by Derek Wilson
John Dudley had a profound respect for both king and Council. No reader of his letters can conclude that he saw himself as another Wolsey or Cromwell, determined to overawe the other advisers or come close to usurping the royal prerogative.
Let us be ready to spend our goods, lands and lives for our master and country, and despise the flattering of ourselves with riches as the greatest pestilence in the commonwealth. Let us not be blinded and abused by those so inflicted. Though plagued in body and purse, I am rich in goodwill to serve my master and commonwealth.4
So Dudley protested to Cecil in December 1552 and it was not the only occasion on which he wrote in similar vein. Before we dismiss such sentiments we should measure Dudley’s words against his actions.
As the months passed Edward became more and more involved with the work of government. The first indication of a new regime was the regular location of Council meetings. Somerset had usually summoned his colleagues to one or other of his own residences. Dudley decreed that the Council should meet at court and that when the king was on progress some of his councillors should be on hand to consult with him, leaving only a rump at Westminster. This was not difficult to achieve because there was no institutional gap between Council and chamber. Several of Edward’s household officers and attendants also belonged to the advisory body. In other words the young king always had to hand men he trusted with whom he could discuss affairs of state. Early in 1552 the situation was formalized when the ‘Council for the State’ was set up. This was a body largely, but not exclusively, chosen from among the members of the Council, who were appointed to meet with the king once a week to overview the more pressing items of government business and draw up an agenda for the ensuing six days. It is not clear how much creative input Edward made to these discussions but the intention was to familiarize him with the complexities of the nation’s affairs and he responded as a serious young man would to taking on those responsibilities for which he had been trained every day of his short life.
As for Dudley, he too studied to make his royal charge into a king. And not just any king but the assertive, confident heir of his magnificent father. We can see both their minds at work in a letter bearing the stamp of the royal signet which was sent to the Lord Chancellor, Richard Rich, in October 1551. Rich had returned to the Lord President a previous despatch from the Council at court on the grounds that it did not carry enough signatures. It brought an imperious response. Was the Lord Chancellor, Edward demanded, casting doubt on the king’s authority?
We think that our authority is such that whatever we do by the advice of our council attendant, although much fewer than eight, has more strength than to be put into question. You are not ignorant that the number of councillors does not make our authority. If you or any other should be of any other opinion . . . that is not convenient and might be harmful where our affairs, for lack of speedy execution for expectation of other councillors might take great detriment.5
Edward had discussed his stern response with Dudley but the sentiment and the sense of personal affront were his own and he recorded as much in his private journal. If he were expected to submit every decision to be endorsed by a large committee, he noted, ‘I should seem to be in bondage.’6
The king was emerging from the chrysalis of total dependence on sage counsel and John Dudley was creating the conditions for this metamorphosis. The Lord President’s letters to the Council were increasingly peppered with such comments as ‘when you have showed the letter to the king, if he likes it, you may work with the rest of the lords,’ ‘the King has seen [this letter] and would have the man communed with’, ‘it is time the King’s pleasure were known for the speaker of the house [of Commons].’ Surviving Council memoranda prepared for Edward indicate that he was consulted on (or at least informed about) a wide range of issues from relations with foreign states to grants of land and pleas from supplicant subjects.
‘Without counsel the people fall,’ Dudley wrote in September 1552, quoting back to Council Secretary, William Cecil, words from Proverbs 29: 18 previously referred to by his protégé. Good government during a minority depended, both men agreed, on a body of men who were united in their objectives and effective in working towards the accomplishment of those objectives. Dudley and his colleagues had before them a heavy agenda of national recovery after the disastrous Somerset years when the kingdom was governed by a man of ‘unskilful protector-ship and less expertise in government’.7 Dudley took it as axiomatic that decisions should be made by the whole Council and this is what actually happened, despite the administrative difficulties of the board often being divided during royal progresses. Does this indicate a genuine absence of faction or simply that England had exchanged the tyranny of Somerset for the tyranny of Dudley? Had he so effectively packed the Council and the chamber with his own cronies, and did his powerful personality so dominate the political life of the nation that no one dared thwart his will? It is very difficult to make the surviving records support the traditional image of Dudley as an ambitious, ruthless schemer who subordinated the interests of king and country to his own. Even the final episode of the Seymour tragedy cannot be made to serve the ‘wicked Dudley’ thesis. Indeed, we gather from the treatment of the fallen Protector a much more rounded view of Dudley’s character.
In February 1550 Somerset was set free and subsequently pardoned. This was political expediency dictated by the ex-Protector’s popular following and the need to avoid rifts in the evangelical consensus. In order to underline the restoration of amity between the old comrades, Dudley’s eldest son, John, was married to Somerset’s daughter, Anne, on 3 June. The lavish celebrations at the Somerset estate at Sheen were attended by the king and most of the court and Edward commented favourably in his journal on the ‘fair dinner’ and the dancing which followed. The only lead player to be absent from the celebrations was the groom’s father, Dudley pleaded ill health as the reason for missing John and Anne’s nuptials. As well as a show for public consumption, this wedding was a genuine attempt by the two men to patch up their quarrel. But that does not explain the singular mark of favour which had been extended to Somerset in April, when he was restored to the Council, where he became assiduous in his attendance. It may be that Dudley believed or wished to believe that the duke really had turned over a new leaf. He might have been persuaded by his colleagues that the support of Somerset’s clientage would be valuable to the regime. He must have recognized that if the ex-Protector were left in the political wilderness he might soon be making mischief, whereas if he were tied into the government it would be much more difficult for him to dissociate himself from agreed policy. Unfortunately Dudley’s generosity backfired.
What happened was that whenever Dudley was absent from Council meetings Somerset asserted his authority over the body. On several Council orders and letters it is his name that heads the list of signatures. Far from resenting this, Dudley seems to have encouraged Somerset to take on the role of deputy president. We find him instructing Cecil, ‘see what Somerset, the master of the horse, you and the others resolve: send me the instrument if it needs my signature and I will sign it,’ and, in order to expedite certain matters while he is absent the secretary is to gather together the appropriate documents so that ‘at Somerset’s coming to court you may deliver them to him.’8 Government solidarity was at the centre of Dudley’s thinking; if recent troubles were to be laid to rest the nation’s leaders must be united behind a coherent agenda. He needed Someset to be and to be seen to be a committed member of the regime and he fell over backwards to accommodate the duke. That is not to say that he did not have misgivings. Within weeks of Somerset’s rehabilitation he suspected that the duke was trying to build up a political following of his own. He had, on his own initiative, begun talks with Bishop Gardiner, the Earl of Arundel and others imprisoned for their parts in the recent conspiracy. On 25 June Dudley had an earnest talk with one of Somerset’s closest supporters, Richard Whalley, who reported the conversation to Ce
cil.
Last night Warwick . . . talked with me at great length about [the Duke of Somerset], to whom he seems a faithful friend, being much concerned about his late proceedings – his unadvised attempt to release the bishop of Winchester and the Arundels and his late conference with the [Earl of] Arundel. He told me that the whole council dislikes these things . . . They all think he aspires to have again the same authority he had as protector. He would harm himself. His late government is still disliked and he does not stand in the King’s credit as he and others fondly believe. By discretion he might have the King as his good lord, and all he can reasonably desire . . . let your better wisdom consider [Somerset’s] preservation. Never leave him until you persuade him to some better consideration of his proceedings, and to concur with Warwick, who will be very plain with him at his coming to court.9
Presumably this overture via one of Somerset’s friends was followed by a direct approach. Diplomats, ever eager to detect government rifts, reported that all was well between the two old comrades in arms and throughout the summer and autumn Somerset played a leading role in the work of the Council. It is difficult to see what more Dudley could have done to maintain an honourable place for the ex-Protector in the political life of the kingdom. Unfortunately, Somerset was incapable of responding with a due measure of humility or even intelligence. He remained deaf to the entreaties of friends, the promptings of reason and even to considerations of self-preservation. Had he bided his time and concealed his intentions it might well have been that, in the summer of 1550, Somerset would have had the political field to himself, for Dudley had planned on a long absence.
He had decided to take up once more the governance of the northern border region and a patent was drawn up appointing him Warden of the East and Middle March. The Scottish problem was becoming progressively worse. England’s inadequately provisioned Lowlands garrisons were picked off, one at a time, by the local Scottish magnates with help from Henri II, and French influence north of the border had never been stronger. In February Dudley realized that he could not devote sufficient attention to the guardianship of the Narrow Seas and, in February, he handed the Admiralty into the safe keeping of his protégé, Lord Clinton (who continued in that post with one brief intermission until his death in 1585) and prepared to travel north to negotiate a new agreement with the Scots and to reinforce the authority of central government in an area where the loyalty of local magnates could not be automatically relied on.
However, on 19 July, a Council minute recorded, ‘it was not thought convenient that the Earl of Warwick should, according to the former order, go into the north, but rather for many urgent considerations attend upon the King’s person.’10 Plans for the border region were downgraded, the veteran soldier and lawyer, Sir Robert Bowes being sent to make a thorough survey of the territorial and political situation. Chief among the ‘many urgent considerations’ for the change of plan was the behaviour of Somerset. Every policy that was ill received by a substantial section of the political nation played into Somerset’s hands, since he was the obvious focus for discontent. So far from associating himself with the decisions of the conciliar majority he allowed government opponents to know that they had his sympathy. One place to which he could look for support was parliament and he tried to persuade the Council to recall it. The two houses had been adjourned for Easter and members had been told to be ready to reconvene in October. Yet, despite the government’s need for money and the piling up of other urgent business, Dudley insisted on further prorogations and the assembly did not meet again until January 1552.
Foreign diplomats drew their own conclusions, which certainly had some foundation in reality: Somerset and Dudley were at loggerheads in the Council; the duke intended to appeal over the heads of the government to his friends in the country; as soon as the Commons met he would accuse Dudley and the Council of pursuing their own interests rather than those of the king and the people; he was spreading sordid rumours about Dudley, including the extraordinary claim that the earl intended to divorce his wife and marry Princess Elizabeth. Dudley was acutely conscious of how unpopular he was becoming. Since young Edward was beyond criticism Dudley was the target for everyone with a grievance against the government. He was indelibly marked with the stain of having removed the ‘good duke’ and suppressed the common people in the interests of the wealthy elite. He was also branded as a man who came from tainted stock. Dudley knew that men murmured in corners and commented that one could expect nothing better from the son of an executed traitor. ‘Had I sought the people’s favour,’ he grumbled to Cecil, ‘without respect to his highness’s surety I needed not so much obloquy for some kind of men. Though my father, after his master was dead, died for doing his master’s commands, I will serve without fear, seeking God’s glory and his highness’s surety.’11
In the meantime all Dudley could do was keep a close watch on Somerset and outplay the potential rival in the game of building up alliances. But we must not exclude the personal element in Dudley’s reaction to Somerset’s opposition. There is no worse enemy than a betrayed friend and Dudley, with much justification, felt himself betrayed. He could truly claim that he had saved Somerset’s life, that he had restored him to a place of honour, that he was continuing the religious revolution to which the Protector had been committed. There may well have been considerations of realpolitik in all this but that does not mean that Dudley felt no affection for Somerset or that the years of comradeship in court and on campaign counted for nothing.
Had Dudley been a political animal who enjoyed outwitting enemies and loved power for its own sake – in other words, had he been the Machiavellian schemer of popular legend – he would have been in his element. He was not, and he found the burden of government, the constant demands made upon him and his growing unpopularity wearying and debilitating. He frequently claimed that cares of state undermined his health. If his own self-diagnosis is to be believed his body was racked by sundry torments. In March 1550 he was ‘very ill and troubled with sickness’. In September he was laid up with a fever. A few weeks later he had a throat infection (a ‘falling of the uvula’). In December 1552 he excused his absence from court with the words, ‘Being continually sick I cannot but talk of cure and medicine: bear with my infirmity, for I mean as well to master and country as the fittest.’ And when he was not sick himself he worried about the presence of contagious disease in his own household and concluded, ‘I think neither I, my son, nor any in my house should repair to the king unless he commands to the contrary or you think it without danger.’12 How genuine were Dudley’s claims to be so frequently incapacitated? There were, if a seventeenth-century chronicler is to be believed, some colleagues and close observers who declined to take the Lord President’s protestations at face value.
‘What,’ said they, ‘is he never sick but when affairs of greatest weight are in debating? Or wherefore else doth he withdraw himself from the company of those who are not well assured of his love? Wherefore doth he not now come forth and openly overrule . . . ? Would he have us imagine by his absence that he acteth nothing? Or, knowing that all moveth from him, shall we not think that he seeketh to enjoy his own ends . . . ?’13
Dudley’s frequent absence from the centre of power does not really square with the image of an overbearing Svengali who made the juvenile king his puppet and crushed all opposition by the force of his personality and the threat of dire reprisals. However well the Lord President and Lord Great Master may have packed the Council and royal household with his own agents and supporters, he could not assert his will effectively if he was frequently away from court, particularly when Somerset and his allies were challenging his authority. It is only when we cast aside the traditional presentation of the ‘bad duke’ and allow his words and actions to speak for themselves, as they happened, rather than as they have become coloured by the notoriety attaching to the final crisis of his life, that we can properly understand John Dudley, his achievements and his ultimate failure
.
He was a man whose head and heart were often in conflict. Like the good tactician he was, Dudley had a clear understanding of what the country needed. In political terms he was absolutely committed to two principles. He believed that England could only prosper under a strong, personal monarchy. Henry VIII was his model. He had never known any other occupant of the throne, but he had heard stories of the periodic chaos that had afflicted the realm in the days of his father and grandfather. He believed also in consensus government during a royal minority. It followed that he saw his own position as provisional and that he had no intention of emulating the folie de grandeur of Somerset’s solo rule.
However, when it came to making consensus government work Dudley was hampered by his consciousness of his own limitations and by his impatience to get things done. He had little enthusiasm for committee work and sometimes felt disconcertingly out of his depth in debate. Called upon to give his opinion on a discussion paper prepared by the king, he ruefully confessed, ‘as it is all in Latin I can but guess at it.’ He asked for a private meeting with the Lord Chamberlain and one or two others who could explain clearly what was on Edward’s mind.14 Dudley held highly educated men in awe and felt keenly his own inability to converse with them on equal terms.