1542 TO 1547.
Rout of Solway and death of James V. of Scotland.--Birth of queen
Mary.--Henry projects to marry her to his son.--Offers the hand of
Elizabeth to the earl of Arran.--Earl of Lenox marries lady M.
Douglas.--Marriage of the king to Catherine Parr.--Her person and
acquirements.--Influence of her conduct on Elizabeth.--Henry joins the
emperor against Francis I.--His campaign in France.--Princess Mary
replaced in order of succession, and Elizabeth also.--Proposals for a
marriage between Elizabeth and Philip of Spain.--The duke of Norfolk and
earl of Hertford heads of the catholic and protestant parties.
Circumstances which give a preponderance to the latter.--Disgrace of the
duke.--Trial of the earl of Surry.--His death and character.--Sentence
against the duke of Norfolk.--Death of Henry.
In the month of December 1542, shortly after the rout of Solway, in
which the English made prisoners the flower of the Scottish nobility,
the same messenger brought to Henry VIII. the tidings that the grief and
shame of this defeat had broken the heart of king James V., and that his
queen had brought into the world a daughter, who had received the name
of Mary, and was now queen of Scotland. Without stopping to deplore the
melancholy fate of a nephew whom he had himself brought to destruction,
Henry instantly formed the project of uniting the whole island under one
crown, by the marriage of this infant sovereign with the prince his
son. All the Scottish prisoners of rank then in London were immediately
offered the liberty of returning to their own country on the condition,
to which they acceded with apparent alacrity, of promoting this union
with all their interest; and so confident was the English monarch in the
success of his measures, that previously to their departure, several of
them were carried to the palace of Enfield, where young Edward then
resided, that they might tender homage to the future husband of their
queen.
The regency of Scotland at this critical juncture was claimed by the
earl of Arran, who was generally regarded as next heir to the crown,
though his legitimacy had been disputed; and to this nobleman,--but
whether for himself or his son seems doubtful,--Henry, as a further
means of securing the important object which he had at heart, offered
the hand of his daughter Elizabeth. So early were the concerns and
interests blended, of two princesses whose celebrated rivalry was
destined to endure until the life of one of them had become its
sacrifice! So remarkably, too, in this first transaction was contrasted
the high preeminence from which the Scottish princess was destined to
hurl herself by her own misconduct, with the abasement and comparative
insignificance out of which her genius and her good fortune were to be
employed in elevating the future sovereign of England.
Born in the purple of her hereditary kingdom, the monarchs of France and
England made it an object of eager contention which of them should
succeed in encircling with a second diadem the baby brows of Mary;
while the hand of Elizabeth was tossed as a trivial boon to a Scottish
earl of equivocal birth, despicable abilities, and feeble character. So
little too was even this person flattered by the honor, or aware of the
advantages, of such a connection, that he soon after renounced it by
quitting the English for the French party. Elizabeth in consequence
remained unbetrothed, and her father soon afterwards secured to himself
a more strenuous ally in the earl of Lenox, also of the blood-royal of
Scotland, by bestowing upon this nobleman the hand, not of his daughter,
but of his niece the lady Margaret Douglas.
Undeterred by his late severe disappointment Henry was bent on entering
once more into the marriage state, and his choice now fell on Catherine
Parr, sprung from a knightly family possessed of large estates in
Westmoreland, and widow of lord Latimer, a member of the great house of
Nevil.
A portrait of this lady still in existence, exhibits, with fine and
regular features, a character of intelligence and arch simplicity
extremely captivating. She was indeed a woman of uncommon talent and
address; and her mental accomplishments, besides the honor which they
reflect on herself, inspire us with respect for the enlightened
liberality of an age in which such acquirements could be placed within
the ambition and attainment of a private gentlewoman, born in a remote
county, remarkable even in much later times for a primitive simplicity
of manners and domestic habits. Catherine was both learned herself, and,
after her elevation a zealous patroness of learning and of
protestantism, to which she was become a convert. Nicholas Udal master
of Eton was employed by her to translate Erasmus's paraphrase of the
four gospels; and there is extant a Latin letter of hers to the princess
Mary, whose conversion from popery she seems to have had much at heart,
in which she entreats her to permit this work to appear under her
auspices. She also printed some prayers and meditations, and there was
found among her papers, after her death, a piece entitled "The
lamentations of a sinner bewailing her blind life," in which she
deplores the years that she had passed in popish observances, and which
was afterwards published by secretary Cecil.
It is a striking proof of the address of this queen, that she
conciliated the affection of all the three children of the king, letters
from each of whom have been preserved addressed to her after the death
of their father.
Elizabeth in particular maintained with her a very intimate and frequent
intercourse; which ended however in a manner reflecting little credit on
either party, as will be more fully explained in its proper place.
The adroitness with which Catherine extricated herself from the snare in
which her own religious zeal, the moroseness of the king, and the enmity
of Gardiner had conspired to entangle her, has often been celebrated.
May it not be conjectured, that such an example, given by one of whom
she entertained a high opinion, might exert no inconsiderable influence
on the opening mind of Elizabeth, whose conduct in the many similar
dilemmas to which it was her lot to be reduced, partook so much of the
same character of politic and cautious equivocation?
Henry discovered by experiment that it would prove a much more difficult
matter than he had apprehended to accomplish, either by force or
persuasion, the marriage of young Edward with the queen of Scots; and
learning that it was principally to the intrigues of Francis I., against
whom he had other causes also of complaint, that he was likely to owe
the disappointment of this favourite scheme, he determined on revenge.
With this design he turned his eyes on the emperor; and finding Charles
perfectly well disposed to forget all ancient animosities in sympathy
with his newly-conceived indignation against the French king, he entered
with him into a strict alliance. War was soon declared against France by
the new confederates; and after a campaign in which little was effected,
it was agreed that Charles and Henry, uniting their efforts, should
assail that kingdom with a force which it was judged incapable of
resisting, and without stopping at inferior objects, march straight to
Paris. Accordingly, in July 1544, preceded by a fine army, and attended
by the flower of his nobility splendidly equipped, Henry took his
departure for Calais in a ship the sails of which were made of cloth of
gold.
He arrived in safety, and enjoyed the satisfaction of dazzling with his
magnificence the count de Buren whom the emperor sent with a body of
horse to meet him; quarrelled soon after with that potentate, who found
it his interest to make a separate peace; took the towns of Montreuil
and Boulogne, neither of them of any value to him, and returned.
So foolish and expensive a sally of passion, however characteristic of
the disposition of this monarch, would not merit commemoration in this
place, but for the important influence which it unexpectedly exerted on
the fortune and expectations of Elizabeth through the following train of
circumstances.
The emperor, whose long enmity with Henry had taken its rise from what
he justly regarded as the injuries of Catherine of Arragon his aunt, in
whose person the whole royal family of Spain had been insulted, had
required of him as a preliminary to their treaty a formal
acknowledgement of the legitimacy of his daughter Mary. This Henry could
not, with any regard to consistency, grant; but desirous to accede as
far as he conveniently could to the wishes of his new ally, he consented
to stipulate, that without any explanation on this point, his eldest
daughter should by act of parliament be reinstated in the order of
succession. At the same time, glad to relent in behalf of his favorite
child, and unwilling perhaps to give the catholic party the triumph of
asserting that he had virtually declared his first marriage more lawful
than his second, he caused a similar privilege to be extended to
Elizabeth, who was thus happily restored to her original station and
prospects, before she had attained sufficient maturity of age to suffer
by the cruel and mortifying degradation to which she had been for
several years subjected.
Henceforth, though the act which declared null the marriage of the king
with Anne Boleyn remained for ever unrepealed, her daughter appears to
have been universally recognised on the footing of a princess of
England; and so completely were the old disputes concerning the divorce
of Catherine consigned to oblivion, that in 1546, when France, Spain and
England had concluded a treaty of peace, proposals passed between the
courts of London and Madrid for the marriage of Elizabeth with Philip
prince of Spain; that very Philip afterwards her brother-in-law and in
adversity her friend and protector, then a second time her suitor, and
afterwards again to the end of his days the most formidable and
implacable of her enemies. On which side, or on what assigned
objections, this treaty of marriage was relinquished, we do not learn;
but as the demonstrations of friendship between Charles and Henry after
their French campaign were full of insincerity, it may perhaps be
doubted whether either party was ever bent in earnest on the completion
of this extraordinary union.
The popish and protestant factions which now divided the English court,
had for several years acknowledged as their respective leaders the duke
of Norfolk and the earl of Hertford. To the latter of these, the painful
impression left on Henry's mind by the excesses of Catherine Howard, the
religious sentiments embraced by the present queen, the king's
increasing jealousy of the ancient nobility of the country, and above
all the visible decline of his health, which brought into immediate
prospect the accession of young Edward under the tutelage of his uncle,
had now conspired to give a decided preponderancy. The aged duke,
sagacious, politic, and deeply versed in all the secrets and the arts of
courts, saw in a coalition with the Seymours the only expedient for
averting the ruin of his house; and he proposed to bestow his daughter
the duchess of Richmond in marriage on sir Thomas Seymour, while he
exerted all his authority with his son to prevail upon him to address
one of the daughters of the earl of Hertford. But Surry's scorn of the
new nobility of the house of Seymour, and his animosity against the
person of its chief, was not to be overcome by any plea of expedience or
threatening of danger. He could not forget that it was at the instance
of the earl of Hertford that he, with some other nobles and gentlemen,
had suffered the disgrace of imprisonment for eating flesh in Lent; that
when a trifling defeat which he had sustained near Boulogne had caused
him to be removed from the government of that town, it was the earl of
Hertford who ultimately profited by his misfortune, in succeeding to the
command of the army. Other grounds of offence the haughty Surry had also
conceived against him; and choosing rather to fall, than cling for
support to an enemy at once despised and hated, he braved the utmost
displeasure of his father, by an absolute refusal to lend himself to
such a scheme of alliance. Of this circumstance his enemies availed
themselves to instil into the mind of the king a suspicion that the earl
of Surry aspired to the hand of the princess Mary; they also commented
with industrious malice on his bearing the arms of Edward the
Confessor, to which he was clearly entitled in right of his mother, a
daughter of the duke of Buckingham, but which his more cautious father
had ceased to quarter after the attainder of that unfortunate nobleman.
The sick mind of Henry received with eagerness all these suggestions,
and the ruin of the earl was determined[9]. An indictment of high
treason was preferred against him: his proposal of disproving the
charge, according to a mode then legal, by fighting his principal
accuser in his shirt, was overruled; his spirited, strong and eloquent
defence was disregarded--a jury devoted to the crown brought in a
verdict of guilty; and in January 1547, at the early age of
seven-and-twenty, he underwent the fatal sentence of the law.
[Note 9: One extraordinary, and indeed unaccountable, circumstance
in the life of the earl of Surry may here be noticed:--that while his
father urged him to connect himself in marriage with one lady, while the
king was jealous of his designs upon a second, and while he himself, as
may be collected from his poem "To a lady who refused to dance with
him," made proposals of marriage to a third, he had a wife living. To
this lady, who was a sister of the earl of Oxford, he was united at the
age of fifteen, she had borne him five children; and it is pretty plain
that they were never divorced, for we find her, several years after his
death, still bearing the title of countess of Surry, and the guardian of
his orphans. Had the example of Henry instructed his courtiers to find
pretexts for the dissolution of the matrimonial tie whenever interest or
inclination might prompt, and did our courts of law lend themselves to
this abuse? A preacher of Edward the sixth's time brings such an
accusation against the morals of the age, but I find no particular
examples of it in the histories of noble families.]
No one during the whole sanguinary tyranny of Henry VIII. fell more
guiltless, or more generally deplored by all whom personal animosity or
the spirit of party had not hardened against sentiments of compassion,
or blinded to the perception of merit. But much of Surry has survived
the cruelty of his fate. His beautiful songs and sonnets, which served
as a model to the most popular poets of the age of Elizabeth, still
excite the admiration of every student attached to the early literature
of our country. Amongst other frivolous charges brought against him on
his trial, it was mentioned that he kept an Italian jester, thought to
be a spy, and that he loved to converse with foreigners and conform his
behaviour to them. For his personal safety, therefore, it was perhaps
unfortunate that a portion of his youth had been passed in a visit to
Italy, then the focus of literature and fount of inspiration; but for
his surviving fame, and for the progress of English poetry, the
circumstance was eminently propitious; since it is from the return of
this noble traveller that we are to date not only the introduction into
our language of the Petrarchan sonnet, and with it of a tenderness and
refinement of sentiment unknown to the barbarism of our preceding
versifiers; but what is much more, that of heroic blank verse; a noble
measure, of which the earliest example exists in Surry's spirited and
faithful version of one book of the AEneid.
The exalted rank, the splendid talents, the lofty spirit of this
lamented nobleman seemed to destine him to a station second to none
among the public characters of his time; and if, instead of being cut
off by the hand of violence in the morning of life, he had been
permitted to attain a length of days at all approaching to the
fourscore years of his father, it is probable that the votary of letters
would have been lost to us in the statesman or the soldier. Queen Mary,
who sought by her favor and confidence to revive the almost extinguished
energies of his father, and called forth into premature distinction the
aspiring boyhood of his son, would have intrusted to his vigorous years
the highest offices and most weighty affairs of state. Perhaps even the
suspicions of her father might have been verified by the event, and her
own royal hand might itself have become the reward of his virtues and
attachment.
Elizabeth, whose maternal ancestry closely connected her with the house
of Howard, might have sought and found, in her kinsman the earl of
Surry, a counsellor and friend deserving of all her confidence and
esteem; and it is possible that he, with safety and effect, might have
placed himself as a mediator between the queen and that formidable
catholic party of which his misguided son, fatally for himself, aspired
to be regarded as the leader, and was in fact only the instrument. But
the career of ambition, ere he had well entered it, was closed upon him
for ever; and it is as an accomplished knight, a polished lover, and
above all as a poet, that the name of Surry now lives in the annals of
his country.
Of the five children who survived to feel the want of his paternal
guidance, one daughter, married to the earl of Westmorland, was
honorably distinguished by talents, erudition, and the patronage of
letters; but of the two sons, the elder was that unfortunate duke of
Norfolk who paid on the scaffold the forfeit of an inconsiderate and
guilty enterprise; and the younger, created earl of Northampton by James
I., lived to disgrace his birth and fine talents by every kind of
baseness, and died just in time to escape punishment as an accomplice in
Overbury's murder.
The duke of Norfolk had been declared guilty of high treason on grounds
equally frivolous with his son; but the opportune death of Henry VIII.
on the day that his cruel and unmerited sentence was to have been
carried into execution, saved his life, when his humble submissions and
pathetic supplications for mercy had failed to touch the callous heart
of the expiring despot. The jealousies however, religious and political,
of the council of regency, on which the administration devolved,
prompted them to refuse liberty to the illustrious prisoner after their
weakness or their clemency had granted him his life. During the whole
reign of Edward VI. the duke was detained under close custody in the
Tower; his estates were confiscated, his blood attainted, and for this
period the great name of Howard disappears from the page of English
history.