IN THE TIME OF THE TUDOR KINGS
_Henry VII.—Battle of Bosworth—Thomas Wyatt and the Cat—Edward,
Earl of Warwick—Perkin Warbeck—Sir William Stanley—Edmund
de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk—Sir John Tyrrell—Sir John
Wyndham—Marriage of Prince Arthur and Katharine—His
Death and Death of his Mother, Elizabeth of York—Death
of Henry VII—Henry VIII—Empson and Dudley—Marriage
with Katharine of Aragon—High Festival—Building of the
Lieutenant’s House and other Improvements—Stafford, Duke
of Buckingham—Marriage with Anne Boleyn—Completion of the
Tower Buildings—Birth of the Princess Elizabeth—Execution
of Anne—Fisher and More—Lord and Lady Howard—The
“Pilgrimage of Grace” and its Victims—Courtenay, Marquis of
Exeter—The Pole Family—Treachery of Geoffrey Pole—Thomas
Cromwell, his Rise and Fall—Marriage with Anne of Cleves
and Divorce, 1540—Marriage with Katharine Howard, and her
Execution—Anne Askew, Protestant Martyr, Friend of Katharine
Parr—Festivities to French Ambassadors—Dukes of Norfolk
and Surrey Condemned—Death of Henry VIII—Edward VI—His
Uncles the Seymours—Their Fall—Ascendancy of the Duke of
Northumberland—Other Executions—The King’s Death._
We have come to the end of secret murders, but the Tower was never more
in use as a State prison than under the house of Tudor, which began its
royal course after the battle of Bosworth, August 22, 1485.
In the reign of Richard III Henry Wyatt, a gentleman of Surrey and
member of the House of Commons, was thrown into the Tower for favouring
the claims of Henry Tudor. According to his son’s statement, Richard
had him tortured, vinegar and mustard being forced down his throat,
and afterwards remonstrated with him. “Wyatt, why art thou such a
fool?” said he, “Henry of Richmond is a beggarly pretender; forsake
him and become mine. Thou servest him for moonshine in water. I can
reward thee, and I swear to thee, I will.” “If I had chosen thee for my
master,” answered the prisoner, “I would have been faithful to thee.
But the Earl of Richmond, poor and unhappy though he be, is my master,
and no allurement shall drive me from him, by God’s grace.” And here
comes a pretty legend, we hardly dare regard it otherwise, which is
told in the Wyatt papers. King Richard, in a rage, had him confined
in a low and narrow cell, where he had not clothes sufficient to warm
him and was a hungered. A cat came into this cell, he caressed her for
company, laid her in his bosom and won her love. And so she came to
him every day and brought him a pigeon when she could catch one. He
complained to his keeper of his short fare, and received for answer,
that “he durst not better it.” “But if I can provide any,” said Sir
Henry, “will you dress it for me?” “I may well enough promise that,”
was the answer, and so he promised. And he was as good as his word,
and dressed each time the pigeon which the faithful cat brought. When
Richmond became King Henry VII he rewarded his faithful liegeman by
making him a Privy Councillor and giving him rich offices enough to
enable him to buy Allington Castle, one of the finest in Kent. He was
equally well regarded by Henry VIII, who visited him at Allington; but
more of this farther on.
The two most noteworthy occupants of the Tower, however, in this reign,
strangely different in character and circumstances, were brought into
close connexion with each other. Edward, Earl of Warwick, was the
eldest son of the Duke of Clarence, and was three years old when his
father was put to death in the Tower. His early history is obscure; at
one time Richard III, after the death of his son, thought to nominate
him as his heir, but changed his mind, and sent him to Sheriff Hutton
Castle, Yorkshire. After Bosworth Henry VII brought him from thence
and shut him up in the Tower, his only offence being that he was the
representative of the fallen dynasty of York. The injustice of this
was widely felt, and this, combined with the uncertainty as to the
whereabouts or movements of the youth, induced a usurper named Lambert
Simnel to personate him in Ireland in 1487, and he was actually crowned
in Dublin Cathedral. King Henry found it advisable to bring the Earl
forth for a day and march him through the streets to St. Paul’s. It was
the last day of his life that he spent outside the limits of the Tower.
He was taken back and remained there for twelve years longer. And here
we have to take up another history. Perkin Warbeck was the son of a
citizen of Tournay, who came to England as a serving man to two or
three English gentlemen, and in 1491, moved by vanity and ambition,
whilst in Ireland, where feeling against Henry VII was strong, declared
himself to be the Duke of York, who had been reported murdered in
the Tower with his brother Edward V. The King of Scotland, James
IV, acknowledged him, and two years later gave him his own cousin,
Catherine Gordon, to wife. Charles VIII of France also for a while
acknowledged him. But his strongest ally was Margaret, Duchess of
Burgundy. This remarkable woman has little to do with the Tower, but
is too much connected with English history to be passed over. She
was the sister of Edward IV, fifteen years old when he became King.
In 1467 she married Charles, Duke of Burgundy, and is favourably
remembered as having patronized Caxton, who gave up the Mastership of
the Merchant-Adventurers of Bruges to enter her service, and produced
his first great printing work under her patronage. In 1477 her husband
was killed at the battle of Nancy, and she was left a childless widow.
The rest of her life was spent in the Netherlands, and when Henry VII
confiscated the dowry which her brother King Edward had granted her,
nothing more was needed to ensure her hatred of his rule, and desire
to get the Yorkist dynasty restored. She had abetted Simnel, and
now furnished Warbeck with means to carry out his attempt. When the
latter, after repeated failures, was taken prisoner in October, 1497,
his life was spared on his making full confession of his imposture,
and he was then placed in the Tower, after being paraded through the
streets in mockery. In 1498 he escaped, but was captured in a week,
placed in the stocks in Westminster Hall and in Cheapside, and then
sent back to the Tower. Next year he renewed his attempt at escape by
bribing his gaolers, and unhappily induced the Earl of Warwick, who was
of course nothing loth, to join him. The plot was discovered, and on
November 23 Warbeck was hanged at Tyburn, and five days later Warwick
was beheaded on Tower Hill. This last was a shameful act of injustice,
but Henry longed to get rid of him, and it is said that his aversion
was furthered by the refusal of King Ferdinand of Aragon to marry his
daughter Katharine to Arthur, Prince of Wales, so long as a son of the
Duke of Clarence existed as a possible claimant of the succession.
When, years later Katharine of Aragon was bewailing the injustice done
to her, she observed that it was a judgment of God upon her because her
former marriage was sealed with blood, namely Warwick’s.
[Illustration: 17. VAULTED ROOM IN THE CRYPT OF THE WHITE TOWER, IN
WHICH THE RACK STOOD.
_From a drawing in the Gardner Collection._]
[Illustration: 18. A CELL IN THE BLOODY TOWER.
_From a drawing by J. Wykeham Archer.
British Museum._]
[Illustration: 19. THE PRIVY COUNCIL CHAMBER IN THE LIEUTENANT’S
LODGING.
_From a drawing by P. Justyne_, 1873.
_Gardner Collection._]
[Illustration: 20. A ROOM IN THE BEAUCHAMP TOWER, WITH PRISONERS’
INSCRIPTIONS ON THE WALLS.
_From an old engraving._]
[Illustration: 21. THE BEAUCHAMP TOWER, AND ST. PETER’S CHAPEL.
_From a drawing by P. Justyne_, 1873.
_Gardner Collection._]
[Illustration: 22. THE LIEUTENANT’S LODGING. _From a drawing
by C. J. Richardson_, 1871. _Gardner Collection._]
[Illustration: 23. THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST. KATHERINE, LOOKING WEST.
_From an engraving by J. Carter_, 1780.]
[Illustration: 24. THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST. KATHERINE, LOOKING EAST.
_From an engraving by B. T. Pouncey_, 1779.]
There was yet another victim to Warbeck’s imposture. Sir William
Stanley, who had turned the scale in King Henry’s favour at Bosworth
Field, was, in 1495, impeached as having been heard to say that “if he
were sure that the young man called Perkin was really the son of Edward
IV, he would never draw sword against him.” For this he was sent to the
Tower, tried in its Council Hall, and beheaded on Tower Hill, February
16, 1495.
Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, was the son of Elizabeth, sister of
Edward IV. His plottings against Henry VII, encouraged by Maximilian,
failed, and he fled the kingdom, and remained abroad several years.
But Philip, King of Castile, who had given him shelter, visiting Henry
in 1506, persuaded him to spare the fugitive’s life on his surrender,
and Suffolk was committed to the Tower. Here he remained until 1513,
when he was beheaded by order of Henry VIII on a charge of plotting.
But he had involved two men in his ruin; Sir James Tyrrell, the same
who had assisted at the murder of the two princes, and Sir John
Wyndham, who had been knighted for his good service against Perkin
Warbeck, were both executed on Tower Hill for their share in Suffolk’s
treason. Tragedies enough, these, for one reign; yet we have hardly
come to the end of them. The marriage of Prince Arthur with Katharine
of Aragon took place in St. Paul’s Cathedral on November 14, 1501,
and the rejoicings took the form of a succession of tournaments and
feasts within the Tower walls. There were great pageants to emphasize
the descent of the bridegroom from his namesake the British hero whose
fabulous exploits fill the pages of Geoffrey of Monmouth. But they
could not alter the fact that he was a poor sickly child of fifteen,
and five months later he died. The calamity was a terrible blow to
his mother, Elizabeth, of York, whose health appears to have failed
from that time. On February 2, 1503, she gave birth to a daughter,
Katharine, in the Tower, and died nine days later, on her birthday,
aged thirty-eight. An amiable and beautiful woman, according to all
accounts; “brilliant, witty, and pious,” so says Erasmus. Six years
later her husband was buried by her side in the Abbey.
The reign of Henry VIII forms an epoch in the history of the Tower.
There are tragical events in plenty, but there are other notes on
which it is pleasant and interesting to dwell. He began his reign by
imprisoning Empson and Dudley, who had been his father’s instruments
of extortion. He did so because he knew how they were hated by the
nation, though he profited by their misdeeds, for Henry VII bequeathed
him what was then the enormous sum of £1,850,000. Next year they were
both beheaded on Tower Hill. Meanwhile the King was holding high
festival to celebrate his marriage with his brother’s widow Katharine.
He was now nineteen years old, and she twenty-five. Surrounded by a
splendid retinue he created four and twenty Knights of the Bath, after
which there was a gorgeous procession from the Tower to Westminster;
the details are given at length, and dismal enough they are when one
sees the hollowness of them all in what followed. Henry was bent on
improving the Tower buildings, and appointed Commissioners to take the
work in hand. In the S.W. corner a Lieutenant’s house was built with
many chambers, having a free passage both into the Beauchamp and Garden
Towers. This house was flanked by two smaller buildings, warders’
houses, one on the West, the other on the South. The Bell Tower part
of this building had a stone vault pierced for archers, who from it
could sweep the outer works. This is called in old records the Strong
Room. Though not intended for the reception of prisoners, it presently
received an illustrious one, as we shall see. In the State Papers of
the reign are the following memoranda of repairs done in the Tower
during the summer of 1532: “Work done by carpenters and taking down old
timber, etc., at St. Thomas’ Tower, and for alterations in the palace.”
“There has also been taken down the old timber in the four turrets of
the White Tower; and the old timber of Robert the Devil’s Tower—that
is Julius Caesar’s tower; and of the tower near the King’s wardrobe.
Half of the White Tower is now embattled, coped, indented, and cressed
with Caen stone to the extent of 500 feet.” The cost is given as £3,593
14_s._ 10_d._
[Illustration: A TOURNAMENT.
_From a MS. of the Romance of the Sire Jehan de Saintré._
_British Museum, Nero D._ IX.]
But we have perforce to return to the tragical records. We have already
recorded how the Earl of Suffolk, Edmund de la Pole, was beheaded in
1513. Edward Stafford, third Duke of Buckingham, was the great grandson
of Humphrey Stafford, son of Anne, daughter of Thomas of Woodstock,
son of Edward III. Humphrey Stafford had received his dukedom for his
services under Henry VI, had tried in vain to reconcile Queen Margaret
with the Yorkists, and was slain at the battle of Northampton. His
grandson was executed at Salisbury by Richard III in 1483. The Duke
with whom we are now concerned was sworn a Privy Councillor in 1509,
and was for a while high in favour with Henry VIII. But he hated
Cardinal Wolsey, and the hatred was returned, and the Cardinal appears
to have brought before the King some boasting speeches of the Duke
about his royal lineage, implying a claim to the throne. For this
he was sent to the Tower, was tried for high treason, and on May
17, 1521, was beheaded on the Green. Shakespeare gives us several
pathetic touches in his Henry VIII. Half a dozen Augustinian friars,
in gratitude for the many kind deeds which the Duke had done to poor
religious men in his lifetime, took up his body and buried it in the
Church of Austin Friars.
We come to scenes of revelry again in May, 1533, when the King brought
hither his new wife Anne Boleyn; painful enough to read in connexion
with the rest of the history. He had gone through a marriage service
with her in the previous January, before his divorce from Katharine had
been pronounced. Anne was now some months advanced in pregnancy. She
was brought to the Tower preparatory to a stately march to Westminster
for her coronation, and it was all very magnificent to look at, but the
people viewed it in sullen silence; enthusiasm there was none. What
was yet worse, the King’s passion for her was already on the wane. She
gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth on September 7, 1533, had a
miscarriage the next year, and a still-born child in January, 1536,
only three weeks after the death of Katharine of Aragon. On Mayday
following she was charged with unfaithfulness to the King, was brought
a prisoner to the Tower next day, tried in the Great Hall on the 15th,
beheaded on Tower Green on the 19th. This is not the place to discuss
the question of her guilt or innocence. The twenty-five peers who tried
her gave a unanimous verdict against her; the President of the Court
was her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. Mr. Gairdner expresses his opinion
that the evidence against her was not conclusive, but that her conduct
had long been indecorous.
But between her coronation and execution two illustrious victims had
passed away. John Fisher, who as a College Principal had done splendid
service in the way of advice and assistance to the munificent works
of the “Lady Margaret,” Countess of Richmond, Henry VII’s mother, was
raised in 1504 to the bishopric of Rochester. He was a man of saintly
life, and eager to promote learning. There seems to have been a mutual
distrust between him and Wolsey, which Burnet bluntly attributes to
Fisher’s grief at the Cardinal’s lax morality. When the question of
King Henry’s divorce was raised Fisher expressed himself firmly against
it, and when, further, the doctrine of the royal supremacy was proposed
to Convocation, he declared that the acceptance of it would “cause the
clergy of England to be wiped out of God’s holy Catholic Church.” When
it was carried in Convocation, it was he who procured the addition
of the saving clause “quantum per Dei legem licet.” Unfortunately he
compromised himself by giving countenance to Elizabeth Barton, “the
nun of Kent,” when the _soi-disant_ prophetess threatened calamity to
the King for his marriage with Anne Boleyn. In April, 1534, he and Sir
Thomas More were summoned to Lambeth to take the oath to the Act of
Succession. They both agreed to that portion of the Act which fixed the
succession to the offspring of the King and Anne, but firmly objected
to call the Princess Mary illegitimate, and to the words denying
faith, truth, and obedience to the Roman Church. The commissioners
were anxious, Cranmer at the head of them, to accept the submission
as sufficient for the occasion, but they were both sent to the Tower;
and when the Act of Supremacy was passed in November, 1554, Secretary
Cromwell read it to Fisher, with the clause making it high treason to
deny the King’s right to the claim. Fisher declined to subscribe to it.
Henry was unwilling to proceed to extremities, but at this very moment
Pope Paul III, ignorant (as he afterwards declared) of the unhappy
relations between King and bishop, and desirous of rewarding learning,
made Fisher a Cardinal. Henry broke out into ungovernable fury when
he heard it, and declared that the red hat might come, but that there
should be no head on which to place it. The bishop was brought to trial
at Westminster and beheaded on Tower Hill June 15, 1535. “There is in
this realm no man,” said Sir Thomas More, “in wisdom, learning, and
long approved virtue together, meet to be matched and compared with
him.” He died with perfect calmness and dignity. The head was fixed
on London Bridge, and the body lay exposed to insult all day. In the
evening it was buried without ceremony in the Church of Allhallows
Barking.
A fortnight later Sir Thomas More shared the same fate, and on the
same charge. His brilliant abilities, wit, and virtue have made his
name illustrious. Many of his noble friends visited him in confinement
and did all they could to persuade him to yield, but in vain. Not only
his firmness, but his cheerfulness remained undiminished. When he was
brought through Traitors’ Gate the porter, according to ancient custom,
demanded his uppermost garment as his fee. More handed him his cap,
telling him that this was his “uppermost garment,” and that he wished
it was of more value. When he ascended the scaffold he observed that
it was somewhat insecure. “Prythee, good fellow,” he said to one of
the guards, “help me up; when I come down let me shift for myself.”
And when the headsman prayed his forgiveness, “I forgive thee, good
fellow, with all my heart,” he said as he laid his head on the block.
Immediately after he raised it for a moment to remove his beard.
“That,” he said, “has not committed treason; pity it should be cut.”
Every succeeding year of this darkening reign brought more prisoners to
the Tower. Thence Lord Howard was sent with his wife, the King’s niece,
because they had married without the royal consent. Here the husband
died and then the widow was released. She afterwards became the mother
of Darnley.
“The Pilgrimage of Grace,” in other words the series of insurrections
which broke out in the North because of dissatisfaction at the
promulgation of the reformed doctrines and the dissolution of the
religious houses, filled the Tower dungeons with prisoners. Among
them were the Lords Darcy and Hussey, Sir Robert Constable, Sir John
and Lady Bulmer, Sir Francis Bigot, Sir Thomas Percy, brother of the
Earl of Northumberland, Sir Stephen Hamilton, William, son of Lord
Lumley, Nicholas Tempest and Robert Aske; also the Abbots of Rievaulx,
Fountains and Jervaux, and the Prior of Bridlington. All were convicted
of treason and put to death in 1536.
In 1538 Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, Sir Edward Neville,
Sir Nicholas Carew and others were accused of holding a traitorous
correspondence with Cardinal Pole, and were imprisoned in the Tower; as
were also the Cardinal’s brothers, Lord Montague and Sir Geoffrey Pole,
their mother the Countess of Salisbury, the Marchioness of Exeter, Sir
Adrian Fortescue and Sir Thomas Dingley. Reginald Pole, who had never
hesitated in his conferences with the King to condemn the divorce,
had been entrusted by Henry to go on a mission to the Pope to make
peace if possible. Pope Paul IV had made him a Cardinal, to Henry’s
indignation, and he was still on the Continent. The Marquis of Exeter
was a grandson of Edward IV, and Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, was
the daughter of his brother, the Duke of Clarence. The King was roused
to fresh anger against them because Charles V and Francis I had laid
aside their enmity and become friends, and the Pope, looking to them
for assistance, had issued a bull of excommunication against him.
Geoffrey Pole saved his life by giving evidence against the plotters.
Exeter and Montague were beheaded, December 9, 1538, Carew on March 3
following. Lady Exeter was pardoned, but the Countess of Salisbury was
kept in confinement for two years longer, when she was brought to the
scaffold on the fatal Green. Froude thinks it was because she was found
to be still secretly corresponding with her son the Cardinal against
the King, and there were fresh alarms of a rising in the North under
Sir John Neville. Froude discredits the story told by Lingard, that
the aged Countess refused to lay her head on the block on the ground
that she was no traitor, and that the headsman hacked it off as he best
could; and Mr. Gairdner evidently does not believe it.
Of the King’s chief adviser in these terrible doings we have as yet
said nothing, but it becomes necessary to do so now. Thomas Cromwell,
who had risen from low estate, and whose early history is almost a
blank to us, after a youth spent on the Continent, was appointed by
Wolsey collector of his revenues of the see of York, entered Parliament
in 1523 and became a member of Gray’s Inn. Wolsey leaned much upon him,
made him one of the commissioners appointed (1525) to inquire into the
conditions of the smaller monasteries—and in this work he acted with
great harshness—and he also managed the work of the foundation of the
Cardinal’s Colleges at Oxford and Ipswich. He seems to have remained
faithful to Wolsey to the end, but it was he more than any one who
persuaded Henry VIII to make himself supreme head of the Church by way
of facilitating his divorce from Katharine, and he rose high in favour
with the King and became Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1535 he was
made Vicar-General for a general visitation of churches, monasteries
and clergy, was rewarded with large gifts of confiscated church lands,
and was made Lord Chamberlain in 1539. This was the culmination of a
career clever and wary, but tyrannical and oppressive to the English
nation and utterly unprincipled towards foreign powers. His fall,
which had long been desired by the Catholic party in England, was
hastened by his negotiating the King’s marriage with Anne of Cleves.
Henry’s disgust at his first sight of his affianced bride would not
have sufficed to cause the agent’s ruin, but the alliance with German
Protestants, of which the marriage was to be the seal, was unpopular,
and as it had served its purpose, nothing more was to be got out of it.
For arranging the marriage he was created Earl of Essex April 1540, and
on June 10 following the Duke of Norfolk denounced him as a traitor at
the Council board, and he was at once sent to the Tower, charged with
receiving bribes wholesale, selling commissions, secretly dispersing
heretical books, and designing to marry the Princess Mary and make
himself King. He was not tried but proceeded against by attainder.
Archbishop Cranmer vainly tried to stem the tide. He was beheaded on
Tower Green July 28, 1540. It was one sign of a Catholic reaction.
The Tower and other metropolitan prisons were crowded with Protestant
heretics, who were dragged away on hurdles and burnt in Smithfield, as
were also some Catholics at the very same period for denying the King’s
supremacy.
Anne of Cleves was married to Henry on January 6, 1540, and divorced
in July following. She lived the rest of her life in England with a
pension, quite content, and rode in the procession along with the
Princess Elizabeth at Queen Mary’s coronation. She was buried in
Westminster Abbey, August 1557.
Immediately after this divorce Henry married Katharine Howard, niece of
the Duke of Norfolk, and for a while all seemed bright. The royal pair
next year went on a tour through the North. At Hampton Court they kept
All Saints’ Day, 1541, with much solemnity, and the King gave
directions to the celebrant, the Bishop of Lincoln, to return thanks to
God “for the good life which he hoped to lead after sundry troubles.”
Next day after mass Archbishop Cranmer sorrowfully handed the King a
paper which gave evidence of Katharine’s unchastity both before and
after marriage. She was confined for a while at Syon House, on February
10 was brought to the Tower, and beheaded on the Green three days
later. It was a strange request which she made, and which was complied
with—that the block might previously be brought to her cell that she
might learn how to place her head upon it aright. With her died Lady
Rochford, who had connived at her immoralities.
Anne Askew, our next prisoner, presents a strange contrast. She was the
daughter of a Lincolnshire gentleman, who married in early life a Mr.
Kyme, an ardent Roman Catholic. Anne’s friends in London were equally
ardent believers in the Reformed faith; among these friends was Queen
Katharine Parr. Anne’s husband, who for some time had neglected her,
charged her with heresy, resting his charge on the recently passed “Six
Articles” Act, which ordained that denial of Transubstantiation should
be punished with death by burning. It was in 1545 that she was charged.
Bishop Bonner appears to have been so moved by the sight of her simple
beauty as to try to save her, but the Chancellor, Wriothesley, pressed
her with questions, and she was firm in her answers, and was condemned.
Her first place of confinement was Newgate, but she was sent to the
Tower to be racked. The rack, says Lord de Ros, was regarded with
such horror by the people as to be applied only in secrecy, and there
might have been an outbreak in the city had all this become known. The
application of the torture was in order to force her to incriminate
the ladies who had supported her, but she resolutely closed her lips,
first declaring that she was grateful to all her friends and would
not betray them, and that it was her faithful maid who had kept her
from starvation by going out and begging for her “of the prentices and
others she met in the streets.” Wriothesley himself worked the rack
until she was nearly dead. She was taken off the machine, but was no
longer able to walk, so she was carried in a cart to Smithfield and
burned. Queen Katharine appears to have been in danger, but the King’s
sympathies were moved by the accounts which reached him of the
sufferer’s noble constancy, and when Wriothesley came to him to excite
him against the Queen, Henry called him a beast and a fool and drove
him out of the room.
One more cheerful record remains of this terrible reign. In 1546, in
honour of the peace which had been made between France and England, the
former country sent its Lord High Admiral, the Bishop of Evreux, and
some other nobles on an embassy to England. They landed at Greenwich
and thence were conducted to the Tower, where a splendid banquet
awaited them; thence to Lambeth Palace, and finally to Hampton Court,
where the treaty was signed.
And still we have two more illustrious prisoners to name in this reign.
The Duke of Norfolk was now seventy-four years old: He had commanded
the victorious army at Flodden, had led another victorious campaign in
Scotland, and had done good service in France. He was a son-in-law of
King Edward IV, and two of his nieces had been Queens of England. The
jealousy of Henry was aroused; he knew himself to be nearing his end,
and feared that the Duke and his son, the Earl of Surrey, had designs
upon the crown. He appointed Lord Hertford, his son’s uncle, to be his
guardian during his minority, and sent to Parliament a complaint that
Norfolk and his son were plotting to seize the government. Surrey was
accused of quartering the arms of King Edward the Confessor on his
shield, after the manner of an heir-apparent, and also (it is shocking
to have to record it) of having persuaded his sister, the widow of the
King’s natural son, the Duke of Richmond, to become Henry’s mistress,
of course with a view to ruling his movements. Surrey was tried by
jury January 13, 1547, and perished six days later on Tower Hill. The
Duke of Norfolk was condemned by bill of attainder, and would have
died in like manner, had not the King himself died January 28, 1547, a
few hours before the appointed time of execution. The Duke remained a
prisoner until the accession of Mary, when he was released. He presided
at the trial of the Duke of Northumberland, and died in his bed in
1554, aged eighty-one.
The young Edward, now ten years old, was at Hatfield when his father
died. Next day his uncle, the Earl of Hertford, brought him up to the
Tower with great pomp and ceremony. Here he received knighthood by the
accolade of his uncle, and in return conferred on him the title of Duke
of Somerset. On February 24 the coronation took place at Westminster
with the usual pageants.
Almost immediately disturbances began. Thomas, Lord Seymour, Somerset’s
younger brother, was sent to the Tower on the charge of aspiring to
the kingdom by offering marriage to the Princess Elizabeth. He had
secretly married Queen Katharine Parr on King Henry’s death, and when
she died (Sept. 5, 1548) he made this new move. Other acts of ambition
were charged against him, as well as of using his office of Lord High
Admiral for privateering. He was beheaded on Tower Hill March 20,
1549, and though he was not worthy of much sympathy, public opinion
was indignant against the heartlessness of his brother the Protector,
and advantage was taken of it by the Catholic party to form a faction
against him. He was accused, not unjustly, of accumulating vast riches
by seizing property of the Church and Crown. A leader of the opposition
to him was found in Dudley, Earl of Warwick. A meeting of his opponents
was held in Ely Place in October 1549, with the result that the Tower
was seized and Somerset was shut up in it. He was deposed from the
Protectorate, and in February 1550 was pardoned and re-admitted to the
Privy Council. But in October 1551 he was again arrested on the charge
of plotting to raise the country and murder Warwick. On this charge
he was tried and beheaded on Tower Hill. He was the first Protestant
ruler of England, “a rank Calvinist,” and was, in fact, in close
communication with Calvin. It was certainly his influence which led
to the changes between the two English prayer-books of 1549 and 1552.
His royal nephew, apparently, was, as Burnet puts it, “not greatly
concerned” for him. This is his entry in his diary: “January 22, the
Duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Touer Hill between eight and
nine a cloke in the morning.” His fall involved the ruin of some of
his principal supporters. Thus Sir Ralph Vane (or Fane; he belonged to
the still existent Westmoreland family), though he had distinguished
himself in the army, had offended the Duke of Northumberland. He was
charged with complicity with Somerset and hid himself in a stable at
Lambeth, but was arrested. Before the Privy Council he showed a bold
front, and on his condemnation declared that his murder would make
Northumberland’s pillow uneasy. He was hanged, and the royal diary
recording his “felony” and death adds that on his trial he “answered
like a ruffian.” Sir Miles Partridge was also hanged; Sir Thomas
Arundel and Sir Michael Stanhope were beheaded; the Earl of Arundel,
Lords Grey and Paget were acquitted.
Edward VI’s was a short reign, but a terrible amount of blood was shed
on the scaffold, through the machinations of evil counsellors.