Crown of Blood

by Nicola Tallis

  ONCE AGAIN JANE’S father had failed to impress in his military role, but rather than attempting to make the best of the situation, he resigned as Lord Warden and returned home to the comforts of the south. On 28 September the King wrote in his journal that ‘the Lord Marquis Dorset, grieved much with the disorder of the marches towards Scotland, surrendered the wardenship thereof to bestow it upon whomever I wanted’.58 Henry’s complaints had not gone unnoticed, and it was the last occasion on which he would be given a military role, much to his relief. His post was granted to the Earl of Warwick, whose experience far superseded Henry’s.

  During Henry’s absence, a completely unforeseen occurrence transpired that would ultimately change the Dorsets’ fortunes in a way that none of them could have anticipated. Lady Frances’s two young halfbrothers, Henry, Duke of Suffolk, and Charles, had been attending St John’s College, Cambridge, where they had been enrolled since 1549.59 However, the intense summer heat brought a deadly wave of the sweating sickness to Cambridge, and in fear for their health, the brothers were immediately removed to the village of Buckden in order to avoid the contagion.60 The sweating sickness was often fatal, and within a few hours of contracting it a previously healthy person could be dead. In spite of their move, though, soon after their arrival at Buckden the two boys, aged fifteen and thirteen, both contracted the sickness and lay dangerously ill. On hearing that her sons were ailing, their mother Katherine Willoughby rushed to Buckden to nurse them, but it was too late. Henry succumbed to the illness and died on 14 July, leaving his younger brother to inherit the dukedom of Suffolk. Sadly, it was destined to be a double tragedy, for in a cruel twist of fate, just half an hour later young Charles died too.61

  Their mother was devastated at losing her two children in such tragic and rapid circumstances. Four months after their death, she expressed her grief in a letter written to Sir William Cecil, in which she exclaimed, ‘truly I take this [God’s] last (and to the first sight most sharp and bitter) punishment not for the least of his benefits, in as much as I have never been so well taught by any other before to know his power, his love, and mercy, my own wickedness, and that wretched state that without him I should endure here’.62 King Edward was also saddened by the death of young Henry, who had been one of his childhood companions, and the Imperial ambassador reported that ‘He remains almost in hiding, and the French lords saw little of him. The reason seems to be the shock and surprise he received at the news of the Duke of Suffolk’s death; for the King loved him dearly.’63 The boys’ deaths signalled the end of the male branch of the Brandon family, and the extinction of the dukedom of Suffolk. For Jane’s family, therein lay an opportunity, and one that was soon to be seized.

  Having returned from the north, Jane’s father was soon back in London. At court, the influence of the Earl of Warwick was continuing to grow, and for the fallen Somerset there seemed no hope of restoration. For Jane’s parents, however, this was of little concern, for less than three months after the deaths of the Brandon brothers the King, perhaps in a demonstration of affection for Jane’s family, gave his permission for the Suffolk title to pass through the female line. Thus, the rightful heiress was Lady Frances, Jane’s mother. On 11 October in a glittering ceremony at Hampton Court, Jane’s father was created Duke of Suffolk in right of his wife, while alongside him Warwick was elevated to the dukedom of Northumberland. At a stroke, Jane was now the daughter of a royal Duke and Duchess. Despite Henry’s political incompetence, Northumberland still needed him on side in order to retain his hold on power at court, and doubtless played on Henry’s greed and ambition just as Thomas Seymour had done before. The relationship between Northumberland and the Suffolks was destined to have devastating consequences.

  CHAPTER 10

  Godly Instruction

  IN THE AFTERMATH of the events at Beaulieu, little appears to have passed between Jane and her cousin, the Lady Mary. Jane had continued in her zealous enthusiasm for religious reform, while Mary remained staunchly Catholic. Insulted though she may have been by Jane’s apparent outburst in her chapel, Mary did her best to try to restore good relations between herself and her cousin. After all, Jane was still a young girl lacking in experience. A further opportunity for Mary to demonstrate her kindness to Jane presented itself in November 1551, shortly after the ennoblement of Jane’s father.

  The occasion was the visit of the Dowager Queen of Scots, Marie de Guise, who had arrived in London following a visit to France. She had been visiting her young daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, who was being raised at the French court as the future bride of Henri II’s heir. In her daughter’s absence, Marie had been appointed Regent of Scotland, and had chosen to break her return journey in England. To her delight, she was welcomed to London with a lavish display of royal hospitality amid ‘great cheer’.1 Jane’s family were among the welcome party that consisted of a ‘great train of noblemen, gentlemen, and ladies’.2 Moreover, at fifteen Jane was considered old enough to be an integral part of King Edward’s attempt to dazzle his guest with the magnificence of the English royal court and family. This may have been one of a series of appearances Jane made at court, for Roger Ascham later observed that ‘at court I was very friendly with her, and she wrote learned letters to me’.3 Ascham’s comment must refer to the period before he left for his secretarial post abroad in 1550, the last occasion on which he saw Jane at Bradgate, and indicates that Jane was perhaps already familiar with the trappings and social etiquette that revolved around life at court.4 The Scottish Queen Dowager’s reception, however, was almost certainly Jane’s first experience of a ceremonial occasion, and one in which she may not have taken much pleasure given that the fervently Catholic Queen Dowager’s religious opinions were so different from her own.

  Though the Lady Mary had been invited, she had declined to attend the court on this occasion. By this time relations between Mary and her half-brother the King had drastically deteriorated over her continued defiance of his laws regarding religion. So much so that several of her chaplains had been summoned by the King, who ‘cast them into prison’.5 Edward’s religious reforms were becoming increasingly radical, encouraged by Archbishop Cranmer. Mary, therefore, had chosen to avoid a situation that might lead to a bitter confrontation between the siblings, and wisely stayed away. Nevertheless, when she heard that Jane would be attending, she decided to send her cousin a gift. Herself excessively fond of fine clothes, Mary’s generosity came to the fore once again when she opted to send Jane some ‘goodly apparel of tinsel, cloth of gold, and velvet, laid on with parchment lace of gold’, in order that she should be magnificently attired.6 Mary realized that lavish array meant everything on occasions such as this, and would have assumed that the teenage Jane would appreciate such a gesture. Jane had certainly expressed a great interest in clothes, so much so that it drew concern from her tutor, Master Aylmer, who urged Jane’s idol Heinrich Bullinger to write to instruct her

  [a]s to what embellishment and adornment of person is becoming in young women professing godliness. In treating upon this subject, you may bring forward the example of our king’s sister, the princess Elizabeth goes clad in every respect as becomes a young maiden; and yet no one is induced by the example of so illustrious a lady, and in so much gospel light, to lay aside, much less look down upon, gold, jewels, and braidings of the hair. They hear preachers declaim against these things, but yet no one amends her life.7

  Though Elizabeth did not converse with learned theologians, she nevertheless ensured that she met with their approval by means of her sober appearance. Upon receiving Mary’s costly gift, however, rather than expressing gratitude, Jane was perplexed. ‘What shall I do with it?’ she asked her lady as she opened the parcel.8 ‘Marry, wear it, to be sure,’ came the astonished response.9 It appears, though, that Jane had taken the advice sent to her by Bullinger to heart, and had chosen to follow the example of her cousin the Lady Elizabeth. It was a choice of which Aylmer would have approved, for he later wrote of Elizabeth
that he was ‘sure that her maidenly apparel which she used in king Edward’s time made the noblemen’s wives and daughters ashamed to be dressed and painted like peacocks’.10 It now appeared that Jane too was determined to be seen as a sober evangelical maiden, who favoured plain black and white dress. The showy dress provided a stark contrast to this image, but rather than politely accepting the gift, once again Jane seized the opportunity to make a point. Replying to her lady’s comments that she should wear the gorgeous dress, she resolutely replied, ‘Nay, that were a shame to follow my Lady Mary against God’s word, and leave my Lady Elizabeth, which followeth God’s word.’11 Jane’s parents were horrified when their daughter’s discourtesy was reported to them, and insisted that Jane wear the clothes, much to her distaste.12 Not only was her fervency becoming greater, but she was also becoming increasingly intolerant of those whose religious views were at odds with her own.

  When the royal party arrived at the Palace of Westminster, Jane arrayed in her dazzling new dress, the young King was waiting to greet them. He received Marie ‘in most honourable and gracious fashion’, and when they sat down to dine at ‘a splendid banquet’, the young King recorded the proceedings in his journal.13 He wrote that the Queen Dowager ‘dined under the same cloth of estate at my left hand. At her rearward dined my cousin Frances and my cousin Margaret [Lennox].’14 It was a lavish occasion during which the King remembered that ‘we were served by two services of servers, cupbearers, carvers and gentlemen’, and ‘there were two cupboards brought in, one of gold four tiers high, another of solid silver six tiers high’.15

  The Suffolks stayed in London for the remainder of the year, having opted to spend Christmas in the capital. On 1 December, Henry was among the twenty-seven lords who were present at the trial of the fallen Duke of Somerset, who had once more been arrested following a suspected attempt to oust Northumberland from power. Somerset was found guilty of felony, and imprisoned in the Tower under sentence of death.

  ON 22 JANUARY 1552, according to the young King’s own account, ‘the duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Tower Hill between eight and nine o’clock in the morning’.16 The year had already begun with violence, and the Duke of Northumberland was now the undisputed authority in the land.

  Somerset’s death brought Jane’s family a new home, the Charterhouse at Sheen. The Charterhouse had once been a priory, founded by Henry V in 1414 for the use of Carthusian monks. It had remained thus until the reign of Henry VIII, who had dissolved the priory in 1539. The following year it was granted to Somerset, then Earl of Hertford. Interestingly, it was to the Charterhouse that the body of the Scottish King, James IV, was brought for burial in 1513 following the Battle of Flodden. The Tudor historian and antiquarian John Stow later made the astonishing claim that ‘in the reign of King Edward the Sixth Henry Grey then Duke of Suffolk there keeping house, I have been showed the same body (as was affirmed) so lapped in lead thrown into an old waste room, amongst old timber, stone, lead, and other rubble’.17 With the acquisition of a luxurious new property, the Suffolks practically abandoned Dorset House as their London residence and relocated to the Charterhouse. According to historian Hester Chapman, on one occasion when the family were enjoying their new home they received some uninvited guests. Following the dissolution of the priory, some of the monks who were distressed at being driven out of their former home contrived to force the Suffolks out. They waited until the Duke and Duchess were walking in one of the galleries and there, from an opening in one of the walls, appeared a hand brandishing a blood-stained axe. Jane’s parents were apparently unfazed by this bizarre spectacle, and continued their walk. Though it is an entertaining story, it is completely apocryphal.18

  With the ennoblement of Jane’s father, the family had also come into possession of Suffolk Place near Charing Cross, but like Dorset House, it appears to have been used but rarely.19

  BY THE SUMMER, Jane had returned to Bradgate Park, perhaps to avoid the unhealthy contagion that the summer heat often brought to the capital. However, rather than taking the opportunity to enjoy some leisure time, instead she took up her pen in order to reply to her most recent letter from Bullinger. Each day she tirelessly attempted to live by the guidance she received from Bullinger and others in order to live up to the high expectations that others had of her, and indeed that she had of herself.20 Her letters have the tone of a girl who was eager to please the adults whom she held in such high regard, and who dominated her everyday life: her parents, Aylmer, and of course, Bullinger.

  By now, Jane had also attracted the admiration of another who shared her intellectual interests. Lady Mildred Cecil was herself a distinguished scholar believed to be on a par with Jane, and took a particular interest in translating Greek texts.21 Alongside Jane and the Lady Elizabeth, Roger Ascham praised Mildred for her ability, and he claimed that she ‘speaks and understands Greek about as well as English’.22 Mildred was married to Sir William Cecil, King Edward’s Secretary of State and Northumberland’s man, who Jane’s parents knew well from court, and who Jane was probably also on friendly terms with.23 She must therefore have been delighted when she received the gift of a book from Lady Cecil, with an encouraging note.24 Addressing Jane as ‘My most Dear and Noble Lady’, Mildred wrote:

  Although I am conversant with many of the writers and theologists of old, yet of no one has the perusal been more pleasing and agreeable to me, than of Basil the Great, excelling all the Bishops of his time, both in the greatness of his birth, the extent of his condition and the glowing zeal of his holiness. To you then so worthy, both in consideration of your noble birth, and on account of your learning and holiness, I thought, the perusal of so rational and holy and noble a man and theologian could be very fitting; for it will raise the soul, grovelling below and set on earthly things, to God the Almighty and the remembrance of heavenly things. With these words then of Basil the Great, I present you, a gift, if the ink and paper be considered, small and trifling, but if you consider the profit, more valuable than gold and precious stones, and a token of my great affection for you – Hoping that the perusal of these words will be no less agreeable and delightful to you than they have been to me throughout my youth – and so imploring for you and your body, health and happiness and all prosperity, I bid you farewell.25

  The tone of the letter is suggestive of a close relationship between Mildred and Jane, although there is no further evidence for this. Though only ten years Jane’s senior, Mildred was already renowned for her ability to translate texts, undoubtedly earning her Jane’s admiration. Perhaps Jane felt a similar sense of warmth towards Mildred as she had done for Katherine Parr; she would have been flattered by Mildred’s kind and complimentary words, and even more elated with the book that she sent.26 The text to which Mildred referred was a sermon written by the early Greek bishop Basil the Great that she had translated.27 Doubtless Mildred felt that the words of this worthy man would prove to have a positive influence on Jane; Basil was revered for having led a saintly life as a renowned theologian who fought for his religious beliefs while staying afloat in the world of politics.28 Mildred could not have known that, in time, the example of Basil would come to have more relevance in Jane’s life than she could ever have anticipated.

  With Jane having earned the respect and esteem of so many of her contemporaries through her own merits, it is easy to understand why her parents pinned all of their hopes on her. In a world in which women were considered to be far inferior to their male counterparts, the praise heaped upon Jane was the very greatest of compliments, and this cannot have failed to encourage the young girl’s confidence as she grew. Jane’s learning was one of the few consistent factors in her life, and one to which she clung for comfort when events spiralled out of her control.

  JANE’S RETURN TO Bradgate may have been of relatively short duration, for in August her mother fell ill at the Charterhouse. The nature of her malady soon became dangerously apparent: the sweating sickness. The illness which had killed both
of Frances’s half-brothers had been particularly savage over the past two years; John Stow had observed that in just one week of the previous year, the number of people who had died of the sickness in London alone totalled 806.29 Henry was at court when he heard of his wife’s sickness, and immediately departed for the Charterhouse to be by Frances’s side. On 26 August he wrote to Cecil, explaining that his departure had been caused by the news of Frances’s illness.

  I never saw a more sicker creature in my life than she is. She hath three diseases. The first is a hot burning ague, that doth hold her twenty-four hours, the other is the stopping of the spleen, the third is hypochondriac passion. These three being enclosed in one body, it is to be feared that death must needs follow.30

  Henry was deeply agitated by Frances’s poor state, and signed off his letter ‘by your most assured and loving cousin, who, I assure you, is not a little troubled’.31 His concern for his wife is touching, and the household at the Charterhouse must have been an anxious one as both Henry and his daughters waited to see whether Frances would survive. His letter confirms that her condition was so serious that she was not expected to live, and it must therefore have come as a great relief when, contrary to expectations, Frances recovered. She was fortunate, as a high proportion of sweating sickness victims did not survive. It is possible that Jane herself had also suffered with the sweat, as in February she reported that she had recently fortunately ‘recovered from a severe and dangerous illness’.32 Sadly for Jane, this was not the last time that she would fall sick.