Transcriber’s Note
Superscripts are indicated by “^” as in “w^thout”. Multiple-letter
superscripts are enclosed in braces, as in “maj^{tys}”. Italics text is
indicated by _underscores_, and small-caps text has been converted to
upper-case. Additional notes will be found at the end of this eBook.
ROMANTIC HISTORY
GENERAL EDITOR: MARTIN HUME, M.A.
THE NINE DAYS’ QUEEN
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE PAGEANT OF LONDON
THE SULTAN AND HIS SUBJECTS
[Illustration: LADY JANE GREY
FROM THE PAINTING BY LUCAS DE HEERE AT ALTHORP]
THE
NINE DAYS’ QUEEN
LADY JANE GREY
AND HER TIMES
BY
RICHARD DAVEY
EDITED, AND WITH INTRODUCTION, BY
MARTIN HUME, M.A.
WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published in 1909_
TO
MY DEAR WIFE
ELEANORA DAVEY
AUTHOR’S NOTE
My object in writing this book has been to interest the reader in
the tragic story of Lady Jane Grey rather from the personal than the
political point of view. I have therefore employed, more perhaps than
is usual, what the French historians term _le document humain_ in my
account of the extraordinary men and women who surrounded Lady Jane,
and who used her as a tool for their ambitious ends. The reader may
possibly wonder why in several of the earlier chapters Lady Jane Grey
plays so shadowy a part, but I deemed it impossible for any one who
is not very familiar with our History at this period to understand,
without having a complete idea of the chain of conspiracies that
preceded and rendered possible her proclamation, how a young Princess,
not in the immediate succession to the Crown, came to be placed, if
only for nine days, in the towering position of Queen of England. These
conspiracies were four in number. The first was that of the Howards
and the Catholic party against Queen Katherine Parr. The second, the
conspiracy of the Seymours against the Howards, which ended in the
downfall of the great House of Norfolk, whereby Edward Seymour was
enabled to proclaim himself Lord Protector of the Realm. The third
plot was that of Thomas Seymour to cast down his brother Edward from
his high station, and, if possible, to usurp the same for himself--a
strange story of folly and intrigue and overvaulting ambition which
ended in one of the most terrible fratricidal tragedies to be found
in the history of the nations. Fourthly, the removal of the brothers
Seymour from the scene enabled John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland,
to work his own will and to prepare the way, during the last days of
Edward VI, for his daughter-in-law, much against her will, to usurp the
throne.
I have consulted every available document, as well in our national
archives and private libraries as in those of foreign countries,
concerning Lady Jane and her friends and foes, the better to paint as
vivid a picture as possible of the times in which they lived.
I need scarcely add how greatly I appreciate the honour Major Martin
Hume has conferred upon my work by his scholarly Introduction, which
gives so succinct and deeply interesting an account of our foreign
politics at a most momentous period of English history. To him, to Dr.
Gairdner, to Earl Spencer, to Earl Stamford and Warrington, and to many
other gentlemen and friends, including the officials at the State Paper
Office and the British Museum, I beg to tender my sincere thanks for
their courtesy and for the valuable information with which they have
helped me to complete my picture of one of the most interesting periods
in our national history.
I cannot, moreover, allow this opportunity to pass without recording,
with sincere gratitude and affection, the aid which I received, when I
first thought of writing this life of Lady Jane Grey, from the kindness
of my old valued and lamented friend, Dr. Richard Garnett.
RICHARD DAVEY
200 ASHLEY GARDENS, LONDON, S.W.
_5th September 1909_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION xiii
CHAP.
I. BRADGATE HALL AND THE GREYS OF GROBY 1
II. BIRTH AND EDUCATION 14
III. THE LADY LATIMER 28
IV. THE KING’S HOUSEHOLD 42
V. MRS. ANNE ASKEW 58
VI. THE HOWARDS AND THE SEYMOURS 73
VII. HENRY VIII 100
VIII. CONCERNING THE LADY JANE AND THE QUEEN-DOWAGER 115
IX. THE QUEEN AND THE LORD HIGH-ADMIRAL 136
X. THE LADY JANE GOES TO SEYMOUR PLACE 147
XI. THE EDUCATION OF LADY JANE 168
XII. JOHN DUDLEY, EARL OF WARWICK 190
XIII. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF SOMERSET 208
XIV. THE LADY JANE MARRIES THE LORD GUILDFORD 221
XV. ON THE WAY TO THE TOWER 238
XVI. THE LADY JANE IS PROCLAIMED QUEEN 249
XVII. THE NINE DAYS’ REIGN 256
XVIII. THE LAST DAYS OF NORTHUMBERLAND 289
XIX. THE TRIAL OF QUEEN JANE 310
XX. THE SUPREME HOUR! 328
XXI. THE FATE OF THE SURVIVORS 348
APPENDIX 359
INDEX 365
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LADY JANE GREY _Frontispiece_
From the Painting by LUCAS DE HEERE at Althorp.
(Photograph by HANFSTAENGL)
FACING PAGE
HENRY GREY, DUKE OF SUFFOLK 12
From the Painting by JOANNES CORVUS, in the National
Portrait Gallery
QUEEN KATHERINE PARR 30
After the Painting formerly in the possession of
Horace Walpole
HENRY VIII IN 1547 48
From an old Engraving
ROGER ASCHAM’S VISIT TO LADY JANE GREY AT BRADGATE 172
After the Painting by J. C. HORSLEY, R.A.
JOHN DUDLEY, DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND 192
From an Engraving by G. VERTUE
EDWARD SEYMOUR, DUKE OF SOMERSET 208
From an Engraving after the Painting by HOLBEIN
SUPPOSED PORTRAIT OF LADY JANE GREY 224
Formerly in the Collection of Col. Elliott of Nottingham,
and now at Oxford University. From an Engraving after
the Painting by HOLBEIN
EDWARD VI 246
From an Engraving by G. VERTUE
LADY JANE GREY BY WYNGAERDE 270
The earliest engraved Portrait of her, from a Picture
said to be by HOLBEIN, now lost
QUEEN MARY AT THE PERIOD OF HER MARRIAGE 322
From the Painting by ANTONIO MOR, in the Prado Museum.
(Photograph by R. ANDERSON)
PORTRAIT OF THE LADY FRANCES BRANDON, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK,
AND HER SECOND HUSBAND, ADRIAN STOKES, ESQ. 352
Probably by CORVINUS, property of Col. Wynn Finch
INTRODUCTION
The tragedy of Lady Jane Grey is unquestionably one of the most
poignant episodes in English history, but its very dramatic
completeness and compactness have almost invariably caused its wider
significance to be obscured by the element of personal pathos with
which it abounds. The sympathetic figure of the studious, saintly
maiden, single-hearted in her attachment to the austere creed of
Geneva, stands forth alone in a score of books refulgent against
the gloomy background of the greed and ambition to which she was
sacrificed. The whole drama of her usurpation and its swift catastrophe
is usually treated as an isolated phenomenon, the result of one man’s
unscrupulous self-seeking; and with the fall of the fair head of the
Nine Days’ Queen upon the blood-stained scaffold within the Tower the
curtain is rung down and the incident looked upon as fittingly closed
by the martyrdom of the gentlest champion of the Protestant Reformation
in England.
Such a treatment of the subject, however attractive and humanly
interesting it may be, is nevertheless unscientific as history and
untrue in fact. An adequate appreciation of the tendencies behind
the unsuccessful attempt to deprive Mary of her birthright can only
be gained by a consideration of the circumstances preceding and
surrounding the main incident. The reasons why Northumberland, a weak
man as events proved, was able to ride rough-shod over the nobles
and people of England, the explanation of his sudden and ignominious
collapse and of the apparent levity with which the nation at large
changed its religious beliefs and observance at the bidding of assumed
authority are none of them on the surface of events; and the story
of Jane Grey as it is usually told, whilst abounding in pathetic
interest gives no key to the vast political issues of which the fatal
intrigue of Northumberland was but a by-product. To represent the
tragedy as a purely religious one, as is not infrequently done, is
doubly misleading. That one side happened to be Catholic and the other
Protestant was merely a matter of party politics, and probably not a
single active participator in the events, except Jane herself, and to
some extent Mary, was really moved by religious considerations at all,
loud as the professions of some of the leaders were.
Mr. Davey has given in the vivid pages of this book a striking picture
of the Society in which the drama was represented and of the persons
who surrounded Lady Jane Grey in the critical period of her unhappy
fate; and this of itself enables a wider view than is usual to be taken
of the subject. But, withal, I venture to think that an even more
extended prospect of it may be attained and the whole episode fitted
into its proper place in the history of England, if supplementary
consideration be given to international politics of the time, and
especially to the part which England aspired to take in the tremendous
struggle for supremacy which was then approaching the end of its first
phase on the Continent of Europe; a struggle in which not only the two
most powerful nations in Christendom were engaged and the two greatest
monarchs in the world were the leaders, but one in which the eternally
antagonistic principles of expansion and repression were the issues.
It is too often assumed that the system of political parties in
English Government dates only from the rise of Parliament as the
predominant power in the State in the seventeenth century, since, by
the open opposition and the public discussion of rival policies in
the Legislature, the existence of different groups of statesmen then
became evident to the world. But at least it may be asserted that,
from the time when the two first Tudor kings sought the aggrandisement
of England by placing their power in the balance between the great
Continental rivals, two schools of English politicians surrounded
their sovereign, each intent upon forwarding the alliance which
seemed to them wisest in the interests of the country and their own.
When, however, the political rivalry of France and the Emperor was
accentuated by the introduction of religious schism in the contest, by
the bold defiance of Luther and the spread of the reformed doctrines,
the political parties in the English Court were divided more distinctly
than ever by the new element introduced; and, despotic as the Tudor
sovereigns were, the apparently personal and fickle character of
their policy, which proves so puzzling to students, really arose in
nearly every case from the temporary predominance in their counsels
of one or the other school of thought represented in their Court. It
is only by recognising this fact that the strange and sudden changes
which took place in the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI can be made
comprehensible, and by it also the rise and fall of Lady Jane Grey can
be seen in its true light.
During the last twenty years of the reign of Henry VIII his bewildering
mutations of policy and of wives were the result of efforts on the
part of rival sets of politicians to utilise his brutal sensuality
and inflated pride to their respective ends. With him, as with the
most of them, religion was a mere stalking horse for other interests.
The traditional and more Conservative party, which usually leant
towards the imperial alliance, naturally took the Catholic side,
the established nobility such as the Howards backed by the Catholic
bishops being contrasted with the more recently ennobled men, aided
by bureaucrats like Cromwell and by the reforming churchmen. Thus it
came to be understood before the end of Henry’s reign that the men in
the English Court most favourable to emancipation from the Papacy were
generally speaking the advocates of a French alliance, whilst those
who clung to the orthodox view of religion favoured the traditional
adherence to the house of Burgundy. It is true that the men on both
sides were equally eager to participate in the plunder of the Church
and in filching the commons from the people of England; and that both
parties included men who were ready to profess themselves faithful
Catholics or ardent reformers as their interests demanded at the time.
But the political aims of the respective parties were quite distinctly
divided, notwithstanding religious affinities, for the Emperor was
just as desirous of having Protestant friends in England as the King
of France was willing to accept Catholic support there. The object of
the English sovereigns, it must be recollected, was usually somewhat
different from that of their bribed councillors who had their own
interests to serve. The aim of Henry VII and Henry VIII, and especially
of Elizabeth, who alone was successful in attaining it, was so to
distribute the weight of England’s influence as to avert any coalition
of the two great Continental powers against her, rather than to become
the permanent tool of either; the efforts of Charles V, and his French
rival being respectively directed towards preventing England from
throwing in her lot with their enemies.
Until religious bitterness infinitely complicated the question, and
finally led to the long state of war with Spain, the side which
commanded most sympathy amongst the English people at large was
unquestionably that which favoured a cordial understanding with
the sovereign of Flanders and Spain. The country had been in close
antagonism with France on and off for centuries, the proximity of
the coasts and the aspirations of the French to dominate the Channel
represented a constant danger and source of anxiety, and it was
instinctively felt in England that the time-honoured policy which
bound her to the monarch who was able when he pleased to divert the
aggression of the French by threatening any of their land frontiers,
was the safest friend of this country. The English merchants who found
their richest markets in Flanders and Spain, and who were in chronic
irritation at the French piratical attacks upon their commerce, were
equally anxious for a friendship which they looked upon as the best
assurance against a war which they dreaded; so that the chief English
advocates of the French connection were usually those whose adherence
to the reformed religious doctrines overbore their political interests,
and the newer nobility and politicians who found themselves at enmity
on social and other grounds with the traditional conservatives.
It must not be forgotten that both France and the Emperor strove
ceaselessly to gain friends amongst the English councillors. Immense
bribes found their way into the pockets of ministers and secretaries
of State, in many cases regular yearly pensions being settled upon
influential political supporters, and by means of flattery, social
attentions, and promises, the ambassadors in England of the rival
powers became centres of intrigue to influence English policy in
favour of one or the other. The goal to which both the rivals directed
their eyes was one in which, curiously enough, England had no interest
whatever, namely, the hegemony over Italy; but England which by
activity on the northern coasts of France or on the Scottish border
could weaken the French power for harm in other directions, could
enable the Emperor at any time to check his enemy’s Italian ambitions;
whilst with England as her friend France could brave the imperialists,
certain that she would not be taken in the rear, especially when, as
she usually managed to do, she had enlisted on her side the Turks on
the Hungarian frontier and the Lutheran princes and towns of Germany.
The marriage of Henry VIII with Jane Seymour was looked upon by the
Imperialist Conservative party in England as a victory for their cause.
Her brother, Sir Edward Seymour, had been in the Emperor’s service,
and Jane had supplanted the hated Anne Boleyn, whose sympathies were,
of course, entirely French. It is true that later Seymour, a parvenu
noble, be it recollected, was driven into the anti-papal camp mainly by
the antagonism of Norfolk and the older nobles who led the Conservative
party, but, notwithstanding his Protestantism, he never wavered in
his attachment to the imperial alliance and his opposition to French
interests.
When the death of Henry VIII made Seymour, as Duke of Somerset and
Protector, virtually ruler of England with Paget as his principal
minister, both of them were almost servile in their professions of
devotion to the cause of the Emperor; and made no secret of their
distrust of France with which a hollow and temporary peace had only
been recently patched up. Somerset harried the Church and changed
religious forms ruthlessly; his greed was insatiable and the devotional
endowments were looted without compunction, the Catholic bishops were
treated with stern severity, and even the schismatic Catholicism of
Henry VIII was cast aside in favour of an entirely new creed and
ritual. Norfolk was kept in the Tower, Wriothesley was disgraced
and the Catholic Conservative nobles were warned not to stand in
the Protector’s way. But through it all Somerset and Paget were
politically the sworn servants and friends of the Emperor, pledged
to discountenance any attempts of the French to injure him: whilst
Charles V on his side, much as he deprecated the religious changes,
could no more afford to quarrel with Somerset than he could with
Henry VIII, twenty years before when he contumeliously repudiated his
blameless Spanish wife and scornfully threw off the papal supremacy
which was the keystone of the imperial system.
Submissive as were the words of Somerset and Paget to their imperial
master[1] not by words alone but by acts also they sought to serve
him as against France. The strong policy adopted by Somerset towards
Scotland, and his defiant attitude at Boulogne, then temporarily
held by the English against the payment of a great ransom, served
the Emperor’s turn excellently at a period when he was at grips with
his Lutheran subjects, at issue with the Pope and faced by a series
of dangerous French intrigues in Italy. That the French themselves
understood this perfectly well is seen by the desperate efforts they
made to conciliate Somerset and win him to their side. Early in July
1547, only five months after his accession to power, Somerset told
the imperial ambassador in strict confidence, when the latter was
complaining of his religious innovations, that the special French
envoy, Paulin--“immediately after the death of King Henry had striven
to win him, the Protector, to the side of France by means of a large
annual pension, which, as was only right, he had always declined.
Notwithstanding this, however, Paulin, the last time he came hither,
was instructed to offer him the assignment of the pension, which
he had brought with him already signed and sealed. But with all
these offers and grand promises of the French to divert the English
Government from their alliance with your Majesty (the Emperor), he
said he would always remain constant and loyal to you, knowing well
that the strict preservation of the ancient alliance was so important
for both parties.” Even a month previous to this Somerset had informed
the ambassador that the French had greatly scandalised him by offering
him as an inducement to join France, in an offensive and defensive
alliance, the cession of the Emperor’s Flemish province to England when
it had been conquered by the allies, Boulogne at the same time to be
restored to France.
What wonder that the Emperor’s reply to this was to send flattering
autograph letters to Somerset, assuring him of his unalterable regard,
but saying not a word about his Protestant proceedings. “Of course,”
continues the Emperor, writing to his ambassador, “the Protector would
naturally refuse to accept the pension from the French, if only in the
interests of duty and decency. The goodwill he displays towards us
must be encouraged to the utmost by you on all occasions, and you must
lose no opportunity of confirming the Protector in these favourable
sentiments.” Somerset and Paget were therefore from first to last
“Emperor’s men” and opponents of French interests, that is to say
advocates of the same policy as that identified with the older nobles
and Catholics, most of whom were now under a cloud in consequence of
their religion or in consequence of their personal enmity to Somerset
whom they regarded as a greedy, unscrupulous interloper.
From the first days after the death of Henry VIII, it had been
seen by close observers that personal and not political rivalry
alone was likely in the future to bring about a split in Somerset’s
Government. The imperial ambassador, writing less than a fortnight
after Henry’s death, says that whilst Hertford (Somerset) and Warwick
(Northumberland) would apparently be supreme in authority, “it is
likely that some jealousy or rivalry may arise between them because,
although they both belong to the same sect, they are nevertheless
widely different in character: the Lord-Admiral being of high courage
will not willingly submit to his colleague. He is in higher favour with
the people and with the nobles than is the Earl of Hertford, owing to
his liberality and splendour. The Protector, on the other hand, is not
so conspicuous in this respect, and is looked down upon by everybody
as a dry, sour, opinionated man”: the sequel to this being that both
these nobles with Paget and Wriothesley should, in the opinion of the
ambassador, be “entertained” by the Emperor “in the usual way.”
Before many months had passed, as we have seen, it was recognised by
the Imperialist party that Somerset and Paget were their fast friends
and that the rising personal opposition of Dudley had adopted, not
unnaturally, as its policy that of a _rapprochement_ with France. It
would, of course, be untrue to say that Dudley’s attack upon Somerset
had for its sole object the substitution of one international policy
for another. Dudley, like his rival, was in the first place ambitious
and self-seeking; but it was necessary for both of them, in order
to serve their ends, that they should obtain the cooperation and
support of one or other of the two main currents of public opinion,
the adhesion of both rivals to the advanced Protestant practices in
religion being dictated in the first place by their need for the money
and patronage that the religious confiscations provided, and, secondly,
by the great predominance of the reformed doctrines in and about
London. But Somerset having embraced the Conservative or Imperialistic
policy, and infused, under the influence of Catholic Paget, some
consideration for the professors of the old faith into his reforming
zeal, it was incumbent upon Dudley, who wished to overthrow him, to
adopt in both respects an entirely opposite policy.
It is the fate of most Governments to be judged by results, and it was
a comparatively easy matter for Dudley to pick holes in Somerset’s
management of affairs. The debasement of the coinage and the consequent
dislocation of business and the terrible distress it caused, the
enclosures of the commons and the process of turning customary
copyholds into tenancies at will, had reduced the people of England to
a condition of misery such as they had never seen before. The cruel
confiscation of the monastic properties had deprived the sick and
the poor of their principal source of relief, the drastic changes in
religion had produced indignation in the breasts of many citizens,
whilst slackening the hold of authority generally and promoting
lawlessness. When to all this is added the grasping selfishness of
Somerset personally, and above all the success of the French arms
before Boulogne, attributed to the parsimony of the Protector, it
will be seen that Northumberland had a large area of discontent upon
which to work for support against his unpopular rival. But even so, it
is improbable that he would have ventured to take so bold an action
against the Protector as he did, but for the consciousness that he had
behind him the support, moral and financial if not military, of France
and the Lutheran enemies of the Emperor.
When the loss of the English forts protecting Boulogne made
negotiations for peace necessary, a French Embassy was sent to London,
and a keen observer present at the time[2] thus records what was
evidently the public impression of events--“It was suspected that the
principal object of this embassy was to bribe them (_i.e._ the English
Government) to make war on the Emperor. Whilst these ambassadors were
there they were greatly feasted by the Earl of Warwick (Northumberland)
and the Grand Master (Paulet, Marquis of Winchester) much more than any
other of the lords; for it appears that the French ambassadors could
not gain the ear of the others--The King of France found out from his
ambassadors which of the English lords showed more leaning towards
France and against the Emperor. These were the Earl of Warwick and the
Grand Master (of the Household), and it is believed that the King (of
France) wrote to them warning them against the Protector and the Earl
of Arundel who were plotting their destruction.” If this contemporary
belief was well founded, as it probably was, the overthrow of Somerset
is proved to a great extent to have been an international intrigue
promoted and probably well paid for by France.
As the observer already quoted remarks, the sequel of the Embassy
which thus ensured Northumberland’s neutrality in favour of France was
the almost immediate declaration of war by the French King against
the Emperor, and the wholesale plundering of the imperial subjects at
sea. Seen in this light, therefore, Northumberland’s complete change
of England’s policy, his truckling to France, his merciless measures
against Catholics, although, as events proved he was a Catholic at
heart himself, his imprisonment of Paget the Emperor’s humble servant,
and his ostentatious disregard for the imperial friendship, his whole
attitude indeed, assumes a new aspect. His ambition was boundless for
himself and his house; but it must have been evident to him that it
could only be successfully carried into effect if he had behind him a
strong body of public opinion in England itself, and the countenance of
one of the great continental powers. Both these desiderata he had in
the earlier months of his domination; and if Edward VI had died or had
been despatched late in 1551, or in the earlier weeks of 1552, it is
quite possible that Northumberland might have carried through his great
conspiracy successfully.
But the eighteen months that elapsed between the execution of Somerset
and the death of Edward were fully sufficient to prove to the people
of England that they had cast off the yoke of a King Log to assume
that of a King Stork--Northumberland’s overbearing arrogance and
roughness had offended everyone with whom he came into contact: his
colleagues dreaded and hated him, especially after the marriage of his
young son Guildford to a lady of the Royal house in the direct line of
succession had to some extent opened the eyes of men to the magnitude
of his aspirations. The condition of the country, moreover, instead
of improving under his rule was considerably worse even than it had
been under Somerset. The coinage had now reached its lowest point of
debasement, the shilling containing only one quarter of silver to three
quarters of copper, and even was ordered by decree to be only valued
at half its face value. The gold had all left the country and foreign
trade was killed by the lack of a decent currency. Labour, driven from
the land by the wholesale conversion of the estates from tillage to
pasture, crowded the towns clamouring for food, and the disgraceful
treatment of the Princess Mary by the ruling minister had aroused a
strong feeling against his injustice and tyranny.
The Emperor was at war with France and the Lutherans, and was obliged
to speak softly to Northumberland. Again and again he tried to win
him over to his side, and the ruler of England knew full well that,
whatever he might do he was safe from any overt interference from the
imperial power. But for this fact it is certain that Northumberland
would not have attempted the bold stroke of disinheriting Mary and
placing Jane Grey and his own son upon the throne of England. When
Edward VI was known by him to be sick beyond recovery Northumberland,
with an eye to the near future, endeavoured to conciliate the Emperor
somewhat and to bring about peace upon the Continent. His object in
doing so was twofold--first to persuade Charles that he was still a
potential friend; and, secondly, to set his French friends free from
their war with the Emperor, and so enable them at the critical moment
he foresaw to come to his aid in England if necessary. The English
trading classes were by this time in a fever of indignation against
the French for their piratical interference with English shipping, and
Northumberland must have known that with this and the fear aroused by
the French successes in the Emperor’s Flemish dominions--always the
key of English policy--even he could not for very long withstand the
demand of the English people to help the Emperor against his enemies.
It was Northumberland’s misfortune that he was obliged to deliver
his blow against the legitimate English succession in this state of
public affairs. The Emperor and his ministers were keenly alive to
the situation, and although they were of course not yet aware of the
details of Northumberland’s intended _coup d’état_, they feared that
the Princess Mary might by his influence be excluded from the throne.
This of course would have been a serious blow to the imperial cause;
for it would in all probability mean the permanent adhesion of England
to the French alliance. But Charles had swallowed so much humiliation
to keep England friendly in the past that he was not disposed now to be
too squeamish. He did not know how far his enemies the French had gone
in their promises of support to Northumberland when Edward should die,
but if by blandishments and conciliatory acquiescence he could win the
friendship of England he was willing to smile upon any occupant of the
throne or any power behind it who would keep to the old alliance and
turn a cold shoulder to the French.
As soon as it was known in the imperial court that Edward was
approaching his end the Emperor’s ambassadors hurried over to England
with instructions to conciliate Northumberland at all costs, and to
assure him that the Emperor’s affection for England and its young King
was much greater than that of the King of France. “But,” continues the
Emperor’s instructions, “if you arrive too late and the King is dead,
you must take counsel together and act for the best for the safety of
our cousin the Princess Mary, and secure, if possible, her accession
to the Crown, whilst doing what you judge necessary to exclude the
French and their intrigues. You must endeavour also to maintain the
confidence and good neighbourship which it is so important that our
States should enjoy with England ... and especially to prevent the
French from getting a footing in the country, or of gaining the ear
of the men who rule England, the more so if it be for the purpose of
embarrassing us.”
News had already reached Flanders of Northumberland’s intention to
exclude Mary from the throne on her brother’s death, and although
the Emperor saw that in such case the life of his cousin would be in
grave peril, especially if French aid, as was feared, were given to
Northumberland, the principal efforts of the imperial envoys were
to be directed to assuring the English government in any case that
the Emperor was their friend and not France; Northumberland was to
be persuaded that the Emperor had no thought of proposing a foreign
husband for Mary; and that any match chosen for her by the ruling
powers in England would be willingly accepted by her imperial kinsman.
In short, the envoys were to promise anything and everything to secure
the throne for Mary, even to endorsing the religious changes effected
under Edward. But failing success in this it is made quite clear that
the Emperor was willing to accept Jane Grey or any other sovereign who
would consent to regard him as a friend and exclude French influence
from the country.
The French were just as much on the alert to serve their own interests,
and Northumberland, knowing how unpopular the French were at this
juncture, and how much his supposed dependence upon them was resented,
was extremely careful not to show ostensibly any leaning towards
them. But as soon as he heard, late in June, that the imperial envoys
were coming to London he came specially from Greenwich to the French
ambassador’s lodging at the Charterhouse to inform him that the Emperor
was sending an embassy. “I doubt not,” writes the French agent to his
King, “that they will do their best to interrupt the friendship that
exists between your Majesty and the King of England. I will keep my eye
upon them and will leave no effort untried to subvert them.”
Edward died on the very day that the imperial ambassadors arrived in
London, though the death was kept secret for some days afterwards, and
it soon became evident, both to the French and the Imperialists, that
Northumberland had prepared everything for the elevation of Jane Grey
to the throne. At this juncture, which called, if ever one did, for
prompt and bold action, only one of the several interests took a strong
course, the Princess Mary herself. It is quite evident that everyone
else had deceived himself and was paralysed in fear of action by
another. Again and again the French ambassador expressed a belief that
the coming of the imperial envoys portended an active interference on
the part of the Emperor in favour of Princess Mary; and Northumberland
and his council, notwithstanding all the protestations of the imperial
envoys, were of the same opinion; whereas we now see that the Emperor
was quite willing to throw over Mary, and even the Catholics, if only
he could persuade Jane Grey and her government to join him against
France.
When Mary’s bold defiance of the usurper was announced, the Emperor’s
envoys, whom many believed to be forerunners of a strong foreign armed
force to aid her, had nothing but shocked condemnation for her action.
They considered her attitude “strange, difficult and dangerous”;
and predicted her prompt suppression and punishment. In reference
to the suggestion of her Catholic friends, that imperial aid should
be sent to her, the envoys, who were supposed to be in England for
the purpose of forcing her upon the throne, could only say to their
master, “Considering your war with the French, it seems unadvisable
for your Majesty to arouse English feeling against you, and the idea
that the Lady will gain Englishmen on the ground of religion is vain.”
Serious remonstrances were sent to Mary herself by the imperial envoys,
pointing out the danger and the hopelessness of her position in the
face of Northumberland’s supposed strength, and they laboured hard to
dissuade the Duke from his idea that they had been sent to England to
sustain Mary’s cause.
Nor was the Emperor himself bolder than his envoys. He instructed the
latter to recommend Mary, “with all softness and kindness,” to the
mercy of Jane’s government, but they were to make it quite clear that
he would strike no blow in her favour, and would receive with open
arms any sovereign of England who would not serve French interests.
Mr. Davey has indicated in the present book the eagerness with which
the great imperial minister, Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, greeted
Guildford Dudley as King of England. That Mendoza, one of the most
trusted and ablest of the Emperor’s councillors, could take such a step
without knowing that it would not, at least, be against his master’s
policy is inconceivable: and all through it is clear that, if Mary had
waited for effective help from her imperial cousin, Jane Grey might
have reigned for a long lifetime.
Just as the Emperor was paralysed in his action by the fear that he
might alienate England from his side, so France allowed discretion
to wait upon valour for fear of driving the English government
irretrievably into the arms of the Emperor. When the news of Mary’s
rising came to London the French ambassador bitterly deplored
Northumberland’s want of foresight in not having seized the person of
the Princess in time to prevent it. He confessed that Northumberland
was excessively unpopular, but believed that his possession of the
national forces would enable him to crush Mary and her malcontents. But
he took care not to pledge himself too deeply to Jane, and whilst full
of sympathy and good wishes for Northumberland’s success always kept in
touch with some of Mary’s friends. Neither the French ambassador nor
the English council really understood the Emperor’s attitude. When the
council communicated to the imperial ambassadors Jane’s succession,
they haughtily told them that it was known they were here to force Mary
upon the throne, and that a new sovereign now having been successfully
proclaimed, the sooner they left England the better. The French
ambassador, writing to his king at the same time, remarked that the
imperial ambassadors had informed the English council, that rather than
submit to Jane’s wearing the crown to Mary’s deprivation his master
would make friends with the French on any terms and would deal with
Jane in a way which she would not like.
It is almost amusing, now that we have the correspondence of all
parties before us, to see how they all deceived themselves. The
Emperor, as has been said, would not lift a finger to help Mary, even
when she was in the field with a strong armed force, for fear of
alienating hopelessly the sovereign of England whoever he might be;
the King of France, whilst giving the same sort of hesitating implied
support to Northumberland and Jane as Charles held out to the Princess
Mary, would give no effective help for the same reason that tied the
Emperor’s hands. Both sides, indeed, were waiting to greet success
without pledging themselves to a cause which might fail.
But the person who miscalculated most fatally of all was Northumberland
himself. He had been during the whole time of his rule the humble
servant of France. He had violated the treaty of 1543, by which England
was bound to side with the Emperor in case his territory was invaded by
France, and he stood between the throne and Princess Mary who it was
known would serve the cause of the Emperor and her mother’s country to
the utmost. He was obliged, as has been shown, to cast his hazard when
the public opinion was strongly against him, the commercial classes
of England well nigh ruined, the labourers in a worse condition than
had ever been known before, and the nobility jealous and apprehensive.
Knowing this, as he did, it is difficult to believe that he would
have dared to take up the position he assumed unless he had persuaded
himself that, as a last resource, French armed aid would support him.
That such a thing was not remotely probable is now evident from the
correspondence of the French ambassadors. They were only full of sorrow
for “this poor Queen Jane” and feared for the fate of their unfortunate
friend the Duke of Northumberland. And yet London itself was in a
panic, born of the conviction that 6000 French troops were on their
way to keep Jane upon the throne; Northumberland, in fact, presumably
believing that his past services to France had deserved such aid, had
actually sent and demanded it of the King. If it had been afforded in
effective time the whole history of England might have been changed.
We know now, although none knew it then, that the Emperor would have
greeted with smooth assurances the victorious Jane and Northumberland,
and would have deserted his cousin Mary until a turn of the wheel gave
her hopes of success again. There was, indeed, nothing to prevent
Henry of France, but groundless fear of his rival, from sending to
England the small force necessary to keep Jane upon the throne and
defeat Mary. But time-serving cowardice ruled over all. The edifice
of Northumberland’s ambition crumbled like a house of cards under
the weight of his unpopularity alone, and when Mary the victorious
entered into the enjoyment of her birthright, the Frenchman who had
plotted and intrigued against her in secret, vied with the imperial
ambassadors who had stood by, unsympathetic in the hour of her trial,
in their professions of devotion to her and her cause. The people of
London, overwhelmingly Protestant as they were, greeted the Queen with
effusion and had few words of pity for poor Jane, not because they
loved the old observance but because they dreaded the French, and hated
Northumberland the tyrannous and unjust servant of France. In the
country districts, too, where Catholicism was strong, the enthusiasm
for Mary was not so much religious, for all the people wanted was quiet
and some measure of prosperity, as expressive of joy at the hope of a
return to the national policy of cordial relations with the sovereign
of Flanders, which in past times had ensured English commerce from
French depredations and the English coast from French menaces, with
freedom from the arrogant minister who had harassed every English
interest and had reduced to ruin all classes in the country.
The unhappy Jane, a straw upon the rushing torrent, was not raised
to her sad eminence that the Protestant faith might prevail, though
that might have been one of the results of her rule, nor was she
cast down because Catholicism was triumphant, but because the policy
which her dictator, Northumberland, represented was unpopular at the
time of Edward’s death, and the English sense of justice rebelled at
the usurpation and its contriver. Mary, in addition to her inherent
right to the succession, which was her strong point, had only her own
boldness and tenacity to thank for the success which she achieved. The
Emperor, notwithstanding all his sympathy and the enormous importance
to him of her success, did nothing for her until she was independent
of him, and only promised her armed aid then in case the French should
attempt to overthrow her by force.
Northumberland fell, not because the country at large and London above
all, was yearning for the re-submission of England to the Pope, but
because the eighteen months of his unchecked dictatorship had made him
detested, and because he overrated the boldness and magnanimity of the
King of France. The English public, by instinct perhaps more than by
reason, believed in the ideal policy of Henry VII: that of dexterously
balancing English friendship between the rival continental powers,
making the best market possible for her moral support, keeping at
peace herself and adhering mostly to the more prosperous side without
fighting for either. Such a policy required statesmanship of the
highest order, and Elizabeth alone was entirely successful in carrying
it out. Somerset and Northumberland both failed because they were
unequal to it. Each of them took the minister’s view rather than that
of a monarch. They were party leaders, both of them, and incapable of
adopting the view above party considerations which marks the successful
sovereign. They pledged themselves too deeply to the respective foreign
alliances traditional with their parties; and in both cases, as a
penetrating statesman would have foreseen, their allies failed them at
the critical moment.
Mary’s tragical fate was the result of a similar short-sighted policy.
When she determined against the wishes of her people and the advice
of her wisest councillors, Catholics to a man, to hand herself and
her country, body and soul, over to Spanish interests, she ceased to
be a true national sovereign; the nice balance upon which England’s
prosperity depended was lost, the love and devotion of the people
turned to cold distrust, and failure and a broken heart were the
result. Not until Elizabeth came with her keen wit and her consummate
mastery of the resources of chicanery was England placed and kept
firmly again upon the road to greatness which had been traced for her
by the first Tudor sovereign.
MARTIN HUME
THE NINE DAYS’ QUEEN
CHAPTER I
BRADGATE HALL AND THE GREYS OF GROBY
There is no more picturesque spot in England than Bradgate Old Manor,
the birthplace of Lady Jane Grey. It stands in a sequestered corner,
about three miles from the town of Leicester, amid arid slate hillocks,
which slope down to the fertile valleys at their feet. In Leland’s
_Perambulations through England_, a survey of the kingdom undertaken
by command of Henry VIII, Bradgate is described as possessing “a fair
parke and a lodge lately built there by the Lorde Thomas Grey, Marquise
of Dorsete, father of Henry, that is now Marquise. There is a faire and
plentiful spring of water brought by Master Brok as a man would judge
agyne the hills through the lodge and thereby it driveth a mylle.” He
also informs us that “there remain few tokens of the old castelle,”
which leads us to believe that at the time of Lady Jane Grey’s birth
Bradgate was a comparatively new house. The ruins show that the
mansion was built of red brick and in that severe but elegant form of
architecture known as the “Tudor style.” Worthy old Leland goes on to
say that Jane’s paternal grandfather added “two lofty towers at the
front of the house, one on either side of the principal doorway.” These
are still remaining.
In Tudor times the park was very extensive and “marched with the forest
of Chartley, which was full twenty-five miles in circumference, watered
by the river Sore and teeming with game.” Another ancient writer
tells us, in the quaint language of his day, that “here a wren and
squirrel might hop from tree to tree for six miles, and in summer time
a traveller could journey from Beaumanoir to Burden, a good twelve
miles, without seeing the sun.” The wealth of luxuriant vegetation in
the old park, the clear and running brooks, that babble through the
sequestered woods, and the beautifully sloping open spaces, dotted
with venerable and curiously pollarded oaks, make up a scene of sylvan
charm peculiarly English. Here cultivation has not, as so often on the
Continent, disfigured Nature, but the park retains the wild beauty
of its luxuriant elms and beeches that rise in native grandeur from
amidst a wilderness of bracken, fern, and flags, to cast their shadows
over heather-grown hillocks. On the summit of one of the loftiest
of these still stands the ruined palace that was the birthplace of
Lady Jane Grey. The approaches to Bradgate are beautiful indeed,
especially the pathway winding round by the old church along the banks
of a trout-stream, which rises in the neighbourhood of the Priory of
Ulverscroft, famous for the beauty of its lofty tower. When Jane Grey
was born, this Priory had been very recently suppressed, and the people
were lamenting the departure of the monks, who, during the hard winter
of 1528, had fed six hundred starving peasants.
Bradgate Manor House was standing as late as 1608, but after that
date it fell into gradual decay. Not much is now left of the original
structure, but its outlines can still be traced; and the walls of the
great hall and the chapel are nearly intact. A late Lord Stamford and
Warrington roofed and restored the old chapel, which contains a fine
monument to that Henry Grey whose signature may be seen on the warrant
for the execution of Charles I.
A careful observation of the irregularities of the soil reveals traces
of a tilt-yard and of garden terraces; but all is now overgrown by
Spanish chestnut trees, wild flowers, nettles, and brambles. The
gardens were once considered amongst the finest in England, Lord Dorset
taking great pride in the cultivation of all the fruits, herbs, and
flowers then grown in Northern Europe. The parterres and terraces were
formal, and there was a large fish-pond full of golden carp and water
lilies. Lady Jane Grey must often have played in these stately avenues,
and there is a legend that once, as a little girl, she toppled into the
tank and was nearly drowned--a less hideous fate than that which was to
befall her in her seventeenth year.
“This was thy home, then, gentle Jane!
This thy green solitude; and here
At evening, from thy gleaming pane,
Thine eyes oft watched the dappled deer
(Whilst the soft sun was in its wane)
Browsing beside the brooklet clear.
The brook yet runs, the sun sets now,
The deer still browseth--where art thou?”
These sentimental lines were written in the eighteenth century, when
deer still browsed in Bradgate Park, whence they have long since
departed. Many curious traditions concerning Lady Jane are even now
current among the local peasantry. Some believe that on St. Sylvester’s
night (31st December) a coach drawn by four black horses halts at the
door of the old mansion. It contains the headless form of the murdered
Lady Jane. After a brief halt it drives away again into the mist. Then
again, certain strange[3] stunted oaks are shown, trees which the
woodmen pollarded when they heard that the fair girl had been beheaded.
The pathetic memories of the great tragedy, reaching down four slow
centuries, prove how keenly its awful reality was felt by the poorer
folk at Bradgate, who, no doubt, had good cause to love the “gentle
Jane.”
The Manor of Bradgate was settled upon the Lady Frances Brandon, Henry
VIII’s niece, when she espoused Henry Grey. It had been inherited by
the Greys of Groby, Lady Jane’s paternal ancestors, from Rollo, or
Fulbert, said to have been chamberlain to Robert, Duke of Normandy, who
gave him the Castle of Croy in Picardy, the ruins of which are still
to be seen not far from Montreuil-sur-Mer. It was hence he derived
the surname of de Croy, afterwards anglicised to de Grey. This Rollo
accompanied William the Conqueror into England, and was settled, soon
after the Conquest, at Rotherfield, in Oxfordshire. The first of the
family to be noticed by Dugdale is Henry de Grey, to whom Richard
I granted the Manor of Grey’s Thurrock, in Essex, which grant was
confirmed by King John in the first year of his reign. The descendant
of this nobleman, Edward de Grey, was summoned to Parliament in 1488
in right of his wife’s barony of Ferrers of Groby, and his son John,
afterwards Earl Rivers, who was slain in the battle of St. Albans,
married the beautiful daughter of Sir John Woodville, subsequently the
Queen of Edward IV. Bradgate is thus associated with two of the most
unfortunate of England’s Queens: Elizabeth Woodville, who passed much
of her life in its leafy glades; and Lady Jane Grey, who first saw the
light in the stately red brick Manor House of which the crumbling ruins
are now so beautiful in their decay.
Jane Grey’s grandfather, Thomas, the eldest son of Elizabeth Woodville,
was summoned to Parliament on the 17th October 1509 as Lord Ferrers
of Groby, his mother’s barony, and to the second Parliament in 1511
as Marquess of Dorset. He was a man of great note. In the third year
of Henry VIII’s reign he had charge of the army of 10,000 men sent
into Spain to assist the forces invading Guyenne under the Emperor
Ferdinand. This force returned to England without doing service. We
next hear of the Marquess figuring at the jousts with Charles Brandon,
Duke of Suffolk, Lady Jane’s maternal grandfather, on the occasion
of the latter’s adventurous journey to France to bring back Mary
Tudor, widow of Louis XII of France, whom he subsequently married.
The Marquess was also sent to Calais to attend Charles V to England;
indeed, he was very conspicuous throughout the early years of Henry’s
reign. King Hal paid him the compliment of calling him “that honest
and good man”--a title which he thought he richly deserved, since he
signed the celebrated letter to Pope Clement VII touching the King’s
divorce. He died in 1530, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Henry,
Lady Jane’s father. The inheritance of this nobleman included the
Marquisate of Dorset and the baronies of Ferrers,[4] Grey, Astley,
Boneville, and Harrington, besides vast estates in Leicestershire and
other parts of England. Henry Grey, though his portraits show him to
have been a very good-looking man, did not enjoy a good contemporary
reputation for ability or strength of character. During the brief
reign of Edward VI he became the patron of the Swiss Reformers and was
adulated by Bullinger and Hill. His name will be found attached to many
of Henry VIII’s anti-papal decrees, and so long as that monarch lived,
he was a staunch “Henryite” or schismatic, professing belief in all
the doctrines of Rome save and except papal supremacy. In 1531, when
the clergy were threatened with _præmunire_ and mulcted in a fine, as
a punishment for their too close attention to pontifical interests,
young Henry of Dorset, who had just come to his own, displayed great
energy in carrying out the King’s wishes and supporting his attempt to
get himself acknowledged supreme head of the English Church. He also
evinced considerable courage in connection with Henry VIII’s resistance
to the excommunication of the Pope, launched against him after his
marriage with Anne Boleyn. Such zeal in his sovereign’s service
undoubtedly led to his advancement and paved the way to his marriage
with the King’s niece, the Lady Frances Brandon. He may have owed much
to the counsels and influence of Cromwell, to whom he carried a letter
of introduction from his mother,[5] when he first went to London as a
lad of seventeen, immediately after his father’s decease. The Dowager
recommended her son very earnestly to “Master Cromwell,” pleaded his
youth, and besought that worthy, then all-powerful, not to take heed
of certain ill-natured reports concerning alleged wilful damage to the
priory buildings of Tylsey, where she was then residing.[5]
The good lady couches her letter in very humble terms, but does not
enlighten us fully about the nature of the “damage” to which she
refers, or by whom it was done. She seems, at any rate, to be in
a terrible fright lest the tale should injure her son’s prospects
with the all-powerful Chancellor. Some little time afterwards the
Marchioness wrote another letter to Cromwell complaining of her son’s
undutiful behaviour to her. It is dated from the “House of Our Lady’s
Passyon”[6] (the Priory of Tylsey), and begins:--
“MY LORDE,--I beseeche you to be my good lorde, consyderyng me a
poor wydo, so unkyndly and extreymly escheated by my son.”
This curious epistle, now in the British Museum, is much defaced and
in parts illegible. The name of the person to whom it is addressed
is undecipherable, but, taken in conjunction with two other letters
previously addressed to Cromwell by the same correspondent, there can
be little doubt as to its destination. Her son had evidently withheld
some property intended for her under her husband’s will. Whether he
mended his manners and paid her the money, we know not; but as the
Dowager is occasionally mentioned as attending Court functions in
company with her daughter-in-law, it seems probable that the ultimate
issue of the difficulty, whatever it was, was satisfactory to her.
Margaret, Dowager Lady Dorset, became one of the greatest ladies of
the Court in the latter years of the reign of Henry VII and during a
part of that of Henry VIII. She was in much request, it seems, at royal
christenings, for not only was she specially invited to that of Mary
Tudor, afterwards Queen Mary I, but she enjoyed the signal honour of
carrying the infant Elizabeth to the font. She was invited to perform a
like office at the baptism of Edward VI, but this time she was unable
to be present, and wrote to make her loyal excuses, pleading that
some of her household at Croydon had been attacked by the “sweating
sickness.” It is probable that she had no desire to attend, for she had
been the intimate friend of Anne Boleyn, and could hardly have felt
kindly towards Jane Seymour.[7] Her place was filled by the Marchioness
of Exeter, who eventually, after the execution of her luckless husband,
was sent to the Tower on a flimsy charge of treason, and kept there
until Mary I’s time.[8]
A singular point in the history of Jane Grey’s forbears is that her
father, in his hot haste to marry into the royal family, set aside,
without the slightest scruple, his legitimate wife, Lady Katherine
Fitzalan, daughter of the Earl of Arundel. Some writers say he was
simply “contracted,” not married, to this lady, who never demanded
her marriage rights, but retired into a dignified obscurity. None the
less her family resented the affront offered their kinswoman, and it
was Thomas, Earl of Arundel, this discarded lady’s brother, who acted
as Dorset’s Nemesis, and at last betrayed him into the hands of his
enemies.
Lady Jane Grey’s maternal grandfather was, as he wrote himself in the
famous quatrain referring to his marriage with the King’s sister,
descended from “cloth of frieze.” He was the grandson of a London
mercer who had married a lady allied to the great houses of Nevill,
Fitzalan and Howard, and his father had fought and fallen at Bosworth
Field in the cause of Henry VII. In recognition of his services, Henry
attached young Charles Brandon to the person of his younger son, Prince
Henry, who was of similar age to himself. Thus began a friendship which
was only severed by death. In appearance the Prince and his comrade
were singularly alike: both were tall and stalwart, both with red hair
and fair complexions, and they were equally skilful and agile in sport
and manly pastimes. Charles was more intellectually gifted than Henry,
but there was little to choose between them as regards their execrable
views of moral responsibilities and their laxity in respect of their
marriage vows.
As this last characteristic of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk,
touches somewhat upon the legitimacy of Lady Jane Grey’s descent, a
short summary of his matrimonial vagaries may be pardoned here. He was
contracted in marriage early in life to Anne Browne, a daughter of
Sir Anthony Browne, Governor of Calais, by his wife Lady Lucy Nevill,
daughter of George Nevill, Duke of Bedford, brother of Richard, Earl
of Warwick, “the King maker.” In 1513 he was bold enough to flirt most
outrageously with, and seek in marriage, one of the greatest ladies
in Europe, Margaret of Austria, the widowed Duchess of Savoy, aunt
of the Emperor Charles V. But though Margaret fell in love with him,
such a match was soon seen to be impossible, even by the lady herself,
and Brandon came out of the affair most ungallantly. For this or some
other reason never clearly explained, Brandon set aside his contract
with Anne Browne, notwithstanding that by the laws of the period it
was considered as binding as the completed marriage ceremony. We
next learn that a probable reason for his unchivalrous conduct was
a chance that suddenly offered itself to him of marrying the Lady
Margaret, the rich widow of Sir John Mortimer of Essex. Charles and
his mature consort--there was a difference of nearly thirty years
between them--did not abide long together, for he presently endeavoured
to annul this marriage on a plea of consanguinity, the Lady Margaret
being sister to the mother of his neglected bride, Anne Browne, and
consequently her aunt, a complication which surely ought to have been
discovered at an earlier stage of the proceedings. Having settled this
matter for the time being to his own, but certainly not to the lady’s,
satisfaction, he remarried his discarded wife, Anne Browne, in the
presence of a great concourse of relations and friends. By this lady
he had two daughters: Mary, who became the wife of Lord Mounteagle;
and Anne, who married a connection of the Greys, Viscount Powis. Their
mother died in 1515, and Brandon soon afterwards contracted himself
in matrimony with the Lady Elizabeth Grey, daughter and heiress of
Viscount de Lisle. Whether through the interference of Lady Mortimer
or not it is impossible to say, but it is certain that Lady de Lisle
refused to carry out her side of the contract, and the match was broken
off. Brandon, with the consent of Henry VIII, filched from the poor
lady her title of Lisle, which he forthwith assumed. In due time the
lady gave her hand to Edmund Dudley, father of the fateful Duke of
Northumberland. It was probably when in France, and in attendance upon
King Henry, at the time of the negotiations for the marriage of the
King’s youngest and most beautiful sister, Mary, to the prematurely
aged Louis XII, King of France, a hideous victim to elephantiasis,
that Charles made so strong an impression upon that ardent Tudor
princess that she swore by all the saints that she would not wed the
French King unless it was thoroughly understood she was to marry whom
she chose after his death, which took place within eighteen months
of the marriage. The romantic story of how Brandon, now created Duke
of Suffolk, wooed and married the royal widow within a fortnight of
the King’s death, and whilst she still wore the white widow’s weeds
of a French King’s Consort, is too well known to need recapitulation
here, nor need we enter into the details of the gorgeous ceremonies
of remarriage that took place at Greenwich, in the presence of King
Henry, Queen Katherine of Aragon, and their Court, soon after Mary
and Suffolk had landed in England. The Duke of Suffolk took his bride
to spend their honeymoon in his magnificent mansion in Southwark,
known as Suffolk Place, which he had recently inherited by the death
of his uncle, Sir Thomas Brandon. It must have been about this time
that the friends of the Lady Mortimer, and probably that lady herself,
began to spread rumours abroad that made both Charles and his consort
anxious as to the validity of their marriage and the legitimacy of
their offspring. Indeed, even at the time of his clandestine wedding
in the Chapel of the Hôtel de Cluny (now incorporated in the Museum of
that name), he had felt very uneasy about the matter, and, foreseeing
his peril, wrote to Wolsey, beseeching his assistance and advice on
a matter of such vital importance, which, however, was not decided
so easily as Charles expected. It was not until 1528 that Wolsey
dispatched a somewhat garbled account of the matter to Pope Clement
VII, then in exile at Orvieto, where he received Cardinal Campeggio
and the English envoys who came to him with the first negotiations for
the divorce of Henry VIII from Katherine of Aragon. Trusting in the
evidence which Wolsey sent him, the Pope, by a special Bull (dated 12th
May 1528), annulled the marriage of Brandon with the Lady Mortimer,
on the plea of consanguinity, and at the same time declared valid
that of her niece, Anne Browne, and legitimized her two children. The
Bull further stated that Lady Mortimer and her friends were “liable
to ecclesiastical censure if they made any attempt to invalidate
the decree” making valid Brandon’s marriage to Anne Browne and Mary
Tudor. The importance of this decree, which was first read out to the
people in Norwich Cathedral in 1529 by Bishop Nyx, can readily be
imagined when we remember that it was not delivered until after the
Queen-Duchess had given birth to two children. Her only son, the Earl
of Lincoln, died in infancy, and the Lady Frances became in due time
the Marchioness of Dorset and mother of Lady Jane Grey. On the other
hand, the legitimacy of the Lady Eleanor Brandon, the younger daughter,
who was born after the publication of the papal decree, was never
disputed, and moreover, before she entered upon her sorrowful career,
the Lady Mortimer was dead. That considerable doubt was entertained as
to the validity of Brandon’s marriage with the Queen-Dowager is proved
by a variety of facts too numerous to be detailed, but one of which is
very significant. Late in the first half of Queen Elizabeth’s reign,
the validity of the claims of the Lady Mounteagle and her sister, the
children of Brandon and Anne Browne, to be considered legitimate,
was ventilated in the Court of Arches, and after much deliberation
confirmed. Although the legitimacy of these ladies, both of whom were
long since deceased at the time of this trial, had nothing to do with
the legal position of Mary Tudor as the wife of the Duke of Suffolk, it
was none the less an indirect test of the right to the throne of her
granddaughters, the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey.
From these briefly resumed facts it is not difficult to understand that
although King Henry VIII highly approved of his bosom friend’s conduct,
his subjects held Charles to be an arrant rascal. His treatment of
his beautiful royal wife was on a par with his low conception of his
moral obligations. He neglected her, spent her money, and lived openly
with a notorious woman known as Mrs. Eleanor Brandon, by whom he had
an illegitimate son, Charles, who is said to have been the well-known
jeweller to Queen Elizabeth, and whose son, or grandson, Gregory
Brandon, was, according to tradition, the headsman who executed Charles
I.
Lady Jane’s grandmother, Mary Tudor, was a most amiable and
long-suffering princess, who after a somewhat secluded life in
Southwark withdrew to Westhorpe Hall. Here she died on 24th June
1533. Her two daughters--the Lady Frances, who had recently married
the Marquess of Dorset; and the Lady Eleanor, soon to be the bride of
Henry, Lord Clifford, eldest son of the Earl of Cumberland--were with
her at the time of her death, but the Duke was absent in London, and
so too was the Marquess of Dorset, her son-in-law, attending at the
coronation of Anne Boleyn. The Queen-Duchess was interred in Bury St.
Edmunds, Henry VIII and Suffolk paying the expenses of a gorgeous
alabaster monument to her memory, “full of little saints and angels,”
which was destroyed soon after, during the wreck of the glorious Abbey
Church at the time of the suppression of the monasteries. The remains
of the Queen were then removed to the parish church, where they still
rest, a marble tablet put up in the early nineteenth century being the
only memorial of Mary Tudor, Dowager Queen of France and Duchess of
Suffolk.
Within three months of the Queen’s death (September 1533) Suffolk
married a fifth wife, the Lady Katherine Willoughby d’Eresby, who,
it seems, was his ward and only fifteen years old. She was a great
heiress, and what made her marriage all the more singular was the fact
that she was a daughter of that Doña Maria de Sarmiento who, as Lady
Willoughby, was the friend and attendant of Queen Katherine of Aragon.
It must also be remembered that Queen Katherine had no more bitter
enemy than Suffolk. This Duchess developed into a very pretty woman, of
great wit and character, and a staunch supporter of the doctrines of
the Reformation.
The Lady Frances Brandon was born at Hatfield, then a palace of the
Bishop of Salisbury, who had afforded her mother hospitality; for it
seems that the Queen-Duchess was obliged to halt here, for reasons
easily understood, on her way to Walsingham Priory, whither she was
bound on a pilgrimage. There is still extant a very curious account
of the baptism of the Lady Frances in the parish church of Hatfield,
which was hung with garlands for the occasion. The Lady Anne[9] Boleyn,
aunt of the ill-fated Queen Anne of that ilk, stood proxy for Queen
Katherine of Aragon as sponsor.
In 1533-4 the Lady Frances was married, notwithstanding his
afore-mentioned “contract” to the Lady Fitzalan, to Henry Grey,
Marquess of Dorset. The wedding took place at Suffolk Place, Southwark,
and the religious ceremony in the Church of St. Saviour, now the
cathedral of the new diocese. No very great pains seem to have been
taken with the lady’s education, except in the matter of what we
should call “sports,” in which, it seems, she was very proficient.
The Lady Frances was a handsome woman, however, but somewhat spiteful
and wholly unscrupulous. In a well-known portrait, dated after
her second marriage, she is represented as a buxom, fair-haired,
well-featured matron, with a very sinister expression in her light
grey eyes. Her eldest child was a son who died of the plague when a
baby, and the three children who survived were all girls--the Ladies
Jane, Katherine, and Mary Grey. Lady Jane Grey, as we shall see, had
little cause to feel deep affection for either of her parents, but
least of all for her mother. The Lady Frances seems to have been
cast, so far as her heart went, in a mould of iron. Even the bloody
deaths of her husband and her eldest daughter, and the wretchedly
precarious existence of her two remaining children, did not affect
her buoyant spirits, since she enjoyed her life to the end. It would
be difficult to define her religious opinions. She was a schismatic
under Henry VIII, and under Edward VI she appeared a zealous Protestant
and so intimate with the famous Reformer Bucer that when he died she
petitioned Cranmer to obtain a pension for his widow. She became a
pious Papist in Queen Mary’s time, and died a prominent member of the
Church of England as by law established, under Elizabeth.
The Lady Eleanor Brandon, Henry VIII’s niece and Lady Jane Grey’s only
maternal aunt, married, as we have said, Henry, Lord Clifford, to whom
she was united in 1537 at the Duke of Suffolk’s palace in Southwark.
The Lady Eleanor gave birth to two sons and a daughter. At the time
of the Pilgrimage of Grace (in 1536) she was staying at Bolton Abbey,
which Henry VIII, after confiscating it from the Church, had presented
to Lord Clifford; and had it not been for the chivalry and bravery of
Christopher Aske, the rebel leader’s brother, she would have suffered
at the hands of the infuriated “pilgrims.” By dint of a bold night
ride, Aske aided Lady Eleanor to fly from Bolton Abbey and reach a
place of safety. In 1542 her husband succeeded to the Earldom of
Cumberland on the death of his father, and five years later (November
1547) Lady Eleanor passed away at Brougham Castle and was laid to rest
in Skipton Church.
[Illustration: HENRY GREY, DUKE OF SUFFOLK
FROM THE PAINTING BY JOANNES CORVUS IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY]
It will be seen by this rapid sketch of her forbears on both sides
that Lady Jane Grey might, without exciting surprise, have developed a
character strongly sensual and unscrupulous. That she did not do so,
apart from the fact that her early death perhaps prevented the full
development of her character at all, was probably owing to the rigid
and severe nature of the education to which she was subjected. The
influence of Erasmus and the fashion of the newly revived classical
learning had in the childhood of Jane Grey firmly seized upon the
higher classes of England; and the ladies of royal and noble birth,
schooled in the stern pietism of _The Instruction of a Christian Woman_
of Luis Vives, which they all studied in Latin or in English, and,
steeped in the classic moralities, they became prim and self-suppressed
in expression and behaviour. It is likely enough, indeed, that in
most cases this prudishness of attitude was but skin deep; but in the
case of the hapless Jane, who was little more than a child when she
was sacrificed, no other impression of her personality than this was
left upon the world. We may picture the tiny demure maiden pacing the
green alleys and smooth sward of Bradgate, with her Latin books and her
exalted religious meditations, a fervent mystic, with no knowledge of
the great world of greed, ambition, and lust, of which she, poor child,
was doomed to be the innocent victim.