# Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 2/Chapter 11

CHAPTER XI.
REIGN OF EDWARD VI.
The country was doomed once more to experience the inconveniences of a regal minority, of that evil so forcibly enunciated by the sacred Scriptures: "Woe to the country whose king is a child." It was doomed once more to witness the struggles, incapacities, and manifold mischiefs of ambitious nobles, whilst the hand of the king was too feeble to keep them in restraint. The execution of Surrey, and the imprisonment and attainder of the great Duke of Norfolk, left the Seymours completely in the ascendant; and having recently risen into note and power, they very soon showed all the inflated ambition of such parvenus. The Earl of Hertford, as uncle of the king, was in reality the man now in the possession of the chief power. The king was but a few months more than nine years of age; and Henry, his father, acting on the discretion given him by an Act of Parliament of the twenty-eighth year of his reign, had by will settled the crown on his son, and had appointed sixteen individuals as his executors, who should constitute also the Privy Council, and exercise the authority of the Crown till the young monarch was eighteen years of age. To enable these executors, or rather, to enable Hertford to secure the person of the king, and take other measures for the establishment of their position, the death of Henry was kept secret for four days. He died on the morning of Friday, the 28th of January, and Parliament, which was virtually dissolved by his death, according to the then existing laws, met on the 29th, and proceeded to business as usual, so that any Acts passed under these circumstances would have clearly become null.
On the 31st of the month, the Chancellor Wriothesley announced to the assembled Parliament of both Houses, the decease of the king, and the appointment of the council to conduct the Government, in the name of the young Sovereign, Edward VI. The members of both Houses professed to be overwhelmed with grief at the news of their loss. It might have been supposed that Henry VIII., of blessed memory, had been one of the most mild and endearing men that ever lived. The Romanists and the Protestants, whom he chastised and tyrannised over with a pretty equal hand, were, according to their own account, sunk in sorrow, and the tender-hearted Wriothesley, who had never before shown any feeling except for himself, was so choked by his tears as scarcely to be able to announce the sad event. In fact, the servility of the Ministry and Parliament during the ​king's life, were only equalled by their hypocrisy at his death.
The boy king, however, soon engrossed all their powers of political joy and flattery. He was represented as the greatest prodigy of learning and virtue that ever lived. William Thomas, who became one of the clerks of the council—as who can wonder—in a work called the "Pilgrim," thus describes him: "If ye know the towardness of that young prince, your hearts would melt to hear him named, and your stomach abhor the malice of them that would him ill; the beautifullest creature that liveth under the sun; the wittiest, the most amiable, and the gentlest thing of all the world. Such a spirit of capacity, learning the things taught him by his schoolmaster, that it is a wonder to hear say. And finally, he hath such a grace of posture and gesture in gravity, when he comes into a presence, that it should seem he were already a father, and passeth he not the ago of ten years. A thing undoubtedly much rather to be seen than believed."
Edward appears, indeed, to have been a very amiable and clever lad, but probably suffered severely in his health by the over-working of his brain whilst so young, a circumstance which is supposed also to have injured the constitution and cheerfulness of temper of his sister Mary. He kept a journal, which still remains, in his own hand, in the British Museum, and in this he tolls us many things of his life and short reign. From this we learn that till he was six years old he was brought up much "amongst the women." We know that his step-mother, Catherine Parr, bestowed much pains on the education of both himself and his sisters Mary and Elizabeth. He was next placed under the tuition of Sir Anthony Cook, "famous for his five learned daughters," of Mr. Cheke, and Dr. Cox. These gentlemen were to educate him in "learning of tongues, of the Scripture, of philosophy, and all liberal sciences." Cox, in particular, was "to be his preceptor for his manners, and the knowledge of philosophy and divinity; the other for the tongues and mathematics." He had masters for French and other accomplishments; and Bishop Burnet says that "he was so forward in his learning, that before he was eight years old, he wrote Latin letters to his father, who was a prince of that stern severity that one can hardly think that those about his son durst cheat him by making letters for him."
Henry VIII., in fact, does not seem to have examined very closely into what was going on in the education of his son; the queen appears to have had that very much left to her, and she had contrived so that all who were about him were of the reformed opinions; indeed, of such opinions, that, had Henry known it, he would sooner have had them at the stake than at the teaching of his heir. These men most thoroughly imbued him with their own views, and he showed himself through his brief life a steadfast maintainer of the new faith. Had he been allowed more play and exercise during his early boyhood, instead of being drilled so unremittingly in his educational labour, he might have lived longer, and proved none the less accomplished in the end.
At the time of his father's death he was residing at Hertford, in the house of his uncle, the Earl of Hertford. Thither Hertford and Sir Anthony Browne, the master of the horse, proceeded, and, bringing him as far as Enfield, where his sister Elizabeth was, they first announced to them the death of their father, by which they are said by Hayward to have been greatly affected. On the 31st of January, the same day the announcement had been made to Parliament of Henry's decease, and whilst this and his own accession was being proclaimed in London, Edward, escorted by Hertford, Sir Anthony Browne, and a body of horse, entered the capital, and was conducted straightway to the Tower, amidst a vast concourse of applauding people. At his approach to that ancient bastile, where young princes had before been led by their uncles, with results which might have made the little king shrink, "there was," says Strype, "great shooting of ordnance in all parts thereabouts, as well from the houses as from the ships, whereat the king took great pleasure. Being there arrived, he was welcomed by the nobles, and conducted by them to his lodging within the Tower, being richly hung and garnished with rich cloth of Arras, and cloth of estate agreeable to such a Royal guest. And so were all his nobles lodged and placed, some in the Tower and some in the City. His council lodged for the most part about his highness, who every day kept the council-chamber, for determination of main causes, as well about the interment of the king's father, as for the expedition of his own coronation."
On the day after his arrival at the Tower, that is, on February 1st, 1547, the greater part of the nobility and the prelates were summoned, and assembled there about three o'clock in the afternoon, in the presence-chamber, where they all successively knelt and kissed his majesty's hand, saying every one of them, "God save your grace!" Then Wriothesley, the chancellor, produced the king's will, and announced from it that the following sixteen persons were appointed to be his late majesty's executors, and to hold the office of governors of the present king and of the kingdom till he was eighteen years of ago:—Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury; Thomas Wriothesley, the Lord Chancellor; William Paulet, Baron St. John, Master of the Household; John Russell, Baron Russell, Lord Privy Seal; Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, Lord Great Chamberlain; John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, Lord Admiral; Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham; Sir Anthony Browne, Master of the Horse; Sir William Paget, Secretary of State; Sir Edward North, Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations; Sir Edward Montague, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; Thomas Bromley, one of the Justices of the King's Bench; Sir Anthony Denny and Sir John Herbert, Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber; Sir Edward Wotton, Treasurer of Calais; and Dr. Nicholas Wotton, Dean of Canterbury. To these were added twelve others, who were to aid them in any case of difficulty by their advice:—Henry Fitzallan, Earl of Arundel; William Parr, Earl of Essex; Sir Thomas Cheney, Treasurer of the Household; Sir John Gage, Comptroller; Sir Anthony Wingfield, Vice-Chamberlain; Sir William Petre, Secretary of State; Sir Richard Rich, Sir John Baker, Sir Ralph Sadler, Sir Thomas Seymour, Sir Richard Southwell, and Sir Edmund Peckham. Yet, although these formed a second council, it was totally destitute of any real authority, and could only tender advice when asked.
The announcement of these names excited much ​inadversion and some censure. It was remarked that the greater part of them were new men; and the chief council consisted of those who had been about him in his last illness. But what next was disclosed was still more extraordinary. The executors, when assembled in the Tower on the day of the young king's proclamation, declared that "they were resolved not only to stand to and maintain the last will and testament of their master, the late king, and every part and parcel of the same, to the uttermost of their powers, wits, and cunning, but also that every one of them present should take a corporal oath upon a book, for the more assured and effectual accomplishment of the same." But now it was announced that the Privy Council, for the better dispatch of business, had resolved to place the Earl of Hertford at their head. This was so directly in opposition to the will, which had invested every member of the council with equal power, that it was received with no little wonder. The fact was that Hertford, who, before the old king's death, had determined to seize the supreme power during the minority of his nephew, had secured a majority in the council, who, as we shall soon find, had their object to attain. Wriothesley was the only one who stood out. He assured them that such an act invalidated the whole will. But he argued in vain, and, finding it useless, he gave way; and thus Hertford was now proclaimed protector of the realm and guardian of the king's person, with the understood but empty condition, that he should attempt nothing which had not the assent of a majority of the council.
However much astonished or chagrined, the courtiers expressed their unanimous approbation; the new Protector expressed his gratitude, and Edward, pulling off his cap, said, "We thank you heartily, my lords all; and hereafter in all that you shall have to do with us for any suit or causes, ye shall be heartily welcome." Thereupon the lords expressed their entire content, and the public announcement of the appointment of Hertford was received with transports of joy by all who were attached to the new doctrines, or who sought to improve their fortunes at the expense of the Church.
Great Seal of Edward VI.
And now came the next remarkable development, that which had made so many of the council ready to support the pretensions of Hertford. There was a clause in the king's will requiring the council to ratify every gift and perform every promise which he had made before his death. When the meaning of this clause was inquired into, it was asserted that Paget, Herbert, and Denny were in the king's confidence on the subject; and, on being interrogated, as of course it was arranged, they stated that the king had not only had this clause inserted in his will, but that he had solemnly reiterated this injunction to those in attendance upon him, while he lay on his deathbed. By a letter of Paget's, which is preserved in Strype, we perceive that Hertford had, before the king's death, promised him, and no doubt others, their proper rewards for assisting his intentions on the protectorate. "Remember what you promised me in the gallery at Westminster," he says, writing to Hertford, "before the breath was out of the body of the king that dead is; remember what you promised me immediately after, devising with me about the place which you now occupy."
Accordingly, when Paget, Denny, and Herbert were interrogated, they stated that the clause related to certain honours and rewards that Henry intended to bestow on these worthy executors. Paget declared that when the evidence appeared against the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Surrey, the king, who used oft to talk in private with him alone, told him that he intended to bestow their lands liberally; and since, by attainder and other ways, the nobility were much decayed, he intended to create some peers, and ordered him to write a book of such as he thought merited. Paget said that he himself then proposed to Henry that the Earl of Hertford should be made a duke, and that several other persons whom he named should be ennobled: and that others who were peers, should be raised to a higher rank. He added, that he suggested that they should divide amongst them the lands of the Duke of Norfolk, but that the king liked it not, but made Mr. Gates bring him the books of that estate, which being done, he ordered Paget "to tot upon ​the Earl of Hertford," as he expressed it, 1,000 marks; on the Lords Lisle, St. John, and Russell, £200 a year; to the Lord Wriothesley, £100; and to Sir Thomas Seymour, £300 a year, which Paget said was too little, and reminded the king of Denny; but that the king, saying nothing of Denny, ordered £200 for him (Paget), and £400 for Sir William Herbert, and remembered some others.
Of the persons mentioned for promotion, Paget said, some, on being spoken to, desired to remain in their present estate, the land which the king proposed to give being insufficient for the rank to be attached to them. After many consultations, the king had settled it thus:—"The Earl of Hertford was to be created earl marshal and lord treasurer, to be Duke of Somerset, Exeter, or Hertford, and his son to be Earl of Wiltshire, with £500 a year in lands, and £300 a year out of the next bishop's lands that fell void. The Earl of Essex was to be Marquis of Essex; the Viscount Lisle to be Earl of Coventry; the Lord Wriothesley, Earl of Winchester; Sir Thomas Seymour, a baron and lord admiral; Sir Richard Rich, Sir John St. Leger, Sir William Willoughby, Sir Edward Sheffield, and Sir Christopher Danby, to be barons; with yearly revenues to Anne and several other persons. And having at the suit of Sir Edward North promised to give the Earl of Hertford six of the best prebends that should fall in any cathedral, except deaneries and treasurerships, at his, the duke's suit, he, the king agreed that a deanery and a treasurership should be instead of two of the six prebends."
Rearing the Fire Cross for the Assembly of the Highland Clans, before the Battle of Pinkle. (See page 304.)
This extraordinary statement of Paget's was fully confirmed by Denny and Herbert, who said that, on Paget quitting the room, the king related to them what had passed, and made Denny thereupon write it down; and Herbert observing that Paget, the secretary, had remembered every one but himself, the king ordered them to write down £400 a year for him.
Perhaps this is the most barefaced example on record of a set of executors helping themselves out of the estate of the testator, on the mere assertion that he promised them these good things, without a word of such particulars in the will; and it has also been well observed by Burnet and Lingard, that though there was a vague clause in the body of the will, recommending the keeping of the king's promises, yet the will bore date the 30th of December, and these conversations were represented to have taken place on the king's deathbed, Henry dying on the 28th of January, nearly a month after. When it became known abroad, the people said it was enough for them to have drained the dead king of his treasure, but now they were sharing honours amongst themselves which should only have been granted when the new king came of age. The discrepancy betwixt the date of the will and the date of the alleged conversation made the public regard the whole as what, no doubt, it was—a gross and impudent fabrication.
​Without regarding public opinion, however, the honest courtiers proceeded to endow one another with the honours and estates agreed upon. They hesitated to sell the king's jewels or plate, but there was property still more to their taste, as it would give hereditary estates in connection with the desired titles—there were different manors and lordships belonging to the dissolved monasteries, or to bishoprics still existing. With the new peerage titles different to those first named were bestowed. The Earl of Hertford was buried, as it were, under a whole mountain of honours and titles. His style ran thus:—"The most noble and victorious Prince Edward, Duke of Somerset, Earl of Hertford, Viscount Beauchamp, Lord Seymour, governor of the person of the king's majesty, and protector of all his realms, his lieutenant-general of all his armies both by land and sea. Lord High Treasurer and Earl Marshal of England, Governor of the Isles of Guernsey and Jersey, and Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter." And it is added, "Because he was thus great, so he was also a very generous and good man, and a sincere favourer of the Gospel; he was entirely beloved of those that professed it, and for the most part, by the populacy, and therefore was commonly called 'The Good Duke.'"
Essex, that is Parr, brother of the late queen, became Marquis of Northampton; Lisle, Earl of Warwick; Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton; Sir Thomas Seymour, Baron Seymour of Sudeley, and Lord High Admiral; Rich became Baron Rich; Willoughby, Baron Willoughby; Sheffield, Baron Sheffield; St. Leger and Danby alone refused both peerage and estate.
Having thus first seized on the property of the late king, or rather of the nation, these bold courtiers proceeded to bury the body of the deceased sovereign, which, till then, had remained above ground. The body lay in state in the chapel of Whitehall till the 14th of February, when it was removed to Sion House, on the 15th to Windsor, and the next day was interred in the midst of the choir, near to the body of Jane Seymour. Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, preached the sermon and read the funeral service. When he cast the mould into the grave, saying "Pulvis pulveri, cinis cineri," the lord great master, the lord chamberlain, the treasurer, comptroller, and gentlemen ushers broke their staves in three parts over their heads, and threw the fragments upon the coffin. The psalm "De profundis" was then sung, and Garter King-at-Arms, attended by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Durham, immediately proclaimed the style of the new sovereign. Four days afterwards the coronation of Edward took place in Westminster Abbey, but with considerable variations and abridgments, to accommodate the ceremony to the tender age of the king, and to the changes which had taken place in the laws of the realm.
The greatest innovation was in the form which had been prescribed by our Saxon ancestors, to remind the monarch that he held the crown by the free choice of the people. It had always been the custom for the king to take the oath to preserve the liberties of the nation, and then for the archbishop to ask the people whether they were willing to have him reign over them. But now the archbishop asked the people first whether they would have him as their liege lord, and then put the oath as if it were a matter of the Royal option. Still more, in addressing the people, the primate took care to let them know that the king held the throne, not by popular will, but by descent and heirdom. "Sirs," said the primate, "I here present King Edward, rightful and undoubted inheritor by the laws of God and man, to the Royal dignity and crown imperial of this realm, whoso consecration, inunction, and coronation is appointed by all the nobles and peers of the land to be this day. Will ye serve at this time, and give your good wills and assents to the same consecration, inunction, and coronation, as by your duty of allegiance ye be bound to do?"
To clench the matter still farther, and let the people know that the new king acknowledged no obligation to the people for his crown, but held it as lord in his own right, Cranmer, in his address which he gave instead of the usual sermon, told the young king that the promises he had just made could not affect his right to sway the sceptre of his dominions. That right he, like his predecessors, had derived from God, whence it followed that neither the Bishop of Rome, nor any other bishop, could pretend to interfere with his title. The inference was, that just as little had the people, under any circumstances, any right to dispute his proceedings, or call him to account. Such were the high and arbitrary notions instilled into this boy's mind—principles which, in only ninety-eight years from this period, cost a similarly instructed monarch his head, and, for a time, destroyed the ancient monarchy of England. After this inculcation of kingly right, Cranmer had the grace, however, to recommend the little king to rule well, "to reward virtue, and revenge vice; to justify the innocent, and relieve the poor; to repress violence, and execute justice; and then he promised him that he should become a second Josias, whose fame would remain to the end of days." According to ancient usage, a general pardon was then proclaimed to all State offenders, with some exceptions, amongst which were the names of the Duke of Norfolk and Cardinal Pole.
But it was not the king who was destined to reign for many a day yet, even if he lived to his majority, but his proud uncle Somerset. With all the soaring ambition of an upstart, he was prepared to grasp the reins of government in his own hands, and use the innocent lad as a mere puppet for his own purposes. He had placed himself at the head of the council, and, therefore, of the Government; but he lost no time in endeavouring to make himself not only superior to, but independent of, both king and council. Somerset had sworn never to act without the assent of the majority of the council, but he had little thought indeed of abiding by that oath. He could rely on Craumer's support in his attempts at supreme authority, as the primate calculated, through his means, to carry out the most extensive innovations in religion; but there was one man whom he well knew would oppose his aspiring proceedings—Wriothesley, the new Earl of Southampton. His legal knowledge and ability were not readily to be coped with; and he had recently shown that he would not fail to resist any domineering conduct in the Protector, especially where religion was concerned. Southampton, therefore, must be put quickly out of the way, and occasion was soon found. That stanch lawyer, finding it necessary to watch ​closely the proceedings of Somerset, put the great seal to a commission, empowering four masters to hear all causes in Chancery, and giving to their decisions all the force of his own, provided that, before they were enrolled, they received his signature. But the Protector, aware of the chancellor's object, very soon moved several lawyers to petition against this arrangement. The petition was referred by the council to the judges, who declared that the act of putting the great seal to this commission was punishable with loss of office, and fine and imprisonment at the royal pleasure. Southampton boldly contended that the commission was perfectly legal; that even had it been illegal, they could only revoke it, to which he made no objection; that he held his office by patent from the late king, and they had no power to deprive him of it. But legal arguments had no weight with the council. Somerset had secured a majority in it, and Southampton was compelled to resign, and retire to his residence at Ely House, or expect worse. He surrendered the seal the same evening, which was given to Lord St. John. But that was not enough for Somerset: Southampton was ordered to confine himself to his own house as a prisoner, till the amount of the fine was determined.
Having thus ousted this dangerous opponent, Somerset immediately procured letters patent under the great seal, conferring on himself alone the whole authority of the crown. This patent was signed by his facile and devoted friends Cranmer, St. John, Russell, Northampton, Cheney, Paget, and Browne, and thus did these men, who had gorged themselves with the property of the Church, and arrayed one another with titles, basely surrender to this adventurer the whole of the will of King Henry, which they had sworn to maintain, as far as it regarded the safeguards of the crown during the minority.
Having thus seized and secured the actual sovereign power in England, Somerset began to turn his attention to foreign affairs. Henry VIII. had left it as a strict injunction to his council to secure the marriage of the Queen of Scots with his son Edward. Somerset, therefore, addressed a letter to the Scottish nobility, calling upon them to complete an arrangement which he recommended as equally advantageous with that to which they were bound by oaths, promises, and seals. The Scotch took little notice of this communication from the man who had carried the commands of the late king through their land with fire and sword.
Whilst this fruitless intercourse was passing, Francis I. died at Rambouillet, on the 31st of March, about two months after Henry VIII. From some cause, probably some astrological calculation, Francis entertained a firm conviction that the lives of himself and Henry were bound together in some mysterious union. On the news, therefore, of Henry's decease, he dreamed that his own hour was at hand, and fell into a deep melancholy and dejection, which nothing could chase away. With all their sparrings, fightings, and jealousies, Francis appears to have felt a considerable regard for his brother of England, and seemed to feel an affection for his heir. Proposals for the renewal of alliance and friendship betwixt the two monarchs had been made and accepted, and messengers already appointed to receive their oaths, when Francis died. His successor, his son Henry, pursued a very different policy. He was greatly guided by the counsels of the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, the brothers of the queen-dowager of Scotland. The Guises were bigoted Romanists, and of course the queen-dowager was a resolute opponent of the English plans. To her they were the most fearful heretics, and she not only educated her daughter in opinions diametrically opposed to those of Edward VI., and which made her the least fitted for his wife as the queen of Protestant England, but she naturally clung to a closer alliance with France. Henry II., who sympathised with her in her religious views, saw also the vast advantages offered to France by espousing the cause of the infant Queen of Scotland. Still he preserved the appearance of concord with England.
The Castle of St. Andrews, which the murderers of Cardinal Beaton held out against Arran, had in the course of this summer been surrendered to a French force, and the conspirators were conveyed to France. Some of them were confined in fortresses on the coast of Brittany, and others, amongst whom was John Knox, were sent to work in the galleys, whence they were not released till 1550. By the mouth of August, Somerset was once more prepared to invade Scotland, and to force, if possible, the young queen from the hands of Arran and the queen-mother. Under the name of Hertford he was already too well known as the scourge which Henry VIII. had repeatedly sent thither, and who had executed the remorseless vengeance of the tyrant on that unhappy country in the same spirit as that in which it had been dictated: what that was we may learn from these literal orders with which Henry furnished him for his expedition in 1543-4. He commands him, through a despatch of the privy council, to make an inroad into Scotland, "there to put all to fire and sword; to burn Edinburgh town; and to raze and deface it, when you have sacked it, and gotten what ye can out of it, as that it may remain for ever a perpetual memory of the vengeance of God lighted upon it for its falsehood and disloyalty. Do what you can out of hand, and without long tarrying, to beat down and overthrow the castle, sack Holyrood House, and as many towns and villages about Edinburgh as ye conveniently can; sack Loith, and burn and subvert it and all the rest, putting man, woman, and child to fire and sword, without exception, when any resistance shall be made against you; and this done, pass over to the Fife land, and extend like extremities and destructions in all towns and villages whereunto ye may reach conveniently, not forgetting, amongst all the rest, to spoil and turn upside-down the cardinal's town of St. Andrews, as the upper stone may be the nether, and not one stick stand by another, sparing no creature alive within the same, specially such as, either in friendship or blood, be allied to the cardinal."
Hertford, so far as he was able, had carried this out to the letter. And now he set out to make a campaign in Scotland on his own account; and the manner in which he conducted himself showed how well he had studied Henry's savage system of Christian warfare. The army collected at Newcastle, and there Somerset himself arrived, on the 27th of August. Warwick, the second in command, and Sir Ralph Sadler, deep in the mysteries of facing Scotland's sons against herself, or of directing his own countrymen how best they might most completely ​harry the devoted land, were already there. The forces were reviewed, and on the 29th they commenced their march. On the 2nd of September they were at Berwick, where they found Lord Clinton with the fleet, and from that point the army marched along the shore, supported by the ships at sea. Somerset took Douglas Castle, the property of Sir George Douglas, without resistance. The castle being rifled, was then blown up with gunpowder, as were also the peels of Thornton and Anderwick. Passing by Dunbar and the castle of Tantallan, the army, on Friday the 8th of September, sat down near Preston-pans, the fleet being stationed opposite the town of Musselburgh.
To meet this invasion, Arran had sent the fire-cross from clan to clan through the Highlands, and had ordered every Scot capable of bearing arms to assemble at Musselburgh. The two armies now lay not much more than a couple of miles from each other. On the 9th the Scottish horse were seen parading themselves boldly on the eminence which lay betwixt the hosts, called Falside, or Fawside Brae. The two armies had the sea to the north, whilst Falside rose facing the west, betwixt them, and having on its summit a castellated keep, and a few huts. In the afternoon of that day, a body of English cavalry pricked forwards to dislodge the enemy, and succeeded, after a sharp skirmish, in which Lord Hume was severely injured by a fall from his horse, and his son and heir fell into the hands of the English.
The field being cleared of the skirmishers, Somerset, Warwick, and other of the officers, rode forward with a strong body of horse to take a view of the position of the Scottish army. On reaching the eminence, they saw it lying, its white tents gleaming in the setting sun, on a very advantageous ground, betwixt the River Esk and the sea, the right flank strongly defended by a deep, swampy ground. The bridge over the Esk was strongly guarded with cannon, and again, in front of the bridge, they had posted an advanced guard of musketeers, or hackbuttors, furnished with a couple of pieces of ordnance. Betwixt Fawside, on which the reconnoitrers were, and the front of the Scottish army, rose a small insulated eminence, crowned with the parish church of St. Michael's, of Inveresk. Somerset and his attendants rode on to that spot, though it was not more than a couple of arrow-shots from the Scottish lines, from which they were saluted by many shots, and one of the soldiers had his horse killed under him. On their return they were overtaken by a herald and a trumpeter. The herald brought from Arran a proffer of fair conditions of peace, and the trumpeter a challenge from Lord Huntly to Somerset. Somerset replied that he desired no peace but such as his sword should win, and as to the challenge, he bade the herald tell his master that he was entrusted with too precious a charge, the person of a king, to risk a personal conflict; but that if the Scots would meet them in the field, they should have fighting enough. Warwick was sot so cautious, but begged earnestly, but in vain, to be permitted to accept the defiance.
Somerset and Warwick resolved to occupy the height on which stood St. Michael's Church, and for this purpose, early on the following morning, long called "Black Saturday" in Scotland, they advanced upon it about eight o'clock. But the Scots had also concluded to advance, and on the English approaching the first height, they were astonished to find that the Scots had quitted their strong position beyond the river, and were occupying the ground they had intended for themselves. It seems that the Scots had somehow got the idea that the English meant to retreat and escape them, and to prevent this, they determined to surprise them in their camp, and were on the way for this purpose. At the sight of the English the Scotch pushed forward impetuously, hoping to get possession of Fawside Brae, but they were checked by a sharp discharge of artillery from the admiral's galley, which mowed down about thirty of them, as they defiled over the bridge near the sea. Seeing the English posted on the height with several pieces of artillery, the Scotch halted in a fallow field, having in their front a deep ditch. The English, however, reckless of this obstacle, dashed on, and, with Lord Gray at their head, made their way up to them. But here they encountered one of those serried phalanxes which Patten, an eye-witness, describes very graphically:—"In their array towards the joining with the enemy, they cling and thrust to war in the fore-rank, shoulder to shoulder together, with their pikes in both hands straight before them, and their followers in that order to hand at their backs, laying their pikes over their foregoers' shoulders, that if they do assail undissevered, no force can well withstand them. Standing at defence, the fore-ranks, well nigh to kneeling, stoop low before their fellows behind, the one end of the pike against their right foot, the other against the enemy, head high, their followers crossing their pike-points with their foreward, and thus each other so nigh as time and place will suffer, that as easily shall a bare finger pierce the skin of an angry hedgehog, as any encounter the point of their pikes."
Standing in such an almost impenetrable mass, the Scots kept crying, "Come here, louns! come here, tykes! come here, heretics!" and the like, and the English charging upon them, seemed for a moment to have disconcerted them, but soon were fain to turn and retreat. The flight became general, and the Scots rushing on, expected to reap an easy victory. Lord Gray himself was severely wounded in the mouth, and the Scottish soldiers pressing on seized the Royal standard, when a desperate struggle ensued, and the staff of the standard being broken, part of it remained in the hands of the enemy, but the standard itself was rescued.
The fight now became general and fierce, and there was a hand-to-hand contest, in which many fell on both sides; but the English commanders were men proved in many a great battle, and exerted themselves to restore order amongst their troops. Warwick was seen everywhere encouraging, ordering, and ranking his men afresh; whilst the artillery from the height, directed over the heads of their own regiments, mowed down the assailing Scots. The ardour of the soldiers restored, advantage was taken of the position of a large body of the enemy, which, in their impetuosity, had rushed forward beyond the support of the main army. They were surrounded, and attacked on all sides. Confounded by this unexpected occurrence, the Scots were thrown into confusion, and began to take to flight. Arran himself soon put spurs to his horse; Angus followed, and the Highland clans— ​who had never been engaged—fled en masse. "Therewith then turned all the whole rout," says Patten; "cast down their weapons, ran out of their wards, off with their jacks, and with all that ever they might, betook them to the race that their governor began. Our men, with a universal cry of 'They fly! they fly!' pursued after in chase amain, and thereto so eagerly, and with such fierceness, that they overtook many, and spared, indeed, but few. But when they were once turned, it was a wonder indeed to see how soon, and in how sundry sorts, they were scattered. The place they stood on, like a wood of staves strewed on the ground as rushes in a chamber, impassable, they lay so thick, for either horse or man. Here, at the first, had they let fall all their pikes; after that everywhere scattered swords, bucklers, daggers, jacks, and all things else that either was of any weight, or might be any let to their course."
The rout was general, and the slaughter terrible, some making off for Leith, some direct for Edinburgh by fields or woods as they could, and others endeavoured to cross the marsh and reach Dalkeith. The English horse pursued them wherever they could follow; and the description of Patten may show how mercilessly Somerset repeated the bloody practices of his campaigns under Henry's fell orders. "Some lay flat in a furrow as though they were dead, thereby past by of our men untouched; as I heard say, the Earl of Angus confessed he crouched till his horse happened to be brought him. Other some to stay in the river lowering down his body, his head under the root of a willow tree, with scarce his nose above water for breath. A shift but no succour it was to many that had their sculls on, at the stroke of the follower, to shrink with their heads into their shoulders, like a tortoise into his shell. Others again, for their more lightness, cast away shoes and doublets, and ran in their shirts; and some also seen in this race all breathless to fall flat down, and have run themselves to death. Soon began a pitiful sight of the dead corpses lying dispersed abroad; some their legs off, some but houghed, and left lying half dead, some thrust quite through the body, others the arms cut off, divers their necks half asunder, many their heads cloven, of sundry the brains pushed out, some others again their heads quite off, with other thousand kinds of killing. And thus, with blood and slaughter of the enemy, this chase was continued five miles in length westward from the place of their standing, which was on the fallow fields of Underesk, until Edinburgh Park, and well nigh to the gates of the town itself, and unto Leith; and in breadth nigh four miles from the Frith sands, up towards Dalkeith southward. In all which space, the dead bodies lay as thick as a man may note cattle grazing, in a full replenished pasture. The river all ran red with blood, so that in the same chase were counted, as well by some of our men that somewhat diligently did mark it, as by some of them taken prisoners, that very much did lament it, to have been slain above 13,000. In all this compass of ground, what with weapons, arms, hands, legs, heads, blood, and dead bodies, their flight might easily have been traced to every of their three refuges. And for the smallness of our number, and shortness of the time, which was scant five hours, from one till nigh six, the mortality was so great, as it was thought the like aforetime not to have been seen."
Great numbers of men of rank and station were slain as well as of the commonalty, and only 1,500 prisoners made. When the wretched fugitives who had escaped had got into Edinburgh or some other retreat, the heart of Somerset professed to feel pity, and he called back his troops to plunder the Scottish camp. They seem to have found plenty of provisions, and in the tents of the chief officers good wine and some silver plate. They stripped naked the bodies of the slain over all the space where they fell, and of coats of mail and other armour and arms more than 30,000 pieces. They found thirty pieces of ordnance, and amongst the prisoners taken was the Earl of Huntly, lord chancellor of the kingdom, who had sent the challenge to Somerset; the Masters of Buchan, Erskine, and Graham, the Scottish historians assert to have been put to death in cold blood, after having surrendered on promise of quarter. The battle became named the battle of Pinkie, from Pinkie, or Pinken-cleugh, an eminence near it.
The army rested in its camp the next day, and on the following morning, Sunday, September the 11th, it advanced to Leith. From that point the fleet sailed up the Forth, destroying all the vessels in it, and ravaging and laying waste the towns and country on its banks. The Isle of Inchcolm, the town of Kinghorn, and numbers of villages were plundered and burnt. Leith was set on fire by Somerset, and the gentry, subdued by their tenors, came in from all the country round and made their submission.
Now, then, was the time to push the object for which this expedition was undertaken—the securing the young queen for the king. Somerset had attained a commanding position. He held the capital, as it were, under his hand, and fresh forces brought up and judiciously employed, must have put the country so far into his power as to enable him to treat on the most advantageous terms for the accomplishment of this great national object; or if he could not obtain it by treaty, he might make himself master of her person by arms. But all this demonstration, this signal victory, this sanguinary butchery, which must add finally to the antipathy of the Scottish people if no great good followed it, was abandoned with a strange recklessness which showed that though Somerset could conquer in the field, he was totally destitute of the qualities of a statesman. Instead of making his success the platform of wise negotiation, and of a great national union, he converted it into a fresh aggravation of the ill-will of the Scotch, by depriving it of all rational result. Being, it is supposed, apprised of some machinations of his brother, the admiral, in his absence, he commenced an instant march homeward, like a man that was beaten rather than a victor. On the 17th of September, only a week and one day from the battle of Pinkie, he took his departure. The Scotch were amazed at a flight as sudden as the onslaught had been deadly. As he marched from Leith, whose flames wore mounting redly into the sky behind him, the commander of Edinburgh Castle fired twenty-four pieces of ordnance at him, but too far off to reach him. He had dispatched Clinton with a part of the fleet to awe the coasts of Scotland, and to reduce the castle of Broughty at the mouth of the Tay, which was the key to that river and to the towns of Perth and Dundee, which he soon effected. But whilst victory ​was disposed to settle on the banners of Somerset wherever displayed, he himself was making all speed homewards. On the 19th he reached Hume Castle, which Lady Hume consented to surrender on being allowed to retire with the garrison, and whatever they could carry with them. He halted also a few days at Roxburgh, where he threw up some fortifications amid the ruins of the old castle, and having received the submission of the neighbouring country, on the 29th he crossed the Tweed. All this time he was followed by Arran with a body of horse, whom he did not attempt to check or chastise, and on entering England, he made the best of his way to London, the whole term of his absence having been only about six weeks.
Somerset entered the capital like a great conqueror. The mayor and corporation met him in their robes in Finsbury, and accompanied him as far as the Pound in Smithfield, where they parted, and he went on that night to his house at Sheen, and the next day to the king at Hampton Court. Edward received him joyfully, and made him an additional grant of lands to the value of £500 a year; in other words, Somerset awarded these to himself. A Parliament was then summoned, and the Protector proceeded to carry forward the contemplated reform in the Church, now that he was covered with useless and worse, most mischievous military honours, as the country was soon to learn.
The Duke of Somerset. From a Painting by Holbein.
The Herald Delivering a Challenge to Single Combat from Lord Huntly to the Duke of Somerset.(See page 304.)
To prepare the way for these changes, a great step was already taken in the removal of Wriothesley from the council, and Tunstall was next ordered to his own diocese, on plea of business there which demanded his immediate attention. Cranmer then, in order to remind the bishops that the retention of their sees might depend on their acquiescence in the proposed alterations, asserted that his authority as primate expired with the king who had conferred it; and he therefore petitioned to be continued in it, and accepted a new commission to execute the functions of an archbishop till it should please the sovereign to revoke it. This was literally laying episcopacy at the foot of the throne; not admitting simply that such offices were derivable from it, but terminated at its pleasure. The example set by the primate became, as it were, a law to the whole episcopal bench.
The next movement was to adopt the late king's plan of a visitation of dioceses. For this purpose, the kingdom was divided into six circuits, to each of which was appointed a certain number of visitors, partly laymen partly clergymen, who, the moment they arrived in a diocese, became the only ecclesiastical authority there. They were empowered to call before them the bishop, the clergy, and five, six, or eight of the principal inhabitants of each parish, and put into their hands a body of Royal injunctions, seven-and-thirty in number. These injunctions regarded religious doctrines and practice, and the visitors required an answer upon oath to every question which they chose to put concerning them. The injunctions were similar to those which had been framed and used by Cromwell, but the present practice of joining the laity with the clergy was an innovation of a more sweeping character.
The visitors also carried with them and introduced into every parish a book of homilies, which every clergyman was required to read in his church on Sundays and holidays, and also to provide for himself, and each parish for the congregation, a copy of the paraphrase of Erasmus on the New Testament. This was an immense change in the public worship of the nation, and that it might be effectually obeyed, no person was allowed to preach, not even the bishop of the diocese, who had not a licence from the metropolitan. To prevent any lack of preaching, through the refusal of any of the clergy to obey the injunctions, the most popular preachers of the reformed faith were sent down into the country, and these gradually superseded those who refused to comply with the new ordinances. Coverdale was so delighted with these regulations, that he declared the young king to be "the high and chief admiral of the great navy of the Lord of Hosts; principal captain and governor of us all under him; the most noble ruler of his ships, even our most comfortable Noah, whom the eternal God hath chosen to be the bringer of us unto rest and quietness."
The visitors set out to their respective districts about the same time that the Protector departed for his campaign in Scotland, and he had the satisfaction, on his return, to find that they had completed their work with great success. One of the injunctions was that all objects of idolatry should be removed out of all the walls and windows of the churches; and under this particular order there was as much mischief done to art as there was good to religion; and Bishop Burnet tells us that "those who expounded the secret providences of God with an eye to their own opinions, took great notice of this, that on the same day in which the visitors removed and destroyed most of the images in London, their armies were so successful in Scotland in Pinkie Field."
Of all the prelates who resisted the new injunctions, none were so prominent as Bonner and Gardiner. Bonner made at first a great show of opposition, then attempted to escape by saying that he would obey the injunctions as far as they were not contrary to the law of God and the ordinances of the Church, and finally acquiesced in them, at least outwardly. Gardiner took a more honest and honourable stand, and had he been as willing to concede liberty of conscience to others as he was to claim it for himself, would have proved himself a more genuine Christian than he appeared in the next reign. Gardiner, who had both great ability and learning, did not wait for the arrival of the visitors in his diocese of Winchester to ascertain the nature of the injunctions and the paraphrase. He procured copies of them, and then wrote to the Protector and the Primate, warning them of the danger, and, as he conceived, sin of forcing these on the public. He contended that the two books contradicted each other, and to the Protector he said that the king was too young to understand those matters, and Somerset himself too much occupied to examine them properly; that it was imprudent to unsettle the general mind with the theological crotchets of Cranmer, and that, as they were in direct violation of Acts of Parliament, any clergyman who taught from the homilies and paraphrase, would incur the penalties attached to the statute of the Six Articles; that the Royal covenant did not shield Wolsey from the penalty of a premunire, nor could it hereafter defend the present clergy from the reactions of the law.
"It is a dangerous thing," he said, "to use too much freedom in researches of this kind. If you cut the old canal, the water is apt to run farther than you have a mind to." And as regarded himself, he added, with a dignity worthy of respect, "My sole concern is to manage the third and last act of my life with decency, and to make a handsome exit off the stage. Provided this point is secured, I am not solicitous about the rest. I am already by nature condemned to death. No man can give me a pardon from this sentence; nor so much as procure me a reprieve. To speak my mind, and to act as my conscience dictates, are two branches of liberty which I can never part with. Sincerity in speech and ​integrity in action are entertaining qualities; they will stick by a man when everything else takes its leave; and I must not resign them upon any consideration. The best on it is, if I do not throw them away myself, no man can force them from me; but if I give them up, then I am ruined by myself, and deserve to lose all my preferments."
There wanted nothing to a man with such sentiments to make him great, but the heart to cede this liberty to others, but in this he woefully failed when his turn came. Now his sturdy independence condemned him to the Fleet, where Bonner had gone before him, for the council did not wait for the visitors summoning him in his own diocese, but called him before them, and committed him.
Parliament assembled on the 4th of November. In anticipation of it the Protector had procured a patent under the great seal empowering him to sit in Parliament on the right hand of the throne, and to enjoy all the honours and privileges that any king's uncle, whether by the father's or the mother's side, ever enjoyed. This was noted as the beginning of that vainglorious arrogance which in the end proved so ruinous to him. The Parliament in its proceedings first took care of the interests of the king and his ministers; but that done, it passed some very useful and constitutional acts. The subsidy of tonnage and poundage had become so much a regular aid of the crown, that Henry VIII. had received it for many years before any Act of Parliament whatever had granted it to him. It was now voted to Edward for life, but Parliament treated it not as a matter of right, but of option—a freedom which would have brought down stern reproof in the last reign. The next act was more exclusively for the benefit of the king's ministers. It went to make over to the crown all the lands of the charities, colleges, and free chapels which had been granted to Henry, but had not yet been appropriated. It was proposed to add these to the funds for the support of obits, anniversaries, and church-lights, and all guild lands possessed by fraternities for the same purpose, so that the king might employ them in providing for the poor, augmenting the income of vicarages, paying the salaries of preachers, and endowing free schools for the advancement of learning.
Cranmer, however, aware of what was the real object of the measure, opposed it in the House of Lords, and was warmly supported by the bishops; but there were too many interested in the passing of the Act for their opposition to avail. The late king's executors had already divided these amongst them, as we have seen, by anticipation, and "they saw," says Burnet, "that they could not pay his debts nor satisfy themselves in their own pretensions, formerly mentioned, out of the king's revenue, and so intended to have these divided amongst them." All who hoped to share in the booty eagerly supported them, and the bill passed by an overwhelming majority, Cranmer and six bishops constituting the whole minority. In the Commons the members of the boroughs resisted it stoutly, on account of the guild lands which it gave to the king, and they would not suffer it to pass till they were assured that these should be excepted. All such lands as had been granted by the late or present king were to be confirmed to their possessors.
These interested grants being made, Parliament proceeded to mitigate some of the severities of the last reign. It repealed those monstrous acts of Henry VIII. which gave to Royal proclamations all the force of Acts of Parliament; likewise all the penal statutes against the Lollards, and all the new felonies created in the last reign, including the statute of the Six Articles. It admitted the laity as well as the clergy to receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper in both kinds. It determined that the old fiction of electing bishops by "conge d'elire" should cease, and that all such appointments should proceed directly by nomination of the crown; that all processes in the episcopal courts should be carried on in the king's name, and all documents issuing thence should be sealed, not with the bishop's seal, but with that of the crown. The claim of spiritual supremacy was placed on the same level as the other rights of the crown, and it was made a capital offence to deny that the king was supreme head of the Church; but with this distinction, that what was printed of that nature was direct high treason—what was merely spoken only became so by repetition. A bill for legalising the marriages of the clergy was brought into the Commons, and carried by a large majority; but, from some cause, was not carried to the Lords during the present session.
The attention of the Legislature was drawn forcibly to a great and growing evil, that of mendicancy. Those who had received daily relief at the doors of the monasteries and convents, were now thrown on the country in crowds, without homes and resources. They speedily grew in this life into the worst type of vagabondism; swarmed on the highways, and in the villages and solitary country dwellings became a terror and a nuisance. The boldest and worst soon associated in the shape of footpads and robbers, and travelling became highly dangerous. An act was, therefore, passed for the punishment of these vagabonds, and for the relief of the poor. The relief was of a very inefficient and fallacious kind. It was ordered that the impotent, the maimed, and the aged, who were not vagabonds, should be relieved "by the willing and charitable dispositions of the parishioners" where they were born or had lived for the last three years. Relief by the charitable disposition of parishioners where no specific fund for the purpose was erected, was not likely to be very great; but the punishments awarded to the vagabond class were of the most savage and brutal character, and said very little for the better understanding of the Gospel in those reformers of religion. Well might the young king in his journal term it "an extreme law." Any person brought before two justices of the peace on the charge of "living idly and loitering for the space of three days," was to be branded with a hot iron on the breast with the letter V, as a vagabond, and adjudged to serve the informer for two years as his slave. The master thus acquiring his services, was to give him bread, water, or small drink, but to refuse meat, and might compel him to work by beating, chaining, or otherwise, at any kind of labour, however vile. He might put an iron ring round his neck, arm, or leg, and if he absented himself for a fort-night, might brand the letter S into his cheek or forehead, as a sign that he was become a slave for life. If he ran away a second time, he was to suffer death as a felon. Clerks, that is clergymen, convicted of felony, if they were entitled to purgation in the bishop's court, ​were to be slaves for two years; if not so entitled, for five years. The masters of this new class of slaves could sell them, let them out for hire, or give them without hire, in any manner or for any term that they thought proper, as they had a right to do with any other of their movable goods and chattels. If no one presented them to the magistrates, they might hunt them up themselves, brand them as slaves, and dispose of them as they thought best, by selling them, letting them out to work in chains on the roads or other public works. Thus, ample powers were given for establishing an extensive slave-trade and slavery in England and in Englishmen in the sixteenth century. Still worse, any one might seize the children of beggars, and use or dispose of them as slaves: the boys till they were twenty-four years of age, and the girls till they were twenty. If they ran away they were empowered to put them in chains, and otherwise to punish them. And though these unfortunates would nominally acquire their freedom at the prescribed age, yet that was perfectly nominal, for being found begging or loitering as they must do, they were liable to be immediately seized again.
This act was so atrocious, and liable to such hideous abuses, that it was repealed after two years' trial, and the statute of 28 Henry VIII., c. 12, was revived, allowing persons to beg with license of the magistrates, and punishing beggars without license with whipping, or the stocks for three days and three nights.
Parliament terminated its sitting on the 24th of December, and the council, carrying forward its measures for the advancement of the Reformation, issued an order prohibiting the bearing of candles on Candlemas-Day, of ashes on Ash Wednesday, and of palms on Palm Sunday. The order against images was repeated, the clothes covering which were directed to be given to the poor. The people, however, who delighted in religious ceremonies, processions, and spectacles, and thought the sermons very dull, were by no means pleased with these innovations. There was to be no elevation of the host, and the whole service was to be in English.
Cranmer employed himself in composing a catechism, which was published "for the singular profit and instruction of children and young people;" and a committee of bishops and divines sat to compile a new liturgy for the use of the English Church. They took the Latin missals and breviaries for the groundwork, omitting whatever they deemed superfluous or superstitious, and adding fresh matter. Before Christmas they had compiled a book of common prayer, differing in various particulars from the one now in use, and all ministers were ordered to make use of that book, under penalty, on refusal, of forfeiture of a year's income, and six months' imprisonment for the first offence; for the second, loss of all his preferments, with twelve months' imprisonment; and for a third, imprisonment for life. Any one taking upon him to preach, except in his own house, without license from the king's visitors, the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the bishop of the diocese, was liable to imprisonment. Latimer, who had resigned his bishopric in 1539, was now called forward again, and appointed to preach at St. Paul's Cross, and also in the king's privy garden, where Edward, attended by his court, used to listen to his bold and quaint eloquence for an hour together.
Gardiner, on the contrary, continued to give his decided opposition to the progress of reform. The act of general pardon at the close of the session gave him his liberty; on the 5th of January, 1548, he was called into the presence of the council, admonished, and discharged. He returned to his diocese, but there he continued to exert himself with such effect in resistance to the new doctrines and institutions, that he was again summoned before the council in June, and ordered to preach at St. Paul's Cross, on the feast of St. Peter, in presence of the king. He conducted his sermon with such adroitness, that it was only in the third part of it, where he had treated of the mass and the eucharist, which had been prohibited to him by the Protector in writing, that they could find occasion against him. The next day, June 30th, he was committed to the Tower, and detained in confinement during the remainder of the reign.
Towards the close of the year 1547, a bill passed the Commons authorising the marriage of the clergy, and on the 9th of February, 1548, a different bill for the same object was carried in the House of Lords, and accepted by the Commons.
Whilst these events had been taking place in England, the war had been steadily prosecuted against Scotland, and led to the result which might naturally be expected, but which was least expected by the Protector—that of the passing of the young queen of Scotland into the hands of the French. To woo a woman by making war on her, ravaging her estates, and murdering her friends and servants, would be thought monstrous in private life. But kings and Royal councillors have often peculiar ideas, and this had been the absurd plan of England's wooing of the Queen of Scots. Very soon after the battle of Pinkie, a council was summoned at Stirling, where the queen-dowager proposed that, to put an end to those barbarous inroads of the English on pretence of seeking the hand of the queen, they should apply to France for its assistance; and as a means of engaging it in effectual aid, they should offer the young queen in marriage to the dauphin, and that for her better security she should be educated in the French court. The news of this proposition struck Somerset with the greatest alarm. He issued a proclamation on the 5th of February, 1548, to the Scottish people, charging the evils of the war on Arran and his advisers, who, he said, had the last year suppressed the favourable offers of the English Government. He asked them what they hoped for in marrying their queen to a foreign prince, which would at once reduce Scotland to a province of France, and render perpetual the quarrel with England? For 800 years, he said, no such opportunity had offered for uniting the people of the two countries, each under their own laws, but in all the blessings of peace, union, and strength, under the common name of Britons.
To add force to his arguments, Somerset adopted both those of Henry VIII. He had used his argument of war, and now he added his argument of money. He freely bribed the Scotch nobles, and they as freely promised him their aid, but their promises were more readily given than the aid; and when Lord Wharton and the Earl of Lennox invaded the western marches, they even turned against the invaders, and drove them back across the borders with considerable slaughter. On the eastern coast, Lord Gray de Wilton marched with a powerful army to the very gates of ​Edinburgh. He took the town of Haddington, and placed in it a garrison of 2,000 men. He battered down several castles, burnt Musselburgh and Dalkeith, and had scarcely began his retreat when the aid promised by the French king arrived in the Forth. It consisted of 3,000 Germans and 2,000 French under D'Esse D'Espanviliers, a general of great talent and experience. Arran added to this welcome reinforcement 8,000 Scottish troops under his own command, and the united army sat down before Haddington. It was at first resolved to take it by storm; batteries were raised, and a breach made, but the governor, Sir John Wilford, defended the place with so much skill and obstinacy, and inflicted such slaughter on the assailants, that the besiegers were obliged to convert their siege into a blockade.
Whilst this was proceeding, Arran, who is supposed to have been won over to the French interest by a promise of the dukedom of Chatelherault and a pension from France, summoned the three estates of the kingdom to meet in the abbey of Haddington, where it was proposed to ratify the treaty agreed by the lords at Stirling for the marriage of the queen to the dauphin. It met with a strong opposition, though warmly advocated by the court and the clergy, and was finally confirmed by Arran and the French ambassador, D'Oyselles. De Breze and Villegaignon then set sail with four galleys as if to the French coast; but once out at sea, they put about, and passing round the north of Scotland, descended the western coast, and anchoring off Dumbarton, there received on board the young queen and her attendants, consisting of Lord and Lady Erskine, to whom she was especially entrusted, Lady Fleming, and 200 gentlemen and servants. The fleet reached Brest in safety on the 13th of August, when she was conducted to St. Germain-en-Laye, where she was met by the French court and immediately contracted to the dauphin, who was then about five years old, she being only a few months older. There was the end of all the violence, the sanguinary slaughters, the intrigues and bribery of Henry VIII. and of Somerset, to obtain the hand of the queen for the young King of England, which might have been secured by fair and honourable means. France had now contrived to snatch her away from them, and the ostensible object of the war was at an end. Henry II. of France forthwith demanded that the English should desist from all hostility against the Scots during the minority of the two princes.
Somerset refused to comply with this demand, and the war continued; he entered into secret negotiations with the Earl of Argyll, and Lord Gray had orders to do all in his power to drive the French auxiliaries from the country. Haddington was strictly besieged by the French and Scotch, and the garrison was reduced to such extremity that their powder began to fail, and they were obliged to tear up their shirts to use instead of matches. At length, a body of 200 English found means, probably by the use of their great instrument, money, to pass the watches on the side where the Scotch lay, and throw into the town considerable supplies of ammunition and provisions. A similar attempt by Sir Thomas Palmer and Sir Robert Bowes, at the head of 2,000 horse, was intercepted by the horse of both nations under D'Esse and Lord Hume, and put to the rout with such slaughter that few escaped.
When the news of this disaster and of the condition of the garrison in Haddington reached London, Somerset, who had now obtained letters patent from the king authorising him to call the king's subjects to arms whenever he deemed necessary, and to appoint lieutenants in his own name to command in his stead, both by sea and land, at once dispatched the Earl of Shrewsbury with 22,000 men to raise the siege and expel the French. On the approach of Shrewsbury, the enemy retired from the walls of Haddington; and the earl, who found the garrison in such distress that, according to Holinshed, he shed tears, supplied them with all things needful, and with fresh and untired men to maintain the siege. He then advanced in quest of the Scotch and French army, and found them posted at Musselburgh. Neither party, however, showed any great desire to come to blows. The united army lay still in its intrenchments, and Shrewsbury, after drawing out his forces, and watching the motionless army for the space of an hour, wheeled round and marched homewards. It is difficult to understand the proceedings of the English at this period. They seemed to have no hope nor courage for the attempt at any permanent advantage. Their sole object appeared to be to inflict an injury and retire pleased with revenge, but unambitious of any great result. What makes the conduct of the English commander the more strange is, that Lord Clinton, or Lord Seymour of Sudley, the Protector's brother, according to Burnet, at the same time had proceeded by sea with a formidable fleet to the same point, thus prepared to support any action of Shrewsbury's; yet the English admiral, whichever it was, made a still worse figure than the general. Balfour asserts that Clinton landed 5,000 men on the coast of Fife, to lay waste the country, but they were met by the laird of Wemyss and the barons of Fife, who routed them, killed 700 of them, and drove them into the sea; but Burnet has it that Seymour, the admiral, landed 1,500 men at St. Minius, or St. Monance, where, just as they had landed their cannon, they were attacked by the queen's natural brother, James Stuart, prior of St. Andrews, and afterwards the celebrated regent Murray, who killed 600, and took 100 prisoners; that they afterwards made a descent on Montrose in the night, but were attacked by the country people, under Erskine of Dun, who, of 800 who had landed, scarcely left any alive to regain their ships. Whichever of these accounts is correct, if either, the English admiral does not seem to have reaped anything but disgrace.
When Lord Shrewsbury returned, Lord Gray, who was left as lieutenant of the north, entered Scotland, and committed great havoc in Teviotdale and Liddesdale for the space of twenty miles. There were also fresh attempts of the French on Haddington, but nothing was effected during the year.
But during the session of Parliament commencing on the 24th of November, a question of most serious import was brought forward concerning the Protector's brother. The lord high admiral, Thomas Seymour, had all the ambition of his elder brother, the Protector, but from some cause he had failed to acquire the same position at court. Henry VIII. had not only employed Somerset in great commissions, but had given him such marks of his confidence that, on his death, he easily engrossed all the power of the state under his son. The admiral did not ​witness this with indifference. The Protector, to satisfy him, got him created Baron Seymour of Sudley, and with this title he received in August, 1548, the lordship of Sudley in Gloucestershire, together with other lands and tenements in no less than eighteen counties. He made him, moreover, high admiral, a post which had been held by the Earl of Warwick, who received instead of it that of lord great chamberlain. These honours and estates might have well contented a man of even great ambition, but the aspiring of the Seymours brooked no limits. The new Lord Seymour was still restless, and could not feel content till he stood on a level with his fortunate brother. The Protector was a man who, though he had been entrusted with great commissions, and had executed his military ones with a lion-like fury, was yet of a timorous nature. He grasped at the highest honours, yet he trembled to lose them, and, therefore, coveted popularity, and was careful to maintain an outwardly irreproachable moral character. He moreover was a zealous reformer of religion, and probably was sincerely so. We have no cause to deem that he feigned this attachment to Protestant principles, though he neither understood the humility nor the humanity required by the Gospel which he contributed largely to make known. We have seen the un-Christian cruelty of his campaigns; and, in his whole bearing, after his achievement of the supreme power, he displayed the most inflated arrogance, and even violence and insolence of temper. Shrinking at the faintest murmurs of the people, stooping to the domestic yoke of a coarse, proud, and imperious wife, he treated not only his inferiors, but even his equals at the Council board, with all the offensive airs of an upstart.
Latimer Preaching before Edward VI. From an old Print in the British Museum. (See page 310.)
That these traits have not been bestowed upon him by his enemies, we have the clearest proofs in the honest expostulations of his intimate friend Paget, who wrote thus to him:—"If I loved not your grace so deeply in my heart that it cannot be taken out, I could hold my peace as some others do, and say little or nothing. But my love to your grace, and good hope that you take my meaning well, hath enforced me to signify unto your grace, that unless your grace do more quietly show your pleasure in things wherein you will debate with other men, and hear them again graciously say their opinions, when you do require it, that will ensue whereof I would be right sorry, and your grace shall have just cause to repent, that is, that no man shall dare speak to you what he thinks, though it were never so necessary." And he adds, "However it cometh to pass I cannot tell, but of late your grace is grown great in choleric fashions whensoever you are contraried in that which you have conceived in your head;" and he entreats him to avoid this, or mischief might grow out of it.
The admiral, on the contrary, cared little for popular opinion. He was a handsome, gay man, free in his principles, by no means nice in his life or his morals. ​extremely fascinating to ladies, and as ambitious as any man that ever lived. As he did not seem to succeed in his desire of rising to a station as lofty as that of his brother, the Protector, through the Council and political alliance, he sought to achieve this by means of marriage. There were several ladies on whom he cast his eyes for this purpose. The Princesses Mary and Elizabeth were the next in succession, and he did not hesitate to aim at securing the hand of one of them, which would have realised his soaring wishes or plunged him down at once to destruction. He seems then to have weighed the chances which a union with Lady Jane Grey might give him; but, as if not satisfied with the prospect, he suddenly determined on the queen-dowager. He had, indeed, paid his addresses to Catherine Parr before her marriage with Henry VIII., and Catherine was so much attached to him that she at first listened with obvious reluctance to Henry's proposal. No sooner was Henry dead than Seymour seems to have renewed his addresses to Catherine, and, with all her piety and prudence, the queen-dowager seems to have listened to him as promptly and readily. Though Henry only died at the end of January, 1547, in a single month, according to Leti, she had consented to a private contract of marriage, and she and Seymour had exchanged rings of betrothal. According to King Edward's journal, their marriage took place in May, but the courtship had been going on long before, and was only revealed to him when it was become dangerous to conceal it any longer, and they were privately married long before that. The marriage was publicly announced in June—a rapidity for such a transaction as strange as it was indecorous.
Pillory at the Gateway of Old London Bridge
Traitors' Heads over the Gateway of London Bridge.
On the king's death Catherine went to live at her fine jointure house at Chelsea, on the banks of the Thames, which; with its gardens and extensive grounds, occupied Cheyne Pier. There Seymour used to visit her in the night, and so cautiously that Catherine, in one of her letters, discloses the fact that she herself waited at the park-gate, when all others had retired to rest, to let him in. "When it shall be your pleasure to repair hither, you must take some pain to come early in the morning, that you may be gone again by seven o'clock, and so I suppose you may come without suspect. I pray you let me have knowledge over-night at what hour you will come, that your portress may wait at the gate to the fields for you."
But such an affair could not long escape attention, and though they were married, Seymour began to take steps for soliciting the king's consent to the alliance. First he wrote to the Princess Mary, entreating her to break it to her brother Edward, and to plead for it; but Mary declined so delicate a commission, saying, "Wherefore I shall most earnestly require you, the premises considered, to think none unkindness in me, though I refuse to be a meddler anyways in this matter; assuring you that, wooing matters set apart, wherein, being a maid, I am nothing cunning, I shall most willingly aid you, if otherwise it shall lie in my power."
Failing here, a plan was laid for inducing Edward, not merely to consent to the marriage of his step-mother with his uncle Seymour, but for his own asking her to accept Seymour, which he did; and was made to believe that the match actually proceeded from his own suggestion. Catherine Parr played a part in this scheme—as appears by King Edward's own letters and journal—which shows that with all her piety and reputation for discreetness, and even wisdom, she was not averse on occasion to practise all the art of the diplomatist. She went on professing her deep love and devotion to the memory of his father long after she was secretly the wife of Seymour, till the young unsuspecting king was completely wrought over to her wishes. Yet that he did not interfere in this affair without a good deal of repugnance, or without good advice against it, ​appears from his own statement:—"Lord Seymour came to me in the last Parliament at Westminster, and desired me to write a thing for him. I asked him what. He said, 'It is no ill thing; it is for the queen's majesty.' I said, 'If it were good, the lords would allow it; if it were ill, I would not write it.' Then he said, 'They would take it in better part if I would write.' I desired him to let me alone in that matter. Cheke (his tutor) said to me afterwards, 'Ye were best not to write.'"
When the marriage became known Somerset was highly incensed at Seymour's audacity in contracting a marriage of this lofty and important kind without consulting the Council, or without the authority of the Crown. He was stimulated to strong expression of his indignation by his haughty duchess, who had been accustomed to regard her husband and herself as the chief people in the realm, next to the king and his sisters. The proud duchess had long borne an ill-concealed dislike to Catherine, thinking it scorn that the wife of the great Somerset should bear the train, as was her office, of a queen who had formerly been a subject like herself. Now she openly rebelled against the fulfilment of this office, alleging that "it was unsuitable for her to submit to perform that service for the wife of her husband's youngest brother." It was, in fact, more tolerable to bear the train of Catherine as queen than to have her as her superior in the family. The feuds on this subject became warm. Catherine, with all her prudence, was roused by the Protector's language regarding the marriage, and declared that she would call him to account for it before the king; but not the less did Somerset's proud duchess struggle audaciously with the queen-dowager for precedence, "so that," says Lloyd, "what between the train of the queen and the long gown of the duchess, they raised so much dust at Court as at last pat out the eyes of both their husbands, and caused their executions."
The duchess declared that, as wife of the Lord Protector, she had the right to take precedence of everybody in England, in her proud mind not even excepting the princesses; but as she was soon compelled to submit she cherished a hatred both against Catherine and Lord Seymour, which, no doubt, had its full effect in urging her husband to imbrue his hands in his brother's blood. According to Hayward, in his life of Edward VI., Anne Stanhope, Duchess of Somerset, was "a woman for many imperfections intolerable, but for pride monstrous. She was both exceedingly violent and subtle in accomplishing her ends, for which she spurned all respects of conscience or shame. This woman did tear such invincible hate to the queen-dowager, first for light causes and women's quarrels, and especially because she (the queen-dowager) had precedency over her, being the wife of the greatest peer in the land." He also says that she was accustomed to abuse Queen Catherine in the grossest terms, and in this strain:—"Did not Henry VIII. marry Catherine Parr in his doting days, when he had brought himself so low by his lust and cruelty that no lady that stood on her honour would venture on him? And shall I now give place to her who in her former estate was but Latimer's widow, and is now fain to cast herself for support on a younger brother? If master admiral teach his wife no better manner, I am she that will."
The immediate consequence of this ill-will in Somerset and his termagant wife towards Catherine was, that she was refused all the jewels which had been presented to her by the late king, her husband, on the plea that they were Crown property. The Protector next called upon her to give up the use of her favourite manor of Fausterne for a creature of his of the name of Long, and though Catherine indignantly refused to do it, by his power he compelled her to give way, and receive Long as tenant.
On the other hand, Seymour used every means to ingratiate himself with the young king, both through the means of his wife, for whom Edward had a great regard, and through the Princess Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey, who had been pupils of Catherine Parr's. Edward appears to have really liked Seymour much better than he did Somerset. The former furnished him with money, of which Somerset seems to have kept him very scant; and though the Duchess of Somerset was pleased to say that Catherine Parr "was fain to cast herself for support on a younger brother," this could not mean pecuniary support, for the match with Catherine was a very desirable one, independent of her elevated position. She was amply dowered by Parliament and the king's patents; she had two dowers besides, as widow of the Lords Borough and Latimer, and was supposed to have saved a very large sum whilst she was queen-consort. Seymour, therefore, with her property and his own grants, was extremely rich.
Both the brothers intrigued actively to get their Royal nephew married, so as to serve their own ambition. The plan of Somerset was to marry the king to his own daughter, Jane Seymour, a lady of much learning, but the admiral plotted against that by endeavouring to place the still more learned Lady Jane Grey continually in his way, who was strongly recommended to Edward by Catherine Parr, who had a real affection for both of them. The Marquis of Dorset, the father of Lady Jane Grey, was induced to allow his daughter to reside in the admiral's family on a distinct proposition of this kind. King Edward was very fond of stealing away from his courtiers into the apartments of Catherine Parr, who had always been the only person like a mother that he had ever known, and, going there by a private entrance without any attendants, he could converse freely with her, her ladies, and the admiral. This excited the deepest jealousy on the part of the Protector, who exerted every means to prevent this intercourse, and so to surround him with his spies that he could rarely find himself alone.
The Royal boy, however, had too much of his father's self-will, however weak he might seem, to be led into either of these alliances. He expressed much indignation at the Protector's attempt, and wrote in his journal that he would choose for himself; and not a subject, but "a foreign princess, well stuffed and jewelled." That is, having not only a princely dower, but also a princely wardrobe and royal ornaments.
Whilst these intrigues were going on around her, Catherine Parr gave birth to a daughter, on the 30th of August, 1548, and on the 7th of September, only eight days after, she died of puerperal fever. Rumours of her husband having poisoned her, to enable him to aspire to the hand of the Princess Elizabeth, were spread by his enemies, for which there does not appear the slightest foundation.
​The lord admiral, who had found it difficult to keep out of danger during the life of his wife, partly through his own rash ambition, and partly through the malice of his near relatives, soon fell into it after her death. In July of 1548, he had been called before the Council on the charge of having endeavoured to prevail on the king to write a letter, complaining of the arbitrary conduct of the Protector, and of the restraint in which he was kept by him. He was seeking, in fact, to supersede the Protector, and was threatened with imprisonment in the Tower; but the matter for that time was made up, and the Protector added £800 per annum to his income, by way of conciliating him.
But with Catherine departed his good genius. He gave a free play to his ambitious desires, and renewed his endeavours to compass a clandestine marriage with the Princess Elizabeth, as he had done with Catherine. Finding, however, that such a marriage would annul the claims of Elizabeth to the throne, he next devised means to extort from the Council a consent, which he was well aware it would never yield voluntarily. For this purpose he is said to have courted the friendship of the discontented portion of the nobility, and made such a display of his wealth and retainers as was calculated to alarm the Protector and his party. The Protector was now resolved to get rid of so dangerous an enemy, though his own brother. Sharington, master of the mint at Bristol, being accused of gross peculation by clipping the coin, issuing testoons, or shilling pieces, of a false value, and making fraudulent entries in his books, was boldly defended by the admiral, who owed him £3,000. But Sharington ungratefully, to save his life, betrayed that of his advocate. He confessed that he had promised to coin money for the admiral, who could reckon on the services of 10,000 men, with whose aid he meant to carry off the king and change the government. This charge, made, no doubt, solely to save his own life, was enough for Somerset: Seymour was arrested on the 16th of January, 1549, on a charge of high treason, and committed to the Tower.
There was no lack of charges against him, true or false. It was stated that he had resolved to seize the king's person, and carry him to his castle of Holt, in Denbighshire, which had come to him in one of the Royal grants; that he had confederated for this purpose with various noblemen and others, and had laid in great store of provisions and a great mass of money at that castle. He was also charged with having abused his authority as lord admiral, and encouraged piracy and smuggling, and with having circulated reports against the Lord Protector and Council too vile to be repeated. But the most remarkable were the charges against him for endeavouring, both before and after his marriage with the queen-dowager, to compass a marriage with the king's sister, the Lady Elizabeth, second inheritor to the Crown, to the peril of the king's person and danger to the throne.
Mrs. Catherine Ashly, the governess of Elizabeth, who was brought before the Council, and made what are called her confessions, certainly opened up a curious course of conduct which had been going on in the household and lifetime of the prudent Catherine Parr, in which she figured remarkably herself. She stated that at Chelsea, where the princess was living under the care of the queen-dowager, being then about sixteen years of age, the admiral used to go into Elizabeth's chamber before she was dressed, and sometimes before she was out of bed. "At Seymour Place, when the queen slept there, he did use awhile to come up every morning in his nightgown and slippers. When he found my Lady Elizabeth up, and at her book, then he would look in at the gallery door, and bid her good morrow, and go on his way; and the deponent told my lord it was an unseemly sight to see a man so little dressed in a maiden's chamber, with which he was angry, but left it."
This highly imprudent and discreditable conduct at length proceeded to such an extreme, that Catherine Parr had cause to repent having suffered it. Elizabeth herself told Thomas Parry, the cofferer of her household, that she feared the admiral loved her too well, and had done so a long while; that the queen was jealous of them both, insomuch that, coming suddenly upon them when they were all alone, he having her in his arms, the queen severely reprimanded both the admiral and the princess. She also scolded Mrs. Ashly for her neglect of her charge, and took instant measures for having Elizabeth removed to her own household establishment.
Elizabeth herself was subjected to inquiry, and as to whether Mrs. Ashly had encouraged her to marry the admiral, which she declared she had never done, except by the consent of the Protector and the Council. Elizabeth wrote to the Lord Protector from Hatfield, stating that the vilest rumours regarding her were in circulation, namely, that she was confined in the Tower, being "enceinte" by the lord admiral; which she protested were shameful slanders, and demanded that, to put them down, she should be allowed to proceed alone to Court, that she might show herself as she was.
It may be supposed what consternation and mortification these scandals and examinations gave to a girl of sixteen; but Elizabeth displayed no small portion of that leonine and sagacious spirit on the occasion which so greatly characterised her afterwards. Sir Robert Tyrwhitt, the husband of Lady Tyrwhitt, already mentioned, was sent by the Protector to Hatfield to interrogate her. He informed Somerset that when Lady Browne communicated to her that Mrs. Ashly and Parry were sent to the Tower, she was greatly confounded and abashed, and wept bitterly for a long time, and demanded whether they had confessed anything or not; that on his arrival, he assured her what sort of characters Ashly and the others were, and said that if she would open all things herself, she should wholly be excused on account of her youth, and all the blame should be laid on them. But Elizabeth replied that she had nothing to confess; "and yet," asserts Tyrwhitt, "I see it in her face that she is guilty."
Presuming on this consciousness of guilt, Tyrwhitt the next day asked her if she would have married the lord admiral if the Council had given their consent. She fired up, and astonished him by telling him that she was not going to make him her confessor; demanded what he meant by such a question to her, and who bade him ask it. Tyrwhitt was soon made aware that "she hath a very good wit, and nothing is gotten of her but by great policy." A few days after, however, the politic agent had the opportunity of trying both her wit and her fortitude, ​by putting into her hand the confessions of Parry and Ashly. The exposures of the flirtations with the admiral must have startled and shamed her to the extreme. "At the reading of Mrs. Ashly's letter," Tyrwhitt wrote to Somerset, "she was much abashed, and half breathless, or she could read it to the end, and perused all their names perfectly, and knew both Mrs. Ashly's hand and the cofferer's hand with half a sight: so that fully she thinketh they have confessed all they know."
It is a significant fact that Elizabeth, so strong in her feelings and resentments, never seems to have retained any ill-will towards Mrs. Ashly for these awkward disclosures, but, on the other hand, interested herself zealously on her behalf. There can be no doubt that her far-seeing and politic mind immediately perceived the necessity of getting that woman in her own hands, and out of those of others, as soon as possible. Accordingly, we find her in the following March writing to Somerset, entreating him to give her freedom to Mrs. Ashly, on the grounds that she had been in her service many years, and had exerted herself diligently for her "bringing up in learning and honesty;" that whatever she had done in the matter of the lord admiral was because he was one of the Council, and therefore she thought he would undertake nothing without the consent of the Council; and that she had heard her say repeatedly that she would never have her marry any one without the approbation of the Lord Protector and the Council. She finally added, that people seeing one she loved so well in such a place would think that she herself was not clear of guilt, though it might have been pardoned in her. This was an episode in Elizabeth's life which might have made her rather more lenient, in after days, in judging of the love affairs of the young people about her.
The unfortunate admiral now found all the world against him, if we may except his wife's brother, the Marquis of Northampton, his brother-in-law, Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, his cousin, Sir Nicholas Thockmorton, and Sir Thomas Throckmorton, the poet. The latter, in his homely verse, say of Seymour—
   "Thus guiltless he through malice went to pot, Not answering for himself nor knowing cause."
That those noblemen and gentlemen, the near kinsmen of Catherine Parr, should remain his firm and almost only friends, is ample proof that they, who had the best means of knowing, held him perfectly guiltless of any ill-usage, much less of poisoning his wife. For the rest, all combined to destroy him, and to curry favour with the all-powerful Protector. Even Wriothesley, the new Earl of Southampton, who had been dismissed from office, came forward and joined in the proceedings against him. He was again and again examined privately and searchingly by deputations from the Privy Council, who endeavoured to persuade him to confess, and submit himself to the grace of the Protector and Council. But Seymour stood boldly on his innocence of any treasonable design, and demanded a fair and open trial. But the fact was, that the Council had no evidence of any treasonable design, or of anything but to take the place, as a matter of political ambition, in the government which his brother now held—a perfectly legitimate object; and to have given him a fair trial would not serve the purpose of the Protector, which was to be rid of him and his rivalry together.
Finding that he would not move an iota from his just demands of a trial by his peers, the right of every Englishman, the whole Council adjourned to the Tower on the 23rd of February, and read to him a list of thirty-three articles which they had drawn out against him. They then again used strenuous endeavours to persuade him to submit; but he stood firm, and demanded an open trial, and to be brought face to face with his accusers. Finding that he could make no impression upon the Council, he at length said that if they would leave the articles with him, he would consider them; but even this they refused, and the next day they proceeded to report to the king, and to request him to leave the matter to Parliament. The poor boy had, no doubt, been worried into a consent to the sacrifice of his favourite uncle. After listening to the arguments of the different members of the Council, and to the hypocritical pretence of the Protector, that "it was a most sorrowful business to him, but, were it a son or brother, he must prefer his majesty's safety to them, for he weighed his allegiance more than his blood," he then said, "We perceive that there are great things objected and laid to my lord admiral, my uncle, and they tend to treason; and we perceive that you require but justice to be done. We think it reasonable, and we will that you proceed according to your request."
This lesson, which, without doubt, had been well drilled into him, was repeated with such gravity, that the Council professed to go into raptures over the Royal precocity of wisdom. Hearty thanks were returned to this boy-Solomon; and the next day a bill of attainder was introduced into the House of Lords. It was almost unanimously declared that the articles amounted to treason, and the bill passed without a division. In the Commons there was more spirit; it was opposed by many, who objected to proceeding by attainder instead of fair trial, as most unconstitutional and dangerous. They commented severely on the peers, who, after listening to some mere hearsay slander, should proceed on such grounds to attaint their fellows. They demanded that the accused should be brought to the bar and allowed to plead for himself. In reply to this a message came down, from the Lords, purporting that the Lords who had taken the evidence should, if the House required it, come to the bar and detail that evidence; but the House declining this, and calling for the admiral himself, on the 4th of March a message was sent from the king, that "he thought it not necessary to send for the admiral." The spirit of the Commons had reached its height: at the Royal command it sank at once, and out of 400 members, only about a dozen ventured to vote against the bill.
On the 14th the Royal assent was given to the bill; the Parliament was prorogued and on the 17th the warrant was issued for the admiral's execution. To this warrant Cranmer, contrary to the canon law, put his signature; but it was not less contrary to the higher laws of nature that Somerset should set his hand to this shedding of his brother's blood. The Bishop of Ely was commissioned to inform Seymour of this solemn fact; and the admiral requested that Latimer should be sent to him, and also that some of his servants should be allowed to attend him. He petitioned, moreover, that his infant daughter should be confided to the Duchess of Suffolk to be brought up. ​His execution took place on the 20th of March, on Tower Hill; Seymour declaring loudly that he had been condemned without law or justice. Before laying his head on the block, ho was overheard to tell an attendant of the Lieutenant of the Tower to "bid his man speed the thing he wot of." The servant was arrested immediately, and threatened till he confessed that his master had made some ink in the Tower by some means, and, plucking an aiglet from his dress, had, with its point, written a letter to each of the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, which he had placed between the leathers of a velvet shoe-sole. The shoe was opened, and the letters found, filled with the bitterest complaints against his brother and all who had conspired for his destruction. The servant, notwithstanding his confession, was executed.
In the whole of this unrighteous business, scarcely any one shows to more disadvantage than the zealous reformer, and generally honest Hugh Latimer. He preached a sermon on the death of the admiral, which is, perhaps, unrivalled as a specimen of all uncharitableness. It may be supposed that the admiral had not received the recommendations of Latimer to confess himself guilty; for he left him with an ebullition of spleen which swallowed all commiseration for his fate.
To the assumption that Seymour must have been innocent, or he would not have died so boldly, Latimer replied that that was a very "deceivable argument." "This I say," he added, "if they ask me what I think of his death, That he died very dangerously, irksomely, horribly." Latimer was lost in wonder at the ingenuity of Seymour in furnishing himself so cleverly with pen and ink. "I was a prisoner in the Tower myself," he cried, "and I could never invent to make ink so. What would he have done, if he had lived still, that invented this gear when he laid his head on the block at the end of his life?" He concluded a most vituperative harangue by declaring that Seymour "was a man farthest from the fear of God that ever I knew or heard of in England;" adding, that he had heard say that he believed not in the immortality of the soul; that when the good Queen Catherine Parr had prayers in her house both forenoon and afternoon, he would get away like a mole digging in the earth. "He shall be to me," he exclaimed, "Lot's wife as long as I live. He was a covetous man—an horrible covetous man: I would there were no mo in England. He was an ambitious man: I would there were no mo in England. He was a seditious man—a contemner of the Common Prayer: I would there were no mo in England. He is gone: I would he had left none behind him."
But he certainly had left a much more horrible and more covetous man in the Protector, whose work poor Latimer was thus doing; for Somerset not only slew his brother, but took possession of his estates. Seymour's only child, the infant daughter of Catherine Parr, not only lost her father's ample patrimony by his attainder, but by an Act of Parliament entitled "An Act for disinheriting Mary Seymour, daughter and heir of the late Lord Sudley, Admiral of England, and of the late queen," lost also her mother's noble estates. A subsequent Act restored her to her rights, but only nominally, for her uncles held her property fast in their selfish gripe. Catherine's brother, Thomas Parr, Marquis of Northampton, was as unnaturally cruel to his sister's orphan as Somerset himself. Sudley was granted to him on Seymour's attainder, and he not only held it fast, but maintained a heartless indifference to the fate of his niece, whose champion he ought to have been, having owed his fortune in the world to her mother's influence.
This unhappy child, the daughter of Seymour and Catherine, was consigned, as Seymour wished, to the care of the Countess of Suffolk, but we find her writing the most urgent letters to Cecil, the secretary of Somerset, afterwards the famous minister of Elizabeth, complaining that she can obtain no allowance for her support, nor even her linen and plate, which were rigorously detained by Somerset and his heartless and revolting wife. The poor girl is stated by Lodge, but without giving any authority, to have died in her thirteenth year; but it has been satisfactorily shown by Miss Strickland that she lived and was married to Sir Edward Bushell, and has still descendants in the family of the Lawsons, of Herefordshire and Kent, a branch of the ancient family of the Lawsons of Yorkshire and Westmoreland, who still retain several heirlooms once the property of Catherine Parr.
The Protector no sooner had put his brother out of his path into a bloody grave, than he was called upon to contend with a whole host of enemies. A variety of causes had reduced the common people to a condition of deep distress and discontent. The depreciation of the coinage by Henry VIII. had produced its certain consequence—the proportionate advance of the price of all purchasable articles. But with the rise of price in food and clothing, there had been no rise in the price of labour. The dissolution of the monasteries had thrown a vast number of people on the public without any resource. Besides the vast number of monks and nuns who, instead of affording alms, were now obliged to seek a subsistence of some kind, the hundreds of thousands who had received daily assistance at the doors of convents and monasteries were obliged to beg, work, or starve. But the new proprietors who had obtained the abbey and chantry lands, found wool so much in demand, that instead of cultivating the land, and thus at once employing the people and growing corn for them, they threw their fields out of tillage, and made great enclosures where their profitable flocks could range without even the necessity of a shepherd.
The people thus driven to starvation were still more exasperated by the change in the religion of the country, in the destruction of their images, and the desecration of the shrines of their saints. Their whole public life had been changed by the change of their religion. Their oldest and most sacred associations were broken. Their pageants, their processions, their pilgrimages were all rudely swept away as superstitious rubbish; their gay holidays had become a gloomy blank. What their fathers and their pastors had taught them as peculiarly holy and essential to their spiritual well-being, their rulers had now pronounced to be damnable doctrines and the delusions of priestcraft; and whilst smarting under this abrupt privation of their bodily and spiritual support, they beheld the new lords of the ancient church lands greedily cutting off not only the old streams of benevolence, but the means of livelihood by labour, and showing not the slightest regard for their sufferings. ​The priests, the monks, the remaining heads of the Papist party did not fail to point assiduously at all these things, and to fan the fires of the popular discontent.
The timidity of the Protector roused the ferment to its climax by the very means which he resorted to in order to mitigate it. He ordered all the new enclosures to be thrown open by a certain day. The people rejoiced at this, believing that now they had the Government on their side. But they waited in vain to see the Protector's order obeyed. The Royal proclamation fully bore out the complaints of the populace. It declared that many villages, in which from one hundred to two hundred people had lived, were entirely destroyed; that one shepherd now dwelt where numerous industrious families dwelt before; and that the realm was wasted by turning arable land into pasture, and letting houses and families fall, decay, and lie waste. Hales, the commissioner, stated that the laws which had forbade any one to keep more than 2,000 sheep, and commanded the owners of church lands to keep household on the same, being disobeyed, the numbers of the king's subjects had wonderfully diminished. But though the Government admitted all this, it took no measures to make its proclamation effective; the land-owners disregarded it, and the people, believing that they were only seconding the law, assembled in great numbers, chose their captains or leaders, broke down the enclosures, killed the deer in the parks, and began to spoil and waste, according to Holinshed, after the manner of an open rebellion. The day approached when the use of the old liturgy was to cease, and instead of the music, the spectacle, and all the imposing ceremonies of high mass, they would be called on to listen to a plain sermon. Goaded to desperation by these combined grievances, the people rose in almost every part of the country.
Old Somerset House, the Residence of the Protector during the Reign of Edward VI.
According to King Edward's journal, the rising took place first in Wiltshire, whence it spread into Sussex, Hampshire, Kent, Gloucestershire, Suffolk, Warwickshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Leicestershire, Worcestershire, and Rutlandshire. Holinshed and Strype give different accounts of the first outbreak and progress of the insurrection through the country; but all agree that it was spread over the greater part of the kingdom. In Wiltshire, Sir William Herbert raised a body of troops and dispersed the insurgents, killing some, and executing others according to martial law. The same was done in other quarters by the resident gentry. The Protector, alarmed, sent out commissioners into all parts to hear and decide all causes about enclosures, highways, and cottages. These commissioners were armed with great powers, the exercise of which produced as much dissatisfaction amongst the nobility and gentry as the enclosures had done amongst the people. The spirit of remonstrance entered into the very Council, and the Protector was checked in his proceedings: whereupon the people, not finding the redress they expected, again rose in rebellion.
In Devonshire the religious phase of the movement appeared first, and rapidly assumed a very formidable air. The new liturgy was read for the first time in the church of Samford Courtenay, on Whit Sunday, and the next day the people compelled the clergyman to perform the ancient service. Having once resisted the law, the insurgents rapidly spread. Humphrey Arundel, the governor of St. Michael's Mount, took the lead, and a few days brought ten thousand men to his standard. As the other risings had been readily dispersed, the Government were rather dilatory at first in dealing with this; but finding that it grew instead of terminated, Lord John Russell was dispatched with a small force against them, accompanied by three preachers, Gregory, Reynolds, and Coverdale, who were licensed to preach in such public places as Lord Russell should appoint. What they hoped for by sending the reformed preachers is not very clear, as it was against this preaching that the rebellion partly directed itself; and Parker, who was sent for the like purpose to Norfolk, owed the preservation of his life to the liberality of the mob.
An Assembly in Ket's Camp.(See page 321.)
​fifteen articles, which went, indeed, to restore everything of the old faith and ritual that had been taken away. The Statute of the Six Articles was to be put in force, the mass to be in Latin, the sacrament to be again hung up and worshipped, all such as refused it homage to be treated as heretics, souls should be prayed for in purgatory, images again be set up, the Bible be called in, and Cardinal Pole to be one of the king's Council. Half of the church lands were to be restored to two of the chief abbeys in each county; in a word, Popery was to be fully restored and Protestantism abolished.
In these articles the hand of the priest was more visible than that of the people; they were sent up to the Council, and Cranmer, at its command, replied to them, granting, of course, nothing. The insurgents then reduced their demands to eight, but with like success. A long reply was this time vouchsafed them in the king's name, and his father's letter to the men of Lincolnshire appears to have been the model on which it was composed. First, the little king was made to announce to them the burden of care that lay upon his juvenile shoulders on their behalf. "We are," he wrote, "your most natural sovereign lord and king, Edward VI., to rule you, to preserve you, to save you from all your outward enemies, to see our laws well ministered, every man to have his own, to suppress discontented people, to correct traitors, thieves, pirates, robbers, and such-like; yea, to keep our realms from other princes, from the malice of the Scots, of Frenchmen, of the Bishop of Rome."
Yet the king repudiated the idea as extremely ridiculous that his youth made him incapable of settling the most abstruse questions. Though as a natural man, he told them, he had youth, and by God's sufferance should have age, yet as a king he had no difference of years. Having thus reasoned with them, he then assumed the menacing tone of his father. "And now we let you know that as you see our mercy abundantly, so, if ye provoke us further, we swear by the living God ye shall feel the power of the same God in our sword, which how mighty it is no subject knoweth; how puissant it is, no private man can judge: how mortal no Englishman dare think." He concluded by threatening to come out against them in person, in all his Royal state and power, rather than not punish them. The rebels, seeing that no good came of the paper war, turned their force more actively against the city. They had no cannon to destroy the walls, so they burnt down one of the gates, and endeavoured to force an entrance there; but the citizens threw abundant fuel into the fire, and whilst it burnt, threw up fresh defences inside of the flames. Foiled in this attempt, they endeavoured to sap the walls; but the citizens discovered the mine and filled it with water. Still, however, they kept close siege on the town, and prevented the ingress of provisions, so that the inhabitants for a fortnight suffered the severest famine.
All this time Lord Russell lay at Honiton, not venturing to attack them, the Government sending him instead of troops only proclamations, by one of which a free pardon was offered to all who would submit; by another, the lands, goods, and chattels of the insurgents were given to any who chose to take them; by a third, punishment of death by martial law was ordered for all taken in arms; and by a fourth, the commissioners were commanded to break down all illegal enclosures. None of these produced the least effect. Lord Russell had sent to court Sir Peter Carew to urge the Protector and Council to expedite reinforcements; but the Protector and Rich charged Sir Peter with having been the original cause of the outbreak. The bold baronet resented this imputation so stoutly, and charged home the Protector in a style so unaccustomed in courts, with his own neglect, that men and money were promised. Nothing, however, but the proclamations just mentioned arrived, and at length the rebels dispatched a force to dislodge Russell from his position at Honiton. To prevent this, he advanced to Pennington Bridge, where he encountered the rebel detachment and defeated it. Soon after Lord Gray arrived with 300 German and Italian infantry, with which assistance he marched on Exeter, and again defeated the rebels. They rallied on Clifton Downs, and Lord Gray coming suddenly upon them and fearing they might overpower him, he ordered his men to dispatch all the prisoners they had in their hands, and a sanguinary slaughter took place. A third and last encounter at Bridgewater completed the reduction of the rising of the west.
Once broken up, no mercy was shown to the rebels; and with them perished or suffered numbers of the innocent. The whole country was given up to slaughter and pillage. A body of 1,000 Welshmen, who were brought by Sir William Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke, did immense damage. Gibbets were erected, and the ringleaders were hanged upon them in various places. Arundel, the chief captain, and some others were taken to London and there executed. The provost of the western army, Sir Anthony Kingstone, made quite an amusement of hanging rebels, and did it with much pleasantry. Having dined with the Mayor of Bodmin, he asked him if he thought the gallows were strong enough. The mayor said he thought so. "Then," said Sir Anthony, "go up and try;" and he hanged him by way of experiment. It was calculated that 4,000 men perished in that part of the country in the field or by the executioner.
In Oxfordshire the insurrection was put down by Lord Gray, who had 1,500 soldiers, including Italians, under Spinola.
But the most formidable demonstration was made by the rebels in Norfolk. It commenced at Aldborough, and appeared at first too insignificant for notice. But the rumours of what had been done in Kent, where the new enclosures had been broken down, gradually infected the people far and wide. They did not trouble themselves about the religious questions, but they expressed a particular rancour against gentlemen, for their insatiable avarice and their grasping at all land, their extortionate rents, and oppressions of the people. They declared that it was high time that not only the enclosure mania should be put a stop to, but abundance of other evils should be reformed.
On the 6th of July, at Wymondham, or Windham, a few miles from Norwich, on occasion of a public play which was annually performed there, the people, stimulated by what had been done in Kent, began to throw down the dykes, as they were called, or fences round enclosures, and, according to Strype, one John ​Flowerdew, of Hetherset, gentleman, finding himself aggrieved by the casting down of some of his dykes, went and offered the people forty pence to throw down the fences of an enclosure belonging to Robert Ket, or Knight, a tanner of Wymondham, which they did. There was probably some private feud betwixt those individuals, or Flowerdew might have had reason to believe that Ket had promoted the attack on his fences. Be that as it may, Ket was not, as it soon proved, a man to take such a proceeding patiently. Although a tanner by trade, he was a wealthy man, lord of three manors in the county, and he found no difficulty the next morning in inducing the same mob that had torn down his fences to accompany him to the grounds of Flowerdew, and repay the compliment by a further onslaught on his hedges and ditches. Flowerdew came out, and earnestly entreated them to go away and do him no mischief; but the choleric Ket incited them to proceed, and became so heated in the affair, that he declared himself the people's captain, and offered to lead them to settle these grievances not for the parish simply but for the kingdom. The news of such a leader flew far and wide, thousands flocked to his banner, and they marched into the neighbourhood of Norwich.
"There were," says Holinshed, "assembled together in Ket's camp to the number of 16,000 ungracious unthriffs, who, by the advice of their captains, fortified themselves, and made provisions of artillery, powder, and other abiliments, which they fetched out of shops, gentlemen's houses, and other places where any was to be found; and withal spoiled the country of all the cattle, riches, and coin on which they might lay hands. But because many, as in such case is ever seen, did provide for themselves, and hid that which they got, laying it up for their own store, and brought it not forth to further the common cause, Ket and the other governors, for so they would be called, thought to provide a remedy, and by common consent it was decreed that a place should be appointed where judgment might be exercised, as in a judicial hall. Whereupon they found out a great old oak, where the said Ket and the other governors or deputies might sit and place themselves, to hear and determine such quarrelling matters as came in question; afore whom sometimes would assemble a great number of the rebels, and exhibit complaints of such disorders as now and then were practised among them; and there they would take order for the redressing of such wrongs and injuries as were appointed; so that such greedy vagabonds as were ready to spoil more than seemed to stand with the pleasure of the said governors, and further than their commissions could bear, were committed to prison. This oak they named the Tree of Reformation."
Under this tree, which stood on Moushill, near Norwich, Ket erected his throne, and established courts of chancery, king's bench, and common pleas, as in Westminster Hall; and, with a liberality which shamed not only the Government of that but of most succeeding times, he allowed not only the orators of his own but of the opposite party to harangue them from this tree. Ket, it is clear, was a man far beyond his times, and one who was sincerely seeking the reform of abuses, and not destruction of the constituted Government. The tree was used as a rostrum, and all who had anything to say mounted into it, as we may suppose, with some convenient standing-place betwixt its first branches, and whence they could be seen and heard by the multitude. Into the tree mounted frequently Master Aldrich, the Mayor of Norwich, and others, who would use all possible persuasions to the insurgents to desist from their spoliations and disorderly courses. Clergymen of both persuasions preached to them from the oak, and Matthew Parker—afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, one day ascended it, and addressed them in the plainest possible terms on the folly of their attempt, and the ruin it was certain to bring upon them. He carried his plain speaking so far, that there arose loud murmurs and a clashing of arms around him, and he began to think that they meant to kill him. But not a man touched him, and the next day in St. Clement's Church, Norwich, he repeated his serious admonitions, there being many of the rebels present; but though they made signs of great dissatisfaction, no one interrupted him. He had been sent by the Government, and having discharged his commission, he got away in safety.
Perhaps the reported moderation of Ket and his coadjutors led the Government to expect that the mob would in a while disperse without further mischief, for for nearly a month they permitted this to go on. The consequence was, that the mob grew so lawless, that neither Ket nor his subordinate captains could any longer restrain the disorders of their followers. They ranged over the whole country round, plundering and destroying. They are said to have drawn off 20,000 sheep, besides a proportionate number of cattle; killed and borne away multitudes of swans, geese, hens, capons, ducks, &c.; with all kinds of garden-stuff and provisions that they could lay hands on. These they brought into their camp and consumed in the grossest riot and waste. They broke down the fences of fields and parks, slew the deer, felled the woods and groves, and had such abundance that they sold fat wethers at a groat a-piece.
At length on the 31st of July, a Royal herald appeared in the camp, "and, standing before the Tree of Reformation, apparelled in his coat-of-arms, pronounced there, before all the multitude, with loud voice, a free pardon to all that would depart to their houses, and, laying aside their armour, give over their traitorous enterprise." Some of the insurgents, who were already weary of the affair, and only wanted a good excuse for drawing off safely, took the offered pardon and disappeared; but Ket and the chief part of the people kept their ground, saying they wanted no pardon, for they had done, nothing but what was incumbent on true subjects.
Expecting that now some attack would soon be made upon them, they marched into Norwich to seize on all the artillery and ammunition they could, and carry it to their camp. The herald made another proclamation to them in the market place, repeating the offer of pardon, but; threatening death to all who did not immediately accept it. They bade him begone, for they wanted no such manner of mercy. From that day the number of Ket's followers grew again rapidly, for he seemed above the Government; and the herald returning to town, dissipated at Court any hope of the rebels dispersing of themselves. A troop of 1,500 horse, under the Marquis of Northampton, accompanied by a small force of mounted Italians, under ​Malatesta, were, therefore, sent down to Norwich, of which they took possession. But the next day Ket and his host descended from their hill, found their way into the city, engaged, defeated, and drove out the king's troops, killing Lord Sheffield and many gentlemen, and, their blood being up, set fire to the town, and plundered it as it burnt.
Northampton retreated ignominiously to town, where the Protector now saw that the affair was of a character that demanded vigorous suppression. An army of 8,000 men, 2,000 of whom were Germans, under the Earl of Warwick, about to proceed against Scotland, was directed to march to Norwich and disperse the rebels. Warwick arriving, made an entrance, after some resistance, into the city. But there he was assailed on all sides with such impetuosity, that he found it all that he could do to defend himself, being greatly deficient in ammunition. On the 26th of August, however, arrived a reinforcement of 1,400 lansquenets, with store of powder and ball, and the next day he marched out, and the enemy having imprudently left their strong position on the hill, he attacked them in the valley of Dussingdale, and at the first charge broke their ranks. They fled, their leader, Ket, galloping off before them. They were pursued for three or four miles, and the troopers cut them down all the way with such ruthless vengeance, that 3,000 of them were said to have perished. The rest, however, managed to surround themselves by a line of wagons, and, hastily forming a rampart of a trench and a bank fortified with stakes, resolved to stand their ground. Warwick, perceiving the strength of the place, and apprehensive of a great slaughter of his men, offered them a pardon; but they replied that they did not trust to the offer; they knew the fate that awaited them, and they preferred to die with arms in their hands than on the gallows. Warwick renewed his offer, and went himself to assure them of his sincerity, on which they laid down their arms, or retired with them in their hands. Ket alone was hung on the walls of Norwich Castle, his brother on the steeple of Wymondham Church, and nine of the ringleaders on the Oak of Reformation.
Thus was this dangerous and widely-spread insurrection put down. On the part of the Government there never was more forbearance shown on such occasion, and on the part of the people, nothing was more demonstrable than the fact that however deep are the grievances of the multitude, however widely spread—for this penetrated from south to north, being equally existent, and with considerable trouble quelled in Yorkshire too—and, however well supported, not one such rising in ten thousand succeeds. In this case, the greater part of the clergy, and not a few of the gentry and aristocracy went along with them on account of religion, yet the rebellion would, with the ordinary severity and appliance of force, have been quelled in a few days. A mob, however brave, must have some thoroughly and universally national cause of excitement, and some peculiarly strong country, to compete with the power of regular soldiery. The dangers of this time, however, led to the introduction of the system which now exists, by which lords lieutenants of counties are empowered to inquire of treason, misprision of treason, insurrections, and riots, with power to levy men, and lead them against the enemies of the king.
The suppression of the insurrections in England had been attended with great mischief to the English power abroad. Both the Scotch and the French had taken advantage of the English being thus preoccupied to press them closely. In Scotland, D'Esse, the French commander, had achieved several successes over the English. Towards the end of the year 1548 a number of English ships arrived in the Forth, and took and fortified the island of Inchkeith, but D'Esse attacked and drove them thence in little more than a fortnight. He then retook Jedburgh, the castles of Hume and Fernihurst, and advancing into England, loaded himself with booty, and returned with 300 prisoners. But, after all, the French had ceased to be popular in Scotland. The Scots, on reflection, half repented having put their queen into the power of France, and made Scotland, as it were, a mere province of that country. They thought that the French who were amongst them already began to display an insolent superiority in consequence, and a lively jealousy of them sprang up in the people. This proceeded so far that a fray arose with the French in Edinburgh; and the provost, his son, and a considerable number of men, women, and children were killed by the foreigners. The people, incensed at the conduct of their allies, began to murmur at the queen-dowager and the clergy, who, they said, had led them into this subjection to French dominance for their own purposes. Complaints were sent to France of the conduct of D'Esse, who was recalled, and Marshal Termes sent in his place. In this distracted state of Scotland, and the severance of feeling betwixt the French and the natives, the English might have gained decided advantages; but the insurrections detained Warwick and his army, and the French were enabled to push their successes further and take Ford Castle in the south, and Broughty in the north, where they put the garrison to the sword. The new commander also besieged Haddington so straitly, that though Lord Dacres continued to throw supplies into it, it was in a miserable condition, and the country all round it was worse; it was reduced to a perfect desert by the alternating inroads of the French, Scotch, and English armies. As the place lay thirty miles from the frontiers, all provisions were obliged to be conveyed under strong escort, and could not find ingress, except by a battle. The maintenance of the garrisons, therefore, was very chargeable, and of no real utility; and, to complete the misfortunes, the plague broke out amongst the garrison owing to their weakened state. It was therefore found necessary to dismantle Haddington, and to remove the soldiers and artillery to Berwick. This was effected on the 1st of October by the Earl of Rutland, who was appointed warden of the marches in the place of Lord Gray.
Meantime the King of France had taken advantage of the embarrassments of England with the insurgents and the Scots, to attempt the capture of Boulogne. From the moment that Mary Queen of Scots was in the French hands, Somerset had been anxious to make peace with Scotland, to surrender Boulogne to Henry II. for a sum of money, and to make a league with that monarch for the support of the Protestants in Germany against the ​power and persecutions of the emperor. But his Council opposed this policy strenuously, declaring that the surrender of Boulogne would entail infinite disgrace upon England. They rather recommended entrusting Boulogne to the keeping of the emperor, and distracting the Scots by offering the crown to Arran. They argued that Edward VI. would then have leisure to cultivate his resources and prepare for the events of the future. Accordingly, Sir William was sent to Brussels, where the emperor was holding his Court, to assist Sir Philip Hoby, the British ambassador, in this negotiation. But the French king had now made a successful approach to the walls of Boulogne; and Charles, deeming the possession of that fortress very doubtful, declined the engagement, and the treaty fell through.
Henry of France had fallen suddenly on the Bolonois, taken the castles of Sallaquo, Blackness, and Ambletouse, and endeavoured to surprise Boulonburg, but failed: the garrison of Boulonburg, however, deeming it untenable after the surrender of the other fortresses, destroyed the works and retired to Boulogne. Henry II. pushed on and laid siege to Boulogne; but the autumn proved excessively rainy: a distemper broke out amongst his soldiers, and he was compelled to withdraw to Paris. Still he left the command of the army to Gaspar de Coligny, Lord of Chatillon, afterwards renowned as Admiral Coligny, with orders to renew the siege as early as possible in the spring. Coligny did not wait altogether for spring, but made several attempts against it during the winter; and unless the English sent a commanding force to support it, it was evident that it must fall in the next season. An attempt was also made by Strozzi, the commander of the French fleet, to invade Jersey; but he found an English fleet already there, and withdrew.
Circumstances were now fast environing the Protector with danger. The feebleness of his government, his total want of success both in Scotland and France, emboldened his enemies, who had become numerous and determined from the arrogance of his manners and his endeavours to check the enclosures of the aristocracy. Henry VIII. had never drawn any signal advantages from his hostile expeditions; but the forces which he collected and the determined character of the man impressed his foreign foes with a dread of him. It was evident that the neighbouring nations had learned the weakness of, and, therefore, despised Somerset. He had driven the Queen of Scots into the hands of the French, and they had driven him out of the country. He was on the very verge of losing Boulogne, which Henry had prided himself so much in conquering. At home the whole country had been thrown into a state of anarchy and insubordination by the reforms in religion, of which he was the avowed patron, and in the meantime he had allowed another to reap the honour of restoring order.
It was intended that the Protector himself should have proceeded against the rebels; but probably he thought he who had encouraged them to pull down the enclosures would appear with a very bad grace against them to punish them for doing it. Dudley, Earl of Warwick, was therefore selected for this office—a man quite as ambitious, quite as unprincipled, and far more daring than Somerset. In the campaign in Scotland, and especially at the battle of Pinkie, Warwick had appeared the real achiever of victory, and now he was suffered to reap the easily-won distinction of suppressing the rebels. He returned from Norfolk like a victor, and his reputation rose remarkably from that moment. He was looked up to as the able and successful man, and his ambitious views were warmly seconded by the wily old ex-chancellor, Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who hated Somerset for having dismissed him from office, and for a time banished him from the Council. He now took up Warwick as a very promising instrument for his revenge. He flattered him with the idea that he was the only man to restore the credit and peace of the nation. "He showed him," says Burnet, "that he had really got all those victories for which the Protector triumphed: he had won the battle of Pinkie, near Musselburgh, and had subdued the rebels in Norfolk; and, as he had before defeated the French, so, if he were sent over thither, new triumphs would follow him. But it was below him to be second to any, so he engaged him to quarrel in everything with the Protector, all whose many motions were ascribed to fear or dulness."
Nor was it Warwick alone that Southampton stimulated to enmity against Somerset. He had arguments adapted to all; and where he found any seeming resolved to stand by the Protector, he would significantly ask what friendship they hoped from a man who had murdered his own brother. There required little rhetoric to influence the old nobility against Somerset, and his hostility to the enclosures had raised him a host of enemies amongst the new, who should be his natural friends. The people he had lost favour with, from his total want of success against the enemies of the country, and if there were any whom all these causes had not alienated, these were disgusted with his insolence and rapacity. He had bargained for large slices from the manors of bishoprics and cathedrals as the price of promotion to the clergy. He had obtained from the puppet king in his hands, grants of extensive church lands for his services in Scotland, services which now were worse than null; and in the patent which invested him with these lands, drawn up under his own eye, he had himself styled "Duke of Somerset, by the grace of God," as if he were a king. He was accused of having sold many of the chantry lands to his friends at nominal prices, because he obtained a heavy premium upon the transaction; but what more than all shocked the public sense of religious decorum was that he had erected for himself a splendid palace in the Strand, where the one called from him Somerset House now stands, and had spared no outrage upon public rights and decencies in its erection. Not only private houses, but public buildings, and those of the most sacred character, had been displaced to make room for his proud mansion. To clear the ground for its site, and to procure materials for its building, he pulled down three episcopal houses and two churches on the spot, St. Mary's and a church of St. John of Jerusalem, also a chapel, a cloister, and a charnel-house in St. Paul's Churchyard, and he carted away the remains of the dead by whole loads, and threw them into a pit in Bloomsbury. When he attempted to pull down St. Margaret's Church in Westminster, for the stones, the parishioners rose in tumult, and drove his men away. Whatever pretences ​of reformed religion be might make, such proceedings as these stamped them as pretences, hollow, and even impious, in the minds of the public.
The feeling which began out of doors had now made its way into the very heart of the Council. Somerset's friends were silenced, his enemies spoke out boldly. During the month of September there were great contentions in the Council; and, by the beginning of October, the two parties were ranged in hostile attitudes under their heads. Warwick and his followers met at Ely Place; the Protector was at Hampton Court, where he had the king. On the 5th of October, Somerset, in the king's name, sent the Secretary of the Council to know why the lords were assembling themselves in that manner, and commanding them, if they had anything to lay before him, to come before him peaceably and loyalty. When this message was dispatched, Somerset, fearful of the manner in which this summons might be complied with, ordered the armour to be brought down out of the armoury at Hampton Court, sufficient for 500 men, in order to arm his followers, and had the doors barricaded, and people fetched in for the defence.
But, instead of coming, Warwick and his party ordered the Lieutenant of the Tower, and the Lord Mayor and aldermen, to be summoned, who duly attended and proffered their obedience. They then dispatched letters to the nobility and gentry in different parts of the kingdom, informing them of their doings and the motives for it. Alarmed at this aspect of affairs, Somerset conveyed the king to Windsor, under escort of 500 men; Cranmer and Sir William Paget alone, of all the Council, accompanying them. King Edward, in his journal, says, "The lords sat in open places of London, calling for gentlemen before them, and declaring the causes of accusation of the Lord Protector, and caused the same to be proclaimed. After which time few came to Windsor, but only mine own men of the guard, whom the lords willed, fearing the rage of the people so lately quieted. The began the Protector to treat by letters, sending Sir Philip Hoby, lately come from his embassage in Flanders, to see to his family, who brought on his return a letter to the Protector, very gentle, which he delivered to him; another to me, another to my house, to declare his faults, ambition, vain-glory, entering into rash wars in my youth, negligent looking on Newhaven, enriching himself of my treasure, following of his own opinion, and doing all by his own authority."
St. James's Palace, Westminster Abbey, and ancient Conduit, in Reign of Edward VI.
Somerset at first resolved to defend himself by arms; he surrounded himself with troops, and wrote to Lord Russell to hasten up out of the west, where he yet remained, with all the power that he could. But his heart failed him, and the next day he wrote to the lords of the Council, stating that if they meant no harm to the Royal person, the king was prepared to hear anything which they desired to lay before him. This sudden evidence of timidity, after a show of preparations for resistance, at once opened the eyes of the Council to the fact that the Protector succumbed before them. They treated his letter with contempt, giving it no answer, but proceeded to the house of the Lord Mayor, whence they issued a proclamation accusing him of evil and malicious designs, of being the occasion of the late insurrection, of the losses in France, his arrogance and vain-glory, especially as shown in his sumptuous and costly buildings during the king's troubles at home and abroad, leaving his majesty's soldiers unpaid, sowing dissension betwixt the nobles and gentlemen and the Commons, with various other misdemeanours, for which they pronounced him a great traitor, and called upon the Lords and Commons to aid them in removing him from the king.
Edward VI. presenting the Warrant for the Execution of Joan Bocher to Archbishop Cranmer. (See page 329.)
The scene now rapidly darkened round the Protector. Not a single adherent had come to Windsor, and the leaders of the hostile party now amounted to two-and-twenty of the councillors and executors of the late king. Warwick, at their head, demanded that Somerset should resign his office, dismiss his forces, and be contented to be ordered according to justice and reason. Somerset pretended to the king that he was willing to leave the settlement of all disputes betwixt himself and the lords of the Council to four arbitrators, two to be chosen by each party. This offer was conveyed to them in a letter from Cranmer, Paget, and Secretary Smith; stating, moreover, that a report had reached them that there was a design upon the life of the duke, and therefore it was necessary that it should be known, before he resigned his office, on what condition the resignation was required. The king also added a letter, requiring the lords "to bring these uprores unto a quiet," and reminding them that whatever were the crimes which the Protector was charged with, it was in his power, as king, to grant him a pardon. The lords, conscious of their strength, whilst they disclaimed all vindictive motives, insisted on an unconditional surrender.
Convinced that it was useless to contend long with his adversaries, an order was issued inviting the Council to Windsor, whither the members repaired; and on the 13th of October they met, and called before them Mr. Secretary Smith and others of Somerset's servants, whom they committed. The next day the Protector was sent for, and twenty-nine articles of treason and misdemeanour were exhibited against him, upon which he was ordered to be committed to the Tower. He was conducted thither on horseback by the Earls of Essex and Huntingdon, accompanied by several other lords and gentlemen, and an escort of 300 horse, the lord mayor and aldermen keeping guard in the streets as he passed. King Edward was at the same time reconducted from Windsor to Hampton Court.
It may be supposed that the imprisonment of Somerset created a great alarm amongst the Reformers. Warwick was known to be an adherent of the old faith, and it was feared that both his ambition and his religious zeal might lead him to seek the execution of Somerset, and with that the restoration of Papacy. But Warwick was too unprincipled a man to sacrifice any interest for religion, and he was aware that not only the king, but a strong body of the nobility, were zealous for the Reformed Church. He soon learned that the young king looked with aversion to the shedding of the blood of another uncle, and he acted accordingly. He affected to be perfectly indifferent to the decisions of the Council or of Parliament, so that they were for the public good. When Parliament met on the 4th of November, he seldom attended in his place, professing to leave the members to their full freedom of opinion; and their acts soon went to reassure the hopes of the Reformers. They immediately passed a bill, making it felony for more than twelve persons to meet for the object of asserting the right to commons or highways, for lowering the rents of farms or the prices of provisions, or for breaking down houses or parks, if they did not disperse within an hour after an order to do so from a magistrate, sheriff, or bailiff. If the object of the assembly was to alter the laws, or to kill or imprison any of the king's Council, it became treason.
This was followed at Christmas by various fresh enforcements of the new order of things. A circular letter was addressed to the clergy commanding them to deliver up all the books of the ancient service, that they might be destroyed; and lest this should not be fully complied with, an Act of Parliament was passed making it punishable for any one, clergyman or layman, to retain any copy of such service in his possession, for the first and second offence by fine; for the third, by imprisonment. A new form of ordination for all ranks of the clergy was enacted, and six prelates, with six other learned persons, were appointed to have it ready by April, after which all archbishops, bishops, priests, and deacons, were to be consecrated by the new form, and by none other. There was a motion made to restore the powers of the episcopal courts, but this Warwick himself opposed, and it fell through.
Whilst these affairs had been progressing, the Council had not by any means neglected the case of Somerset. The articles prepared against him being gone through, it was at length intimated to him that they were so fully proved that there was no ground for a pardon, unless he would submit to a free and full admission of his guilt. This must have been most humiliating to his proud spirit; but he was no hero prepared to die rather than degrade himself, and he humbly on his knees confessed his guilt, his presumption, and incapacity. Having signed this, he was promised his life, but on condition that he should forfeit all his appointments, his goods and chattels, and so much of his estates as amounted to £2,000 a year. A bill to this effect passed both Houses of Parliament in January. Somerset remonstrated against the extent of this forfeiture, but the Council replied to him with so much sternness that the abject-spirited man shrunk in terror, and on the 2nd of February signed a still more ignominious submission, disclaiming all idea of justifying himself, and expressing his gratitude to the king and Council for sparing his life and being content with a fine. On the 6th of February he was discharged from the Tower, and ten days after received a formal pardon. His officers and servants, who had been imprisoned, also recovered their liberty, but were heavily fined.
The actors of this revolution received reward and promotion immediately after the close of the Parliament. Warwick was made great master and lord admiral; the Marquis of Northampton great chamberlain; Lords Russell and St. John were created Earls of Bedford and Wiltshire, and appointed lord privy seal and lord treasurer; but two of the party, the Earls of Arundel and Southampton, who had been amongst the most active supporters of Warwick, were dismissed from the ​Council, and both, for some cause or other, in disgrace. Southampton had revenged himself on Somerset without acquiring the confidence of Warwick; it is even said that he had begun an attempt to undermine him, and he soon after died—according to some, of sheer chagrin, according to others, from poison, self-administered. Arundel and Sir Richard Southwell, belonging to Warwick's party, were also fined—Arundel £12,000, and Southwell £500.
Warwick had humbled Somerset, but he could not prevent the country being humbled with him; and his party had blamed the Protector for proposing to surrender Boulogne, but they were now compelled, by the exhausted and disordered state of the nation, to accept from France even more disgraceful terms. During the winter the French had cut off all communication betwixt Boulogne and Calais, and the Earl of Huntingdon found himself unable to re-open it; though he led against the enemy all his bands of mercenaries and 3,000 English veterans. His treasury and his storehouses were exhausted, and the French calculated confidently on taking the place at spring. Unable to send the necessary succours, a fresh proposal was made to the emperor to occupy it, and this not tempting him, it was proposed by the Council to cede it to him in full sovereignty, on condition that it should never be surrendered to France. Charles declined, and as a last resource a Florentine merchant, Antonio Guidotti, was employed to make the French aware that England was not averse to a peace. The French embraced the offer, but under such circumstances they were not likely to be very modest in their terms of accommodation.
The conferences betwixt the ambassadors was opened on the 21st of January, and the English proposed that, as an equivalent for the surrender of Boulogne, Mary of Scotland should be contracted to Edward. To this the French replied, bluntly, that that was impossible, as Henry had already agreed to marry her to the dauphin. The next proposition was that the arrears of money due from the Crown of France should be paid up, and the payment of the fixed pension continued. To this the ambassadors of Henry replied, in a very different tone to that which English monarchs had been accustomed to hear from those of France, that their king would never condescend to pay tribute to any foreign Crown; that Henry VIII. had been enabled by the necessities of France to extort a pension from Francis; and that they would now avail themselves of the present difficulties of England to compel Edward to renounce it. The English envoys appeared, on this bold declaration, highly indignant, and as if they would break off the conference; but every day they receded more and more from their pretensions, and they ended by subscribing, on the 24th of March, to all the demands of their opponents.
These conditions were that there should be peace and union betwixt the two countries, not merely for the lives of the present monarchs, but to the end of time. That Boulogne should be surrendered to the King of France with all its stores and ordnance; and that, in return for the money expended on the fortifications, they should pay to Edward 200,000 crowns on the delivery of the place, and 200,000 more in five months. But the English were previously to surrender Douglas and Lauder to the Queen of Scots, or if they were already in the hands of the Scotch, should raze the fortresses of Aymouth and Roxburgh to the ground; Scotland was to be comprehended in the treaty if the queen desired it, and Edward bound himself not to make war on Scotland unless some fresh provocation were given.
So disgraceful was this treaty—such a surrender of the nation's dignity, that the people regarded it as an eternal opprobrium to the country; and from that hour the boastful claims of England on the French Crown were no more heard of, except in the ridiculous retention of the title of King of France by our sovereigns.
Freed from the embarrassments of foreign politics, the Council now proceeded with the work of Church reform; and during this and part of the next year was busily engaged checking on the one hand the opposition of the Romanist clergy, and on the other the latitudinarian tendencies of the Protestants. Bonner and Gardiner were the most considerable of the uncomplying prelates, and they were first brought under notice. Bonner had been called before the Council in August of 1540, for not complying with the requisitions of the Court in matters of religion; and in April of this year he was deprived of his see of London, and remanded to the Marshalsea, where he remained till the king's death. Ridley was appointed to the bishopric of London. The bishopric of Westminster was dissolved by Royal authority, and Ridley accepted its lands and revenues instead of those of the see of London, which wore immediately divided betwixt three of the courtiers, Rich, lord chancellor; Wentworth, lord chamberlain; and Sir Thomas Darcey, vice-chamberlain.
Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, equally immovable in his resistance to the new ritual and opinions, was also deprived of his see, and was sent back to the Tower, where he was confined in a meaner cell, every person, except one of the warders, being refused access to him, and was prohibited the use of pen, ink, and paper. The chief reason for this severity was alleged to be that he had in his defence before the Council called his judges heretics and sacramentaries. Poynet, Bishop of Rochester, succeeded him in his see of Winchester, with the same clipping process as that which had taken place in the revenues of the see of London. The new prelate was required to surrender into the hands of the Council all the lands and revenues of that opulent bishopric, and received instead, rectories and lands to the value of 2,000 marks annually. A great portion of this property was divided again amongst the courtiers, the friends of Warwick. Sir Thomas Wroth received a pension of £100 a year; and Gates, Hobey, Seymour, Dudley, Nevil, and Fitzwilliam, valuable grants of lands and manors. These changes, however, were not completed till March of 1551.
Heath, Bishop of Worcester, and Day, Bishop of Chichester, were also committed to the Tower for refusing compliance with the new regulations. They had both refused to exchange the ancient altar for a communion-table, a substitution now introduced, and which afforded the Crown and courtiers a fresh harvest of spoil in jewels, plate, and decorations. It was in vain that the Council attempted to move them by argument; they were, therefore, committed to prison; and, in October of 1551, were deprived of their sees, and retained in the Tower till the next reign.
From the bishops, the reforming Council proceeded to higher game. The Princess Mary, the king's eldest ​sister, from the first had expressed her firm resolution of not adopting the new faith or ritual. She had, moreover, declared to Somerset, that during the minority of the king things ought to remain as the king her father had left them. Somerset replied that, on the contrary, he was only carrying out the plans which Henry had already settled in his own mind, but had not had time to complete. On the introduction of the new liturgy, she received, in June, 1549, an intimation that she must conform to the provisions of the statute. Mary replied with spirit, that her conscience would not permit her to lay aside the practice of the religion that she believed in, and reminded the lords of the Council that they were bound by their oaths to maintain the Church as left by her father; adding, that they could not, with any decency, refuse liberty of worship to the daughter of the king who had raised them to what they were.
The appeal to the liberality, the consciences, or the gratitude of these statesmen producing no effect, she next applied to a more influential person, the Emperor Charles V., her great relative. This was at the time that the English Government was soliciting Charles to take Boulogne off their hands, and what they would not yield to any higher feelings they conceded to policy. The permission was granted her to have her own chapel in her own house. No sooner, however, was the peace with France concluded, than caring less for the emperor, who had refused to oblige them in the matter of Boulogne, the Council began to harass her with their importunities, and by means of letters from her brother.
Warwick and his party, when they were seeking to crush Somerset, wrote a letter to the princesses each in her own person, which, however, was especially addressed to Mary, in which they hint at her being next in succession to the throne, as if they were ready to adopt her creed and place her there. Without speaking too distinctly on this head, they, however, entreated her to join them on that occasion. "We trust your grace," they say, "in our just and faithful quarrel, will stand with us, and thus shall we pray to Almighty God for the preservation of your grace's health." No sooner, however, were Dudley and his clique in power, than they became as troublesome to her as Somerset and his party had been. The young king was put forward as the party pressing for her conformity, and he maintained that he possessed as great authority in religious matters as his father, and that his love to God and to her compelled him to urge this matter upon her. He offered to send her teachers who should instruct her in the reformed faith, and show her clearly her errors. It was in vain that she pleaded and remonstrated; it was told her that the indulgence granted her had been only for a limited period. Again she appealed to the emperor, and again his ambassador, on the 19th of April, 1550, demanded of the Privy Council that this liberty should be continued to her. Edward in his journal says this was refused, but this must have been in equivocal language, for the ambassador reported that the permission had been granted.
These persecutions continued through the whole of this year and the greater part of next, during which time there were some overtures of marriage, which, if closed with, might have rescued her from her irksome situation. The Duke of Brunswick and the Margrave of Brandenburg were amongst her suitors, but could not have been acceptable to Mary on account of their religion. She decided in favour of Don Louis, the Infant of Portugal, a match which was never concluded. The endeavours to coerce Mary in her faith being continued, the emperor seems to have formed the plan of her escape from the kingdom. She was residing at Newhall, near the mouth of the Blackwater in Essex, and when Edward positively forbade the princess to have mass performed in her chapel, the emperor sent some ships to hover on the coast, to receive Mary on board, and carry her over to Antwerp. The Council was alarmed, and Sir John Gates was sent to cruise off that shore and prevent any such attempt. To draw the princess from the dangerous vicinity to the coast, the Council took advantage of an illness which she had in November, 1550, to represent to her that Essex was too low for her health. Mary thanked the Council, and said that it was the season not the situation which affected her, but that if she should "espy any house meet for her purpose," in any other neighbourhood, she would not fail to ask for it. This being construed into a refusal, in December indictments under the statute were found against two of her chaplains, and at the invitation of her brother, Mary consented to meet the Lords of the Council in person for the discussion of the subject.
This meeting took place at Westminster on the 18th of March, 1551. Mary was growing every day more decisive in her demonstrations of her faith—the certain consequence of all this persecution. She, therefore, rode over from Wanstead, where she had a house, attended by a numerous cavalcade of ladies and gentlemen, and every one of her attendants wore a black rosary and cross at the girdle—an obvious proof that she meant no surrender. She passed two hours closeted with the king and his Council, the upshot of which was, that she declared that "her soul was God's, and that she would neither change her faith nor dissemble her opinion." To which it was replied, with very little show of truth, however, "that the king did not constrain her faith, but insisted that she should obey like a subject, and not will like a sovereign."
The very next day the emperor's ambassador declared that if his master's kinswoman were any further molested on account of her religion, he would quit the country, preparatory to a declaration of war. This had effect at the time, for the ministers were obliged to admit to the king that war with the Low Countries at this crisis would be the ruin of England. Edward is said to have wept at being thus checked in the hopeless attempt to convert his sister. The forbearance did not last long: her chief chaplain, Francis Mallet, was arrested and consigned to the Tower. Mary remonstrated; but the only effect was, that in the following August, whilst she was living at Copthall, in Essex, an extraordinary attempt was made to control the exercise of her domestic worship, through the means of the officers of her own establishment. Mr. Robert Rochester, the comptroller of her household, Mr. Walgrave, and Sir Francis Inglefield, her chief officers, were sent for by the king and Council, and commanded under severe menaces to put a stop to the performance of mass in her house; and if she should discharge them from her service on this account, they were still to remain, and enforce the Royal orders.
Mary refused to pay any attention to the orders brought ​by these gentlemen. She herself wrote to the Council, assuring them that they could do what they pleased with her body, but that death would be more welcome than life with a troubled conscience. The Council then ordered Inglefield, Rochester, and Walgrave to return and carry out their Royal commands. But they positively refused, declaring that they might send them to prison if they pleased, but that as to facing their mistress on any such errand, they would not. Rochester, therefore, was committed to the Fleet prison, and afterwards to the Tower, and a deputation of the Council were themselves dispatched to enforce this object. These deputies were Lord Chancellor Rich, Sir Anthony Wingfield, and Mr. Petre. They also carried with them a gentleman to officiate as comptroller in the place of the contumacious Rochester.
The commissioners did not succeed with Mary better than her own servants. She read the letter of the king which they brought, ordering implicit obedience, and said, "Ah! good Mr. Cecil took much pains here;" and she added, seriously, "rather than use any other service than was used at the death of the late king my father, I will lay my head on a block and suffer death. When the king's majesty shall come to such years that he may be able to judge these things himself, his majesty shall find me ready to obey his orders in religion; but now, though he, good sweet king, have more knowledge than any other of his years, yet it is not possible that he can be a judge of these things. If my chaplains do say no mass, I can hear none. They may do therein as they will; but none of your new service shall be used in my house, or I will not tarry in it."
The commissioners, at their wits' end, complained of the conduct of her own officers, who had been ordered to put down the performance of her mass; on which she replied, sarcastically, that it was none of the wisest of all Councils that seat her own servants to control her in her own house, for she was not very likely to obey those who had been always used to obey her. They then commented on the emperor's interference, on which she reminded them that the emperor had their promise that they should not do the very thing they were now doing; and added that they owed her more respect for her father's sake, who, she said, had made most of them out of nothing. On this she left them; but as they were passing through the courtyard she opened a little window, and, with more spirit and stinging wit than dignity, spoke to them. Disliking this very public address, they desired to return into the house; but she insisted on telling them there what she had to say, bidding them desire the Lords of the Council to return her the comptroller, Rochester. "For," she continued, "since his departing I take the accounts myself, and lo! I have learned how many loaves of bread be made out of a bushel of wheat. I wis my father and mother never brought me up to brewing and baking, and to be plain with you, I am a-weary of mine office. If my lords will send mine officer home again, they shall do me a pleasure; otherwise, if they send him to prison, beshrew me if he go not to it merrily, and with a good will. And I pray God send you well in your souls, and in your bodies too, for some of you have but weak ones."
Mary remained a conscious victor over her tormentors; she stood on vantage ground which none of them dared assail by any violence: but their proceedings were more deadly with less-favoured persons, and their zeal was directed not so much against the Romanists, who maintained some caution, as against Protestants who proceeded to what the new Church deemed heresy. First amongst these wore Champnies, a priest, who denied the divinity of Christ, that grace was inadmissible, and that the regenerate, though they might fall in the outward, could never sin in the innerward man. Besides him, Puttow, a tanner, Thumb, a butcher, and Ashton, a priest, who had embraced Unitarianism, were terrified into submission, and bore their fagots during the sermon at St. Paul's Cross.
But not so pliable was Joan Bocher, a lady of Kent, who had adopted the reformed opinions, and became a zealous promulgator of them. During the last reign, and in the time of Catherine Parr, she had frequently resorted to the Court, and secretly introduced there Protestant books and writings. She was a friend and fellow-labourer with the noble martyr, Anne Askew. Being now called before Cranmer, Smith, Cook, Latimer, and Lyall, and charged with certain heretical notions regarding the incarnation, she stood steadfast to her opinions, and when they threatened to send her to the stake, she daringly replied, "It is a goodly matter to consider your ignorance. It was not long ago that you burnt Anne Askew for a piece of bread, and yet came yourselves soon afterwards to believe and profess the same doctrine for which you burned her. And now, forsooth, you will needs burn me for a piece of flesh, and in the end will come to believe this also, when you have read the Scriptures and understand them."
Edward was excessively averse to signing her death warrant. From this reluctance in the young king, she remained in prison for a whole year. He contended that it was an awful thing to put a person to death in her sin, as that would consign the soul to eternal punishment. The mild Cranmer combated this argument with the example of Moses, who caused sinners to be stoned to death; and at length the unhappy boy, drowned in tears, put his hand to the warrant. He told Cranmer that if he were doing wrong, he must answer it to God, for that he did it in submission to his authority. Cranmer seems to have been rendered rather uneasy by this observation, and both he and Ridley laboured with her, to induce her to recant, and escape the flames as others had done. It was all in vain; she stood firm as a rock, and was sent to the stake. There a preacher. Dr. Scory, undertook to refute her, but she treated him with the utmost scorn, exclaiming that "he lied like a rogue, and had better go home and study the Scriptures."
Another victim was a Dutchman of the name of Van Paris, who practised as a surgeon in London. He had imbibed Unitarian tenets, and on that account was excommunicated by the Dutch Church in that city. He was arraigned before Cranmer, Ridley, May, Coverdale, and others. He refused to abjure his creed, and was, therefore, condemned by Cranmer, and burnt on the 24th of April, enduring his sentence with stoical fortitude. These persecutions covered Cranmer and the reformed prelates and clergy with odium, and diminished greatly the public commiseration when their own turn came to suffer the same death.
​With a singular inconsistence, whilst thus burning these individuals at the stake, a host of foreign divines and preachers were not only tolerated but patronised by Cranmer and his clerical coadjutors, though they held a variety of unorthodox opinions. French, Italian, German, Swiss, Polish, and Scotch reformers, of differing creeds, and many of them promulgating the most decided Calvinism, were received by the primate, and even furnished with a sojourn under his own roof. He procured for them livings in the Church, and favour at Court, believing them to be efficient ministers of the reforms and opinions that he wished to establish. Amongst these the great Scottish reformer, John Knox, was appointed chaplain to the king, and itinerant preacher throughout the kingdom. Utenhoff and Pierre Alexandre were fixed at Canterbury; Faggio, Tremelio, and Cavalier read lectures on Hebrew in Cambridge; Peter Martyr and Bucer taught Protestantism in the two universities; and Joannes à Lasco, Valerandus Pollanus, and Angelo Florio were licensed as superintendents and preachers of the foreign congregations in London and Glastonbury.
Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. From the Original Picture.
Edward VII. granting the Charter to Bridewell. From the Original Picture by Hans Holbein.
The attention of the nation at this juncture was called from ecclesiastical affairs, however, to the struggle again commenced betwixt Somerset and Warwick. Somerset had escaped from his enemies and the block for a time by the deepest humiliation. After such a fall and exposure, such an ample confession of his rapacity and his weakness, it might have been supposed that he would never again dare to aspire to the brilliant, but dizzy elevation from which he had been precipitated. He never again regained the respect or confidence of the nation; but the frivolity of his character soon led him to review his condition, and his nearness of affinity to the king seemed to make a re-ascent possible, and not over difficult. The king, as was not unnatural towards an only uncle, soon began to evidence a return of kindliness, if that, indeed, had ever been extinguished. He granted him a general pardon, he cancelled his bonds, restored his personal property, admitted him again, not only to Court, but into his Council; and by the end of March, within less than two months since his liberation from the Tower, appointed him a lord of the bedchamber.
Warwick, as if he would make some amends for his harsh proceedings against him, or deeming that he could make him useful in pushing his own fortunes, whilst he could apprehend nothing from his revenge unsupported by courage or ability, made an apparently sincere reconciliation with him, and even now entered into an alliance with his family by the marriage of Lord Lisle, his oldest son, to Anne, one of Somerset's daughters. This marriage was followed the next day by one still more remarkable—that of Warwick's fourth son, Robert Dudley, afterwards the famous Earl of Leicester, and the lovely but unfortunate Amy Robsart, the daughter of Sir John Robsart.
The king, delighted at the restoration of harmony betwixt his uncle and his able minister, Warwick, accompanied by his Court, joined in all the festivities of the time. But this calm did not last long. With all the outward show of friendship, and the apparent union of this new alliance, it was impossible that Somerset and Warwick could be sincere friends. They were equally ambitious, equally unprincipled; and Somerset could as little forgive what he had suffered as Warwick could believe himself forgiven. Somerset could not rest without regaining the power and dignity which had been wrung from him; Warwick was not likely to resign those which he had gained. Warwick, however, was far the stronger in the firmness and caution of his disposition, and in having all his old associates around him in the Council. Somerset, to regain his lost footing, endeavoured by his agents to secure the interest and votes of some of the peers in Parliament. This did not escape the lynx eyes of Warwick, and on the 16th of February we find by the king's journal that a person of the name of Whaley was examined before the Council, on the charge of persuading several peers of the realm to make Somerset Protector in the next Parliament. Whaley stoutly denied it, but it was as stoutly asseverated by the Earl of Rutland.
Foiled in this attempt, Somerset next ventured on the imprudent step of endeavouring to persuade the king to marry his daughter, the Lady Jane Seymour. For this purpose he employed the good offices of Lord Strange, who was much in favour with the king. This scheme, also, was defeated by the vigilance of Warwick's party, and to cut off the possibility of such an endeavour, the Council came to the resolution of immediately asking the hand of Elizabeth, the daughter of the French king. The occasion, however, did not pass over without mutual animosity and alarms. Lord Gray at once departed for the northern counties, and Somerset was about to follow him, when he was solemnly assured by Sir William Herbert that no injury was intended. A second reconciliation was formally gone through by the adverse parties; and to satisfy the country of their amity—for strange rumours of discord and danger were getting abroad—on the 24th of April the lords of the two factions met in the City, and for four days entertained each other at banquets.
No time, however, was lost in seeking to effectuate the French marriage. On the 17th of May all was in readiness, and the Marquis of Northampton, attended by three earls, the eldest sons of Somerset and Warwick, and a numerous train of other nobles and gentlemen, set out for Paris on the negotiation. Betraying, however, the undying regret of the English Court for the loss of the young Queen of Scots, the ambassador first demanded her hand for Edward; which, as was certain to be the case, was as promptly declined as before. He then solicited that of the Princess Elizabeth, which was as readily conceded; and it was proposed that, as soon as she reached her twelfth year, the marriage should take place. When they came, however, to settle the amount of dowry, the French offered 200,000 crowns, and the English demanded 1,200,000. This vast difference betwixt the offer and the demand appeared as if it would be fatal to the negotiation; but no doubt the Warwick party at home urged the necessary reduction of terms on the English part; and after a suspension of treaty for two months' duration, the English ambassador accepted the French proposal, and agreed to give her the same annual value in Crown lands as had been granted to Catherine of Spain, the first wife of Henry VIII., namely, 10,000 marks yearly.
The English embassy was soon followed to London by the Marshal St. Andre and a numerous retinue, bringing to the King of England the order of St. Michael, in return for that of the Garter, which Edward had sent to his proposed father-in-law. The envoy was met on landing by the gentlemen of the county and 1,000 horsemen; and, avoiding London, which was suffering from a severe attack of the sweating-sickness—which, though it lasted only about eleven days, carried off 872 people—they conducted the embassage to Hampton Court, where the king was, and where they were received by Somerset and Warwick, and conducted to his presence. A succession of banquets and entertainments were given, which lasted till the end of March, when the marshal took his leave, ​having received presents to the value of £3,000, whereas the Marquis of Northampton had received from the French king gifts of the value only of £500.
The remainder of the summer was spent by Somerset in intriguing for the increase of his favour, which these transactions were meant to thwart. He surrounded himself with a strong body of armed men; there were secret debates amongst his friends on the possibility of raising the City in his cause, and he did not hesitate to drop hints that assassination only could free him from his implacable enemies. But whilst the irresolute Somerset plotted, Warwick acted. He secured for himself the appointment of warden of the Scottish marches, thus cutting off the danger which had lately appeared of Somerset's retreat thither. Armed with the preponderating influence which that office conferred in the northern districts, on the 27th of September or the 17th of October he was announced as Duke of Northumberland, a title venerated by the border people, and which had been extinct since the attainder of Earl Percy in 1527. In this formidable position of power and dignity, he was strengthened by his friends and partisans being at the same time elevated in the peerage. The Marquis of Dorset was created Duke of Suffolk, the Earl of Wiltshire, Marquis of Winchester, and Sir William Herbert, Baron of Cardiff and Earl of Pembroke. Cecil, Cheek, Sidney, and Nevil received the honour of knighthood.
This movement in favour of Warwick was followed by consequences of still more startling character to the Duke of Somerset. His enemies now felt on secure ground, and on the 16th of October, the news flew through London that he was arrested on a charge of conspiracy and high treason, and committed to the Tower. He had been apprised that depositions of a serious character had been made against him by Sir Thomas Palmer, a partisan of Warwick's, whereupon he sent for Palmer, and strictly interrogated him, but on his positive denial, let him go. Not satisfied, however, he wrote to Cecil, telling him that he suspected something was in agitation against him. Cecil replied with his characteristic astuteness, that if he were innocent he could have nothing to fear; if he were guilty, he could only lament his misfortune. Piqued at this reply, he sent a letter of defiance, but took no means for the security of his person. Palmer, notwithstanding his denial, had, however, it seems, really lodged this charge against him on the 7th of the month with Warwick:—That in a conference with Somerset in April last, in his garden, the duke assured him that at the time that the solemn declaration of Sir William Herbert had prevented him from going northward, he had sent Lord Gray to raise their friends there; and that after that he had formed the design of inviting Warwick, Northampton, and the chiefs of that party, and of assassinating them, either there or on their return home. That at this very moment he was planning to raise an insurrection in London, to destroy his great enemy, and to seize the direction of government. That Sir Miles Partridge was to call out the apprentices of the city, kill the city guard, and get possession of the great seal. That Sir Thomas Arundel had secured the Tower, and Sir Ralph Vane had a force of 2,000 men ready to support them.
Probably this was a mixture of some truth with a much greater portion of convenient falsehood. The duke was accordingly arrested, and the next day the duchess, with her favourites, Mr. and Mrs. Crane, Sir Miles Partridge, Sir Thomas Arundel, Sir Thomas Holcroft, Sir Michael Stanhope, and others of the duke's friends, were also arrested and committed to the Tower. The king was already brought up from Hampton Court to Westminster for greater security and convenience during the trials of the conspirators. A message was sent in the king's name to the lord mayor and corporation, informing them that the conspirators had agreed to seize the Tower, kill the guards of the City, seize the broad seal, set fire to the town, and depart for the Isle of Wight; and they were, therefore, ordered to keep the gates well, and maintain a strong patrol in the streets.
Whilst the duke was lying in prison, his nephew, the youthful king, was called upon to maintain an air of gaiety and even rejoicing at his Court, where, from the circumstances of the time and the character of the guest on whose account the festivities were held, there could not be much real pleasure. The Queen-Dowager of Scotland had been on a visit to her daughter in Paris, and on her return, through the mediation of Henry II., she obtained permission to pay her court to Edward, and continue her journey by land. The steady hostility which Mary of Guise had shown to the alliance of her daughter with Edward, and to the reforms in religion which he had so much at heart, must have rendered her anything but a welcome guest; but policy, as in all these cases, put on the face of friendship, and to oblige Henry of France, with whom Edward was contemplating a family union, he invited her to London, received her at the entrance of the great hall at Westminster, kissed her, and taking her by the hand, conducted her to her chamber. For the two days of her stay, every attention was shown; the king made her a present of a valuable diamond; the City of London presented her with 100 marks at the gates, and she was accompanied for some distance on her way by a splendid escort of ladies and gentlemen.
This piece of Royal courtesy being performed, preparations were made for Somerset's trial. Such of the persons arrested as could be induced to give evidence, were summoned before the Privy Council, and their depositions taken. Palmer, however, was the chief and the only ready witness. He repeated his account of the intended plot for raising London. If the attempt to destroy the gendarmerie had failed, he said the duke was to ride through the streets, crying, "Liberty! liberty!" to raise the apprentices, and then retire to the Isle of Wight. That he intended to have 2,000 infantry under Crane, and thus to make sure of the massacre of the guards, to seize the Royal person, and issue a proclamation for the arrest of Northumberland, Northampton, and Pembroke, on a charge of treason against the king, and of attempts to alienate his affections from his sister, Mary.
According to the king's journal, Crane confessed quite as much as Palmer asserted, and more:—That the earls were to have been assassinated in the house of Lord Paget; that the Earl of Arundel knew of the matter as well as he did, and that Sir Michael Stanhope was the messenger betwixt them. Some of the others confessed that the duke kept a guard of twenty men to prevent his arrest, and the Lord Strange confessed that the duke had moved him to persuade the king to marry his third ​daughter, the Lady Jane, and to become a spy on all the king's sayings and doings, and to inform the duke when any of his Council had private interviews with him.
These depositions are not stated by the king as made in his presence, and therefore they were probably as reported to him; and we are confirmed in this opinion by the fact, that the duke on his trial in vain demanded that Crane should be confronted with him. The trial of the duke, such as it was, took place on the 1st of December, in Westminster Hall. Twenty-seven peers were summoned to sit as his judges, the Marquis of Winchester being appointed lord high steward, to preside. On that morning Somerset was brought from the Tower, with the axe borne before him; whilst a great number of men carrying bills, gleaves, halberds, and poll-axes, guarded him. A new scaffold or platform was raised in the hall, on which the lords, his judges, sat; and above them the lord high steward, on a raised seat ascended by three steps, and over it a canopy of state. The judges consisted almost wholly of the duke's enemies, and conspicuous amongst them were Northumberland, Northampton, and Pembroke. The witnesses against him were not produced, but merely their depositions read. Somerset denied the whole of the charges respecting his intention to raise the City of London, declaring that the idea of assassinating the gendarmerie was worthy only of a madman. As to the accusation of proposing to kill the Duke of Northumberland and others, he admitted that he had thought of it, and even talked of it, but on mature consideration had abandoned it for ever.
On this confession, the judges declared him guilty of felony without benefit of clergy. They were desirous to adjudge it treason, but this Northumberland himself overruled. When this sentence was pronounced, Somerset fell on his knees and thanked the lords for the fair trial they had given him, and implored pardon from Northumberland, Northampton, and Pembroke for his design against their lives, entreating them to pray the king's mercy to him, and his grace towards his wife, his children, and his servants. On the sentence being pronounced only felony, the axe of the Tower was withdrawn; and the people, seeing him returning without that fatal instrument, imagined that he was wholly acquitted, and gave such shouts, that they were heard from Charing Cross to the hall. According to Holinshed, he landed from the river "at the crane of the Vine-tree, and so passed through London, where were both acclamations—the one cried for joy that he was acquitted, the other cried that he was condemned."
Edward was said to be much troubled at the approaching fate of his second and last uncle, but there certainly is no evidence of the fact in the accounts of the times. Both Stow and Edward's own journal bear testimony to the universal mirth and merriment of the Christmas festivities of that year, the Lord of Misrule even entering the Tower with his noisy followers, bringing uproar to the very ears of the prisoner; and thus closed the year on the once proud Somerset. Opportunity was now given him to reflect on that time when his own brother was confined in the same fortress, and awaiting death by his means. Somerset pleaded hard for mercy, but Warwick barred all access to the king, his nephew; and the only favour granted him was that he should have plenty of time to prepare for death.
Sis weeks after his sentence, the warrant for his execution was signed. The chronicler quaintly remarks that "Christmas being thus passed and spent with much mirth and pastime, it was thought now good to proceed to the execution of the judgment against the Duke of Somerset." The day of execution was the 22nd of February, 1552. To prevent the vast concourse which, from the popularity of his character amongst the common people, from his opposition to enclosures during his protectorship, was sure to take place, the Council had issued a precept to the lord mayor, commanding him to take all necessary measures for restraining the rush towards Tower Hill. The constables in every ward had, therefore, strictly charged every one not to leave their houses before ten o'clock that morning. But, by the very dawn, Tower Hill was one dense mass of heads, assembled there more in expectation of the duke's reprieve than of his execution. At eight o'clock he was delivered to the sheriffs of London, who led him out to the scaffold on Tower Hill. The duke appeared to meet his death with more resolution than he had shown on many occasions during his life. He knelt down, and, after spending some time in prayer, he rose, and, turning towards the east side of the scaffold, he addressed the people, saying that he had ever been a faithful subject, and was, therefore, willing to lay down his life in obedience to the law. Yet he protested that he had never offended the king in either word or deed. That, so far from having to repent of his proceedings when he was in power as Protector, he especially rejoiced that he had settled the kingdom in a form of religion which, in his opinion, the most resembled the primitive church. He therefore exhorted them to maintain it, and to practise it, if they meant to escape the punishment which heaven awarded to offending nations.
At that moment there was a strange noise and confused rush, occasioned by a body of officers with bills and halberds, who had been ordered to attend the execution, but who, on finding themselves behind time, rushed pell-mell towards the scaffold. Those in the way were thrown down; those around driven here and there, occasioned a panic in the crowd pressing on them. The scene of confusion became universal, the real cause being unknown. Some were trampled down, upwards of a hundred were forced into the Tower ditch, and those on the outskirts fled into the City, ascribing various wild causes for the disturbance. When some degree of order was restored, Sir Anthony Brown, a member of the Council, was seen riding towards the scene. The multitude at this sight, cried, "A pardon! a pardon!" and the shout was carried forward till it reached the scaffold. The duke paused, but was soon cruelly undeceived; and, though a hectic colour mounted to his cheeks, he resumed his address with apparent composure, repeating the assertion of his loyalty; exhorting them to love the king, obey his councillors, and to give him their prayers, that, as he had lived, so he might die, in the faith of Christ. He begged them to preserve quiet, that he himself might be the more assured, the spirit being willing, but the flesh weak. He then made another prayer; and, after that, rising, he bade farewell, not only to the sheriffs and ​the Lieutenant of the Tower, but to all on the scaffold, giving to each his hand. He gave to the headsman certain money, took off his gown, and, kneeling on the straw, untied his shirt-strings; but, finding his double tin the way, he rose, and took it off also; his eyes being then bound, he laid his neck on the block, and it was severed at a single stroke.
That there was, mixed up with a certain amount of truth, much false accusation against the duke, became apparent from Palmer and Crane, the chief witnesses, being soon discharged, and still more from Palmer continuing in close intimacy with Warwick. It became a general belief that Palmer had been corrupted to betray Somerset; and that he had oven been employed by Warwick to excite the duke's fears, and so to induce him to get a number of men about him, and then contriving to be taken with him, had made confession as out of terror. Of the other parties connected with Somerset, Partridge, Vane, Stanhope, and Arundel, were condemned to capital punishment. Partridge and Vane were hanged. Vane in indignant language declaring Northumberland a murderer, and that whenever he laid his head on his pillow, he would find it wet with their blood. Stanhope and Sir Thomas Arundel fell by the axe. Lord Paget and the Earl of Arundel, who were arrested soon after the others, escaped. Though it was said that it was at Paget's house that the proposed assassination was to take place, and though he had always been the firm friend and confidential advisor of Somerset, he was never brought to trial; but he confessed to peculation in the offices which he had held under the Crown, resigned the chancellorship of Lancaster, and was degraded from the order of the Garter and fined. The Earl of Arundel was detained in prison for a year, and only liberated on acknowledging himself guilty of concealing the treason of Somerset and his party; he was, moreover, compelled to resign the wardenship of several Royal parks, and to pay annually for six years 1,000 marks. Lord Gray and the rest of the prisoners were liberated one after another; and it is remarkable that all these persons recovered the favour of Government, and obtained a remission of a part or the whole of their fines.
Parliament met the day after the execution of Somerset; and as it had been originally summoned by him, it appeared to act as inspired with a spirit which resented his treatment and his death; and this spirit tended greatly during this session to revive that ancient independence which Henry VIII. had so completely quelled during his life. Most deserving of notice was the enactment which ordered the churchwardens in every parish to collect contributions for the support of the poor. This, though it appeared at first sight a voluntary contribution under the sanction of Government, was in reality a compulsive one, for the bishop of the diocese had authority to proceed against such as refused to subscribe; and from this germ grew our poor-law, with all its machinery and consequences.
The Crown attempted to re-enact some of the most arbitrary and oppressive laws of Henry VIII., though they had been repealed in the first Parliament of this reign. A bill was sent to the Lords, making it treason to call the king, or any of his heirs, a heretic, schismatic, tyrant, or usurper. The Lords passed it without hesitation, for it most probably proceeded from Warwick, and the Lords were strongly devoted to him; but the Commons drew the same line which had been drawn regarding the deniers of the supremacy. They would admit the offence to be treason only when it was done by "writing, printing, carving, or graving," which indicated deliberate purpose; but what was spoken, as it might result from indiscretion or sudden passion, they decreed to be only a minor offence, punishable by fine or forfeiture, and only rendered treasonable by a third repetition.
The Commons also added a most invaluable clause, the necessity of which had been constantly pressing on the public attention, and had just been strikingly demonstrated by the trial of Somerset. It was now enacted that no person should be arraigned, indicted, convicted, or attainted of any manner of treason unless on the oath of two lawful accusers, who should be brought before him at the time of his arraignment, and there should openly maintain their charges against him. Thus was the power of victimising the subject at pleasure wrested from the monarch, and the spirit of Magna Charta more distinctly defined. Had such a practice been maintained through the reign of Henry VIII., how much must even his lawless power have been restrained. Before the same session of Parliament was at an end, there was occasion for its exercise. Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, had been charged before the Council with being privy to an attempt to raise an insurrection in the North. The informer failed to make good his charge from the absence of a document, of which he supposed himself in possession. This document turned up in searching Somerset's house, and Northumberland immediately lodged Tunstall in the Tower, and passed a bill through the Lords to deprive him of his bishopric for divers offences. But here again the Commons applied their new rule, and demanded that Tunstall should be confronted with his accuser before the House; and this put a stop to the affair for that session.
But in prosecuting the reforms of the Church, the Parliament proceeded with a far more arbitrary spirit. The Common Prayer Book underwent much revision, and an Act was passed by which the bishops were empowered to compel attendance on the amended form of service by spiritual censuses, and the magistrates to punish corporally all who used any other. Any one daring to attend any other form of worship was liable to six months' imprisonment for the first offence, twelve months for the second, and a third, confinement for life. So little did our Church reformers of that day understand of the rights of conscience.
In the same spirit Cranmer proceeded to frame a collection of the articles of religion, and a code of ecclesiastical constitutions. We shall have occasion to notice these under the centenary review of the progress of religion, but we may here state that the articles amounted to forty-two, which have since been reduced to thirty-nine. Cranmer, during Henry VIII.'s reign, had subscribed every dogma which that strange reformer had at any time brought forward; now he sought to bind all men to his own.
We turn with more satisfaction to the proceedings of the Commons on secular affairs. A bill was sent down ​to that House, ready signed by the king, for repealing the Act of the late reign, entailing Somerset's estates upon his son. This was beginning wrong end first, and introducing a new system of dictation. The Commons objected strongly to it, and it was only by the most resolute determination that it was carried through. But when a proviso was found added to it confirming the attainder of the duke and his accomplices, the House struck it out. On the heels of this followed the bill to deprive Tunstall of Durham, already mentioned; and Northumberland finding the Commons much too independent for his ideas, not only closed the session, but dissolved Parliament altogether, after it had sat for about five years.
Lady Jane Grey. From the Original Picture.
In preparing for a new Parliament, Northumberland took such measures as showed that his own power and aggrandisement were the first things in his thoughts, the constitution of the kingdom the last. Letters were sent in the king's name to all the sheriffs, directing them, in the most straightforward manner, to abuse their powers in order to return a Parliament completely subservient to the Government. It was stated that it was necessary to return men of gravity, knowledge, and experience; "yet, nevertheless," it was added, "our pleasure is that where our Privy Council, or any of them within their jurisdictions in our behalf, shall recommend men of learning and wisdom, in such case their directions shall be regarded and followed, as tending to the same which we desire—that is, to have this assembly be of the most chiefest men in our realm for advice and good counsel." Besides this unconstitutional proceeding, worthy of Northumberland, the son of the notorious Dudley, a still more daring measure was resorted to. No less than sixteen, all of them in Court employment, were nominated by the king himself in letters to the sheriffs of Hampshire, Suffolk, Berks, Bedford, Surrey, Cambridge, Oxford, and Northampton.
King Edward’s last Physician. (See page 340.)
​as still remained in its possession were totally inadequate to meet the annual demands of the Government. Northumberland, therefore, asked for two-tenths and two-fifteenths; but even with his care to pack the Commons he found it no easy task to obtain it, and the friends of Somerset again assembled in considerable force in the House, resenting in strong terms the pretence thrown out in the preamble to the bill that it was owing to the extravagance and improvidence of the late Duke of Somerset, to his involving the country in needless wars, debasing the coin, and occasioning a terrible rebellion.
In his second object, the suppression of the bishopric of Durham, Northumberland succeeded more easily. Failing to persuade Parliament to condemn the bishop, Northumberland had erected a new and utterly unconstitutional court of lawyers and civilians, empowering them to call the prelate before them, and to examine him on the charge of cognisance of conspiracy; and this monstrous and illegal tribunal had stripped the bishop of all his ecclesiastical preferments as the punishment for his offence. The see being now held to be vacant, an Act was passed for the suppression of that diocese and the erection of two new ones—one including Durham, the other Northumberland. The plea for this daring innovation was the vast and unwieldy extent of the diocese of Durham; but the real cause was well understood to be one much more interesting to Northumberland himself. These two important Acts being passed, Parliament was dissolved, and within two months the bishopric was converted into a county palatine, annexed at present to the Crown, but awaiting a convenient transfer to the possessions of the house of Dudley.
But the king's health was fast failing, and it was high time for Northumberland to make sure his position and fortune. The constitution of Edward had long betrayed symptoms of fragility. In the early spring of the past year he was successively attacked by measles and smallpox. In the autumn, through incautious exposure to cold, he was attacked by inflammation of the lungs, and so enfeebled was he become by the meeting of Parliament on the 1st of March, 1553, that he was obliged to receive the two Houses at his palace of Whitehall. He was greatly exhausted by the exertion, being evidently far gone in a consumption, and harassed with a troublesome cough.
Northumberland, from the day on which he rose into the ascendant at Court, had shown that he was the true son of the old licensed extortioner. He had laboured assiduously not only to surround himself by interested adherents, but to add estate to estate. He inherited a large property, the accumulations of oppression and crimes of the blackest dye. But during the three years in which he had enjoyed all but kingly power, he had been diligently at work creating a kingly demesne. He was become the Steward of the East Riding of Yorkshire, and of all the Royal manors in the five northern counties. He had obtained Tynemouth and Alnwick in Northumberland, Barnard Castle in Durham, and immense estates in Warwick, Worcester, and Somersetshire. The more he saw the king fail, the more anxious he was to place his brother, his sons, his relatives, and most devoted partisans in places of honour and profit around him at Court. This done, he advanced to bolder measures, to which these were only the stepping-stones. Lady Jane Grey was the daughter of Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, whose mother was Mary, the sister of Henry VIII. Mary first married Louis XII. of France, by whom she had no children, and next, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, by whom she had two daughters. The youngest of these two daughters married Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, but the eldest, Frances, whose claim came first, had by the Duke of Suffolk three daughters, Jane, Catherine, and Mary.
Northumberland, casting his eye over the descendants of Henry VIII., saw the only son, King Edward, dying, and the two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, bastardised by Acts of Parliament still unrepealed. A daring scheme seized his ambitious mind—a scheme to set aside these two princesses, the elder of whom, and immediate heir to the throne, was especially dangerous to the permanence of the newly-established Protestantism. It was true that Margaret of Scotland, the sister of Henry VIII., was older than his sister Mary, and her granddaughter, Mary Queen of Scots, would have taken precedence of the descendants of Mary, but she and her issue had been entirely passed over in the will of Henry. Leaving out, then, this line, and setting aside the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth as legally illegitimate, Lady Jane Grey would become heir to the throne after her mother Frances, Duchess of Suffolk. But Northumberland was well informed that the Duchess of Suffolk would not on any account aspire to the throne, though she might not object to see her daughter placed there under promising circumstances.
Northumberland resolved, therefore, to secure Lady Jane in marriage for his son, Lord Guildford Dudley; to obtain Lady Jane's sister, Catherine, for Lord Herbert, son of the Earl of Pembroke, who owed title, estates, and everything to the favour of Northumberland; and to marry his own daughter Catherine to the eldest son of the Earl of Huntingdon.
In May, 1553, Edward was apparently much improved in health, and though, with a good portion of his father's obstinacy, he had greatly disregarded the advice of his physicians, he now promised to observe their recommendations, and cheering hopes were entertained of his actual recovery. The promise was delusive, and Northumberland was probably well aware of it; but as this auspicious event enabled him to effect the contemplated marriage with less suspicion, and with the personal sanction of the sovereign, he seized upon it. The marriages were celebrated at Durham House, Northumberland's new residence in the Strand, where the utmost gaiety prevailed, which the king, with all his asserted improvement, was too feeble to witness, but he sent to the brides magnificent presents; and, no doubt with the intention of winning the approval of the Princess Mary to those alliances, at this time a grant was made her of the castle of Hertford, and of several manors and parks in that county and in Essex.
The gleam of the king's convalescence died away, as it were, with the wedding fetes at Durham House; and in June he had sunk into such debility that it was evident that his life was fast ebbing to a close. Northumberland saw that no time was to be lost in the completion his aspiring plans. He sat down by the bed of the dying young prince, a boy still not sixteen years of age, and ​entered into a serious conversation with him on the prospects of the kingdom, and still more of the Church in it, when he should be gone. The wily politician knew that the interests of the reformed faith ran with the very pulses of the Royal youth's heart, more powerful even than that of nature and family affinity. Through his short life and shorter reign, he had entered into the work of reformation of the national faith with all the zeal of an apostle. Northumberland observed that by his ardent support of this emancipated Christianity, by his manly extirpations of the idolatries and superstitious of the old corrupted form of it, he won an everlasting reputation, and a place amongst the highest saints in heaven. But when they looked forward, what was the prospect? Was this noble work to be perpetuated, or to be marred? If his sister Mary succeeded, with all her Spanish bigotry, what must be the inevitable result? Undoubtedly the return of the old darkness and all its monkish and priestly legends, and the fair faith and knowledge of the Bible must vanish as a beautiful morning dream.
Having sufficiently stretched the young king on the rack of apprehension, he adroitly suggested to him that the case was by no means without remedy. It was difficult and dangerous, but it was practicable, and within his power. He had only to place the interests of religion and of his kingdom in preference to the mere ties of consanguinity, and all would be safe. There was Lady Jane Grey, the descendant of the same father as his own, a lady of his own blood, a lady wise beyond her years, learned beyond most men, and in whose soul the same divine truths were planted beyond all power of eradication, by the same hand which had guided and instructed his own Royal mind. He had only to make a will, like his father, and pass by Mary as declaredly illegitimate by that father, and the danger was past, and he would leave the work which he had nobly begun safe from all fear of change. It was true, as Northumberland was aware, that Elizabeth was as fairly Protestant as Mary was Papist, and the choice of her would undoubtedly have been highly acceptable to the reformed portion of the nation; but that view of things did not suit Northumberland, and therefore he adroitly showed the young monarch that as the thing to guard against was Mary's Popery—a cause, however, which could not be assigned simply and alone, without calling forth all the partisanship of the Papist portion of the nation—it was impossible to exclude Mary on the ground of illegitimacy, and admit Elizabeth, who lay under the same disqualification.
The dying prince listened with a mind which had long been under the influence of the more powerful will of Dudley, and saw nothing but the most patriotic objects in his recommendations. He no doubt considered it a great kingly duty to decide by his will, as his father had done, the succession; and that the whole responsibility might rest on himself, and not on Northumberland, who had so much at stake, he was easily induced to sketch the form of his devise of the Crown with his own pen. In this rough draft he entailed the succession on "the Lady Frances's heirs masles," next on "Lady Jane's heirs masles," and then on the heirs male of her sisters. This, however, did not accord with the plans of Northumberland, for none of the ladies named had any heirs male; and therefore, on the death of Edward, the Crown would have passed over the whole family, and would go to the next of kin. A slight alteration was therefore suggested and made. The letter "s" at the end of "Jane's" was scored out, the words "and her" inserted, and thus the bequest stood "to the Lady Jane and her heirs masles." This alteration made, a fair copy was drawn, and Edward signed it with his own hand, above, below, and on each margin.
This was the first act of the great drama which Dudley was composing—a most marvellous thing when we carry back our memory a few years to the scoundrel deeds of his father, in the notable copartnership of infamy with Empson; the second was to make the poor invalid go through the exciting labour of making this will known, and settling its decision whilst alive. On the 11th of June, therefore. Sir Edward Montague, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Sir Thomas Bromley, another judge of the same court, Sir Richard Baker, Chancellor of the Augmentations, with Gosnold and Griffyn, the Attorney and Solicitor-Generals, were summoned to Greenwich. The king received them in the Council the next day, and informed them of the danger which menaced the laws, the liberties, and the religion of the country if his sister Mary should succeed him, and marry a foreign prince; and that, to provide against this, he had resolved to change the order of succession. He required them, therefore, to draw up an instrument for this purpose, according to the instructions he had prepared and signed for them. The judges, startled at this dangerous and illegal project, were about to make objections, but Edward, who, no doubt, was instructed how to act, would not listen to them, and would only grant them a short time to examine the different acts of succession, and prepare themselves for this duty.
On the 14th, two days later, the judges waited on the lords of the Council, and informed them that to draw the instrument required of them would be a direct breach of the 35th of the late king, and would involve both themselves and they who advised them in the penalties of treason. At these words, Northumberland, who had been listening in an adjoining room, entered in a great rage, denounced them as traitors, and declared that he would fight any man in his shirt who called so salutary a disposition of the Crown in question.
The next day they were again summoned, and by threats and promises were at length induced to comply, demanding, however, that they should receive a commission under the great seal, empowering them to draw the instrument, and a full pardon for having done so. The same apprehensions from the illegality of the proceeding alarmed many of the lords of the Council, but they allowed themselves to be swayed by the threats and promises of Northumberland, who told them that the succession of Mary would see all their lately-acquired lands restored to the Church. Cranmer professed to sign the deed with reluctance, but we may rather suppose that his timidity had more to do with it than his conscientiousness.
Northumberland was not satisfied with the will of the king and the act of the Crown lawyer; he produced another document, to which he required the signatures of ​the members of the Council and of the legal advisers of the Crown, who pledged to the number of four-and-twenty their oaths and honour to support this arrangement. The legal instrument, being prepared, was engrossed in parchment, and was authenticated by the great seal. The peers, the judges, the lords of the Council, the officers of the Crown, and others then signed it, to the number of 101.
Edward VI. in Council. From an old Engraving
There were many other measures necessary to ensure so dangerous an enterprise as Northumberland had now undertaken, which if he failed must send his head to the block—if he succeeded would make him the father of a line of kings. These measures he had carefully prepared. He had superseded the Constable of the Tower, Sir John Gates, by a creature of his own, Sir James Croft. He had dismantled some of the forts on the sea coasts and the banks of the Thames, to carry their stock of ammunition to the Tower, and these preparations being made, Croft surrendered the keeping of the Tower to the high admiral, Lord Clinton. His sons were placed at the head of some companies of horse, and feeling himself now strong at all points, the arch-traitor laid his plans to inveigle the Princess Mary into his hands. A letter was written to her from the Council, informing her that her brother was very ill, and praying her to come to him, as he earnestly desired the comfort of her presence, and wished her to see all well ordered about him. Mary, who was at Hunsdon, was touched by the apparent regard of the king, and sending back a message that she was much gratified that her dear brother thought she could be of any comfort to him, set out to go to him. This was on the last of June. She had reached Hoddesdon, and all seemed to favour the plot of Northumberland, when a mysterious messenger met her, and brought information which caused her to pause in much wonder.
It appears from Cole's MS. in the British Museum, that this messenger was her goldsmith; that one of the Throckmortons, who was in the service of the Duke of Northumberland, casually overheard a part of a conversation between that nobleman and Sir John Gates, one of his most resolute cavaliers. The duke was in bed, the subject of conversation was the Princess Mary, and Sir John Gates exclaimed, "What, sir! will you let the Lady Mary escape, and not secure her person?" The answer was too low to be caught, but the young man hastened to inform his family, who consulted on the best means of apprising Mary of her danger. It was thought best to consult Mary"s goldsmith, who was accordingly sent for, and, it is supposed, immediately dispatched to stay her progress. He met and arrested her advance at Hoddesdon. On the 6th of July the king expired in the evening, and Sir Nicholas Throckmorton hastened after the goldsmith to inform the princess. Mary was in a state of great perplexity when he arrived, from the previous news brought to her, and from a similar message from the Earl of Arundel. The tidings of Sir Nicholas were speedily confirmed by his father, and by the father of the young man who had given the first alarm. By the advice of the elder Throckmorton, Mary quitted the road to London in all haste, and took her way through Bury St. Edmunds for her seat of Kenninghall, in the county of Norfolk.
The death of Edward had been long expected by the whole nation, and so many prognostics had been published of it, that the Council had dealt severe corporal chastisement, as well as incarceration, to a number of such death-prophets. Hayward, Heylin, and others represent the Royal invalid as being, during the latter part of his life, taken out of the hands of his physicians and entrusted to the care of a female quack, whose nostrums hastened his end, and led many to a suspicion that even poison had been resorted to. When his physicians were at last recalled, they declared him past recovery.
Edward was only fifteen years, eight months, and twenty-two days old at his death, and had reigned six years and a half. Much as has been said of the genius and virtues of this young prince, it is still difficult to decide the exact amount of his personal merit, and still more to prognosticate what might have been the character of his reign had he attained to full manhood or to age. That he had a fair share of ability is not to be doubted, and this had been cultivated to the greatest advantage for his years. But we are not warranted in endorsing all the marvellous flatteries of the party in whose hands he was, and who represented him as a prodigy of talent, learning, and virtue. His talent, and indeed his wisdom, would be pre-eminent, did we give him credit for all the grave and well-weighed sentences which were put into his mouth. The boy of fourteen used to sit like an oracle amid his council of learned prelates and practical statesmen, and deliver his opinions and decisions with a grave propriety, which was rather that of a hoary king, than of a mere youth. But we learn from Strype that all this was prepared beforehand. He was drilled by Northumberland in the part which he had to act on every occasion. The whole business was laid down plainly before him, and he was supplied with short notes of the affair in hand, which he committed to memory. The whole reduced itself into the mere lesson of the schoolboy; but to the uninitiated spectator it appeared astonishing and precocious. His learning, which has been asserted on the evidence of his letters, which have been preserved by Fuller, Strype, and others, bears marks of the touches of his preceptors, and his virtues are still more difficult of estimation. That he assisted in a great work of ​reformation in the Church is undoubted, but that work was the work of the party in whose hands he was. If we look for any depth of family affection, we experience considerable disappointment. He suffered both his uncles—who, so far as he was personally concerned, never showed him anything but kindness—to perish in their blood, when a slight exercise of the virtues and wisdom attributed to him might at least have saved their lives. He suffered his sisters to be thrust from the throne, apparently without a pang; and coolly and formally stamped upon them with his own hand the base brand of bastardy, which it required no precocious genius to discern was false, and put forward only for the most sordid interests.
Still, whatever the merits or demerits of Edward VI., we must ever gratefully regard him as an instrument in the hands of Providence for the material and manifest furtherance of those institutions which have tended to build up England into what she is, and to mark her out, by her free and liberal spirit, and by her grand prosperity, from all the nations of the earth. So far as regarded the government of the kingdom at the time, nothing was less successful. The party, whichever it was, which had the king in their hands, were too much engrossed by their eager pursuit of the Church lands and of titles, to maintain the domestic prosperity and the foreign fame of England. Never did a country sink so rapidly in prestige, not even in tho miserably imbecile reigns of Richard II. and Edward II. The English forces were driven out of Scotland, after some bloody and wanton successes, and out of France without any success at all. Boulogne, the solitary conquest of Henry VIII., was surrendered on ignominious terms, and amid the most imperious airs of insult from the French ministers. Tho Queen of Scots, whose hand might have cemented the two countries into an eternal union, was driven into the arms of the French; and foreign nations ceased to respect the once great name of Briton.
At home the land was covered by homeless vagabonds, uncultured fields, insurrection, or sullen discontent. Tho enclosure of commons, and the rack-rents of land, drove the farmer from his grange, and the cotter from his cot. The beggar and the thief infested the highways; and, if we are to believe the preachers of the time, the corruption of morals kept pace with the rapacity of the statesmen and the degradation of the clergy.