1552
Northumberland and the King--Edward’s illness--Lady Jane and
Mary--Mary refused permission to practise her religion--The
Emperor intervenes.
For the moment master of the field, Northumberland addressed himself
sedulously to the task of strengthening and consolidating the position
he had won. In the Council he had achieved predominance, but the
King’s minority would not last for ever, and the necessity of laying
the foundation of a power that should continue when Edward’s nominal
sovereignty should have become a real one was urgent.
The lad was growing up; nor were there wanting moments causing those
around him to look on with disquietude to the day when the nobles
ruling in his name might be called upon to give an account of their
stewardship. A curious anecdote tells how, as Northumberland stood one
day watching the King practising the art of archery, the boy put a
“sharp jest” upon him, not without its significance.
“Well aimed, my liege,” said the Duke merrily, as the arrow hit the
white.
“But you aimed better,” retorted the lad, “when you shot off the head
of my uncle Somerset.”[125]
It was a grim and ominous pleasantry, and in the direct charge it
contained of responsibility for the death of Edward’s nearest of kin
another shaft besides the arrow may have been sent home. The Tudors
were not good at forgiving. Even had the King seen the death of the
Duke’s rival and victim without regret, it was possible that he would
none the less owe a grudge to the man to whom it was due; nor was
Northumberland without a reason for anticipating with uneasiness the
day when Edward, remembering all, should hold the reins of Government
in his own hands.
Under these circumstances it was clearly his interest to commend
himself to the young sovereign, and the system he pursued with regard
to his education and training were carefully adapted to that purpose.
Whilst the Protector had had the arrangement of affairs, his nephew had
been kept closely to his studies; Northumberland, “a soldier at heart
and by profession, had him taught to ride and handle his weapons,” the
boy welcoming the change, and, though not neglecting his books, taking
pleasure in every form of bodily exercise;[126] not without occasional
pangs of conscience, when more time had been spent in pastime than he
“thought convenient.”
“We forget ourselves,” he would observe, finding fault with himself
sententiously in royal phrase, upon such occasions, “that should not
lose _substantia pro accidente_.”[127]
It had been the Protector’s custom to place little money at his
nephew’s disposal, thus rendering him comparatively straitened in
the means of exercising the liberality befitting his position; and
part of the boy’s liking for the Admiral had been owing to the gifts
contrasting with the niggardliness of the elder brother. Profiting by
his predecessor’s mistakes, Northumberland’s was a different policy. He
supplied Edward freely with gold, encouraged him to make presents, and
to show himself a King; acquainting him besides with public business,
and flattering him by asking his opinion upon such matters.[128]
The Duke might have spared his pains. It was not by Edward that he
was to be called to account. But at that time there were no signs to
indicate how futile was the toil of those who were seeking to build
their fortunes upon his favour. A well-grown, handsome lad, his health
had given no special cause for anxiety up to the spring of 1552. In the
March of that year, however, a sharp and complicated attack of illness
laid him low and sowed the seeds of future delicacy.
“I fell sick of the smallpox and the measles,” recorded the boy in
his diary. “April 15th the Parliament broke up because I was sick and
unable to go abroad.”
To us, who read the laconic entry in the light thrown upon it by future
events, it marks the beginning of the end--not only the end of the
King’s short life, but the beginning of the drama in which many other
actors were to be involved and were to meet their doom. As yet none of
the anxious watchers suspected that death had set his broad arrow upon
the lad; and in the summer he had so far recovered as to be sending a
blithe account to Barnaby Fitzpatrick, then in France, of a progress
he had made in the country, and its attendant enjoyments. Whilst his
old playfellow had been occupied in killing his enemies, and sore
skirmishing and divers assaults, the King had been killing wild beasts,
having pleasant journeys and good fare, viewing fair countries, and
seeking rather to fortify his own than to spoil another man’s[129]--so
he wrote gaily to Fitzpatrick.
Meantime his illness, with the dissolution of Parliament consequent
upon it, had probably emptied London; the Suffolk family, with others,
returning to their country home. In July Lady Jane was on a visit
to her cousin, the Princess Mary, at Newhall; when, once more, an
indiscreet speech--a scoff, on this occasion, directed against the
outward tokens of that Catholic faith to which Mary was so vehemently
loyal--may, repeated to her hostess, have served to irritate her
towards the offender against the rules of courtesy and good taste.
Under other circumstances, it might have been passed over by the older
woman with a smile; but subjected to annoyance and petty persecution
by reason of her religion and saddened and embittered by illness and
misfortune, the trifling instance of ill-manners on the part of a
malapert child of fifteen may have had its share in accentuating a
latent antagonism.
In the course of the previous year a controversy had reached its height
which had been more or less imminent since the statute enjoining
the use of the new Prayer-book had been passed, a work said to have
afforded the King--then eleven years of age--“great comfort and
quietness of mind.” From that time forward--the decree had become
law in 1549--there had been trouble in the royal family, as might
be expected when opinion on vital points of religion, the burning
question of the day, was widely and violently divergent, and friends
and advisers were ever at hand to fan the flame of discord in their own
interest or that of their party.
No one could be blind to the fact that the ardent Catholicism of the
Princess Mary, next in succession to the throne, constituted a standing
menace to the future of religion as recently by law established, and to
the durability of the work hastily carried through in creating a new
Church on a new basis. Furthermore it was considered that her present
attitude of open and determined opposition to the decree passed by
Parliament was a cause of scandal in the realm. It was certainly one of
annoyance to the King and Council.
Cranmer would probably have liked to keep the peace. An honest
man, but no fanatic and holding moderate views, he might have been
inclined, having got what he personally wanted, to adopt a policy of
conciliation. Affairs had gone well with him; his friends were in
power; and, if he failed to inspire the foreign divines and their
English disciples with entire trust, it was admitted in 1550 by John
Stumpius, of that school, that things had been put upon a right
footing. “There is,” he added, “the greatest hope as to religion, for
the Archbishop of Canterbury has lately married a wife.”[130]
Matters being thus comfortably arranged, Cranmer, if he had had his
way, might have preferred to leave them alone. But what could one man
do in the interests of peace, when Churchmen and laity were alike
clamouring for war, when the King’s Council were against the concession
of any one point at issue, and the King himself had composed, before he
was twelve years old, and “sans l’aide de personne vivant,” a treatise
directed against the supremacy of the Pope? To the honour of the King’s
counsellors, few victims had suffered the supreme penalty during his
reign on account of their religious opinions;[131] but Gardiner and
Bonner, as well as Bishops Day and Heath, were in prison, and if the
lives of the adherents of the ancient faith were spared, no other
mitigation of punishment or indulgence was to be expected by them.
Under pressure from the Emperor the principal offender had been at
first granted permission to continue the practice of her religion.
But when peace with France rendered a rupture with Charles a less
formidable contingency than before, it was decided that renewed efforts
should be made to compel the Princess Mary to bow to the fiat of King
and Council. Love of God and affection for his sister forbade her
brother, he declared, to tolerate her obstinacy longer, the intimation
being accompanied by an offer of teachers who should instruct her
ignorance and refute her errors.
Mary was a match for both King and Council. In an interview with the
Lords she told them that her soul was God’s, and that neither would
she change her faith nor dissemble her opinions; the Council replying
by a chilling intimation that her faith was her own affair, but that
she must obey like a subject, not rule like a sovereign. The Princess,
however, had a card to play unsuspected by her adversaries. The dispute
had taken place on August 18. On the 19th the Council was unpleasantly
surprised by a strong measure on the part of the imperial ambassador,
in the shape of a declaration of war in case his master’s cousin was
not permitted the exercise of her religion.
The Council were in a difficulty. War with the Emperor, at that moment,
and without space for preparation, would have been attended with grave
inconvenience. On the other hand Edward’s tender conscience had outrun
that of his ministers, and had become so difficult to deal with that
all the persuasions of the Primate and two other Bishops were needed
to convince the boy, honest and zealous in his intolerance, that
“to suffer or wink at [sin] for a time might be borne, so all haste
possible was used.”
A temporising answer was therefore returned to the imperial ambassador,
“all haste possible” being made in removing English stores from
Flanders, so that, in case of a rupture, they might not fall into
Charles’s hands. This accomplished, fresh and stringent measures were
taken to compel the Princess’s obedience; her chief chaplain was
committed to the Tower, charged with having celebrated Mass in his
mistress’s house, and three of the principal officers of her household
were sent to join him there as a punishment for declining to use
coercion to prevent a recurrence of the offence.
An interview followed between Mary and a deputation of members of
the Council, who visited her with the object of enforcing the King’s
orders. The Princess received her guests with undisguised impatience;
requested them to be brief; and, having listened to what they had to
say, answered shortly that she would lay her head upon a block--no idle
rhetoric in those days--sooner than use any other form of service than
that in use at her father’s death; when her brother was of full age she
was ready to obey his commands, but at present--good, sweet King!--he
could not be a judge in such matters. Her chaplains, for the rest,
could do as they pleased in the matter of saying Mass, “but none of
your new service shall be used in my house, or I will not tarry in it.”
Thus the controversy practically ended. The Council dared not proceed
to extremities against the Emperor’s cousin, and tacitly agreed to let
her alone, having supplied her with one more bitter memory to add to
the account which was to be lamentably settled in the near future.