45. Staffordshire
46. Suffolk
47. Surrey
48. Sussex
49. Warwickshire
50. Westmorland
51. Wiltshire
52. Worcestershire
53. Yorkshire
POPULATION
All estimates for population are of necessity approximate, but one source gives 3,194,000 for England and Wales in 1561 (2,985,000 for England alone). In the late 1570s, France had a population of between thirteen and fifteen million. Scotland in the sixteenth century never had a population greater than 600,000.
TREASON
When Henry VII won the throne at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, he consolidated his claim by marrying Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Edward IV, and uniting the warring factions of Lancaster and York. There were, however, rival claimants to the crown, and whether the threat they posed was real or imagined, some of them ended up being charged with treason.
There were three pretenders to the throne. In May 1487, Lambert Simnel was crowned “King Edward VI” in Christ Church, Dublin, after claiming to be Edward Plantagenet, earl of Warwick, who had the best claim to the throne. The real Warwick, however, was a prisoner in the Tower and could be produced. The rebellion of 1487 was settled by Henry’s victory at the Battle of Stoke on June 16. Later, one Ralph Wilsford also claimed to be Warwick. Still later, Perkin Warbeck said he was Richard, younger of the two princes who were supposedly murdered in the Tower of London. On September 7, 1497, Warbeck landed at Land’s End, Cornwall, with three ships, 100 men, and a royal wife (Catherine Gordon, cousin of Scotland’s James IV). Captured, Warbeck was kept at court under light guard. His wife became one of Elizabeth of York’s ladies. When Warbeck escaped in 1498, he was quickly recaptured and confined in the Tower of London. In 1499 both he and the real earl of Warwick were executed.
Others with Plantagenet blood who were executed on charges of treason were Edward Stafford, third duke of Buckingham, in 1521; Henry Courtenay, marquis of Exeter, and Henry Pole, Baron Montagu, in 1538; and Margaret Plantagenet, countess of Salisbury (Warwick’s sister) who, after two years in the Tower, was beheaded without a trial in 1541. It was sufficient that she had been declared guilty of treason by an Act of Parliament (a bill of attainder—those affected were “attainted”) in 1539. The countess refused to cooperate in her own death and had to be chased around the block by the executioner.
Under Henry VIII a great many more things became treasonous. After 1536 it was treason for anyone with royal blood to marry without the monarch’s permission. Written and spoken words, as well as overt actions, might also constitute treason. As soon as Edward VI took the throne, Parliament repealed all the treason and heresy acts of Henry’s reign, but the duke of Somerset, Edward’s Lord Protector (Edward was only nine when he became king), pushed through a new act which tightened up the procedure in treason trials. Ironically, he was himself tried and convicted for treason and executed in 1552.
Throughout the sixteenth century, the laws on treason were expanded and refined. Some of the most significant conspiracies and rebellions against the realm, most of which are too complex to address in detail in this book, are listed at the end of this chapter. In addition, there were people like Mary Cleere of Ingatestone, Essex, who was burnt at the stake for treason in 1576 simply for saying that Queen Elizabeth was baseborn.
Queen Mary I persecuted Protestants as traitors. To be Catholic in Elizabethan England was illegal, but whether it was also treasonable depended upon the individual. Under Elizabeth, most irreconcilable Catholics went abroad. Those called “church papists” by the Protestants and schismatics by other Catholics made a show of attending church, as the law required, but clung to their old beliefs in secret. Recusants were those who refused to attend Anglican services. They were continually fined (twelvepence for each offense) for their failure to do so. Early in the reign, saying mass cost a priest a year’s income and sent him to prison for six months for a first offense. The second offense cost him his benefices and sent him to prison for a year. The third offense meant life imprisonment. Similarly, those convicted of hearing mass were fined 100 marks for the first offense and 400 marks for the second offense. Their goods were confiscated and they were sent to prison for life for a third offense.
In 1581 the law became much more severe. Those trying to win persons from the Church of England were traitors. Those they persuaded were also guilty of high treason. Those who aided and abetted the others were guilty of misprision (neglecting to report a crime) of treason, which was also a felony. There was still a distinction, however, between being Catholic and becoming Catholic. Those who had been Catholics all along were not traitors, but they now had to pay even greater fines, £20 a month for failure to attend church. The penalty for hearing mass became a fine of 100 marks and a year in prison.
In 1568, Dr. William Allen founded a seminary at Douai in Flanders which sent missionary priests into England. The seminary moved to Rheims in 1578 and continued to train militant Catholics who were prepared to become martyrs. Many were caught and executed for treason (an estimated 180 Catholics were executed between 1570 and 1603) but others were deported. In April 1584, seventeen priests were being held in the Marshalsea Prison in London. In January 1585, some of them were among the forty “Jesuits and seminaries” sent by prison ship to Normandy.
On occasion Puritan extremists also ran afoul of the treason laws. When John Stubbs’s The Discovery of a Gaping Gulf Whereinto England is Like to Be Swallowed by Another French Marriage was published in 1579, criticizing Queen Elizabeth, she ordered both Stubbs and his printer, William Page, to be hanged, drawn, and quartered as traitors. The sentence was commuted to losing their right hands by knife and block. Copies of the offending book were confiscated and destroyed. Those Puritan extremists who operated the so-called Marprelate Press were also guilty of treason for turning out seditious publications.
Religion continued to be a political issue under the Stuarts. The Gunpowder Plot in 1605 was prompted by new anti-Catholic legislation. Under Charles I, it was not Queen Henrietta Maria’s Catholicism that concerned the English so much as what was perceived as his subversion of the Church of England by appointing William Laud the new archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. Laud opposed church reforms proposed by the Puritans. In addition, in 1637, he attempted to introduce the Anglican liturgy into Scotland. Riots ensued, the so-called “Bishop’s War,” and that eventually led to Laud’s impeachment by Parliament. He was executed as a traitor in 1645.
CONSPIRACIES AND REBELLIONS
1489: The Yorkshire Rebellion during which the fourth earl of Northumberland was assassinated.
1497: A Cornish rebellion over being forced to pay taxes to fight Scotland. The rebels were led by Thomas Flamank, a lawyer, and Michael Joseph, a blacksmith. They were joined by James, Lord Audley. All three were executed.
1533: The prophesies of the “Nun of Kent” were used to stir up public feeling against Henry VIII's plans to divorce Catherine of Aragon. The nun, Elizabeth Barton, was executed for treason in 1534.
1534: William, fourth Lord Dacre, Warden of the West Marches, was tried for treason for holding secret meetings with Scots enemies in wartime. He was acquitted by his peers but was not reappointed warden until after Henry VIII's death.
1536: The Lincolnshire Rising over rumors of government control, restrictions, and taxes. More than 10,000 marched on Lincoln, then disbanded.
1536-7: The Pilgrimage of Grace, a disorganized rebellion caused in part by disapproval of Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, led to 178 recorded executions.
1540: The Botolf Conspiracy (Gregory “Sweet Lips” Botolf was one of Lord Lisle’s chaplains) planned to seize Calais during “herring time” (September 29 to November 30), when the port city was overrun with herring buyers and sellers. This conspiracy led to a charge of treason against Arthur Plantagenet, Lord Lisle, an illegitimate son of Edward IV. All the family’s letters and papers were seize
d in April 1540. Lord Lisle and Lady Lisle were both placed in custody, and there was a furor when authorities discovered that Mary Bassett, Lady Lisle’s daughter by a previous marriage, had entered into a secret marriage contract with Gabriel de Montmorency, Seigneur de Bours, a Frenchman, without Henry VIII’s consent. When Mary tried to get rid of her love letters by throwing them down the jakes, the letters were assumed to contain treason.
1549: Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour was arrested for trying to overthrow his brother, the Lord Protector, kidnap King Edward VI, and marry Princess Elizabeth. He was executed on March 19.
1549: Kett’s Rebellion in East Anglia (Norfolk and Suffolk) was just one of several riots and rebellions to protest enclosures and demand justice. Rumor claimed 300 executions followed, but existing records show only forty-nine.
1553: John Dudley, duke of Northumberland, attempted to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne instead of Mary I. He was executed. For further information on Lady Jane see Chapter Eight.
1554: Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger attempted to overthrow Queen Mary and put a Protestant monarch on the throne in her place. Over 600 men were arrested. Almost 100, including Wyatt and the duke of Suffolk (Lady Jane Grey’s father), were executed.
1559: A Protestant rising in Scotland succeeded with English support. In 1560, Protestantism became the official religion of Scotland.
1569: The Northern Rebellion, also called the Revolt of the Northern Earls, was led by the earl of Westmorland and the earl of Northumberland. The agitators were Richard Norton (age eighty-one, sheriff of Yorkshire), Norton’s son-in-law (Thomas Markenfeld), Westmorland’s uncle (Christopher Neville), and Dr. Nicholas Morton, an official of the papal court who brought word that Elizabeth was about to be excommunicated by the Pope. Eventually some 600 persons were executed for their involvement in the rising.
1571: The Ridolfi Plot (named for Robert Ridolfi, a Florentine banker living in London) involved a plan to marry Thomas Howard, fourth duke of Norfolk, to Mary, Queen of Scots. Although Norfolk denied he’d been party to the plot, he was executed for treason in 1572.
1583: The Throgmorton Plot came to light when Francis Throgmorton was arrested and tortured. He confessed that the French duc de Guise intended to invade England in the Catholic cause, financed by Philip II of Spain and the Pope. Throgmorton was executed at Tyburn and the Spanish ambassador, Bernardo de Mendoza, was expelled from England.
1585: The Parry Conspiracy. Dr. William Parry was executed for plotting to assassinate Queen Elizabeth.
1586: The Babington Plot involved fourteen conspirators, including Anthony Babington, who were plotting to put Mary, Queen of Scots on the English throne. The conspirators were executed in September 1586. Mary was beheaded in February 1587.
1591: A Catholic plot to marry Elizabeth’s likely heir, Lady Arbella Stuart, to Rainutio Farnese, son of the duke of Parma, was uncovered and prevented by sending Arbella to her grandmother, Bess of Hardwick, in Derbyshire.
1593: The Hesketh Plot sought to make Ferdinando Stanley, fifth earl of Derby, king. Derby himself turned Richard Hesketh over to the authorities.
1594: Dr. Rodrigo Lopez, chief physician to the queen since 1586, was executed for plotting to poison Elizabeth. Lopez was a Jew, and anti-Semitism played a role in the verdict.
1598: Edward Squire was caught trying to kill the queen by putting poison on the pommel of her saddle. It was intended to seep through her gloves and into her skin.
1601: The Essex Rebellion was the attempt by Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex, to protect Queen Elizabeth by ridding her realm of traitors like her Principal Secretary, Sir Robert Cecil. Essex was executed for treason. His fellow conspirator, Henry Wriothesley, third earl of Southampton, was imprisoned in the Tower of London.
1603: The Bye Plot and the Main Plot were separate conspiracies but are usually spoken of together. A plan to put Arbella Stuart on the throne led to the imprisonment of Sir Walter Ralegh. There is some evidence that he was set up and the accusation that he conspired with the Spanish, long his sworn enemies, hardly fits his character.
1605: The Gunpowder Plot, known at the time as the Powder Treason, was an attempt to blow up king, court, and Parliament. It was foiled by a last-minute discovery that was probably orchestrated for maximum public-relations effect.
1611: Mary Cavendish Talbot, countess of Shrewsbury, was tried before the Star Chamber for helping Arbella Stuart escape from the Tower. The countess was held until 1618, when she was released on payment of a fine of £20,000. Lady Arbella was recaptured and kept in prison until her death.
1629: Grain riots at Maldon, Essex. Food riots were a long-standing tradition. There were smaller riots in 1527, 1551, 1586-7, 1594-8, 1605, 1608, 1614, 1622-3 1630-31, and 1647-8. In March, 1629, some 100 women boarded a Flemish ship and forced the crew to fill their caps and aprons with grain (rye) from the hold. In May, a large number of people (200-300) attacked ships taking on grain. Four were executed, including a woman, Ann Carter.
1642: The outbreak of Civil War. In 1646, King Charles I surrendered to the Scots. In 1649 he was executed.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fletcher, Anthony. Tudor Rebellions. London: Longman, 1968.
Graves, M.A.R. and R. H. Silcock Revolution, Reaction and the Triumph of Conservatism: English History 1558-1700. London and New York: Longman, 1984.
Haynes, Alan. Invisible Power: The Elizabethan Secret Services 1570-1603. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992.
Russell, Conrad. Crisis of Parliaments: English History 1509-1660. London: Oxford University Press, 1971.
Smith, Lacey Baldwin. Treason in Tudor England: Politics and Paranoia. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986.
CHAPTER EIGHT: MONARCHS, NOBLES, AND COMMONERS
The monarchs for the period 1485-1649 were Henry VII (1457-1509, Henry VIII (1491-1509), Edward VI (1537-1553), Mary I (1516-1558), Elizabeth I (1533-1603), James I (1566-1625), and Charles I (1600-1649).
THE SUCCESSION
As discussed in Chapter Seven, Henry VII of Lancaster married Elizabeth of York (1465-1503) to bolster his claim to the throne and also systematically eliminated any rival who appeared. His heir, Arthur, Prince of Wales, died in 1502, leaving only one son to carry on. That son, Henry VIII, made his six marriages, at least in part, to secure the succession. The wives were (1) Catherine of Aragon (1486-1536), (2) Anne Boleyn (1507-1536), (3) Jane Seymour (1509-1537), (4) Anne of Cleves (1515-1557), (5) Catherine Howard (1521-1542) and (6) Catherine Parr (1514-1548). Henry ended up with two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, and one sickly son. The Act of Succession of 1536 declared both Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate, but they were reinstated in the succession by another Act of Parliament in 1544. Henry also devised a will to indicate his preference that, after the succession of his own children, the children of his older sister, Margaret, be passed over in favor of the children of his younger sister, Mary.
Lady Jane Grey (1537-1554), granddaughter of Henry VIII’s younger sister, was chosen by John Dudley, duke of Northumberland and Edward VI's guardian, to succeed the boy king and prevent the realm from returning to Catholicism, as it was sure to do if Mary I succeeded her brother. Northumberland persuaded Lady Jane’s mother to relinquish her own claim to the throne in Lady Jane’s favor, then married the girl to one of his own sons, Lord Guildford Dudley, and got the dying king to declare his cousin as his successor. Had Northumberland managed to capture Mary, he might have succeeded in his scheme, but she eluded him, raised an army, and took back the throne. Lady Jane’s “reign” lasted nine days. She and Lord Guildford were executed in 1554 as a result of Wyatt’s Rebellion.
Mary I wed Philip II of Spain (1527-1598) in 1554, but died childless. Elizabeth I never married at all, and refused to name an heir until she was on her deathbed. During the period from 1554 until 1603, when James I (the great-grandson of Henry VIII's sister Margaret) succeeded peacefully, there were a number of contenders.
Lady Frances Brandon, du
chess of Suffolk (1517-1559), was the daughter of Henry VIII’s younger sister and the mother not only of Lady Jane, but also of Lady Catherine and Lady Mary Grey. After her husband’s execution in 1554, the duchess married her Master of the Horse. Lady Catherine Grey (1539-1568) lived at court as heiress presumptive until she disgraced herself by secretly marrying Edward Seymour, earl of Hertford. She bore him two sons while they were both imprisoned in the Tower. Lady Mary Grey (1542-1578) eloped with a commoner, Thomas Keyes, in 1565. They were separated and Lady Mary was confined until after her husband's death.
Lady Margaret Clifford, Lady Strange and later countess of Derby (1540-1596), was also a descendant of Henry VIII's younger sister. She had an interest in alchemy and was believed to be a Catholic, both factors against Elizabeth considering her or her sons as successors.
Lady Margaret Douglas, countess of Lennox (1515-1578), was the daughter of Henry VIII’s elder sister. Her romantic entanglements during Henry VIII’s reign got her in trouble more than once. In Elizabeth’s reign she was twice imprisoned over the marriages of her children, when Henry, Lord Darnley, wed the queen of Scots in 1565, and again when Charles, earl of Lennox, married Bess of Hardwick’s daughter, Elizabeth Cavendish. This second union produced Lady Arbella Stuart (1575-1615), who was considered by many to be the leading candidate to succeed Elizabeth. Unlike her cousin, James of Scotland, she had been born in England. After James succeeded, Arbella eloped with William Seymour, a grandson of Lady Catherine Grey. As this unauthorized marriage constituted treason, Lady Arbella spent the rest of her life in prison and died childless.
Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587) was Elizabeth’s most serious challenger for the throne. Mary even quartered the English arms with her own when Mary I died in 1558. At that time, Mary was queen of France. After the death of her husband, Francis II, she returned to Scotland, married Lord Darnley and possibly murdered him, then married the earl of Bothwell. Deposed (she abdicated in favor of her son, James VI, in 1567) and driven out of Scotland, she sought asylum in England and was promptly imprisoned. She was executed in 1587 on very suspect evidence of a plot to seize Elizabeth’s throne.
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