1553
Trial and condemnation of Northumberland--His recantation--Final
scenes--Lady Jane’s fate in the balances--A conversation with her.
The great subject of interest agitating the capital, when the
excitement attending the Queen’s triumphal entry had had time to
subside, was the approaching trial of the Duke of Northumberland and
his principal accomplices. On August 18 the great conspirator, with
his son, the Earl of Warwick, and the Marquis of Northampton, were
arraigned at Westminster Hall, the Duke of Norfolk, lately himself a
prisoner, presiding, as High Steward of England, at the trial.
Its issue was a foregone conclusion. If ever man deserved to suffer
the penalty for high treason, that man was Northumberland. His brain
had devised the plot intended to keep the Queen out of the heritage
hers by birth and right; his hand had done what was possible to execute
it. He had commanded in person the forces arrayed against her, and had
been taken, as it were, red-handed. He must have recognised the fact
that any attempt at a defence would be hopeless. Two points of law,
however, he raised: Could a man, acting by warrant of the great seal
of England, and by the authority of the Council, be accused of high
treason? And further, could he be judged by those who, implicated in
the same offence, were his fellow-culprits?
The argument was quickly disposed of. If, as Mr. Tytler supposes,[192]
the Duke’s intention was to appeal to the sanction of the great seal
affixed to Edward’s will, the judges preferred to interpret his
plea, as most historians have concurred in doing, as referring to
the seal used during Lady Jane’s short reign; and, thus understood,
the authority of a usurper could not be allowed to exonerate her
father-in-law from the guilt of rebellion. As to his second question,
so long as those by whom he was to be judged were themselves
unattainted, they were not disqualified from filling their office.
Sentence was passed without delay, the Duke proffering three requests.
First, he asked that he might die the death of a noble; secondly, that
the Queen would be gracious to his children, since they had acted by
his command, and not of their own free will; and thirdly, that two
members of the Council Board might visit him, in order that he might
declare to them matters concerning the public welfare.
The trial had been conducted on a Friday. The uncertainty prevailing
as to the condition of public sentiment in the city may be inferred
from the fact, that, when the customary sermon was to be preached at
Paul’s Cross on the following Sunday, it was considered expedient
to have the preacher chosen by the Queen surrounded by her guards,
lest a tumult should ensue. The state of feeling in the capital must
have been curiously mixed. Mary was the lawful sovereign, and had
been brought to her rights amidst universal rejoicing. Northumberland
was an object of detestation to the populace. Yet, whilst the Queen
was undisguisedly devoted to a religion to which the majority of her
subjects were hostile, the Duke was regarded as, with Suffolk, the
chief representative and support of the faith they held and the Church
as by law established. If his adherence to Protestant doctrine, as was
now to appear, had been a matter of policy rather than of conviction,
it had been singularly successful in imposing upon the multitude;
though, according to the story which makes him observe to Sir Anthony
Browne that he certainly thought best of the old religion, “but,
seeing a new one begun, run dog, run devil, he would go forward,” he
had been at little pains to conceal his lack of genuine sympathy with
innovation.[193] When the speech was made, suspicion of Catholic
proclivities would have been fatal to his position and his schemes.
The case was now reversed. He was about to forfeit, by the fashion of
his death, the solitary merit he had possessed in the eyes of a large
section of his countrymen; to throw off the mask, however carelessly
it had been worn; and to give the lie, at that supreme moment, to the
professions of years.
It is said that, in consequence of the request he had preferred at
his trial that he might be visited by some members of the Council, he
was granted an interview with Gardiner and another of his colleagues,
name unknown; that the Bishop of Winchester subsequently interceded
with the Queen on his behalf, and was sanguine of success; but that,
in deference to the Emperor’s advice, Mary decided in the end that the
Duke must die.[194] To Arundel, in spite of the little encouragement he
had received at Cambridge to hope that the Earl would prove his friend,
Northumberland wrote, begging for life, “yea, the life of a dog, that
he may but live and kiss the Queen’s feet.”[195] All was in vain.
Prayers, supplications, entreaties, were useless. He was to die.
Of those tried together with him, two shared his sentence--Sir Thomas
Palmer and Sir John Gates. Monday, August 21, had been fixed for the
executions, Commendone, the Pope’s agent, delaying his journey to
Italy at Mary’s request that he might be present on the occasion.[196]
For some unexplained reason, they were deferred. It was probably in
order to leave Northumberland time to make his recantation at leisure;
for he had expressed his desire to renounce his errors “and to hear
Mass and to receive the Sacrament according to the old accustomed
manner.”[197]
The account of what followed has been preserved in detail. At nine in
the morning the altar in the chapel was prepared; and thither the Duke
was presently conducted by Sir John Gage, Constable of the Tower, four
of the lesser prisoners being brought in by the Lieutenant. Dying men,
three of them, and the rest in jeopardy, it was a solemn company there
assembled as the officiating priest proceeded with the ancient ritual.
At a given moment the service was interrupted, so that the Duke might
make his confession of faith and formally abjure the new ways he had
followed for sixteen years, “the which is the only cause of the great
plagues and vengeance which hath light upon the whole realm of England,
and now likewise worthily fallen upon me and others here present for
our unfaithfulness; ... and this I pray you all to testify, and pray
for me.”
After which, kneeling down, he asked forgiveness from all, and forgave
all.
“Amongst others standing by,” says the narrator of the scene, “were
the Duke of Somerset’s sons,” Hertford and his brother, boys scarcely
emerged from childhood; watching the fallen enemy of their house, and
remembering that to him had been chiefly due their father’s death.
Other spectators were some fourteen or fifteen merchants from the City,
bidden to the chapel that they might witness the ceremony and perhaps
make report of the Duke’s recantation to their fellows.
The news of what was going forward must have spread through the
Tower, partly palace, partly dungeon, partly fortress; and men must
have looked strangely upon one another as they heard that the leader
principally responsible for all that had happened in the course of the
last month, to whom the safety of the Protestant faith had been war-cry
and watchword, had abjured it as the work of the devil. Where was
truth, or sincerity, or pure conviction to be found?
Of Lady Jane, during this day, there is but one mention. The limelight
had been turned off her small figure, and she had fallen back into
obscurity. Yet we hear that, looking through a window, she had seen
her father-in-law led to the chapel, where he was, in her eyes, to
imperil his soul. But whether she had been made aware of what was in
contemplation we are ignorant.
The final scene took place on the succeeding day. At nine o’clock the
scaffold was ready, and Sir John Gates, with young Lord Warwick, were
brought forth to receive Communion in the chapel (“Memorandum,” says
the chronicler again, “the Duke of Somerset’s sons stood by”). By one
after the other, their abjuration had been made, and the priest present
had offered what comfort he might to the men appointed to die.
“I would,” he said, “ye should not be ignorant of God’s mercy, which is
infinite. And let not death fear you, for it is but a little while, ye
know, ended in one half-hour. What shall I say? I trust to God it shall
be to you a short passage (though somewhat sharp) out of innumerable
miseries into a most pleasant rest--which God grant.”
As the other prisoners were led out the Duke and Sir John Gates met at
the garden gate. Northumberland spoke.
“Sir John,” he said, “God have mercy on us, for this day shall end both
our lives. And I pray you, forgive me whatsoever I have offended; and
I forgive you, with all my heart, although you and your counsel was a
great occasion thereof.”
“Well, my Lord,” was the reply, “I forgive you, as I would be forgiven.
And yet you and your authority was the only original cause of all
together. But the Lord pardon you, and I pray you forgive me.”
So, not without a recapitulation of each one’s grievance, they made
obeisance, and the Duke passed on. Again, “the Duke of Somerset’s sons
stood thereby”--the words recur like a sinister refrain.
The end had come. Standing upon the scaffold, the Duke put off his
damask gown; then, leaning on the rail, he repeated the confession
of faith made on the previous day, begging those present to remember
the old learning, and thanking God that He had called him to be a
Christian. With his own hands he knit the handkerchief about his eyes,
laid him down, and so met the executioner’s blow.
Gates followed, with few words. Sir Thomas Palmer, having witnessed the
ghastly spectacle, came last. That morning, whilst preparations for the
executions were being made, he had been walking in the Lieutenant’s
garden, observed, says that “resident in the Tower” in whose diary so
many incidents of this time have been preserved, to seem “more cheerful
in countenance than when he was most at liberty in his lifetime”; and
when the end was at hand, he met it, as some men did meet death in
those days, with undaunted courage, and with a heroism not altogether
unaffected by dramatic instinct.
Though apparently implicitly included amongst the prisoners who had
made their peace with the Church, he is not recorded to have taken
any prominent part in the affair, and his dying speech dealt with no
controversial matters, but with eternal verities confessed alike by
Catholic and Protestant. At his trial he had denied that he had ever
borne arms against the Queen; though, charged with having been present
when others did so, he acknowledged his guilt. He now passed that
matter over, with a brief admission that his fate had been deserved at
God’s hands: “For I know it to be His divine ordinance by this mean to
call me to His mercy and to teach me to know myself, what I am, and
whereto we are all subject. I thank His merciful goodness, for He has
caused me to learn more in one little dark corner in yonder Tower than
ever I learned by any travail in so many places as I have been.” For
there he had seen God; he had seen himself; he had seen and known what
the world was. “Finally, I have seen there what death is, how near
hanging over every man’s head, and yet how uncertain the time, and how
unknown to all men, and how little it is to be feared. And why should
I fear death, or be sad therefore? Have I not seen two die before
mine eyes, yea, and within the hearing of mine ears? No, neither the
sprinkling of the blood, or the shedding thereof, nor the bloody axe
itself, shall not make me afraid.”
Taking leave of all present, he begged their prayers, forgave the
executioner, and, master of himself to the last, kneeling, laid his
head upon the block.
“I will see how meet the block is for my neck,” he said, “I pray thee,
strike me not yet, for I have a few prayers to say. And that done,
strike in God’s name. Good leave have thou.”
So the scene came to an end. The three rebels whose life Mary had
taken--no large number--had paid the forfeit of their deed. That night
the Lancaster Herald, a dependant of the Duke of Northumberland, more
faithful to old ties and memories than those in higher place, sought
the Queen, and begged of her his master’s head, that he might give it
sepulture. In God’s name, Mary bade him take his lord’s whole body and
bury him. By a curious caprice of destiny the Duke was laid to rest in
the Tower at the side of Somerset.[198] There, in the reconciliation of
a common defeat, the ancient rivals were united.
The three chief victims had thus paid the supreme penalty. The rest
of the participators in Northumberland’s guilt, if not pardoned, were
suffered to escape with life. Young Warwick had shared his father’s
condemnation, and, finding that the excuse of youth was not to be
allowed to avail in so grave a matter, had contented himself with
begging that, out of his goods, forfeited to the Crown, his debts
might be paid. Returning to the Tower, he had afterwards followed his
father’s example in abjuring Protestantism, and had listened, with
the older victims, to the words addressed by the priest to the men
appointed to die. Whether or not he had been aware that he was to be
spared, Mass concluded, he had been taken back to his lodging and had
not shared the Duke’s fate.
Northampton’s defence had been a strange one. He had, he said, forborne
the execution of any public office during the interregnum and, being
intent on hunting and other sports, had not shared in the conspiracy.
The plea was not allowed to stand, but though he, like Warwick, was
condemned, he was likewise permitted to escape with life. As Warwick’s
youth may have made its appeal to Mary, so she may have remembered that
Northampton was the brother of her dead friend, Katherine Parr, and
have allowed that memory to save him.
Lady Jane’s fate had hung in the balances. By some she was still
considered a menace to the stability of her cousin’s throne. Charles
V.’s ambassadors, representing to the Queen the need of proceeding
with caution in matters of religion, urged the necessity of executing
punishment upon the more guilty of those who had striven to deprive her
of her crown, clemency being used towards the rest. In which class was
Jane to be included? The determination of that question would decide
her fate. At an interview between Mary and Simon Renard, one of the
Emperor’s envoys, it was discussed, the Queen declaring that she could
not make up her mind to send Lady Jane to the scaffold; that she had
been told that, before her marriage with Guilford Dudley, she had been
bestowed upon another man by a _contrat obligatoire_, rendering the
subsequent tie null and void. Mary drew from this hypothetical fact the
inference that her cousin was not the daughter-in-law of the Duke of
Northumberland’s, adding that she had had no share in his undertaking,
and that, as she was innocent, it would be against her own conscience
to put her to death.
Renard demurred. He said, what was probably true, that it was to be
feared that the alleged contract of marriage had been invented to
save Lady Jane; and it would be necessary at the least to keep her a
prisoner, since many inconveniences might be expected were she set at
liberty. To this Mary agreed, promising that her cousin should not
be liberated without all precautions necessary to ensure that no ill
results would follow.[199]
This interview must have taken place shortly before Northumberland’s
death; for on August 23 the Emperor, to whom it had been duly
reported, was replying by a reiteration of his opinion that all
those who had conspired against the Queen, as well as any concerned
in Edward’s death, should be chastised without mercy. He advised that
the executions should take place simultaneously, so that the pardon
of the less guilty should follow without delay. If Mary was unable to
resolve to put “Jeanne de Suffolck” to death, she ought at least to
relegate her to some place of security, where she could be kept under
supervision and rendered incapable of causing trouble in the realm.
That Mary had decided upon this course is clear, and there is no
reason to believe that Lady Jane would have suffered death had it
not been for her father’s subsequent conduct. In the meantime, she
remained a prisoner in the Tower, and on August 29, eleven days after
the executions on Tower Hill, she is shown to us in one of the rare
pictures left of her during the time of her captivity. On that day--a
Tuesday--the diarist in the Tower, admitted to dine at the same
table as the royal prisoner, placed upon record an account of the
conversation.
Besides Lady Jane, who sat at the end of the board, there was present
the narrator himself, one Partridge,[200] and his wife--it was in
“Partridge’s house,” or lodging within the Tower, that the guests
met--with Lady Jane’s gentlewoman and her man. Her presence had been
unexpected by the diarist, as he was careful to explain, excusing his
boldness in having accepted Partridge’s invitation on the score that he
had not been aware that she dined below.
Lady Jane did not appear anxious to stand on her dignity. Desiring
guest and host to be covered, she drank to the new-comer and made him
welcome. The conversation turned, naturally enough, upon the conduct of
public affairs, of which Lady Jane was inclined to take a sanguine view.
“The Queen’s Majesty is a merciful Princess,” she observed. “I beseech
God she may long continue, and send His merciful grace upon her.”
Religious matters were discussed, Lady Jane inquiring as to who had
been the preacher at St. Paul’s the preceding Sunday.
“I pray you,” she asked next, “have they Mass in London?”
“Yea, forsooth,” was the answer, “in some places.”
“It may be so,” she said. “It is not so strange as the sudden
conversion of the late Duke. For who would have thought he would have
so done?” negativing at once and decidedly the suggestion made by some
one present that a hope of escaping his imminent doom and winning
pardon from the Queen might supply an explanation of his change of
front.
“‘Pardon?’ repeated the dead man’s daughter-in-law. ‘Woe worth him! He
hath brought me and our stock into most miserable calamity and misery
by his exceeding ambition. But for the answering that he hoped for
life by his turning, though other men be of that opinion, I utterly
am not. For what man is there living, I pray you, although he had
been innocent, that would hope of life in that case; being in the
field against the Queen in person as general, and, after his taking,
so hated and evil spoken of by the commons? and at his coming into
prison so wondered at as the like was never heard by any man’s time?
Who was judge that he should hope for pardon, whose life was odious
to all men? But what will ye more? Like as his life was wicked and
full of dissimulation, so was his end thereafter. I pray God I, nor no
friend of mine, die so. Should I who [am] young and in my fewers [few
years?] forsake my faith for the love of life? Nay, God forbid, much
more he should not, whose fatal course, although he had lived his just
number of years, could not have long continued. But life was sweet, it
appeared; so he might have lived, you will say, he did [not] care how.
Indeed the reason is good, he that would have lived in chains, to have
had his life, by like would leave no other means attempted. But God be
merciful to us, for He saith, whoso denyeth Him before men, He will not
know in His Father’s Kingdom.’”
The conviction of Northumberland’s daughter-in-law that his recantation
had not been a mere device designed to lengthen his days may be allowed
in some sort to weigh in favour of the man she hated; and it is also
fair to remember that if his first abjuration may be accounted for by
a lingering hope that it might purchase life, any such expectation
must have been abandoned before the final repetition of it upon the
scaffold. In Lady Jane’s eyes, however, there seems to have been little
to choose between a sham apostacy and a genuine reversion to his older
creed.
“With this and much like talk the dinner passed away,” and with
exchange of courtesies the little company separated. The brief shaft of
light throwing Lady Jane’s figure into relief fades and leaves her once
more in the shadow--a shadow that was to deepen above her till the end.
It was early days of captivity still. Yet one discerns something of the
passionate longing of the prisoner for freedom in her wonder that life
in chains could be accounted worth any sacrifice.