Francis and her husband must have been disappointed that her prior claim had again been passed over, and if they expressed disquiet they were not alone. Archbishop Cranmer and others argued that Henry VIII’s arrangements, which had been ratified by Act of Parliament, could only be changed by the passing of another Act; and it was with great reluctance that the law officers compiled a formal document from the king’s scrawled handwriting. Between 21 June and 8 July no fewer than 202 notables – including Cranmer and some bishops, twenty-four peers, the judges and the mayor of London – signed this ‘declaration’ and swore a solemn oath to uphold its provisions. They were promised pardon if they were subsequently accused of committing a capital offence by acceding to Edward’s wishes (the Treasons Act of 1547 had made it illegal to change his father’s settlement), but it is unlikely that many were reassured.
Edward and Northumberland’s problem was that a king’s authority died with him. He could not compel his successor to pursue a particular policy, nor bind those who would rule during a minority. Henry VIII had recognised this when he had his plans for the succession enshrined in an Act of Parliament, but such an Act – and even the Act that made it a capital offence to change it – could be repealed if a later Parliament thought it necessary. The obvious course of action was to summon a new Parliament for this purpose, but it was becoming increasingly apparent that Edward would not live to see its business concluded. The result was that whatever the young king said or did in the meantime, his father’s wishes remained the law of the land.
It may be worth pausing for a moment here to consider the rights and wrongs of all this. Was Jane the rightful heir at common law and Mary a bastard, or was Mary her father’s chosen successor and Jane an interloper? At the heart of the matter was the question of whether Henry VIII and his first ‘wife’ Catherine of Aragon had been legally married. If they had, then Mary was legitimate and her half-brother Edward’s lawful successor: but if not then she was illegitimate and no more entitled to her father’s property than any other bastard. Although Henry had nominated her to succeed if Edward died without issue he had done nothing to change her illegitimate status; and the idea that a king could choose his successor (any successor) in what he perceived to be the national interest was without precedent. No Act of Parliament could deprive a rightful sovereign of his or her inheritance, and Jane (or, more specifically, Frances), had an entirely valid claim.
It would not, however, be easy to dispossess Mary, who enjoyed widespread popularity and who had been regarded as heir apparent for much of the past decade. One course of action would have been for Northumberland and his associates to circulate Edward’s ‘Declaration’ throughout the country, but they realised that to do so would risk triggering a pro-Marian reaction. In the last weeks of Edward’s life Mary moved from Newhall in Sussex to Hunsdon in Hertfordshire in anticipation of a summons to the capital, but at some point she was warned of what was afoot in London and retired to the relative safety of Kenninghall in Norfolk. Robert Dudley and 300 horsemen were sent to Hunsdon to arrest her the day after Edward’s death on 6 July (perhaps the earliest that his father dared move against her openly), but by then it was already too late.
Northumberland did not immediately announce that Edward had died, but a rumour reached Jehan Scheyfve, the Imperial ambassador, on 7 July, and was soon common knowledge in London. Both Scheyfve and the French ambassador Antoine de Noailles thought the duke’s power was unchallengeable, but Mary had no intention of surrendering what she believed was her divinely ordained right to succeed her brother. Two days later, on the 9th, Jane was brought to Syon House in Isleworth (another of Northumberland’s London properties), knowing nothing of the king’s death or what it would mean for her. On being informed that she was to supplant Mary she collapsed, weeping, and startled those present by protesting that the Crown was not her right. Northumberland and her parents met her defiance by angrily insisting that it was her duty to obey them, and, isolated and uncertain, she bowed to their wishes. Next day she was escorted to the Tower with Guildford (with whom she was now living), and there ‘received as queen’.
There is no evidence that Katherine Willoughby personally witnessed this momentous occasion, and it is possible to imagine her at home at Grimsthorpe in the early stages of pregnancy anxiously awaiting news of every development. Frances was her stepdaughter, Jane her step-granddaughter, and Northumberland an old friend; but so too was Princess Mary, who had played cards with her in the days when they both favoured the old religion. Her first response would have been to write to William Cecil seeking his assessment of the situation, but the prudent Cecil would surely have destroyed any letter that appeared to endorse Jane’s accession. It can only be assumed that, privately at least, she gave the conspirators her blessing, but perhaps not without some feelings of sympathy for Mary, whose mother had been so close to hers.
In the Tower Jane was treated with all the deference and respect due to a queen awaiting her coronation, but continued to question the wisdom of her decision. She declined to try on the crown to see if it fitted her, and precipitated the first clash of her ‘reign’ by refusing her husband the title of king. She met his reproaches and the anger of his mother, the Duchess of Northumberland, with the firm statement that she would do nothing unconstitutional (i.e. without the consent of Parliament), and found – for the first time – that her orders were obeyed. The lords of the Council must have been dismayed by her defiance and by the realisation that this slip of a girl who they had placed over them was minded to be her own person; but they could not refuse her without compromising their claim to be her loyal subjects. Still more alarming was that on 10 July a letter was received from Mary declaring her assumption that she had succeeded her brother, and promising pardon all who would submit to her. Any lingering hopes that she would simply accept the situation or perhaps retire into exile effectively vanished, and to make matters worse, it was becoming clear that there was little or no popular enthusiasm for Jane’s accession. Bishop Ridley had tried to rally support for her in a sermon preached at St Paul’s on the Sunday, but had been met by what one writer describes as ‘a mixture of grief and rage’.7
From 10 to 13 July the Council met in the Tower while Guildford, the would-be ‘king’, dined in regal isolation and, according to one source, chaired its deliberations.8 Jane did not attend personally, and was probably unaware of the tensions that now existed between Northumberland and some of the other nobles. It was decided the Duke of Suffolk would lead an army into East Anglia to apprehend Mary while Northumberland maintained the government in the capital; but Jane insisted that her father, who was unwell, should remain with her and so Northumberland (reluctantly, perhaps because he did not altogether trust his colleagues), undertook to lead it himself. His force left the capital on either Thursday 13 or Friday 14 July, and marched some twenty-five miles to Ware (Herts.).
Northumberland’s decision to obey Jane and go in pursuit of Mary was a fundamental error. He was a more experienced soldier than Suffolk, but the situation did not call for great leadership. What it did require was the personal intervention of a nobleman who was well known in the region and whose popularity there could rival Mary’s – qualities that Suffolk possessed in some measure but Northumberland did not. It is also apparent that his absence loosened his grip on the situation by making it virtually impossible for him to dominate the Council from a distance. Councillors who would not have opposed him to his face began to weigh their options and consider how they might exculpate themselves in the event of a Marian victory. They had promised to support Jane and would, presumably, have preferred her to reign over them, but it was prudent to have a foot in both camps.
Northumberland proceeded cautiously, gathering more troops as he went – his sons joined him at Ware on Friday – and reached Cambridge on 15 July. He lingered there for three days, probably to allow time for his artillery and supply train to catch up with his cavalry, before advancing to Bury St Edmunds on Tuesday 18th
. Mary had been assembling forces at her new, more secure, base at Framlingham, and little more than a day’s march now separated the two armies; but instead of launching the decisive attack everyone expected Northumberland returned to Cambridge. In all probability, he had learned that Mary’s force was much larger and better equipped than he had anticipated,9 and his situation became hopeless when he was informed, probably in the early hours of the 20th, that many of the colleagues he had left behind in London had changed sides. That afternoon he proclaimed Mary in Cambridge marketplace, and dismissed his now demoralised troops.
It is unclear if the councillors in London were swayed mainly by their dislike of Northumberland’s bullying attitude or by their awareness of the groundswell of support for Mary, but they were anxious to exonerate themselves while they still had the opportunity. Their options were limited while they were effectively confined to the Tower, so they told Jane that their best course of action was to ask the French ambassador to help them hire mercenaries. The French, they argued, feared that Mary would ally England to her cousin the Emperor if she gained the ascendancy; but no sooner had they regained their freedom than they assembled at Baynard’s Castle, the Earl of Pembroke’s London residence, and denounced Jane as a usurper. They declared Northumberland a traitor and wrote to him, ordering him to surrender and dismiss his army; and as Mary was proclaimed in the capital to scenes of rejoicing, two of their number returned to the Tower to tell Suffolk that his daughter’s reign was over. Suffolk tore the canopy from above Jane’s chair and told her that she must now be content with a private life, to which she retorted that she had never desired any other and willingly relinquished the Crown. He then sought to save his own skin by proclaiming Mary on Tower Hill before making his way to Sheen Palace, leaving Jane and Guildford bewildered and alone.
Soon after Northumberland had proclaimed Mary in Cambridge the university sergeant-at-arms and others tried to arrest him, but he managed to overawe his would-be captors and retain his liberty for a few more hours. He spent most of this time orchestrating an escape plan with his sons and a few committed supporters, but they were arrested by some members of the royal guard who had marched with them even before the Earl of Arundel arrived to take them into official custody. The prisoners left Cambridge on 24 July, and next day, when they arrived in London, Northumberland was obliged to ride through a mob whose anger could scarcely be restrained by his armed escort. It is said that he never flinched or trembled beneath the hail of filth, stones and insults, but that Warwick, his eldest son, was overcome, covered his face, and burst into tears.
During the eleven days that separated Northumberland’s capture from Mary’s entry into London, Jane and her remaining four servants were removed from the Tower proper to the Gentleman-Gaoler’s lodgings on Tower Green. Guildford was imprisoned in the Beauchamp Tower where he was soon joined by his father and brothers together with the Marquis of Northampton, their acolytes Sir John Gates and Sir Thomas Palmer, and others. Mary tacitly forgave those members of the Council who, less than a fortnight previously, had declared her a bastard and a rebel, and rejected the entreaties of Scheyfve’s successor Simon Renard that Jane should be executed to prevent further trouble. She formally pardoned Suffolk on 30 July after granting Frances a private audience, and made it clear that she had no desire to instigate a political or religious bloodbath. In her pronouncement of 18 August she stated that although she ‘would be glad’ if her people were reconciled to Catholicism she was ‘minded not to compel’ them, and begged them not to use ‘those new-found devilish terms of papist or heretic’. This contrasts strikingly with a letter Jane wrote a few weeks later in which she described Catholics as Romish anti-Christians, their church as the ‘Whore of Babylon’ and urged her correspondent to turn from ‘the most wicked Mass’.10
Northumberland, Warwick and Northampton were brought to trial at Westminster Hall on 18 August, to be followed by Gates, Palmer, Palmer’s brother Henry, and Northumberland’s brother Sir Andrew Dudley the next day. Lady Jane, Guildford, and the others were to be dealt with later. The examinations were formal and the verdicts predetermined – it had already been decided that only Northumberland, Gates and Palmer would die – although Northumberland still hoped for clemency. He argued that he had acted only by warrant of the Great Seal of England and with the approval of the other members of the Council who were therefore, ipso facto, equally guilty; but the president, the Duke of Norfolk, replied that the seal had no valid authority in the hands of a usurper, and until such lords as might be accused were formally convicted their right to judge him could not be questioned! Sentence being passed, he asked for the favour of beheading (quicker and more dignified that being hanged, drawn and quartered), and for time to be reconciled to the Catholic faith. This was perhaps, his last desperate bid for pardon, but it bought him only one extra day of life. Jane, seeing her father-in-law pass by on his way to Mass in the Tower chapel, dismissed his change of heart as false and evil. ‘I pray God,’ she remarked afterwards, ‘[that] I, nor no friend of mine, die so.’11
Northumberland was executed on 22 August, and Jane embarked on the last six months of her life as the Gentleman-Gaoler’s prisoner. Her movements were inevitably restricted, but she retained the services of her four servants, had an ample allowance for her upkeep, and could dine with the gaoler when she chose. On 14 November she was taken to the Guildhall where she was tried together with Guildford and Ambrose and Henry Dudley (Northumberland’s second and third sons), and Archbishop Cranmer. All the accused pleaded guilty and were formally sentenced to death, but none now expected to be executed. A period of imprisonment was inevitable, but the clemency that had allowed the crimes of others to go unpunished would surely be extended to them.
It is likely that all those involved in the conspiracy would have been pardoned (eventually) if the situation had remained calm and unthreatening, but they had not reckoned with the backlash provoked by Mary’s wish to marry Philip of Spain. Only three days after the trial the Council begged her, in the strongest terms, to wed an Englishman, but she replied that marriage to a husband she did not care for ‘would be her death’.12 The old enmity against the Spanish manifested itself in a wave of crudely expressed insularity, and soon there were whisperings that Jane or Elizabeth would be used as the figurehead of a rebellion designed not to depose Mary but to force her to change her plans. Mary displayed her mistrust by requiring the lords to sign a paper in which each formally approved of the match; but in January 1554 Suffolk (who had not signed) came out in rebellion with Sir Thomas Wyatt (a Kentish Catholic who had declared for Mary the previous summer), and Sir Peter Carew in the west. It must have seemed that nearly everyone – Catholic and Protestant alike – supported the enterprise, and there was really no prospect of failure; but Suffolk’s attempt to raise the Midlands faltered when the Earl of Huntingdon (on whom he was relying for support) held Coventry against him, and Wyatt’s march on London was defeated by the Earl of Pembroke at Charing Cross. Suffolk was captured at his manor of Astley (Warks.), hiding in the hollow trunk of a tree as the story has it, and joined his daughter in the Tower a few days later. Jane had played no part in the uprising, but her claim to the throne, her wearing of the crown the previous summer, had brought the danger she still posed into sharp focus. Mary had been shaken by the experience, and a satisfied Renard sat down to inform the Emperor that ‘at last Jane of Suffolk and her husband are to lose their heads’.13
It would be easy to suppose that these two rival queens, both members of the extended Tudor royal family, felt only bitterness towards one another: but Mary displayed commendable concern for her young second cousin’s spiritual welfare by sending her personal chaplain, John Feckenham, to visit Jane in prison. Feckenham was kind, clever and tolerant, and was sufficiently encouraged by their first meeting to ask Mary to postpone the sentence for a few days so that he could discuss Jane’s religious opinions with her. He was later credited with converting John Cheke, Edward VI’s tutor, to C
atholicism, but if he hoped to convince Jane of the error of her beliefs he was to be disappointed. ‘As for my heavy case, I thank God I do so little lament it … being a thing so profitable for my soul’s health,’ she told him, and the best he could do was to persuade her to dispute the differences between them, a debate which culminated in a long and fruitless discussion of the doctrine of transubstantiation. At last Feckenham had to acknowledge that he was beaten. ‘I am sorry for you,’ he said as they parted, ‘for I am sure that we two shall never meet (i.e. in heaven).’ ‘True it is,’ Jane is said to have replied, ‘that we shall never meet except God turn your heart’;14 but she agreed to allow him to accompany her to the scaffold when the time came. Jane was probably not a little disturbed by these encounters, perhaps not so much by Feckenham’s arguments as by his undeniable goodness. As a Catholic he represented the forces of evil; but he was gentle, wise and virtuous, quite unlike the devious, self-seeking Protestants who had used and then abandoned her when their schemes faltered. If he was good there must, logically, be other Catholics who were honourable even if they were mistaken, and she began to realise that not everything was quite as black or white as she had once thought.
Henry VIII's Last Love: The Extraordinary Life of Katherine Willoughby, Lady-in-Waiting to the Tudors Page 10