The Sisters Who Would Be Queen

by Leanda de Lisle

  As his fellow Councillors gathered that afternoon to wish him every success, he delivered a farewell speech, reminding them as forcibly as he could where their duties lay. “My Lords, I and these other noble personages, and the whole army, that now go forth … [do so] for the establishing of the Queen’s highness.” He was sure, he declared, of the Council’s loyalty, for they were all bound by “the holy oath of allegiance made freely by you to this virtuous lady the Queen’s highness,” who had accepted the crown only “by your and our enticement.” But if the army was betrayed, he warned, they had safeguards in place. “Consider also,” he continued, “that [this is] God’s cause.” Their primary intention was always to keep out papistry. “And think not the contrary, but if ye mean deceit … God will revenge the same.” One of the Council reassured him: “My Lord, if you distrust any of us in this matter you are much deceived; for which of us can wipe his hands clean thereof?” And with that Northumberland and his fellow Councillors sat down for a last supper, the duke still wondering how many would play Judas when he and the army were gone.

  Before Northumberland left he had a final audience with Jane at the Tower. She confirmed his commission as head of the army and “he took his leave of her” with her full support. He must also have said a good-bye to his son Guildford, whose brothers, including the youngest, sixteen-year-old Lord Henry Dudley, had all declared their willingness to fight on Jane’s behalf. As Northumberland walked out through the Council Chamber, he saw Arundel, who told him that he was sorry that he was not serving alongside him and that he would willingly “spend his blood even at his foot.” It was a lie.

  The following day, 14 July, Jane’s army left for East Anglia, amid the stony silence of the crowds gathered along the roadside. As they passed through Shoreditch, Northumberland was moved to comment: “The people press to see us, but not one sayeth God speed us.” With the threat of possible disturbances Jane ordered a guard for the gates of the city that night and a curfew was announced, to run between eight in the evening to five in the morning. To the west, in the Thames Valley, meanwhile, news of the sullen mood in London was helping raise support for a gentry-led rebellion with ordinary people flocking to support it. Jane learned that Mary had been proclaimed Queen in Buckinghamshire, while she, Jane, had been condemned as a “Queen of a new and pretty invention.” But it was in East Anglia, where the towns had been so quick to proclaim Jane Queen a few days earlier, that the rebel numbers were growing fastest; Mary’s household and friends were successfully recruiting even the evangelical elite to her cause.

  The next morning, as Northumberland and Northampton headed toward Bury St. Edmunds to cut off Mary’s support from the Midlands, people fled to Mary’s standard at Framlingham Castle in Suffolk. A description is recorded of the army arrayed eventually for her inspection. Mary’s father may have doubted a woman’s ability to inspire men in arms, but she came from fighting stock. Her mother was the daughter of the warrior queen Isabella of Castile, who had fought the Muslim Moors. As she rode up to her troops, a slim, erect figure on a white horse, Mary’s men went into battle order. “The infantry made ready their pikes, the cavalry brandished lances, the archer bent his bow…. Each man kept rank and did not even move a finger’s breadth from the position assigned him.” Mary’s horse shied at the glittering display of steel and fluttering banners, so she dismounted and walked along the line. As she did so each man knelt to the ground and from time to time she stopped to give words of encouragement. Mary was always good with the ordinary man, and it was her good fortune that the ordinary man hated Northumberland and those who had denied them social justice for so long.

  In the Tower, Jane had learned that five royal ships off the Norfolk coast had mutinied and the sailors had forced the officers to go over to Mary’s side. Some Councillors began to ask if the rebellion against Jane was God’s punishment for their denying Mary her rights. As reports came in that the tenants of noblemen loyal to her were refusing to serve them against Mary, so “each man then began to pluck in his horns.” They were afraid of the popular anger they had stirred up. Jane, however, continued to send out letters to sheriffs and justices of the peace demanding their allegiance: “Remain fast in your obeisance and duty to the Crown Imperial of this Realm, whereof We have justly the possession,” she ordered. Her father was surely at her side, sick as he was, but there was no Northumberland pressing Jane to remind the state’s officials, as she did, that each owed their duty “to us, your sovereign Lady, who means to preserve this Crown of England” from the hands “of strangers and papists.” Jane was determined to fight on.

  Aware now of the discontent even within her Council, Jane ordered a strong guard to be mounted around the Tower, and at seven o’clock the gates were shut. The keys were carried up to the Queen in person, and Jane ordered that the Lord Treasurer, Winchester, return from his London home. Outside, Bishop Ridley, at least, remained loyal, and he gave another devastating sermon at Paul’s Cross that Sunday, once again condemning Mary and Elizabeth. It received no better response from the crowd than the first, but Jane did not despair. On 18 July she began raising new troops to be led into rebel Buckinghamshire by “our right trusty and right well-beloved cousins, the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke.” There was real anger in Jane’s letters against those who would betray her. She was sure the rebels in Buckinghamshire would, in the end, either “lack heart to abide in their malicious purpose” or receive “such punishment and execution as they deserve.” But, as Jane cried out for blood, fresh men, and weaponry, already her generals had betrayed or abandoned her. Northumberland and Northampton had received “letters of discomfort” from friends on the Privy Council warning that all was lost, and fled Bury St. Edmunds at nightfall, “when the lamps had been lit.” They headed for Cambridge, the intellectual heartland of the evangelical revolution.

  In the Tower there was an air of unreality as another day dawned. Ordinary life was carrying on even as disaster descended. Jane had agreed to be godmother to the infant son of a radical evangelical called Edward Underhill. That morning, the 19th, the ceremony went ahead in the church on Tower Hill. Jane remained busy at her duties as Queen and her mother’s cousin Lady Throckmorton, the wife of Sir Nicholas, stood proxy in her place. At the same time in the town square in Northampton, Sir Nicholas was trying to prevent a Catholic knight, Sir Thomas Tresham, from proclaiming Mary Queen. The crowd was against him and he only narrowly escaped being lynched thanks to a group of gentlemen who pushed him onto a horse and held back the infuriated mob as he rode away. In the peace of the chapel on Tower Hill, however, such drama seemed far away. By tradition, the godmother chose the child’s baptismal name. Jane’s feelings for Guildford, despite any differences, may be gauged by the fact that the little boy was named after him. Jane’s father was also represented as the child was blessed. Harry Suffolk was still hoping the tide would turn in his daughter’s favor, and that of her young husband. He signed a letter that morning to the Councillor Lord Rich in Essex, informing him of the treachery of the Earl of Oxford and requiring his continued loyalty to Jane. Pembroke, a co-godparent, had signed it alongside him. But in truth, Pembroke, together with Arundel, was now ready to bring Jane down.

  With his business in the Tower completed, Pembroke returned to his London home, Baynard’s Castle. It was to prove a bitter day for Lady Katherine Grey, as her father-in-law prepared to betray her sister and her parents. That afternoon the Lord Mayor arrived along with a number of Councillors. Suffolk had been told they were leaving the Tower for a conference with the French ambassadors (concerning plans to send foreign auxiliaries from the Netherlands to help Northumberland) and so had allowed them through the guard. Over the next couple of hours there was considerable coming and going (perhaps witnessed by Katherine), with the Lord Mayor leaving briefly only to return with a large number of his aldermen. When they were all gathered, Pembroke announced that they would be riding to Cheapside to proclaim Mary as Queen. The traditional spot for such an announc
ement was the huge cross that was fixed there, and the fact that a cross was a Catholic symbol (and was disliked by Protestants, who often vandalized the one at Cheapside) might not have been coincidental. Many of those present as Pembroke spoke wept with shame for having proclaimed Jane, and with relief that civil war could now be avoided.

  As the procession formed outside Baynard’s Castle and set off toward Cheapside, the news spread before them. By the time the dignitaries had ridden up the hillside to St. Paul’s churchyard, the crowds were so great that they could hardly pass. But their horses were urged through the throng until at last they reached their destination. With Sir John Mason, Lord Cobham, and the Earl of Arundel among those present, Mary was then proclaimed to the sound of trumpets and the shouts of the crowd. Pembroke threw a cap full of coins into the air in celebration and pennies rained down from the windows of the houses around. In stark contrast to Jane’s proclamation in London nine days earlier, bonfires were promptly built and church bells rang while men ran through the streets shouting “the Lady Mary is proclaimed Queen!” When the Council’s soldiers arrived at the Tower, Suffolk knew his daughter’s cause was lost and he ordered his men to put down their weapons. The soldiers informed him that they would arrest him if he did not leave the Tower willingly and sign the new proclamation. He did as he was asked and on Tower Hill read the proclamation declaring Mary Queen. He then returned to tell his daughter, as gently as possible, that her reign was over.

  Suffolk found Jane with her mother and her ladies-in-waiting. According to the papal envoy, Commendone, Jane did not lose her composure as her father delivered the grim news. Instead, when he had finished, she reminded him that he had helped persuade her to accept the crown. Jane admitted that she had found his arguments convincing, but then “many men would be deemed to be wise if their shrewdness could not be judged by the results.” Her father took down her canopy of state, his ambitions dismantled in his hands. Jane, meanwhile, retired to an inner chamber with her mother and ladies-in-waiting, “with deep sorrow, but bearing the ill fate with great valour and endurance.”

  Not long afterward, Lady Throckmorton, who had been enjoying dinner in her house after Guildford Underhill’s christening, returned to the Tower and entered the silent throne room. She was astonished to find the cloth of state removed and all the symbols of Jane’s reign defaced, “a sudden change!” She discovered also that the Duke of Suffolk had left with Frances for Baynard’s Castle. The Greys hoped Pembroke could be persuaded that Northumberland and his family alone should take the fall for their actions in excluding Mary from the succession. Lady Throckmorton tried to leave as well, but it was too late: the guards’ orders had changed and she was held along with the other prisoners: Jane, Guildford, and the Duchess of Northumberland. The intended allocation of blame was already evident.

  The details of the coup reached Northumberland in Cambridge that night. He was angry at those who had helped convince him he had been acting in God’s interest in supporting the evangelical cause against Mary. His men were deserting and, like his father, he faced ruin for his loyalty to the wishes of a dead monarch. He had already sent the new Queen a message asking for her orders and begging a general pardon. The tears streamed down his face as he told the vice-chancellor of Cambridge University that “Queen Mary was a merciful woman, and that he doubted not thereof.” The following day Northumberland read the new proclamation and declared for Mary, with Northampton at his side. Thus “Jane was Queen for only nine days and those most turbulent ones,” a friend wrote to John of Ulm, the German academic who had had such high hopes for her.* He referred to the days since she had been proclaimed Queen at the Tower. Her reign had, in fact, lasted just under a fortnight, from Edward’s death on July 6, until her mother’s on the 19th.

  From her house at Hatfield, Elizabeth composed a prompt letter of congratulations to the new Queen Mary. The young princess absorbed important lessons from Jane’s brief reign. She would not forget that Protestant bishops had declared her a bastard, along with Mary, and that the Protestant elite had preferred one of the Grey sisters to her. The ordinary people, by contrast, had supported Mary’s rights of succession, and by inference, hers. Elizabeth would recall also how, in the end, the elite had turned against Jane, in part because her husband was a Dudley and that his name was hated. Jane’s Secretary of State, Sir William Cecil, filed away the documents marked “Jane the Queen,” scribbling on one simply: “Jana non Regina” (“Jane not the Queen”). It might have been her epitaph. But it was as a prisoner in the Tower that she would come into her own.

  * It is said by some modern historians that the phrase “nine-day Queen” was a later invention, intended to imply that Jane’s reign was a nine days’ wonder. But this letter is contemporary and is the probable origin of it.

  XII

  A Prisoner in the Tower

  STRIPPED OF HER CANOPY OF STATE, JANE WAS NOW MOCKED by the Tower guards. The imperial ambassadors reported that both she and Guildford received “sour treatment, very different to that meted out to them during their reign.” Jane had been moved to rooms in a small house next to the royal apartments within the Tower, and Guildford to the Beauchamp Tower close by. There they were divested of valuables down to their small change. Their friends and relations were, meanwhile, being brought in as prisoners almost daily.

  On the morning of 25 July 1553, Londoners were out in force for the arrival of Northumberland and two of Guildford’s brothers, Ambrose and Henry. The mood of the waiting crowd was ugly. Arundel, in charge of the prisoners, feared that Northumberland might be lynched and asked him to remove his distinctive red cloak before he passed through the City gates. Northumberland did as he was asked. The prisoners then rode up the hill toward the Tower, with their escort of cavalry and men at arms, under a barrage of rocks, pebbles, and cries of “Traitor!,” Northumberland’s cap in his hand in a gesture of penitence. His sixteen-year-old son, Henry Dudley, began to cry, but then a boy about the same age burst through the armed ranks that lined the route, and started running up and down the road, shouting and flailing with his sword. It was apparent he had no ears—that he was, in fact, the mutilated Gilbert Potter, the first victim of Jane’s brief reign.

  The next day, Parr of Northampton arrived at the Tower under guard, together with Robert Dudley. Jane was doubtless sorry to see Northampton a prisoner, but it would have been her father’s arrival at the Tower on the 27th that distressed her the most. The family had continued to promote Northumberland’s responsibility for the proclamation that declared Jane Queen and condemned Mary. The imperial ambassadors had been told, as if it were fact, that Northumberland was preparing to give the French Calais in return for their support for his son being made King. They had also been informed that Guildford had tried to pressure Jane into giving him the title, but Suffolk’s arrest indicates that their claims were regarded with skepticism. It was left to Frances to defend the family line, and she rode immediately to Mary, now at Beaulieu in Essex, to do so.

  Frances arrived at Beaulieu at two o’clock on the morning of the 29th. It was here in the chapel that Jane had once berated Mary’s servant Lady Wharton for genuflecting before the Blessed Sacrament. There cannot have been much sleep for Frances as she waited for her morning audience with Mary, but the Queen had both a forgiving nature and a long memory. A quarter of a century earlier, Frances’s mother had done her best to persuade Henry VIII of the folly of abandoning Catherine of Aragon in favor of Anne Boleyn. Those bitter years seemed very close now. Despite all her father had done—the break with Rome, his annulment of her mother’s marriage to him in order that he might be free to have a male heir—Mary was Queen. Later that morning, after her prayers, Mary listened as Frances pleaded that the Grey family were victims of Northumberland’s ambitions, with Harry Suffolk’s illness ascribed to Northumberland having poisoned him. Her contention was, it appears, that having poisoned Edward (as many believed), Northumberland was determined to kill Suffolk also for acting as Jane�
��s protector. Guildford would then have become coruler, or Northumberland would have placed a malleable eleven-year-old Mary Queen of Scots on the throne.

  Frances’s story was a little overwrought, even by the high standard of contemporary conspiracy theories. The facts remained, furthermore, that Jane had raised an army against Mary, the rightful Queen, and had signed documents calling her a bastard, as the imperial ambassadors flagged vigorously. Scheyfve and Renard, who had arrived at Beaulieu only a few hours before Frances, had enormous influence with Mary, representing, as they did, her cousin the Emperor. They were appalled when they discovered that she wanted to pardon Suffolk and his daughter, arguing that Jane, at least, should remain in the Tower. To release her, as they would persistently remind Mary, risked “scandal and danger.” Reluctantly, Mary agreed to deny her a pardon at this stage, but Jane’s father, Suffolk, was pardoned the very next day. The good news was carried to the city of Leicester, where grateful officials gave the messenger a large tip. But Suffolk remained in the Tower for almost another fortnight, too ill to be moved. His servants claimed he might die, but it was Jane the family really feared for. The day after Suffolk was pardoned, Jane was charged with treason and faced an almost certain death sentence. Treason trials were not then designed to establish guilt or innocence, but to advertise the wickedness of the offender, and the case against Jane was a straightforward one. The family needed to redouble their efforts to achieve a pardon for her.