1549 TO 1553.
Decline of the protector's authority.--He is imprisoned--accused of
misdemeanors--loses his office--is liberated--reconciled with Dudley,
who succeeds to his authority.--Dudley pushes on the reformation.--The
celebration of mass prohibited.--Princess Mary persecuted.--The emperor
attempts to get her out of the kingdom, but without success--interferes
openly in her behalf.--Effect of persecution on the mind of
Mary.--Marriage proposed for Elizabeth with the prince of Denmark.--She
declines it.--King betrothed to a princess of France.--Sweating
sickness.--Death of the duke of Suffolk.--Dudley procures that title for
the marquis of Dorset, and the dukedom of Northumberland for
himself.--Particulars of the last earl of Northumberland.--Trial,
conviction, and death of the duke of Somerset.--Christmas festivities of
the young king.--Account of George Ferrers master of the king's
pastimes, and his works.--Views of Northumberland.--Decline of the
king's health.--Scheme of Northumberland for lady Jane Grey's
succession.--Three marriages contrived by him for this purpose.--He
procures a settlement of the crown on the lady Jane.--Subserviency of
the council.--Death of Edward concealed by Northumberland.--The
princesses narrowly escape falling into his hands.--Courageous conduct
of Elizabeth.--Northumberland deserted by the council and the
army.--Jane Grey imprisoned.--Northumberland arrested.--Mary mounts the
throne.
It was to little purpose that the protector had stained his hands with
the blood of his brother, for the exemption thus purchased from one
kind of fear or danger, was attended by a degree of public odium which
could not fail to render feeble and tottering an authority based, like
his, on plain and open usurpation.
Other causes conspired to undermine his credit and prepare his
overthrow. The hatred of the great nobles, which he augmented by a
somewhat too ostentatious patronage of the lower classes against the
rich and powerful, continually pursued and watched the opportunity to
ruin him. Financial difficulties pressed upon him, occasioned in great
measure by the wars with France and Scotland which he had carried on, in
pursuance of Henry's design of compelling the Scotch to marry their
young queen to his son. An object which had finally been frustrated,
notwithstanding the vigilance of the English fleet, by the safe arrival
of Mary in France, and her solemn betrothment to the dauphin. The great
and glorious work of religious reformation, though followed by Somerset,
under the guidance of Cranmer, with a moderation and prudence which
reflect the highest honor on both, could not be brought to perfection
without exciting the rancorous hostility of thousands, whom various
motives and interests attached to the cause of ancient superstition; and
the abolition, by authority, of the mass, and the destruction of images
and crucifixes, had given birth to serious disturbances in different
parts of the country. The want and oppression under which the lower
orders groaned,--and which they attributed partly to the suppression of
the monasteries to which they had been accustomed to resort for the
supply of their necessities, partly to a general inclosure bill
extremely cruel and arbitrary in its provisions,--excited commotions
still more violent and alarming. In order to suppress the insurrection
in Norfolk, headed by Kett, it had at length been found necessary to
send thither a large body of troops under the earl of Warwick, who had
acquired a very formidable degree of celebrity by the courage and
conduct which he exhibited in bringing this difficult enterprise to a
successful termination.
A party was now formed in the council, of which Warwick, Southampton,
Arundel, and St. John, were the chiefs; and strong resolutions were
entered into against the assumed authority of the protector. This
unfortunate man, whom an inconsiderate ambition, fostered by
circumstances favorable to its success, had pushed forward into a
station equally above his talents and his birth, was now found destitute
of all the resources of courage and genius which might yet have
retrieved his authority and his credit. He suffered himself to be
surprised into acts indicative of weakness and dismay, which soon robbed
him of his remaining partisans, and gave to his enemies all the
advantage which they desired.
His committal to the Tower on several charges, of which his assumption
of the whole authority of the state was the principal, soon followed. A
short time after he was deprived of his high office, which was nominally
vested in six members of the council, but really in the earl of Warwick,
whose private ambition seems to have been the main-spring of the whole
intrigue, and who thus became, almost without a struggle, undisputed
master of the king and kingdom.
That poorness of spirit which had sunk the duke of Somerset into
insignificance, saved him at present from further mischief. In the
beginning of the ensuing year, 1550, having on his knees confessed
himself guilty of all the matters laid to his charge, without
reservation or exception, and humbly submitted himself to the king's
mercy, he was condemned in a heavy fine, on remission of which by the
king he was liberated. Soon after, by the special favor of his royal
nephew, he was readmitted into the council; and a reconciliation was
mediated for him with Warwick, cemented by a marriage between one of his
daughters and the son and heir of this aspiring leader.
The catholic party, which had flattered itself that the earl of Warwick,
from gratitude for the support which some of its leaders had afforded
him, and perhaps also from principle, no less than from opposition to
the duke of Somerset, would be led to embrace its defence, was now
destined to deplore its disappointment.
Determined to rule alone, he soon shook off his able but too aspiring
colleague, the earl of Southampton, and disgraced, by the imposition of
a fine for some alleged embezzlement of public money, the earl of
Arundel, also a known assertor of the ancient faith, finally, having
observed how closely the principles of protestantism, which Edward had
derived from instructors equally learned and zealous, had interwoven
themselves with the whole texture and fabric of his mind, he resolved
to merit the lasting attachment of the royal minor by assisting him to
complete the overthrow of popery in England.
A confession of faith was now drawn up by commissioners appointed for
the purpose, and various alterations were made in the Liturgy, which had
already been translated into the vulgar tongue for church use. Tests
were imposed, which Gardiner, Bonner, and several others of the bishops
felt themselves called upon by conscience, or a regard to their own
reputation, to decline subscribing, even at the price of deprivation;
and prodigious devastations were made by the courtiers on the property
of the church. To perform or assist at the performance of the mass was
also rendered highly penal. But no dread of legal animadversion was
capable of deterring the lady Mary from the observance of this essential
rite of her religion; and finding herself and her household exposed to
serious inconveniences on account of their infraction of the new
statute, she applied for protection to her potent kinsman the emperor
Charles V., who is said to have undertaken her rescue by means which
could scarcely have failed to involve him in a war with England. By his
orders, or connivance, certain ships were prepared in the ports of
Flanders, manned and armed for an attempt to carry off the princess
either by stealth or open force, and land her at Antwerp. In furtherance
of the design, several of her gentlemen had already taken their
departure for that city, and Flemish light vessels were observed to keep
watch on the English coast. But by these appearances the apprehensions
of the council were awakened, and a sudden journey of the princess from
Hunsdon in Hertfordshire towards Norfolk, for which she was unable to
assign a satisfactory reason, served as strong confirmation of their
suspicions.
A violent alarm was immediately sounded through the nation, of foreign
invasion designed to co-operate with seditions at home; bodies of troops
were dispatched to protect different points of the coast; and several
ships of war were equipped for sea; while a communication on the subject
was made by the council to the nobility throughout the kingdom, in terms
calculated to awaken indignation against the persecuted princess, and
all who were suspected, justly or unjustly, of regarding her cause with
favor. A few extracts from this paper will exhibit the fierce and
jealous spirit of that administration of which Dudley formed the soul.
"So it is, that the lady Mary, not many days past, removed from Newhall
in Essex to her house of Hunsdon in Hertfordshire, the cause whereof,
although we knew not, yet did we rather think it likely that her grace
would have come to have seen his majesty; but now upon Tuesday last, she
hath suddenly, without knowledge given either to us here or to the
country there, and without any cause in the world by us to her given,
taken her journey from Hunsdon towards Norfolk" &c. "This her doing we
be sorry for, both for the evil opinion the king's majesty our master
may conceive thereby of her, and for that by the same doth appear
manifestly the malicious rancour of such as provoke her thus to breed
and stir up, as much as in her and them lieth, occasion of disorder and
unquiet in the realm" &c. "It is not unknown to us but some near about
the said lady Mary have very lately in the night seasons had privy
conferences with the emperor's embassador here being, which councils can
no wise tend to the weal of the king's majesty our master or his realm,
nor to the nobility of this realm. And whatsoever the lady Mary shall
upon instigation of these forward practices further do, like to these
her strange beginnings, we doubt not but your lordship will provide that
her proceedings shall not move any disobedience or disorder--The effect
whereof if her counsellors should procure, as it must be to her grace,
and to all other good Englishmen therein seduced, damnable, so shall it
be most hurtful to the good subjects of the country" &c.[15]
[Note 15: Burleigh Papers by Haynes.]
Thus did the fears, the policy, or the party-spirit, of the members of
the council lead them to magnify the peril of the nation from the
enterprises of a young and defenceless female, whose best friend was a
foreign prince, whose person was completely within their power, and who,
at this period of her life "more sinned against than sinning," was not
even suspected of any other design than that of withdrawing herself from
a country in which she was no longer allowed to worship God according to
her conscience. Some slight tumults in Essex and Kent, in which she was
not even charged with any participation, were speedily suppressed; and
after some conference with the chancellor and secretary Petre, Mary
obeyed a summons to attend them to the court, where she was now to be
detained for greater security.
On her arrival she received a reprimand from the council for her
obstinacy respecting the mass, with an injunction to instruct herself,
by reading, in the grounds of protestant belief. To this she replied,
with the inflexible resolution of her character, that as to protestant
books, she thanked God that she never had read any, and never intended
so to do; that for her religion she was ready to lay down her life, and
only feared that she might not be found worthy to become its martyr. One
of her chaplains was soon after thrown into prison; and further
severities seemed to await her, when a message from the emperor,
menacing the country with war in case she should be debarred from the
free exercise of her religion, taught the council the expediency of
relaxing a little the sternness of their intolerance. But the scruples
of the zealous young king on this head could not be brought to yield to
reasons of state, till he had "advised with the archbishop of Canterbury
and the bishops of London and Rochester, who gave their opinion that to
give license to sin was sin, but to connive at sin might be allowed in
case it were neither long, nor without hope of reformation[16]."
[Note 16: Hayward's Life of Edward VI.]
By this prudent and humane but somewhat jesuitical decision this
perplexing affair was set at rest for the present; and during the small
remainder of her brother's reign, a negative kind of persecution,
consisting in disfavor, obloquy, and neglect, was all, apparently, that
the lady Mary was called upon to undergo. But she had already endured
enough to sour her temper, to aggravate with feelings of personal
animosity her systematic abhorrence of what she deemed impious heresy,
and to bind to her heart by fresh and stronger ties that cherished
faith, in defence of which she was proudly conscious of having struggled
and suffered with a lofty and unyielding intrepidity.
In order to counterbalance the threatened hostility of Spain, and impose
an additional check on the catholic party at home, it was now judged
expedient for the king to strengthen himself by an alliance with
Christian III. king of Denmark; an able and enlightened prince, who in
the early part of his reign had opposed with vigor the aggressions of
the emperor Charles V. on the independence of the north of Europe, and
more recently had acquired the respect of the whole protestant body by
establishing the reformation in his dominions. An agent was accordingly
dispatched with a secret commission to sound the inclinations of the
court of Copenhagen towards a marriage between the prince-royal and the
lady Elizabeth.
That this negotiation proved fruitless, was apparently owing to the
reluctance to the connexion manifested by Elizabeth; of whom it is
observable, that she never could be prevailed upon to afford the
smallest encouragement to the addresses of any foreign prince whilst
she herself was still a subject; well aware that to accept of an
alliance which would carry her out of the kingdom, was to hazard the
loss of her succession to the English crown, a splendid reversion never
absent from her aspiring thoughts.
Disappointed in this design, Edward lost no time in pledging his own
hand to the infant daughter of Henry II. of France, which contract he
did not live to complete.
The splendid French embassy which arrived in England during the year
1550 to make arrangements respecting the dower of the princess, and to
confer on her intended spouse the order of St. Michael, was received
with high honors, but found the court-festivities damped by a visitation
of that strange and terrific malady the sweating sickness.
This pestilence, first brought into the island by the foreign
mercenaries who composed the army of the earl of Richmond, afterwards
Henry VII., now made its appearance for the fourth and last time in our
annals. It seized principally, it is said, on males, on such as were in
the prime of their age, and rather on the higher than the lower classes:
within the space of twenty-four hours the fate of the sufferer was
decided for life or death. Its ravages were prodigious; and the general
consternation was augmented by a superstitious idea which went forth,
that Englishmen alone, were the destined victims of this mysterious
minister of fate, which tracked their steps, with the malice and
sagacity of an evil spirit, into every distant country of the earth
whither they might have wandered, whilst it left unassailed all
foreigners in their own.
Two of the king's servants died of this disease, and he in consequence
removed to Hampton Court in haste and with very few attendants. The duke
of Suffolk and his brother, students at Cambridge, were seized with it
at the same time, sleeping in the same bed, and expired within two hours
of each other. They were the children of Charles Brandon by his last
wife, who was in her own right baroness Willoughby of Eresby. This lady
had already made herself conspicuous by that earnest profession of the
protestant faith for which, in the reign of Mary, she underwent many
perils and a long exile. She was a munificent patroness of the learned
and zealous divines of her own persuasion, whether natives or
foreigners; and the untimely loss of these illustrious youths, who seem
to have inherited both her religious principles and her love of letters,
was publicly bewailed by the principal members of the university.
But by the earl of Warwick the melancholy event was rendered doubly
conducive to the purposes of his ambition. In the first place it enabled
him to bind to his interests the marquis of Dorset married to the
half-sister of the young duke of Suffolk, by procuring a renewal of the
ducal title in his behalf, and next authorized him by a kind of
precedent to claim for himself the same exalted dignity.
The circumstances attending Dudley's elevation to the ducal rank are
worthy of particular notice, as connected with a melancholy part of the
story of that old and illustrious family of the Percies, celebrated
through so many ages of English history.
The last of this house who had borne the title of earl of Northumberland
was that ardent and favored suitor of Anne Boleyn, who was compelled by
his father to renounce his pretensions to her hand in deference to the
wishes of a royal competitor.
The disappointment and the injury impressed themselves in indelible
characters on the heart of Percy: in common with the object of his
attachment, he retained against Wolsey, whom he believed to have been
actively instrumental in fostering the king's passion, a deep
resentment, which is said to have rendered peculiarly acceptable to him
the duty afterwards imposed upon him, of arresting that celebrated
minister in order to his being brought to his trial. For the lady to
whom a barbarous exertion of parental authority had compelled him to
give his hand, while his whole heart was devoted to another, he also
conceived an aversion rather to be lamented than wondered at.
Unfortunately, she brought him no living offspring; and after a few
years he separated himself from her to indulge his melancholy alone and
without molestation. In this manner he spun out a suffering existence,
oppressed with sickness of mind and body, disengaged from public life,
and neglectful of his own embarrassed affairs, till the fatal
catastrophe of his brother, brought to the scaffold in 1537 for his
share in the popish rebellion under Aske. By this event, and the
attainder of sir Thomas Percy's children which followed, the earl saw
himself deprived of the only consolation which remained to him,--that of
transmitting to the posterity of a brother whom he loved, the titles and
estates derived to him through a long and splendid ancestry. As a last
resource, he bequeathed all his land to the king, in the hope, which was
not finally frustrated, that a return of royal favor might one day
restore them to the representatives of the Percies.
This done, he yielded his weary spirit on the last day of the same month
which had seen the fatal catastrophe of his misguided brother.
From this time the title had remained dormant, till the earl of Warwick,
untouched by commiseration or respect for the misfortunes of so great a
house, cut off for the present all chance of its restoration, by causing
the young monarch whom he governed to confer upon himself the whole of
the Percy estates, with the new dignity of duke of Northumberland; an
honor undeserved and ill-acquired, which no son of his was ever
permitted to inherit.
But the soaring ambition of Dudley regarded even these splendid
acquisitions of wealth and dignity only as steps to that summit of power
and dominion which he was resolved by all means and at all hazards to
attain; and his next measure was to procure the removal of the only man
capable in any degree of obstructing his further progress. This was the
late protector, by whom some relics of authority were still retained.
At the instigation of Northumberland, a law was passed making it felony
to conspire against the life of a privy-counsellor; and by various
insidious modes of provocation, he was soon enabled to bring within the
danger of this new act an enemy who was rash, little sagacious, by no
means scrupulous, and surrounded with violent or treacherous advisers.
On October 16th 1551, Somerset and several of his relations and
dependants, and on the following day his haughty duchess with certain of
her favorites, were committed to the Tower, charged with treason and
felony. The duke, being put upon his trial, so clearly disproved most of
the accusations brought against him that the peers acquitted him of
treason; but the evidence of his having entertained designs against the
lives of the duke of Northumberland, the marquis of Northampton, and the
earl of Pembroke, appeared so conclusive to his judges,--among whom
these three noblemen themselves did not blush to take their seats,--that
he was found guilty of the felony.
After his condemnation, Somerset acknowledged with contrition that he
had once mentioned to certain persons an intention of assassinating
these lords; but he protested that he had never taken any measures for
carrying this wicked purpose into execution. However this might be, no
act of violence had been committed, and it was hoped by many and
expected by more, that the royal mercy might yet be extended to preserve
his life: but Northumberland spared no efforts to incense the king
against his unhappy uncle; he also contrived by a course of amusements
and festivities to divert him from serious thought; and on January 21st
1552, to the great regret of the common people and the dismay of the
protestant party, the duke of Somerset underwent the fatal stroke on
Tower-hill.
During the whole interval between the condemnation and death of his
uncle, the king, as we are informed, had been entertained by the nobles
of his court with "stately masques, brave challenges at tilt and at
barriers, and whatsoever exercises or disports they could conjecture to
be pleasing to him. Then also he first began to _keep hall_[17], and the
Christmas-time was passed over with banquetings, plays, and much variety
of mirth[18]."
[Note 17: To keep hall, was to keep "open household with frank
resort to court."]
[Note 18: Hayward's Life of Edward VI.]
We learn that it was an ancient custom, not only with the kings of
England but with noblemen and "great housekeepers who used liberal
feasting in that season," to appoint for the twelve days of the
Christmas festival a lord of misrule, whose office it was to provide
diversions for their numerous guests. Of what nature these
entertainments might be we are not exactly informed; they probably
comprised some rude attempts at dramatic representation: but the taste
of an age rapidly advancing in literature and general refinement,
evidently began to disdain the flat and coarse buffooneries which had
formed the solace of its barbarous predecessors; and it was determined
that devices of superior elegance and ingenuity should distinguish the
festivities of the new court of Edward. Accordingly, George Ferrers, a
gentleman regularly educated at Oxford, and a member of the society of
Lincoln's inn, was chosen to preside over the "merry disports;" "who,"
says Holinshed, "being of better credit and estimation than commonly his
predecessors had been before, received all his commissions and warrants
by the name of master of the king's pastimes. Which gentleman so well
supplied his office, both in show of sundry sights and devices of rare
inventions, and in act of divers interludes and matters of pastime
played by persons, as not only satisfied the common sort, but also were
very well liked and allowed by the council, and other of skill in the
like pastimes; but best of all by the young king himself, as appeared by
his princely liberality in rewarding that service."
"On Monday the fourth day of January," pursues our chronicler, whose
circumstantial detail is sometimes picturesque and amusing, "the said
lord of merry disports came by water to London, and landing at the Tower
wharf entered the Tower, then rode through Tower-street, where he was
received by Vause, lord of misrule to John Mainard, one of the sheriffs
of London, and so conducted through the city with a great company of
young lords and gentlemen to the house of sir George Burne lord-mayor,
where he with the chief of his company dined, and after had a great
banquet, and at his departure the lord-mayor gave him a standing cup
with a cover of silver and gilt, of the value of ten pounds, for a
reward, and also set a hogshead of wine and a barrel of beer at his
gate, for his train that followed him. The residue of his gentlemen and
servants dined at other aldermen's houses and with the sheriffs, and
then departed to the Tower wharf again, and so to the court by water, to
the great commendation of the mayor and aldermen, and highly accepted,
of the king and council."
From this time Ferrers became "a composer almost by profession of
occasional interludes for the diversion of the court[19]." None of these
productions of his have come down to posterity; but their author is
still known to the student of early English poetry, as one of the
contributors to an extensive work entitled "The Mirror for Magistrates,"
which will be mentioned hereafter in speaking of the works of Thomas
Sackville lord Buckhurst. The legends combined in this collection, which
came from the pen of Ferrers, are not distinguished by any high flights
of poetic fancy, nor by a versification extremely correct or melodious.
Their merit is that of narrating after the chronicles, facts in English
history, in a style clear, natural, and energetic, with an intermixture
of political reflections conceived in a spirit of wisdom and moderation,
highly honorable to the author, and well adapted to counteract the
turbulent spirit of an age in which the ambition of the high and the
discontent of the low were alike apt to break forth into outrages
destructive of the public tranquillity.
[Note 19: See Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 213
et seq.]
Happy would it have been for England in more ages than one, had the
sentiment of the following humble stanza been indelibly inscribed on
the hearts of children.
"Some haply here will move a further doubt,
And as for York's part allege an elder right:
O brainless heads that so run in and out!
When length of time a state hath firmly pight,
And good accord hath put all strife to flight,
Were it not better such titles still to sleep
Than all a realm about the trial weep?"
This estimable writer had been a member of parliament in the time of
Henry VIII., and was imprisoned by that despot in 1542, very probably
without any just cause. He about the same time translated into English
the great charter of Englishmen which had become a dead letter through
the tyranny of the Tudors; and he rendered the same public service
respecting several important statutes which existed only in Latin or
Norman French; proofs of a free and courageous spirit extremely rare in
that servile age!
Ferrers lived far into the reign of Elizabeth, finishing his career at
Flamstead in his native county of Herts in 1579.
From the pleasing contemplation of a life devoted to those honorable
arts by which society is cultivated, enlightened and adorned, we must
now return to tread with Northumberland the maze of dark and crooked
politics. By many a bold and many a crafty step this adept in his art
had wound his way to the highest rank of nobility attainable by a
subject, and to a station of eminence and command scarcely compatible
with that character. But no sooner had he reached it, than a sudden
cloud lowered over the splendid prospect stretched around him, and
threatened to snatch it for ever from his sight. The youthful monarch in
whom, or over whom, he reigned, was seized with a lingering disease
which soon put on appearances indicative of a fatal termination. Under
Mary, the next heir, safety with insignificance was the utmost that
could be hoped by the man who had taken a principal and conspicuous part
in every act of harshness towards herself, and every demonstration of
hostility towards the faith which she cherished, and against whom, when
he should be no longer protected by the power which he wielded, so many
lawless and rapacious acts were ready to rise up in judgement.
One scheme alone suggested itself for the preservation of his authority:
it was dangerous, almost desperate; but loss of power was more dreaded
by Dudley than any degree of hazard to others or himself; and he
resolved at all adventures to make the attempt.
By means of the new honors which he had caused to be conferred on the
marquis of Dorset, now duke of Suffolk, he engaged this weak and
inconsiderate man to give his eldest daughter, the lady Jane Grey, in
marriage to his fourth son Guildford Dudley. At the same time he
procured an union between her sister, the lady Catherine, and the eldest
son of his able but mean-spirited and time-serving associate, the earl
of Pembroke; and a third between his own daughter Catherine and lord
Hastings, son of the earl of Huntingdon by the eldest daughter and
co-heir of Henry Pole lord Montacute; in whom the claims of the line of
Clarence now vested.
These nuptials were all celebrated on one day, and with an ostentation
of magnificence and festivity which the people exclaimed against as
highly indecorous in the present dangerous state of the king's health.
But it was not on _their_ good will that Northumberland founded his
hopes, and their clamors were braved or disregarded.
His next measure was to prevail upon the dying king to dispose of the
crown by will in favor of the lady Jane. The animosity against his
sister Mary, to which their equal bigotry in opposite modes of faith had
given birth in the mind of Edward, would naturally induce him to lend a
willing ear to such specious arguments as might be produced in
justification of her exclusion: but that he could be brought with equal
facility to disinherit also Elizabeth, a sister whom he loved, a
princess judged in all respects worthy of a crown, and one with whose
religious profession he had every reason to be perfectly satisfied,
appears an indication of a character equally cold and feeble. Much
allowance, however, may be made for the extreme youth of Edward; the
weakness of his sinking frame; his affection for the pious and amiable
Jane, his near relation and the frequent companion of his childhood; and
above all, for the importunities, the artifices, of the practised
intriguers by whom his dying couch was surrounded.
The partisans of Northumberland did not fail to urge, that if one of the
princesses were set aside on account of the nullification of her
mother's marriage, the same ground of exclusion was valid against the
other. If, on the contrary, the testamentary dispositions of the late
king were to be adhered to, the lady Mary must necessarily precede her
sister, and the cause of religious reformation was lost, perhaps for
ever.
With regard to the other claimants who might still be interposed between
Jane and the English throne, it was pretended that the Scottish branch
of the royal family was put out of the question by that clause of
Henry's will which placed the Suffolk line next in order to his own
immediate descendants; as if an instrument which was set aside as to
several of its most important provisions was necessarily to be held
binding in all the rest. Even admitting this, the duchess of Suffolk
herself stood before her daughter in order of succession; but a
renunciation obtained from this lady by the authority of Northumberland,
not only of her own title but of that of any future son who might be
born to her, was supposed to obviate this objection.
The right of the king, even if he had attained the age of majority, to
dispose of the crown by will without the concurrence of parliament, was
absolutely denied by the first law authorities: but the power and
violence of Northumberland overruled all objections, and in the end the
new settlement received the signature of all the privy council, and the
whole bench of judges, with the exception of justice Hales, and perhaps
of Cecil, then secretary of state, who afterwards affirmed that he put
his name to this instrument only as a witness to the signature of the
king. Cranmer resisted for some time, but was at length won to
compliance by the tears and entreaties of Edward.
Notwithstanding this general concurrence, it is probable that very few
of the council either expected or desired that this act should be
sanctioned by the acquiescence of the nation: they signed it merely as a
protection from the present effects of the anger of Northumberland, whom
most of them hated as well as feared; each privately hoping that he
should find opportunity to disavow the act of the body in time to obtain
the forgiveness of Mary, should her cause be found finally to prevail.
The selfish meanness and political profligacy of such a conduct it is
needless to stigmatize; but this was not the age of public virtue in
England.
A just detestation of the character of Northumberland had rendered very
prevalent an idea, that the constitution of the king was undermined by
slow poisons of his administering; and it was significantly remarked,
that his health had begun to decline from the period of lord Robert
Dudley's being placed about him as gentleman of the bed-chamber.
Nothing, however, could be more destitute both of truth and probability
than such a suspicion. Besides the satisfactory evidence that Edward's
disease was a pulmonary consumption, such as no poison could produce, it
has been well remarked, that if Northumberland were a sound politician,
there could be no man in England more sincerely desirous, for his own
sake, of the continuance of the life and reign of this young prince. By
a change he had every thing to lose, and nothing to gain. Several
circumstances tend also to show that the fatal event, hastened by the
treatment of a female empiric to whom the royal patient had been very
improperly confided, came upon Northumberland at last somewhat by
surprise, and compelled him to act with a precipitation injurious to his
designs. Several preparatory steps were yet wanting; in particular the
important one of securing the persons of the two princesses: but this
omission it seemed still possible to supply; and he ordered the death of
the king to be carefully concealed, while he wrote letters in his name
requiring the immediate attendance of his sisters on his person. With
Mary the stratagem had nearly succeeded: she had reached Hoddesdon on
her journey to London, when secret intelligence of the truth, conveyed
to her by the earl of Arundel, caused her to change her course. It was
probably a similar intimation from some friendly hand, Cecil's perhaps,
which caused Elizabeth to disobey the summons, and remain tranquil at
one of her houses in Hertfordshire.
Here she was soon after waited upon by messengers from Northumberland,
who apprized her of the accession of the lady Jane, and proposed to her
to resign her own title in consideration of a sum of money, and certain
lands which should be assigned her. But Elizabeth wisely and
courageously replied, that her elder sister was first to be agreed with,
during whose lifetime she, for her part, could claim no right at all.
And determined to make common cause with Mary against their common
enemies, she equipped with all speed a body of a thousand horse, at the
head of which she went forth to meet her sister on her approach to
London.
The event quickly proved that she had taken the right part. Though the
council manifested their present subserviency to Northumberland by
proclaiming queen Jane in the metropolis, and by issuing in her name a
summons to Mary to lay aside her pretensions to the crown, this leader
was too well practised in the arts of courts, to be the dupe of their
hollow professions of attachment to a cause unsupported, as he soon
perceived, by the favor of the people.
The march of Northumberland at the head of a small body of troops to
resist the forces levied by Mary in Norfolk and Suffolk, was the signal
for the defection of a great majority of the council. They broke from
the kind of honorable custody in the Tower in which, from a well-founded
distrust of their intentions, Northumberland had hitherto held them; and
ordering Mary to be proclaimed in London, they caused the hapless Jane,
after a nominal reign of ten days, to be detained as a prisoner in that
fortress which she had entered as a sovereign.
Not a hand was raised, not a drop of blood was shed, in defence of this
pageant raised by the ambition of Dudley. Deserted by his partisans, his
soldiers and himself, the guilty wretch sought, as a last feeble
resource, to make a merit of being the first man to throw up his cap in
the market-place of Cambridge, and cry "God save queen Mary!" But on
the following day the earl of Arundel, whom he had disgraced, and who
hated him, though a little before he had professed that he could wish to
spend his blood at his feet, came and arrested him in her majesty's
name, and Mary, proceeding to London, seated herself without opposition
on the throne of her ancestors.