over
thirty, than a child of ten.”
The greater part of the Lady Jane’s[15] infancy was spent at Bradgate
with her little sisters--Katherine, two years her junior; and Mary,
six years younger than herself. A Mrs. Ashly, sister or sister-in-law
to the Mrs. Ashly, or Astley, who acted in the same capacity to
Princess Elizabeth, was appointed to attend as governess upon Jane and
her sisters; but of this lady little is known, whereas Elizabeth’s
governess is, of course, frequently mentioned as a woman of great
importance. It was evidently not until the Lady Jane had been named
in Henry VIII’s will as a possible successor to his throne that any
particular attention was paid to her instruction, and then only for
purely political purposes. Her two sisters received but an ordinary
education, and Jane herself must have been between nine and ten years
of age when she was handed over to Queen Katherine Parr to begin her
more important studies. No doubt the Dorsets secretly intended their
eldest daughter to become Edward VI’s consort and to rule the kingdom
through her, and her education therefore became a matter of great
importance to them, as they wished her to be thoroughly equipped to
hold the high station they desired her to occupy. In religion she
was to be exceedingly Protestant, but in social matters her training
was most varied, including music and classical and modern languages,
even Hebrew and, if we may credit some of her enthusiastic eulogists,
Chaldee!!
The royal birth of the Marchioness of Dorset and the great wealth of
her lord placed their family in a very exceptional position in the
county. Here, as also in London, they maintained semi-regal state. No
one could compete with them, and although they received much company,
especially at Christmas time, they rarely mixed with their neighbours,
and when they did so condescend, they were invariably received with
all the ceremony due to royalty. When, for instance, the Marquess of
Dorset and his lady visited Leicester, they were entertained with great
ceremony. In the archives of that city for 1540 there is a charge of
“two shillings and sixpence for strawberries and wine for my Lady
Marchioness’s Grace, for Mistress Mayoress and her sisters.” Also,
on the occasion of another visit, “Four shillings” were paid “to the
pothicary for making a gallon of Ippocras,[16] that was given to my
Lady’s Grace, Mistress Mayoress and her sisters, and to the wives of
the Aldermen of Leicester, who gave the said ladies, moreover, wafers,
apples, pears, and walnuts at the same time.” From another record, of
the city of Lincoln, we learn that the Dorset family when on its way
to London frequently put up at the White Hall Inn for the night, their
expenses being paid by the town. There is also an entry specifying the
expenses for entertaining the Lady Jane Grey when on her way to London
and on her return journeys through Leicester to Bradgate in 1548 and
1551.
There was much in the stately mode of life led by our great aristocracy
in the sixteenth century which has not even now passed altogether out
of fashion. At certain seasons of the year, it appears, the family
resided in the main building of the mansion and kept up a state almost
equal in magnificence to that of a royal Court. A great number of
servants--as many as eighty or a hundred--were maintained, and these,
being very ignorant, often formed a rather disorderly crew. They
received very small wages; but as they wore brilliant liveries, and
served as an escort to their masters when they went abroad, they made a
highly picturesque appearance. Few people, even in the upper circles of
society, could read or write with ease; and as there were no newspapers
and scarcely any books, no correspondence, and but few visits to fill
up leisure time, the men’s sports were mainly those of the field, so
that large hunting and hawking parties were the general order of the
day. The ladies were frequently invited to share these pursuits; and
the Lady Frances was well known in Leicestershire in her day as a great
huntress and a skilful archeress.
Hospitality, if barbaric, was none the less sumptuous. Tablecloths
and napkins were already in use, and “damask” was pretty generally to
be seen in the houses of the wealthy; while the plate belonging to
the great nobility was not only very costly, but exceedingly artistic
in design. Then as now, it was the custom to pass the winter months
in the country and the summer in London. During the hunting season
Bradgate was thrown open to a throng of guests, and since the mistress
of the house was niece to the reigning sovereign, many of these were of
princely rank, including Princess Mary, who was on very friendly terms
with her cousin Frances and her children. It is not at all unlikely
that when the family gathered in the great hall of an evening, dances,
masques, and other pastimes of a more boisterous kind, described as
“romps and jigs,” were indulged in. On occasion, players were summoned
from London, and displayed their skill in representing those rough and
unformed plays which delighted our ancestors until the more shapely
Elizabethan drama came into being.[17]
People rose and retired to rest earlier in Tudor days than we do
now, especially in summer, when breakfast was served as early as six
o’clock, dinner at ten, and supper at five. Tea and coffee were as
yet undiscovered, and light home-brewed ale was the usual breakfast
beverage. Such very young ladies as Lady Jane Grey would be served at
this meal with a cup of hot milk and sometimes with a sort of mead, or
barley water, heated and spiced. During Lent breakfast consisted of
bread, with salt fish, ling, turbot and eels, fresh whitings, sprats,
beer and wine. At other seasons there were chines of beef, roast
breast of mutton or boiled mutton, butter, cooked eggs, custard, pies,
jellies, etc., as well as chickens, ducks, swan, geese, and game.[18]
Dinner came at noon, and it was customary in large country houses to
close the gates while the whole establishment sat down, according
to rank, in the great hall. Sometimes a slight alteration was made,
two tables being set in the dining-room, at the first of which sat
the lord and his family, with such titled guests as they might be
entertaining, while the second was occupied by “knights and honourable
gentlemen.” In such a case the tables in the great hall were generally
three, the first for the steward, comptroller, secretary, master of
the house, master of the fish-ponds, the tutor--if one was attached
to the family--and such gentlemen as happened to be under the degree
of a knight. In a very large household it frequently happened that as
many as a hundred and fifty or two hundred people would sit down to eat
at one and the same time, but in most castles, halls, and manors the
ladies of the family, excepting on state occasions, ate apart from the
men, a separate table being laid for them, and for the chaplain, in
the ladies’ chamber, while two others were laid in the housekeeper’s
room for the ladies’ women. The Lady Frances usually partook of her
dinner in solitary state, waited upon by young gentlewomen and, when
they were old enough to do so, by her two elder daughters, who stood on
either side of her until she had finished, when they in their turn sat
down and were served by gentlewomen. In their infancy, the children,
attended by their nurses and gentlemen and women, dined with the
housekeeper in her chamber.
All meals were somewhat disorderly, for, forks not being in general
use, it was the custom for the gentlemen to pick the daintiest scraps
out of the common dish with the tips of their fingers, and place them
gallantly upon the platters of the ladies seated nearest them. It was
considered ill-bred to lick one’s fingers after this act of courtesy.
Proper behaviour was to wipe them daintily upon a sort of napkin or
serviette, sometimes, as in Japan, made of tissue paper.
Grace was said both before and after meals, and as most large houses
had several chaplains and a choir for the service of the chapel,
it was usual for one of the priests, accompanied by three or four
of the choristers wearing their surplices, to enter the hall and
solemnly chant the _Benedicite_ or Grace, which until Edward VI’s time
invariably concluded with a petition for the release of the souls in
Purgatory. It was considered impolite to talk during a repast unless
addressed by the master or mistress of the feast. The chaplain was
employed to read aloud either the Gospel of the day or a chapter from
that enlivening work _The Martyrology_. Occasionally a minstrel was
invited to sing an interesting ballad or tell a story; otherwise the
clinking of the knives was the only sound heard during meals, which,
however copious, were invariably dispatched with the utmost speed.
In proportion to the amount of meat very little bread was consumed.
“The English bolt their food in dead silence,” remarked the Venetian
Ambassador Giustiniani, “and, bread being dear, eat very sparingly
of it. They throw their chicken bones under the table when they have
sucked them clean.”
When supper, a meal which corresponds with our late dinner, was over,
evening prayers were said, and soon afterwards, on ordinary occasions,
everybody retired to rest. It should be remembered that artificial
light was exceedingly costly and inadequate, as indeed it remained
until the beginning of the later half of the nineteenth century. Many
who are still in the prime of life can remember the rush tallow dips
made and used in old-fashioned country houses and farms in their
childhood. In the sixteenth century these were the only lights to be
had, except oil lamps and wax candles imported at immense expense from
France and Italy, and only kindled on high days and holidays.[19] Resin
torches were burnt in the great hall; but many complained of the stench
and smoke, so that an early departure to bed was not only wise but
necessary.
It may perhaps be concluded that we who live at the beginning of the
twentieth century would have found life in an English manor in Tudor
days insufferably dull and monotonous. Yet there were compensations.
Outdoor exercises were many and various. There was the tennis-court,
bowls and quoits were much in vogue, and our forefathers practised
many other excellent sports, some of which we might well revive. There
was hawking, then in the zenith of its popularity; hunting, archery,
slinging, mase or “prisoner’s bars,” wrestling, tennis, of which game
Henry VIII was exceedingly fond; fivestool ball, football, and golf.
Cricket does not seem to have been known, at all events under its
present name; but there were a score or so of other popular games
and sports, some of which, such as duck-hunting, dog-fighting, and
cock-fighting, were exceedingly barbarous. The cruel sport of trying
on horseback to pull off the greased head of a living duck or goose
suspended by the legs from a cross beam was exceedingly popular at
this time.[20] Edward VI, in his _Journal_, mentions it in an entry
dated 4th June 1550: “Sir Robert Dudley, third surviving son of the
Earl of Warwick, was married this day to Sir John Robsart’s daughter,
after which marriage there were certain gentlemen on horseback that did
strive who should first carry away a goose’s head that was hanged alive
on two cross-posts.” Can we imagine the whole Court of England, King
included, assisting at this childish and cruel spectacle?
The Marquess of Dorset and his family did not spend the whole year at
Bradgate; political and social duties brought them a great deal to
London, especially in the early spring and summer months. In London
they inhabited a mansion at Westminster, not far from Whitehall Palace.
The town residence of the Marquess of Dorset was not, as usually
stated, situated in Grey’s Inn. At no time did his branch of the family
of Grey possess property in or near the Inn which bears their name;
it belonged from a remote period to the house of Grey de Wilton, who
sold it, in Edward IV’s time, to the Carthusians of Sheen, from whom
it was confiscated at the Dissolution and subsequently granted by the
Crown for the purpose which it still serves. Thus Grey’s Inn did not
fall to Lady Frances, although she was presented by her uncle the King
with nearly all the other property owned by the Carthusians in and
around London. It has also been said that the Marquess of Dorset had
a house in Salisbury Place, Fleet Street, but this is another popular
error. This property passed to the _Earls_ of Dorset in 1611 and is
connected, not with Lady Jane and her family, but with many worthies
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Henry, Marquess of Dorset,
had his town residence on the Thames above Whitehall,[21] precisely
where stood, until quite recently, Dorset Place--the name by which the
house was known in Lady Jane’s time. After the execution of Suffolk
it was seized by the Crown and eventually, in the last days of the
sixteenth century, cut up into three separate houses, one of which was
inhabited by John Locke the philosopher, who died in it. By a curious
coincidence, Locke had previously lived at Salisbury Square. Dorset
Place must have been a very large house; we know from contemporary
evidence that it had a fine garden and a broad terrace overlooking the
Thames. Here Lady Jane Grey certainly lived for a good many months
of her life, and here she formed the acquaintance of the Reformers
Bullinger and Ulmer, or ab Ulmis. She may also have lived for a time in
yet another house owned by the Marquess, near the Temple, of which no
trace now exists.
The Dorsets were in the habit, especially in the winter season, of
paying country visits to their numerous relatives--to Princess Mary
at Newhall; to the Lady Frances’ stepmother, Katherine, Duchess of
Suffolk, at Wollaton; to Dorset’s sister, the Lady Audley, at Walden;
to his orphan wards and cousins the Willoughbys, at Tylsey; and to Lady
Jane’s paternal grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness of Dorset, either
at her house at Croydon or at Tylsey, where at one time she presided
over the household of the young Willoughbys.
The entertainment of such important personages must often have been a
doubtful pleasure to hosts of limited means, for they never stirred
abroad without a numerous escort of male and female servants and a
guard of thirty or forty retainers mounted on horseback and armed
to the teeth. Carriages were but little used as yet, and people of
quality had to journey from place to place on horseback, the elderly
ladies being provided with the quaintest but most inconvenient and
perilous of side saddles, while the young girls and children rode
pillion either in front of or behind their nearest male relatives or
some trusty yeoman. In cold or damp weather the ladies and children
and their female attendants travelled in a huge and very heavy covered
vehicle[22] not unlike a Turkish _araba_ or a modern omnibus in shape.
This was furnished with leathern curtains and lined with mattresses and
cushions, and could often contain as many as twelve persons, six on
either seat facing each other. To protect themselves from the cold the
ladies wore cloaks and vizors, or “safeguards.”[23] The first genuine
statute for repairing roads dates only from 1668. Before that the roads
were, like those of modern Turkey, universally execrable, and over them
this ponderous vehicle, with its enormous wheels, moved at a snail’s
pace: it is not surprising that most people preferred the hackney,
even in winter time. Yet in spite of all its inconveniences, this
old-world fashion of travel was not without charm, especially in genial
weather, when the passage of a lordly cavalcade added much to the life
of our highways and verdant lanes and lent to the ever lovely English
landscape a picturesqueness and a gaiety which modern civilisation
can never hope to restore. On the other hand, delicate folk must have
dreaded these excursions, and it is not surprising to learn that on
one occasion, in 1550, after a ten hours’ ride in very bad weather to
Newhall, on a visit to Princess Mary, the Lady Jane was taken very ill,
and kept her room for many days.
The Dissolution of the monasteries and the general troubles of the
Church had no doubt greatly attenuated the quaintness of English life
on the high roads by the time Jane had attained girlhood. No longer did
the Lord Abbot or Prior, with his princely train of ecclesiastics on
their gaily caparisoned horses and mules, pass through the leafy lanes
on their way to pay visits of duty or ceremony. Lady Jane can never
have seen the Abbot of Leicester, for instance, he who attended the
death-bed of Wolsey, go forth with all his monks to pay his respects
to the Prior of the rich house of Ulverston, for both abbeys were
suppressed before she was a year old. She was not familiar with the
begging friars, with their sacks and their jokes; and the pardoner, the
palmer, and the pilgrim had also faded into the near past long before
she began to toddle on the green slopes of Bradgate. Still she must
have often witnessed the procession on Corpus Christi, when her own
native village was enlivened by garlands of flowers and on every house
front hung a linen sheet decked with bunches of bright flowers. She may
even have walked with the rest of the children of high and low degree
in the annual procession of Our Lady on Assumption Day, for throughout
the reign of Henry VIII this festival was observed.
The roads were still full of colour in the summer months, with packmen
and peddlers, troops of armed men--not unfrequently dragging along
between them some poor wretch, tied by the wrists, to his fiery doom
at Leicester or London--with travelling caravans, with itinerant
mountebanks and jugglers, and occasionally with a troop of showmen
hastening to exhibit dancing bears or learned dogs and pigs at some
neighbouring village fair.
The suppression of the monasteries had a disastrous effect on
travelling in Henry VIII’s time, comparable only to what would happen
nowadays if all the first-class hotels in the country were suddenly
closed. The Marquess and Marchioness of Dorset, as they journeyed
with their children from Bradgate to London, must have heartily
regretted the hospitality they had enjoyed in their own young days at
many a lordly abbey and wealthy priory now laid in ruins. The inns
were picturesque enough, but none too luxurious; still the beds were
generally comfortable, and the cooking, according to the taste of the
day, was excellent. Conti, an Italian traveller who visited England
some few years after Henry VIII’s death, was much struck by the
cleanliness of the parlours and the softness of the feather beds he met
with in our country hostelries. The fare, too, he found abundant, and
the wines, “sack,” and beers often of superlative quality--facts to
which Shakespeare has not failed to allude. The innkeepers were great
gainers by the Dissolution, for such rich travellers as did not care to
trouble their peers looked to them for board and lodging now that they
were no longer able to put up at a religious house. We may be sure that
the Dorsets and their people were familiar and welcome guests at all
the chief inns along the roads they travelled.
Aylmer, who became Bishop of London in Elizabeth’s time, is usually
described as Lady Jane’s earliest tutor. This is a patent error,
for Aylmer, who was born in 1521, would have been far too young, in
Jane’s infancy, to be appointed tutor to the children of the Marquess
of Dorset. It is more likely that Dr. Harding, who was chaplain at
Bradgate when Jane was born, had the honour of teaching his patron’s
daughters their alphabet. He was reputed a learned man, and posed
at one time as a staunch Protestant; but he resembled his employers
in having a chameleon-like facility for changing the colour of his
opinions according to the state of the religious barometer in regal
quarters. Under Henry VIII he was a schismatic and a firm believer
in transubstantiation and in the wisdom of invoking saints; when
Edward came to the throne he turned _quasi_-Calvinist. Very early in
Mary’s reign he became, much to the unspeakable horror of Lady Jane,
a penitent Papist. Aylmer, a far more estimable man and a greater
scholar, appeared on the scene at Bradgate as tutor after the accession
of King Edward, when Jane was in her twelfth year and ripe to receive
his learned instruction in theology and classic lore.
CHAPTER III
THE LADY LATIMER
No task is more congenial to the earnest student of history than that
of tracing the origin of some important event, and following its
gradual development from a trivial incident to its culmination in
a great matter destined to alter the fortunes, and even change the
faith, of an entire nation. If we would reach a thorough comprehension
of the chain of events which led up to the proclamation of Jane Grey
as Queen of England, we must now leave her to pursue her Greek and
Latin studies and broider her samplers at Bradgate, while we trace
the earlier fortunes of those who so ruled her destiny as to compel a
simple-hearted and naturally retiring girl to accept a station which,
by the time she was constrained to relinquish it, brought her to the
lowest depths of misfortune and transformed the regal diadem which she
herself had never coveted into a crown of martyrdom.
The Lady Latimer, better known in history as Queen Katherine Parr,
influenced the fortunes of Lady Jane Grey more than is usually
imagined, for it was to her care that the ten-year-old child was
committed (after it had been proposed by the Seymour faction that she
should become Queen-Consort of Edward VI and head of the Protestant
party in England), in order that her education might be directed
and her mind bent towards “the new learning” of which Katherine was
secretly a supporter.
Born in 1513 at that lordly Kendal Castle whose ruins still command one
of the loveliest prospects in Westmoreland, Katherine Parr, though a
simple gentlewoman, could boast royal blood--that of our Anglo-Saxon
kings, inherited from her paternal ancestor Ivo de Talbois, who married
Lucy, the sister of the renowned Earls Morcar and Edwin. She was also
of Plantagenet descent through her great-great-grandmother Alice
Nevill, sister to Cicely Nevill, Duchess of York, a lineage that made
her cousin four times removed to King Henry VIII himself. We will not
enter in detail into the many alliances of the Parr family with the
Nevills, Stricklands, Throckmortons, and Boroughs, but we are safe in
describing it as a wealthy and honourable county stock, much looked up
to in those days.
Katherine’s father, Sir Thomas Parr, married, when his bride was but
little over thirteen, Maud Green, daughter of the rich Sir Thomas Green
of Boughton and Greens-Norton in Northamptonshire. Lady Parr had a
sister, Mary, who, when a mere child, married Lord Vaux of Harrowden,
and, dying without issue, left her splendid fortune to her sister Maud.
Lady Parr’s eldest son, born before his mother was fifteen, was the
celebrated Sir William Parr, ultimately Earl of Essex and Marquess of
Northampton. Her next child mated with Mr. William Herbert, who was
raised to the peerage in 1551 by Edward VI as Earl of Pembroke six
weeks before the death of his wife. Katherine, the third and youngest
child of Sir Thomas and Lady Parr, was destined to occupy the perilous
position of sixth Queen-Consort to King Henry VIII. When she was a mere
child, the proverbial gipsy-woman predicted that “she should one day
wear a crown, and not a cap; and wield a sceptre, not a distaff.”[24]
Sir Thomas Parr died in London in 1517, leaving very scant provision
for his two daughters, the bulk of his fortune having been settled
upon his wife and son; but both young ladies married wealthy men, and
thus were not seriously affected by their lack of means. Anne married
at fifteen; and Katherine, long before she was fourteen, was led to
the hymeneal altar by Lord Borough of Cantley Hall, Gainsborough,
Yorkshire. The bridegroom had already been twice married, and so great
was the disparity of age between the couple that Lady Borough was wont
to call her eldest stepdaughter “little mother.” Two years after her
marriage Katherine became a widow with a very handsome dower. Much
of her time of mourning was spent at Sizergh Castle in Westmoreland,
the seat of her kinsfolk the Stricklands, where she left several fine
specimens of her skill as a needlewoman--notably a gorgeous white satin
quilt embroidered with gold--which are still preserved in an apartment
known as Queen Katherine’s Room.
We are fortunate in possessing a good many portraits of this lady,
and at least one wonderful miniature, formerly in the Strawberry
Hill Collection, and which now belongs to Mr. Brocklehurst-Dent of
Sudeley Castle. This contains a likeness of Henry VIII painted in a
space not bigger than a pin’s head, on a tiny medallion suspended
round the Queen’s neck. A strong magnifying glass is required to do
justice to the beauty of this microscopic miniature within a miniature,
probably the smallest ever executed. Judged by all these portraits
and by contemporary descriptions, Katherine Parr must have been a
pretty little woman with delicate features, an intellectual brow--too
amply developed for beauty--fox-coloured eyes, and a rather cunning
expression about the thin yet flexible mouth. When her body was
disinterred in 1786[25] it was found not to be decomposed, and measured
exactly five feet and three inches. The hair, very long and curling
naturally, was of a fine golden auburn.
[Illustration: QUEEN KATHERINE PARR
AFTER THE PAINTING FORMERLY IN THE POSSESSION OF HORACE WALPOLE]
History does not record the names of the tutors who assisted
Katherine Parr to acquire her remarkable education and numerous
accomplishments. We may suppose that some priest or monk chaplain at
Kendal or Sizergh instructed her in Latin and Greek, in both of which
languages she was proficient. She may have learnt French from Mr.
Bellemain, French tutor to Prince Edward, a pronounced Huguenot, who,
notwithstanding his unorthodoxy, was in high favour at Henry’s Court,
received a pension from Edward after he ascended the throne, and walked
in the young King’s funeral procession. She mastered the language
sufficiently to be able to write it and speak it correctly, and even
to record her sentimental impressions in tolerable verse. Amongst the
MSS at Hatfield there is a curious French poem, partly written by
Katherine and partly by another, probably her teacher. It opens with
the following verse in the Queen’s handwriting:--
“Considerant ma vie miserable
Mon cœur marboin, obstine, intraitable,
Outrecuide tant, que non seullement,
Dieu n’estimoit ny son commandement.”
The concluding verse runs:--
“Qui prepare vous est devinement
Ainsi que le monde eust son commencement
Au Pere au Filz au Saint Esprit soit gloire
Loz et honneur d’eternelle memoire. FINIS.”[26]
Katherine’s handwriting, though clear and legible, is not to be
compared with that of Elizabeth, King Edward, and Jane Grey, who very
probably took lessons in the then much esteemed art of caligraphy from
Dr. Cheke, chief tutor to the Prince, or from Ascham, both famous for
the beauty of their penmanship.
Although very worldly, Katherine Parr was much preoccupied with
theological disputations, and a distinctly evangelical tone pervades
her literary remains; it is nevertheless certain that during the
lifetime of her second husband, Lord Latimer, she was, or pretended
to be, a Catholic, and that during the few years of her married life
with Henry VIII she was a schismatic or “Henryite.” Tact and prudence
were her leading characteristics, and she was both amiable and
conciliatory, though she could, when angered, be extremely vindictive.
Thomas Cromwell’s downfall, usually attributed to the machinations of
Katherine Howard, was in reality mainly due to those of Katherine Parr,
for she it was, as we shall presently see, who opened Henry VIII’s eyes
to the prodigious rapacity and unpopularity of his favourite chancellor.
Lord Latimer, the lady’s second spouse, like Lord Borough, had been
twice married, and when he took her to wife was already the father
of several children. The date of this marriage has not been handed
down to us, but as Latimer lost his second wife in 1526, it could
not have taken place earlier than 1527. He was a staunch Catholic
of the belligerent sort, and a prominent leader of the Pilgrimage
of Grace, an insurrection that broke out in the North of England in
1536 in consequence of the popular displeasure at the suppression of
the monasteries and sequestration of church property. The peasants,
suddenly deprived of the monks’ accustomed charity and driven
to desperation, began a local crusade, which soon assumed large
proportions, their ranks being joined by a great number of noblemen
and gentlemen belonging to the old faith, amongst them the Archbishop
of York, Lord Nevill, Lord Darcy, Lord Latimer, Sir Stephen Hamerton,
Sir Robert Constable, a certain mysterious individual who called
himself the “Earl of Poverty,” and Robert Aske, who though of mean
extraction was nevertheless considered by the rest of his party as
their nominal general. These motley pilgrims increased in numbers
as they swept southwards in picturesque confusion; but despite the
enthusiasm of their members, they seem to have been ill-disciplined
and badly organised, and were presently dispersed at Dunstable, thanks
to the conciliatory attitude of the Duke of Norfolk, whom the King had
empowered to treat with these rebels and disband them. Latimer, who had
been elected their spokesman, withdrew almost immediately and returned
to London, where he soon afterwards resumed his post as Comptroller of
the King’s Household. After this excursion into open revolt against
his sovereign, Lord Latimer evidently deemed it prudent to keep himself
very much in the background: he did not join the second Pilgrimage of
Grace, which broke out in the following February (1537) and terminated
in the execution by sword and fire of some seventy of its more
prominent members, among them old Lord Derby, who was over eighty-three
years of age.
When in London, Lord Latimer inhabited a house situated in the
churchyard of the Charterhouse. The Chartreuse, as it was then called,
was rather a fashionable place of residence, being not far distant
from Clerkenwell, which in King Henry’s time was a sort of Court
suburb, such as Kensington became in the eighteenth century. From a
letter still extant, it would appear that Lord Latimer, like many a
modern nobleman and gentleman, was in the habit of letting his mansion
furnished when he himself was absent at Snape Hall, his country seat
in Yorkshire. Sir John Russell, Lord Privy Seal, who looked meek
enough[27] but was popularly known as “Swearing Russell” on account
of his profane language, wrote in January 1537 requesting Latimer to
allow a friend of his to have the loan of his house in the “Chartreuse”
during his absence. Latimer dared not refuse, but his answer betrays
his reluctant compliance with the request and some temper at the favour
having been asked:--
“RIGHT HONOURABLE AND MY ESPECIAL GOOD LORD,--After my most
hearty recommendations had to your good Lordship. Whereas your
Lordship doth desire ... [effaced] of your friends my house within
Chartreuse churchyard, beside so ... [effaced] I assure your
Lordship the getting of a lease of it costs me 100 marcs, besides
other pleasures [_i.e._ “improvements”] that I did to the house;
for it was much my desire to have it, because it stands in good
air, out of press of the city. And I do alway lie there when I come
to London, and I have no other house to lie at. And, also, I have
granted it to farm [_i.e._ “have let it”] to Mr. Nudygate,[28]
son and heir to serjeant Nudygate, to lie in the said house
in my absence; and he to void whensoever I come up to London.
Nevertheless I am contented if it can do your Lordship any pleasure
for your friend, that he lie there forthwith. I seek my lodgings
at this Michaelmas term myself. And as touching my lease, I assure
your Lordship it is not here; but I shall bring it right to your
Lordship at my coming up at this said term, and then and alway I
shall be at your Lordship’s commandment, as knows our Lord, Who
preserve your Lordship in much honour to His pleasure. From Wyke,
in Worcestershire, the last day of September.--Your Lordship’s
assuredly to command,
“JOHN LATIMER”
“To the right honourable and very especial good lord, my Lord Privy
Seal.”[29]
Lord Latimer died in February 1543, a twelvemonth after the execution
of Queen Katherine Howard, leaving his widow the manors of Nunmonkton
and Hamerton for life, and his mansion in the Charterhouse for as
long as she should remain a widow. As soon as her husband was safely
buried in St. Paul’s Churchyard, Katherine began to indulge her leaning
towards what was then known as the “new learning”; and her house
became the resort of the leaders of a movement which was eventually
to complete the Reformation in England. These gentlemen were wont,
it is said, to assemble at regular intervals and hold conferences
on religious subjects in the presence, not only of Katherine and
her household, but of a select circle of great ladies, among them
Katherine’s sister, Anne Herbert, and the charming Katherine, Duchess
of Suffolk, the fourth wife of Lady Jane’s singular grandfather, who
were only too willing, notwithstanding the risk they ran, to sit at
the feet of a Coverdale, a Latimer, or a Parkhurst. Religion, however,
sat lightly on this clever Duchess, who--so brilliant, witty, and
amusing are her letters--might well claim to be the precursor in the
epistolary art of Madame de Sévigné. To these pious gatherings of the
widow Latimer came likewise the haughty and turbulent Anne Stanhope,
Countess of Hertford, who in due time, as wife of the Protector,
was to be Duchess of Somerset and Katherine Parr’s arch-enemy;
Lady Denny,[30] wife of Sir Andrew Denny, Privy Councillor to Henry
VIII; the Lady Fitzwilliam,[31] wife of Sir William Fitzwilliam, and
acknowledged to be one of the ablest women of her time; and the Lady
Tyrwhitt,[32] who came very near martyrdom for her heretical opinions,
in the last year of Henry’s life. The Countess of Sussex,[33] second
wife of Henry Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex, was likewise one of Lady
Latimer’s _intimes_. This lady’s alleged familiarity with the black
art eventually led to her being charged with witchcraft, in 1552, and
imprisoned in the Tower, from which durance she was delivered six
months later by order of the Duke of Northumberland. The Marchioness of
Dorset may also have assisted at Lady Latimer’s religious exercises,
which, although noticed by her contemporaries as matters of general
knowledge, seem to have temporarily escaped the unpleasant attention of
King Henry’s chief heretic-hunters. The Lady Frances was certainly on
the most friendly terms with Lady Latimer, and so too was Princess Mary.
Another guest there was at the Charterhouse who probably came when the
house was quiet, the voices of the preachers hushed, and the great
ladies returned to their respective domiciles. This was Sir Thomas
Seymour, the late Queen Jane’s second brother, who was considered the
Adonis of the Court. Lady Latimer seems to have been deeply enamoured
of his good looks and stalwart figure; but it is not unlikely that it
was her rich dower, rather than herself, that tempted Sir Thomas. Be
this as it may, the intimacy which began about this period, paved the
way to the tragic close of the handsome courtier’s chequered career.
Seymour appears to have proposed to the widow three months after Lord
Latimer’s death, and she seems to have rejected him “pleasantly,”
saying “some one higher than he had asked her to be his wife.” For all
that, Sir Thomas had certainly made a deep impression on her heart, a
fact all the more remarkable since he was in every way the opposite to
herself: she was learned and sedate--he was gay and profligate; the
lady loved rich but sober attire--the gentleman blazed with brilliant
satins and silks and cloth of gold and silver, setting his brother
courtiers the fashion as to the wearing of their jewels and the number
of feathers they should sport in their caps. Still, the advantage of
the alliance was obvious, for though not a rich man, he was a great
favourite with the King, his potent brother-in-law, and further, he
was the second member of the rising house of Seymour, which many
predicted--in the event of any accident happening to His Majesty,
whose health was fast declining--would at once assume a preponderating
position at his successor’s Court.
But although Lady Latimer must have been acquainted with every
detail of the conspiracy organised by the Seymours against the
house of Howard, of which the first fruit was the revelation of the
unfortunate Queen Katherine Howard’s misconduct, she does not seem
to have hesitated for a moment in her determination to become Queen
of England, even at the sacrifice of her passion for Thomas Seymour,
which, all-absorbing as it was, never diverted her from the two
great objects of her ambition: her own political influence, and the
ultimate advancement of the Reformation. She cannot be described as a
Protestant, for in her time that word was not yet coined. During her
second husband’s lifetime she must have concealed her “advanced views,”
and when she became Queen she was--outwardly at least--a schismatic,
who attended as many as three and four Masses daily. Henry VIII rarely
heard less than three, and sometimes as many as five Masses every day,
and what is more, obliged every official of his Court and household,
high and low, to do the same. How she first attracted his attention
has never transpired; but as a great Court lady she must have been in
frequent and immediate relations with the sovereign. The first mention
of her personal dealings with King Henry is connected with trouble in
the Throckmorton family. Owing to some dispute over their respective
country seats, Coughton Court and Oursley, which were contiguous to
one another, her maternal aunt’s husband, Sir George Throckmorton,
had incurred Cromwell’s ill-will. Cromwell, with a view to ruining
his opponent, went so far as to accuse him of conspiring against the
King’s supremacy in ecclesiastical matters. According to an MS. ballad
still preserved in the Throckmorton archives, Lady Latimer interceded
with His Majesty for her uncle, and obtained full justice for him. At
the same time she contrived the overthrow of Cromwell, whose title of
Essex was eventually conferred upon her brother, Sir William Parr, who
married Anne Bourchier, only daughter of the last Earl of Essex of the
original branch.
The divorce--based on the futile plea that the King did not find Anne
of Cleves physically attractive[34]--which followed six months after
Henry VIII’s pompous marriage with that lady was accepted by the
philosophical Dutchwoman in a spirit that proved her practical sense
to be stronger than her sentiment. A noble mansion in the country, a
dower of £4000 a year, and precedence over all the great ladies of the
Court, the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth excepted, struck her as more
desirable than an anxious and uncertain struggle to retain the crown
matrimonial which, under somewhat similar circumstances, had proved so
sorry a possession to Queen Katherine of Aragon. None the less, the
Reformers took Anne’s humiliation--she was a Lutheran princess--in much
the same spirit as that which possessed the Catholics at the time of
the momentous divorce of Queen Katherine. The accommodating “daughter
of Cleves,” as she now styled herself, continued to receive friendly
visits from the King even in the halcyon days of his brief matrimonial
alliance with Katherine Howard, and shortly after that wretched
woman’s execution an influential party appears to have been bent, in
Reformation interests, on reconciling King Henry with his repudiated
spouse. Anne herself seems to have been not at all averse to the
scheme; and Marillac, the French Ambassador, who favoured it, found her
on one occasion quite hopeful--“in the best of spirits,” and “thinking
only of amusing herself and of her fine clothes.” But when the matter
of a reunion between the King and his discarded wife was formally
proposed to Cranmer by the Duke of Cleves’ Ambassador, it met with a
flat refusal. The Archbishop knew the good-natured lady’s character
too well to doubt that she was never likely to influence the King or
be of the least use in furthering the Reformers’ interests. In the
meantime, Parliament had urged Henry, for his “comfort’s sake,” to take
unto himself another wife; and at the same time, as if to keep him out
of the way, Sir Thomas Seymour was sent on an embassy to the Queen of
Hungary, and did not return to London until some days after Katherine
Parr’s wedding.
The earliest intimation in the State Papers of the King’s connection
with Katherine is in a letter from Lord Lisle, afterwards Duke of
Northumberland, to Sir William Parr, dated Greenwich, 20th June 1543:--
“My lady Latymer, your sister, and Mrs. Herbert be both here in the
Court with my Lady Mary’s grace and my Lady Elizabeth.” Quite a
friendly party!
On 22nd June 1543 the gorgeous State barges streamed up the Thames from
Greenwich to Hampton Court. On 10th July Cranmer issued a licence for
the King to marry Katherine, Lady Latimer, “in any church or chapel
without issue of banns,” and two days later Henry VIII led Lord
Latimer’s widow to the altar of an upper oratory called “the Quynes
Prevey closet” at Hampton Court Palace. After Low Mass, said by Bishop
Gardiner, the consent of both parties was pronounced in English. The
King, taking the fair bride’s right hand, repeated after the Bishop
the words: “I, Henry, take thee, Katherine, to my wedded wife, to have
and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse (_sic_), for
richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part,
and thereto I plight thee my troth.” Then, unclasping and once more
clasping hands, Katherine likewise said, “I, Katherine, take thee,
Henry, to my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward,
for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health
to be bonayr and buxome in bed and at board, till death us do part, and
thereto I plight unto thee my troth.” The putting on of the wedding
ring and offering of gold and silver followed, and after a prayer the
Bishop pronounced the nuptial benediction.
At the wedding were present, amongst others, Lord Hertford and his
Countess; Sir Anthony Browne; Joan, Lady Dudley; Katherine, Duchess
of Suffolk; Lord John Russell; the King’s niece, the Lady Margaret
Douglas; Mrs. Herbert, the Queen’s sister; and last but not least, the
Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, to whom their stepmother made handsome
presents of money. There is no mention of the Dorsets attending the
wedding, though both were in London at the time. Everybody seemed
delighted, even Wriothesley, who went so far as to write to Suffolk,
then with the army in the north, that “on Thursday last the King
had married the Lady Latimer, a lady in his judgment for virtue and
winsomeness and gentleness most mete for His Highness, who never had
such a wife more agreeable to his harte than she is.” Katherine herself
informed her brother, Sir William Parr, that “it had pleased God to
incline the King’s heart to take her as his wife, which was to her the
greatest joy and comfort that could happen.” Wriothesley enclosed this
letter in one of his own in which he entreated Parr to make himself
worthy of such a sister as the new Queen. Chapuys wrote to the Emperor
on 27th July: “My lady of Cleves has taken great grief and despair at
the King’s espousal of this last wife, who is not, she says, nearly so
beautiful as she, and besides that there is no hope of issue, seeing
that she has been twice married before and no children born to her.”
Richard Hills, “Heretic Hills,” as they called him, in a letter to
Bullinger, the Swiss Reformer, who subsequently became the friend of
Lady Jane Grey, and dated from Strasburg on 26th September, makes the
following very characteristic comments on the King’s sixth marriage:--
“No news but that our King has, within these two months as I have
already written to John Bucer, burnt three godly men in one day.
In July he married the widow of a nobleman named Latimer, and,
as you know, he is always wont to celebrate his nuptials by some
wickedness of this kind.”
The victims alluded to are known as the “Windsor martyrs.” They were
men in humble circumstances named Parsons, Testwood, and Filmer.[35] A
fourth, John Marbeck, who was organist at St. George’s Chapel Royal,
was, it is said, reprieved at the instance of Dr. Casson, Bishop of
Salisbury, and of the Queen, who is also credited with having saved
the life of Dr. Haines, Dean of Exeter, of Sir Philip Hoby and his
wife, and of Sir Thomas Carden, who had been denounced by Dr. London as
spreading heresy even within the precincts of the palace. The result of
the Queen’s action was that London and Simmonds, his coadjutor, were
condemned for perjury, and sentenced to ride round Windsor with their
faces to the horses’ tails--a humiliating punishment which is said to
have caused Dr. London’s death--no great loss to humanity.
To save human life and to alleviate suffering is a meritorious act
that brings its own reward; but in spite of this, and although the
newly made Queen was thus enabled to realise her own influence, she
must have found her honeymoon a season full of dread, revealing as
it did the terrible insecurity of lives dependent on the fiat of so
capricious a tyrant as her royal mate.
CHAPTER IV
THE KING’S HOUSEHOLD
Not Solomon in all his glory--nor Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent of
Istambul--was lodged more sumptuously than Tudor King Henry VIII of
England. When Katherine Parr espoused the much-married monarch, she
found herself mistress of a score of royal palaces, each furnished in
a manner not unworthy of the splendour of Aladdin after that fortunate
youth had gained possession of his magic Lamp, and served by the most
numerous retinue ever brought together in this ancient kingdom of ours.
The Venetian envoys, accustomed to the luxury and artistic elegance
of the Queen of the Adriatic, were fairly dazzled by the sight of the
treasures Henry gathered about him. Although within the space of a
few brief years he suffered vandal hands to rob his country of more
noble abbeys, churches, libraries, and works of art than had been
destroyed by time and foreign and civil war combined since William’s
Conquest, the King’s own artistic sense was highly developed, and he
revelled, with a glee that sometimes verged upon the childish, in pomp
and luxury and all things rare and beautiful.[36] To the confiscated
collections of Wolsey he added the spoils of a hundred monasteries, and
the Inventory of his effects, taken a few days after his death,[37]
fills two enormous folio volumes preserved among the Harleian Papers
in the British Museum. It is written in a round, legible hand, on the
finest paper of the period, and a glimpse of its contents cannot fail
to excite the longing of the _virtuoso_ and to stir the imagination
as effectually as any brilliant page of description in the _Arabian
Nights_. A perusal of these bulky tomes facilitates some partial
conception of the extraordinary magnificence of the Court at which Lady
Jane Grey figured as a child, and whence, no doubt, she derived that
taste for “costlie attire, music and other vanities,” which was to
evoke the unfavourable criticism of her Puritan friends at Zurich and
Strasburg, who exhorted her, if she really desired to save her soul,
to forswear all such trash, and imitate “the simplicity in dress and
modesty in demeanour” practised by her cousin the Princess Elizabeth.
We find hundreds of entries touching bedsteads, tables, card or playing
tables, chairs, couches and footstools of carved ebony, cedar-wood,
walnut, or oak, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, ivory, or rich metal
wirework, and upholstered in silk, satin, velvet, or Florence brocade,
fringed with gold, and even with strings of seed-pearls. Persian and
Turkish carpets, silks and woollen, covered every available space in
corridor, gallery, hall, and bedchamber, and there is mention of one
especially wonderful carpet “of silk,” probably Persian, “nine yards
long by two and a half wide.” One chamber was decorated with “101 yards
of white satin embroidered and fringed with gold,” while the walls of
another were panelled with purple cloth of gold, _i.e._ purple silk
shot with gold.
There must have been some hundreds of complete sets of the costliest
tapestries and arras in the various royal palaces. Wolsey, whose
passion for tapestry as a mural decoration became quite unreasonable,
collected scores of the finest specimens the looms of Italy and
Flanders could produce and lavish outlay secure. After his fall these
remained as he had left them at Hampton Court, where we still admire
the splendid series representing the “Story of Abraham,” designed
by Raphael’s pupil, Bernard van Orly, and another of yet earlier
date illustrating the “Triumphs,” of which three, those of “Death,”
“Renown,” and “Time,” occupy their original positions in Henry VIII’s
Great Watching or Guard Chamber. As we gaze on their faded beauty,
we should remind ourselves that the immense quantity of gold thread
wrought with infinite care and taste into their composition, and now
tarnished, glistened in King Henry’s time in all the glory of its
freshness. In the Audience Chamber at Whitehall many a great Ambassador
may have envied the arras hangings, representing the “Acts of the
Apostles,”[38] from designs by Raphael presented to the King by Pope
Leo X when he gave him the proud title of “Defender of the Faith.”
The walls of three State rooms at Hampton Court were hung “with cloth
of gold, blue cloth of gold, crimson velvet upon velvet, tawny velvet
upon velvet, green velvet figury, and cloth of bawdekin,” a regal
material woven partly of silk and partly of gold. Some of the chief
tapestries at Whitehall represented the “History of Our Lady,” the
“Story of Ahasuerus and Esther,” the “Crucifixion,” the “Story of
Apollo and Daphne,” “St. George and the Dragon,” “Hawking and Hunting
Scenes,” the “Siege of Jerusalem,” and many other like episodes in
sacred and profane history and in mythology. The King would order a
score of sets of tapestry at once, and would spend a sum equal to
£10,000 or £15,000 of our money upon them. The overflow of tapestries,
“picture-hangings,” Oriental silks, Genoa velvets, Florence and Venice
brocades, curtains of French lace, Chinese silks, and costly furniture,
went to the State rooms of the stern old Tower; to Windsor--where a
few remnants of Henry VIII’s belongings still remain; to Woodstock,
to Richmond, to Greenwich, to Oatlands in Surrey--where Prince Edward
often lived; to Newhall to Havering atte Bower--the chief country
seat of Princess Mary; to Hatfield and Enfield Chase--where Princess
Elizabeth spent her girlhood; to the Queen’s dower-houses at Hanworth
and Chelsea; and above all, to that marvel of the age, the new Palace
of Nonesuch, which Henry had built him at Cheam, Surrey.[39] At
Whitehall there were scores of cupboards crammed with gold and silver
plate, and there were ivory and ebony cabinets with crystal doors, in
which glittered strange Italian jewels, and curiosities from all parts
of the then known world. In none of Henry’s palaces does there seem
to have been a gallery exclusively devoted to pictures, such as would
be found in most contemporary Italian and French royal and princely
residences; but there were plenty of pictures or “painted tables,” as
the Inventory quaintly calls them, in nearly every chamber. In 1540
Holbein’s great fresco in the King’s Privy Council Room at Whitehall,
representing King Henry VII and Queen Elizabeth of York in the
background, with Henry VIII and Jane Seymour standing in front, was a
comparatively recent work. The illustrious artist, who died in London
of the plague in 1543, had also designed the ceiling of the “Matted
Gallery,” and covered the walls of the Chapel Royal with frescoes and
arabesques.
The King’s appearance, as he developed from boyhood to manhood and
middle age, might have been studied in scores of presentments of him,
to be met with at every turn: here, a plump little boy, by Mabuse;
there, a singularly handsome fair-haired young man by Paris Bordone;
and yonder, a full-length portrait by Hans Holbein, in which it was
evident that His Majesty was beginning to “put on flesh.” In the
Audience Chamber was a “table” of the monarch painted by Bartolomeo
Penni, wherein the “peepy eyes” and the bloated cheeks of his latter
years were only too faithfully portrayed. Though there were portraits
of nearly all the King’s contemporaries, including one of Charles VIII
of France and another of Charles V, besides a round dozen of Francis
I, the likenesses of the five queens who preceded Katherine Parr
had all been carefully removed, or, as in the case, of Anne Boleyn
and Katherine Howard, destroyed. A cabinet full of relics of Queen
Jane stood, however, in the anteroom of the King’s bedchamber at the
Tower; and at Westminster, in a picture-book, there was a portrait of
this Queen with another of the King facing it on the opposite page.
Among the great “tables” at Whitehall were the “Virgin and Child,” by
Leonardo da Vinci,[40] given to the King by Francis I in exchange for
a picture by Holbein; “St. George and the Dragon,”[41] by Raphael;
“Christina of Denmark,”[42] by Holbein, full length; a portrait, “Like
unto Life,” of “Thomas, Duke of Norfolk,”[43] and “one table of the
King’s Highness trampling upon the papal tiara, whence issues a serpent
with seven heads snorting fire. In the King’s hand is the Bible, and a
sword whereon is written _Verbum Dei_.”[44]
If the art of painting was well represented in the King’s many palaces,
that of music was even more cherished. Page after page in the Royal
Inventory is devoted to “double” and “single” virginals, with cases
inlaid and encrusted with ivory and mother-of-pearl or adorned with
arabesques of gold, studded with gems; while of lutes and flutes,
rebecks and viols, there seems to have been a perfect arsenal. Then
there was a library of over a thousand precious volumes, a sort of
perambulating feast of reason, for in the Household Expenses we find
various sums of money disbursed from time to time for the removal
of boat-loads of books from one palace to another. The number of
gold, silver, bronze, crystal, and glass chandeliers, sconces, and
candlesticks distributed among the royal residences baffles belief.
Each of the two hundred and eighty-four guest-chambers at Hampton
Court boasted a bedstead hung with the richest silk and satin, with a
gorgeously embroidered and wadded counterpane to match, an Oriental
carpet, and a toilet set, ewer, basin, and candlesticks complete,
of massive silver; while one closet at Whitehall was stored with an
immense collection of the choicest German and Venetian glass. Such, in
fact, was the King’s mania for collecting things rich and rare that,
in spite of the hopeless and suffering condition of his health, he was
still “buying,” down to the ultimate week of his life, and some of his
last purchases seem never to have been paid for by his successors.
These contemporary accounts of the Household of Henry VIII strike the
student by their marked resemblance to similar descriptions, by such
writers as Sagrado and Knowles, of the quaint and numerous population
of the Seraglio in the palmy days of the Ottoman Khaliphats. The Tudor
King, like the Grand Turk, had four battalions of pages--pages of the
Outer and of the Inner Court, of the King’s Antechamber, and of the
King’s Presence Chamber; and yet a fifth contingent was attached to
the service of the Queen. These lads, some hundreds in number, had
their captains and even their school-masters; they were mostly of good
family, and were apparelled, according to their rank, in wondrous
State garments either of satin, green and white, the colours of the
house of Tudor, or else of royal scarlet and gold. There was a legion
of Grooms of the Wardrobe, Keepers of the King’s Horse, Sports and
Pastimes, of his Harriers and Beagles, Sergeants-at-Arms, Sergeants
of the Woodyard, Sergeants of the Bakehouse, Sergeants of the Pantry,
Sergeants of the Pastry, Sergeants of the Trumpeters, Yeomen of the
Wardrobe, Yeomen of the Armoury, Yeomen of the Buttery, Yeomen of
the Chamber, Yeomen of the Chariots, of the Cooks, of the Henchmen,
Stables, and Tents. The Royal Chapel was served by a full complement
of chaplains, sub-chaplains, organists, and choir-boys. There were
apothecaries, physicians, astronomers,[45] astrologers, secretaries,
ushers, cup-bearers, carvers, servers, singing-boys, virginal players,
Italian singers and English madrigalists, and a perfect orchestra of
players on the lute, the flute, the rebeck, the sackbut, the harp, the
psalter, and all manner of instruments.
Full fifty cooks and twice as many scullions worked in the spacious
kitchens, and in 1544 we hear of a French pastry-cook of good repute
who rejoiced in the very pleasing and appropriate name of M. Doux. A
regiment of gardeners and under-gardeners trimmed the pleasaunces and
kept the King’s orchards in order.
The dresses and costumes of this army of picturesque, though often
quite useless, folk, numbering some thousands or so, were sufficiently
costly to account in part for the straits of the Royal Exchequer. Their
wages and silks and satins cost the nation, in the last year of Henry
VIII’s reign, £56,700--against £17,280 in the last year of that of his
father; a prodigious increase--when we take into consideration the
relative value of money--and sufficient to explain the depletion of the
coin.
[Illustration: HENRY VIII IN 1548
FROM AN OLD ENGRAVING]
Scarlet, or rather deep red, was the predominant colour of the garments
of King Henry’s retainers, but dark blue and orange, with the white
and light apple green of the house of Tudor, were not lacking, and
added to the kaleidoscopic aspect of the courtyards and staircases,
galleries and audience chamber, in the stately residences of “bluff
King Hal.” One Venetian Ambassador, commenting on the order kept
at the English Court, declared that “everything is regulated as by
clock-work, and no one ever seems to be out of his place.” When the
King condescended to walk abroad, he was attended by a host of superbly
attired courtiers, by his grand equerries and chamberlains, the
Grand Master of his Horse, his almoners, ushers, and physicians; his
fool--Will Somers[46]; his pages, and even by a favourite musician or
so. In the last years of his life, owing to his increasing infirmity,
Henry was sometimes carried upon the shoulders of six sturdy noblemen,
in a kind of _sedia gestatoria_ like the Pope’s. At His Majesty’s
approach every knee was bent, and many who particularly desired to
conciliate his favour “grovelled” face downward as Orientals before
some Eastern despot. The officials and serving-men who prepared the
table for His Majesty’s meals made an obeisance each time they passed
the vacant chair wherein the monarch was presently to seat himself. The
Queen-Consort, and the Princesses, his daughters, knelt whenever they
addressed him. In brief, King Henry, having filched from Peter some of
Peter’s pontifical prerogatives, exacted the same sort of homage as
that paid to the Roman Pontiff, and turned himself from mortal into a
sort of demigod or idol. But foreigners and Catholics noted that though
people knelt as he rode past, His Majesty bestowed no blessing upon
them. This slavish etiquette continued throughout the reign of Edward
VI,[47] but was modified when Mary renounced the titular position of
Head of the Church. Elizabeth, however, demanded, and, what is more,
received, _quasi_-divine honours from her subjects.
Yet another point of resemblance between the Courts of England and the
Ottoman at this period: Whitehall, like the Seraglio, was gay and
brilliant on the surface, but in each case there was an undercurrent of
terror and suspicion. The Tudor Court swarmed with spies and informers,
and often a thoughtless jest, a careless remark, spitefully retailed
at headquarters, would send men or women to the Tower, or even to
the stake. Folks went in fear and trembling lest what they had said
overnight in their cups might be brought home to them with appalling
consequences in the morning. This state of abject and habitual fear
engendered habits of whispering and talking apart and an atmosphere of
mystery, in spite of which the gossip and rumours of the King’s own
chamber passed to the pages, grooms, and serving-men in the courtyards
below, and thence to the general public, as rapidly as news flies
nowadays by telephone and telegraph.
There can be no doubt that Jane Grey, the daughter of one so closely
connected with the throne as was the Marchioness of Dorset, must often
have mingled in the gaudy crowd that thronged her grand-uncle’s palace.
Henry was as “fond of children as he was of pastry,” although, for
obvious reasons, he did not display any overweening affection for his
own offspring. This engaging little niece, now about six years of age,
is likely to have found favour in the monarch’s sight, and Jane Grey,
for all we know, may even have throned it on her dread relative’s
august knee. Cranmer’s hand, too, must have rested in benediction
upon her head, and she may, perchance, have won the smile of Gardiner
and of Bonner. She must often have heard the sick King, who had lost
his own fine voice, accompany his favourite fool, Will Somers, on
the lute, in some song or hymn of his own composition. She must have
been familiar with the two Seymour brothers; with the dreamy face and
austere manner of the Earl of Hertford, and the bluff good-nature of
Sir Thomas. She may even have been tossed in the strong arms of John
Dudley, at this time Lord High-Admiral of England and Viscount de
Lisle, reputed a “magnificent gentleman,” but otherwise of secondary
importance. Wriothesley, Rich, and foredoomed Surrey and his father,
old Norfolk, must often have watched her run along, clinging to her
portly mother’s trailing brocades as she passed on her way to and from
the King’s cabinet, and may even have whispered one to the other that
the little damsel would surely be as good a match for young Prince
Edward as the Scottish Queen’s daughter, Mary Stuart. In the apartment
of her grand-aunt the Queen, where that busy little lady nestled like
a sultana among her innumerable soft pillows and cushions,[48] encased
in cloth of gold and silver, the child Jane must have heard much
evangelical counsel from the erstwhile widow Latimer, who found some
consolation in the gorgeousness of her thraldom for the loss of her
handsome lover, Sir Thomas Seymour.
The Queen’s lodgings were parted from the King’s by a short corridor,
and nearly all her windows overlooked the Thames. Here Katherine Parr
played the housewife, and in the midst of her tapestries and brocades
and her “stretches” of silver and gold cloth, made poultices for
Henry’s ulcered legs, wrote her pious treaties on probity and prayers,
and probably counted the hours till the Lord in His mercy should
deliver her royal spouse from his sore sufferings. In these rooms,
perhaps, Jane Grey sat for her miniature to Lavinia Tyrling; Bartolomeo
Penni may here have limned her diminutive but very pretty features; and
we fancy we can see Mr. Crane or Mr. John Heywood, His Majesty’s chief
virginal players, teaching her the notes upon the King’s “favourite
virginal,” the one “enlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl.” In the last
months of Henry’s life, when Lady Jane is known to have been much with
Katherine Parr, the little girl may have listened with delight to the
wonderful warbling of the King’s Italian singers, Alberto of Venice,
Marc Antonio Galiadello of Brescia, or Giorgio da Cremona, as they
vainly endeavoured to soothe the sufferings of the dying monarch by
their elaborate _cadenze_.
Queen Katherine soon made her influence felt at Court. She could not
control the violent passions of her wayward lord, but she did in a
measure modify them, and steered her own course amid the shoals of
regal existence with consummate skill. No breath of scandal ever
sullied her fair name, though Thomas Seymour, back from his convenient
mission to Hungary, was appointed her Chamberlain, and must have been a
good deal in her company. Even her worst enemies never ventured on that
track. When at a later date they planned a blow, which they hoped would
prove fatal to the Queen, they selected her religious leanings, not her
love affairs, as their fell weapon. Katherine Parr, to her credit, lost
no time in reconciling the King with his hitherto neglected daughters.
Princess Mary was near her own age, and had been intimate with her when
she was Lady Latimer. The Emperor’s Ambassadors praise “the new Queen
for her kindness to the daughter of Katherine of Aragon,[49] who now
takes her proper place at Court.” Elizabeth, too, was summoned from her
suburban retreat, but had not been many weeks under her father’s roof
ere he became so exasperated by her pert obstinacy that he summarily
ordered her back to Enfield. In a few weeks, however, Katherine patched
up the quarrel, and on 24th July 1544 Elizabeth wrote Her Majesty, in
Italian, a most graceful letter of thanks for her good offices.[50]
Edward was too delicate to be much in London, but none the less his
stepmother looked after his health with so much “gentleness” that she
soon won his sincere affection and lasting goodwill. He wrote her
letters in Latin, French, and Italian, addressed to his _charisima
Mater_, and full of praise for her beautiful penmanship, which, on
comparison, proves greatly inferior both to his own and to that of
either Elizabeth or Jane Grey. Katherine induced her stepdaughter Mary
to assist in the translation of Erasmus’s _Paraphrase of the Four
Gospels_. The Princess selected that of St. John, and when the work
was finished, an amusing correspondence ensued as to the propriety of
the future Queen of England placing her name, as translator, on the
frontispiece. “I see not why you should reject the praise deservedly
yours,” argued the Queen; and the Princess at last allowed the editor
of the work, the learned Dr. Udall, to allude to the fact that “the
most noble, the most virtuous and the most studious Lady Mary” had a
hand in its success.[51]
To occupy her own leisure, Queen Katherine devoted herself to the
composition of a quaint book entitled _The Lamentations of a Penitent
Sinner_, a pious work which gives us, at least in one passage, a lucid
idea of the methods employed by Her Majesty to keep her hold over her
extraordinary husband, among which gross flattery was by no means the
least. A copy of this work was once in the possession of John Thelwall,
and was sold at the death of his second wife. It contained a curious
autograph, indicating that it had been given by the Queen to her “dear
cosyn, Jane Grey,” who no doubt read it with veneration and delight.
In this tiny volume Henry had the satisfaction of being likened unto
Moses leading the Children of Israel out of bondage. “I mean by Moses,
King Henry VIII, my most sovereign favourable lord and husband, one (if
Moses had figured any more than Christ) through the excellent grace
of God, meet to be another expressed verity of Moses’ conquest over
Pharaoh (and I mean by this Pharaoh the Bishop of Rome), the greatest
persecutor of all true Christians than ever was Pharaoh of the Children
of Israel.”
As may well be imagined, Queen Katherine Parr did not fail to use her
influence to obtain prominent positions about the Court for her own
kith and kin. Her uncle and Chamberlain, Sir Thomas Parr, was created
Lord Parr of Horton; her brother was raised from the rank of Baron
Parr of Kendal to be Earl of Essex, in lieu of the lately decapitated
Thomas Cromwell; and her brother-in-law, William Herbert, was knighted.
These gentlemen received their new dignities in the Chapel Royal, but
were not entertained in one of the apartments spread with Persian
carpets. Their dinner was served in the choir-boys’ mess-room, in
which a fresh litter of rushes was strewn for the occasion--a curious
fact, which leads one to conclude that the acting master of ceremonies
expected the party to indulge in libations which might result in some
injury to Oriental rugs but were not likely to do much damage to
fresh rushes costing 3s. 6d. the litter. Parr had to pay 40s. for his
new paraphernalia, and the choir-boys got 10s. for singing after the
dinner.[52]
On 14th July 1544 King Henry sailed from Dover for France to
superintend in person the approaching siege of Boulogne. He left our
shores in a vessel with sails made of cloth of gold, the glitter of
which does not appear to have added to the ship’s speed, for the King
did not get to Calais for nearly twenty-four hours, although the
weather was fine, and the sea calm--probably too calm. The last time he
had crossed the Channel, on his way to the Field of the Cloth of Gold,
Henry had acted the part of pilot, garbed in nether garments of cloth
of gold, and had blown the pilot’s whistle as loud as any trumpeter.
This time he was too anxious and enfeebled to play at all. His Majesty
was attended by his brother-in-law, the Duke of Suffolk, also a very
sick man; by Sir William Herbert, who acted as his spear-bearer, by the
Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Surrey, the Spanish Duke of Alberqurque,
John Dudley, the Lord High-Admiral, afterwards Duke of Northumberland,
and half the English nobility. Before his departure he appointed the
Queen Regent of England and Ireland, with power to sign all official
and State documents, this being almost the first occasion on which a
Queen-Consort of England held so responsible a position. The Earl of
Hertford was to be Her Majesty’s constant attendant, but should he
chance to be temporarily absent, Cranmer was to remain with her, and
with these two, Sir William Petre and Lord Parr of Horton, her Grace’s
uncle, Wriothesley, and Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, were to sit in
council.
During this regency Katherine kept aloof from politics and occupied
herself principally with assisting the University of Cambridge and with
the royal children, who were left in her charge. Princess Mary, who
was an almost constant guest during the King’s absence, and Princess
Elizabeth, were both invited to join the circle at Oatlands, where
Prince Edward was residing, and whither, owing to an outbreak of the
plague, the Queen herself soon retired. From the various suburban
palaces in which she was residing, Katherine addressed letters almost
daily to the King, giving him accounts of the health and the doings
of his children; and the monarch vouchsafed in return to write most
approvingly of all she did. Towards the middle of August the Lady
Dorset and her daughter, the Lady Jane Grey, came to Oatlands for a
few days’ visit. This was perhaps the first and probably the only
time spent by Lady Jane and Prince Edward under the same roof. The
royal kinsfolk may have lived a very quiet life, spending their days
in the gardens and park, and their evenings either listening to the
singing of Princess Mary, who is reputed to have had a magnificent
contralto voice, or to Princess Elizabeth’s playing upon the virginals,
an art in which she already excelled. The Queen may perchance have
favoured the company with a chapter or so from some one or other of her
remarkably dull theological compositions. There is no evidence that
she was a musician, and she does not seem to have been infected with
the prevailing Court vice--gambling--in which even the pious Princess
Mary indulged, frequently losing much more than she could pay--as
demonstrated by the Household Books of Henry VIII.
Boulogne capitulated to Suffolk on 16th September, after a lengthy
siege, and on the 18th, the King, accompanied by the Duke of
Alberqurque, representing his ally the Emperor, received the keys of
the city from his brother-in-law’s hands, and made what he was pleased
to consider his triumphal entry into the town. But he rode through a
city untenanted and in ruins; even the magnificent Cathedral had not
been spared, and the townsfolk, who had fled for security, as they
hoped, to Hardelot and Etaples, were massacred, man, woman, and child,
by the allied Spanish, German, and English troops. English historians
have been reticent in dealing with the siege of Boulogne,[53] and
the majority have passed very lightly over the disagreement which
soon broke out between our King and his ally the Emperor.[54] Charles
now urged Henry to join him and march on Paris. Henry, who knew his
troops to be enfeebled by hardship and suffering, and moreover felt
himself far too ill to supervise fresh military operations, would go
no farther, more especially because he feared to infuriate the French
King, who might at any moment ally himself with his former enemy
the Emperor Charles, and thus form a Catholic coalition absolutely
inimical to the policy of the English King. Henry’s hesitation
undoubtedly saved the city of Paris. Seeing the Emperor’s troops
approach the capital, Francis roused himself for a moment from the
lethargy in which he had been plunged, and once more became the hero
of Marignano. The King’s attitude and the bravery of the Dauphin,
who was covering the capital with 8000 men, stimulated the drooping
spirits of the Parisians, and, with their usual heroism, they prepared
to offer a stout resistance to their foes. They even made merry at
the expense of their two arch-enemies, ridiculing the gouty Emperor
and caricaturing the corpulent English King--a proof, if one were
lacking, that the fatal diseases destined eventually to carry Henry
off had already made sufficient progress to excite general attention.
Queen Eleanor, the neglected wife of Francis I, foreseeing the horrors
to which the capital and its inhabitants were exposed, determined,
without consulting her husband, to plead personally with the Emperor.
Accompanied by a Spanish monk named Guzman, she proceeded to the
Imperial tent, and casting herself upon her knees before Charles, then
writhing in agonies of gout, obtained terms from him, thus averting a
siege which must have cost rivers of blood. The peace then concluded
was none too satisfactory, so far as England was concerned, since
it stipulated that Boulogne was to be restored in the space of six
years, during which time the place lost us in money and men far more
than it was worth. Never, indeed, was there a more futile expedition
than this, nor a greater waste of money. The much-talked-of sails of
cloth of gold wafted the King home on 1st October 1544. In London he
was received with little enthusiasm, or none at all. The nation was
disappointed by the terms of the peace, the army was disorganised,
Norfolk already out of favour, and Surrey, accused of insubordination,
was openly disgraced. Boulogne was left in the hands of Jane Grey’s
future father-in-law, Lord High-Admiral John Dudley.
The health of Lady Jane’s maternal grandfather, Charles Brandon, Duke
of Suffolk, failed him completely soon after his return to England.
He seems to have suffered from a complication of disorders not unlike
those which were afflicting his brother-in-law, the King. After the
siege of Boulogne, he appears to have been of very little use, and
eighteen months later he retired with his Duchess to Guildford Castle
“in much suffering and pain.” There is a portrait extant of Charles
Brandon, taken at this time, which represents him seated in a large
armchair, his head bound up in a sort of nightcap, and his swollen and
gouty feet, one of which rests on a stool, enveloped in bandages. The
bloated face bears a weird resemblance to Henry VIII. Brandon died at
Guildford in 1546 after a long illness, during which he was nursed by
his Duchess and his two daughters, the Ladies Frances and Eleanor, the
former of whom brought her eldest daughters, Jane and Katherine, with
her. By his will Charles Brandon left, after deducting a rather meagre
dower for his wife, the bulk of his vast fortune to his two sons,
with remainder to his daughters in unequal shares, the Lady Frances,
in the case of the death of her two brothers, inheriting considerably
more than two-thirds of her father’s lands and money. He desired to be
buried in Lincolnshire, but Henry, overlooking this request, caused
his body to be conveyed to Windsor, where it was interred with great
pomp in St. George’s Chapel, in the presence of his family and of a
multitude of courtiers.
CHAPTER V
MRS. ANNE ASKEW
It was in the latter years of Henry VIII’s reign that Stephen Gardiner,
Bishop of Winchester, conceived his scheme for the reconciliation of
England and England’s monarch with the Roman Pontiff. Although a less
astute intriguer than his powerful opponent Cranmer, Gardiner, who was
apt to lose his temper and blurt out things best kept to himself, was
a man of marked ability, one of whom his crafty master made frequent
use, playing him off against the Archbishop, and so retaining the
balance of power in his own jealous hands. Cranmer was at this period
using his influence with Henry to abolish the use of Latin in the
Mass, preparatory to the eventual introduction of the Book of Common
Prayer and the early and total abrogation of the Eucharistic Service
in the Roman sense. Yet the wily Churchman knew right well that so
long as the King lived there was but faint hope of this change. For
His Majesty clung to the doctrine of Transubstantiation closer than to
any other tenet; not so much on account of his faith--did he believe
anything?--as because, in the days of his youth, he had indited a work
in defence of the Catholic doctrine of the Sacraments, which, so his
clergy had averred, proved him wiser than Solomon himself, and which
Pope Leo X had favourably compared with the writings of St. Augustine
and Gregory the Great, rewarding the royal author with that title of
“Defender of the Faith” which is still a cherished appanage of British
royalty. Henry had even made belief in the Sacrament of the Altar a
principal Article amongst the famous Six, any denial of which was
punishable with death. Yet, if the King had searched Cranmer’s study
at Lambeth at the very moment when that wily prelate was professing
to accept his beliefs from his King, as submissively as though the
monarch had possessed the infallible powers of his own Maker, he might
have laid his hand on a bulky correspondence between the Primate and
every Lutheran and Calvinistic leader in Germany and Switzerland--with
Calvin, Bullinger, Œcolampadius, Osiander, Dryander, Bucer, and the
rest. Gardiner, on his side, was in communication with Cardinal Pole,
Charles V, the Pope, and the entire papal party at home and abroad.
This duel between the papal leader and the Reformers, then, was the
true basis of all political undertakings at this momentous crisis. The
rival parties were really preparing themselves for the departure of
the dying King, and aimed at controlling the inevitable Protectorate,
necessitated by the minority of his successor, a lad of nine summers.
Had Gardiner, the Howards, and the Catholic party won the day, history
would have had little, perhaps nothing, to record concerning Lady Jane
Grey. Her name, like that of her accomplished friend Lady Jane Seymour,
daughter of Lord Hertford, would have been lost, buried in the spent
sands of the past.
The decline of the King’s health began in the summer of 1541-2, when he
was attacked by a dangerous tertian fever, from which, thanks to his
powerful constitution, he partially recovered.
At the time of his marriage with Anne of Cleves he was again in poor
health, and during the proceedings for the King’s divorce from his
Dutch consort, Cranmer laid great stress on the fact that although
she had shared his chamber for six months, the bride was still to all
intents and purposes unwed. At the siege of Boulogne, as we have seen,
Henry was terribly altered, and the French ballad-writers jested about
_le cercle de fer_, which, they averred, kept his ungainly carcass
together. Queen Katherine was probably espoused rather as a skilful
nurse than as a wife, in the ordinary acceptance of the term, and a
most assiduous attendant she proved, kneeling for hours at a time
rubbing his swelled legs and dressing his many ulcers. It would be
unjust to the Queen’s memory to attribute this wifely devotion to none
but selfish motives. But her contemporaries shrewdly guessed that,
while fulfilling her wifely duty, she did not fail to work in her own
interest, and that of her friends, with her own peculiar skill and
tact. She certainly wished to be appointed Regent during Edward’s
minority, and would gladly have excluded the Howards, Wriothesley,
Gardiner, Rich, and the whole Catholic element from the King’s
sick-room, while doing all she could to strengthen the hand of the
Seymours, maternal uncles of the future King, who were intent on ruling
his kingdom for him on strictly anti-papal lines. In the spring of the
year 1546 the King had a bad relapse, and day by day the grey shadows
of approaching death deepened on that broad and bloated countenance.
He would not have the grim word mentioned in his presence, and any
courtier who appeared before him dressed in mourning[55]--even for
the nearest kin--was driven in fury from his sight. None the less,
he realised that he had not many months to live. It was imperative,
therefore, if any reconciliation with Rome was to be effected before
the new reign began, that no time should be lost, and that some sharp
and decisive blow should overthrow the influence of the Queen, now the
chief intermediary between her sick spouse, Cranmer, and the Seymours.
But Katherine, in spite of the notoriety of her intimate friendship
with Sir Thomas Seymour, was far too clever to give her enemies any
chance of blasting, or even smirching, her reputation. With respect
to her religious opinions, which were distinctly heterodox, she was
less guarded, however, and her enemies had good reason to believe that
if they could convince the King, beyond any doubt, that she was in
correspondence with those whom he was pleased to term “heretics,” she
would never be able to weather the storm her treachery must inevitably
raise in the King’s resentful breast.
Henry, whose brain remained astonishingly active, notwithstanding his
infirmities, had never been so irritable and ferocious as during the
last few months of his life. He was like a half-dead rattlesnake, which
may recover life and spring afresh upon its prey at any moment. Never
were the fires at Smithfield so active as in 1546. Early in this year
six poor wretches were sent to the stake--three Catholics; the other
three, Reformers. To demonstrate the impartiality of their merciless
judge they were all chained together. People scarcely knew what they
must believe or what disbelieve, to escape execution. The King’s
informers were always at work, spying upon the sayings and doings of
people in every rank of life; and the wonder is that the Queen and
her ladies were not caught in some imprudent admission or other, and
convicted. At last, however, in the early spring of 1546, an incident
occurred which brought Katherine’s foes their longed-for chance of
effecting her downfall.
Anne Askew, second daughter of Sir William Askew, or Ayscough, of
South Kelsy, Lincolnshire, was born at Stallingbrough, near Grimsby,
in 1521. When about fifteen years of age, she was married, without her
consent, to Mr. Thomas Kyme, a Lincolnshire squire and neighbour, who
had been previously “contracted” to her elder sister. During her early
wedded life Mrs. Kyme appears to have been happy enough, and became
the mother of two children. She presently occupied herself in studying
the newly translated Scriptures, and shortly after imagined she had a
divine mission to preach the gospel and correct what she deemed the
theological errors of her neighbours, especially on the subject of the
Lord’s Supper, concerning which she held Genevan views.
After a few years of discomfort, Mr. Kyme, who, according to the
latest researches, entertained contrary religious opinions to those of
his wife, began to complain of the scanty enjoyment he derived from
her society. She was perpetually “gadding up and down the country,
a-gospelling and a-gossiping, instead of looking after her children.”
Anne is described as a handsome and daring young woman with a good
deal of native wit and ability, and was evidently the prototype of not
a few ladies of our own time, who prefer public life and controversy
to domestic duty and retirement. She even took upon herself to read
and comment on the New Testament in the nave of Lincoln Cathedral,
where she was often to be found surrounded by an interested or amused
group of priests and people. This state of things no Dean or Chapter
could be expected to endure, and one fine day Mrs. Kyme found herself
forcibly ejected from the sacred edifice. After this incident, she must
have had some unusual disagreement with her husband, for her relations
persuaded her to leave the town, and she travelled to London, where
she soon made herself conspicuous as a preacher of the new learning,
and secured several distinguished converts. She lodged in a house near
the Temple, and one of her neighbours, Mr. Wadloe, a hot Catholic, who
began by deriding her behaviour, ended by admiring her “godliness”; to
use his own expression--“At mydnyght when I and others applye ourselves
to sleape, or do worse, Mrs. Askew” (she had resumed her maiden name),
“begins to pray, and ceaseth not in many howers after,” doubtless to
the edification of such of her neighbours as suffered from insomnia.
By dint of perseverance, and also, it may be, through her connections,
Anne Askew formed the acquaintance of several great ladies of the
Court, and is said to have obtained, through the offices of the Duchess
of Suffolk, an interview with the Queen, to whom, in the presence
of her ladies, notably Lady Tyrwhitt, Lady Lane, Lady Denny, and
the little Lady Jane Grey,[56] she offered some copies of Tyndale’s
version of the New Testament, and certain tracts arguing against
Transubstantiation, which were subsequently found in the Queen’s own
closet and in the possession of the King’s “Suffolk nieces.”
It was in March 1545 that Mrs. Askew was first arrested on a charge
of heresy and taken to Sadler’s Hall, where she was denounced to the
civil authorities and taken before the Lord Mayor, who in the course
of his examination questioned her as to the probable changes in a
consecrated wafer after a “mowse” had swallowed it, whereupon she
“made no answer but smiled,” and was committed to the Counter. That
much-abused man, Bishop Bonner, appears to have taken an interest
in her case, and endeavoured to save her from an awful fate. He
granted her a private interview and drew up a form of recantation
which she signed in the following ambiguous terms: “I, Anne Askew,
do believe all manner of things contained in the Catholic Church and
not otherwise.” On this, Bonner, whose patience had been severely
tried,--for Anne was very sharp-tongued and uncompromising,--waxed
wroth, and taking her by the shoulders, pushed her out of the chamber.
Her next friend was Dr. Weston, afterwards Bishop of Westminster, who
got her liberated on her own security; and for some months we hear no
more about her, except that she was busy preaching and distributing
her tracts secretly. On 10th May 1546 both Mr. and Mrs. Kyme received
a summons to present themselves within a specified time before the
Privy Council, then sitting at Greenwich, and they accordingly appeared
on the 19th of the following June before the Chancellor of the
Augmentations, Sir Richard Rich, the Bishops of Durham and Winchester
and a number of other noblemen and gentlemen, and were put through a
severe cross-examination.[57] Anne, we learn, received this summons in
London, but her husband came to town on purpose to attend. Kyme got
off with a caution, on his promise to return forthwith to Lincoln,
and remain there. His wife, in open court, declared she would never
again recognise him as her husband. He went back to Lincoln, and we
lose sight of him. All we know is that he died, where he is buried, at
Friskne in 1591.
Anne Askew was eventually arraigned before the King’s Justices at
Guildhall for speaking against the Sacrament of the Altar, contrary to
the Statute of the Six Articles. This time she appeared with two other
“heretics,” one of them that singular personage Dr. Nicholas Shaxton,
ex-Bishop of Salisbury, whose pupil she is said to have been. Shaxton,
a Norfolk man by birth, was one of the Commission appointed by Gardiner
in connection with the divorce of Katherine of Aragon, and during the
proceedings he so favoured the King’s view that he eventually became
almoner to Anne Boleyn and Bishop of Salisbury. At a later date he
preached Zwinglian doctrines concerning the Eucharist, got himself
into serious difficulties with Archbishop Cranmer, and was forced to
relinquish his see. After a time he became a notorious “gospeller,”
and was finally arrested with Anne Askew and a man named Christopher
White. The lady and White were both sent to Newgate; but the former
recanted, and so escaped a fiery ordeal. Shaxton did the same, obtained
his pardon, and was actually ordered to visit Anne in prison, and
persuade her to follow his example. But, weak woman though she was,
Anne was made of sterner stuff than the ex-prelate. “It were better for
you you had not been born than do that which you have done,” cried she;
and, crestfallen, her former friend and tutor left her presence. Her
condemnation followed immediately afterwards. It was presently noticed
that Anne enjoyed more creature comforts in prison than the customs
of Newgate allowed. She explained the matter by saying that “her maid
went abroad into the streets and made moan to the prentices and they
did send her money!” But her persecutors refused to believe this story,
and so one afternoon, not long before her martyrdom, she was conveyed
to the Tower, taken to the torture chamber, and there racked in the
presence of Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, Sir Richard Rich, Sir John
Barker, and Sir Anthony Knyvett, Constable of the Tower. Hitherto no
one had been tortured in England for conscience’ sake, this terrible
resource being solely employed to extract information from persons
suspected of treasonable practices. Wriothesley, exasperated at his
failure to elicit direct information or satisfactory answers from his
victim, turned the screws himself, after Knyvett had refused to order
her to be further tormented by the official executioner. Sir Richard
Rich lent his hand to the Chancellor in this merciless task, and so, to
use poor Anne’s own words, she “was nigh dead.”[58]
Dr. Lingard and other historians have cast doubt upon the veracity of
this horrible story, but the scene is described by Anne herself in
her “Narrative,” dictated a few days before her death, and published
at Marburg, in the Duchy of Hesse, in 1547, with a long running
commentary by John Bale, afterwards Bishop of Ossory. In his _Three
Conversions of England_, the Jesuit, Father Parsons, who had access
to much information and evidence long since destroyed or lost, not
only confirms the truth of the torture episode, but adds that it was
ordered by the King himself, who, hearing of the intercourse between
his Queen and Anne, “caused her to be apprehended and put to the rack,
to know the truth thereof. And by her confession he learned so much of
Queen Katherine, as he had purposed to burn her also, if he had lived.”
Parsons goes on to say that “the King’s sickness and death, shortly
ensuing, was the chief cause of her escape.” Mrs. Askew bravely endured
the most horrible torments rather than betray her friends’ trust, and
only yielded so far as to admit that whilst in prison she had received
ten shillings, delivered by a man in a blue livery. She thought the
money had been sent her by the Countess of Hertford, but was not sure.
She had a further sum of eight shillings at the hand of a footman in a
purple livery, and believed it was a gift from Lady Denny. Questioned
if she knew Lady Fitzwilliam, the Duchess of Suffolk, Lady Sussex, or
any other great ladies of the Court, she evasively answered that she
“knew nothing about them that could be proved.” She does not seem to
have been questioned point-blank as to whether she had ever had any
direct dealings with the Queen. Wriothesley may have thought he had
already obtained sufficient information for his purpose. However that
may have been, the stout-hearted lady was sent back to Newgate, there
to spend her last three days of life, which she occupied in writing and
dictating the “Narrative” to be found among Dr. Bale’s writings.[59]
On the eve of her execution Anne Askew and three men who had been
condemned for heresy at the same time as herself were visited in the
little parlour at Newgate by George Throckmorton and his brother, who
were kinsmen of the Queen--a rather suspicious circumstance. They
were cautioned in time, and thus escaped being arrested on a charge
of heresy, which might have proved fatal to themselves and their
royal cousin. John Louthe, the Reformer, who has left us an account
of the meeting, also came, at great risk to himself, to encourage
the unfortunate Anne. Mrs. Askew, with an “Angel’s countenance and
a smiling face,” talked “merrily” with her unhappy companions, John
Laselles, who had been a gentleman in attendance upon the King, and
is supposed to have been the individual who betrayed the secrets of
Katherine Howard; Nicholas Bolenian, a priest from Shropshire; and
John Adams, a tailor. They talked on religious subjects until it was
time to separate. The next day, 16th July, Mrs. Askew and her three
fellow-prisoners were taken from Newgate to Smithfield. So dislocated
were the poor lady’s limbs that she had to be carried to her doom in
a chair. Cranmer, seeking to throw the full odium of the horrible
business on Gardiner, kept much in the background in the whole matter
of Anne Askew. He did not attend the ecclesiastical commission which
condemned her to the stake; but for all that his signature is affixed
to her death-warrant. Six years later, another martyr, Joan Bocher,
one of the last of his many victims, reminded the Archbishop that he
had martyred her friend Anne Askew for teaching more or less the same
doctrines he now preached himself.
In the 1563 edition of Foxe’s _Martyrs_ there is a most curious
engraving, probably after an original drawing, representing the burning
of Anne Askew and her companions. The spectators are kept back by a
ring fence within which we see the stake, and a quaint pulpit, from
which Dr. Nicholas Shaxton, duly restored to grace, preached a sermon,
supporting the very dogma for denying which he had been prosecuted but
a few days previously. Anne is shown dressed in white; one side of the
pyre is entirely devoted to her, while the three men, apparently naked
to the waist, are bound together, on the side opposite the pulpit.
The concourse of people appears enormous; the mob seems to seethe
round the scaffold, loll out of the surrounding windows, and even
swarm on the opposite roofs. On a raised bench, under a canopy, sit
Wriothesley, Rich, the Dukes of Norfolk, Surrey, “Swearing Russell,”
and the Lord Mayor. These worthies, it appears, were sorely perturbed
by a rumour that there was an unusual amount of gunpowder on the spot,
and were very much afraid of a dangerous explosion. Their terrors were
swiftly allayed when Bedford informed the company that the explosive
in question was merely a number of small bags of gunpowder concealed
about the persons of the victims with the object of shortening their
sufferings.
At the very last moment Mrs. Askew was offered a pardon on condition
that she recanted and gave up the names of her high-born friends. She
refused: the Lord Mayor shouted _Fiat justitia_, and the faggots were
lighted. Presently the fire crackled. A quick succession of explosions
followed, the smoke concealing the wretched victims from sight. When
the flames and smoke died down only the charred and blackened remains
of four human beings could be descried. Clouds had been gathering; a
peal of thunder rolled, and heavy drops of rain soon dispersed the
throng. The show was over, and the home-returning spectators chatted as
they went, blaming or praising the deed, according to their individual
view. The horror of it does not seem to have affected them much,
although among the Reformers and the better classes of all creeds
expressions of hearty indignation were not lacking. But the masses
were accustomed to such sights of horror, and so, indeed, were our
own immediate forbears, until public executions ceased and the death
sentence was carried out in the courtyards of the prisons. We have
indeed progressed in these matters since 1546 and even since 1868.
A few days after the burning of the unfortunate Lincolnshire lady,
Foxe tells us, Wriothesley, Gardiner, and Rich waited on the King, and
so persuaded him that Anne had made damaging revelations concerning
the Queen’s intercourse with heretics that Henry “proposed to burn
her also.” His Majesty, in his rage, actually signed a warrant for
the arrest of his offending Consort and handed it to Wriothesley.
That worthy let the paper drop in a corridor or gallery close to the
Queen’s apartment. One of her servants picked it up and carried it to
Her Majesty, who was so terrified by its contents that she fell into
violent hysterics. Her apartments were close to the King’s, and Henry,
overhearing the outcry, and probably disturbed by the noise, sent to
inquire what was amiss. The Queen’s physician, Wendy, informed the
messenger that Her Majesty was dangerously ill, and her sickness, to
his reckoning, caused by sudden and extreme distress of mind. Whereupon
the King sent word that she was not to trouble herself further, as no
ill was intended to her. Greatly comforted by this reassuring message,
Katherine presently felt herself sufficiently recovered to receive a
visit from her husband, who, at great personal inconvenience, caused
himself to be conveyed into her apartment in his chair. Nothing could
have been better calculated to revive the drooping spirits of the
scared Consort than the sight of her august spouse in a good humour.
The following evening she was well enough to return the King’s visit.
She was accompanied by the Lady Tyrwhitt, her sister the Lady Herbert,
by the King’s niece the Lady Jane Grey, and by the Lady Lane, who bore
the candles before Her Majesty. The King welcomed the Queen and her
company very courteously, and, bidding her be seated, in a cheerful
tone entered into a controversial conversation with her. He possibly
wished to “draw” his Consort upon certain theological questions; but
she shrewdly observed that “since God had appointed him Supreme Head
of the Church it was not for her to teach him theology, but to learn
it from him.” “Not so, by St. Mary,” said the King, “you are become
a doctor, Kate, to instruct us, and not to be instructed of us, as
oftentimes we have seen.” “Indeed, indeed, Sire,” quoth the Queen,
“if your Majesty so conceive, my meaning has been mistaken, for I
have always held it preposterous for a woman to instruct her lord.”
“If,” she continued, “I have occasionally ventured to differ with your
Highness on religious matters, it was partly to obtain information, and
also to pass away the pain and weariness of your present infirmity with
arguments that interested you.” “And is it so, sweetheart?” replied His
Majesty, “then we are perfect friends,” and thereupon he kissed her and
gave her leave to depart.
The day appointed by her foes for the Queen’s arrest chanced to be fine
and the sun shone brightly. The King sent for her to take the early air
with him on the garden terrace overlooking the Thames. Katherine came,
attended as before by her sister, the Lady Herbert, the Lady Lane,
the Lady Tyrwhitt, and the little Lady Jane Grey. They had not been
long walking up and down in the sunshine before the Lord Chancellor,
with forty of the guard, entered the garden, expecting to carry off
the Queen to the Tower--for no intimation of the change in the King’s
intentions had reached him. Henry received his minister with a burst
of furious invective. Bidding the Queen and her ladies stand apart, he
called up Wriothesley and cast every evil name he could think of at
him, commanding him, finally, to “avaunt from his presence and never
show his face again till he was summoned.” Wriothesley, crestfallen and
humbled, was about to withdraw, when the Queen advanced and interceded
for him: “Poor soul, poor soul!” quoth the King; “thou little knowest,
Kate, how ill he deserveth this grace at thy hands. On my hand,
sweetheart, he hath been to thee a very knave!” So the disappointed
minister departed, and Henry walked up and down the terrace again,
leaning on his Queen and followed by her escort of ladies. Although
Wriothesley’s part in this tragi-comedy seems to have been overlooked,
the King is said never to have forgiven Gardiner his share in the
matter. A little later, notwithstanding the royal prohibition, both
conspirators presented themselves with their colleagues. The King
forthwith reminded Wriothesley in his most forcible manner that he had
ordered him never to show his face again, and above all never, on any
pretext whatever, to bring “that beast Gardiner” along with him. “My
Lord of Winchester,” replied the cunning Wriothesley, “has come to
wait upon your Highness with an offer of benevolence from his clergy.”
The King being as usual in great need of money, began to listen
more benignly, allowed Gardiner to present the address, and finally
accepted the bribe.[60] But he took no further notice of the Bishop,
and is said to have struck his name off the list of his executors
within the next few days. He also cancelled that of Thirlby, Bishop of
Westminster, because, said he, “he is too much under the influence of
Gardiner.”[61] Queen Katherine may have had a hand in this affair, and
after the revelation of the treachery which would fain have destroyed
her she very likely took the opportunity of letting the King know more
concerning the machinations of Gardiner and Wriothesley than was good
for their credit or likely to serve their influence.
The details of this formidable but abortive plot against Katherine
Parr rest mainly on the authority of Foxe. But it must be remembered,
by those inclined to doubt the “Martyrologist,” that at this time he
had attained his thirtieth year, he was in touch with most of the
personages named, and was consequently in a position to obtain the
information which he wove into his famous narrative--not, we admit,
without considerable embellishment and exaggeration, introduced to
suit the taste of his readers--from living witnesses. Foxe also made
liberal use of Paget’s statement during the proceedings for Gardiner’s
deprivation, which took place early in Edward’s reign. All the
Elizabethan and Jacobean historians of Henry VIII--Herbert, Parsons,
Holinshed, Strype, Speed, Oldmixon, and others--reproduce the story
with slight emendations and additions from Foxe. No direct confirmation
of it is to be found indeed in the State Papers, but this is not
surprising, for such matters were not usually set down in writing.
Nevertheless, it is hinted at.[62] Nor do the Ambassadors seem to have
known anything about it. Father Parsons, who, like Foxe, obtained
much of his information at first hand, introduces the incident in his
_Three Conversions of England_, a book written to refute some of Foxe’s
errors, and adds that although Foxe lays “all the cause of the Queen’s
trouble upon Bishop Gardiner and others, and though the King did kindly
and lovingly pardon her, the truth is that the King’s sickness and
death were the chief causes of her escape, for had the King found her
guilty he would have commanded her also to be burned.”
Speed, possibly mistaking Lady _Lane_ for Lady Jane, introduces
the King’s little niece on this occasion, not only as a witness of
the reconciliation of the royal couple, but in the character of a
candle-bearer before the Queen. Jane Grey, being a Princess of the
Blood, could never have been in _attendance_ upon the Queen, and
she was too small a child to be laden with a pair of heavy branch
candlesticks. Lady Lane, on the other hand, was certainly in the
Queen’s Household at this particular juncture. She was Her Majesty’s
cousin-german, being the daughter of her uncle, Lord Parr of Horton,
and wife of Sir Ralph Lane of Orlingby, Nottinghamshire. Still,
since the fact of her being present is mentioned by so many almost
contemporary writers, we may conclude that Lady Jane was a witness
of the dramatic scenes that took place between King Henry and his
terrified Consort, and may herself, in after life, have narrated the
incident to some friend of Foxe or immediate forbear of Parson’s
informant. Gardiner’s disgrace does not seem to have been quite as
complete as Foxe has been pleased to represent it, and he was in close
enough contact with those in power to be selected as chief celebrant at
the King’s Requiem.
That the King was completely reconciled to his wife is proved by the
conspicuous part he assigned her in the splendid series of festivities
in honour of the French Envoy, who arrived in August, when the Court
had removed to Hampton Court. Not only was her apartment refurnished
with sumptuous tapestries, but her wardrobe was renewed, and the King
presented her with a quantity of magnificent jewellery, which, after
his death, gave rise to considerable misunderstanding and trouble.
These festivities in honour of Monsieur d’Annebault, Francis I’s
special Envoy, were the last flicker of the pageantry of Henry VIII’s
reign, and revived for a week something of the brilliance of the
Court of England in the great days of Wolsey. For the first and only
time, Prince Edward, as heir-apparent, played a conspicuous part. On
Monday, 23rd August, the boy-prince rode out towards London to meet
the Ambassador, attended by the Archbishop of York and the Earls of
Hertford and Huntingdon, and by a retinue of “five hundred and forty
persons in velvet coats, and the Prince’s liveries wore sleeves of
cloth of gold, and half the coats embroidered also with gold, and there
were the number of eight hundred, royally apparelled.” D’Annebault,
who came to ratify the peace recently concluded between the sovereigns
of France and England, was accompanied by a suite of two hundred
gentlemen, who were all lodged at the King’s expense and entertained
in the most hospitable manner. His Majesty was not well enough to
receive the Ambassador on his arrival, but he received him in audience
on the following day, after which monarch and Ambassador proceeded
to the Chapel Royal, where, during Mass, they solemnly received the
Host together.[63] Then followed six days of banqueting, hunting, and
merry-making, masques, and mummeries, “with divers and sundry changes,
inasmuch that the torch-bearers were clothed with gold cloth, and
such like honourable entertainments, it were much to utter and hard
to believe.” On these occasions the Marchioness of Dorset and her
daughter, the Lady Jane Grey, were present, and Prince Edward danced
with his little cousin, who also tripped it with young Lord Edward
Seymour, the Lord Hertford’s eldest boy. When the Ambassador took his
leave, Henry made him a present of silver plate to the value of £1200.
After his departure the dying King seems to have led a very quiet life
at Hampton Court and Whitehall. The end was visibly approaching. His
feet and hands were abnormally swollen; dropsy had set in, and he was
probably also suffering from an internal tumour. Even his most fervent
admirers were obliged to confess that in appearance, at least, he had
assumed somewhat of the aspect of a monster; but music still charmed
the suffering monarch, and the last Household Books of his reign
contain various items of payments to musicians and madrigal singers.
NOTE.--Dr. Gairdner makes the following comments on this subject in
his Preface to vol. 21, part i. of the Calendar of State Papers for
1546 (published in 1908): “But one word may be permitted here about
that dreadful incident, the racking in the Tower. It took place
_after_ her (Anne’s) condemnation, the object being to elicit from
her information about persons at the Court who it was suspected had
been her allies in promoting heresy. Besides others whose names
are given, against whom she positively refused to utter a word,
she was probably expected to accuse Queen Katherine Parr herself;
for Parsons (_Three Conversions of England_, ii. 493) is no doubt
perfectly correct in saying that the well-known incident related by
Foxe, about this Queen, when she stood in real danger from a charge
of heresy, was connected with the affair of Anne Askew. But Parsons
is certainly wrong in saying that the King would have burned
Katherine Parr also if he had lived. For though her heretical
propensities were no secret, she survived the King, and he himself
for fully six months survived Anne Askew. More probably the Queen
was saved by Anne’s refusal to commit anyone except herself.”
CHAPTER VI
THE HOWARDS AND THE SEYMOURS
The collapse of the conspiracy against Katherine Parr led to an
immediate counter-plot on the part of the Seymours and their allies
to compromise the Duke of Norfolk and his son, Surrey, and thereby
frustrate the aspirations of the Catholics, of whose party Norfolk was
the acknowledged chief. A previous attempt to inflict irretrievable
damage on the credit of the Howards had partially failed, though the
unsavoury revelations connected with the arrest and execution of
Queen Katherine Howard had covered the illustrious name with obloquy,
and almost every conspicuous Howard in England had been sent to the
Tower,[64] on the charge of having concealed the Queen’s previous
immorality from the King’s knowledge when he proposed to marry her. At
that moment Norfolk and his son only escaped by taking Henry’s side
against their miserable kinswoman. But the Duke never regained his full
influence over his master, and, despite his great services, both as
statesman and warrior, lived on, to use the expression of one of his
contemporaries, “like the bird that is wounded i’ the wing.” Yet he was
a great power in the politics of those days, for though the Catholic
party was of but small account at Court, a good two-thirds of the
people remained firmly attached to the ancestral faith; this was the
case more especially in the rural districts, where the vast majority
clung to the dogmas and ceremonies of the ancient Church, and only
awaited an opportunity to assert their preference. For the matter of
that, it was shown very early in Queen Mary’s reign that the Protestant
fervour of the official world, being a matter of policy rather than of
conviction, was not to be relied on. The majority of that aristocracy
which had so eagerly accepted the extreme reforms assented to by Edward
VI was to be seen, a few weeks after his death, parading the streets of
London, taper in hand, in the wake of the revived processions of Corpus
Christi and Our Lady.[65]
Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, was one of the most conspicuous
figures in Henry’s reign. He may not, perhaps, have been as astute a
statesman as has been asserted, but he showed remarkable qualities
as a capable peacemaker on the occasion of the Pilgrimage of Grace;
while as a warrior he had no rival, and proved himself a hero on
Flodden Field. If anything, he was excessive in his loyalty to the
King, and he would even seem to have sunk all sense of his own
dignity and importance, humbling himself utterly before the monarch
whose assumption of _quasi_-divine attributes he had aided and
abetted. Thus, when his niece Anne Boleyn was tried and executed for
misdemeanours she was certainly not proved to have committed,[66]
he, at her royal assassin’s command, pronounced the death sentence,
and with his son, the young Earl of Surrey, who sat at his feet,
holding the Earl Marshal’s baton in his hand, was actually present
at her execution. When, some few years later, Norfolk’s other niece,
Katherine Howard, was proved guilty of many serious offences, both
before and after marriage, Norfolk sat in judgment upon her and would
have witnessed her death too but for an attack of gout which kept him
a prisoner. Two days after the execution he penned an abject letter
to the King apologising for “the naughtiness of his said niece, the
late Queen.”[67] In person, Norfolk was a dark, handsome man, of
moderate stature, with piercing eyes and an exceedingly intelligent
countenance. Holbein has left us several magnificent oil portraits of
him, and at least one noble drawing, now in the Windsor Collection. He
was fairly educated, a good Latin scholar, and a patron of art. His
first wife, Princess Anne Plantagenet, the King’s aunt, died young in
1512. The day on which he espoused his second,[68] the handsome Lady
Elizabeth Stafford, was an evil one for him. The alliance was one of
convenience on his side and of compulsion on hers. His duchy had been
greatly impoverished by the attainder of his father, the second Duke,
after Bosworth, and the luckless Buckingham’s daughter was possessed
of a handsome fortune in money and wide lands. She had been previously
contracted to Ralph Nevill, afterwards Earl of Westmoreland, to whom
she was greatly attached and with whom she kept up a correspondence
till the end of her life. Although she bore her husband five children,
the Duchess of Norfolk suffered some neglect at his hands, her rival
being a certain Bess Holland,[69] a gentlewoman in her service. The
mortification caused by this outrage drove the poor Duchess to the
verge of distraction. She seems to have been a naturally conscientious,
if narrow-minded, woman, of an exceedingly high-strung and excitable
temperament. We should describe her nowadays as an “impossible” person,
whose lack of tact and outbursts of uncontrollable rage not only
alienated her husband’s affections, but deprived her of her children’s
love as well as of her servants’ respect.
Of all the men of his time, Surrey, this ill-used lady’s son, was the
most accomplished. He was an excellent Latin, French, and Italian
scholar, and well versed in ancient and modern literature. No one could
excel him in tourney or joust--not even John Dudley, afterwards Duke
of Northumberland, who had exceeding skill with the sword and spear,
and than whom scarce one could pull a bow with surer aim. Surrey danced
more lightly than Thomas Seymour, who prided himself on the “altitude
of his pirouettes,” and the King himself in his singing youth did not
warble a sweeter note. No Englishman since Chaucer had so enriched our
literature with verse all redolent of those sweet-scented fields and
lanes, meadows and gardens amid which the poet’s muse loved best to
linger. An Elizabethan critic well described him as “a poet new crept
out of the school of Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto,” and “coming nearer
to Ariosto” than to either the prophet of Florence or the inspired
singer of Vaucluse. Though of but medium height, Surrey was so graceful
and well-proportioned as to seem taller than he really was. There is a
portrait of him at Hampton Court, most probably by Guilliam Streete,
which gives us a fair idea of this prince for a fairy-tale. The face is
full of youthful charm: the eyes hazel, frank, and winning; the cheeks
rounded and flushed with rosy health; the hair a darkish chestnut; the
slight moustache of the colour of ripe corn. His costume is superb. The
young Earl stands before us garbed from head to foot in red velvet,
softened by bands of brocade and sarsenet, the only white spot visible
being the silk shirt open at the neck, and even that enriched with a
dainty arabesque wrought in gold stitchery. On his well-shaped head
rests a jaunty cap of crimson velvet with a feathered plume of the same
tint.
There was much that was purely personal in the violent animosity
displayed by the Seymours against the Howards in general and against
Surrey in particular. The Seymours, although of far more ancient and
well-ascertained lineage than either the Brandons or the Boleyns,
were not of the great aristocracy, but, in a sense, what the modern
French would call _arrivistes_. Had it not been for the accident which
raised their sister Jane to the towering position of Queen-Consort,
the Seymours would probably have remained what they originally were,
mere country squires of excellent lineage, reputed to be remotely
connected with royalty. Their father,[70] Sir William St. Maur, or
Seymour, of Wolf’s Hall, Wiltshire, had on one occasion entertained
King Henry VIII; and their mother, Lady Seymour, by birth a Wentworth,
and a lineal descendant of Edward III, was highly connected; but
otherwise there was nothing in their antecedents to distinguish them
from scores of other equally respectable and wealthy country gentlemen.
The sudden[71] elevation of their sister Jane brought them a rapid
promotion, which first dazzled them and then turned their heads.
Honours and positions were heaped upon them. Edward, the eldest son,
was first created Viscount Beauchamp, and, after the birth of Prince
Edward, Earl of Hertford; the second, Thomas, was knighted. The
youngest, Henry, seems to have preferred obscurity and security to rank
and risk, and lived the life of a country gentleman, married young, and
merely accepted knighthood on Edward VI’s accession.
The ranks of the old aristocracy had been thinned by the pro
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