by Derek Wilson
At the end of June everyone who was at all informed knew that their sovereign was dying and that the princesses had been dispossessed. The men who mattered were carefully giving the impression of unity and making preparations for the proclamation of Queen Jane. But by no means were they all doing so with enthusiasm. There were many who nursed misgivings and even more who were secretly resolved to wait upon events. Mary, in her residence at Hunsdon, near Hertford, received almost hourly news about her brother. Dudley, moving up and down river between Chelsea and Greenwich, was, of course, even better informed. He had dismissed the royal doctors and installed his own physicians at the royal bedside. Thither he made frequent visits, mesmerized by the steady evaporation of this young life. The crisis moment was coming nearer and those most closely concerned did – nothing.
There was a hush of inactivity which lasted almost a week. Dudley did not muster his military forces. He did not send troops to guard Mary or bring her to court or have her moved to a more secure lodging. He completely failed to take the initiative. The reasons are not difficult to determine. They existed, as it were, on two levels. The first and most obvious was at the legal and constitutional level. He was unwilling to take decisive action without the authority of the king. Every decision he had taken since 1550, every order he had issued, theoretically at least, had always had royal warrant. Now the only person who could issue such a warrant was beyond concerning himself with affairs of state. Fighting for breath, racked with pain and kept from delirious stupor by stimulants, Edward longed only for his heavenly reward. Given time Dudley would have legitimated the change in the succession by Act of Parliament and plans were already in hand to recall the assembly. But time was the one commodity he lacked. Once again we have to make the point that the Dudley of legend would have efficiently and effectively filled the power vacuum and issued orders on his own authority. He would certainly have brought some of his crack troops from their border garrisons to protect Queen Jane and her court in her and its first, vulnerable days and weeks. At the lower level the reason, therefore, lies in his inner motivation. I believe he was still uncertain about what action to take. The moment he made a move against the princess would be the moment he was irrevocably committed. He always preferred to proceed by peaceable consensus rather than by violent confrontation. This was what he had done in October 1549, and the way he had resolved his conflict with Somerset then indicated his dislike of extreme measures. The evidence points to Dudley desiring some accommodation with Mary, hoping for some honourable position for her in the new order. That was why he hesitated until the last possible moment and why the first move that he did make as soon as he knew for certain, on 4 July, that Edward only had hours to live was to send for the boy’s half-sisters.
This procrastination enabled Mary to grasp the initiative. While Elizabeth pleaded illness, her sister obeyed the summons to Edward’s bedside, setting out to ride southwards on 5 July. But, wary of what might be awaiting her, she travelled slowly, sending messengers on ahead to bring her the most up-to-date intelligence of events in the court and the capital. By the evening of 6 July she and her suite had covered only five miles and were lodged at Hoddesdon. It was late that night that she received the news that Edward had died a few hours earlier. The king had breathed his last in the embrace of his close friend Sir Henry Sidney (Dudley’s son-in-law), who recorded the event in his memoirs:
This young Prince, who died within my arms, had almost caused death to penetrate his dart even into my own soul, for to behold him and how like [a] lamb he departed this life, and when his voice had left him, still he erected his eyes to heaven, it would have converted the fiercest of papists if they had any grace in them of true faith in Christ. He would call upon none saving his Saviour. He prayed that God would be pleased to bestow the Gospel on his subjects, for his glory and their salvation. He also in his sickness made a prayer to God to deliver this nation from that uncharitable religion of popery, which was the chiefest cause for his election of the Lady Jane Grey to succeed before his sister Mary . . . out of pure love to his subjects, that he desired they might live and die in the Lord, as he did.14
The news galvanized Mary into action. Immediately she ordered her people to prepare for instant departure and in the small hours she set out at a greatly increased speed. To put as much distance as possible between her and the rival regime, she rode northwards, travelled by side roads to avoid detection and, by nightfall had reached Sawston, south of Cambridge, where a kinsman of one of her attendants gave her refuge.
By this time Dudley had bestirred himself. He sent his sons John and Robert with an armed escort to bring Mary to court. This was still no more than courteous convention; the young men had not been despatched to arrest the princess. This is evidenced by the complete confusion into which they were thrown when they reached Hunsdon to discover that the bird had flown. If their orders had been to bring Mary in come what may they would have immediately set out in hot pursuit and would probably have caught up with her before she had plunged deep into East Anglia. In fact, they separated, Robert riding on to seek out the princess and John returning to Greenwich for fresh instructions. Robert took the highway (the present A10) and, stopping for neither food nor sleep, clattered into Cambridge before dawn on 8 July. There he learned that he had overshot his mark and he immediately turned back towards Sawston. Once again he was too late; Mary had set off on the Newmarket road scarcely an hour before. Now the twenty-year-old Robert gave vent to his anger and frustration. He was tired and humiliated by failure. Not only that, he was worried. The mood of the people he met along the road was distinctly hostile and some of his own men had deserted during the hours of darkness. He was hearing stories of local gentlemen flocking to join the fleeing princess. So, instead of pressing on with his pursuit, he ordered his men to set fire to Sawston Hall while he rode back into Cambridge. This was the vital turning point. Had Robert followed Mary, resolved to complete his mission, there was a good chance that he would have succeeded. It was what his father, the seasoned campaigner, would have done. But the situation had changed drastically since he had been given his instructions. To have pressed on in the face of growing opposition would almost certainly have involved an attempt to seize Mary by main force. Because he shrank from this, the smoke and flames that rose into the fenland sky became a beacon marking the failure of Dudley hopes and pretensions.
John rejoined his brother in Cambridge on 8 July. He brought the news that Jane had been publicly proclaimed queen, that she and Guildford and their court would shortly be moved to the Tower and that orders had gone out for loyal nobles and gentlemen to repair to London with their forces ready to defend their sovereign. The word was being disseminated that Catholic Mary was in flight to the coast in the hope of crossing to the continent to raise an army of invasion. This was almost certainly what Dudley believed. It may even have been what Mary had originally had in mind when she fled from Hoddesdon but, if so, her plans changed completely when she observed the delirious joy with which she was greeted along the way. What was encouraging to her had the opposite effect on the Dudley brothers. With new orders to follow the princess and promises of military reinforcements from their father, they set out along the Newmarket road. Every mile brought more depressing news. Mary’s entourage had swollen dramatically. In Bury St Edmunds the corporation had given her a civic reception. She was headed for Kenninghall Castle, the centre of her extensive East Anglian estates, where she could count on the support of her considerable tenantry and most of her gentry neighbours. As for the reception accorded to the pursuers, sullen looks and shouted insults left them in no doubt about the unpopularity of their father’s regime. It was particularly unfortunate for Dudley that his showdown with Mary should have occurred in the eastern counties. Here people had vivid memories of the suppression of Kett’s rebellion. Many families had lost sons or husbands in its bloody aftermath and in the private reprisals carried out by the chief men of the shires. Partisans for social and religi
ous change, of whom there were many in this part of the country, felt betrayed by the ‘murderer’ of Somerset. Thus radicals, Catholics, sympathizers with the rejected princess, supporters of the legitimate succession, tenants of the dispossessed Howards and people who simply hated the ‘upstart’ Dudley found common cause in rallying to Mary’s support. By contrast, this was not a part of the country where the Dudleys had substantial landholdings and, therefore, tenants and agents upon whose support they could rely. (Robert did his best but could only raise a modest force.) As soon as she arrived at Kenninghall Mary sent a strongly worded letter to the Council in London declaring that she was now their lawful queen and demanding their allegiance.
In London matters did not yet look hopeless. Assuming that Mary was bent on escape, Dudley despatched ships to patrol the east coast on the lookout for imperial vessels. Queen Jane and her Council were secure in the Tower and the government held London. Bishop Ridley and other preachers were advocating the new regime and denouncing Catholic plans for an overthrow of England’s godly Reformation. News from the provinces was mixed but some nobles and substantial gentlemen were reported as mustering forces to support Jane. Several East Anglian town corporations had declared for her. Once again, prompt and decisive action on Dudley’s part might have resulted in victory before the princess was able to organize an effective military strategy. As always in these situations, most men of consequence waited to see which way the wind was blowing before committing themselves. But once again Dudley hesitated. His colleagues urged him to take the field in person against the rebels, reminding him of his success at Dussindale. However, their very insistence was part of Dudley’s problem. He knew that some of his ‘supporters’ had mixed motives. If he took up arms against Mary and was unsuccessful, they would fall over themselves to dissociate themselves from him. Once they had changed sides the City would be lost to him and his retreat cut off. The alternative would be to throw down the gauntlet to the princess, let her march on the capital and hope to energize the citizenry in their own defence. But frequent reports came in asserting that Mary’s force was growing by leaps and bounds. In order to show herself as all things to all men she assured local evangelicals that she would enforce no religious changes (a promise she spectacularly broke as soon as her throne was secure). Thanks in part to Dudley’s earlier hesitation, everything was now happening too quickly for him. Given time, he could have brought his mercenaries back from the border. He might even have been able to reinforce them with troops from France, for he had sent his kinsman Henry Dudley to Paris asking the king for aid. Eventually there was nothing for it but for Dudley to leave the capital with whatever forces he could muster.
He set out on 14 July, having first urged the Council to remain united and firm in their resolve, a message which had about it more than a hint of desperation. But he never put his cause to the trial. He arrived in Cambridge with some 1,500 men and a small artillery train. The word that reached him there was that Mary had moved to the nigh-impregnable Framlingham Castle and could call on 20,000 supporters. This was certainly a wild exaggeration but Dudley could not know that and more reliable news of various defections added to his depression. Even the crews of ships he had sent forth to frustrate Mary’s supposed emigration plans mutinied and went over to her side. Yet, it was not the military imbalance that decided the issue. Lord Clinton arrived with reinforcements and other contingents were expected. Really determined leadership (something which Mary’s army lacked) and clever tactical planning might still have made a contest. The reason why Princess Mary’s rebellion succeeded without a shot being fired was that the opposition imploded. Several of Dudley’s allies simply did not have their hearts in the enterprise, and probably the same may be said of Dudley himself.
Back in London it took very little time for nerves to crack. The first person to give way under the strain was someone Dudley had thought he could rely on but who now showed himself a time server par excellence. William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, one of the principal dynasts involved in the marriage negotiations back in May, now made common cause with one of Dudley’s old enemies, the Earl of Arundel, who had been recently rehabilitated. The two men called a Council meeting at Pembroke’s town house on 18 July and persuaded most of their colleagues that Mary’s claim could not be set aside. This was exactly what Dudley had feared; without his energizing presence the Council lacked backbone. The following day the Duke of Suffolk himself informed his daughter that she was no longer queen. London, we are told, exploded in a spontaneous festival of rejoicing. Bonfires were lit in every street, church bells were rung, cheering, laughing crowds gathered and, according to one report, money was thrown from windows. This release of pent-up emotion had many elements. People were jubilant that justice had at long last been done to Mary, that Somerset’s blood was avenged, that the Tudor dynasty had been saved. Many, doubtless, were simply relieved that an unpopular government had been overthrown without the shedding of blood. No regime, they assured each other, could be worse than Dudley’s. Not for the first or last time in history such malcontents were soon to learn how wrong they were.
Dudley advanced as far as Bury St Edmunds before conceding that the game was up. He returned to Cambridge and there, on 20 July, proclaimed Mary the rightful Queen of England. Four days later Arundel arrived to arrest him. By the 26th John Dudley, and all his sons were prisoners in the Tower. Earlier in the year the duke had commented in one of his many letters to Cecil, ‘I trust I shall be found ready to serve the king, whatever his pleasure, with my life.’ He cannot have known then how prophetic his words were.
The last days of John Dudley were a drab, dispirited coda to an exciting and spectacularly successful life. On 18 August he was brought to Westminster Hall where the newly released Duke of Norfolk presided over the formality of his trial. The prisoner, who can have been under no illusion about the verdict, conducted himself with dignity and pointed out that, throughout his days in power, he had always acted with the support of the Council, some of whom were now looking down on him from their jury seats. Such veiled accusations can only have been counter-productive. All members of the political elite were united in their need for a scapegoat and fully intended to keep Dudley isolated. He and he alone was to be branded as guilty, not only for the Jane Grey plot, but for all the ills that had beset the realm since 1549, however one might define them. Gardiner, Bonner, Howard and other religious conservatives concocted the official story that Dudley had seduced the boy king into heresy. Former allies distanced themselves from responsibility for government acts by claiming that they had been pressured by Dudley into doing his will. Above all, Queen Mary could not afford to start her reign with an orgy of bloodletting. Her security in a society fractured along so many fault lines depended on the support of the political class, and of men of all persuasions within that class. As Scheyfve observed, Mary ‘cannot possibly . . . punish all who have been guilty of something; otherwise she would be left without any vassals at all.’15 So it was in everyone’s interest to give the populace what it wanted, the severed head of the ‘bad duke’. Dudley was found guilty and his execution fixed for two days time.
However, the eager crowd that gathered on Tower Hill on 21 July were disappointed. Time was made for a different ceremony, one which set the seal on Mary’s triumph. A distinguished congregation, including the fresh clutch of prisoners, gathered in the chapel of St Peter within the Tower. Bishop Gardiner entered, vested in full Roman paraphernalia and accompanied by acolytes to perform the full canon of the mass. At its climax Dudley and his associates knelt to receive the consecrated bread. At the end of the service he stood up to make a brief speech.
Truly, I profess here before you all that I have received the sacrament according to the true Catholic faith; and the plagues that is upon the realm and upon us now is that we have erred from the faith these sixteen years. And this I profess unto you all from the bottom of my heart.16
For the new regime this propaganda coup was intended b
oth to discredit Dudley in the eyes of all who were stubbornly addicted to evangelical religion and to symbolize that England’s clock was to be put back to its pre-1527 setting. In the first of those objectives it succeeded spectacularly. Upholders of the reformed faith would never, after this, be able to revere Dudley as a religious martyr.
Dudley’s total capitulation has been habitually cited as evidence of his lack of religious conviction. A man who, perhaps in the hope of gaining a reprieve, could renounce those things he had always declared himself to believe passionately must have lacked any spiritual depth. From there it is but a short step to asserting that he was motivated throughout his life by nothing but ambition and greed. However, the eleventh hour conversion of a man condemned to suffer a humiliating public death is an ill-constructed cross upon which to crucify a man’s whole reputation. If Dudley is to be accused of cynicism and cowardice for changing his coat others must stand in the dock with him. William Cecil, ardent Puritan at heart, wriggled his way into Mary’s counsels and played a part in reconciling England to Rome. Thomas Cranmer recanted his ‘errors’, though he famously recanted his recantation at the stake. The Marquess of Northampton, brother of the pious Catherine Parr, Sir Andrew Dudley and Sir John Gates, the Vice-chamberlain, discovered that they had really been Catholics all along. The members of the Council who hoped to be retained in office ostentatiously attended mass in Mary’s chapel. The queen was not a little astonished at the squabbling and mutual recriminations of the old guard, whose members, as she told the imperial ambassador, changed their opinions more often than their shirts in order to protect their reputations. And Princess Elizabeth had no hesitation in conforming to her sister’s type of worship. For all these people the Latin tag that enabled them to square their consciences was cuius regio, eius religio. As long as Edward was their anointed king they had obediently followed his lead in matters of faith. Now that God had placed Mary on the throne they could do no other than accept her religion.