THE HOWARDS AND THE SEYMOURS
The collapse of the conspiracy against Katherine Parr led to an
immediate counter-plot on the part of the Seymours and their allies
to compromise the Duke of Norfolk and his son, Surrey, and thereby
frustrate the aspirations of the Catholics, of whose party Norfolk was
the acknowledged chief. A previous attempt to inflict irretrievable
damage on the credit of the Howards had partially failed, though the
unsavoury revelations connected with the arrest and execution of
Queen Katherine Howard had covered the illustrious name with obloquy,
and almost every conspicuous Howard in England had been sent to the
Tower,[64] on the charge of having concealed the Queen’s previous
immorality from the King’s knowledge when he proposed to marry her. At
that moment Norfolk and his son only escaped by taking Henry’s side
against their miserable kinswoman. But the Duke never regained his full
influence over his master, and, despite his great services, both as
statesman and warrior, lived on, to use the expression of one of his
contemporaries, “like the bird that is wounded i’ the wing.” Yet he was
a great power in the politics of those days, for though the Catholic
party was of but small account at Court, a good two-thirds of the
people remained firmly attached to the ancestral faith; this was the
case more especially in the rural districts, where the vast majority
clung to the dogmas and ceremonies of the ancient Church, and only
awaited an opportunity to assert their preference. For the matter of
that, it was shown very early in Queen Mary’s reign that the Protestant
fervour of the official world, being a matter of policy rather than of
conviction, was not to be relied on. The majority of that aristocracy
which had so eagerly accepted the extreme reforms assented to by Edward
VI was to be seen, a few weeks after his death, parading the streets of
London, taper in hand, in the wake of the revived processions of Corpus
Christi and Our Lady.[65]
Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, was one of the most conspicuous
figures in Henry’s reign. He may not, perhaps, have been as astute a
statesman as has been asserted, but he showed remarkable qualities
as a capable peacemaker on the occasion of the Pilgrimage of Grace;
while as a warrior he had no rival, and proved himself a hero on
Flodden Field. If anything, he was excessive in his loyalty to the
King, and he would even seem to have sunk all sense of his own
dignity and importance, humbling himself utterly before the monarch
whose assumption of _quasi_-divine attributes he had aided and
abetted. Thus, when his niece Anne Boleyn was tried and executed for
misdemeanours she was certainly not proved to have committed,[66]
he, at her royal assassin’s command, pronounced the death sentence,
and with his son, the young Earl of Surrey, who sat at his feet,
holding the Earl Marshal’s baton in his hand, was actually present
at her execution. When, some few years later, Norfolk’s other niece,
Katherine Howard, was proved guilty of many serious offences, both
before and after marriage, Norfolk sat in judgment upon her and would
have witnessed her death too but for an attack of gout which kept him
a prisoner. Two days after the execution he penned an abject letter
to the King apologising for “the naughtiness of his said niece, the
late Queen.”[67] In person, Norfolk was a dark, handsome man, of
moderate stature, with piercing eyes and an exceedingly intelligent
countenance. Holbein has left us several magnificent oil portraits of
him, and at least one noble drawing, now in the Windsor Collection. He
was fairly educated, a good Latin scholar, and a patron of art. His
first wife, Princess Anne Plantagenet, the King’s aunt, died young in
1512. The day on which he espoused his second,[68] the handsome Lady
Elizabeth Stafford, was an evil one for him. The alliance was one of
convenience on his side and of compulsion on hers. His duchy had been
greatly impoverished by the attainder of his father, the second Duke,
after Bosworth, and the luckless Buckingham’s daughter was possessed
of a handsome fortune in money and wide lands. She had been previously
contracted to Ralph Nevill, afterwards Earl of Westmoreland, to whom
she was greatly attached and with whom she kept up a correspondence
till the end of her life. Although she bore her husband five children,
the Duchess of Norfolk suffered some neglect at his hands, her rival
being a certain Bess Holland,[69] a gentlewoman in her service. The
mortification caused by this outrage drove the poor Duchess to the
verge of distraction. She seems to have been a naturally conscientious,
if narrow-minded, woman, of an exceedingly high-strung and excitable
temperament. We should describe her nowadays as an “impossible” person,
whose lack of tact and outbursts of uncontrollable rage not only
alienated her husband’s affections, but deprived her of her children’s
love as well as of her servants’ respect.
Of all the men of his time, Surrey, this ill-used lady’s son, was the
most accomplished. He was an excellent Latin, French, and Italian
scholar, and well versed in ancient and modern literature. No one could
excel him in tourney or joust--not even John Dudley, afterwards Duke
of Northumberland, who had exceeding skill with the sword and spear,
and than whom scarce one could pull a bow with surer aim. Surrey danced
more lightly than Thomas Seymour, who prided himself on the “altitude
of his pirouettes,” and the King himself in his singing youth did not
warble a sweeter note. No Englishman since Chaucer had so enriched our
literature with verse all redolent of those sweet-scented fields and
lanes, meadows and gardens amid which the poet’s muse loved best to
linger. An Elizabethan critic well described him as “a poet new crept
out of the school of Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto,” and “coming nearer
to Ariosto” than to either the prophet of Florence or the inspired
singer of Vaucluse. Though of but medium height, Surrey was so graceful
and well-proportioned as to seem taller than he really was. There is a
portrait of him at Hampton Court, most probably by Guilliam Streete,
which gives us a fair idea of this prince for a fairy-tale. The face is
full of youthful charm: the eyes hazel, frank, and winning; the cheeks
rounded and flushed with rosy health; the hair a darkish chestnut; the
slight moustache of the colour of ripe corn. His costume is superb. The
young Earl stands before us garbed from head to foot in red velvet,
softened by bands of brocade and sarsenet, the only white spot visible
being the silk shirt open at the neck, and even that enriched with a
dainty arabesque wrought in gold stitchery. On his well-shaped head
rests a jaunty cap of crimson velvet with a feathered plume of the same
tint.
There was much that was purely personal in the violent animosity
displayed by the Seymours against the Howards in general and against
Surrey in particular. The Seymours, although of far more ancient and
well-ascertained lineage than either the Brandons or the Boleyns,
were not of the great aristocracy, but, in a sense, what the modern
French would call _arrivistes_. Had it not been for the accident which
raised their sister Jane to the towering position of Queen-Consort,
the Seymours would probably have remained what they originally were,
mere country squires of excellent lineage, reputed to be remotely
connected with royalty. Their father,[70] Sir William St. Maur, or
Seymour, of Wolf’s Hall, Wiltshire, had on one occasion entertained
King Henry VIII; and their mother, Lady Seymour, by birth a Wentworth,
and a lineal descendant of Edward III, was highly connected; but
otherwise there was nothing in their antecedents to distinguish them
from scores of other equally respectable and wealthy country gentlemen.
The sudden[71] elevation of their sister Jane brought them a rapid
promotion, which first dazzled them and then turned their heads.
Honours and positions were heaped upon them. Edward, the eldest son,
was first created Viscount Beauchamp, and, after the birth of Prince
Edward, Earl of Hertford; the second, Thomas, was knighted. The
youngest, Henry, seems to have preferred obscurity and security to rank
and risk, and lived the life of a country gentleman, married young, and
merely accepted knighthood on Edward VI’s accession.
The ranks of the old aristocracy had been thinned by the prolonged
civil wars and the plague, and towards the middle of the century the
Court was so full of new men that at the time of Henry’s last illness
there were only two dukes in the peerage--Norfolk, then seventy-two;
and Suffolk, a lad of seventeen. The new peers, whose fortunes were
mainly derived from confiscated church property, were eager to obtain
recognition from the few of the old aristocracy who yet remained,
and more especially from the Howards, a sturdy race, full of sap and
vigour, and conspicuous in Court and State. The Duke of Norfolk was
too experienced a man, both socially and politically, to permit his
inborn pride of birth to display itself out of season. With Surrey it
was otherwise. In his case, pride of ancestry was something more than
a mere matter of vulgar boast. He regarded it with a poet’s eye and
imagination, and took delight in remembering that through his veins
flowed the blood of emperors and kings who had founded realms and
dynasties, and built up the glory of a great nation. In the beginning
of the fifteenth century a marriage between Robert Howard and the Lady
Margaret Mowbray had brought the illustrious house into alliance with
royalty. His father’s first wife had been the reigning King’s aunt,
and his mother, Elizabeth Stafford, had a right to quarter Royal Arms
on her escutcheon. With such a pedigree, and in an age when rank was
paramount, Surrey conceived himself sufficiently powerful to hold his
own against the encroachments of a new peerage only too eager to claim
a fellowship which offended his sense of propriety.
When the Seymours first came to Court, in the heyday of their youth and
good looks, they sought young Surrey’s society, just as in our day new
people seek that of a leader of the “smartest set.” So long as they
kept their place, Surrey consorted with them willingly enough; but
their rapacity and arrogance jarred on him at last, and he resented
their many attempts at over-familiarity. He himself, on occasion, was
apt to transgress the bounds of good behaviour, and once upon a time,
being in lodgings in St. Lawrence Lane, Old Jewry, and leading what he
himself is pleased to call a “racketty life,” went brawling about the
streets at midnight with young William Pickering[72] and young Wyatt,
the poet’s son, casting stones into peaceful citizens’ windows, and
frightening them out of their wits. One night the party rowed over in
a boat to Southwark, where dwelt in those days that gay and facile
sisterhood whose representatives, in this year of Grace, 1909, patrol
more central parts of our great city. In this fast company, our young
gentlemen, evidently in their cups, behaved disgracefully. On Surrey’s
part such conduct was all the more unseemly since he was already
married to the plain-faced, but wealthy, Lady Frances Vere,[73] Lord
Oxford’s daughter, to whom he declared himself devotedly attached.
These escapades ended by attracting public attention, and their heroes
were arrested for disorderly conduct. Thanks to their rank, they were
brought before the Privy Council,[74] instead of being haled before
an ordinary justice, though, as ill-luck would have it, Edward, Lord
Hertford, was presiding at the Council board. The opportunity of paying
off a few old scores was too much for him, and he swiftly resolved to
give Surrey good cause to remember him in future. A very comical and
characteristic scene ensued.[75] Surrey, mimicking Hertford, who was
nothing if not puritanical in his mode of expressing himself, “having
ever God on his lips,” assured the Council that if he had done what he
had, it had been for the good of the souls of the wicked citizens of
London, who were behaving more abominably than the men of papal Rome.
Had he not seen them sitting round tables and playing at cards in the
late hours of the night?--and was it not a godly thing to whizz a stone
or so at their windows, which stone, passing silently through the air,
fell with all the greater suddenness among them, thereby recalling
them to a proper sense of their duties to their God, their King, and
their country?[76] Mrs. Arundel, a woman of good family but greatly
impoverished, who kept a sort of boarding-house for bachelors of rank
in St. Lawrence Lane, Old Jewry, was the Earl’s landlady, and imparted
a very different colour to the episode. “Her young gentleman,” she
said, had frankly admitted to her that he considered these pranks good
jokes: but she herself disapproved of them, especially the shooting
at the windows of women of light character, or “bawds,” in Southwark,
which the Earl, it seems, was addicted to, going by boat close to their
quarters and firing off petards at the “trolls”! There was nothing for
it, therefore, but to pronounce sentence. Surrey was committed to the
Fleet, the most abominable of all the many vile prisons of those days,
while Wyatt and Pickering, though of much inferior rank, were sent
to the stately Tower, whence they were delivered in a day or two on
payment of a heavy fine and promising good behaviour. How long Surrey
remained in durance it is difficult to say--long enough certainly for
him to compose his “Satire on the Citizens of London” and several other
poems. He never forgave Seymour his share in the business, and never
failed to annoy his enemy openly or covertly whenever opportunity
occurred. It was quite in keeping with his character to address amatory
verses with this intent to Hertford’s handsome and very proud wife,
who took his lines in very bad part, as so many insults to her honour.
The Countess once made a scandal by deliberately turning her back upon
the poet-Earl when, in August 1542, at a ball in his own father’s
house,[77] he ventured to ask her permission to lead her out to dance.
Late in the summer of 1542 a very serious quarrel broke out between
Seymour and Surrey, over an incident which took place in Hampton Court
Park. Seymour, it was alleged, had reported against Surrey that he had
openly approved of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Surrey, coming face to
face with his antagonist in a glen in the park, instantly challenged
him. Coats were off in a moment, and the two were in the midst of a
hearty boxing-match when the guard arrived and took both into custody
for violating the royal privilege and fighting within the precincts
of the King’s palace. The punishment for this offence, as readers of
_The Fortunes of Nigel_ will recollect, was loss of the right hand. All
the diplomacy and influence of the Duke of Norfolk had to be exerted
to avert the infliction of this terrible penalty; but, thanks to his
efforts, both the hot-headed young gentlemen escaped with a sharp
reprimand. Scores of similar curious instances might be quoted from the
chronicles and letters of the time, to prove the depth and bitterness
of the social animosity between the Howards and the Seymours. The Duke
himself resented the cruel manner in which Hertford had behaved in the
matter of His Grace’s niece, the unhappy Katherine Howard. There can be
no doubt that at one time both Cranmer and the King wished to spare her
life, and would have spared it had not Hertford, in his hot haste to
ruin the Howards’ credit, prematurely dispatched letters to the King’s
Ambassadors abroad containing full details of the Queen’s disgrace,
with orders to hand them to the sovereigns to whose Courts they were
accredited. This publicity rendered the royal clemency impossible.[78]
Early in the summer of 1546 the Duke of Norfolk made up his mind, in
what he held to be the interests of himself and his family, to bring
about a reconciliation, if that were possible, between his house and
Seymour’s. He fully realised that, ageing as he was, he could no longer
be a match for two unscrupulous and very able men, then reaching the
prime of life, and already holding the King’s complete confidence.
Further, he felt Surrey to be hopeless in all business calling for
tact and diplomacy, and was convinced the persistent animosity between
his son and Hertford would lead before long to some awful catastrophe.
Surrey’s bravery as a fighting soldier was undisputed, but as a
commander his lack of reticence and his rashness had led the King’s
troops in France into more than one disaster; he himself had paid the
penalty of his rashness before the walls of Montreuil, where he was
seriously wounded and only saved from certain death by the gallantry
of Sir Thomas Clere. He had then been recalled, and Hertford had been
sent to take his place, a bitter humiliation to the proud Howards and
one which more than anything else rankled in Surrey’s soul. Yet the
old Duke recognised that Hertford’s bravery and tact as warrior and
diplomatist had soon ended the war and obtained peace with honour for
the English forces, thus raising his popularity to the highest pitch;
for there was nothing the nation then desired so much as peace, at home
and abroad. Hertford’s brother, Sir Thomas, was, if anything, still
more popular, for he had so successfully scoured the seas in quest of
French galleons laden with provisions that suppressed monasteries had
been converted into storehouses. The magnificent ex-church of the Grey
Friars had become a wine-vault, crammed to the roof with barrels of
Burgundy and other wines of the best French vintages. In Austin Friars
such a stock of cheeses was stored that there was no moving in that
erstwhile beautiful priory church, and the huge and splendid church of
the Black Friars was literally packed with salt herring and dried cod.
Wherefore the people had good reason to be well pleased with brother
Thomas.
The Duke, then, without consulting his son,--and here his disastrous
mistake,--obtained an interview with Hertford, and, skilfully playing
on his well-known vanity and social ambition, suggested at length that
a betrothal should be forthwith arranged between Hertford’s eldest
daughter and Surrey’s eldest son, and a similar contract entered into
between Lord Thomas Howard[79] and Seymour’s youngest daughter, the
Lady Jane Seymour. His Grace, apparently in a match-making mood,
gave his paternal sanction to the wooing and wedding of his beautiful
daughter, the widowed Duchess of Richmond, by Sir Thomas Seymour.
With all these suggestions the Seymours gladly closed, making but one
condition, that Surrey should accept a slightly subordinate position
under Hertford’s command, virtually tantamount to a tacit apology for
his repeated slights, covert and open, in the past. On Tuesday in
Whitsun week 1546, then, the Duke, well pleased with his own diplomacy,
presented himself at Whitehall and laid his rather complicated scheme
of alliances before His Majesty. Henry was graciously pleased to
approve it, and willingly agreed that his daughter-in-law of Richmond
should become the bride of the handsome Thomas Seymour, with whom,
according to Court gossip, she was already much in love. But in all
these schemes the Duke had reckoned without his host, for when he put
the matter before Surrey, that impetuous poet flew into a towering
rage. He would “sooner see his children dead in their coffins than
married to Seymour’s brats,” he said. Then, turning furiously on his
sister, the Duchess of Richmond, who had accompanied her father, he
cried,--at least, according to that dangerous Court gossip, Sir Gawen
Carew,--“Go, carry out your farce of a marriage. My Lord of Hertford
is in full favour, I grant; but why not do yet better for yourself
and follow Madame d’Estampes’ example with King Francis. Get you
into the same sort of favour with King Henry, and rule through him.”
This sinister advice was evidently dictated by that vein of bitter
sarcasm usual with Surrey when the uncontrollable temper which he
inherited from his mother mastered his common sense. It could not
have been seriously meant, for nobody knew better than Surrey that
the King was already more than half dead, utterly unable to trouble
himself about new mistresses, and in any case not likely to select
his own daughter-in-law to replace his excellent Queen-Consort and
nurse, Katherine Parr. The Duchess of Richmond, however, took the jibe
seriously, replied that she “would sooner cut her throat” than do “any
such vile thing,” and left her irate brother to his own reflections,
which, when he cooled down, cannot have been particularly agreeable. He
knew his sister well; she was an exceedingly beautiful woman, to whom
Holbein, in his exquisite drawing, has given the expression of one of
Ghirlandajo’s sweetest Madonnas. But at heart she was a little fiend,
capable, when her passions were roused, of working dire mischief. She
said little at the time, but she nursed her grievance and exaggerated
its importance. She may also have felt not a little embittered against
Sir Thomas Seymour, who had ungallantly refused her hand because it
was not accompanied by her brother’s submission. Be this as it may,
“the Duchess of Richmond from that day forth hated her brother as much
as she had previously loved him,”[80] and when the hour for revenge
came at last, forgetful of her obligations as sister and woman, she
scandalised even that unsentimental age by appearing at her brother’s
trial as one of the principal witnesses for the prosecution.
Meanwhile the Duke of Norfolk was at his wits’ end to know how to make
Hertford aware of the unfortunate results of his negotiations with his
son. He was possessed of a perfect mania for putting pen to paper on
any and every pretext, although, as every one who has waded through
his correspondence knows, there has never been a statesman, before or
since, who could indite more indiscreet and exasperating epistles.
If then, as is likely, he conveyed the unpleasant news by letter, he
was not the man to improve matters by a tactful manner. The breach
between the Howards and the Seymours was now complete. Hertford, hurt
in pride and vanity, would accept no apologies from the Duke, and the
feud between himself and Surrey soon grew more bitter than ever. To
make matters worse, the Duchess of Richmond made a confidant of her
friend, Sir Gawen Carew, who detested her brother, and was the most
inveterate gossip of the Court, as is well known to those who have read
the State Papers connected with the tragedy of Katherine Howard; it
was, indeed, the gossip of Sir Gawen that did most to ruin that Queen.
Presently young scions of the nobility, courtiers who hated the Howards
for their airs and graces and forgot the old Duke’s well-known kindness
to the youthful, buzzed about the King, and did their best to set him
against the luckless Earl. Hertford and his brother afforded them ample
assistance, supplying all necessary instructions and information; and,
for all we know to the contrary, the Queen may have lent a helping
hand. In fact, the whole Protestant party was now roused against the
Howards, the representatives of the Catholics, and determined to bring
about their ruin or perish in the attempt. It had hoped the folly of
Katherine Howard would have sufficed for this purpose, but the great
house of Norfolk was firm enough to resist even that storm. Another
pretext had to be found, and the impolitic behaviour of the poet-Earl
supplied it.
Poor Surrey was no match for the low and cunning intrigues amongst
which “Fate and metaphysical aid” had thrown him. Somewhere in June
1546 he was summoned before the Privy Council, severely reprimanded
for what he could not possibly help, and imprisoned in Windsor Castle,
where he consoled himself by writing one of his most exquisite poems.
This was his “Swan Song”! By August, however, he was certainly out
of durance, and apparently once more in favour with the King, for
he figured as Earl Marshal at the entertainments given in honour of
the French Envoy, Claude d’Annebault, taking precedence of everyone
excepting members of the royal family.
Early in September he left London, and returned to his wife and
children at Kenninghall, accompanied by Churchyard the poet, who was
his secretary, and an extremely numerous and miscellaneous retinue,
which included several Italian painters, musicians, and jesters. One
of the artists, Toto, was soon engaged upon a portrait of him, which
was later used to his great disadvantage; in the left-hand corner of
it appeared his escutcheon, bearing among its numerous quarterings the
arms of England, but so arranged that a slide could be drawn, when
necessary, over the coat-of-arms. The Duke of Norfolk and my Lady of
Richmond came to Kenninghall Palace about this time; but the mansion,
of which not a vestige now remains, was so enormous that every member
of the ducal family had a separate dwelling. The Duchess of Richmond
had a whole wing to herself, which she shared with her friend Mrs.
Holland. The society of those days was not so dead to all sense of
propriety as not to be scandalised by this singular intimacy between
the Duke’s daughter and his mistress. Most people agreed with the
Duchess of Norfolk “that her dater’s abiding ever with that drab
Holland” was a “scandayul and most unnatterall.” Owing to the huge size
of the mansion, not much inferior to that of Hampton Court, the Duchess
and Mrs. Holland may never once have come into contact with Surrey and
his family; otherwise, it is difficult to account for the fact that we
have no record of any fiery scene between brother and sister. The Duke
seems to have spent his time very quietly, reading the books he most
affected, such as Plutarch’s _Lives of Illustrious Men_, Josephus’s
_History_, and _The Confessions of St. Augustin_.[81]
Whilst the Howard family was thus peacefully rusticating in Norfolk,
gossip and slander were making headway in the metropolis and preparing
poor Surrey’s ruin. Sir George Blagg, the “my Blagg” of one of his
finest poems, had picked a quarrel with him in the summer, and was
busy as a bee spreading evil reports against him. Sir Gawen Carew had
confided to every one what the Duchess of Richmond had related to him
anent her brother’s advice to hasten and become the King’s mistress.
His enemies had even pressed the Court astrologer into their service,
and this functionary had actually warned the King that unless he was
careful, his successor’s monogram would, like his own, be “H.R.” The
Duke himself was not spared: he had been seen to enter the French
Ambassador’s house late at night and to leave it again in the small
hours of the morning. A letter of his to Gardiner, then on a mission
to Brussels, was intercepted--and vague though its terms were, it was
held to be proof positive of Norfolk’s adherence to Gardiner’s scheme,
as planned with Cardinal Granville, to restore the papal supremacy in
England. At last, truth and lies together rolled themselves up into
an ominous storm-cloud, which burst when Surrey was called to appear
before the Council in London on a charge of high treason.
Some writers have attempted to extenuate Henry VIII’s share in the
_dénouement_ of this tragedy. They plead that he was too ill at this
time to know exactly what he was doing, and that, in consequence of the
swollen state of his hands, he was compelled to use a stamp to sign his
letters. With regard to this, we know that as far back as 1st August
1546 he had commissioned Sir Anthony Denny, Sir John Gates, and William
Clere to sign documents for him with a dry stamp, the signature thus
made being filled in with ink. And even this is not the first time
Henry had recourse to a mechanical contrivance for signing letters
and State Papers. Lord Hardwick has a letter of the King’s signed
with a stamp and dated as early as the seventh year of his reign.
Moreover, the official documents, which were drawn up by Wriothesley,
are carefully annotated and corrected in pencil by Henry himself, with
very full marginal notes and numerous interlineations. The handwriting
is very shaky, but it is the King’s none the less, and proves that if
the monarch’s body was infirm, his brain was as clear and his feelings
as vindictive as ever. The death-warrant of the Earl of Surrey is also
scribbled over on the margin with certain pencil notes in the King’s
own writing, proving that Henry must have retained the use of his hands
to the end.
Sufficient evidence having been gathered, and Surrey being summoned
to London, he left Kenninghall[82] in the last days of September, and
appeared before the Privy Council in Wriothesley’s house in Holborn,
not far from Chancery Lane, on 2nd October. His first accuser was
Sir Richard Southwell, at one time in his mother’s household at
Kenninghall, who hated him heartily. He averred that Surrey had placed
the Royal Arms of England in the first quartering of his escutcheon,
thereby claiming the crown. When confronted with Southwell, Surrey,
with his foolish impetuosity, and to the consternation of the Council,
proposed a sort of trial by battle after the mediæval fashion.
Southwell and he were there and then to divest themselves of their
upper garments, descend on to the floor of the court, and indulge the
Lord Chancellor and the Council with the spectacle of a boxing-match,
the winner of which was to be declared innocent. The Council, needless
to say, did not see fit to accept the fiery Earl’s suggestion, and
both Surrey and Southwell were temporarily detained--the Earl being not
yet formally charged.
The examination of the other witnesses took place privately a few days
later, before the Council but not in the presence of the prisoner.
Sir Edmund Knyvyt, a son of the Lady Muriel Howard, the sister of
the Duke of Norfolk, and therefore a cousin of Surrey, out of sheer
spite, and also perhaps to give himself importance, accused the Earl
of harbouring Italian spies in his house at Kenninghall, of affecting
foreign airs, of wearing foreign costumes, and, gravest of all, of
entertaining persons suspected of correspondence with Cardinal Pole and
other “traitors” abroad. Then came Sir Gawen Carew with an exaggerated
version of the Duchess of Richmond’s story that her brother advised
her to become the King’s mistress, and had spoken lightly of the
King’s illness, and speculated as to what might occur in the event of
his death; and before the week was out a score or so of other venal
witnesses had concocted sufficient evidence to send fifty men to the
block.
The Duke, meanwhile, tarried at Kenninghall, wondering what had
happened to his son, and never imagining how bitter and relentless was
the suddenly, and indeed inexplicably, developed hatred of the King,
which we, however, know was stimulated by the Seymours and Cranmer for
their own ends. Instead of coming up to London to help the Earl out
of his difficulties, he set himself, as usual, to write confidential
letters to those members of the Council upon whom he thought he could
rely. These effusions were promptly shown to Hertford, with the result
that His Grace himself was ordered to London with the utmost dispatch.
On 12th December the Duke of Norfolk appeared before Lord Chancellor
Wriothesley at his house in Holborn, near the present Southampton
Buildings, and, to his unutterable amazement, found himself formally
charged with high treason. He was immediately committed to the Tower,
but on account of his rank and age, and to spare him the humiliation
of being paraded as a prisoner through the city streets, he was
conveyed down the hill, put on board a barge in the Fleet, and so to
the Thames, through the arches of London Bridge, and onward to his
ominous destination in the ancient fortress. Later in the same day
Surrey too was conducted to the Tower, but he had to go on foot and
through a dense multitude. To the consternation of his enemies, he
was cheered all along the road, and grave fears were entertained of a
rescue.[83] Three commissioners were now dispatched to Kenninghall to
bring the Duchess of Richmond and her friend Mrs. Holland up to town.
Another embassy rode to Redbourne, to fetch the Duchess of Norfolk, who
was only too delighted to come to London and blurt out all she could
to the detriment of her hated spouse. By this time London could talk
of nothing but the Surrey trial. In the palaces of the rich, in the
hovels of the poor, in all the little taverns and drinking-houses down
by the Thames, in the parlours of the great inns in Southwark and the
Cheape, the conversation turned upon no other subject, and even the
all-absorbing topic of the King’s illness was forgotten for the time
being. A touch of horror was added to the general excitement when it
became known that Norfolk’s wife and his daughter and mistress were to
be the chief witnesses against him and his son. The Duchess did not
spare her husband. Snatching at the welcome chance of avenging her
wrongs, the half-witted lady grew garrulous, and confirmed everything
_suggested_ by those who desired to damn her lord’s cause. She had
but little to say, however, concerning her son, for the simple reason
that she had not seen him for many months and knew nothing about his
affairs. He was very “unnatturell” towards her, she declared, and so
was her daughter, but nevertheless she “loved her children dearly.” Her
husband, she said, had leanings towards Popery, and caused his children
to be brought up to deny the King’s supremacy.
Mrs. Holland behaved with great discretion, considering her position
and antecedents. It was true, she said, that the Duke of Norfolk had
on one occasion told her that “if he had been young enough he would
like to go to Rome to venerate the Veronica, an image of our Lord
miraculously impressed upon a handkerchief which He had given to
certain women on His way to Calvary.” The Duke had bidden her lay
aside some needlework upon which she was engaged, to oblige the Earl of
Surrey, and in a corner of which were his arms, one quartering of which
was to be left blank, “probably for the introduction of the Royal Arms
and monogram.” She had obeyed the Duke’s behest and never set needle
into the work again. Before concluding her evidence, she, perhaps
not unnaturally, seized the opportunity to try and clear her own
reputation, and informed the Court that “the Earl detested her because
she was so friendly with his sister.”
The appearance of Mary, Duchess of Richmond, must have created a
sensation. Her angelic beauty contrasted strangely with her spiteful
and bitter nature. Like her mother, when she was once started there
was no stopping her, and in her excitement she materially damaged
her brother’s cause, exaggerating every point against him suggested
by the prosecution. With telling and dramatic effect she related the
scene when he advised her to become the King’s mistress. Her brother,
she said, had been reading the book about Lancelot of the Lake, and
had introduced that hero’s arms, together with those of Anjou, into
his own. He had recently had his portrait taken by an Italian artist,
as already related, and had caused the arms of England to be painted
into the left corner, with the monogram “H.R.” surmounted by a crown,
which she thought was a closed crown, like the King’s. He had also
appropriated the Confessor’s arms, which belonged by right to the King,
and the King only; he had spoken irreverently of His Majesty, and had
speculated upon what might happen after his death; and, she added, “my
lord of Hertford is particularly hateful to him because he superseded
him at Boulogne, and indeed he detested the new nobility in general.”
The Council, to its credit, discarded the Duchess’s evidence concerning
Surrey’s alleged infamous advice to her. They held it too abominable to
be even probable, and it was not included in the indictment; but the
rest of her evidence was considered very compromising.
On 13th January 1548 Surrey was brought on foot from the Tower to
the Guildhall, which was packed to suffocation, and the charges of
treacherously conspiring, together with his father, either to usurp the
throne or seize the protectorate, were read over to him. He made an
eloquent defence, and, while denying every other item of the charge,
said he had a right, in accordance with a grant made by Richard III
to his grandfather, the first Duke of Norfolk, to use the arms of the
Confessor; which was perfectly true--“Herald-at-Arms knew this, and
was content he used them.” As to his ever “having dreamed of usurping
the throne,” that was “mere chatter.” He owned he bore Hertford no
goodwill, but the fault rested with that gentleman, and was “not of
my making.” He was innocent on all points, he said, and called God to
witness his loyalty to his King and country. In spite of all, sentence
was passed upon him, and he was condemned to die on the following
morning. The breathless silence with which the verdict had been awaited
gave way to tumultuous protests from all sides of the Court, and it was
only with great difficulty, even danger, that the hall was cleared. As
the condemned Earl passed from the Guildhall to the Tower every cap
was lifted, and the utmost sorrow and sympathy were displayed when
the result of the trial was revealed by the sight of the executioner
walking in the procession, the sharp edge of his axe turned towards the
prisoner’s person.
The next morning, 14th January, rose bright and frosty. A huge
multitude had assembled on Tower Hill to witness the closing scene.
Surrey, dressed in black velvet, looked very handsome, as with brave
and elastic step he mounted the scaffold. He delivered the usual
speech--a part of the grim pageant which no prisoner, male or female,
ever missed--in a clear voice. He eloquently declared his innocence,
forgave his enemies, and avowed his loyalty to his sovereign. He begged
the prayers of all the company, and himself prayed aloud while the
final preparations were being made. These done, in the midst of an awed
silence, Surrey knelt to receive the fatal stroke, and with the sacred
name of “Jesus” on his lips, his brave soul passed into eternity. Thus
was the Court of England robbed of a gallant and magnificent gentleman,
and the country of a man of genius, who, had he lived into the calmer
and fostering atmosphere of Elizabeth’s reign, might have left a name
in literature equal, if not superior, to that of Spenser.
The Duke of Norfolk escaped trial, but not attainder. His dignities and
estates were confiscated and distributed among his enemies. On the 27th
of January his death-warrant was brought to the King; but Henry was
too far gone, by this time, to be able to affix his autograph, and Sir
Richard Gates stamped the document with the Royal Seal only. The deed,
however, never reached its destination. Possibly it was detained by the
Seymours, who may have thought that age and infirmity would soon spare
them the blood-shedding of an old man. If so, they were mistaken, for
Norfolk survived them both. A few hours later the King’s death saved
the aged Duke’s. He remained, however, a close prisoner throughout the
reign of Edward VI, but at the accession of Queen Mary he was liberated
and all his dignities restored.
The most pitiable part of this strange episode in the history of an
epoch which was one long series of domestic and political tragedies is
that the Duke, in the hope of saving his life, was induced to address
a shameful confession to the King. This confession His Majesty never
read. It is still in existence, and must be described, even by the most
merciful critics, as a very foolish and impolitic effusion. Yet that
the Duke of Norfolk and his son were both conspiring--not, indeed, to
usurp the throne, but to obtain the protectorate--is beyond dispute.
The Seymours, on their side, though with much greater skill and
diplomacy, were doing precisely the same thing.
Among our national archives and those of Norfolk House are full
inventories of the estates, goods, and chattels of the Duke of Norfolk
and his son, and also of the Duchesses of Norfolk and Richmond and of
Mrs. Holland. Norfolk’s list is valuable as affording a fair idea of
the contents of a great English nobleman’s house and wardrobe in the
first half of the sixteenth century. In his desire to save them, the
Duke had presented his vast landed estates to the Prince of Wales,
who, needless to say, never got an acre of them; they were made over
to the Duke of Somerset, a title assumed by Hertford on becoming Lord
Protector, to Paget, and to other members of the new Government. His
wearing apparel, which consisted of many garments, mostly of black or
russet velvet or satin richly furred, and “much worn,” or even “very
much worn,” was also seized. The Countess of Surrey was allowed one of
her father-in-law’s “coats” of black satin much worn, and furred with
coney and lamb, which was delivered to her “to put about her in her
chariot.” This is probably the first mention of a carriage rug in the
domestic history of this realm. All the rest of the Duke’s effects,
including “three broad yards of marble cloth and two pairs of old
black slippers,” were given to the Duke of Somerset for his use. The
Protector also obtained possession of the magnificent jewelled collars
belonging to the various Orders of which the Duke was a member. Paget
had a “George, set with diamonds and one ruby,” and Lord St. John
had poor Surrey’s “Order of St. Michael with its chain, studded with
pearls and diamonds.” The Duke left many pictures, all of a sacred
character, and an enormous quantity of gold and silver plate, which
was divided into equal parcels, and delivered to Somerset, Princess
Mary, the Duchess of Norfolk, the Duchess of Richmond, and Surrey’s
widow. Somerset seized a collection of thirty-two splendid rings, but
Mrs. Holland claimed the finest table diamond as her private property.
His Grace had also some fifty sets of rosary beads, some of coral with
paternosters in gold, others of pearl, agate, gold studded with little
jewels, black enamel, and even of glass. A great quantity of these
were presented to Princess Mary, to whom also went much of the altar
furniture of the Duke’s private chapel.
Surrey’s wardrobe was as magnificent as that of any prince. There was
“a Parliament robe, of rich purple velvet lined with ermine, and with a
garter set with jewels upon the shoulder,” and a gown “of black velvet
curiously figured in gold pasmentary”; “a coat and cassock of crimson
velvet, wrought with satin in the same colour, with a cloak, hat and
hose to match,” was most probably the identical costume in which he was
represented by Streete in the picture still at Hampton Court. We read
of dozens of gorgeous suits, one more splendid than the other. Somerset
chose the finest for himself, and handed over the rest to his brother
Henry, who had come up to town to be knighted, and who doubtless
ultimately paraded his Wiltshire market town, decked in poor Surrey’s
finery, looking very much like the fabled jay in peacock’s feathers.
The furniture of Surrey’s country house, St. Leonard’s, near Norwich,
which he had built after designs of John of Padua, was given to his
widow, but some of the altar furniture went to Princess Mary at Newhall.
Seals had been placed on the goods and chattels of the Duchesses
of Norfolk and Richmond and of Mrs. Holland, but they were lifted
immediately, and the ladies received all their several properties
intact.
The name of Sir Thomas Seymour does not figure in any connection, even
remote, with this tragedy, and he did not receive a single coat or
“night-gown,”[84] whether of velvet, satin, or common cloth, belonging
to either the Duke or to his son. It may be that by the time the
distribution of the confiscated property took place the feud between
the ambitious brothers had already begun. It was destined amply to
avenge Surrey’s untimely fate.
Readers may fairly ask what the story of the poet-Earl’s end has to
do with Lady Jane Grey? It may be replied that his death and his
father’s imprisonment affected her very nearly. They cleared the way
for the temporary triumph of the Protestant party, and enabled Seymour
to proclaim himself Protector unopposed. The close intimacy between
the families of Howard and Dorset is easily traced through at least
three generations in the household books of Thomas, Earl of Surrey,
afterwards Duke of Norfolk.
When the Earl entertained company, the ladies and gentlemen, it seems,
all dined together in the “great chamber,” and there were often as many
as twenty to fifty guests staying in the house. Their names include
nearly all the leading aristocracy of the time, among them being Lady
Jane Grey’s father and mother, the Lord Marquis of Dorset and the Lady
Frances; Brandon, Duke of Suffolk; the Lady Wyndham, the Lady Parker,
the Lady Essex; Mrs. Brian, afterwards governess to the Princesses
Mary and Elizabeth; the Lady Vere, the “old” Lady of Oxford,[85] etc.
The ladies attending on the visitors[86] dined at my Lady’s mess,
the gentlemen in the hall. When Mr. Thomas Reddynge, a gentleman of
the Duke’s household, brought his bride to Tenderinge Hall for her
honeymoon, “all the company dined and supped in the bride’s bedroom.”
The little Lord Thomas Howard, afterwards Earl of Surrey, dined in the
nursery.
Hospitality was exchanged between the Howards and the Dorsets almost to
the end of the Duke’s life. The Marquis and Marchioness of Dorset (the
Lady Frances Brandon), Lady Jane Grey and her sisters, were certainly
at Hunsdon[87] on more than one occasion, and when the two families
were in town there was, doubtless, constant visiting between them. It
must be remembered that the Duke of Norfolk, being uncle-by-marriage
to the King, was also uncle to the Lady Frances’s mother, Mary Tudor,
the royal Queen-Duchess of Suffolk. Little Lady Jane must often have
sat perched on Surrey’s knee and listened with delight as he whispered
in her ear those tales of fairy enchantment he himself loved so well.
Owing to her tender age, Jane may never have been told the details of
the closing scenes of her gallant kinsman’s life, but she must surely
have noticed that on a certain day in January 1547-8 the curtains of
her father’s house were drawn, as for a family in mourning; that her
parents moved about with pale and saddened faces; and that the servants
stirred noiselessly and spoke under their breath. The shadow lay
everywhere, and the various chronicles of the period afford abundant
proof that there was a genuine sorrow felt in the city on the day of
Surrey’s death.
And there is yet another link between Lady Jane Grey and the unhappy
Surrey. The name of her kinswoman, Elizabeth Fitzgerald, the “fair
Geraldine,” must ever be associated with that of the poet-Earl, for
she is as indissolubly connected with him as is Laura with Petrarch,
or Leonora with Tasso. A daughter of Oge, Earl of Kildare,[88] by his
wife, the Lady Elizabeth Grey, daughter of the first Marquis of Dorset,
the fair Fitzgerald was a not distant cousin to Lady Jane Grey, and
there were but a few years between them. She was born in Ireland,
probably at Maynooth Castle, somewhere in 1528, and was brought to
England whilst yet an infant. In 1533 her father died in the Tower,
broken-hearted at the news that his son, whom the Irish cherished as a
patriot and the English hated as a rebel, had been captured and brought
to London. A few days after his father’s decease, the young man was
hanged at Tyburn with some seventeen other Irishmen. Henry VIII appears
to have pitied the widowed Lady Kildare, who was reduced to the verge
of starvation after her husband’s death. A small pension was granted
her, and her children were dispersed among the leading families of the
aristocracy, to receive an education worthy of their rank. Elizabeth,
“the fair Geraldine,” an extremely beautiful child, was placed under
the guidance of the Princess Mary.[89] It was probably in the year
1542, whilst attending Her Highness on a visit at Hunsdon, that she
first fell under the notice of Surrey, who, though already married,
became desperately enamoured of her. The young lady cannot have been
more than fourteen or fifteen at this time, but in those days this was
quite a marriageable age. We have Surrey’s own word for it that it was
at Hunsdon he first beheld the “fair Geraldine”--
“Hunsdon did first present her to mine eyen:
Bright is her hue, and Geraldine she hight.
Hampton me taught to wish her first for mine;
And Windsor, alas! doth chase her from my sight.
Her beauty of kind; her virtues from above.
Happy is he that can obtain her love!”
They appear to have met again at Hampton Court, and we seem to have
evidence that the “fair Geraldine” yielded to some extent to her
suitor’s prayers. They danced together, no doubt, in the Great Hall,
which still delights us with its lofty beauty and rich arras. They sat
side by side in the oriel windows, or romped among the flower-beds
of the palace garden. But the lovely Irish girl, true to her race,
was chaste as snow, and when Surrey’s ardour grew too hot for modest
endurance, he was firmly repulsed. One thing is quite certain,
that “Geraldine” was very beautiful, with Irish sea-green eyes[90]
and glorious fair hair. She seems otherwise to have been a very
matter-of-fact young lady, who presently bestowed her hand on the rich
old Sir Anthony Browne.[91] After his death, in 1548, she re-entered
the household of her royal mistress, and as the Lady Frances and her
daughter paid several visits to their cousin, Princess Mary, in 1551,
Jane Grey must often have seen the _bella ma fredda innammorata_ of
poet Surrey. After Queen Mary’s death the “fair Geraldine” consoled
herself with a second husband, in the person of Clinton, Earl of
Lincoln. An account of her funeral still exists, according to which
sixty-one old women walked in the procession, each wearing a new suit
of clothes and carrying a loaf of bread, their number recording the
fact that the lady they mourned had reached sixty-one years at the time
of her decease.
The Duchess of Richmond seems ultimately to have repented to some
extent of her wickedness. At any rate, her father left her £500 in his
will--a considerable sum of money in those days--in acknowledgment of
the expense and trouble she had borne to obtain his liberation, and of
her care of her brother’s children. She died of the plague in 1556.
It is curious that Surrey’s children should have been placed under his
sister’s charge, since their mother, an eminently respectable woman,
was living, and they were with her at the time of their father’s
death. She was, however, a Catholic, whereas the Duchess had for some
years past rather ostentatiously proclaimed herself a Protestant.
Somerset’s religious opinions may have had something to do with this
transaction, concerning which there is a strange legend. Three days
after the Earl of Surrey’s execution, Foxe, the martyrologist, was
sitting in St. Paul’s Cathedral, pale, haggard, and almost dying of
misery and starvation. Presently a gentleman approached him and placed
a considerable sum of money in his hand, bidding him be of good cheer,
for that “luck was coming to him at last.” A few days later Somerset
appointed him tutor to the children of the late Earl of Surrey, then
under the charge of their aunt, the Lady of Richmond. Notwithstanding
his ardent Protestantism, Foxe was never able to completely detach the
future Duke of Norfolk from the older faith; but he gave his pupil a
sound and virtuous education, and won his enduring affection. This Duke
shared his father’s fate; he was beheaded, in the reign of Elizabeth,
for espousing the cause of Mary Stuart. From him the present Duke of
Norfolk is descended in a direct line.
The Countess of Surrey resided for many years at Kenninghall, but,
as usual in those days, she presently took a second husband, in the
person of Mr. Thomas Steyning, of Woodford, Suffolk, most likely her
steward or secretary. She lived to an advanced age, and is buried in
Framlingham Parish Church, under the elaborate monument she erected to
the memory of her husband, whose remains, however, are by some believed
to be still lying in the interesting church of All Hallows’, Barking,
near the Tower, where they were certainly interred immediately after
his decapitation.