1553
The King dying--Noailles in England--Lady Jane married to Guilford
Dudley--Edward’s will--Opposition of the law officers--They
yield--The King’s death.
The King was becoming rapidly worse, and as his malady increased upon
him, strange suspicions were afloat amongst the people, their hatred to
Northumberland giving its colour to their explanation of the situation.
He himself, or those upon whom he could count, were ever with the sick
boy, and hints were uttered--as was sure to be the case--of poison. For
this, murmured the populace, had the King’s uncles been removed, his
faithful nobles disgraced; and the condition of public opinion caused
the Duke, alarmed at its hostility, to publish it abroad that Edward
was better.[142]
In May a rally appears to have in fact taken place, giving rise in
some quarters to false hopes of recovery, and Mary wrote to offer her
congratulations to her brother upon the improvement in his health. On
May 13 the new French ambassador, Noailles, whose audience had been
deferred from day to day, was informed by the Council that their master
was so much better that he would doubtless be admitted to the royal
presence in the course of a few days. The doctors told a different
story, and Noailles believed the doctors. A diplomatist himself, he
knew the uses of lying perhaps too well to condemn it severely. That
the King was dying was practically certain, and though those whose
object it was to conceal the fact lest measures should be concerted
to ensure the succession of the rightful heir, might do their best to
disguise the fact, the truth must become known before long.
Meantime the French envoy, in the interest of the reformed party in
England--not by reason of their religion, but as opposed to Mary, the
Emperor’s cousin--was quite willing to play into Northumberland’s
hands, and to assist him in the work of spreading abroad the report
that the King’s malady was yielding to treatment. He and his
colleagues were accordingly conducted to an apartment near to the
presence-chamber, where they were left for a certain time alone, in
order to convey the impression that they had been personally received
by the sovereign. Some days later it was confessed, but as a peril
past, that Edward had been seriously ill. He was then stated to be out
of danger, and the ambassadors were admitted to his presence, finding
him very weak, and coughing much.[143]
The rally had been of short duration. Hope of recovery had, in truth,
been abandoned; and those it concerned so intimately were forced to
face the situation to be created by his death. It was a situation
momentous alike to men whose fortunes had been staked upon the young
King’s life, and to others honestly and sincerely solicitous regarding
the welfare of the realm and the consequences to the new religion
should his eldest sister succeed to the throne.
Every one of the Lords of the Council and officers of the Crown,
with almost all the Bishops, save those who had suffered captivity
and deprivation, had personal reasons for apprehension. Scarcely a
single person of influence or power could count upon being otherwise
than obnoxious to the heir to the crown. That most of them would be
displaced from their posts was to be expected. Some at least must
have felt that property and life hung in the balance. But it was
Northumberland who, as he had most to lose, had most to fear. The
practical head of the State, and wielding a power little less than
that of Somerset, he had amassed riches and offices to an amount
bearing witness to his rapacity. In matters of religion he had been
as strong, though less sincere, in his opposition to the Church
claiming Mary’s allegiance as his predecessor. During the preceding
autumn the iconoclastic work of destruction had been carried on
in the metropolitan Cathedral; the choir, where the high altar had
been accustomed to stand, had been broken down and the stone-work
destroyed.[144] Gardiner and Bonner, who, as prominent sufferers for
the Catholic cause, would have Mary’s ear, were in prison. For all
this Northumberland, with the King’s Council as aiders and abettors,
was responsible. Not a single claim could be advanced to the liking
or toleration of the woman presently to become head of the State. If
safety was to be ensured to the advisers of her brother, steps must
be taken at once for that purpose. Northumberland and Suffolk set
themselves to do so.
It was on May 18 that Noailles and his colleagues had been at length
permitted to pay their respects to the sick boy. On Whitsunday, the
23rd--the date, though not altogether certain, is probable--three
marriages were celebrated at Durham House, the London dwelling-place
of the Duke of Northumberland. On that day the eldest daughter of the
Duke of Suffolk became the wife of Lord Guilford Dudley, the Duke
of Northumberland’s fourth and, some say, favourite son; her sister
Katherine was bestowed upon Lord Herbert, the earl of Pembroke’s
heir--to be repudiated by him the following year--and Lady Katherine
Dudley, Northumberland’s daughter, was married to Lord Hastings.[144]
The object of the threefold ceremony was clear. The main cause of
it, and of the haste shown in carrying it through, was a dying boy,
whose life was flickering out a few miles distant at Greenwich. It
behoved his two most powerful subjects, Northumberland and Suffolk, to
strengthen their position as speedily as might be, and by this means it
was hoped to accomplish that object.
The place chosen for the celebration of the weddings might have
served--perhaps it did--to host and guests as a reminder of the perils
of those who climbed too high. Durham House, appropriated in his
days of prosperity by Somerset--to the indignation of Elizabeth, who
laid claim to the property--had been forfeited to the Crown upon his
attainder, and was the dwelling of his more fortunate rival; and, as
if to drive the lesson further home, the very cloth of gold and silver
lent from the royal coffers to deck the bridal party had been likewise
drawn from the possessions of the ill-starred Duke. The dead furnished
forth the festal array of the living.
That day, with its splendid ceremonial--the marriages took place with
much magnificence in the presence of a great assembly, including
the principal personages of the realm--presents a grim and striking
contrast to what was to follow. None were present, so far as we know,
with the eyes of a seer, to discern the thin red ring foretelling the
proximate fate of the girl who played the most prominent part in it,
or to recognise in death the presiding genius of the pageant. Yet the
destiny said in old days to dog the steps of those doomed to a violent
death and to be present at their side from the cradle to the grave must
have stood by many, besides the bride, who joined in the proceedings
on that Whitsunday. Where would Northumberland be that day year? or
Suffolk? or young Guilford Dudley? or, a little later, the Bishop who
tied the knots?
How Jane played her part we can only guess, or what she had thought
of the arrangement, hurriedly concluded, by which her future was
handed over to the keeping of her boy husband. Whether willing or
unwilling, she had no choice but to obey, to accept the bridegroom
chosen for her--a tall, handsome lad of seventeen or nineteen, it is
not clear which--and to make the best of it. Rosso indeed, deriving his
information from Michele, Venetian ambassador in London, and Bodoaro,
Venetian ambassador to Charles V., states that after much resistance,
urged by her mother and beaten by her father, she had consented to
their wishes. It may have been true; and, standing at the altar, her
thoughts may have wandered from the brilliant scene around her to the
room at Greenwich, where the husband proposed for her in earlier days
was dying. She might have been Edward’s wife, had he lived. She can
scarcely have failed to have been aware of the hopes and designs of
her father, of those of the dead Admiral, and of others; she had, in
a measure, been brought up in the expectation of filling a throne.
But the plan was forgotten now. Edward was to be the husband neither
of Jane nor of that other cousin, not of royal blood, the daughter
of his sometime Protector, whose father was dead and mother in the
Tower; nor yet of the foreign bride, well stuffed and jewelled, of
whom he had himself bragged. He was dying, like any other boy of no
royal race, upon whose life no momentous issues hung. From his sick-bed
he had taken a keen interest in what was going forward, appearing,
says Heylyn, as forward in the marriages as if he had been one of the
principals in the plot against him.[145] He might be fond of Jane,
but even had he loved her--which there is nothing to show--he was too
far within the shadow of the grave to feel any jealousy in seeing her
handed over to another bridegroom.
At the demeanour of the little victim of the Whitsun sacrifice we can
but guess. Grave and serious we picture her, as it was her wont to
be, with the steadfast face depicted by the painters of the day--far,
in spite of Seymour’s boast, from being “as handsome as any lady in
England,” but with a purity and simplicity, a stillness and repose,
restful to those who looked into the quiet eyes and marked the
tranquillity of the countenance. Did she, in her inward cogitations,
divine that there was danger ahead? If so we can fancy she was ready
to face it. Were it God’s will, then let it come. Peril was the
anteroom, death the portal, of the eternal city--the heavenly Jerusalem
in which she believed.
Such was the image printed upon the time by the woman-child who
was never to know maturity, as it lived in the tender and loving
remembrance of her contemporaries, the delicately sculptured figure of
a saint in the temples of the iconoclasts.
[Illustration:
From an engraving by George Noble after a painting by Holbein.
LADY JANE GREY.]
By the country at large the sudden marriages were regarded with
suspicion. “The noise of these marriages bred such amazement in the
hearts of the common people, apt enough in themselves to speak the
worst of Northumberland, that there was nothing left unsaid which might
serve to show their hatred against him, or express their pity for the
King.”[146] Overbearing and despotic, the merciless “bear of Warwick,”
as he was nicknamed, was so detested that by some the failure of his
scheme was afterwards ascribed rather to his unpopularity than to love
for Mary. Yet it was Northumberland who, with the blindness born of
a sanguine ambition, was to trust, six weeks later, to the populace
to join with him in dispossessing the King’s sister, for whom they
had always shown affection, and in placing his daughter-in-law and
her boy-husband upon the throne. So glaring a misapprehension of the
situation demands explanation, and it is partly supplied by a French
appreciation of the Duke’s character. According to M. Griffet, he was
more heedful to conceal his own sentiments than capable of discerning
those of others; a man of ambition who neither knew whom to trust nor
whom to suspect; who, blinded by presumption, was therefore easily
deceived, and who nevertheless believed himself to possess to the
highest degree the gift of deceiving all the world.[147] Such as he
was, he had deceived himself to his undoing.
Meantime Lady Jane’s marriage had made for the moment little change
in her manner of life. She had answered the purpose for which she was
required, and was permitted temporarily to retire behind the scenes.
It is said--and there is nothing unlikely in the assertion--that,
the ceremony over and obedience having been rendered to her parents’
behest, she entreated that she might continue with her mother for
the present. She and her new husband were so young, she pleaded. Her
request was granted. She was Guilford Dudley’s wife, could be the wife
of no other man, and that was, for the moment, sufficient.
There was much to think of, much to do. Measures had to be taken to
keep the King’s sisters at a distance, lest his old affection, for
Elizabeth in particular, reawakening might frustrate the designs of
those bent upon moulding events to their advantage. Above all, there
was the pressing necessity of inducing the King to exclude them by
will from their rightful heritage. On June 16 Noailles had again been
conferring with the doctors, and had learnt that, in their opinion,
Edward could not live till August. Ten days later Northumberland
came from Greenwich to visit the envoy, and to prevent his going to
Court. He then told the Frenchman that, nine days earlier, the King
had executed his will in favour of the Duke’s daughter-in-law, Lady
Jane[148]--“qui est vertueuse, sage, et belle,” reported the envoy to
his master some three weeks later.[149]
Of the manner in which the will had been obtained full information is
available. It was not out of love for Northumberland that Edward had
yielded to his representations. The Throckmorton MS.[150] asserts that
Edward abhorred the Duke on account of his uncle’s death. Sir Nicholas
Throckmorton, in attendance on the King, should be a good authority; on
the other hand, he was opposed to the Duke’s designs. Whether or not
the latter was personally distasteful to the boy, it was no difficult
matter to represent the situation in a fashion to lead him to believe
the sole alternative was the course suggested to him. Conscientious,
pious, scrupulous to a fault, and worn by disease, the future of
religion could be made to hang upon his fiat, and the thought of Mary,
a devout Catholic, or even Elizabeth, who might marry a foreign prince,
seated upon the throne, filled him with apprehensions for the welfare
of a people for whom he felt himself responsible. Yet he, with little
to love, had loved both his sisters, and the thought of the sick lad,
torn between duty and affection, a tool in the hands of unprincipled
and ambitious men who could play on his sensitive conscience and
over-strained nerves at will, and turn his piety to their advantage, is
a painful one.
The Duke’s arguments lay ready to his hand. Religion was in danger, the
Church set up by Edward in jeopardy; the work that he had done might be
destroyed as soon as he was in his grave. How could he answer it before
God were he, who was able to avert it, to permit so great an evil? The
remedy was clear. Let him pass over his sisters, already pronounced
severally illegitimate by unrepealed statutes of Parliament, and entail
the crown upon those who, under his father’s will, would follow upon
Mary and Elizabeth, the descendants of Mary Tudor, known to be firm in
their attachment to the reformed faith.
Edward yielded. Given the circumstances, the power exercised by the
Duke over him, his physical condition, his fears for religion, he could
scarcely have done less. With his own hand he drew up the draft of
a will which, amended at Northumberland’s bidding, left the crown in
unmistakable terms to Lady Jane and her heirs male. It had now to be
made law and accepted by the Council.
On June 11 Sir Edward Montagu, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas,
Sir Thomas Bromley, another Justice of the same court, Sir Richard
Baker, Chancellor of the Augmentations, and the Attorney- and
Solicitor-General were called to Greenwich, and were introduced into
the King’s apartment, Northampton, Gates, and others being present
at the interview. If what took place on this occasion and at the
other audiences of the legal officers with the King, as recorded by
themselves, is naturally, as Dr. Lingard has pointed out, represented
in such a manner as to extenuate their conduct in Mary’s eyes, there
seems no reason to doubt that Montagu’s account is substantially
true.[151]
In his sickness, Edward told them, he had considered the state of the
realm, and of the succession, should he die without leaving direct
heirs; and, proceeding to point out the danger to religion and to
liberty should his sister Mary succeed to the throne, he ordered them
to “make a book with speed” of his articles.
The lawyers demurred, but the King, feverishly eager to put an end
to the business, and conscious perhaps that if the thing were not
done quickly it might not be done at all, refused to listen to the
objections they would have urged, dismissing them with orders to carry
out his pleasure with haste. For all his gentleness and piety, Edward
was a Tudor, and no less peremptory than others of his race.
Two days later--it was June 14--having deliberated on the question, the
men of law acquainted the Council with their decision. The thing could
not be done. To make or execute the “devise” according to the King’s
instructions would be treason. The report was made to Sir William
Petre at Ely Place; but the Duke of Northumberland was at hand, and
came thereupon into the Council-chamber, “being in a great rage and
fury, trembling for anger, and, amongst all his ragious talk called
Sir Edward Montagu traitor, and further said he would fight any man in
his shirt in that quarrel.” It was plain that no technical or legal
obstacles were to be permitted to turn him from his purpose.
The following day the law-officers were again called to Greenwich.
Conveyed in the first place to a chamber behind the dining-room, they
met with a chilling reception. “All the lords looked upon them with
earnest countenances, as though they had not known them;” and, brought
into the King’s presence, Edward demanded, “with sharp words and angry
countenance,” why his book was not made?
Montagu, as spokesman for his colleagues, explained. Had the King’s
device been executed it would become void at the King’s death, the
Statute of Succession passed by Parliament being still in force. A
statute could be altered by statute alone. On Edward’s replying that
Parliament should then shortly be called together, Montagu caught at
the solution. The matter could be referred to it, and all perils saved.
But this was not the King’s meaning. The deed, he explained, was to be
executed at once, and was to be afterwards ratified by Parliament. With
growing excitement, he commanded the officers, “very sharply,” to do
his bidding; some of the lords, standing behind the King, adding that,
did they refuse, they were traitors.
The epithet was freely bandied about in those days, yet it never failed
to carry a menace; and Montagu, in as “great fear as ever he was in all
his life before, seeing the King so earnest and sharp, and the Duke so
angry the day before,” and being an “old weak man and without comfort,”
began to look about for a method of satisfying King and Council without
endangering his personal safety. In the end he gave way, consenting
to prepare the required papers, on condition that he might first be
given a commission under the great seal to draw up the instrument, and
likewise a pardon for having done so. Northumberland had won the day.
It was afterwards reported that when the will was signed a great
tempest arose, with a whirlwind such as had never been seen, the
sky dark and fearful, lightning and infinite thunder; one of the
thunderbolts accompanying that terrible storm falling upon the
miserable church where heresy was first begotten.... “This accident was
observed by many persons of sense and prudence, and was considered a
great sign of the avenging justice of God.”[152]
The Council, undeterred by the manifestations of divine wrath, were
not backward in endorsing the deed. Overborne by the Duke, probably
also influenced by the apprehension of a compulsory restoration of
Church spoils should Mary succeed, they unanimously acquiesced in the
act of injustice. To a second paper, designed by the Duke to commit
his colleagues further, twenty-four councillors and legal advisers
set their hands. By June 21 the official instrument had received the
signatures of the Lords of the Council, other peers, judges, and
officers of the Crown, to the number of 101. The Princesses had been
set aside, and the fatal heritage, so far as it was possible, secured
to Lady Jane. The King, at the direction of her nearest of kin, had in
effect affixed his signature to her death-sentence.
When Northumberland was assured of success he gave a magnificent
musical entertainment, to which the French ambassador was bidden. Three
days earlier it had been reported to Noailles that Edward was at the
point of death, and he was surprised at the merry-making and the good
spirits prevalent. The affair, it was explained to him, was in honour
of the convalescence of the King, who had been without fever for two
days, and whose recovery appeared certain.[153] The envoy doubtless
expressed no incredulity, and congratulated the company upon the good
tidings. He knew that Edward was moribund, and understood that the
rejoicings were in truth to celebrate the approaching elevation to the
throne of Northumberland’s daughter-in-law.
Was she present? We cannot tell; but it was the Duke’s policy to make
her a prominent figure, and Noailles’ description of her beauty and
goodness implies a personal acquaintance.
It only remained for Edward to die. All those around him, with perhaps
some few exceptions amongst his personal attendants, were eagerly
awaiting the end. All had been accomplished that was possible whilst
he was yet alive, and Northumberland and his friends were probably
impatient to be up and doing. His sisters were at a distance, his
uncles dead, Barnaby Fitzpatrick was abroad, and he was practically
alone with the men who had made him their tool. The last scene is full
of pathos. Three hours before the end, lying with his eyes shut, he was
heard praying for the country which had been his charge.
“‘O God,’ he entreated, ‘deliver me out of this miserable and wretched
life, and take me among Thy chosen; howbeit not my will, but Thine, be
done. Lord, I commend my spirit to Thee. O Lord, Thou knowest how happy
it were for me to be with Thee. Yet, for Thy chosen’s sake, send me
life and health, that I may truly serve Thee. O my Lord God, bless Thy
people and save Thine inheritance. O Lord God, save Thy chosen people
of England. O Lord God, defend this realm from Papistry and maintain
Thy true religion, that I and my people may praise Thy holy Name, for
Jesus Christ His sake.’
“Then turned he his face, and seeing who was by him, said to them:
“‘Are ye so nigh? I thought ye had been further off.’
“Then Doctor Owen said:
“‘We heard you speak to yourself, but what you said we know not.’
“He then (after his fashion, smilingly) said, ‘I was praying to
God.’”[154]
The end was near.
“I am faint,” he said. “Lord, have mercy upon me, and take my spirit”;
and so on July 7, towards night, he passed away. On the following day
Noailles communicated to his Court “le triste et piteux inconvénient de
la mort” of Edward VI., last of the Tudor Kings.