by Jones, Nigel
Seymour was beheaded on Tower Hill on 19 March. Few details survive of his last moments, but according to the later Protestant martyr Bishop Hugh Latimer, he died ‘dangerously, irksomely, horribly’. The preacher added that he was a man ‘furthest from the fear of God that ever I knew or heard of in England’. Latimer’s testimony is suspect, however, for at the time he uttered it, he was in the pay of Somerset, who had ordered him to blacken his brother’s reputation to deflect attention from his own growing unpopularity. Despite separating himself from his unruly sibling, however, Somerset fulfilled the prophecy being whispered in the streets, that ‘the fall of one brother would be the overthrow of the other’. Within a few years, Edward Seymour would be treading in his brother’s footsteps along the melancholy path from the Tower to the scaffold.
Somerset’s fall was brought about by a combination of economic and religious discontent, and the machinations of a man, John Dudley, who proved a more ruthless operator than he in the worst Tudor tradition. 1549 became a year of revolt as the kingdom’s woes came to a violent head. Somerset was ill-placed to deal with the crisis as his reputation had been fatally undermined by his brother’s fate. Damned by family association with such a man, Somerset was also damned by his part in his brother’s death, with one woman telling him to his face that Thomas’s blood ‘cried against thee unto God from the very ground’.
The religious Reformation had got out of hand, with liberty becoming licence. Ordinary folk were confused and offended by the sudden ending of ancient traditions – candles being withdrawn from the festival of Candlemas, for instance – and with the introduction of Cranmer’s unfamiliar English Book of Common Prayer. Their bewilderment was exacerbated by landlords racking up rents to cope with rampant inflation, and enclosing land which had been common for centuries. Instead of taking a firm line with the discontent, Somerset let things drift.
In the summer of 1549 the pressure cooker exploded. A Whit Sunday protest against Cranmer’s new prayer book in the Devonshire village of Sampford Courtenay became a fully fledged rebellion that crackled across Devon and Cornwall like a raging brush fire. Two officials sent to enforce the government’s new religious edicts were murdered by mobs, and encouraged by their priests, a rebel army besieged and seized Exeter. Ominously, the rebels adopted as their emblem the five wounds of Christ – the same symbol used by the Pilgrimage of Grace in Henry VIII’s reign.
While Somerset dithered, the council sent an armed force to confront the rebels, but by the time they arrived in the West Country, a fresh revolt – centred on economic, rather than religious, grievances – had broken out in East Anglia. Peasant labourers tore down the fences that local landowners had thrown up to enclose their estates, preventing the landless poor from grazing their animals or growing crops. One of the landowners targeted, Robert Kett, unexpectedly joined the protesters and swiftly became the revolt’s leader. Kett planted himself under an oak on Mousehold Heath outside Norwich, the second largest city in England, and laid down the law as his followers tore down enclosures across the county.
The two rebellions threatened a pincer movement on London from east and west. The Privy Council unanimously blamed the Protector for the unrest. Although Somerset attempted to crack down on both outbreaks, he would not be forgiven by his fellow grandees for his radical reforms and weakness in countenancing a revolt that looked alarmingly like an egalitarian social revolution. In the late summer, Lord Russell, commander of the government forces, retook Exeter and in three pitched battles, finally smashed the prayer book rebellion. More than 3,000 rebels died, and hundreds more were executed in subsequent reprisals.
Simultaneously, Kett’s rebellion was also snuffed out. The Privy Council’s hard man, John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, rode to Norfolk with a large army, stiffened by seasoned Swiss mercenaries. A battle took place in Norwich and on Mousehold Heath, which destroyed Kett’s untrained peasant army. Dudley allowed most of Kett’s followers to return to their hovels. A few ringleaders, however, were hanged from Kett’s oak tree, and Kett himself and his brother William were taken to the Tower. There they were tried and sentenced to death before being carted back to Norwich for the ghastly final act: like Robert Aske, leader of the Pilgrimage of Grace, both suffered the slow torture of being hanged in chains.
The twin revolts spelled the death of Somerset, too. Within a few weeks he was deposed by John Dudley, whose prompt response to rebellion had contrasted so painfully with Somerset’s dithering. Recent research, however, has revealed suspicious links between Kett’s revolt and Dudley, the man who apparently quashed it so firmly. One of Dudley’s Privy Council cronies, Sir Richard Southwell, was channelling government cash intended for the suppression of the rebellion to the rebels themselves. Moreover, Southwell visited Kett during his brief incarceration in the Tower, and was himself later confined to the Tower for financial malpractice. Finally, in his will, Southwell left £40 to Kett’s son, who was in his service. It seems possible, if not likely, that Dudley, using Southwell as his go-between, was manipulating the rebellion to discredit and dispose of his rival Somerset. His involvement may also explain his relative leniency to the rebels.
In October 1549, Dudley gathered the majority of the council in London and secured the Tower against an attempt to take it by Somerset, who was holding the king at Windsor Castle. (‘Methinks this is a prison,’ the astute boy told his uncle.) As his support drained away, Somerset was reduced to pathetically begging his former colleagues to spare his life. Arrested at Windsor by the ubiquitous Sir Anthony Wingfield, captain of the guard, he was taken to the Tower. The king, who was fond of his Protestant uncle, was informed that he was ill. The deception, however, would not last long.
The few Catholics on the council, led by Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, thought that the duke’s downfall meant that the Reformation would be stopped in its tracks. When, however, at young King Edward’s insistence, Dudley gave orders for the reforms to proceed at full steam – with bonfires being made of Catholic relics in marketplaces across the country – the Catholics decided that he was as bad as Somerset and must suffer the same fate. Wriothesley went to the Tower in December to interrogate the former Protector, hoping that he would incriminate Dudley, taking with him his fellow councillors the Earl of Arundel and William Paulet.
Somerset told his interrogators that if he was guilty of treason, then so was Dudley. This was music to Wriothesley’s ears. On their way out of the Tower he told his companions, ‘I thought ever we should find them [Somerset and Dudley] traitors both, and both worthy to die on my advice.’ Arundel agreed that Dudley should join Somerset in the Tower. But Paulet wisely kept his counsel. He went straight to Dudley and warned him of Wriothesley’s plot. At the next council meeting, held in Dudley’s house in Holborn as the earl was either ill or feigning sickness, Wriothesley demanded that Somerset be executed for his ‘many treasons’. Knowing that his was the next name on Wriothesley’s little list, Dudley sprang out of his bed ‘with a warlike visage’, laid his hand on his sword, and snarled at Wriothesley, ‘My lord, you seek his blood and he that seeketh his blood would have mine also.’ Dudley summoned the guard and had Wriothesley confined to his nearby house. His co-conspirator Arundel was also placed under house arrest, and deprived of office. Sore and seeking revenge, he became an embittered enemy of Dudley. For Wriothesley, losing office was a death sentence. He died – possibly by suicide – in July 1550.
Having secured supremacy in the council, Dudley dished out the usual round of peerages and posts to reward supporters. Paulet, who had revealed Wriothesley’s plot, became the Earl of Wiltshire; Russell, who had vanquished the prayer book rebellion, became Earl of Bedford; while Northampton – who had been less successful at putting down Kett’s rebellion – became Lord Great Chamberlain. Sir Anthony Wingfield at last reaped a reward for all the high-profile arrests he had carried out as captain of the guard, being promoted to Comptroller. Somerset’s secretary, Sir Thomas Smith, who was sharing his mas
ter’s imprisonment in the Tower, made a cynical comment in verse on Dudley’s honours list.
This day made new Duke, Marquis or Baron
Yet may the axe stand near the door
Every thing is not ended as it is begun
God will have the stroke, either after or before.
King Edward pressed for his uncle’s release from the Tower. This accorded with Dudley’s plans, since he saw the humbled ex-protector as a useful firewall to deflect criticism from his own policies. In early February 1550 Somerset was bailed for the hefty sum of £10,000 and formally pardoned – though he was kept under house arrest at Syon Park for the time being. Somerset did not stay out in the cold for long. In April he was received by the king and dined with his supplanter Dudley, and the following month he was taken back on the council, his misrule seemingly forgiven if not forgotten.
Somerset’s brief spell in the Tower appeared to have made him a humbler and wiser man. He had read improving Protestant tracts finding therein ‘great comfort … which hath much relieved the grief of our mind’. At first the reconciliation between the former friends seemed permanent. The seal was set on their amity by the wedding, in June 1550, between Somerset’s daughter Anne and Dudley’s son Lord Lisle – though it was noted that Somerset was not present to give his daughter away.
But Somerset could not resist returning to politicking for position and power. His tactics were to seek a reconciliation with his old Catholic enemies. He visited the ultra-Catholic Bishop Stephen Gardiner in the Tower, seeking his agreement to recognise Cranmer’s prayer book. Tired of the Tower, the hard-line Gardiner, somewhat surprisingly, agreed. But when told of Gardiner’s submission Dudley insisted that he make a full confession of his errors, and returned with Somerset to the Tower to hear them. An indignant Gardiner refused, declaring he would rather take a dip in the polluted sewer that was the Thames, and stayed inside.
In early October 1551, exactly two years after Somerset’s first fall from grace, a defector from his camp, Sir Thomas Palmer, told Dudley that Somerset was planning to ignite a popular revolt against his rule. The ‘Good Duke’ had always enjoyed great popularity among the common people, and Dudley found Palmer’s tale both credible and convenient. Among those named by Palmer as plotters was Sir Miles Partridge, who was to raise the city of London apprentices, using them to seize and hold the Tower. As in an efficient modern police state, Somerset and his followers were rounded up in a single morning. The ‘Good Duke’ himself was the first to be arrested at Westminster. Along with two of his sons, he was taken back to the Tower. By the end of the week a dozen of the duke’s closest associates – including his beautiful but unpopular second wife, Anne Stanhope, and the Earl of Arundel – had joined him there.
Although noblemen like Somerset and Arundel were spared torture, the council authorised its use on lesser conspirators. After some were locked in a room at the Tower without food or water, confessions soon spilled out. Somerset was personally interrogated by Dudley. On the basis of the evidence extracted, Somerset was accused of attempting to abduct Dudley and seize the Tower, together with ‘the treasure, jewels and munitions of war therein contained’; and of inciting rebellion among the common people. He was rowed upriver from the Tower at 5 a.m. to Westminster Hall for the trial, for fear that his popularity might lead to a rescue attempt. Shouts of ‘God save the Duke!’ from the crowds milling outside penetrated the hall and may have influenced the jury, which, astonishingly for a state trial, cleared Somerset of treason. He was, however, convicted of attending unauthorised assemblies.
The mixed verdict caused confusion among Somerset’s supporters. Most assumed that he had been completely cleared and lustily cheered his expected release. To pacify them, Dudley promised to pardon the duke, telling him, ‘I will do my best that your life may be spared.’ Dudley’s duplicity in pretending to pardon the ‘Good Duke’ while privately contriving his death weighed heavily on his conscience. Two years later, facing his own execution, he admitted that ‘fraudulently procuring … [Somerset’s] unjust death’ was the sin for which he was most sorry.
The demonstrations in Somerset’s favour had unnerved Dudley. Again, he visited his rival in the Tower, apparently undecided as to whether to execute or spare him again. Christmas passed with the country in frozen suspension as to its political future. Finally, Dudley resolved to execute Somerset before demands for his reprieve overwhelmed him. One factor in his decision was the resolution of King Edward himself. The boy had been persuaded by the evidence that his uncle was a traitor and commanded that ‘the law take its course’, signing the duke’s death warrant without a qualm. Historians have often portrayed Edward as a helpless puppet of Dudley, but the reverse seems to have been the case. The young king was determined to rule in his own right. He was prepared to go against his entire council to get his way. Now he ordered the execution of his own, once beloved, uncle without turning a hair. Edward was, after all, a true Tudor.
On the evening of 21 January a royal messenger brought Somerset in the Tower the letter from Edward that he had been dreading. It notified him that his nephew had agreed to his execution the following morning. Somerset took the news philosophically. Reaching for the book of devotions he had been keeping in the Tower he wrote calmly:
Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Put thy trust in the Lord with all thine heart.
Be not wise in thine own conceit, but fear the
Lord and flee from evil.
From the tower, the day before my death. E. Somerset.
Around eight o’clock the following day, Somerset paced the melancholy path up Tower Hill in his brother’s footsteps. Hoping to fool the duke’s many friends, Dudley had announced that the execution would take place at noon, but the ploy failed: an enormous crowd lined the route, many murmuring their sympathy as the ‘Good Duke’ made his final journey. Reaching the scaffold, Somerset knelt and raised his hands in prayer. Facing east towards the rising sun he addressed the crowd. He said that he accepted his death and thanked God that he had been granted time to prepare for it. He affirmed that he did not regret the religious reforms that he had pushed through, and wished them to be pushed further still as the alternative to a ‘worse plague’.
At that point a single loud thunderclap split the silence, leaving Somerset dumbfounded and the crowd amazed. Some hurled themselves into the Tower’s moat in fear. Many thought it an act of God to prevent the execution. Somerset silenced the murmuring crowd, asking them to pray for the king. When they responded with cries and whispers, he begged the people to be silent lest they disturb his final moments on earth. He then read out his confession from a scroll, shook hands with the witnesses on the scaffold, tipped the executioner who gently removed his gown and ruff, and without more ado knelt at the block. His head was severed by a single stroke, at which a great groan of disapproval went up from the crowd, many darting forward to soak their kerchiefs in the ‘Good Duke’s’ spurting blood.
Edward coolly recorded the event in his journal: ‘The Duke of Somerset had his head cut off on Tower Hill between eight and nine o’clock this morning.’
Like Macbeth after Duncan’s death, having achieved supreme power by reluctantly eliminating the man who stood in his path, Dudley began to feel that he was ‘stepped in blood so far that returning were as tedious as go o’er’. Somerset’s eldest son John died in the Tower of unknown causes, but the smaller fry of the conspiracy survived to be beheaded and hanged a month after their master. Noted for his unusual leniency earlier in his career, now that he had the power, Dudley began to exhibit all the hallmarks of a tyrant. Even light-hearted comments about the regime were visited by savage penalties such as ear cropping. Other malefactors had their ears nailed to the pillory. Elizabeth Huggons, a servant of Somerset, was sent to the Tower for commenting that Dudley deserved to die more than the late duke. Depression and ill health – including stomach ulcers, a sure sign of stress – plagued Dudley, who talked openly of des
iring death.
He was not the only one to fall sick. As the New Year of 1553 opened, King Edward took to his bed with an ominously persistent cough. The illness could not be shaken away, and by May the king was coughing up blood and mucus. The tuberculosis bacillae, triggered by an attack of measles the previous April, were firmly lodged in the king’s lungs and he was clearly dying. Realising that he could not recover, Edward’s thoughts – and those of his Privy Council – turned to the succession.
Edward’s bigoted Protestantism revolted at the thought of his equally bigoted Catholic half-sister Mary succeeding him and undoing the Reformation. And although his younger half-sister Elizabeth, who was next in line after Mary, was a Protestant, she was also a daughter of the condemned ‘concubine’ Anne Boleyn, and therefore a bastard. Edward decided to exclude both his half-sisters from the succession. Writing in the bedchamber of Greenwich Palace that had become his sickroom, Edward drew up a ‘Device for the succession’. Disinheriting his siblings, this document declared that the succession would pass down the line started by Henry VIII’s youngest sister, Mary, to her daughter Frances, and then to her firmly Protestant daughters Jane, Catherine and Mary Grey, and thence to their male heirs.
The king deciding this was one thing; persuading the Privy Council and Parliament to enact it was quite another. John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, was naturally the strongest supporter of the scheme since, as the chief driving force behind the continuing Protestant Reformation, he would have everything to lose if Mary inherited the crown. Jane Grey, a slip of a girl, might, he thought, be easier to manipulate than the tough-minded Edward. To ensure that the kingdom stayed in his hands, Dudley hastily arranged for his youngest surviving son, Lord Guildford Dudley, a handsome seventeen-year-old, to marry Lady Jane.