by Derek Wilson
It was in the spring and summer of 1527 that these three powerful forces combined to push England in a wholly new direction. The influence of Lutheranism was reaching into scholarly and fashionable circles. Students at university and the Inns of Court were discussing the new ideas, as were merchants, free-thinking clergy and even members of the royal household. In recent months copies of a revolutionary book had begun to circulate. William Tyndale, in voluntary exile in the Low Countries, translated the New Testament into English and despatched it across the North Sea. The bishops banned it and, when they could lay hands on copies, they burned them and threw their owners into jail. This only emboldened radical spirits and proved to them that the pope and his minions were afraid that the searchlight of holy scripture would illuminate their corrupt ways and their false doctrines. Wolsey received a growing volume of complaints about preachers who were proclaiming heresy. He refused to be pushed into overreaction by alarmed traditionalists, reasoning that it was unwise to make martyrs. Occasional demonstrations of government determination would be sufficient to ensure that the latest intellectual fad went the way of all other challenges to religious convention. In this he grossly underestimated the power of reformist sentiment which was churning up a religious war in Germany which cost 100,000 lives, shattering monastic cloisters and tearing down the objects of ‘superstition’ that had adorned church walls for centuries.
Henry was, as ever, preoccupied with international diplomacy. Currently he was going through a pro-French phase. In February 1525 an imperial army had inflicted a humiliating defeat on their enemies at the Battle of Pavia. Francis I was taken prisoner and conveyed in triumph to Madrid, where Charles V demanded a massive ransom, including a third of French territory. Had Francis agreed to these humiliating, draconian terms there would have been an end to French pretensions in Europe, which would have become in large measure part of the Habsburg empire. In England this gave rise to serious alarm. The Emperor was now worryingly powerful and, if that was not cause enough for concern, he made it quite clear that he no longer had need for allies. Any hope that Henry might have entertained of sharing in Charles’ good fortune and picking up for himself some tasty morsels of French land were soon dashed. He was furious at having once again been the victim of Habsburg perfidy. Domestically, his rage was vented against Queen Catherine, the Emperor’s aunt, and this added to the tension between them. Diplomatically the king was ready to be drawn into an alliance with the French.
Not until May 1527 was all in readiness for a ceremonial demonstration of Anglo–French accord but then Francis’ ambassadors were received in splendour at Greenwich. They were treated to four days of banquets, ‘combats’, masques and balls in beautiful pavilions specially constructed for the purpose. Henry signed the treaty. Wolsey preened himself as the architect of the new-found friendship between his master and the King of France while the pro-imperial party glowered in impotent silence.
But those in the know were aware of a significant sub-text to the celebrations. A powerful rival to the great cardinal had, at last, emerged. It was during the Anglo–French festivities that courtiers first observed and began to interpret the body language of the king and Mistress Boleyn. Henry now secretly confided to his minister that he was conscience-bound to seek the annulment of his marriage, so Wolsey used his legatine powers to summon an ecclesiastical court to deliberate on the validity of the royal marriage. The senior churchmen and canon lawyers were in the unenviable position of having to juggle nice theological and legal arguments with their desire to please their sovereign and they were also aware that if they delivered the verdict Henry wanted, his outraged wife would, as a matter of course, appeal over their heads to Rome. It must have been with a profound sense of relief that they received some shattering news that provided an excuse for adjourning their deliberations: Charles V, had despatched imperial troops to sack the papal city and drive the vicar of Christ into the Castel Sant’ Angelo, where he was now a virtual prisoner. All of Europe was shocked by this audacious sacrilege but to Wolsey it seemed that the Emperor had played into his hands. None of his political enemies could argue with his policy of alliance with the French to contain soaring imperial ambition. The papacy was, to all intents and purposes, out of commission and that left a vacuum at the heart of Christendom, a vacuum someone had to fill in order to challenge Charles V, achieve Clement VII’s release, stop the spread of heresy, restore equilibrium to the affairs of the continent, reform the Church and settle a variety of specific inter-state issues, including the little matter of the king of England’s marital problems. Cardinal Wolsey was in no doubt whatsoever who was the only man to shoulder this immense burden.
In July 1527, he set out with more than even his accustomed splendour to carry his master’s fraternal greetings to Francis I at Amiens and then proceed to Avignon where he had summoned a solemn conclave of cardinals to meet with him. But Wolsey’s power had been built upon the king’s confidence in him and that confidence was now being undermined by Anne Boleyn and her faction, prominent among whom was her uncle, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. He had for years been a violent if covert enemy of the ‘upstart’ cardinal who had usurped that position at the king’s right hand that he believed was his by hereditary right. Wolsey’s opponents ensured that the imperial ambassador knew of Wolsey’s plans, with the result that Charles V put pressure on the Pope to forbid his cardinals to travel to Avignon. The emperor was also informed of the slight being offered to his aunt, Queen Catherine, and he set himself staunchly to prevent Henry casting her aside. Anne, meanwhile, was only concerned about the divorce. Having no confidence in Wolsey to secure it, she urged the king to bypass him by a direct appeal to Clement. All this inept and malicious activity muddied the waters and ensured that the king’s ‘great matter’ would drag on for years and have monumental, unforeseen consequences.
Feelings ran high in the towns and villages of the realm. They may have been focused on what many saw as the heroic queen Catherine and the despised cardinal but what lay behind them were the jumbled emotions of anti-French sentiment, religious discord and discontent over taxation.
John Dudley cannot have failed to be aware of the feelings running through London and his own estates, but his perspective on events was very different. He was at the centre of things. He attended the king at Westminster and on progress. He featured prominently as one of the new stars of the tiltyard in the martial contests laid on to entertain the king and foreign dignitaries. He was a member of Wolsey’s impressive entourage in the summer of 1527. He witnessed himself or shared gossip about those incidents which were the very stuff of court tittle-tattle: incidents such as the cardinal’s reception on his return from his failed diplomatic venture. Within hours everyone knew that Henry had kept his minister waiting for an audience and had then interviewed him in the presence of Mistress Boleyn. Yet, no more than any other habitué of the court, could he have fully understood the forces that were threatening to pull his world apart. He was aware of the clash of personalities, of the greater freedom with which men expressed their resentment of Wolsey’s power and ostentation, of the growing estrangement between king and queen, of the widespread sympathy which Catherine enjoyed and of the slow emergence of factions, but he was not a political animal and he was preoccupied with pursuing his own advancement. That did not yet involve him in taking sides in any of the personal, political or religious rivalries that were emerging.
Pope Clement prevaricated over the annulment of the royal marriage, because he had no alternative. Wolsey’s heart was not in the business though he prosecuted it with all the vigour and guile at his command, to no effect. Meanwhile, in 1529, Charles V and Francis I patched up their quarrels at the Peace of Cambrai and England was, once more, pushed out into the diplomatic cold. Henry readily believed what Anne lost no opportunity to suggest to him, that the cardinal was opposed to the king’s wishes and was secretly trying to frustrate them. He also began to pay attention to all those criticisms of Wolsey that
he had always dismissed before: the servant was become too powerful, rivalling his master; he outshone the king in splendour; while pretending to work on his sovereign’s behalf he pursued his own policies and ambitions.
But it was not just the man against whom the king’s suspicions were raised. He began to think that the writers of heretical pamphlets and banned books might have a case when they complained about the usurped temporal authority of the senior clergy.
. . . the bishops, abbots, priors, deacons, archdeacons, suffragans, monks, canons, friars, pardoners and summoners . . . have gotten into their hands more than the third part of all your realm . . . What money pull they in by probates of testaments, privy tithes, and by men’s offerings to their pilgrimages and at their first masses . . . by hallowing of churches, altars, superaltars, chapels and bells . . . Is it any marvel that the taxes . . . that your Grace most tenderly of great compassion hath taken among your people to defend them from the threatened ruin of their commonwealth hath been so slothfully, yea, painfully levied, seeing that almost the utmost penny that might have been levied hath been gathered before yearly by this ravenous, cruel and insatiable generation?1
So wrote Simon Fish in A Supplication for the Beggars, from the safety of the Low Countries. The Boleyns drew Henry’s attention to the diatribe and Henry not only read it but extended his protection to the author. It was, doubtless, Anne who encouraged Henry to think daring new thoughts and he, driven almost to distraction by what he saw as the ‘obstruction’ of the ecclesiastical establishment, was not the man to shrink from draconian measures if they might serve his purpose. Wolsey was dismissed from office and only his sudden death saved him from a charge of treason.
The Boleyns and their friends were now unchallenged and unchallengeable and courtiers scrambled to win the favour of the second family in the kingdom. The twenty-six-year-old Sir John Dudley was among those who emerged triumphantly from the scrum. He was no original thinker but he was in tune with those who were championing reform and urging the king on. Now he displayed a new confidence, boldness and aggression in all his dealings. The 1530s would be the decade that transformed his fortunes as well as those of the nation.
It was only three months after Wolsey’s death that Dudley achieved his first public office, as a member of the commission of the peace for Surrey and Sussex. However, it was not the southern counties that engaged John’s attention. Throughout 1532 and 1533 he was engaged in a monumental series of land transactions that removed his base from south-east England to the Midlands. His eyes were fixed on the ancient Dudley estates and he was determined on nothing less than the restoration of his family’s greatness. The spur to this sudden burst of energy was the state of the barony. It had fallen on hard times since the days of Lord John Sutton de Dudley, due largely to the ineptitude and fecklessness of the great man’s heirs. Perhaps we should not judge Edward, the seventh baron too harshly. He did correctly assess the changing nature of English politics. Realizing that attendance on the king was the key to advancement rather than remaining in Worcestershire and patiently building up his estates, Edward had rented one of the new houses in Tothill Street, Westminster, specifically built in response to the demand of gentlemen and noblemen who wanted to be close to the court. From there he tried to cut a dash in Tudor society. In order to maintain an impressive style, over the years, he ran himself further and further into debt and mortgaged many of his lands. He had, in addition, a large family to keep. We know of eleven children who survived infancy. For some of them he managed to engineer alliances with other ancient families, but such connections were only through daughters or younger sons. The children of Lord Dudley were not regarded as good catches because, despite his efforts, he lacked the talent, character or sheer pushiness to gain the king’s favour. Edward died in January 1532, at precisely the right moment to facilitate the upward mobility of his second cousin.
The man who succeeded to the barony was another John, Lord Edward’s eldest son. He was a wastrel and a simpleton and in short measure completed the dismantling of his patrimony that his father had begun. Sir John, now the most prominent member of the family, was not prepared to stand by and see its property dispersed. He spent several months in feverish activity with influential friends and wealthy potential backers putting together a rescue package. On 3 July 1532, a consortium consisting of the Earl of Shrewsbury, Baron De la Warr, Thomas Fitzalan, Lord Maltravers, William Whorwood, Sir Thomas Arundell, Sir George Carew, Sir Thomas Wyatt and Sir Andrew Dudley (Sir John’s brother) paid £4,200, on behalf of Sir John, for,
Dudley Castle, the manor of Sedgeley, 50 messuages, 3,000 acres of [arable] land, 1,000 acres of meadow, 5,000 acres of pasture, 1,000 acres of furze and heath and £25 of rent in Dudley, Sedgeley, Ettinghall, Brierly, Coseley, Woodsetton, Upper Gornal, Nether Gornal, Darlaston, Cotwall End and Gospel End, the manors of Dudley and Himley and the manor of Deoder in Shropshire.2
Lord Dudley now mortgaged the remainder of his lands directly to Sir John for £6,000. This was a huge sum and the courtier had to use every means at his disposal to raise the necessary capital. He borrowed. He obtained mortgages. He sold some of his Sussex property and what he could not sell he found other ways to turn into cash. His stepfather had a life interest in some of the lands which John had inherited from his mother. John now sold the reversion of these lands to his friend at court, Sir Edward Seymour (so they would transfer to Seymour’s ownership on the death of Sir Arthur Plantaganet). Seymour, in his turn, seems to have borrowed the money from the king. This meant that Dudley had to accept a much lower valuation of the property but he was happy to do so in return for ready cash. It was the same with the Lisle lands. Since they, along with the title, would now be his when the viscount died – because Arthur and Elizabeth had had no heirs male – John could sell their reversions too. He also looked to the king for help. He had, by now, achieved that prominence in the royal household that enabled him to sue for favours. Thus it was that, in March of this same year, 1532, he received the wardship of Anthony Norton, orphaned son of a Worcestershire landowner, whose property lay conveniently close to the old Dudley lands.
Sir John’s virtual assumption of family leadership and his grasping of the Dudley lands could not fail to provoke the resentment of his relatives. Lord Dudley’s affairs were in hopeless disarray and he defaulted on his mortgage repayments. His cousin, not unnaturally, foreclosed and the wretched baron was left with virtually nothing. He became a laughing stock throughout the capital and was commonly referred to as ‘Lord Quondam’ – ‘Lord Once-upon-a-time’. It was left to his dependants to go cap in hand to the king on his behalf and to appeal desperately to their friends for help. Quondam’s son, Edward, thanking one of Henry’s ministers for aid in 1536, assured his benefactor, ‘Had it not been for your compassion I must have sought my living from door to door.’3 And Cecily, Lady Dudley, threw herself on the mercy of one of the religious houses that, in better times, her family had generously patronized: ‘I have little above £20 a year, which I have by my lady mother, to find me and one of my daughters, with a woman and a man to wait upon me,’ she explained when the nunnery was faced with closure, ‘and unless the good prioress of Nuneaton gave us meat and drink of free cost I could not tell what shift to make.’4
Lord Edward and Lord John were responsible for their own downfall but it was inevitable that they should blame their dashing and successful kinsman for their plight. Quondam feebly excused himself from appearance at court by claiming that Sir John lay in wait for him to have him hustled off to prison. The baronial family looked upon their cousin with both envy and resentment as an ogre who had used sharp practice to bring them all to beggary. They themselves were not above acting outside the law in their efforts to thwart him. One of Quondam’s brothers, Arthur, a priest, took matters into his own hands as we know from a plaint Sir John entered against him in the Court of Chancery:
. . . minding utterly to disherit and wrongfully to put your said orator from the p
remises for ever, [he] of late wrongfully entered into the castle of Dudley and thereupon brake up certain chests and coffers, then being in the said castle, wherein remained divers evidences, charters, writings, court rolls, rentals, terriers, etc., of the said Sir John Dudley and took them away with him and keepeth them in his possession and custody and that [he] at all times denied and utterly refused to return them . . .5
All who knew Sir John recognized that he was a shrewd and ambitious young man. It was said of him that he ‘had such a head that he seldom went about anything, but he conceived first three or four purposes beforehand’.6 He was certainly an energetic go-getter but he was far from being unique among the courtiers of his generation in using position and contacts to enlarge and rationalize his land holdings. Edward Seymour was embarked upon a consolidation programme which would make him the most powerful man in Somerset and Thomas Wriothesley, an up-and-coming member of Wolsey’s secretariat, would shortly embark upon a similar programme to achieve prominence in Hampshire. What was different about John Dudley was his transferring his attention to the inheritance of his baronial cousins. If he was merely interested in building a power base he could have concentrated on those counties where he already had a considerable stake. That would have been less complicated and would not have involved raising a huge amount of loan capital all at once. But the land deals he opted for in 1532–3 involved him in an enormous risk.