Even allowing for a measure of exaggeration in all the tributes to his virtue and wisdom, there is no reason to doubt that Edward did have great natural intelligence, a real eagerness to learn and an enormous capacity for concentrated hard work. Nor is there any reason to doubt the utter sincerity of his religious convictions, even if they do make him seem priggish to a materialistic age. The coldly uncommunicative front he presented, especially in the early years of his reign, was probably a defence mechanism as much as anything and where his suspicions had been aroused his hostility could be implacable - witness his attitude towards his unfortunate Seymour uncles. But Edward could both give and inspire affection. His personal attendants were all devoted to him and Edward himself had formed a close and lasting friendship with Barnaby Fitzpatrick, the Irish boy who shared his childhood.
In his obstinacy, his streak of ruthlessness, his personal charm, his love of music and pageantry, and his addiction to physical exercise Edward was a very recognizable Tudor. It seems more than possible that he might have grown up to combine his father’s more attractive characteristics with his grandfather’s long-headedness and made England a very great king. But he had been able to give ‘a show or sight only of excellency’ and now:
Out of Greenwich he is gone.
And lieth under a stone.
That loveth both house and parke:
Thou shalt see him no more,
That set by thee such store.
For death hath pearced his hart.
Gone is our King,
That would runne at the ringe.
And oftentimes ryde on Black heath
Ye noblemen of chevalry,
And ye men of artillehe,
May all lament his death.
That swete childe is deadc,
And lapped in leade,
And in Westminster lyeth full colde
All hartes may rue,
That ever they him knew.
Or that swete childe did beholde.
Farewell, diamonde deare!
Farewell, christall cleare!
Farewell, the flower of chevalry!
The Lorde hath taken him,
And for his people’s sinne;
A just plague for our iniquitie.
The plague, just or otherwise, which Edward’s people now faced was that old recurring nightmare, a disputed succession, and in the summer of 1553 the outlook was particularly gloomy. With the royal house reduced to a handful of women and babies and the rightful heir a delicate ageing spinster, the way seemed wide open for the strong men to take over. Mary had been waiting out the last few months in ‘sore perplexity’ and increasing fear of the future. Northumberland sent her regular reports on Edward’s condition and he even sent her a present, a blazon of her coat of arms as Princess of England, but Mary and de Scheyfve believed these attentions were intended to lull her suspicions, that the moment Edward was dead the Duke meant to seize power for himself by proclaiming his new daughter-in-law Queen, and that Mary would then be in deadly danger. All the same, when a summons to her dying brother’s bedside reached her at Hunsdon, probably on 5 July, she obediently set out on the journey. She had not gone far - she was at Hoddesdon on the London road - before she received an anonymous warning, which can surely have come as no surprise, that Northumberland’s message was a trap.
The crisis which had been lying in wait for Mary all her adult life was now upon her. Now, if ever, she must forget her megrims, her nervous headaches, her self-doubts and hesitations and fits of weeping. Now, if she was to save herself, let alone her chances of becoming Queen, she must act with speed and decision. With only one possible course of action before her, Mary showed that she could rise bravely to an occasion. After sending a brief word to the Imperial embassy, she turned aside and, with no more than half a dozen loyal companions, rode hard and straight down the Newmarket road tor Kenninghall in Norfolk. She had friends in the eastern counties and there, if it came to the worst, she would be within reach of the coast and rescue.
In London the King’s death was being kept a close secret, or as close as it was possible to keep a secret in any royal household, but when he heard that Mary had slipped through his fingers, Northumberland could wait no longer - for him, too, speed was of the essence. He despatched a party of three hundred horses under the command of his son Robert with orders to pursue and capture the Lady Mary and on Sunday, 9 July, he finally showed his hand. The Bishop of London, preaching at St. Paul’s Cross, referred to both the princesses as bastards and fulminated especially against Mary as a papist who would bring foreigners into the country. Also on that Sunday the Lady Jane was officially informed of her new status.
The six weeks since her marriage had not been happy ones for Jane. She seems to have feared and disliked the whole Dudley family, particularly her husband and his mother, to such an extent that even her own mother’s company was preferable and immediately after the wedding she had gone back first to Suffolk Place and then to her parents’ house by the river at Sheen. But the Duchess of Northumberland, who did not get on with the Duchess of Suffolk, soon became impatient. She told Jane that the King was dying and that she ought to be ready for a summons at any time, because he had made her his heir. According to Jane, this information, flung at her without warning, caused her the greatest stupefaction, but she put it down to ‘boasting’ and an excuse to separate her from her mother. She probably said so, for the result was a furious Tudor-Dudley quarrel - the Duchess of Northumberland accusing the Duchess of Suffolk of deliberately trying to keep the newly-weds apart and insisting that whatever happened, Jane’s place was with her husband. This argument was unanswerable and, in the end, Jane was forced to join Guildford at Durham House where, apparently, the marriage was consummated. But the reluctant bride stayed only a few days with her in-laws. She had become ill -probably some form of summer complaint aggravated by nervous strain - and, with curious lack of logic, was convinced that the Dudleys were poisoning her. In fact, of course, her health and wellbeing were of vital concern to the Dudleys just then and they sent her out to Chelsea, with its happy memories of Katherine Parr, to recuperate. She was still there on the afternoon of 9 July when Northumberland’s daughter, Mary Sidney, came to fetch her to Syon House - another of the Duke’s residences. At Syon she found her parents, her husband, her mother-in-law, and the Lords of the Council headed by Northumberland himself These distinguished personages greeted her with ‘unwonted caresses and pleasantness’ and, to Jane’s acute embarrassment, proceeded to kneel before her and do her reverences which she considered most unsuitable to her state. Northumberland then broke the news of Edward’s death and went on to disclose the terms of the King’s ‘Device’; how he had decided for good and sufficient reasons that neither of his sisters was worthy to succeed him and how - ‘he being in every way able to disinherit them’ - he had instead nominated his cousin Jane as heir to the crown of England.
Jane’s partisans have always maintained that this was the first she knew of her deadly inheritance, but it is hard to believe that a girl pf so much brilliant, highly-trained intelligence can have failed to grasp the significance of her hasty forced marriage to Guildford Dudley, or that she had not at least guessed what was being planned for her. Not that prior knowledge in any way affected the helplessness of her position. Half-fainting, she managed to gasp out something about her ‘insufficiency’ and a hasty prayer that if the crown was rightfully hers, God would help her govern the realm to His glory. In present circumstances, God looked like being her only friend.
On the following afternoon, the new Queen was taken in state by water from Syon to the Tower and a Genoese merchant, one Baptista Spinola, who was standing in a group of spectators outside the fortress to see the procession disembark, took the trouble to describe her appearance in detail. ‘This Jane’, he wrote, ‘is very short and thin (all the Grey sisters were diminutive, Mary, the youngest, being almost a dwarf), but prettily shaped and graceful. She
has small features and a well-made nose, the mouth flexible and the lips red. The eyebrows are arched and darker than her hair, which is nearly red. Her eyes are sparkling and reddish brown in colour.’ Spinola was standing so close to Jane that he noticed her complexion was good but freckled and her teeth, when she smiled, white and sharp. She was wearing a gown of green velvet stamped with gold, while Guildford, ‘a very tall strong boy with light hair’ resplendent in white and silver, preened himself at her side and ‘paid her much attention’.
Guildford was enjoying himself He made no pretence of loving his wife, but he was quite prepared to be polite to her in public in return for the golden stream of social and material benefits which would flow from her. Unfortunately these happy expectations were about to receive a severe set-back. No sooner was Jane installed in the royal apartments at the Tower than she was visited by the Lord Treasurer, the Marquis of Winchester, bringing a selection of royal jewels for her inspection. He also brought the crown itself although, as Jane was later careful to stress, she had not asked for it. Either in an ill-judged attempt to please her, or (more likely) to force her into committing herself beyond any possibility of return, Winchester urged her to put it on to see if it suited her. Jane recoiled in horror. The crown was the ultimate symbol of sanctified earthly power - to treat it as a plaything, a sort of extra special head-dress, would be tantamount to blasphemy. Winchester tailed to see the storm-signals. She could take it without fear, he told her, and added kindly that another should be made to crown her husband.
This was the final straw. It was perhaps only now that Jane realized, ‘with infinite grief and displeasure of heart’, exactly how she had been tricked. No one cared a snap of their fingers about fulfilling her dead cousin’s wishes, about maintaining the gospel and the Protestant faith, or whether the throne was rightfully hers. The plot was simply to use her and her royal blood to elevate a plebeian Dudley to a throne to which he had no shadow of right so that his father could continue to rule. Jane had her full share of Tudor family pride and now that pride was outraged. Small, stubborn, terrified and furious, she laid back her ears and dug in her heels. She would make her husband a duke but never, never would she consent to make him king. This naturally precipitated a full-scale family row. Guildford rushed off to fetch his mother and together they launched an all-out attack on their victim - he whining that he did not want to be a duke, he wanted to be King; she scolding like a fishwife. At last, finding Jane immovable, they stormed out of her presence, the Duchess of Northumberland swearing that her precious son should not stay another minute with his unnatural and ungrateful wife but would return immediately to Syon. Jane watched them go and then sent for the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke. Little though she wanted Guildford’s company, she had no intention of allowing him to put such an open slight on her. She ordered Arundel and Pembroke to prevent him from leaving. Whether or not he continued to share her bed, his place was by her side and there he must stay. Guildford sulked but he did as he was told.
While these domestic storms were raging inside the Tower, the heralds were going round the city proclaiming Queen Jane but, noted the Greyfriars Chronicle ominously, ‘few or none said God save her’. The sullenly silent crowds in Cheapside and Ludgate that summer evening set the pattern for the rest of the country. The English people knew nothing and cared less about Jane Grey; they had always had a soft spot for Mary Tudor and, even more to the point, they had come to loathe the whole tribe of Dudley for greedy, tyrannical upstarts. Richard Troughton, bailiff of South Walshen in Lincolnshire, hearing of Mary’s plight from his friend James Pratt as they stood together by the cattle drinking-place called hedgedyke, was moved to exclaim: ‘Then it is the Duke’s doing and woe worth him that ever he was born, for he will go about to destroy all the noble blood of England.’ John Dudley might control the capital, the Tower with its armoury, the treasury and the navy; he might have all the great lords in his pocket, meek as mice; but Richard Troughton spoke for England, and England had had more than enough of John Dudley and his like and was not prepared to stand idly by while King Harry’s daughter, poor soul, was cheated of her rightful inheritance.
Meanwhile, King Harry’s daughter had reached the comparative safety of Kenninghall and on 9 July had written defiantly to the Council, commanding them to proclaim her right and title in her City of London. Mary’s challenge was delivered just as the new Court was sitting down to dinner on that eventful Monday, lo July and caused the Duchesses of Suffolk and Northumberland to shed tears of alarm. The news that Mary was still at large and showing fight came as an unwelcome surprise to her enemies, ‘astonished and troubled’ as they read her letter, but not even the most optimistic of her friends dared to hope that she might stand a chance. At the Imperial embassy, where Jehan de Scheyfve had recently been reinforced by three envoys extraordinary, they were confidently expecting the worst and could only deplore my Lady’s obstinate refusal to accept defeat.
But the Duke knew how fragile were the foundations on which his power rested. Every day that Mary remained free would undermine them further and disquieting reports were beginning to come in about the support rallying to her. The Earl of Sussex and his son were on their way to Norfolk, while the Earl of Bath and men like Sir Thomas Wharton, Sir John Mordaunt, Sir Henry Bedingfield and Henry Jerningham, as well as other substantial gentlemen with their tenantry – not to mention ‘innumerable small companies of the common people’ - were already helping to swell the numbers at the little camp now established at Framlingham Castle, a stronger place than Kenninghall and nearer the coast. No cause yet perhaps for serious anxiety, but any hope of the swift, silent coup which John Dudley had been banking on was gone. He would have to mount a full-scale expedition ‘to fetch in the Lady Mary’ and ride out the consequent bad publicity as best he could.
Preparations began on the twelfth with a muster at Tothill Fields and that night wakeful citizens could hear carts laden with weapons and supplies ‘for a great army towards Cambridge’ rumbling eastward through the streets. Northumberland had intended to put the Duke of Suffolk in command of the army, but when this information was conveyed to Queen Jane, she burst into tears and begged that her father ‘might tarry at home in her company’ - the prospect of being left alone in a nest of Dudleys was altogether too much. The Lords of the Council looked uneasily at their weeping sovereign and then at each other, an idea beginning to form in their collective minds. This idea they presently propounded to Northumberland. It would be so much better, they suggested, if he took command himself No other man was so well fitted for the task, especially seeing that he had already suppressed one rebellion in East Anglia and was therefore so feared in those parts that no one would dare offer him any resistance. Besides, was he not the best man of war in the realm’ ? Then there was the matter of the Queen’s distress and the fact that she would ‘in no wise grant that her father should take it on him’. So it was really up to the Duke, murmured someone, a note of steel audible under the persuasion, it was really up to the Duke ‘to remedy the matter’. The Duke, sensing that control of events was beginning to slide out of his hands, gave way. ‘Since ye think it good’, he said, ‘I and mine will go, not doubting of your fidelity to the Queen’s majesty which I leave in your custody.’
The fidelity of his associates to anything but their own best interests was, of course, highly doubtful and it was the lively fear of what they might do as soon as his back was turned which lay behind John Dudley’s reluctance to take the field himself. He knew that he was being manoeuvred into the role of scapegoat, but there was no going back now.
Next day, all his arrangements made, he addressed the assembled Council for the last time, in a last effort to impress them with the hypnotic force of his personality. He and his companions, he said, were going forth to adventure their bodies and lives trusting to the faith and truth of those they left behind. If anyone was thinking of violating that trust, let them remember treachery could be a two-handed game; le
t them also remember God’s vengeance and the sacred oath of allegiance they had taken ‘to this virtuous lady the Queen’s highness’, whom they had all helped to entice into a position she had never asked for or sought. ‘My lord’, said someone -it may have been Winchester, the eldest of the peers - ‘if ye mistrust any of us in this matter, your grace is far deceived; for which of us can wipe his hands clean thereof?’ While they were talking the servants had come in with the first course of dinner and were laying the table, but Winchester (if it were he) went on: ‘If we should shrink from you as one that were culpable, which of us can excuse himself as guiltless? Therefore herein your doubt is too far cast.’ ‘I pray God it be so’, answered the Duke abruptly. ‘Let us go to dinner.’
The House of Tudor Page 27