1549-1550
The Protector’s position--Disaffection in the country--Its
causes--The Duke’s arrogance--Warwick his rival--The success of
his opponents--Placed in the Tower, but released--St. George’s
Day at Court.
The Protector’s conduct with regard to his brother does much to
alienate sympathy from him in his approaching fall, in a sense
the consequence and outcome of the fratricide. He “had sealed his
doom the day on which he signed the warrant for the execution of
his brother.”[96] If the Admiral, having crossed his will, was not
safe, who could believe himself to be so? Yet the fashion of the
accomplishing of his downfall, the treachery and deception practised
towards him by men upon whom he might fairly have believed himself able
to count, lend a pathos to the end it might otherwise have lacked.
For the present his power and position showed no signs of diminution.
The Queen, his wife’s rival, was dead. The Admiral, who had dared to
measure his strength against his brother’s, would trouble him no more,
unless as an unquiet ghost, an unwelcome visitant confronting him in
unexpected places. During his Protectorate he had added property to
property, field to field, and was the master of two hundred manors. If
the public finances were low, Somerset was rich, and during this year
the building of the house destined to bear his name was carried on on a
scale of splendour proportionate to his pretensions. Having thrown away
the chief prop of his house, says Heylyn, he hoped to repair the ruin
by erecting a magnificent palace.
The site he had chosen was occupied by three episcopal mansions and
one parish church; but it would have been a bold man who would have
disputed the will of the all-powerful Lord Protector, and the owners
submitted meekly to be dispossessed in order to make room for his new
abode. Materials running short, there were rough-and-ready ways of
providing them conveniently near at hand; and certain “superstitious
buildings” close to St. Paul’s, including one or two chapels and a
“fair charnel-house” were demolished to supply what was necessary, the
bones of the displaced dead being left to find burial in the adjacent
fields, or where they might. As the great pile rose, more was required,
and St. Margaret’s, Westminster, was to have been destroyed to furnish
it, had not the people, less subservient than the Bishops, risen to
protect their church, and forcibly driven away the labourers charged
with the work of destruction. St. Margaret’s was saved, but St. John’s
of Jerusalem, not far from Smithfield, was sacrificed in its stead,
being blown up with gunpowder in order that its stone-work might be
turned to account.
The Protector pursued his way unconscious of danger. The Earl of
Warwick, his future supplanter, looked on and bided his time. The
condition of the country had become such as to facilitate the designs
of those bent upon a change in the Government. Into the course of
public affairs, at home and abroad, it is impossible to enter at
length; a brief summary will suffice to show that events were tending
to create discontent and to strengthen the hands of Somerset’s enemies.
The victory of Pinkie Cleugh, though gratifying to national pride, had
in nowise served the purpose of terminating the war with Scotland.
Renewed with varying success, the Scots, by means of French aid, had
upon the whole improved their position, and the hopes indulged in
England of a union between the two countries, to be peacefully effected
by the marriage of the King with the infant Mary Stuart, had been
disappointed, the little Queen having been sent to France and affianced
to the Dauphin. In the distress prevailing amongst the working classes
of England, more pressing cause for dissatisfaction and agitation was
found. Partly the result of the depreciation of the currency during
the late reign, it was also due to the action of the new owners who,
enriched by ecclesiastical property, had enclosed portions of Church
lands heretofore left open to be utilised by the labourers for their
personal profit. Pasturage was increasing in favour compared with
tillage; less labour was required, and wages had in consequence fallen.
To material ills and privations, other grievances were added.
Associated in the minds of the people with their condition of want
were the changes lately enforced in the sphere of religion. The new
ministers were often ignorant men, who gave scandal by their manner of
life, their parishioners frequently making complaints of them to the
Bishops.
“Our curate is naught,” they would say, “an ass-head, a dodipot [?], a
lack-latin, and can do nothing. Shall I pay him tithe that doth us no
good, nor none will do?”[97]
In some cases the fault lay with patrons, who preferred to select a man
unlikely to assert his authority. Economy on the part of the Government
was responsible for other unfit appointments, and capable Churchmen
being permitted to hold secular offices, they were removed from their
parishes and their flocks were left unshepherded. Against this practice
Latimer protested in a sermon at St. Paul’s, on the occasion of a
clergyman having been made Comptroller of the Mint. Who controlled the
devil at home in his parish, asked the rough-tongued preacher, whilst
he controlled the Mint?
The condition of things thus produced was not calculated to commend
the innovations it accompanied to the people, and the introduction of
the new Prayer-book was in particular bitterly resented in country
districts. In many parts of England, interest and religion joining
hands, fierce insurrections broke out, and the measures taken by “the
good Duke” to allay popular irritation, by ordering that the lands
newly enclosed should be re-opened, had the double effect of stirring
the people, thus far successful, to yet more strenuous action in
vindication of their rights, and of increasing the dislike and distrust
with which his irresponsible exercise of authority was regarded by the
upper classes.
Upon domestic troubles--Ket’s rebellion in Norfolk, one of large
dimensions in the west, and others--followed a declaration of war with
France, certain successes on the part of the enemy serving to discredit
the Protector and his management of affairs still further.
Whilst rich and poor were alike disaffected in the country at large,
the Duke had become an object of jealousy to the members of the Council
Board who were responsible for having placed him in the position he
occupied. To a man with the sagacity to look ahead and take account of
the forces at work, it must have been plain that the possession of
absolute and undivided power on the part of a subject was necessarily
fraught with danger, and that the Duke’s astonishing success in
obtaining the patent conferring upon him supreme and regal authority
contained in itself the seed and prophecy of ruin. But, besides more
serious causes of offence, his bearing in the Council-chamber, far
from being adapted to conciliate opposition, further exasperated his
colleagues against him. Cranmer and Paget were the last to abandon his
cause, but on May 8--not two months after his brother’s execution--the
latter wrote to give him frank warning of the probable consequences
of his “great cholerick fashions.” It is evident that a stormy scene
had taken place that afternoon, and that Paget must have been strongly
convinced of the need for interference before he addressed his
remonstrance to the despotic head of the Government.
“Poor Sir Richard a Lee,” he wrote, “this afternoon, after your Grace
had very sore, and much more than needed, rebuked him, came to my
chamber weeping, and there complaining, as far as became him, of your
handling of him, seemed almost out of wits and out of heart. Your Grace
had put him clean out of countenance.” After which he proceeded to warn
the Duke solemnly, “for the very love he bore him,” of the consequences
should he not change his manner of conduct.[98]
Paget’s love was quickly to grow cold. During the summer the various
rebellions in different parts of the country were suppressed, the Earl
of Warwick playing an important part in the operations. On September
25 the Protector was, to all appearance, still in fulness of power and
authority. By October 13 he was in the Tower.
The Spanish spectator again supplies an account of the view taken by
the man in the street of the initiation of the quarrel which led to
the Duke’s disgrace and fall. Returned to London, Warwick, accompanied
by the captains, English and foreign, who had served under him against
the rebels, is said to have come to Court to demand for his soldiers
the rewards he considered their due. Met by a refusal on the part of
the Protector of anything over and above their ordinary wages, his
indignation found vent. If money was not to be had, it was because of
the sums squandered by the Duke in building his own palace. The French
forts were already lost. If the Protector continued in power he would
end by losing everything.
[Illustration:
From a photo by Emery Walker after a painting in the National
Portrait Gallery.
WILLIAM, LORD PAGET, K.G.]
Somerset replied with no less heat. He deserved, he said, that Warwick
should speak as he had spoken, by the favour he had shown him. Warwick
having retorted that it was with himself and his colleagues that the
fault lay, since they had bestowed so much power on the Protector,
the two parted. Of what followed Holinshed gives a description.
“Suddenly, upon what occasion many marvelled but few knew, every lord
and councillor went through the city weaponed, and had their servants
likewise weaponed ... to the great wondering of many; and at the last
a great assembly of the said Council was made at the Earl of Warwick’s
lodging, which was then at Ely Place, in Holborn, whither all the
confederates came privily armed, and finally concluded to possess the
Tower of London.”[99]
As a counterblast, Somerset issued a proclamation in the King’s name,
summoning all his subjects to Hampton Court for his defence and that of
his “most entirely beloved uncle.” Open war was declared.
So far the Archbishop and Paget, both resident with the Court, together
with the two Secretaries, had adhered to the Protector. Upon Cranmer,
if upon any one, Somerset, who had done more than any other person
to establish religion upon its new basis, should have been able to
count, if not for support, for a loyal opposition. But fear is strong
and--again it must be repeated--fidelity to the unfortunate was no
feature of the times; and by both Archbishop and Paget the cause of the
falling man was abandoned. Not only did they secretly embrace the cause
of the party headed by Warwick, but private directions were furnished
by Paget as to the means to be employed in seizing the person of the
Duke.
Meantime, Hampton Court being judged insufficiently secure, Somerset,
with a guard of five hundred men, had removed the King, at dead of
night, to Windsor, a graphic account of the journey being given by the
chronicler.
“As he went along the road the King was all armed, and carried his
little sword drawn, and kept saying to the people on the way:
“‘My vassals, will you help me against the people who want to kill me?’
“And everybody cried out, ‘Sir, we will all die for you.’”[100]
Windsor reached, the defence of the Castle and of the sovereign
was wisely entrusted, in the first instance, to men upon whom the
Duke could depend. But the Council was successful in lulling any
apprehensions of violent action to rest. Sir Philip Hoby, according to
some authorities,[101] was despatched from London with open, as well as
secret, letters, wherein it was declared that no harm was intended to
the Duke; order was merely to be taken for the Protectorship. Somerset
had by this time yielded so far to the forces arrayed against him as to
recognise the necessity of consenting to some change in the government;
and at the reassuring terms of the communication all present gave way
to emotion; wept with joy, after the fashion of the times; thanked
God, and prayed for the Lords; Paget, in particular, clasping the Duke
about the knees, and crying with tears, “O my Lord, ye see what my
lords be!”
The Protector’s ruin had been assured. Trusting to the declarations of
the Council, he fell an easy prey into their hands. Yielding to the
representations of Cranmer and Paget, to whose “diligent travail” his
enemies gratefully ascribed their success, he permitted his trusty
followers to be replaced in the defence of the Castle by the usual
royal guard; on October 11 he had been seized and placed in safe
keeping, and it was reported that the King had a bad cold, and “much
desireth to be hence, saying that ‘Methinks I am in prison. Here be
no galleries nor no gardens to walk in.’”[102] The young sovereign
had also, with a merry countenance and a loud voice, asked how their
Lordships of the Council were, and when he would see them, saying that
they should be welcome whensoever they came.
It was plain that objections to a transference of his guardianship were
not to be expected from the nephew of the Lord Protector, and the Duke
was removed from Windsor to the Tower, followed by three hundred lords
and gentlemen, “as if he had been a captive carried in triumph.” It
would, however, have been more difficult to induce the boy to consent
to the execution of another of his closest kin, and there may have
been some fraction of truth in the report which gained currency that
the King had not been made acquainted with the fact that his uncle was
actually a prisoner until he learnt it from the Duchess. He then sent
for the Archbishop and questioned him on the subject.
“Godfather,” he is made to say, “what has become of my uncle, the
Duke?” The explanation furnished him by Cranmer--to the effect that,
had God not helped the Lords, the country would have been ruined, and
it was feared that the Protector might have slain the King himself--did
not appear to commend itself to the young sovereign. The Duke, he said,
had never done him any harm, and he did not wish him to be killed.
A King’s wishes, even at thirteen, have weight, and Warwick suddenly
discovered that good should be returned for evil; and that since it was
the King’s desire, and the first thing he had asked of his Council, the
Duke must be pardoned.[103]
[Illustration:
From a photo by W. Mansell & Co. after a painting by Holbein.
EDWARD VI.]
What is more certain is that, on condition of an unqualified
acknowledgment of his guilt, accompanied by forfeiture of offices
and property, it was decided that Somerset should be set at liberty.
Self-respect or dignity was not in fashion, and in the eyes of some
the submission of the late Lord Protector assumed the character of an
“abjectness.” For the moment it purchased for him safety, and he was
gradually permitted to regain a certain amount of influence and power.
Some portion of his wealth was restored to him, and he was at length
readmitted to the Council and to a limited share in the government. To
sanguine eyes all seemed to have been placed on a satisfactory footing;
but jealousy, distrust, and hatred take much killing. The position of
the man who was the King’s nearest of kin amongst his nobles, and had
lately been all-powerful in the State, was a difficult one. Warwick was
rising, and meant to rise; Somerset was not content to remain fallen
and discredited. What seemed a peace was merely an armistice.
Meantime Warwick and his friends were no more successful than his rival
in maintaining the national honour, and the peace with France concluded
during the spring was regarded by the nation as a disgrace. Boulogne
was surrendered to its natural owners, and in magniloquent terms war
was once more stated to be at an end for ever between the two countries.
Court and courtiers troubled themselves little with such matters, and
on St. George’s Day a brilliant company of Lords of the Council and
Knights of the Garter kept the festival at Greenwich; when a glimpse of
the thirteen-year-old King is to be caught, in a more boyish mood than
usual.
Coming out from the discourse preached in honour of the day, in high
spirits and in the argumentative humour fostered by sermons, the “godly
and virtuous imp” turned to his train.
“My Lords,” he demanded, “I pray you, what saint is St. George, that we
here so honour him?”
The sudden attack was unexpected, and, the Lords of the Council being
“astonied” by it, it was the Treasurer who made reply.
“If it please Your Majesty,” he said, “I did never read in any history
of St. George, but only in _Legenda Aurea_, where it is thus set down,
that St. George out with his sword and ran the dragon through with his
spear.”
The King, when he could not a great while speak for laughing, at length
said:
“I pray you, my Lord, and what did he do with his sword the while?”
“That I cannot tell Your Majesty,” said he.[104]
Poor little King! poor “godly imp”! It is seldom that his laughter
rings out through the centuries. Perhaps some of the grave Councillors
or divines present may have looked askance, considering that it was not
with the weapon of ridicule that the patron saint of England should be
most fitly attacked, but with the more legitimate one of theological
criticism. But to us it is satisfactory to find that there were times
when even the modern Josiah could not speak for laughing.