House Of Treason: The Rise And Fall Of A Tudor Dynasty

by Hutchinson, Robert

  Wriothesley, his voice raised above the babble of voices, then pronounced sentence: that Surrey was to be taken ‘back to the Tower and thence led through the City of London to the gallows at Tyburn64 and hanged and disembowelled’ and his body quartered. He was led out of the Guildhall and back to the Tower, the halberdiers struggling to push back the crowds, with Surrey still angrily declaring his innocence. One eyewitness said it was ‘shocking to hear the things he kept saying and to see the grief of the people’.65

  On 19 January, the sentence against this ‘foolish proud boy’ having been commuted to mere beheading, Surrey was executed on Tower Hill and buried immediately in the church of All Hallows, close by in Upper Thames Street.66 On the scaffold ‘he spoke a great deal but said he never meant to commit treason. They would not let him talk any more.’

  The British Library holds a sketch of his arms, drawn by the Garter King of Arms in 1586, and headed ‘Drawing of Arms of Howard, Earl of Surrey, for which he was attainted’. Its complexity - and inaccuracies in the twelve quarters - demonstrates that the earl was probably doing little more than careless, wistful doodling.67

  Just over a week later, on 27 January, Wriothesley presided over a joint session of Parliament and announced the Royal Assent to the Bill of Attainder68 of both Surrey and Norfolk, as Henry was too ill to attend in person. It was the last document signed in the king’s reign.69 As traitors, Norfolk and Surrey were automatically degraded from the Order of the Garter.70

  Norfolk, still in the Tower, anxiously awaited his own lonely march to the scaffold. At least now he was relatively comfortable, lodged in the Constable’s apartments. Walter Stonor’s accounts for 12 December to 6 February show that £210 (£58,000 in today’s money) was spent on the duke’s board and lodging, including the cost of coals and candles.71

  Henry VIII died dumbly, probably from renal and liver failure, coupled with the effects of his obesity,72 at around two o’clock on the morning of Friday 28 January 1547, his hand clasped by the faithful Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury.

  Later that morning Norfolk was due to be executed. He had probably been told the time of his last hour and as it passed - together with the days that followed - he must have puzzled at the reprieve.

  The king’s huge body lay within his apartments at Westminster for three days while the power brokers on his Council fashioned the shape of the government of the new nine-year-old king, Edward VI. Normal ceremonies were maintained as the news of Henry’s death remained secret; the royal dishes were greeted at mealtimes by a flourish of trumpets as usual.

  On 31 January, Wriothesley, his voice choking with emotion, announced the death of the king to a grieving Parliament. Edward, under Hertford’s close protection, rode into London and was proclaimed king at the Tower amid the roar of cannon salutes from the ramparts and from ships moored in the Thames. Norfolk now knew the reason for his survival: if he shed any tears, they would have been of relief rather than remorse over the death of his old master.

  Hertford was created Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector. Norfolk’s death warrant, already signed, was never fulfilled, probably because it was felt the threat he posed was effectively neutralised by his continued imprisonment.

  Two months later, the plain, stark truth about Surrey’s arraignment and execution emerged during a conversation between Jean de St Mauris, the Spanish ambassador to France, and his English counterpart, Nicholas Wotton. The English diplomat declared that ‘God had shown mercy to the late king and to his people in that the Earl of Surrey had died before him’,

  for otherwise he would have given the government trouble . . . [Wotton] greatly censured the earl’s insolence and hinted that he had been put out of the way because it had been feared he might stir up some commotion.73

  In July 1547, six months after Surrey’s trial, some of the evidence against him turned up, tantalisingly only to be lost again. Privy Council records show that Sir Robert Southwell, Master of the Rolls - the younger brother of the informer against the earl -

  delivered up a bag of books, sealed with his seal, wherein were contained writings concerning the attainder of the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Surrey his son, to the said Sir Robert and other learned men heretofore delivered to peruse. [The] bag was hereupon ordered to be stowed in the study at Westminster Palace, where other records do lie.74

  Surrey left two sons and two daughters and his wife, Frances, gave birth to a third daughter Jane three weeks after his execution. Their custody was granted by the government to his sister, Mary, Duchess of Richmond, who was allowed £100 a year, paid quarterly, for their upkeep. Thomas, aged ten, Henry, six, and the eldest daughter Katherine were lodged at Reigate Castle in Surrey, which had been forfeited, with the rest of Norfolk’s and Surrey’s possessions, to the crown.75 Frances remarried by 1553; her new husband was Thomas Steyning, with whom she had two children.76

  The duke’s second son, Thomas, was pardoned and restored to the rank of baron in mid-April.77 Norfolk’s half-brother, Lord William Howard, was the only member of the family not tainted by disgrace. The general pardon issued to ‘all who had offended the king’ deliberately excluded Norfolk. Cannily, he sought assistance from the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom he asked to visit him in the Tower. They talked for two hours, both weeping - one in sympathy, the other in self-pity - and Cranmer agreed to lobby for the duke’s release. His mission failed.

  To the victors, the spoils. Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, received Norfolk’s clothes and apparel ‘however much worn: his parliamentary robes, jewels, gold chains, the French order of St Michael and the Garter regalia; crosses, brooches, rings, bracelets and ‘most of his chapel plate’. The duke’s livestock and provisions were divided between Somerset and Princess Mary.78

  Claims by Bessie Holland, his mistress, for the return of all her glitzy jewellery were allowed, no doubt as reward for testifying against father and son. The Duchess of Richmond also received ‘a good many things’. Surrey’s widow was allowed a small quantity of plate and furniture but the pictures and furnishings from their home at Mount Surrey were passed over to the earl’s creditors in payment of his still sizeable debts.

  The Duchess of Norfolk received a considerable quantity of clothes, soft furnishings and some of her other possessions: ‘a little coffer of ivory . . . [with] a silver gilt lock; a little flat casket, having a silver lock’. Neither had their keys. Her smile of satisfaction must have been terrible to see.

  The summer of 1549 brought rebellion to Devon and Cornwall, the southern Midlands and elsewhere, over the imposition of the Book of Common Prayer. In Norfolk, the population rose in reaction to the end of the Howards’ conservative - if not reactionary - domination of East Anglia and their maintenance of medieval feudalism. In the mid-1540s, of four manors in Norfolk which still maintained bondmen or serfs three belonged to the duke, and, in adjacent Suffolk, five of the six manors retaining villeins were owned by him.79 The East Anglian insurrection was led by a tanner called William Kett and, among more general damage, it destroyed the fences around Kenninghall Park and sacked Surrey’s house in Norwich. One of the rebels’ demands was: ‘We pray that all bondmen be made free - for God made all free with his precious blood shedding.’80

  The rebellion was crushed at the end of August and Norfolk’s feudalism continued, with complaints to Somerset that the duke had used his serfs ‘much more extremely than his ancestors did’. The accounts for the Howard estates are liberally sprinkled with references to ‘bondmen’ and payments for chevage, a poll tax levied on villeins, including fines paid for permission for their daughters to be married. At Bungay in Suffolk, the manor court records show that on 25 May (no year, but during the later reign of Mary),

  It is informed that where Robert Spark, bondman of blood to the manor there, fled from them at the rebellion and commotion upon Mousehold, besides Norwich, to Colchester in Essex and dwells at the sign of the George there.

  And being spoken to and desired to return a
nd compound to pay his chevage yearly, and does not, that therefore he be seized before the day of my lord’s delivery out of the Tower.81SKI

  And at Bressingham, on the ‘vigil of St Luke’ (17 October) 1552, ‘to this court comes John Bartram of Palgrave, bever82 and acknowledges that he is a villein of the lord and he pays a fine, for chevage 12d’.83 At Kenninghall ‘came William Foster and Joan Baxter, the widow of William Baxter and daughter to William Glede and asked licence to marry together, which for 3s 4d of fine to be paid to my lord at the next account . . . for the manor . . . I granted’.84

  Back in London, conditions of Norfolk’s confinement slowly eased. He was now housed in the Beauchamp Tower, adjacent to the Lieutenant’s lodgings. In March 1548, Sir Ralph Sadler, Master of the Great Wardrobe, was authorised to deliver ‘apparel and beddings’ to Sir John Markham, the new Lieutenant, for Norfolk’s use.85 The following month, the Treasurer of the Exchequer was authorised to pay Markham an annual sum of £73 5s 4d towards the duke’s apparel, and £80 as ‘his spending money’ so long as he remained his prisoner.86 Accordingly in June, a tailor called Bridges was paid £9 9s 9d for making clothes for Norfolk.87 A total of £5 was allowed for food and drink and 6s 8d each for boarding five servants, each paid 6s 8d a week.

  There were other benefits of a less material nature. In February 1549, the Privy Council agreed that the duke’s daughter and wife may ‘have recourse to the late duke’ who ‘could have liberty to walk in the garden and gallery when the Lieutenant shall think good’.88 The duke’s reaction to meeting his estranged wife in the Tower can only be imagined.

  His freedom of movement continued to be extended: on 20 July 1550, the Privy Council ordered the Lieutenant and Sir Ralph Hopton, Knight Marshal, to ‘suffer the late Duke of Norfolk to have the liberty to walk and ride within the precincts of the Tower [so long as] one of them [was always] present’.89 Nine months later came another concession to make the old man’s life more bearable. On 8 April, the Council wrote to the Lieutenant instructing him ‘to suffer for this once, the Lord Thomas Howard [Norfolk’s grandson] to speak with the late duke . . .’.90

  He may have watched in smug satisfaction as Sir Thomas Seymour was marched out of the Tower for execution for treason on 20 March 1549 and, better yet, on 22 January 1552, the same lonely walk undertaken by his brother Somerset, who took his death ‘very patiently’.91

  The duke’s sufferings finally ended after the death of Edward VI and the accession of his Catholic half-sister, Mary, in August 1553, who swept aside the Protestant candidate for the throne, Lady Jane Grey. On the evening of 3 August, Mary arrived at the Tower after a triumphal progress through London, escorted by 1,000 retainers dressed in velvet coats. She was met at the gates by Sir John Gage and, arriving at the green, she saw Norfolk and Gardiner (who had also been imprisoned during Edward’s reign) kneeling humbly on the grass, amidst the joyful salvoes of gunfire ringing out from the fortress. Mary kissed them, declared ‘these be my prisoners’, and bid them rise up and stand.92 The following day Norfolk and Gardiner were formally freed.

  Norfolk’s revenge on his captors was swift and ruthless.

  On Friday 18 August, Norfolk, as High Steward of England, sat beneath a canopy of gold cloth of estate in Westminster Hall in judgement on Sir John Dudley, now first Duke of Northumberland, his eldest son John, Earl of Warwick, and Sir William Parr, Marquis of Northampton, on charges of treason. Northumberland objected, claiming there was no crime in him having supported Lady Jane Grey as his sovereign, but Norfolk declared the charges just.93 But after the indictments were read, they meekly pleaded guilty and ‘without passing of any jury of their peers, had judgement to be drawn, hanged and quartered’. The duke was among the official witnesses at Northumberland’s execution on 22 August94 and a month later had the satisfaction of recovering his gold ducal coronet, the collar and badge of the Garter and his jewels and plate from Northumberland’s estate.95 The duke also presided over the trials of Cranmer, Lady Jane and her husband.

  As Earl Marshal, he organised Mary’s coronation at Westminster Abbey on 1 October. As his customary fee, he claimed ‘the queen’s horse and palfrey, with all the furniture that is on the horse and he claimed to be high usher on the day of the coronation and to have the table cloth of the high dess [desk] and the cloth of estate that was behind the queen’.96

  Norfolk’s attainder was reversed in October and his grandson Thomas Howard, now the Earl of Surrey, was restored in blood.97 He had trouble reclaiming his forfeited lands, which had been disposed of by Edward VI. Eventually, two-thirds were restored, worth £1,600, and early in 1554 he held a manorial court at Framlingham.98

  The duke’s warlike duties were not over - and his last campaign was probably his most ignominious. In January 1554, Kent rose in rebellion, under Sir Thomas Wyatt, over Mary’s plans to marry Philip of Spain, the son of Charles V. Norfolk, as an eighty-one-year-old Lieutenant General of the army, was despatched to Kent to assault the rebel headquarters at Rochester with a small force of 1,000 white-coated London troops. From Gravesend, he confidently promised the Privy Council: ‘I doubt not you shall shortly hear of their repulse out of . . . Rochester.’99

  His confidence was misplaced.

  Without securing his lines of communication, Norfolk hastened on to Strood and opened fire with his artillery on Rochester Bridge. One of his captains, called Bret, suddenly turned to face his 500-strong battalion and drew his sword. He shouted:

  Masters, we [are] about to fight against our native countrymen of England . . . in a quarrel unrightful and partly wicked for . . . we shall be under the rule of the proud Spaniards . . . [and] if we should be under their subjection, they would, as slaves and villeins, spoil us of our goods and lands, ravish our wives before our faces and deflower our daughters in our presence.

  The troops responded by crying ‘A Wyatt, a Wyatt’ and ‘We are all Englishmen’. They turned their cannon on the remainder of Norfolk’s little army and the duke, sensing discretion to be the better part of valour, hastily departed, leaving behind him eight brass guns and his honour.100 Fortunately for him, perhaps, Wyatt’s rebellion foundered in Fleet Street at the gates of the city of London in early February.

  Norfolk attended his last Privy Council meeting on 7 May but was too ill to be present at the preparations for his grandson Thomas’s marriage to Mary Fitzalan, daughter of the Earl of Arundel, a fortnight later.

  Back at Kenninghall on 21 July, he dictated his last will to George Holland, his secretary:

  I Thomas Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of England, being [moved] by the goodness of God and by merciful pity shown and extended towards me for and concerning my deliverance out of and from my long imprisonment by the most gracious lady Queen Mary, by the grace of God, Queen of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the

  Faith, and on earth, the supreme head of the church of England101 . . . of that name the first.

  Calling now into remembrance the great age I am now grown into and feeling myself thereby to be fallen into great weakness of my body, albeit, thanks to almighty God, having my full, whole and perfect memory, [I] here[to]fore declare my last will and testament in form following.

  First, I bequeath my soul to almighty God, having sure trust and confidence that through and by the merits of Christ’s death and Passion, to have that remission and forgiveness of my sins and trespasses and to be a partaker and one of the inheritors of the kingdom of God.

  His grandson Thomas was named heir ‘to all and singular, my manors, lands, tenements, possessions . . . whatsoever which I have within the realm of England’.102 Among the other bequests was £500 to Mary, Duchess of Richmond, for bringing up her brother’s children and ‘her great costs and charges in making suit for my deliverance out of my imprisonment’. Each of Surrey’s daughters were also to receive £1,000 on their marriage or when they reached the age of twenty-one.

  There was no mention of his wife, or Bessie Holland. But there was one surprise: £100 was l
eft to his lawyer and steward ‘Sergeant [Thomas] Gawdy and John Gosnold’, to bring up ‘the child which [is] in my house now commonly called Jane Goodman’ - quite probably his bastard daughter.103 A clue to this may lie in a document detailing his properties which includes the annuities paid by the duke. Among them is: ‘Item. To Thomas Goodman, gentleman, out of the manor of Shelfhanger, £20.’104

  His last act was to give his blessing to the wedding of his granddaughter Katherine and Henry Lord Berkeley, who were married a month later at Kenninghall.105

  Norfolk died in his bed on 25 August 1554 at Kenninghall. There were many who would say there was no justice in his peaceful end. But after all his conspiracies, intrigue and the tumult of his life, he ended up the great survivor.

  The London mercer and undertaker Henry Machyn recorded the duke’s funeral at Framlingham on 2 October:

  There was a goodly hearse [with] wax [candles] as [ever] I have seen in these days, with a dozen of bannerols106 of his progeny [ancestral descent] and twelve dozen pensels,107 two dozen of escutcheons and with [a] standard and three coats of arms, and a banner of damask . . . and many mourners and a great dole and after, a great dinner.

  [Mourners were fed on] forty great oxen and a hundred sheep and sixty calves, besides venison, swans and cranes, capons, rabbits, pigeons, pikes and other provisions, both flesh and fish. There was also a great plenty of wine and of bread and beer as great plenty as ever been known, both for rich and poor and all the country came thither and a great dole of money [was bestowed on the poor].108

  That marital thorn in Norfolk’s side, Elizabeth Howard, died at Kenninghall during the evening of Thursday 4 September 1558, aged sixty-five - no doubt delighted that she had outlived her much despised husband.109 Her will, signed when she was ‘sick and diseased in body’, asked that she should be buried in the Howard chapel at St Mary’s church, Lambeth, in Surrey. Even in death, her proper status as widow of a duke must be observed, even though she hated most of her Howard in-laws.