by Derek Wilson
One area of expenditure that Dudley deliberately declined to prune was defence. Having abandoned Boulogne he took care to reinforce the Calais pale. Having pulled his forces back to the Scottish border, he had all the garrisons inspected and, where necessary, strengthened. But it was his first love, the navy, that received the lion’s share of available funds. There was no wholesale laying off of ships and men as had always happened in the past when the nation enjoyed a period of peace. Over £20,000 per annum was being regularly spent on the navy which, in August 1552, numbered fifty-five ships, most of which were either at sea or ready for service. The Council for Marine Causes maintained the dockyards at Portsmouth, Deptford, Gillingham and Woolwich, which had an ongoing programme of building, repairing and refitting. Crews were kept busy on escort duty with the mercantile and fishing fleets and with forays against the pirates of the Narrow Seas.
It would be stretching the evidence to claim that Dudley had a vision for overseas expansion and exploration but he certainly continued his interest in maritime developments. He looked beyond the narrow confines of Europe with the continual frustrations that war and diplomatic complications threw in the way of trade and he encouraged brave men who did have vision and the will to pursue it. One such was Thomas Wyndham. With his three voyages (1550–53) the age of English long-range exploration may be said to have arrived. This experienced mariner ranged along the Atlantic coast of Africa, was the first English captain who ‘fairly rounded Cape Verde and sailed into the Southern Sea’,7 and reached the Bight of Benin. The possibilities of Wyndham’s third voyage excited interest far beyond the mercantile community. Cranmer provided the captain with letters of introduction in Latin, Hebrew and Syriac to be presented to whatever exotic princes he should meet in distant lands. Though the leader of the expedition was among the many Europeans who perished from west coast fever in what later ages came to know as the ‘white man’s graveyard’, he had blazed a trail which others followed. Wyndham represented an eager, impatient, nationalistic and avaricious maritime sub-culture that was not content to allow Spain and Portugal monopolize the riches of a world opening up to European enterprise.
Dudley put the old mariner Sebastian Cabot in charge of a floating school for navigators in the bark Aucher. Here the veteran passed on his vast knowledge of the sea and ships to a new generation of navy men, men like Richard Chancellor, who established regular trade with Russia, and Matthew Baker, the master shipwright who built for Elizabeth vessels that confronted the Armada and crossed the Atlantic to pester Spain’s New World commerce. According to a remarkable claim Cabot made later, Dudley was the father of an Anglo-French project to establish a base at the mouth of the Amazon from which to harass Spanish settlements. Such a scheme was beyond England’s resources in the 1550s but not beyond the imagining of adventurous minds. It may be no coincidence that it was precisely at this time that England’s most original thinker returned from years of study and renewed acquaintance with his old patron, now the Duke of Northumberland. John Dee had been a tutor in the Dudley household before travelling to the continent, where he had studied with the leading experts of the day in mathematics, astronomy and cosmography and enjoyed a close relationship with Gerard Mercator, the cartographic genius who had given the world its most accurate terrestrial globe. Still only in his twenties, Dee was already a celebrity. His recent lecture on Euclid in Paris had been so packed that several students had to stand outside the open windows to hear him. Now he was introduced to court and awarded a pension by the king. He immediately interested himself in a new projected voyage, to sail via northern waters to the Far East, thereby opening up trade routes with China and the Spice Islands that the Iberian nations would be unable to challenge.
With Dudley’s backing this venture attracted an unprecedented amount of support from councillors, courtiers and London merchants. Two hundred and forty shares were sold in a company whose unlimited remit was reflected in its title: the ‘Merchant Adventurers of England for the discovery of lands, territories, isles, dominions and seignories unknown’. What was new and forward-looking about this venture, apart from the number of prominent men involved in it, was its open-endedness. Normally members of the cautious mercantile community committed themselves to single trading voyages and shared any profits when and if the ships came safe home. This time they were investing in a long-term project which would depend on the establishment of commercial relations with far distant princes of whom they only knew from popular myths and mariners’ tales. The first of many voyages launched by this company began on 10 May 1553. It consisted of three ships under the command of Sir Hugh Willoughby, with Richard Chancellor as navigator. As the vessels were towed past Greenwich Palace,
. . . upon the news thereof the courtiers came running out and the common people flocked together, standing very thick upon the shore. The Privy Council they looked out at the windows of the court, and the rest ran up to the tops of the towers. The ships hereupon discharge their ordnance and shoot off their pieces after the manner of war and of the sea, insomuch that the tops of the hills sounded therewith, the valleys and the waters gave an echo, and the mariners they shouted in such sort that the sky rang again with the noise thereof. One stood in the poop of the ship and by his gesture bids farewell to his friends in the best manner he could. Another walks upon the hatches, another climbs the shrouds, another stands upon the mainyard, and another in the top of the ship. To be short, it was a very triumph (after a sort) in all respects to the beholders. But (alas!) the good King Edward (in respect of whom principally all this was prepared) he only by reason of his sickness was absent from this show . . .8
The young king was, in fact, dying.
Dudley’s only consolation during the opening months of 1553 lay in contemplating and planning for the future. The present was fraught with mounting worries, annoyances and pressures. Despite all the financial measures put in place, the Crown was desperately short of money. This led to the unwelcome prospect of going cap in hand to a parliament that could not be expected to be sympathetic to the government. As he acknowledged to Cecil at the close of 1552, ‘there is no other remedy for the king’s great debt.’ At the same time the assembly could not be relied upon: ‘in case parliament should be summoned chiefly for that intent and then not serve the purpose, the summoning were better protracted till after harvest.’ Dudley by now regarded parliament as a hostile institution. Give the members warning of the taxes required before Michaelmas, when the profits from summer farming and trading were known and recorded, and it would be easy for them and their friends too defraud the king. Furthermore, it would, ‘take away every man’s comfort of traffic and gain in the meantime, yet avoid little or nothing the danger of murmuring or grudging.’9 The Council ignored this advice and set the date of 1 March for the opening of the next session. There was nothing to do, therefore, but fall back on the usual devices of influencing elections and exercising a tight control over the agenda.
While these preparations were in hand the Council came under an unprecedentedly ferocious and sustained attack from those they had always looked upon as their allies. As usual the cream of the nation’s preachers were summoned to occupy the court pulpit during Lent. Almost to a man they lashed the royal advisers for their vices, ‘insatiable covetousness, of filthy carnality and voluptuousness, of intolerable ambition and pride, of ungodly loathsomeness to hear poor men’s causes, and to hear God’s word’. Dudley and his colleagues were furious. They had given their evangelical allies free rein to attack all perceived enemies of the Gospel and now they themselves were put within that category.
Amidst these and other cares Dudley solaced himself by looking to the not far distant future. He would soon be able to lay aside his burden because Edward would be of age. To be able to retire from the thankless task of government was what he now desired above all things and he was actively preparing for his change of role. He was already keeping a lower profile in government and no longer exercising unquestioned authority
over the Council. On such issues as the summoning of parliament and the urgent appointment of a new Bishop of Durham he was outvoted. He seems to have absented himself even more from court and Council and was frequently to be found, not in the magnificence of Ely Place, between Westminster and the City, but in his ‘little house’ in the tranquil suburb of Chelsea, where, like Thomas More before him, he found a measure of peace.
He devoted what time he could spare in 1552–3 to personal and family matters, although these were inevitably often tangled up with affairs of state. The summer months of 1552 saw him making a leisurely inspection of the administration of the Scottish Marches and his own property in the far north. It has often been assumed that the third movement of his territorial base (i.e. from Kent and Sussex to the Midlands and then to the north-east) is further proof of his personal aggrandizement and his desire for a strong power base. The reality is more complex. Had he really aimed to replace the semi-independence of the great Percy family, the ‘princes of the north’, he would have appreciated that such an objective would take generations to achieve. However, no one knew better than he how vital it was that the central government should be well represented in the border region and how limited was the obedience of some of the great landowners there. Several were men of Catholic sympathies and not a few had cross-border connections that were more important to them than commitment to the regime in distant London. And it may well have been that very distance that was for Dudley an added attraction. From his base at Newcastle or Alnwick he could serve the king in years to come by keeping the border region quiet and avoid involvement in the stressful daily grind of court politics and intrigue.
It was with an eye to the future that, in the latter half of 1552, he embarked on a series of dynastic negotiations which would integrate the Dudleys more intimately with families close to the throne. Edward had very few relatives on his father’s side and those he did have were all female. His aunt Margaret had, long years since, married James IV of Scotland and her only descendant was Mary, Queen of Scots, currently being brought up in France as a good Catholic. His other aunt, Mary, had made a runaway marriage with her father’s bosom friend, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and she had given birth to two daughters. Frances Brandon married Henry Grey, Marquess of Dorset who later became Duke of Suffolk, in right of his wife. Of their children only three survived, Jane, Catherine and Mary. Edward’s other first cousin, Eleanor Brandon, became the wife of Henry Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, and had one daughter, Margaret, before her death in 1547. All these ladies had a claim to the throne, but only after the princesses Mary and Elizabeth, who had been named in their father’s will. Clifford was something of a recluse and seldom visited the court but Suffolk was a councillor, a friend and supporter of Northumberland, and a religious radical. Jane, the eldest of the Grey girls, was of age with the king and there was talk at one time of the two being wed. Those plans had been scotched by Somerset who had designed to marry Edward to his own daughter and Jane to his eldest son (something often omitted from the story of Lady Jane Grey and the wicked Duke of Northumberland).
In 1552 Dudley had two unmarried children to dispose of, Guildford and Catherine, and it was arranged that they should unite the Dudley clan with other establishment families. For Guildford his father tried, unsuccessfully, to make a match with Margaret Clifford and Catherine was betrothed to Henry Hastings, son and heir to the Earl of Huntingdon, also a councillor of evangelical persuasion. To complete this network of alliances Catherine Grey was promised to the Earl of Pembroke’s son, Lord Herbert. There was nothing unusual or, by the standards of the day, untowardly calculating about this matrimonial patchwork. The heads of these aristocratic clans were placing their offspring around the throne in order to ensure their continuing prosperity and social elevation. They were also, as they saw it, providing the Tudor regime with a core of committed Protestant courtiers and Edward certainly gave his blessing to all these arrangements. The Seymours had done no less, nor the Howards before them, nor numerous other ambitious noble families for generations.
What becomes clear from these negotiations is that they had nothing to do with the succession issue. In 1552 John had no plan to put his own son on the throne by marrying him to Jane Grey, the closest female claimant after her mother. Only when Cumberland declined Guildford Dudley as a match for his daughter did Guildford’s marriage to Jane become a possibility and, for reasons of state, desirable to at least some of the parties concerned. It is this which disposes, once and for all, of the myth of the scheming, ambitious ‘evil duke’. Had Dudley been aiming for royal power the simplest way of achieving his objective would have been to marry Catherine Dudley to the king. The Howards and the Seymours had both schemed to place female relatives in the royal bed. Perhaps that is the point. Had Dudley seriously entertained royal pretensions he only had to think of the old Duke of Norfolk now repining in the Tower and the two Seymour brothers recently perished under the axe to conclude that such a game was not worth the candle.
Dudley was as ever bothered about his health. In December he reported mournfully to Cecil, ‘neither close keeping, warm furs nor clothes can bring any natural heat to my head, and I have no hope of recovery’.10 One concern Dudley did not have at this time was for the king’s health. Edward was never robust. In 1552 he suffered from measles and also a slight attack of smallpox. But, with the resilience of youth, he threw these off and when, in the new year, he succumbed to what seemed to be a seasonal cold and cough no one took much notice. Yet, at some moment in the early months of 1553 Edward himself gave anxious thought to the implications of his dying before he could sire children. In his habitual, scrupulous way he set down his wishes for what should happen in such an eventually. And so we come to the notorious ‘device’ for the succession.
This document, written very clearly in the king’s own hand, represents his passionate concerns and sense of responsibility for the well-being of his country. On balance it seems unlikely that he discussed his ideas with Dudley, Gates, Cecil or anyone else at this stage. Succession issues were matters of royal prerogative and Edward would have believed that it was in his power to name his successor. He would have seen no need to consult his advisers about something that might never become a reality. What Edward wanted and what he believed the realm needed was a male, Protestant ruler. Male because that was the divinely appointed order of things. England had never been ruled, unchallenged, by a queen and could not possibly be secure in female hands. Edward’s father, as he knew, had gone through hell and high water to provide himself with a male heir and Edward was determined, if need be, to do no less. Protestant because the English Reformation was not complete. Evangelical truth was a tender plant which still had not sent down deep roots into the native soil. It was the king’s responsibility to see that it was nurtured, even if he was no longer present to tend it personally. He was passionately determined that England should not fall back into Roman bondage. That would certainly happen if his half-sister Mary succeeded to the Crown. He had personally remonstrated with her, face-to-face and by letter, and knew how stubbornly she was addicted to the old religion. As for Elizabeth, Edward had no reason to doubt her commitment to the reformed faith but she would probably marry some foreign prince and he, by the law of averages, was highly likely to be Catholic. Edward therefore planned meticulously for a future which, God willing, would never materialize.
The king’s problem was that among the possible claimants to the Crown there was not a single male contender. All he could do was what he did do. Setting aside the claims of Mary and Elizabeth (who, in any case, despite Henry VIII’s will, were still technically bastards, their mothers’ marriages having been annulled), he devised the Crown to the future male offspring of his only living first cousin, Frances Brandon. In default of Lady Suffolk giving birth to a boy (and she was now thirty-six) Edward nominated as next in line the possible sons of her daughters, Jane, Catherine and Mary. If they failed to oblige, and if their mother had, meanwhil
e, given birth to another daughter, then that daughter’s sons were to be brought into the account. In the event of all the Suffolk line failing for want of a male heir, attention was to switch to the potential sons of Margaret Clifford. The thorough Edward had not yet exhausted all the possibilities. Next in line were to be ‘the heirs male of the Lady Jane’s daughters . . . the heirs male of the Lady Catherine’s daughters . . . and so forth till you come to the Lady Margaret’s daughters’ heirs male.’11 Nothing could illustrate better than this genealogical treasure hunt the slender thread on which the English Reformation hung and the king’s determination to protect it come what may.