by Kerr, Gordon
Henry had formulated a plan. From the beginning of his rule he had set up an intricate spying network across England and mainland Europe and was informed that support for the imposter was rapidly decreasing. Parliament passed a number of acts of attainder in 1495 and Henry was determined to make an example of those who had betrayed him. The chamberlain, Sir William Stanley was implicated in the plot and he was executed with all his estates passing to the king. Sir Robert Clifford was working as a double agent for the king, and frequently informed him of those who were plotting to betray him. The king had shown that he took a very strict stance on traitors and signposted what Warbeck could expect having fought against him.
After a short period of inactivity he began his invasion again. This time it was hugely less impressive as he was flanked by only a couple of small vessels and his wife and children. Again Warbeck appeared to be slightly deluded about the support that he would greet him in England, but he strategically chose the site of the recently suppressed Cornish Rebellion to bring his boats into harbour. As he arrived at Land’s End in Cornwall he was met by the country people who had recently been revolting against the excessive taxation that Henry VII had imposed. Their response was mixed, but Warbeck was able to march up to Exeter where he was met by the royal troops. Perkin Warbeck had never put himself forward as a particularly brave young man and this situation was no different. He rapidly deserted both his supporters and his family and hastily fled to Hampshire where he was forced to surrender.
Like all who were accused of conspiring against the king at this time, Warbeck faced a frightening end. Initially he was forced to make confessions to the public admitting his own wrongdoings, and his punishment was made all the more horrific by the fact that he was a foreigner and could not be tried for treason. He was instead forced to endure the brutality of being hung, drawn and quartered, and his body was laid out in the streets as a source of both ridicule and warning to any others who might go against the monarch.
Edward Plantagenet
Born in 1475, Edward Plantagenet was not blessed with an easy life. His struggles started in his childhood as he was troubled by the consequences of his father’s disloyalty to the king, his brother, Edward IV. In order to understand why Edward’s life ran the course that it did, it is first necessary to examine the life of his father, George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence. Born the younger son of Richard, Duke of York, George was never going to amount to as much as his elder brother, Edward. In 1461 when Edward was crowned king, George was appointed the Duke of Clarence and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. With his father-in-law, Richard Neville, at his side, he continued to act in a disloyal manner towards the king through his support of the rebels in northern England. Consequently he was deprived of his title and was forced as many had done before him, to flee to France.
Clarence proved to be a treacherous man as he quickly seized Neville’s numerous estates only days after his death. His behaviour was continually erratic and Edward found his rule as a monarch threatened, whilst his brother continued to behave unpredictably towards him. He was placed in prison under charges of slander and conspiracy to rebel and died shortly afterwards when he was mysteriously suffocated. As a result his lands were allocated elsewhere and he was posthumously charged with an act of attainder.
EDWARD’S CLAIM TO THE THRONE
Needless to say, Clarence’s son did not have the opportunity of a stable upbringing. Luckily for Edward he retained his mother Isabel’s high connections and, upon his father’s death, was still permitted the title of Earl of Warwick. In 1478, the same year that his father was murdered, he was ordained with this title and his supporters stood at his side to reinforce his claim to the throne. An opening seemed to become more apparent in 1483 after the deposition of his cousin, Edward V. Unfortunately for the Earl of Warwick he was prevented from becoming king by the acts of attainder against his father. This seemed even more unjust because the act could easily have been reversed in parliament.
Worse luck was to come to the young boy later that year when King Richard III had him locked up. There is much dispute as to whether this was just in the self-interests of the king or if, as has widely been reported, his detention was the result of the mental retardation that Warwick was a victim of. Either way it is likely that following the death of Richard’s son, he only granted Warwick the position of heir to the throne to please his ailing wife, Warwick’s guardian Queen Anne. After her death, Richard promptly denied Warwick’s claim to the throne and named his other nephew the Earl of Lincoln, John de la Pole, as heir in Warwick’s place. Edward Plantagenet, arguably the rightful heir to the throne, was sent back to his dank prison in the Tower of London and left to be forgotten.
THE PRETENDERS
Throughout the middle ages every government was posed with numerous threats to its leadership. England was no different as rulers had continually been forced to counter the efforts of others to overthrow their crowns. After the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, a new problem arose. The Yorkist family, headed by King Richard III was finally fought off by the victorious Lancasters and upon Richard’s death, England had a new king. King Henry VII succeeded to the throne later in this year and was determined to overcome all of his opponents.
The years directly following Henry’s accession proved to be very challenging to the new king. Although he had endeavoured to protect himself from the threat that Warwick posed through keeping him imprisoned, he had not reckoned upon the threat that others would pose to him. Throughout these first years of his rule, Henry Tudor was compelled to head off various imposters. The first of these was Lambert Simnel who assumed the identity of the Earl of Warwick himself and was assisted by members of the nobility in an attempt to overthrow the king. Henry acted fast to suppress his opposition and was lucky enough to discover that Simnel appeared to be an innocent pawn in the ambitious designs of others. The young boy was installed as the king’s own falconer and let off with a mere caution. Meanwhile the real Warwick was still being detained in the Tower of London, but was granted one glorious day of freedom to meet the king’s own ends. The young man was paraded through the streets of London to prove that he was very real and that pretenders to the throne would not be tolerated. Warwick’s excursion was short lived and he was sent back to the tower immediately.
Although Simnel had been an easy contender to deal with, Henry was soon faced with a far greater threat. As mentioned earlier, Perkin Warbeck’s assumption of the identity of Richard of York set the king back a step or two. He was forced to face up to this opponent more forcefully as he had some much more powerful support. When Warbeck was finally captured he was placed in the Tower of London with Warwick. The pretender engineered an escape for the two men and upon capture they were both tried for treason and executed in 1499.
Edward Plantagenet only lived into his twenties before his life was tragically cut short. Although he was never guilty of the same extent of treason as his father, he was really the subject of bad luck. He was a legitimate claimant to the throne but was shut away for the whole of his life in order to halt the threat he posed to those that ruled in his place. As a result of his death, the family of the Plantagenets who had produced fourteen kings, was finally destroyed.
Mary Queen of Scots
Mary Queen of Scots was unique in the respect that at one point in her life she had legitimate claims to the kingdoms of England, Ireland, Scotland and France. She was also one of the youngest ever monarchs when, at just six days old, she became Queen of Scotland. She had a very regal past and secured her own rights to the English throne by virtue of the fact that she was the great granddaughter of Henry VII. If Henry’s children were to produce no heirs then she would be entitled to the English throne, and this aspect was the source of the threat that she posed to Elizabeth. The sixteenth century was fractured by religious unrest and, as a ruler, Elizabeth I was determined to put a stop to this. After a harrowing few years of rule under the brutal Mary I and the short reign of Henry’s only son Edwar
d, Elizabeth endeavoured to restore Protestantism to a religiously divided country. As a devout Catholic, Mary Queen of Scots was even more of a threat to the Queen of England and she was held at arm’s length for many years.
From her birth in 1542 Mary was thought to be a very desirable marriage match around Europe. Seeing a chance to unite the kingdoms of Scotland and England and put an end to the religious disputes between them, a marriage proposal was set up between the baby and King Henry’s son, Edward VI. Although this match was accepted wholeheartedly by the Scottish nobility, the Catholics opposed the plan and took the girl to Stirling Castle, where they officially broke off the talks with England. Not one to take rejection lightly, Henry VIII began an aggressive series of raids on Scotland, known simply as ‘the rough wooing’, where the King attempted to change their minds by force. The Scots failed to react and turned in the direction of France in order to strengthen their old alliance with the country.
MARY IN FRANCE
A new marriage match was soon drawn up for Mary and she was betrothed to King Henri II’s son, François II. In 1548, at the tender age of six, she was sent to France to be raised in the French court. Here she was rewarded with a great education and became well versed in ancient Greek, Latin and French, to name but a few of her talents. She was extremely well received by her future father-in-law, Henri, and was known to be a truly delightful child. When the two youngsters were old enough the alliance was cemented by their marriage in 1558, ten years after her first arrival in France. She became the queen of both France and Scotland when her husband succeeded to the throne in 1559. But Mary’s happiness was short lived and within a year the new king was dead. This left her at a loose end and after the death of her dear mother, she decided to return to Scotland.
RETURN TO SCOTLAND
A new problem now arose for Mary. In her absence every shred of Catholicism had been erased from Scotland and, as a devout Catholic, she did not know how she would be received, or even if she would be allowed to practice Catholicism any longer. An agreement was reached which allowed Mary the right to practice her religion in private and she returned to a warm reception in 1561.
The beginning of her reign was well managed and she was popular among both the people and her advisers. However, the good feeling did not last after her second marriage in 1565 to her second cousin, Lord Darnley. To Mary the match seemed ideal but others could see the man for what he really was; arrogant, buffoonish and extremely impulsive. The pair had a difficult relationship and were unable to trust each other, especially after Darnley and some of his cronies took part in the unprovoked murder of Mary’s secretary. Mary’s health was somewhat precarious at this point as she was heavily pregnant and in need of the support of her people. Thanks to the disastrous choice she had made in her second husband she found that she had largely alienated those that had been willing to support her, and with the birth of her child to come, the future was looking very bleak indeed.
The relationship between the two did not get much better and there was still a large amount of antagonism between them, even after the birth of their son. The suspicious circumstances which were to follow shortly after were to signal the beginning of Mary’s downfall. Her loathed husband Darnley was murdered in very suspicious circumstances when the building that he was staying in was blown up in 1567. His cause of death did not actually come from the explosion but from being strangled afterwards which made Mary look even more guilty. Mary clearly hadn’t learned from this experience and made another dubious marriage match. Not only was the Earl of Bothwell generally disliked by the people, he was also heavily implicated in Darnley’s murder.
Such a bold move seemed to her Protestant opposition to be very unwise and they decided to confront her army in the summer of 1567. Mary Queen of Scots was forced to admit defeat and to abdicate in favour of her infant son, while she was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Throughout her time in prison Mary made it clear that she believed that she was the rightful Queen of England and posed even more of a threat to Queen Elizabeth by receiving the backing of the Pope in 1570. Although she was sufficiently worried by the risk that she was faced with, the English ruler decided that she should not execute Mary because she was royalty and she would therefore run the risk of serious backlash from the Scottish.
THE BABINGTON PLOT
Having been involved in many unsuccessful Roman Catholic plots to overthrow Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots then allegedly became involved in something a lot more dangerous. In 1586 a group of Catholic men revealed to Mary their plans to kill the Queen and to place her on the throne of England. Messages were passed in secret between Mary and Babington, the main plotter, and it was not long before Elizabeth’s adviser, Sir Francis Walsingham, got wind of their plans. Mary’s involvement in the plot was obvious, though it was more likely that Walsingham had forged her reply than Mary had written to Babington herself. Elizabeth was not able to protect her cousin any longer and under the advice of her ministers she ordered Mary’s execution, which took place in Fotheringhay Castle in 1587.
Mary’s reliance upon treachery against the Queen of England was spawned from the religious divide which prevailed in England and Scotland. Mary believed that killing Elizabeth was the right thing to do, as this move had been endorsed by the Pope who hoped to restore Catholicism to England. Throughout her life she was criticised for many of the decisions she had made and also the ones that she had been forced into. She held to her convictions that restoring Catholicism was the correct course of action, even if this resulted in the murder of her own cousin. Mary cannot be described as a bad person, but instead one who made many bad decisions and alienated her followers. She tried to do what she thought was right, but in doing so it cost her her life.
Sir Thomas More
Thomas More was fortunate enough to have been brought up in a stable environment within a very respectable family. His father was Sir John More, who had made a name for himself as a prominent judge and was keen to pass his own knowledge onto his son. More made sure that Thomas’s every need was catered for and enrolled him at St Anthony’s school in London. It was here that More’s two greatest passions were nurtured; his interest in law and his desire to serve the Church. His studies suited him well for both subjects and he was an avid scholar of Greek and Latin literature. He remained undecided about which path he should follow and, shortly after he qualified as a barrister in 1501, he decided to join religious orders and become a monk.
After a few years he decided that his duty to his country should be put above his desire to lead a life solely devoted to God, and he left the monastry to enter parliament in 1504. This was a busy year for him; he married for the first time and met and forged a strong friendship with the humanist Erasmus. More’s introduction to parliament was not hugely successful as he openly challenged Henry VII about the high rates of taxes that he had been charging the poor under the agency of Empson and Dudley. Sir Thomas More’s insistence upon being fair gained him a reputation for being a patron of the poor and secured him the support of the people throughout his life. However, More’s policies were risky and put his family in danger. He was forced to withdraw from public life until 1509, when the greatly angered Henry VII had died.
HENRY’S CLOSEST ADVISER
As More reacquainted himself with parliament, his various merits and skills came to the attention of the new king, Henry VIII. His first appointment as Henry’s adviser came in 1515, when he accompanied the delegation to Flanders to resolve the disputes surrounding the wool trade. He achieved even greater recognition from the king when he managed to suppress an uprising and in 1518 was rewarded by becoming a member of the Privy council. Clearly, More was a very talented man and his knowledge of politics and law suited Henry VIII perfectly. What most appealed to the king were More’s writing skills. With his assistance the king was able to draw up his ‘Defence of the Seven Sacraments’ in response to Luther’s protestant teachings. As chancellor, More was also asked to spearhead a campaig
n to enforce laws against heretics, which proved to be quite unsuccessful – only four people ever suffered the penalty for this crime.
More’s talents were constantly recognised by Henry VIII and he was duly rewarded. Firstly, he was knighted by the king in 1521 and was then made speaker in the House of Commons in 1523. More’s influence helped to establish the parliamentary privilege of free speech, which left politicians free to express their views in parliament. The last of More’s promotions came in 1529 when he became Lord Chancellor after Cardinal Wolsey had fallen out of the king’s favour. Henry VIII was proving himself to be a frightening opponent to any who spoke against him, and More would have been wise to pay attention to this.
THE BREAK WITH ROME
In 1527 Henry made a decision that Sir Thomas More felt he could not support. He sought to seek a divorce from his wife, Katherine of Aragon, as she had failed to produce an heir and, more importantly, he was in love with his mistress Anne Boleyn. The religious beliefs that More had held so closely to him could not be observed if the king was to allow a divorce between himself and his wife, expressly as a way of legitimising his infidelity. Henry did not act against More at first, but it was noted that the reason behind the politician’s resignation was given as poor health. This was unlikely to be the primary cause of his resignation from Henry’s service and he made no secret of his disdain for the king’s new marriage.