Adieu pleasure!
Gone is our treasure,
Mourning may be our mirth:
For Edward our King
That rose and spring
Is faded and lyeth in earth.
Therefore, mourn we may
Both night and day,
And in heart we may be full sad;
Since Brute came in,
Or at any time since,
The like treasure we never had.
It was agreed that there should be no more Lord Protectors. England’s new strong man had no intention of repeating his predecessor’s mistakes and, in any case, was a great deal more interested in the realities of power than in its trappings. Now in his late forties, John Dudley’s career to date had set a perfect pattern of the rise of the Tudor meritocracy. Descended from a cadet branch of a respectably old and well-connected baronial family, his father, a clever lawyer with a first-class financial brain, had served Henry VII as fiscal adviser rather too efficiently for his own good. One of Henry VIII’s first acts as King had been to offer Edmund Dudley and his colleague Richard Empson as sacrifices on the altar of public opinion, and both men were executed on charges of treason blatantly contrived to appease the outraged taxpayers of England. Young John had therefore had to make his own way in the world. Darkly handsome, athletic, gifted and aggressively ambitious, he was clearly destined to be a high-flier and progressed steadily in the royal service as a soldier, diplomat and administrator.
Throughout his career, first as Lord Lisle and then as Earl of Warwick, John Dudley had made a careful study of Tudor psychology. He became a particular favourite of the old King – especially after Charles Brandon’s death – and had been named as one of the trusted inner circle of executors of Henry’s will. His plan now was to use the still impressionable Edward as a screen behind which to consolidate his own position and secure the future of his numerous sons. First, though, he would have to be assured of the King’s trust, his unqualified support and, if possible, his love. Warwick was a man of commanding presence and magnetic personality. In private life he was an affectionate family man with plenty of experience of bringing up boys, but he never made the mistake of treating Edward as a child. He treated him as a King, and as a King who should now be old enough to start taking an active part in the serious business of government. Edward naturally responded eagerly to this form of flattery. He began to attend regularly at Council meetings and not merely to rubber-stamp decisions already taken. So at least it appeared, and so Edward himself believed. Those who were surprised at his grasp of affairs were possibly not aware that Warwick was in the habit of visiting the King privately late in the evening to brief him on the next day’s business. He would listen deferentially to the royal opinion but was careful to ensure that his own viewpoint should always be uppermost in Edward’s mind before he slept.
It used to be said that Warwick took Edward out of the stuffy atmosphere of the schoolroom and brought him into the fresh air. In fact, Edward’s timetable had always included provision for plenty of outdoor exercise and training in the sports and pastimes proper for kings. At the same time it was certainly a very important item of Warwick’s strategy to bring Edward forward, to introduce him to the more glamorous aspects of kingship and generally to keep him happy and amused.
A special embassy came over from France in the early summer of 1550 to conclude a new Anglo-French treaty and the King was fully involved in the entertainment provided for the envoys. There was a state dinner, bull and bear baitings, a hunt and supper at Hampton Court and fireworks on the Thames. Several cheerful young Frenchmen were added to the royal entourage and on 19 June Edward took them down to Deptford, where Lord Clinton, the new Lord Admiral, put on an exciting display of tilting in which the contestants stood on boats and ran at one another until the loser fell into the water. This was followed after supper by a mock sea battle staged on the river – all exactly calculated to entrance a twelve-year-old boy. Edward was still keeping regular lesson hours, but under his new guardian’s carefully unobtrusive guidance his horizons were widening every day and he was enjoying every moment of it.
In the autumn of 1551 he had his first experience of acting as host to foreign royalty, when Mary of Guise, Queen Dowager and Regent of Scotland, asked leave to pass through his realm on her way back to the North after visiting her daughter in France. The Dowager was storm-bound at Portsmouth and the English government immediately sent a welcoming deputation with friendly letters from the King and orders to escort the distinguished castaway to London, Edward adding a special message that he would be pleased to supply anything she needed for her comfort and that he looked forward to meeting her. The Court was at Westminster and the King received his guest with all the due ceremony in the Great Hall of the Palace. Later they dined together, the Queen Regent sitting on Edward’s left under the cloth of estate and, so it was said, being much impressed by the maturity, wisdom and judgement of her youthful host.
Among those members of the royal family summoned to do honour to the Queen were the King’s cousins Margaret, Countess of Lennox and Lady Jane Grey and her parents. Jane Grey’s parents had recently taken a step up in the world. Following the sudden and tragic deaths from the sweating sickness of Charles Brandon’s two sons by Katherine Willoughby, the dukedom of Suffolk had devolved on their half-sister Frances and her husband. In spite of the fact that Jane was no nearer to marrying the King – the present plan was for a betrothal between Edward and the French Princess Elisabeth – the Dorsets basked happily in the glory of their new honour. But Henry Grey was not the only new Duke at Court that autumn. John Dudley now felt sufficiently secure to petition the King on his own account and on 11 October he had been created Duke of Northumberland, the first Englishman with no blood tie with the royal house ever to bear a ducal title.
The King’s sisters had not been invited to meet Mary of Guise. In fact the King’s sisters played very little part in the life of the Court. In Mary’s case this was due to a steadily widening rift over the religious question and by the early fifties the unfortunate princess was once again being hounded for her beliefs. Trouble had started in the spring of 1549 when Somerset’s programme of reform had culminated in the establishment of Cranmer’s English prayer book as the official order of service for the church in England. The Book of Common Prayer came into general use on Whitsunday, and it meant the end of the ancient Latin mass. Faced with the threatened extinction of the very foundations of her faith, Mary appealed to the Emperor and Charles responded more energetically than usual, instructing his ambassador to obtain a written guarantee from the Duke of Somerset that his cousin would be allowed to continue to have mass unmolested in her own household. This guarantee was not forthcoming but, after a good deal of argument, François van der Delft did succeed in extracting a verbal promise from the Protector that the princess might do as she thought best in the privacy of her own house until the King came of age. There the matter might have rested. Somerset was a man of his word and Mary was an old friend of his wife’s, who had once been one of her mother’s maids. Then came the October coup. The Somersets were in eclipse and early in 1550 Mary had warning that the Council were planning further moves against her, that before long both she and her household would be forbidden to hear mass.
For the second time in her life Mary’s thoughts turned to escape. It seemed as though she could not endure any more battles. She was older now and more tired, worn out by constant colds, toothache and headache. She yearned only to live at peace among her mother’s kin in some quiet Catholic country and she begged the Emperor to give her sanctuary. The Emperor had his doubts. Whatever her private longings, Mary was still her brother’s heiress. To connive at her escape would be a risky business, to harbour her would be expensive and embarrassing. On the other hand, she was potentially a very valuable property and Charles may have been touched by her despair. He may also have feared, as his ambassador certainly did, that if he, Mary’s ‘only hope and refuge in this world’, failed her in this extremity, she would attempt to escape unaided and that ‘the good lady through her own incompetence might fall into a worse evil’. At any rate, Charles gave his reluctant consent to a rescue attempt.
Speed and secrecy were essential. Van der Delft was recalled at the beginning of June and his replacement, a stolid Dutch merchant, kept in careful ignorance of what was going on. Mary had already moved to her manor at Woodham Walter, east of Chelmsford and only a couple of miles from Maldon on the tidal river Blackwater where, on the last day of the month, a smooth-talking Flemish merchant berthed his vessel at the quayside. Master Jehan Duboys was from Ostend with corn to sell in the Essex ports. Nothing unusual about that. Nothing unusual either in the Lady Mary’s Comptroller, with a large household to feed, coming down to do business with him. The unusual thing about Master Duboys was his mission – somehow to smuggle the Lady Mary aboard that innocent-looking coaster and carry her downriver to a rendezvous with certain ships of the Imperial navy, currently lying off Harwich on the pretext of hunting pirates.
The plan was a bold and simple one and might very well have succeeded, but now the moment had arrived Mary’s nerve failed her. She dithered in miserable indecision while those members of her household who disapproved of the whole project worked on her fears. Jehan Duboys was not unsympathetic but he could not hang about while the princess made up her mind. For Mary’s sake as well as his own, he dared not delay. So the chance was lost and now Mary had to stay and face whatever her brother’s Council had in store for her.
The secret of that aborted escape was soon out, of course, and the government took prompt steps to ensure that such a thing would not happen again, moving soldiers into all the likely east coast ports. No direct reprisals were taken against Mary, but the new line of attack being masterminded by John Dudley became apparent when a warrant was issued for the arrest of one of her chaplains who had unwisely celebrated mass in her absence. Previously the Council had aimed their warning shots at the princess herself and had been ignored. Now, and more effectively, they intended to penalize her servants.
By the autumn the battle of the Princess Mary’s mass was fairly joined. Supported by the new Imperial ambassador, Jehan de Scheyfve, and by the Emperor, Mary based her defence on the promise made by the Duke of Somerset to Van der Delft. The Council blandly denied that such a promise had ever been given. In any case, they said, any promises made by Somerset were strictly temporary and provisional and applied only to Mary herself – certainly not to the fifty-odd members of her household, who could claim no privilege and must obey the King’s laws or suffer the consequences.
It was not until January 1551 that the King himself took a hand in the affair, adding a personal postscript to one of the Council’s hectoring letters. ‘Truly, sister’, he wrote, ‘I will not say more and worse things, because my duty would compel me to use harsher and angrier words. But this I will say with certain intention, that I will see my laws strictly obeyed, and those who break them shall be watched and denounced, even as some are ready to trouble my subjects by their obstinate resistance.’
This unequivocal statement of the King’s position came to Mary as a bitter revelation of the gulf which now yawned between them, causing her ‘more suffering than any illness even unto death’. Previously she had been able to comfort herself with the thought that her brother was still a helpless puppet in the hands of men like John Dudley and his confederates; that it was they, not he, who were her enemies. But in Edward’s letter the echo of their father’s voice was too unmistakeable to be disregarded. Brother and sister had seen little of each other during the past two years. Mary had avoided the Court deliberately, keeping her occasional visits private and as brief as possible, for fear that she would in some way be forced or tricked into attending one of the new services and so seem to be giving public countenance to the hated new ways. Now there was the additional fear that Edward’s mind was being poisoned against her and she realized that the dreaded confrontation could not be postponed any longer.
So, on 17 March she came to London in state, ‘with fifty knights and gentlemen in velvet coats afore her, and after her four score gentlemen and ladies’. Her regular household had obviously been reinforced by other sympathizers and their wives. On the following day the princess made her way through Fleet Street and the Strand to Westminster, where Edward, supported by all twenty-five members of the Council, was waiting for her.
The proceedings began with another inconclusive wrangle about the Duke of Somerset’s promise. Mary complained of the tone of the Council’s letters, saying that contrary to previous undertakings she was now being prevented from practising her religion. Edward interposed at this point. He knew nothing about that, he said, for he had only taken a share in affairs during the past year. Mary saw her opening. In that case, she remarked, he had not drawn up the new ordinances about religion. There was no answer to this, but the councillors came back fighting with a warning that grave troubles might arise if she, sister to the King and heiress to the crown, continued to disobey his laws. The new ordinances applied to everyone, and although a measure of indulgence had been granted to Mary to please the Emperor and out of respect to her position, it would not be continued indefinitely.
Mary replied by turning to her brother. She was his humble subject and sister, she said, who would always pray for his prosperity and for the peace of the realm. Everyone praised the King’s great knowledge and understanding and she had no wish to denigrate it, rather she would pray that God would increase his many virtues. Nevertheless, and she looked the thirteen-year-old Edward straight in the eye, riper age and experience would teach him much more yet. This was too much for the young Josiah, who promptly retorted that Mary might also have something still to learn, no one was too old for that. It would be very hard for her to change the religion in which the King her father had bred her, answered Mary sadly, not pretending to misunderstand. Here someone observed irresistibly that the late King had changed several points of religion and had he lived, he would no doubt have gone further. But Mary refused to be drawn on this point, merely sighing that she wished everything had remained as it was at the time of the King her father’s death.
The bulky ghost of the King their father, who had bequeathed them their insoluble problem, was almost palpably present at this encounter between his son and daughter. The frail, indomitable woman and the fair, slender boy might physically be shadows of their tremendous sire, but no one could have mistaken those jutting chins, the stubbornly folded mouths, the unshakeable conviction of righteousness. Many of those standing by in the gallery at Westminster on that March morning must surely have heard the rumble of distant thunder.
The Council were now shifting the attack, trying to accuse Mary of disobedience to her father’s will, but here they were on shaky ground. Mary, who knew the will as well as anybody, could reply with perfect truth that it bound her only in the matter of her marriage and, while they were on the subject, what about the two masses a day which her father had ordered for the repose of his soul? What about the four obsequies a year and the other ceremonies which were not being carried out? The provisions of the will were being carried out, was the rather feeble reply, but only insofar as they were not harmful to the present King. Her father had never ordered anything in the least harmful to the King, said Mary scornfully and, in any case, surely it was reasonable to suppose that he alone had cared more for the good of his son’s kingdom than all the members of the Council put together? This defiance brought the Earl of Warwick into the fray. ‘How now, my lady!’ he exclaimed. ‘It seems your Grace is trying to show us in a hateful light to the King our master without any cause whatsoever.’ She had not meant to do so, answered Mary but they pressed her so hard that she would not dissemble or hide the truth. Then she turned back to Edward. She hoped that, remembering their nearness in blood, he would show her enough consideration to allow her to continue undisturbed in the observance of her religion. In the last resort, she went on, there were only two things – soul and body. Her soul she offered to God, her body to the King’s service and she would rather he took away her life than the old religion in which she desired to live and die – and who then can have failed to hear echoes of the long-dead Catherine of Aragon? Edward, obviously embarrassed, said hastily that he had no desire for such a sacrifice and there the meeting ended. Mary, exhausted and shaking with nerves, asked permission to go home and permission was granted.
Edward is usually said to have been fond of his elder sister, although direct evidence of this is pretty slight. He may well have retained some affection and respect for the woman who had helped to mother him in his babyhood; but to the boy in his early teens, just beginning to feel his power, Mary and her awkward conscience (only Tudor kings were permitted the luxury of awkward consciences) and her elder sisterly habit of telling him he was too young to understand were becoming an irritation and a nuisance.
His own account of the matter is characteristically terse. ‘The Lady Mary my sister came to me at Westminster’, he wrote in his Journal, ‘… where it was declared how long I had suffered her mass against my will [he later crossed out these words] in hope of her reconciliation, and how now … except I saw some short amendment, I could not bear it. She answered that her soul was God’s and her faith she would not change, nor dissemble her opinion with contrary doings. It was said I constrained not her faith, but willed her as a subject to obey.’
Edward took his responsibilities as the keeper of his people’s conscience with great seriousness, but it seems likely that the question of his sister’s conscience did not worry him too extremely at this time. Mary, by contemporary standards, was already middle-aged. To Edward she must have seemed already old – she was, after all, fully old enough to be his mother – and her poor health was notorious. The King, notably unsentimental in such matters, probably reflected that the problem would soon go away of its own accord and, left to himself, might have been prepared, however disapprovingly, to let his sister go her own way. But, unhappily for Mary, she was now once again the heiress presumptive and her actions and beliefs were of political importance. It had suited John Dudley to ally himself with the extreme radical wing of the religious reformers, men who stood well to the left of Cranmer. He knew that the conservative bulk of the population, the silent majority, disliked much of what he was doing and agreed with the Lady Mary when she wished that everything had remained as it was at the time of her father’s death. Her example and her influence were important and so, as once before in her life, it was necessary to force her submission. And, as once before, Mary finally surrendered. By the autumn of 1551 mass was no longer being publicly celebrated in her chapel where, of course, any of her neighbours who wanted to come and worship in the old way, had always been welcome. Mary herself continued to seek the consolation of her religion, but in fear and secrecy behind the locked doors of her own apartments.
The King’s relations with his younger sister were uncomplicated by religious differences, and, so it was said later, there was between them ‘a concurrency and sympathy in their natures and affections, together with the celestial conformity in religion which made them one, and friends; for the King ever called her his sweetest and dearest sister, and was scarce his own man, she being absent.’ Protestant historians and propagandists writing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were concerned to present an idealized picture of this brother and sister, both such notable champions of the faith, and undoubtedly a genuine bond of affection did exist. Born on the same side of the great divide, Henry VIII’s two younger children shared the same sort of background, the same pattern of education, many of the same ideals. They corresponded fairly regularly and Edward always seemed pleased to see Elizabeth when she came to Court. But nevertheless, the depth of their relationship has undoubtedly been exaggerated. Apart from the barrier set up by Edward’s accession, the intimacy of childhood faded as he grew towards manhood. He had more exciting things to think about now than either of his sisters and, in any case, he naturally preferred to spend his leisure in sporting activities than in feminine company.
Elizabeth had by this time pretty well succeeded in living down any unfortunate impression left behind by the Seymour scandal – at least among those people whose opinions mattered. She had adopted a severely plain style of dressing which suited her elegant figure admirably and won golden opinions from leading Protestant divines, who commented approvingly on her maidenly apparel – such a dramatic contrast to those society ladies who persisted in going about ‘dressed and painted like peacocks’. The visit of Mary of Guise had awakened a new interest in French fashions but the Lady Elizabeth would alter nothing, keeping ‘her old maiden shamefacedness’. She was, of course, setting a fashion herself, eagerly followed by such high-born Protestant maidens as her cousin Jane Grey.
Jane had recently received a present from Mary of a dress of ‘tinsel cloth of gold and velvet, laid on with parchment lace of gold’ and is said to have complained: ‘What shall I do with it?’ ‘Marry, wear it’, answered one of her ladies in surprise. ‘Nay’, said Jane, never noted for her tact, ‘that were a shame to follow my Lady Mary against God’s word, and leave my Lady Elizabeth, which followeth God’s word.’
Elizabeth came up to London about once a year between 1549 and 1552. ‘She was most honourably received by the Council’, wrote Jehan de Scheyfve acidly, ‘who acted thus in order to show the people how much glory belongs to her who has embraced the new religion and is become a very great lady.’ But apart from her carefully spaced public appearances, Elizabeth was living quietly in the country, dividing her time between her Hertfordshire manors of Hatfield and Ashridge. One reason for this retired existence was her own indifferent health. As a little girl she had always been remarkably fit – there is no mention even of ordinary childish ailments – but ever since her separation from Katherine Parr in the spring of 1548 she had been poorly on and off, suffering from recurrent severe attacks of migraine and catarrh. Probably this was largely of nervous origin – the effect of shock and strain on an adolescent girl. But Elizabeth also found her symptoms provided a useful excuse on occasions. Her other, and perhaps more compelling reason for avoiding the limelight was her determination to avoid any involvement in any controversial issue while the political situation remained so fluid.
Elizabeth’s innate good sense had saved her at the time of the Admiral’s downfall, but that episode had left an indelible mark on her and had taught her some valuable lessons about discretion and caution and dissimulation – about the necessity of keeping one’s mouth shut and one’s feelings to oneself in a hard, unforgiving world. ‘Her mind has no womanly weakness’, wrote her ex-tutor, Roger Ascham, to his friend the Rector of Strasbourg University, ‘her perseverance is equal to that of a man and her memory long keeps what it quickly picks up.’ Ascham, of course, was referring with justifiable pride to the princess’s wide knowledge of the classical authors, her ability to speak ‘readily and well’ in Latin and moderately in Greek, not to mention her fluency in modern languages, and certainly Elizabeth contributed her full share to the sudden intellectual flowering among the third and fourth generations of the house of Tudor. But that brilliant mind could also apply itself to the strictly practical problems of survival and the retentive memory long keep its hold on matters other than Greek grammar. Fortunately for herself and for posterity, Elizabeth remembered and profited by lessons learned outside the schoolroom before she was sixteen. She had her eighteenth birthday in September, 1551 – an age when it was unusual for such a princess to be still unspoken for – but she was content to wait, biding her time and keeping a low profile until she saw more clearly what the future might hold for her.
What the future held for Elizabeth and Mary Tudor, and for the people of England, depended entirely on Edward who was already becoming a factor to be reckoned with politically and who, if he survived, would soon be casting off the tutelage of his Council. If he survived. … Edward was not the big, strong boy his father had been and his fair colouring and slender physique promoted an impression of fragility, so that emissaries of Catholic powers – alarmed by evidence of his increasingly belligerent Protestantism – dropped hopeful hints in their letters home that the King of England was delicate and not likely to live long. In fact, at fourteen, the King seemed healthy enough. He was now showing every sign of developing the family passion for outdoor sports and spent every spare moment on the tennis court, in the tiltyard or shooting at the butts, and his Journal contains frequent references to various interesting sporting events. The Spanish ambassador reported that the King was beginning to exercise himself in the use of arms and enjoyed it heartily. The French ambassador complimented him on the dexterity of his swordplay, declaring that his Majesty ‘had borne himself right well’ and receiving the modest reply from Edward that it was a small beginning but as time passed he hoped to do his duty better.
Then, in April 1552, the King developed a high temperature and a rash. He himself later recorded, ‘I fell sike of the mesels and the smallpokkes.’ This would surely have been a lethal combination and Edward’s illness was probably a sharp attack of measles. He made a good recovery and was able to attend a St George’s Day service at Westminster Abbey, wearing his Garter robes. On the thirtieth the Court moved down to Greenwich and Edward held a review of his men-at-arms on Blackheath. On 27 June, apparently in his usual health and spirits, he set out on an extended progress through the south and west. The progress was a triumphant personal success for the King and Edward, who had never before travelled so far from London, thoroughly enjoyed himself. But the programme was an exhausting one and people noticed that he was looking pale and thin. In fact, that unlucky bout of measles, coming just at the most dangerous age for Tudor boys, and followed by a strenuous summer, had fatally weakened him and by the time he got back to Windsor, a few days after his fifteenth birthday, tuberculosis was already established. By Christmas it was obvious that he was far from well and a more than usually elaborate round of festivities was organized to distract attention from this disturbing fact. When Mary came to London at the beginning of February, Edward was running a temperature and it was three days before he was well enough to see her. Jehan de Scheyfve reported that the princess was received with noticeably more attention and courtesy than on previous occasions, the Duke of Northumberland himself going down to the outer gates of the Palace of Westminster to welcome her. Edward was still in bed and Mary sat beside him while they chatted amicably about safe subjects – the thorny topic of religion was not mentioned.
Edward stayed in his room for the rest of the month. He seemed, wrote de Scheyfve, ‘to be sensitive to the slightest indisposition or change’ and suffered a good deal when the fever was on him. In March he rallied temporarily and was able to open the new session of Parliament, although the Lords and Commons had to go to him and a much curtailed ceremony was performed within the precincts of the palace. The doctors, who remained in constant attendance, made reassuring noises but those courtiers who had not seen the King since Christmas were horrified by the change in him. He had become thin to the point of emaciation and his left shoulder seemed higher than his right. On 11 April 1553 Edward was moved out to the purer air of Greenwich, but de Scheyfve wrote that he was no better and the ambassador heard from ‘a trustworthy source’ that his sputum was ‘sometimes coloured a greenish yellow and black, sometimes pink, like the colour of blood’. A month later, de Scheyfve had another grisly bulletin for the Emperor. ‘The physicians are now all agreed that he is suffering from a suppurating tumour on the lung … He is beginning to break out in ulcers; he is vexed by a harsh, continuous cough, his body is dry and burning, his belly is swollen, he has a slow fever upon him that never leaves him.’
The government was making every effort to conceal the gravity of the King’s condition, but it was impossible to stop the rumours spreading. Mary wrote anxious letters begging to be allowed to visit him and Elizabeth made a determined effort to reach her sick brother. Some time that spring she had actually started on the journey to London but was met on the way by a messenger purporting to come from the King, who ‘advised’ her to turn back. After this, there was nothing to be done but return to Hatfield and await developments. She continued to write to Edward but it is doubtful if any of her letters ever reached him. Having once faced the fearful fact that the King’s illness was mortal, the Duke of Northumberland had gone to considerable pains to separate him from his sisters. He wanted no outside influence brought to bear on the dying boy and was anxious to prevent either of the princesses from hearing of certain plans for their future.
Northumberland’s power would end with the King’s death – the best he could expect from Mary and her friends was political extinction, the worst an early appointment on Tower Hill – and since no one believed he would give up without a struggle, the Court and City seethed with nervous speculation. At the beginning of May John Dudley took the first steps towards securing his position by announcing the betrothal of Lady Jane Grey to his youngest and only remaining unmarried son, Guildford. Bearing in mind that Henry VIII had willed the crown to the so-called Suffolk line after his own children, the intention behind this move could hardly be mistaken.
At first the plan encountered some unexpected opposition from fifteen-year-old Lady Jane. After the arrest of Thomas Seymour, Jane had been reluctantly obliged to return home. Her only escape would be marriage but she disliked Guildford Dudley, a conceited, oafish youth and his mother’s darling, and she considered herself already promised to the young Earl of Hertford, son of the late Protector. Her protests did her no good. Her deplorable parents set on her in unison and the marriage duly took place at Durham House on Whitsunday, 21 May. At the same ceremony, Jane’s younger sister Katherine, now thirteen, was married to Lord Herbert, son and heir of the powerful Earl of Pembroke, and one of Northumberland’s daughters, another Katherine, to Lord Hastings, heir of the Earl of Huntingdon. This triple wedding, designed by John Dudley to forge a triple-strength chain of alliances, was ‘a very splendid and royal’ occasion, attended by ‘a great concourse of the principal persons of the kingdom’. It had been given out that the King himself would be there, but Edward was by now in no condition to leave his bed. According to de Scheyfve, writing on 11 June, he was now obliged to lie flat on his back all day. He could keep nothing on his stomach and was living ‘entirely on restoratives and obtaining little or no repose’.
By this time, in fact, the wretched Edward, suffering as much, if not more, from the remedies being inflicted on him as from his disease, was very near his end. But there was to be no merciful oblivion for England’s Treasure, or at any rate not yet. Somehow he must stay alive until he had completed his blueprint for the future as set out in his Device for the Succession, which disinherited Mary and Elizabeth as ‘not lawfully begotten and related to him by half-blood only’, passed over Frances Suffolk and bequeathed the crown directly to Jane Grey and her ‘heirs male’.
While Northumberland must bear a considerable share of the blame, the prime mover in this patently illegal attempt to set aside the provisions of the 1544 Act of Succession was undoubtedly Edward himself. His motives appear to have been straightforwardly ideological. Trained in the school of advanced evangelical Protestantism, he believed, just as rigidly as Mary did, that his was the only way of salvation for himself and for his people, for whose salvation he had always been taught, he was personally responsible under God. Conviction of this kind overrode all considerations of earthly justice and as soon as he began to realize that he might not live to provide heirs of his own body, Edward knew that if he valued his immortal soul, he must take every possible precaution to safeguard the work of godly reform. Why he was so determined to rule out the Protestant Elizabeth as well as the Catholic Mary has never been fully explained, but it would obviously be difficult to justify the exclusion of one princess and not the other, and Elizabeth, however good her intentions, might well find herself obliged to marry a Catholic prince. For that matter, both the princesses were liable to acquire foreign husbands, who would gain control of affairs and ‘tend to the utter subversion of the commonwealth’.
The Device went through several drafts, but by the middle of June it was ready in its final form and before the end of the month had been ratified, more or less reluctantly, by the Privy Council, the judiciary and the bishops. The most determined opposition had come from Sir Edward Montague, the Lord Chief Justice, who pointed out that, without another Act of Parliament, Edward had no power to alter his father’s dispositions, and from Archbishop Cranmer, whose conscience troubled him deeply. Montague put up a spirited resistance, but he was an elderly man, frightened of Northumberland and conditioned to obeying royal commands, and in the end he surrendered. So too, in the end, did Cranmer, who wanted more than anything to see his pathetic, suffering godson die in peace – happy in the belief that he had ensured the survival of the true Protestant faith.
Edward had now taken no solid food for nearly three weeks; his sputum was black, fetid and stinking; his fingers and toes were becoming gangrenous and the boy, born in such joy and wondrous hope fifteen years and nine months ago, longed only for death. Release came during the afternoon of 6 July, when the last Tudor King died in the arms of his friend Henry Sidney.
Edward VI was the first committed Protestant King of England – a fact which unfortunately tended to overshadow everything else in the minds of his contemporaries – and the flood of eulogies on his godly wisdom and government, his zeal in abolishing ‘the deformities of popish idolatry’ and overthrowing ‘the tyranny of Anti-Christ’ have very largely succeeded in obscuring the reality of the living, breathing boy. Perhaps the most interesting, because disinterested, appreciation comes from an outsider, Girolamo Cardano, an Italian mathematician and physician, who saw and talked to the King in the autumn of 1552 when a trained observer could already discern ‘the mark in his face of death that was to come too soon’. Cardano could report at first-hand on Edward’s ‘singularly perfect’ knowledge of Latin and French and could easily believe that he was equally proficient in Greek, Italian and Spanish. ‘Neither was he ignorant in logic, in the principles of natural philosophy, or in music. There was in him lacking neither humanity, the image of our mortality, a princely gravity and majesty, nor any kind of towardness beseeming a noble king. Briefly, it might seem a miracle of nature to behold the excellent wit and forwardness that appeared in him being yet a child.’ And yet, Cardano insisted, he was not exaggerating. If anything ‘the truth is more than I do utter’. They met several times and discussed, among other things, astronomy and the causes of comets. Cardano was deeply impressed by his grasp of and interest in the liberal arts and sciences, his sagacity and his ‘amiable sweetness’. ‘By this little trial’, he wrote, ‘a great guess may be given what was in this King.’
Even allowing for a measure of exaggeration in all the tributes to his virtue and wisdom, there is no reason to doubt that Edward did have great natural intelligence, a real eagerness to learn and an enormous capacity for concentrated hard work. Nor is there any reason to doubt the utter sincerity of his religious convictions, even if they do make him seem priggish to a materialistic age. The coldly uncommunicative front he presented, especially in the early years of his reign, was probably a defence mechanism as much as anything and where his suspicions had been aroused his hostility could be implacable – witness his attitude towards his unfortunate Seymour uncles. But Edward could both give and inspire affection. His personal attendants were all devoted to him and Edward himself had formed a close and lasting friendship with Barnaby Fitzpatrick, the Irish boy who shared his childhood.
In his obstinacy, his streak of ruthlessness, his personal charm, his love of music and pageantry, and his addiction to physical exercise Edward was a very recognizable Tudor. It seems more than possible that he might have grown up to combine his father’s more attractive characteristics with his grandfather’s longheadedness and made England a very great king. But he had been able to give ‘a show or sight only of excellency’ and now:
Out of Greenwich he is gone,
And lieth under a stone,
That loveth both house and parke:
Thou shalt see him no more,
That set by thee such store,
For death hath pearced his hart.
Gone is our King,
That would runne at the ringe,
And oftentimes ryde on Black heath:
Ye noblemen of chevalry,
And ye men of artillerie,
May all lament his death.
That swete childe is deade,
And lapped in leade,
And in Westminster lyeth full colde:
All hartes may rue,
That ever they him knew,
Or that swete childe did beholde.
Farewell, diamonde deare!
Farewell, christall cleare!
Farewell, the flower of chevalry!
The Lorde hath taken him,
And for his people’s sinne;
A just plague for our iniquitie.
The plague, just or otherwise, which Edward’s people now faced was that old recurring nightmare, a disputed succession, and in the summer of 1553 the outlook was particularly gloomy. With the royal house reduced to a handful of women and babies and the rightful heir a delicate ageing spinster, the way seemed wide open for the strong men to take over. Mary had been waiting out the last few months in ‘sore perplexity’ and increasing fear of the future. Northumberland sent her regular reports on Edward’s condition and he even sent her a present, a blazon of her coat of arms as Princess of England, but Mary and de Scheyfve believed these attentions were intended to lull her suspicions, that the moment Edward was dead the Duke meant to seize power for himself by proclaiming his new daughter-in-law Queen, and that Mary would then be in deadly danger. All the same, when a summons to her dying brother’s bedside reached her at Hunsdon, probably on 5 July, she obediently set out on the journey. She had not gone far – she was at Hoddesdon on the London road – before she received an anonymous warning, which can surely have come as no surprise, that Northumberland’s message was a trap.
The crisis which had been lying in wait for Mary all her adult life was now upon her. Now, if ever, she must forget her megrims, her nervous headaches, her self-doubts and hesitations and fits of weeping. Now, if she was to save herself, let alone her chances of becoming Queen, she must act with speed and decision. With only one possible course of action before her, Mary showed that she could rise bravely to an occasion. After sending a brief word to the Imperial embassy, she turned aside and, with no more than half a dozen loyal companions, rode hard and straight down the Newmarket road for Kenninghall in Norfolk. She had friends in the eastern counties and there, if it came to the worst, she would be within reach of the coast and rescue.
In London the King’s death was being kept a close secret, or as close as it was possible to keep a secret in any royal household, but when he heard that Mary had slipped through his fingers, Northumberland could wait no longer – for him, too, speed was of the essence. He despatched a party of three hundred horse under the command of his son Robert with orders to pursue and capture the Lady Mary and on Sunday, 9 July, he finally showed his hand. The Bishop of London, preaching at St Paul’s Cross, referred to both the princesses as bastards and fulminated especially against Mary as a papist who would bring foreigners into the country. Also on that Sunday the Lady Jane was officially informed of her new status.
The six weeks since her marriage had not been happy ones for Jane. She seems to have feared and disliked the whole Dudley family, particularly her husband and his mother, to such an extent that even her own mother’s company was preferable and immediately after the wedding she had gone back first to Suffolk Place and then to her parents’ house by the river at Sheen. But the Duchess of Northumberland, who did not get on with the Duchess of Suffolk, soon became impatient. She told Jane that the King was dying and that she ought to be ready for a summons at any time, because he had made her his heir. According to Jane, this information, flung at her without warning, caused her the greatest stupefaction, but she put it down to ‘boasting’ and an excuse to separate her from her mother. She probably said so, for the result was a furious Tudor–Dudley quarrel – the Duchess of Northumberland accusing the Duchess of Suffolk of deliberately trying to keep the newly-weds apart and insisting that whatever happened, Jane’s place was with her husband. This argument was unanswerable and, in the end, Jane was forced to join Guildford at Durham House where, apparently, the marriage was consummated. But the reluctant bride stayed only a few days with her in-laws. She had become ill – probably some form of summer complaint aggravated by nervous strain – and, with curious lack of logic, was convinced that the Dudleys were poisoning her. In fact, of course, her health and wellbeing were of vital concern to the Dudleys just then and they sent her out to Chelsea, with its happy memories of Katherine Parr, to recuperate. She was still there on the afternoon of 9 July when Northumberland’s daughter, Mary Sidney, came to fetch her to Syon House – another of the Duke’s residences. At Syon she found her parents, her husband, her mother-in-law, and the Lords of the Council headed by Northumberland himself. These distinguished personages greeted her with ‘unwonted caresses and pleasantness’ and, to Jane’s acute embarrassment, proceeded to kneel before her and do her reverences which she considered most unsuitable to her state. Northumberland then broke the news of Edward’s death and went on to disclose the terms of the King’s ‘Device’; how he had decided for good and sufficient reasons that neither of his sisters was worthy to succeed him and how – ‘he being in every way able to disinherit them’ – he had instead nominated his cousin Jane as heir to the crown of England.
Jane’s partisans have always maintained that this was the first she knew of her deadly inheritance, but it is hard to believe that a girl of so much brilliant, highly-trained intelligence can have failed to grasp the significance of her hasty forced marriage to Guildford Dudley, or that she had not at least guessed what was being planned for her. Not that prior knowledge in any way affected the helplessness of her position. Half-fainting, she managed to gasp out something about her ‘insufficiency’ and a hasty prayer that if the crown was rightfully hers, God would help her govern the realm to His glory. In present circumstances, God looked like being her only friend.
On the following afternoon, the new Queen was taken in state by water from Syon to the Tower and a Genoese merchant, one Baptista Spinola, who was standing in a group of spectators outside the fortress to see the procession disembark, took the trouble to describe her appearance in detail. ‘This Jane’, he wrote, ‘is very short and thin (all the Grey sisters were diminutive, Mary, the youngest, being almost a dwarf), but prettily shaped and graceful. She has small features and a well-made nose, the mouth flexible and the lips red. The eyebrows are arched and darker than her hair, which is nearly red. Her eyes are sparkling and reddish brown in colour.’ Spinola was standing so close to Jane that he noticed her complexion was good but freckled and her teeth, when she smiled, white and sharp. She was wearing a gown of green velvet stamped with gold, while Guildford, ‘a very tall strong boy with light hair’ resplendent in white and silver, preened himself at her side and ‘paid her much attention’.
Guildford was enjoying himself. He made no pretence of loving his wife, but he was quite prepared to be polite to her in public in return for the golden stream of social and material benefits which would flow from her. Unfortunately these happy expectations were about to receive a severe set-back. No sooner was Jane installed in the royal apartments at the Tower than she was visited by the Lord Treasurer, the Marquis of Winchester, bringing a selection of royal jewels for her inspection. He also brought the crown itself although, as Jane was later careful to stress, she had not asked for it. Either in an ill-judged attempt to please her, or (more likely) to force her into committing herself beyond any possibility of return, Winchester urged her to put it on to see if it suited her. Jane recoiled in horror. The crown was the ultimate symbol of sanctified earthly power – to treat it as a plaything, a sort of extra special head-dress, would be tantamount to blasphemy. Winchester failed to see the storm-signals. She could take it without fear, he told her and added kindly that another should be made to crown her husband.
This was the final straw. It was perhaps only now that Jane realized, ‘with infinite grief and displeasure of heart’, exactly how she had been tricked. No one cared a snap of their fingers about fulfilling her dead cousin’s wishes, about maintaining the gospel and the Protestant faith, or whether the throne was rightfully hers. The plot was simply to use her and her royal blood to elevate a plebeian Dudley to a throne to which he had no shadow of right so that his father could continue to rule. Jane had her full share of Tudor family pride and now that pride was outraged. Small, stubborn, terrified and furious, she laid back her ears and dug in her heels. She would make her husband a duke but never, never would she consent to make him king. This naturally precipitated a full-scale family row. Guildford rushed off to fetch his mother and together they launched an all-out attack on their victim – he whining that he did not want to be a duke, he wanted to be King; she scolding like a fishwife. At last, finding Jane immovable, they stormed out of her presence, the Duchess of Northumberland swearing that her precious son should not stay another minute with his unnatural and ungrateful wife but would return immediately to Syon. Jane watched them go and then sent for the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke. Little though she wanted Guildford’s company, she had no intention of allowing him to put such an open slight on her. She ordered Arundel and Pembroke to prevent him from leaving. Whether or not he continued to share her bed, his place was by her side and there he must stay. Guildford sulked but he did as he was told.
While these domestic storms were raging inside the Tower, the heralds were going round the city proclaiming Queen Jane but, noted the Greyfriars Chronicle ominously, ‘few or none said God save her’. The sullenly silent crowds in Cheapside and Ludgate that summer evening set the pattern for the rest of the country. The English people knew nothing and cared less about Jane Grey; they had always had a soft spot for Mary Tudor and, even more to the point, they had come to loathe the whole tribe of Dudley for greedy, tyrannical upstarts. Richard Troughton, bailiff of South Walshen in Lincolnshire, hearing of Mary’s plight from his friend James Pratt as they stood together by the cattle drinking-place called hedgedyke, was moved to exclaim: ‘Then it is the Duke’s doing and woe worth him that ever he was born, for he will go about to destroy all the noble blood of England.’ John Dudley might control the capital, the Tower with its armoury, the treasury and the navy; he might have all the great lords in his pocket, meek as mice; but Richard Troughton spoke for England, and England had had more than enough of John Dudley and his like and was not prepared to stand idly by while King Harry’s daughter, poor soul, was cheated of her rightful inheritance.
Meanwhile, King Harry’s daughter had reached the comparative safety of Kenninghall and on 9 July had written defiantly to the Council, commanding them to proclaim her right and title in her City of London. Mary’s challenge was delivered just as the new Court was sitting down to dinner on that eventful Monday, 10 July and caused the Duchesses of Suffolk and Northumberland to shed tears of alarm. The news that Mary was still at large and showing fight came as an unwelcome surprise to her enemies, ‘astonished and troubled’ as they read her letter, but not even the most optimistic of her friends dared to hope that she might stand a chance. At the Imperial embassy, where Jehan de Scheyfve had recently been reinforced by three envoys extraordinary, they were confidently expecting the worst and could only deplore my Lady’s obstinate refusal to accept defeat.
But the Duke knew how slight were the foundations on which his power rested. Every day that Mary remained free would undermine them further and disquieting reports were beginning to come in about the support rallying to her. The Earl of Sussex and his son were on their way to Norfolk, while the Earl of Bath and men like Sir Thomas Wharton, Sir John Mordaunt, Sir Henry Bedingfield and Henry Jerningham, as well as other substantial gentlemen and their tenantry – not to mention ‘innumerable small companies of the common people’ – were already helping to swell the numbers at the little camp now established at Framlingham Castle, a stronger place than Kenninghall and nearer the coast. No cause yet perhaps for serious anxiety, but any hope of the swift, silent coup which John Dudley had been banking on was gone. He would have to mount a full-scale expedition ‘to fetch in the Lady Mary’ and ride out the consequent bad publicity as best he could.
Preparations began on the twelfth with a muster at Tothill Fields and that night wakeful citizens could hear carts laden with weapons and supplies ‘for a great army towards Cambridge’ rumbling eastward through the streets. Northumberland had intended to put the Duke of Suffolk in command of the army, but when this information was conveyed to Queen Jane, she burst into tears and begged that her father ‘might tarry at home in her company’ – the prospect of being left alone in a nest of Dudleys was altogether too much. The Lords of the Council looked uneasily at their weeping sovereign and then at each other, an idea beginning to form in their collective minds. This idea they presently propounded to Northumberland. It would be so much better, they suggested, if he took command himself. No other man was so well fitted for the task, especially seeing that he had already suppressed one rebellion in East Anglia and was therefore so feared in those parts that no one would dare offer him any resistance. Besides, was he not ‘the best man of war in the realm’? Then there was the matter of the Queen’s distress and the fact that she would ‘in no wise grant that her father should take it on him’. So it was really up to the Duke, murmured someone, a note of steel audible under the persuasion, it was really up to the Duke ‘to remedy the matter’. The Duke, sensing that control of events was beginning to slide out of his hands, gave way. ‘Since ye think it good’, he said, ‘I and mine will go, not doubting of your fidelity to the Queen’s majesty which I leave in your custody.’
The fidelity of his associates to anything but their own best interests was, of course, highly doubtful and it was the lively fear of what they might do as soon as his back was turned which lay behind John Dudley’s reluctance to take the field himself. He knew that he was being manoeuvred into the role of scapegoat, but there was no going back now.
Next day, all his arrangements made, he addressed the assembled Council for the last time, in a last effort to impress them with the hypnotic force of his personality. He and his companions, he said, were going forth to adventure their bodies and lives trusting to the faith and truth of those they left behind. If anyone was thinking of violating that trust, let them remember treachery could be a two-handed game; let them also remember God’s vengeance and the sacred oath of allegiance they had taken ‘to this virtuous lady the Queen’s highness’, whom they had all helped to entice into a position she had never asked for or sought. ‘My lord’, said someone – it may have been Winchester, the eldest of the peers – ‘if ye mistrust any of us in this matter, your grace is far deceived; for which of us can wipe his hands clean thereof?’ While they were talking the servants had come in with the first course of dinner and were laying the table, but Winchester (if it were he) went on: ‘If we should shrink from you as one that were culpable, which of us can excuse himself as guiltless? Therefore herein your doubt is too far cast.’ ‘I pray God it be so’, answered the Duke abruptly. ‘Let us go to dinner.’
After the lords had eaten, Northumberland went to take his leave of the Queen and receive from her his signed and sealed commission as Lieutenant of her army. Jane thanked him ‘humbly’ for allowing her father to stay at home and asked him to use all his diligence. ‘I will do what in me lies’, he said, looking down at the thin, red-haired slip of a girl to whom he had bound himself by the unbreakable kinship of mutual destruction. Early on the following morning, 14 July, he rode out of Durham Place in the Strand, his eldest son at his side, and took the road through Shoreditch – the way lined with silent, staring crowds.
During the next few days the faces of those left behind in the Tower grew steadily longer as word arrived that Mary had been proclaimed in Norwich and that the town had sent her men and weapons. Even more worrying were the reports of desertions and dissension in Northumberland’s forces. Then came a shattering piece of news – the crews of the six royal ships sent to Yarmouth to cut off Mary’s escape route had gone over to her in a body, taking their captains and their heavy guns with them. ‘After once the submission of the ships was known in the Tower’, wrote an eyewitness, ‘each man then began to pluck in his horns.’ It was now a question not of whether, but when they would follow the sailors’ example. Already certain individuals were looking for ways of escaping from the stifling confines of the fortress ‘to consult in London’, and on the sixteenth there was a sudden alarm at about seven o’clock in the evening when the main gates of the Tower were locked and the keys carried up to Queen Jane. It was given out that there was a seal missing, but the same anonymous eyewitness believed the truth of the matter was that the Queen suspected the Lord Treasurer of some evil intent. Old Winchester had sneaked out to his own house and had to be fetched back at midnight.
Jane could not hope to stem the tide – she had neither the experience nor the authority – and two days later she was forced to allow Arundel, Pembroke and about a dozen others to leave on the excuse that they had urgent business to discuss with the French ambassador. But, on the following afternoon, it was the Imperial embassy which received a visit from a deputation of councillors. They had come to explain how reluctant they had been to subscribe to King Edward’s ‘Device’, but really they had had no choice for they had been so bullied by the Duke and treated ‘almost as if they were prisoners’. Of course they all believed in their hearts that Mary was the rightful Queen and they were going to proclaim her that very day.
And so they did, between five and six in the evening of 19 July at the Cross in Cheapside amid scenes of hysterical excitement. People with money in their purses flung it out of their windows into the cheering, yelling crowds – the Earl of Pembroke was seen to throw a whole capful of gold angels and no doubt regarded it as a good investment. Sober citizens wrenched off their gowns and capered in the streets like children. The church bells rocked and crashed in a forest of steeples. Bonfires were lit on every corner and all that night the people of London sang and danced and feasted, drinking the health of the rightful Queen and destruction to her enemies.
Faint echoes of the general rejoicing could be heard in the Tower where, so it was said, the Duke of Suffolk broke the news to his daughter and with his own hands helped to tear down the cloth of estate over her head. Then he went out on to Tower Hill and proclaimed the Lady Mary’s grace to be Queen of England before scuttling away to Sheen. Jane was left alone in the stripped and silent rooms to listen to the distant pealing of the bells – for her there was no going home.
At Framlingham, Mary’s first act as Queen had been to order the crucifix to be set up again in the parish church where a Te Deum was sung. To her friends, to all those conservative gentlemen who had risked their lives and fortunes to come to her aid, to the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who believed in the rule of law because it was their only protection, her victory against all the odds seemed like a miracle. To Mary there was no question about it. She had been vouchsafed a clear and obvious sign that God was prepared to give her a second chance, a chance to expiate an old festering sin, a chance to lead her people back into the light.