JOHN DUDLEY, EARL OF WARWICK
Immediately after the execution of Thomas Seymour, John Dudley steps
forward on the lurid stage of this history. If Seymour was a rascal,
Dudley, son of a rascal, was even worse. Divested of his magnificent
habiliments and picturesque surroundings, this man was a far meaner and
more sordid ruffian than was ever my Lord of Sudeley--more devilish in
his cunning and, if anything, more unscrupulous.
John Dudley was the son of that notorious Edmund Dudley who, under
Henry VII, had remorselessly plundered the public coffers, and so
earned the execution which fell to his lot in the first years of Henry
VIII’s reign--on 28th August 1510, to be precise. In common justice,
it is fair to say that this Dudley of evil repute was highly esteemed
by his most illustrious contemporary, Sir Thomas More; and we may
believe him to have been much calumniated, like many other men of his
time. Dugdale says Edmund Dudley was the son of a carpenter,[158] and
the assertion is somewhat supported by the fact that although he was
born twenty years before the death of the Lord Dudley whom he asserted
to be his grandfather, that gentleman would never acknowledge him.
His real patronym was Sutton, but he assumed that of Dudley after his
acquisition of the ancient castle of that name, and the expulsion of
its rightful owner, who fled abroad. On the gates of the Castle, Edmund
affixed his own arms, together with those of the ancient houses of
Someries and Malpas, from which he claimed descent. He was at one time
Sergeant-at-Law and at another Speaker of the House of Commons, and
married Lady Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Edward Grey, Viscount
Lisle, a collateral of the great house of Grey, and the same young
lady to whom Charles Brandon was contracted and who, as we have seen,
refused to carry out her side of the engagement.
The John Dudley of these pages was born about 1502, the eldest of three
brothers, who, after their father’s ignominious death, were placed
under the guardianship of Sir Edward Guildford. The latter fought
valiantly to obtain some part of the father’s ill-gotten property for
his wards, and their possessions were further increased at the death of
their mother, a considerable heiress. Being a handsome, dashing young
fellow, the father’s bad reputation was soon forgotten, and his gay
son John, as Viscount Lisle, was a prominent figure at Court in the
last half of Henry VIII’s reign. In his early years he was a good deal
in France with Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, the Lady Frances’s
father, who knighted him at Vian, in Normandy. John Dudley’s wife, Jane
Guildford, whom he married when he was a mere lad, contrived to absorb
his affections so completely that his domestic life was remarkably
respectable. She was a very beautiful woman, and part heiress of his
former guardian, Edward Guildford, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.
She bore him a numerous and handsome family, and her behaviour in
clinging to her husband during his hour of danger, and making desperate
efforts to save him, was rare at this strange period. With all her good
qualities, however, she was cordially disliked by Lady Jane Grey, whom
she treated with consistent harshness.
As Viscount Lisle,[159] John Dudley worked his way up legitimately
enough until he was nominated Lord High-Admiral and Master of the Horse
(1542) to Henry VIII. Although at heart a Catholic, he sided with the
Seymours against the Howards, and thus--for ambition’s sake--came to
be numbered among the chiefs of the Protestant party at Edward VI’s
coronation, and was then created Earl of Warwick. His ambition was now
well fired--he must become _aut Cæsar, aut nullus_, and this he could
only achieve by ousting the two Seymours and taking their place. Like
most of his contemporaries, he was essentially an opportunist--_un
arriviste_, as the French would say. For some years he worked like a
rat in the dark, waiting his opportunity: first he nibbled at Thomas
Seymour’s good fame--what there was of it!--and then cunningly set
brother against brother. Patiently, subtly, he gnawed on till he
saw Thomas ascend the scaffold; then he promptly undermined Edward
Seymour’s credit with King and people. His aim was to become Lord
Protector himself, to reach at supreme power by fair means or foul.
[Illustration: JOHN DUDLEY, DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND
FROM AN ENGRAVING BY G. VERTUE]
Soon after the death of his brother, Thomas, Somerset began to totter.
The Admiral’s execution had produced a bad effect. Hardened as men were
in those ferocious times, there were yet certain ties of consanguinity
which might not be violated with impunity; and so, although
Elizabeth did write to her sister Mary, that “had the brothers met,
the Lord Admiral would have been saved,” it was none the less the hand
of Cain that signed his death-warrant. The people said so openly. They
had not forgotten the dreadful carnage that had marked Edward Seymour’s
return, through Scotland into England, on the occasion of his first
Scotch expedition.[160]
If the horrors perpetrated by Somerset himself during that expedition
were execrable, those committed with his knowledge and connivance in
the same forlorn country under Edward VI were even more atrocious. That
“varmint” Lennox, the husband of the Lady Margaret, niece of Henry
VIII, was his chief agent. Reeking corpses of men, women, and little
children marked the passage of the English troops to and from the
Border lands. Thus the Lord Protector’s reputation in the North was of
the worst--“his very name stank of blood.”[161]
Dudley had not, therefore, so much difficulty as might be thought in
undermining his formidable rival’s position, towering though it was. In
many ways, Somerset had proved himself a failure, and he had already
lost much of his popularity, even among Protestants, who were none too
sure of his loyalty--was he not the friend of Mary and the avowed enemy
of Elizabeth? By the large Catholic party he was, of course, entirely
and heartily detested.
He was not a Calvinist, although he maintained an active correspondence
with Calvin, but a Church of England man of the “Low Church”
description, a hater of ecclesiastical ritual and formality, and,
incidentally, a born iconoclast. The statement that no man or woman was
persecuted or burnt for religious opinions under his rule, is hardly
exact. There are more ways than one of killing a dog--or of persecuting
an opposing faith. True, the fires of Smithfield were quenched for
the time being, but Catholics and Anabaptists were made to feel they
were outside the law, and the prisons were crowded with men and women
of those persuasions, and of every social grade.[162] The cathedrals
and parish churches were cleared of their sacred images, their plate,
their rood-lofts, and their art treasures; even their frescoed
walls were whitewashed. Stained glass was smashed, because it bore
“idolatrous pictures,” and replaced by plain glass or horn. Even dead
men’s tombs were overthrown, and the bodies cast “into filthy ditches
and fields beyond the city.”[163] In a word, the artistic treasures
of centuries were within a few months dispersed, destroyed, or sold
to a throng of Jews, who flocked to England to seize so splendid an
opportunity. Somerset pulled down three or four episcopal palaces, the
beautiful North Cloister of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the Churches
of St. Mary-le-Strand and St. John’s, Clerkenwell, for the sake of
their building materials, which he used for his own new and almost
royal residence in the Strand. He gave orders for the demolition of
St. Margaret’s, Westminster, and but for the angry protests of the
indignant parishioners, his command would have been obeyed. There
was another cause of discontent, which has been much neglected
by historians, namely, the doctrinal changes, which necessarily
greatly altered outward observances, much to the disgust of the older
generation, who saw the destruction of the cherished traditions of a
thousand years, and the desecration of their most sacred social usages.
Their pageants, pilgrimages, and processions were now paralysed; and it
was an offence deemed worthy of imprisonment, ay, even of burning, to
pray for the dead, or to retain the rosary the dying mother had given,
with her last blessing, on her death-bed.
The average Englishman is apt to think of the Sixth Edward’s reign
as an era of peace and plenty, during which, to the applause of the
entire nation, the Book of Common Prayer was formulated by Cranmer,
and the churches emptied of “hated and idolatrous images and symbols.”
In reality, it was one of the most disastrous epochs in the whole
of our history. Froude, in a passage of uncommon brilliance, sums
up the appalling effect, after a lapse of fifteen years, of Henry
VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries and hospitals. With singular
vividness he depicts the extreme misery to which the lower orders
were reduced; the high roads and country lanes rendered dangerous
by hordes of starving and half-naked men and women, who a few years
previously had been in fairly comfortable circumstances, earning a
living wage from the now banished masters of abbeys and priories.
Now the poor wretches roved in fear and trembling, begging food and
shelter; or, driven desperate by want, committing deeds of violence.
Dr. Latimer, in his _Royal Sermons_, puts his unfailing finger on the
right spot when he remarks that “the misery the people were enduring
was entirely due to the new order of things. My father,” he continues,
“was a yeoman who lived comfortably, educated his children, served
the King, and gave to the poor, on a farm the rent of which has been
increased fourfold since, so that his successor in the farm has
become a pauper in consequence.” Then, turning upon the Seymours,
the Pagets, and others of their kind, who had enriched themselves
out of the ecclesiastical spoils, he thundered: “I fully certify you
as extortioners, violent oppressors, engrossers of tenements and
lands, through whose covetousness villages decay and fall down; and
the King’s liege people, for lack of sustenance, are famished and
decayed.... You landlords, you rent-raisers, I may say, you step-lords,
you unnatural lords, you have for your possessions yearly too much!
The farm that was some years back from £20 to £40 by the year, is now
charged to tenants at from £50 to £100.... Poor men cannot have a
living, all kinds of victuals are so dear. I think, verily, that if it
thus continue, we shall at length be obliged to pay twenty shillings
for a pig. If ye bring it to a pass the yeomen be not able to put their
sons to school, ye pluck salvation from the people, and utterly destroy
the realm.”... “In those days,” he says in another sermon, “they [the
monks] helped the scholars. They maintained and gave them living. It is
a pitiful thing to see schools so neglected; every true Christian ought
to lament the same. To consider what has been plucked from abbeys,
colleges, chantries, it is a marvel that no more is bestowed upon this
holy office of salvation.... Scholars have no exhibition. Very few
there be who help poor scholars, or set children to school to learn the
Word of God, and make provision for the age to come. It would pity a
man’s heart to hear what I have of the state of Cambridge.... I think
there be at this day [1550] one thousand students less than were within
twenty years, and fewer preachers.”
The enclosure, too, by their new owners, of the vast tracts of lands,
which had formerly belonged to the abbeys and priories, for the
purpose of cattle rearing, instead of corn growing--as hitherto--(wool
being at a premium) had thrown thousands of agricultural labourers
out of employment; and soon the large cities, London, Bristol, and
York, were crowded with poor creatures seeking work, only to meet
with flat refusal from the citizens, who were angered and alarmed by
so considerable an addition to that pauper population whose hapless
descendants still form the bulk of the very appropriately styled
“Submerged Tenth” of our times. This rapid increase of an undesirable
class soon resulted in a marked debasement of the lowest orders, and so
bad did the state of morals in the capital become, that Ridley, Bishop
of London, preached more than one sermon on the subject, and, in a
book entitled _The Lamentation of England_, gives a hideous picture of
the rising tide of “immorality, crime, drunkenness, hatred and scorn
of religion and its ministers amongst the people.” Domestic chastity
was held at a discount and reviled, and adultery was so common, even
in the highest ranks, that the Privy Council spoke of bringing the
question of prohibitive measures before Parliament. The Protector
himself had set aside his first wife, Catherine Ffoliot, although she
had borne him a son, on no valid pretext, legal or otherwise, in order
to marry the higher born Anne Stanhope--the temper of this Stanhope
lady was so peppery that he went in fear and trembling, and this led
his contemporaries to say “he had got rid of a dove to saddle himself
with a scorpion.” Henry, son of William, Earl of Pembroke, divorced
Katherine, daughter of Henry, Duke of Suffolk (Lady Jane’s younger
sister), to marry Mary, daughter of Sir Henry Sydney. The Earl of
Northampton, Katherine Parr’s brother, divorced Anne, daughter of the
Earl of Essex, when he married Lord Cobham’s daughter Elizabeth. Even
Lady Jane Grey’s own legitimacy was disputed; and the matrimonial
adventures of her grandfather Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, have already
been mentioned.
The wickedness of the upper classes[164] spread downwards, and, coupled
with intense poverty, made “London worse than Babylon of old.”
Well might honest old Latimer cry out to the King, in one of his most
interesting sermons (preached in 1550 at Paul’s Cross), “For the love
of God take an order for marriage here in England.” Cecil also protests
against the prevailing looseness of morals: “Sacrilegious avarice
ravenously invaded Church livings, colleges, chantries, hospitals,
and places dedicated to the poor, as things superfluous. Ambition and
emulation among the nobility, presumption and disobedience among the
common people, grew so extravagant, that England seemed to be in a
downright frenzy.” Hear Bishop Burnet also on the same subject: “This
gross and insatiable scramble after the goods and wealth that had been
dedicated to good designs, without applying any part of it to promote
the good of the Gospel, and the instruction of the poor, made all
people conclude that it was for robbery and not for reformation that
their zeal made them so active. The irregular and immoral lives of many
of the professors of the Gospel gave their enemies great advantage
to say that they ran away from confession, penance, fasting, and
prayer, only to be under no restraint, and to indulge themselves in a
licentious and dissolute course of life. By these things, that were but
too visible in some of the most eminent among them, the people were
much alienated from them; and as much as they were formerly against
Popery, they grew to have kinder thoughts of it, and to look on all
the changes that had been made, as designs to enrich some vicious
characters, and to let in an inundation of vice and wickedness upon
the nation.” To stem this rising tide would have been a task for a
great statesman; Somerset was not a great statesman, for, though many
of his intentions were good, his methods were primitively violent. He
thought himself capable of repressing the inevitable result of the evil
wrought by Henry VIII and his followers by force of arms, and by laws
which, even in those days, chilled men with horror. To put down the
vagabondage in the country districts,--a consequence of the disbanding
of the great crowd of abbey retainers,--he signed a decree whereby “Any
man or woman found suspiciously near any house, or wandering by the
highways, or in the streets of any city, town, or village, for three
days together, without offering to work, or running away from their
labour, may be brought by the master, or any other person, before two
justices of the peace [these] having the power of the statute law to
exercise the said power by burning into his or her breast with a hot
iron the letter V, and to adjudge him or her to be the slave of the
informer, to have and to hold the said slave to him, his executors or
assigns, for the space of two years, only giving the said slave bread
and water.” The “slave” was to be made to work by blows or chains. In
the event of his disappearing for the space of fourteen days without
leave, he could be punished by chaining up and beating, “and if he [the
owner of the slave] chose to prove the fault by two witnesses before
the justices, they shall cause such slave to be marked on the forehead,
or the ball of the cheek with a hot iron, with the sign of an S, that
he may be known for a loiterer, and [the justices] shall adjudge the
runaway to be the said master’s slave for ever.” The penalty of a
second escape from slavery was death by hanging “from the nearest tree,
if violent.” Any one was permitted to take children between five and
fourteen years of age from any wanderer, whether they were willing or
not, and if the child ran away from his master the latter had the power
“to keep and punish the said child in chains, or otherwise, and use him
or her as his slave in all points,” up to the age of twenty at least.
The master of a grown-up slave had the right, under section 4 of this
law, “To let, set forth, sell, bequeath, or give the service of such
slaves to any person or persons, whatsoever.” The law further empowered
an owner of slaves “to put a ring of iron about his neck, arm, or leg,
for a better knowledge and surety of keeping him.” Aiding a slave to
escape was punished by the forfeiture of ten pounds by the person so
doing. These and other evils too numerous to detail helped to fan the
flame of popular discontent.
Presently the counties began to rise, the people of Devonshire and
Cornwall flew to arms to vindicate the rights of conscience. They
would have back the religion which their forefathers had held for a
thousand years. They demanded that the “Six Articles” should be put in
force. The men of Cornwall refused the Book of Common Prayer, because,
they alleged, they could not speak English, and could not understand
it, while they were accustomed to the Latin Mass, which they had been
trained from infancy to comprehend. Down into the West went Lord
Russell (“Swearing Russell”), dispatched by the Lord Protector. He
behaved “more like a wild beast than a human being”--as abominably as
Lennox in Scotland. Hooper, who went with him to preach to the rebels,
describes his massacres as “the most horrible butcheries of brave men
that ever did happen in this world.” Russell’s dispatches do not in
any way minimise the horrors he perpetrated, and “our men,” he says,
“are daily supplied with large numbers of sheep and fowl from the
places where the farmers and squires forfeited such property by their
obstinate adherence to the Popish Mass, and other superstitions.” Some
three thousand men and several hundreds of women are said to have
suffered death in the fight for freedom of conscience in Devonshire.
The central counties rose too, and there were terrible riots in
Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Derbyshire, and Huntingdonshire.
But it was in Norfolk that the grandest demonstration against the
tyranny of the central Government occurred. It commenced at Aldborough,
and at first seemed a matter of little consequence; but the rumours
of what had happened in Kent, where new enclosures had been broken
down, greatly inflamed the people from one end to the other of the
eastern counties. There was little of the religious element in the
revolt, although two-thirds of the people, at least, still adhered
to the old faith, but now religious differences were set aside, and
Catholics and Protestants stood shoulder to shoulder in the fight for
what we should call liberty. At first the mass of the people were
without a leader, but they soon found one in the person of an honest
tanner, named Robert Ket.[165] It fell out on the 6th July 1549, at
Wymondham, near Norwich, where many folk were watching, on a small
stage erected in the market-place, a sort of “mystery,” that the
actors touched sarcastically upon the leading events and scandals of
the day. Ket, who was present, leapt on to a barrel, and delivered a
rough and ready oration on burning topics, every word of which told,
and roused the enthusiasm of his audience to a very delirium. In a
surging, motley crowd, his hearers followed him from Wymondham to
Mousehold Heath, near Norwich, a desolate sweep of country commanding
glorious views, immortalised in later times by a Crome or a Vincent.
Hereabouts, on an elevation, grew a stalwart oak, beneath which Ket and
his men encamped, and where he held Courts of Justice, of Common Pleas,
Chancery and King’s Bench, “even as in Westminster Hall.” With a high
and generous sense of freedom, he allowed the orators, not only of his
own, but of the opposition party, to harangue the multitude from this
tree of liberty, which was now called “the Oak of Reformation.” The
venerable tree had become a rostrum, and all who had anything to say
scrambled into it. Aldrich, Mayor of Norwich, preached thence against
the iniquities of Somerset’s rule. Clergymen and priests, parsons
and ex-monks, made a rough pulpit of it. Matthew Parker, afterwards
Archbishop of Canterbury, climbed into its branches one day, and
harangued the mob “on the unwisdom of their attempt,” and the ruin they
were sure to bring on themselves and their families. He would have done
better to hold his peace; no one listened to him. So great was the
crowd on Mousehold Heath, it looked on occasions like a surging sea of
heads, and sometimes, as in Hyde Park in our times, separate groups of
lecturers and hearers formed at a distance from the tree.
Suddenly, on July 31st, a glittering figure bearing the Royal Arms of
England, rode into the midst of Ket’s camp--his white horse sheathed
like himself in steel, a plume of white feathers nodding on its head.
In a loud voice the man in the “coat-of-arms” proclaimed a free
pardon to all present in that multitude, if they “would depart to
their homes.” Some, weary of the business and only seeking an excuse,
turned their backs on the oak, and trudged citywards; but Ket and the
larger mass held their ground, saying they wanted no pardon, having
committed no offence--they only craved justice, and that was the
right of every Englishman. They were true subjects of the King, they
said, and had done him no harm--all they needed was justice, justice!
Turning his back on the tanner and the ancient oak, the glittering
herald scattered the people right and left, as he galloped away across
heath and common, dissolved into the mist like a meteor. When he had
vanished, Ket, fearing a treacherous surprise, called his merry men
together, and marched into Norwich, where they once more encountered
the royal messenger, who again offered them his master’s pardon. Ket
replied as disdainfully as ever, and the gorgeous official departed,
whilst the rebels, having seized all the arms and ammunition they
could find, returned to their camp on Mousehold Heath. To Court sped
the herald, and the Protector, alarmed at the turn of events, sent a
force of fifteen hundred horsemen, under the Marquis of Northampton,
and some Italians led by a _condottiére_ named Malatesta, against the
malcontents. These troops entered Norwich, but Ket and his men were
able to drive both Northampton and the Italian out of the city, in a
fight in which “fell Lord Sheffield and several gentlemen; so that now,
blood being up on both sides, the town was set fire to and plundered.”
Hearing this news, the Protector ordered another army of eight
thousand men, two thousand of whom were Germans, who were on their
way to Scotland under the Earl of Warwick, to turn southward, march
on Norwich, and disperse the rebels. After some resistance, Warwick
entered the city, only to be so fiercely assailed on every side that it
was as much as he could do to hold his ground. Ket galloped off towards
Dossingdale; but Warwick’s troopers came after him, and 3500 of his
men were cut to pieces. Yet another massacre followed, in which many
of the royal forces were killed. Ket was captured at last, and hanged
without ado, on the walls of Norwich Castle, his brother William (who
had been a black monk of the Hospitallers of St. John)[166] was swung
from the steeple of Wymondham Church, and nine of the ringleaders of
the rebellion were hanged on the “Tree of Reformation.” In the course
of this expedition, Warwick saw enough to convince him that every town
and village, farmstead and cottage, from the borders of Cambridge to
the sea, was a hotbed of rebellion, and that the names of Somerset and
Warwick had become loathed bywords.
Such a state of internal strife, combined with foreign defeat, made up
an aggregate of confusion which only a statesman of the highest genius
could attempt to quell. Somerset, a man of indifferent education, even
if of the best intentions, was quite unequal to the task. His natural
defects of character--his love of power and money, his contempt for the
ancient traditions of the country, his hatred of the religion of his
ancestors, his prejudices and his inveterate habit of scheming, now
began to occupy the malicious attention of his enemies, who felt the
time for striking the decisive blow, which should crush his power for
ever, was drawing nigh.
Their plans were served by Warwick’s reception in London as a
conquering hero, recognised by the metropolis as a successful and able
leader. His ambitious views were well seconded by old ex-Chancellor
Wriothesley, who had a personal grudge against Somerset, and who now
took up his would-be rival as a promising instrument for his revenge.
Durham House presently became the rendezvous of a great number of the
older nobility, who were discontented with the new régime; and here
they plotted and schemed, with one great object in their hearts--the
overthrow of Somerset and the exaltation of Warwick. The Londoners,
too, were against the Protector. Boulogne had been lost mainly through
his blundering policy, and the French war had been notoriously
unsuccessful. Moreover, when Warwick demanded extra pay for some two
hundred soldiers who had assisted in quelling the Ket rebellion, and
other risings, Somerset, unconsciously playing into his enemy’s hands,
refused the request, and the mercenaries, naturally incensed against
the Protector, held themselves ready to aid Warwick without compunction.
Realising in some measure--especially after the defection of Pembroke
and Winchester to Warwick’s party--that, unless he made some effort,
his position would soon become altogether untenable, Somerset
metaphorically entrenched himself and his family behind the person
of the King at Hampton Court, and thence began to defy Warwick and
his followers, so that, about September 1549, the Court of England
was divided into two distinct camps--Warwick and the Council at Ely
Place, Holborn; the Protector and the principal members of his party,
Cranmer, Sir John Thynne, his secretary, Sir Thomas Smith, Cecil,
Paget, and Petre, at Hampton Court, where King Edward was held in a
state bordering on captivity. Then Somerset set to work to limit the
power of his sovereign as much as possible, so as to have him on his
own side in the struggle with Warwick, which was now beginning in
earnest. On the ground that Warwick was bribing the Court lackeys to
spy on the King, the royal attendants at Hampton Court were removed and
replaced by Somerset’s own men. No one could approach His Majesty’s
person save through the Protector. A stop was put to all those games
and sports in which the little King delighted, on the score of his
health, and the lad was made to feel himself so completely a prisoner,
that he alludes sadly to the matter in his “Diary.” Meanwhile the Duke
himself assumed almost regal rank, styling himself “By the Grace of
God Lord Protector of the Realm, Highness”; using a prayer in which he
is described as being “called by Providence to rule”; addressing the
French King as “brother,” a title hitherto exclusively employed by the
anointed monarch; and, as a climax, offending the nobility by taking
a seat in the House of Lords above his peers. In October, he issued a
proclamation, commanding all the King’s loyal subjects “to repair with
all haste to His Highness at His Majesty’s Manor of Hampton Court,
in most defensible array, with harness and weapons, to defend his
most royal person, and his entirely beloved uncle the Lord Protector,
against whom certain have attempted a most dangerous conspiracy. And
this do in all possible haste. Given at Hampton Court the 5th day of
October in the 3rd year of his most noble reign.”[167] Hundreds of
copies of this document were distributed all over London; and Lord
Edward Seymour, the Protector’s son, was dispatched with letters in the
King’s name to Lord Russell and Sir William Herbert, who were still
in the West, stamping out the rebellion, commanding them to hasten
to the aid of the King and himself, with all the troops they could
muster. These worthies, who would seem to have had personal grievances
against Somerset,[168] promptly threw in their lot with Warwick’s
party, promising assistance, and sending to Bristol for cannon for
that purpose. Somerset now set the printing-presses to work to
distribute thousands of handbills, calling on townsfolk and villagers
to rise and “protect the King and the Lord Protector,” “because he
[the Lord Protector] is the friend of the poor and the enemy of their
oppressors.” The Lord Mayor and Corporation were also commanded to
dispatch a thousand men to Hampton Court, and the Lieutenant of the
Tower received orders to close the gates of that fortress and refuse
admission to members of the Council. On 5th October, Petre was sent
to London to interview Warwick and the Council. He found them at Ely
Place; but as Petre, thinking all lost, did not return to Hampton
Court, the Protector never got any answer to his message. At the same
time, the Council sent letters to the chief nobles throughout the
country, demanding their aid and dilating on Somerset’s misdeeds.
Within a few days, the Lord Mayor, the Aldermen, and the Lieutenant
of the Tower had all turned traitors to the Protector, and promised
Warwick their support.
Hampton Court, put into a state of defence,[169] assumed the aspect
of a fortress; the moat was filled up, the gates were fortified,
and every battlement and tower was made ready in case of danger.
Five hundred suits of armour were brought out of the armoury for the
palace servants, much to the delight of King Edward, who watched the
preparations. A vast crowd assembled round the palace, and in the
neighbourhood; and the Protector, hoping that a sight of the King might
rouse it to loyalty, led him into the Base Court, where the soldiers
were drawn up to receive him. The stricken youth[170] appeared, leaning
heavily on his uncle’s arm, with Archbishop Cranmer, Paget, and Cecil
behind him; the heralds sounded their trumpets, and as the flare of the
torches--for it was an autumn evening--flashed on their armour, the
troops greeted his sickly Majesty with three times three cheers. From
the Base Court the King and his escort passed over the stone bridge
across the moat in front of the great gate, where a motley throng was
gathered. Presently silence was obtained, and gradually the mumble of
many voices was hushed, as the young King’s feeble tones struck on the
still evening air, asking humbly, “I pray you be good to us and to
our uncle.” Then Somerset made a speech, pleading in such stupid and
selfish fashion for himself and the King that the rude crowd listened
with impatience, and gave no cheers when he had finished. Mortified and
disappointed, the Protector and the King turned their backs on the mob,
and silently re-entered the palace. The people round Hampton Court were
more bitter against Somerset than he imagined. Their grievance was not
abstract and national, but local; they could not forget that it was
Somerset who, in the first year of King Edward’s reign, had dechased
Hampton Court Chase.
Seeing himself unable to inspire the people with anything like
enthusiasm for their sovereign (or for himself), Somerset determined
on more vigorous action, and on 7th October, the King, despite his
“rewme,” was hurried to Windsor, at nine or ten o’clock at night.
Thence the Protector wrote to the Council, asking what had become of
Petre, and why no answer had been vouchsafed to his message, adding,
“that if any violence was intended to the King’s person, he would
resist till death.” Negotiations by letter continued for some days,
and there was even an interview on 12th October at Windsor, between
Warwick’s group and the Protector. On the following day, a number of
charges were promulgated against Somerset, and the once all-powerful
“Lord Protector of these Realms” was arrested and confined for the
night in Windsor Castle. Next day he was conducted to the Tower,
whither most of his adherents and associates in the Hampton Court
adventure had preceded him; and he had the mixed pleasure of being
received _en route_ by his quondam friend the Lord Mayor, who had
lately turned traitor to his cause. Meanwhile Edward, very glad, no
doubt, to be rid of so austere and troublesome an uncle, returned from
Windsor to Hampton Court, and appointed Warwick Lord Great Master and
Lord High-Admiral. So far, John Dudley’s plot had prospered.