EDWARD VI
The boy King Edward VI. was only ten years of age when he succeeded to
the throne. On the 30th of May 1547, he was brought in state to the
Tower amidst an outburst of the people’s gladness, which, considering
all the troubles they had for so long endured under the savage rule of
the late monarch, must have been heartfelt and genuine.
Near the town of Midhurst in Sussex are the ruins of one of the finest
of the old Tudor mansions, Cowdray House, the old home of the Montagus.
In the reign of Edward VI. Cowdray belonged to Sir Antony Brown, who
held the proud office of Grand Standard Bearer of England. Here it
was that the boy King in the year of his accession was entertained
by Sir Antony, and in his precocious diary the little monarch wrote
that he was “marvellously, yea, rather excessively banketted.” Cowdray
House—and that is my reason for writing about it here—contained a
most interesting series of paintings upon its walls illustrating the
events in the reign of Henry VIII. and that of his son, who was so
“excessively banketted” within its halls. Among these paintings were
representations of the siege of Boulogne by Henry VIII.; the Field of
the Cloth of Gold; and a huge painting of the coronation of Edward VI.,
in which the long procession is seen wending its gorgeous length from
the Tower to Westminster Abbey. All these paintings perished in the
disastrous fire which destroyed Cowdray on the 24th of September 1793.
Fortunately, George Vertue copied these paintings and engraved the
copies in the middle of the eighteenth century, the engravings being
published by the Society of Antiquaries. Next to the Bayeux tapestry,
nothing more interesting than these pictured records of English history
have come down to us.
Among the pageants and devices with which the joyous Londoners graced
the occasion when the young King rode through the festive streets,
was a very quaint one, which Holinshed thus describes: “An argosine
(a sailor) came from the batilment of Saint Poule’s Church, upon a
cable, beyng made faste to an anker at the deane’s doore, liying uppon
his breaste, aidyng himself neither with hande nor foote, and after
ascended to the middes of the same cable, and tumbled and plaied many
pretie toies, wherat the Kyng and other of the peres and nobles of the
realme laughed hartely.” A few days before his coronation Edward had
taken his place upon a throne in the Tower, and had had his little
hand kissed by the peers, receiving the accolade of knighthood from
the hands of his maternal uncle, the Protector Somerset. But whilst
he received knighthood from one uncle, to another he gave lodging in
the Tower. The latter was Thomas, Lord Seymour of Sudley, Lord High
Admiral of England. Lord Sudley—or as it is also written Sudeley—was
an over-ambitious personage. He had married the late King’s widow,
Catherine Parr, and after her death, which he is supposed to have
hastened, he began to pay very marked attentions to the Princess
Elizabeth. Although one does not wish to allude to any scandal that
may have attached itself in the gossip of the time to the name of that
Princess, the flirtation—to give Elizabeth’s conduct with the Lord
High Admiral its mildest description—was at one time too notorious an
episode in the future “Gloriana’s” career to be wholly omitted from
mention. Who has not read of the “high jinks” carried on between them?
How on one occasion Seymour was found cutting the Princess’s gown
“into a hundred pieces,” in the gardens of Hanworth, and how on another
he had the audacity to pay Elizabeth a visit in her bed-chamber, on
which occasion she “ran out of her bed to her maidens, and then went
behind the curtains of her bed.” Seymour was certainly uncommonly
handsome, and it is well known that Elizabeth was very impressionable
in the matter of manly beauty. Probably Elizabeth’s chances of one day
succeeding to the Crown may have helped to make Seymour so forward in
his advances, but it was neither his flirtation with the Princess,
nor his marriage with Catherine Parr, that brought about his ruin; he
was discovered to be intriguing against his all-powerful brother, the
Protector Somerset. A warrant was issued for his arrest on the 17th of
January 1549, and he was taken to the Tower, in spite of his threat to
poignard any person who dared to lay hands on him (“State Papers,” Dom.
Ed. VI.). “By God’s precious soul,” he wrote, “whosoever lays hands
on me to fetch me to prison, I shall thrust my dagger into him.” It
is not recorded whether he carried his threat into execution. He was
repeatedly interrogated whilst in the Tower, but without any effect,
and on the 25th of February the bill of attainder against him was
introduced into the House of Lords. On the 2nd of March it passed the
Commons, and three days later received the royal assent; on the 15th,
Goodriche, Bishop of Ely, communicated to Seymour that he was to suffer
death on the 20th.
The Protector has naturally been greatly blamed for the part he took in
bringing his brother to the scaffold, and there is a curious passage
in a letter written by the Princess Elizabeth to her sister Queen
Mary, shortly after she herself was sent a prisoner to the Tower, in
which she says, “In late days I hearde my Lorde Somerset say, that if
his brother had bine suffered to speke to him, he had never suffered;
but the persuasions were made to him so gret, that he was brought in
beleafe that he could not live safely if the admirall lived; and that
made him give his consent to his dethe.” The young King’s entry in
his diary regarding his uncle’s death is extremely laconic: “The Lord
Sudley, admiral of England, was condemned to death, and died in March
ensuing.” Burnet in his “History” says, “What his behaviour was on the
scaffold I do not find,” and indeed no record, as was the case with
so many of his distinguished contemporaries, has come down to us of
his last moments, except that Strype in his “History” says, that just
before the end the Admiral bade his servant, “speed the thing that he
wot of.”
This last message appears to have regarded two letters which he had
written in the Tower, one to the Princess Elizabeth, and the other to
the Princess Mary. They had been written in some kind of invisible ink,
and, having no pen, he had written them with the point of an “uglet”
which “he had plucked from his hose,” and they had been sewn between
the sole of one of his velvet shoes. “By this means these letters
came to light, and fell into the hands of the Protector and Council.
The contents of these tended to this end, that the two sisters should
conspire together against the Protector, enforcing many matters against
him, to make these ladies jealous of him, as though he had, it may be,
estranged the King their brother from them, or to deprive them of the
right of their succession. Both these papers Latimer himself saw, and
repeated publicly in his fourth sermon before the King, though in the
last edition of his sermons the passage is left out.” The following,
however, is the passage from Latimer’s most strange discourse on the
death of the Lord High Admiral, which he preached before the King
regarding his uncle’s death; a less charitable or courtly address is
not often met with: “As touching the kind of his death, whether he be
saved or no, I refer that to God. In the twinkling of an eye He may
save a man or turn his heart. What he did I cannot tell, and when a man
hath two strokes with an axe, who can tell but between two strokes he
doth repent? It is hard to judge, but this I will say, if they will ask
me what I think of his death, that he died very dangerously, irksomely
and horribly. He was a wicked man and the realm is well rid of him”
(“Latimer’s Sermons”).
The death of his brother made the Protector still more disliked by
the people; he was already unpopular by reason of his rapaciousness
and the manner in which he attained great wealth by the seizure of
Church property. The huge palace he had built by the riverside, and
called after himself Somerset House, was a standing witness of his
overpowering greed in the eyes of all men. In order to increase the
size of this building he had committed desecration by pulling down a
church, and casting away the human remains that had been buried within
it; such an action in those days was considered by the populace as a
crime.
The elder brother soon followed the younger along the same gloomy road
to the grave, thus fulfilling the words of the chronicler Grafton, who,
when Seymour died, had written, “It was commonly talked that the fall
of one brother would be the overthrow of the other, as soone after it
came to passe.”
The Protector’s fall was brought about by John Dudley, Duke of
Northumberland, his rival. At a meeting convened at Ely House, Holborn,
at which Lord St John, the President of the Council, Northumberland,
Southampton, Arundel, and five other members of the Privy Council
were present, the Protector’s arrest was decided upon. When Somerset
heard this startling news he took the young King from Hampton Court
to Windsor, and prepared to defend himself by force to the last. His
call to arms, however, met with no response; none of his former friends
came forward in his support, and he felt that his cause was lost.
Meanwhile the Privy Council had taken possession of the Tower and
despatched Sir Philip Hoby as its messenger to the King at Windsor,
with letters, “beseeching his highness to give credit to that which he
should declare in their names; and the King gave him libertie to speak,
and most gentlie heard all that he had to saie, and trulie he did so
wiselie declare his message, and so gravelie told his tale in the name
of the Lords, yea therewithal so vehementlie and greevous so against
the Protector, who was also there present by the King, that in the end,
the Lord Protector was commanded from the King’s presence” (“Grafton’s
Chronicle”).
On the 12th of October, two days after the meeting of the Privy Council
at Ely House, the Protector occupied the prison chamber at Beauchamp
Tower. The once all-powerful Duke was brought to his knees in every
sense of the term, for, on the 21st of January 1550, he actually signed
a confession, kneeling before his nephew the King. Apparently, in
consequence of this submission, Somerset was released from the Tower,
as Edward records in his diary on the 6th of February, that his uncle
“supped at Sir John Yorke’s, one of the sheriffes of London, where the
Lords assembled to welcome him”; and on the 31st of March he reappeared
at Court, the King writing under that date, “My Lord Somerset was
delivered of his bondes and came to court.” On the 21st of April the
King recorded, “It was granted that my lord of Somerset should have all
his moveable goodes and leases, except those that be alreadie given.”
Warwick, who had about this time been created Duke of Northumberland,
had arranged a marriage between his eldest son, Lord Lisle, and
Somerset’s daughter, Lady Anne, in June 1550; but in spite of this
alliance, the old feud between these enemies broke out again, with
the result that on the 16th of October 1551, Somerset was again a
prisoner in the Tower, on a charge of high treason. And that evening
the royal diarist writes, “This morning none were at Westminster of
the conspirators. The first was the duke, who came later than he was
wont, of himself. After dinner he was apprehended.” On this occasion
Somerset’s wife shared his imprisonment.
The indictment against the Duke was presented at the Guildhall on the
21st of November, a true bill being found by a jury of Middlesex.
Strict orders were given to the Lord Mayor “to cause the citie to be
well looked to and garded all to-morrow and the next night.” Two days
afterwards the King entered in his diary, “The Lord Treasurer (this was
William Paulet, created Marquis of Winchester in 1555) apointed high
stuard for the arraignment of the Duke of Somerset.”
[Illustration: _The King’s House_]
Stowe writes on the 2nd of December, “The sayde Duke brought out of
the Tower of London, with the axe of the Tower borne before him, with
a great number of billes, glaves, holbardes, and polaxes attending
upon him; and was had from the Tower by water, and having shot London
Bridge at five of the clock in the morning, so came unto Westminster
Hall, where was made the middle of the Hall a new scaffold, where all
the Lordes of the King’s Counsaill sate as his judges, and there was he
arraigned and charged with many articles both of treason and felony.
And when, after much speeche, he had answered not guiltie, he in all
humble manner put himself to be tryed by his peeres who, after long
consultations among themselves, gave their verdict that he was not
guiltie of the treason, but of the felony.”
The King gave a long and very involved account of the Duke’s trial
in his diary, far too long to quote; at the close he writes as
follows:—“So the lordes acquited him of high treason and condemned
him of treason feloniouse, and so he was adjudged to be hanged. He
gave thankes to the lordis for their open trial and cried mercy of the
Duke of Northumberland, the Marquis of Northamptoon, and the Erie of
Pembroke for his ill meanings against them and made suet (suit) for his
life, wife and children, servantes and dettes, and so departed without
the axe of the Tower. The people knowing not the matter, shrieked half
a dozen times so loud that from the halle dore it was heard at Charing
Crosse plainely, and rumours went that he was quitte of all.”
Grafton writes of the Duke’s trial: “But nevertheless he was condemned
to death, wherof shortlye after he tasted. The felony that he was
condemned of was upon the statute made the last yere agaynst rebelles
and unlawfull assemblyes, wherein among thinges is one branch that
whosoever shall procure the death of any counsellor, that every
such attempt or procurement shall be felonye, and by force of that
statute the Duke of Somerset being, accompanyed with certain others,
was charged that he purposed and attempted the death of the Duke
of Northumberland. After the Duke was thus condemned he was agayne
returned to the Tower, through London, where were bothe exclamations,
the one cried for joye that he was acquitted, the other cried out
that he was condemned. But howsoever they cried he was conveyed to
the Tower where he remained until the twenty-second daye of January
next following.” Burnet says that everything was done to prevent
the young King taking the fate of his uncle to heart, there being
many festivities at Court during the month, but the Bishop adds
significantly, “he was not much concerned in his uncle’s preservation.”
The 22nd of January was a Friday, and at seven o’clock in the morning
the fatal Hill was covered with a dense crowd, who had come out from
all sides of London to see the Protector die. An eye-witness of the
scene has left the following account of the Duke’s execution:—
“Soon after eight o’clock of the morning, the Duke of Somerset was
beheaded on Tower Hill. There was as gret company as have been
syne: the King’s gard behynde them with ther halbards and 1000 men
with halbards of the priviledge of the Tower, Ratcliffe, Lymhouse,
Whytechappell, Saint Katheryn, and Stretford, Bow, Hogston, and
Shoerdyche, and ther were two sheriffs ther present seying the
execuyson of my Lord” (Machyn).
Grafton adds that the Duke, “nothing changing voyce nor countenance,
but in a manner with the same gesture that he partely used at home,
kneeling down upon both his knees, and lifting up his handes, erected
himself unto God. And after that he had ended a few shorte prayers,
standing up agayne, and turning himself unto the East syde of the
skaffolde, he uttered to the people these words.” Then follows a long
speech in which the Duke rather praised himself for having upheld
religion when he was in power. In the midst of his speech a great
tumult arose, and Sir Anthony Browne of Cowdray was seen riding up
the Hill, at the sight of whom loud cries of “Pardon! Pardon!” and
“God save the King!” were raised by the people. Grafton continues
his account thus: “The truth of this hurly-burly grewe hereof, as it
was afterwards well knowen. The manner and custome is that when such
executions are done out of the Tower, the inhabitants of certayne
hamlets round about London, as Hogsden, Newynton, Shordiche, and
others, are commanded to give their attendance with weapons upon the
Lieutenant. And at this tyme, the Duke being upon the scaffolde, the
people of one of the hamlets came late, and coming through the postern
gate and espying the Duke upon the scaffolde, made haste and beganne
to roune, and cried to their felowes that were behind, ‘Come away,
come away.’ The people sodainely beholding them to come rounning with
weapons, and knewe not the cause, cried, ‘Away, away,’ by reason
whereof the people roun every way, not knowing whither or wherefore.”
So great was the panic that many persons fell into the Tower moat.
The Duke appears to have waited calmly until the disturbance ceased,
and then resumed his speech. He gave a scroll to Dr Coxe, the Dean
of Westminster, who attended him upon the scaffold, which probably
contained a confession of faith. Coxe was afterwards made Bishop of Ely
by Queen Elizabeth, after having been imprisoned in the Tower by Queen
Mary, who deprived him of his Deanery, and it was to him that Elizabeth
wrote her famous letter, “Proud Prelate, you know what you were before
I made you what you are; if you do not immediately comply with my
request, by God I will unfrock you.”
After bidding farewell to his friends about him, Somerset gave himself
over to the executioner, “and kneling downe agayne in the straw untyed
his shirtstrings, and the executioner coming to him, turned downe his
collar rounde about his necke, and all other things which did let or
hinder him. Then he, covering his face with his own handkerchiefe,
lifting up his eyes unto heaven, where his only hope remained, laid
himself downe alone, and there suffered the heavie stroke of the axe,
which dispersed the head from his bodye, to the lamentable sight and
griefe of thousands that heartily prayed God for him and entirely loved
him.” Burnet declares that the people were generally “much affected by
the execution,” which was somewhat strange, seeing how deeply unpopular
the Protector had been, “and many threw handkerchiefs into the Duke’s
blood, to preserve it in remembrance of him. One lady that met the Duke
of Northumberland when he was led through the city in Queen Mary’s
reign, shaking one of these bloody handkerchiefs, said, ‘Behold the
blood of that worthy man, that good uncle of that excellent King, which
was shed by thy malicious practice, it doth now begin apparently to
revenge itself upon thee.’” In Edward’s diary is this laconic entry on
22nd January (1551–52): “The Duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon
Towre hill between eight and nine a cloke in the morning.” The boy-king
was certainly not much “concerned,” as Bishop Burnet remarked, for the
fate of his uncle.
The Protector, like his brother the Admiral, was a singularly handsome
man even in that age of handsome men, and according to Sir John
Hayward, one of his contemporaries, was “courteous and affable.” A
French writer of the period is not so complimentary in his appreciation
of the Duke of Somerset, writing that he was a “homme de quelque
entendement, couvert et simulé en ses actions, de la nature commune
des Anglois, douce apparence, gracieuses paroles, et maligne volonté.”
One of the invariable results of the fall of a party chief in these
so-called “good old days,” was that his most trusted friends and
adherents fell after him; this occurred in the case of the Protector.
The Earl of Arundel, Lords Grey and Paget, with others of his
supporters, were sent to the Tower at the same time as the Duke, and of
these, Sir Ralph Vane, Sir Michael Stanhope, Sir Thomas Arundel, and
Sir Miles Partridge, were executed. Sir Ralph Vane had distinguished
himself at the siege of Boulogne in 1544, where he had gained his
knighthood, a distinction given in those times only for distinguished
services on the field. James I. was the first monarch to prostitute
this honour by making it a thing of sale. Vane had also fought in the
Scottish campaign. “A man of fierce spirit,” Hayward characterises
him, “both sodaine and bold, of no evill disposition, saving that he
thought scantnesse of estate too great an evill.” Sir Ralph had in
some manner offended the all-powerful Duke of Northumberland, and on
some now unknown charge, he was lodged in the Tower in the March of
1551. He was released, but again imprisoned on a charge of conspiring
with Somerset. He fled, hiding himself in a stable in Lambeth, but was
re-arrested, and again placed in durance in the Tower. When examined
by the Privy Council he showed a bold, even a defiant, front, “The
time hath been,” he exclaimed, “when I was of some esteeme; but now we
are at peace, which repenteth the coward and the courageous alike,”
“and so with an obstinate resolution he made choice rather not to
regard death than by any submission to intreat for life” (Hayward’s
Edward VI.). When found guilty and sentenced to death he said that his
blood would make Northumberland’s “pillow uneasy to him,” and Edward
hearing of Sir Ralph’s replies to the Court, wrote in his diary under
the date 27th January 1551–52, “Sir Ralph Vane was condemned of felony
in treason, answering like a ruffian.” Sir Michael Stanhope was a
cousin of Somerset’s, a fact sufficient in itself to condemn him. Sir
Thomas Arundel, another of the condemned knights, was of Lamberne in
Cornwall, and had been one of Wolsey’s attendants, being made a Knight
of the Bath at Anne Boleyn’s coronation. In 1549 he was appointed
Receiver-General of the Duchy of Cornwall. He had been accused of
forming a conspiracy in Cornwall, for participation in which his
relative, Humphrey Arundel, Governor of St Michael’s Mount, had been
hanged at Tyburn in 1549, but Sir Thomas had been released from his
imprisonment, the charge against him not having been proved. Shortly
afterwards, however, he was again thrown into prison, charged with
complicity in the Somerset conspiracy, the nature of this fresh charge
being indicated by King Edward’s brief entry in his diary of 11th
October 1551, “Sir Thomas Arrundel had ashuired my Lord that the Tower
was sauf.” On the 16th October he was sent to the Tower, and Edward
writes, “Arrondel was taken.” Arundel was tried the day after Sir Ralph
Vane, and also sentenced to die. These and the two others were all
executed on the same day, 26th February 1552. Sir Ralph Vane—or, as it
should be spelt Fane, for he belonged to the same stock as the Fanes,
Earls of Westmoreland, but in those days of euphonious spelling, it
is found as Vane, Fane, Perne, and even Phane—and Sir Miles Partridge
were hanged, whilst Sir Thomas Arundel and Sir Michael Stanley were
beheaded. “Ther body wher putt into dyvers new coffens to be bered, and
heds, into the Towre in cases, and ther bered” (Machyn’s Diary); the
Earl of Arundel, Lords Grey and Paget were acquitted.
Edward’s short reign of six years ended on the 6th of July 1553,
and considering the brief time he occupied the throne, there was a
sufficiency of blood shed upon the scaffold, through the machinations
of those around him, to have pleased the insatiable Henry the Eighth
himself.