The Seymours had been practically unknown until the King chose Jane Seymour as his third wife. The paterfamilias, Sir John Seymour, of Wolf Hall, Wiltshire, had been knighted by Henry VII in 1497 for his services against the Cornish rebels at Blackheath, but his subsequent career did not attract attention. It was his children who were to bring fame to the name of Seymour, notably Edward, Jane, and Thomas. As they rose in royal favour, so, in direct proportion, the Howards sank; the fortunes of the new family were directly related to the humiliation of the old, and the Seymours climbed to the highest rank by stamping on the slipping fingers of the Howards.
Jane Seymour, as the daughter of a country gentleman, was lady- in-waiting to Henry VIII's first two queens, Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. The King fell in love with her in 1535, and met her through a secret passage to her apartments at Greenwich. The fate of Queen Anne Boleyn was sealed; she was beheaded, and Jane married the King the very next day. Thus, from obscurity the Seymours were thrust into the headlines of English history, and, at the same time, the Howards suffered a set-back by the execution of the favoured niece Anne Boleyn. Jane secured the position of her family by giving birth to the much-needed son, the future King of England. Celebrations were ecstatic. At the christening, the Queen's brother, Edward Seymour, carried her stepdaughter Princess Elizabeth (the child of Anne Boleyn), and was elevated to the peerage as Earl of Hertford. (He had already been made Lord Beauchamp after the marriage.) Another brother, Thomas Seymour, was delivered from even deeper obscurity (he was a servant to Sir Francis Bryan) to take his place as a member of the Royal Family. Norfolk and his son the Earl of Surrey watched from the shadows in silent fury.
Jane died twelve days after the birth of her son, casting the King into genuine grief; he wore mourning for her, a consideration he did not show for his other wives. Her death consolidated the position at Court of her brothers, to whom the King looked for consolation. There was no stopping them. Hertford became Captain-General in the north, revealing an unsuspected talent for battle when he raided Scotland in 1545 and within two weeks had burnt seven monasteries, sixteen castles, five towns, and 243 villages.11 At the dissolution of the monasteries, he was granted lands which included Maiden Bradley in Wiltshire, where his descendant, the present Duke of Somerset, now lives.
The Howards grew restive. Another one of their number, Catherine Howard, had lost her head, while Edward and Thomas Seymour, who came from nowhere, continued to sit in the sunshine of royal favour. It was intolerable for Norfolk's son, the brilliant and impetuous Earl of Surrey. This man graces our anthologies with some of the loveliest poetry written in the English language, and introduced the Petrarchan sonnet to English literature. At the age of ten he had fallen in love with nine-year-old Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, daughter of the Earl of Kildare (and ancestor of the Dukes of Leinster), and had addressed to her some of his most beautiful sonnets expressing the ideal of Platonic love. He had then married Lady Frances de Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford. This man, whose poem The Happy Life recommends "no grudge nor strife . . . wisdom joined with simplicity", and exhorts the reader to be "contented with thine own estate", this man was before all else a Howard. He possessed the Howard vanity and arrogance in abundant measure, allied with a poetic sensibility which unleashed passions beyond rational control. Even for the sixteenth century, when birth and rank counted for far more than they do now, Surrey was unduly impressed with his ancestry. Jealous of the rise of the Seymours, he made a foolish move; he had his arms quartered with the arms of Edward the Confessor, thus claiming royal blood. He wanted to prove the superiority of his descent to that of the Seymours. In purely factual terms, Surrey was perfectly justified in quartering the royal arms, since he was descended through the Mowbray family from Thomas Brotherton, son of Edward I, and Richard I had permitted the Mowbrays the quartering. However, it was a dangerous gesture, knowing the antipathy of the Seymours and their power to express it. Surrey and his father were accused by the Seymours of treasonable designs, and were committed to the Tower.
There then followed the most unseemly squabble. The Howards' fate was not helped by dissension within the family. The Duke of Norfolk's private life had been the subject of gossip for some time. He and his wife had been forever quarrelling, and had eventually separated, as a result of the Duke's taking a mistress. What really rankled was that the mistress, Elizabeth Holland, was a washerwoman from the Duke's own household. The Duchess told Cromwell that Mistress Holland was "a churl's daughter, who was but a washer in my nursery eight years".12 For a man from whom aristocratic snobbery came as fire from his nostrils, the Duke showed a remarkable lapse in taste. The affair rent the family asunder. The Duchess claimed she was afraid to enter the house. "He keeps that harlot Bess Holond and the residue of the harlots that bound me and pinnacled me and sat on my breast till I spat blood, and I reckon if I come home I shall be poisoned."13 The affair is too distant now for us to judge whether she was being melodramatic, but the family appear to have believed it. Surrey took his father's side, but his wife, his daughter, and his mistress all testified against him to the Seymours. Matters were made worse by the daughter's statement that her brother (Surrey) had rigidly adhered to the old Catholic religion, an admission which cannot have pleased the King, and which further antagonised Seymour, who was a convinced Protestant. Father and son were attainted; their fall was absolute. The Earl of Surrey was beheaded on 21st January 1547, a martyr to vanity; he died for a trivial cause, which appears to the modern mind as mere "showing off", but which, in the nervous and agitated times of Henry VIII, was high treason. His father the Duke signed a confession, was about to lose his head, but was saved by the death of the King the night before the execution was due to take place.
It is odd how, in these early days, the fortunes of the Seymours continued to follow the demise of the Howards so closely. Only one week after the execution of Surrey, Henry VIII died (28th January 1547). Edward Seymour lost no time in seizing power; with the Howards out of the way, the "old nobility" could hinder him no longer with their petulant pride. He did not announce the king's death immediately, but first fetched the new King, Edward VI his nephew, who was now ten years old, and brought him to London. With the King's person in his custody, Seymour proclaimed himself Lord Protector of the Realm, releasing the secret of Henry's death and Edward's accession, and secured the right to act independently of the Privy Council's advice. Only one member of the Council strongly objected to this coup d'etat - Wriothesley. A few days later Seymour created himself Baron Seymour, and on 16th February Duke of Somerset.
The warrant creating this dukedom is a unique document. It bears the signature of the boy king, "Edward", but it bears in addition a number of other signatures, among which can be seen "E. Somerset" who, in all logic, can hardly have existed, under that name, to put his signature to a document which would enable him thenceforth, to bear that name. The warrant may still be seen at the Public Record Office.
His brother Thomas was appointed Lord High Admiral of England and elevated as Lord Seymour of Sudeley (Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire was where Thomas went to live with his new wife, Queen Catherine Parr, after being turned down by Princess Elizabeth). The Seymours had never imagined such heights of power; together the brothers ruled England, their nephew was king in theory, and the new Duke of Somerset was king in fact. The official designation by which he permitted himself to be called had a royal ring about it: "Edward, by the grace of God, Duke of Somerset".14 He addressed the King of France as "brother".
The Lord Protector achieved much in the field of religious reform during his reign. He was, indeed, the first Protestant ruler of England. He allowed priests to marry, issued a proclamation against ceremonies, removed images, and enforced the use of English in church services, all measures regarded as extremely radical at the time; he was thought a "rank Calvinist",15 and did openly correspond with Calvin. He was, however, intoxicated with the taste of power, and overstretched the forbearance of
those about him. He was far too ready to line his own pocket, acquiring for himself vast properties from monastic lands, far more than might be regarded as reasonable, and a huge personal fortune. The high regard in which he obviously held himself was his undoing. He thought that he could proceed along the path of self-indulgence without hindrance, as long as the child king was at his bidding. He built a sumptuous palace in the Strand - Somerset House - and erected there a court of requests. The last straw was his making a stamp of the King's signature, which was an impudent admission that the power of the royal authority was entirely in his grasp.
Ironically, it was a family squabble which turned the tables against the Seymours, as it had against the Howards. The Duke of Somerset and his brother the Lord Admiral fell out almost as soon as they acquired power, and were virtually sworn enemies for the rest of their lives. As they were in control of the country, their strife did not make for harmonious government. Even their wives quarrelled over precedence, the Duchess claiming a higher status than the Queen Dowager. Thomas Seymour was jealous of his brother's supreme authority; he thought that the Lord Protectorship should have been shared equally between them. Since Somerset had control of the King, Thomas Seymour would have control of his sister the Princess Elizabeth. When this failed, he turned his attentions to Lady Jane Grey (who lived with him and his wife Catherine Parr at Sudeley). Then he attempted to seduce the eleven-year-old boy king away from the Protector's authority by the most elementary ruse: he sent him secret pocket-money. When he thought that he had the boy's confidence he made a fatal miscalculation. He planned to kidnap him. With master keys to the royal palaces, it was no trouble for Seymour to gain access to his nephew. In the middle of a winter night, Seymour and some confederates stole to the door of the King's bedroom. As he fumbled with the lock, the King's pet spaniel barked, and Seymour ran the dog through with his sword. But it was too late. The alarm was raised, Seymour was arrested and conveyed to the Tower.
Lord Seymour of Sudeley was beheaded on his brother's orders on Tower Hill in 1549, two years after the same fate had befallen Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, for whose execution Seymour had actively striven. It is a pity that history has no truck with the moral principles of poetic justice, for here would be a splendid example of the principle at work.
The following year, the Duke of Somerset himself began his decline. He was deprived of his Protectorship (to which, anyway, he had had no right in Henry VIII's will) and all other offices, was later imprisoned in the Tower, and finally found guilty of inciting the London citizens to rebellion. The Duke's execution in 1552 provoked scenes of unheard-of lamentation, for in spite of the man's rapaciousness and unbridled ambition, he enjoyed considerable popularity with the people. The period of his rule had been mercifully free from religious persecution, and ordinary people slept more soundly in their beds than they had done for a hundred years or more. They knew also that he had a deeply felt concern and sympathy with the poorer working classes, whose part he often took. Londoners always know in their bones when they are ruled by someone with their interests at heart, and they cherish him accordingly. They felt this for Charles II, for Elizabeth I, for George VI, and for Lord Protector Somerset.
Orders had been given for the people to stay indoors until ten o'clock, when the execution would already be over, but they were wasted words. Tower Hill was crowded. The Duke addressed a few words to the people before he placed his head on the block. He said that he was glad to have advanced the cause of religion. Then he was beheaded. The crowds rushed to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood. At least one woman still had her handkerchief two years later.
When the Duke of Northumberland was led through the city in chains in 1554 for his opposition to Queen Mary, the woman shook her blood-stained handkerchief in front of him. "Behold the blood of that worthy man, that good uncle of that excellent King," she said, "which was shed by thy treacherous machinations, now, at this instant, begins to revenge itself upon thee."16 Contemporary accounts have perhaps adorned the lady's prose a little, but that was no doubt the gist of what she said. The "excellent king" meanwhile, now fourteen years old, recorded his uncle's death in his diary in the manner of a dispassionate news item. "The Duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Tower Hill between eight and nine o'clock in the morning."17
It was time for the Howards to re-emerge. The Seymour family, consigned to political oblivion, were never again to attain such heights. They now entered a century of comparative obscurity. The old Duke of Norfolk, 3rd of the Howard line, who had been saved from the scaffold by the perfect timing of Henry VIII's death, was reinstated by Mary Tudor, half-sister and successor of the child Edward VI, and allowed to die of old age, a rare privilege for the dukedom. His grandson the 4th Duke of Norfolk (.1536-1572), son of the beheaded poet Surrey, succeeded in 1554 at the age of eighteen. He married Lady Mary Fitzalan, daughter and heiress of the Earl of Arundel, and she died in childbirth at the age of sixteen. The earldom of Arundel, one of the most ancient titles in the land, passed to her son Philip, and has been held by the Dukes of Norfolk ever since. This marriage marks the first alliance of the Howards and Fitzalans, the first joining of the titles of Norfolk and Arundel, an alliance commemorated in the family name of the present Duke, Miles Fitzalan-Howard.
Norfolk's career was tragic and tempestuous. He married three times, and was three times a widower. On each occasion his grief was hardly compensated by the wealth and lands he inherited from successive wives. By 1570, he was not only the richest man in England, and the loneliest, but the only duke in the realm, respected and revered as the head of English nobility, and living representative of an illustrious family whose past was already part of distant history. It was a virtually impregnable position, almost divine in its antiquity and in the veneration it inspired. The unique situation of the Howards was demonstrated at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, when not only was Norfolk the Earl Marshal in charge of arrangements, but his father-in-law, Arundel, was Lord High Steward, his great-uncle, Lord Howard of Effingham, was Chamberlain of the royal household, and his wife the Duchess was one of the two principal ladies of honour. Elizabeth herself may have been the centre of attraction, but she was the only member of the Tudor family present, whereas around her, in front of her, and behind her were quantities of Howards who dominated the proceedings. She was even the daughter of a Howard.
All this was cast to the winds by the Duke's ineffaceable ambition and inexpungeable pride. He resented his role as stage manager of State ceremonial occasions, denied the high political office which his name deserved. Not satisfied with being a cousin of the Queen, he dreamed of the day when a Howard would sit on the throne of England.
The seed of his misfortune was once again the Howard arrogance. Just as his father and grandfather had despised Seymour on account of his low birth, and his great-grandfather the 2nd Duke of Norfolk had despised the butcher's son Wolsey, so the Elizabethan Duke turned his nose up at the Earl of Leicester, the Queen's favourite companion, lifelong friend, and flirtatious admirer. Norfolk was incapable of understanding that the Queen could possibly take Leicester's part against him. He had been eleven years old when his father was beheaded by the Seymours, who had thereby deprived his family of their rightful positions as protectors of the realm. He saw Leicester as the reincarnation of the perennial impudent upstart, and he smarted with indignation at the Queen's preference for him. He rebuked Leicester in a high-handed manner for behaving familiarly with the Queen, and for "kissing the Queen's majesty without being invited thereto".18 Eventually, Norfolk was led to imagine that the only way of protecting the throne from the pernicious influence of such ne'er-do-wells was to look after the succession himself.
The Queen was not married, and showed no signs of remedying the situation. There was no obvious heir to the throne. The loudest claimant was Mary Queen of Scots, descended from Henry VII, and recognised by the French as the rightful Queen of England. But Elizabeth could not envisage such a cla
im. The two queens never met (to the eternal regret of biographers and dramatists), but they impinged upon each other's lives almost every day. Elizabeth was the obstacle to Mary's designs and the chief cause of her unhappiness; Mary was the sorest thorn in Elizabeth's flesh, and the one problem over which she prevaricated. Moreover, Elizabeth was Protestant, and Mary was Roman Catholic. The one man who might mediate between the two, it was suggested, was the Duke of Norfolk, nominally a Protestant, but belonging to an ancient Catholic family whom the Catholics still regarded as theirs. The question of the succession must be settled, but it could not be as long as the two women glowered at each other. Norfolk was the only man with the prestige to solve the issue. His mistake was to try to solve it without the Queen's knowledge or consent, and to allow himself to be talked into solving it by advancing himself. He would marry the Queen of the Scots.
On the face of it, this was not such a bad idea. Mary would succeed Elizabeth on the throne of England, and their offspring would assure the future of the crown. He was acceptable to both Protestants and Catholics. Nevertheless, it is astonishing that Norfolk should have considered for one moment either that Mary would have been acceptable to the English, or that she would have made a decent wife. The truth is that he hardly decided anything. He drifted with the tide, manipulated by his followers. For once, the famous Howard pragmatism, the ability to change allegiance according to the wind, was misjudged. Naturally, with her expert intelligence system and her wary First Minister Cecil, whose antennae were always alert, Elizabeth found him out. She asked him point blank if he intended to marry the Queen of Scots. Norfolk denied it. The Queen did not remind him that anyone with whom Mary contracted a marriage, or anyone who advised such a course, was ipso facto guilty of treason and would die as a matter of course. Had he forgotten? Typically, his reaction was to nurse a new resentment, this time against the career-conscious Cecil.
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