While King Edward was in the process of subduing his sister, John Dudley was plotting to destroy the king’s uncle Somerset once and for all. The master manipulator had already assumed the highest offices in government, capping his climb by creating himself Duke of Northumberland—a reflection of the considerable power he now possessed. He had also won Edward’s total confidence by flattering the boy, encouraging him to exercise more royal authority, and especially by presenting himself as a passionate religious reformer. Now only Somerset stood in his way.
Though Somerset had been allowed to resume his place on the council, Northumberland (as Dudley was now called) deliberately provoked and marginalized him to such an extent that the former Protector sought to ally himself with the religiously conservative faction of peers and counselors, including the king’s sister Mary. It was a perfect trap. Though there is some evidence that Somerset and his allies plotted to bring down Northumberland, the extent of their plans remains murky. What is certain, though, is that Northumberland pounced, manufacturing evidence that Somerset had plotted to kill him and capture the king.
Somerset was tried and, though acquitted of treason, condemned for the felony of unlawful assembly. His nephew the king—probably under the influence of Northumberland—was convinced of his guilt and seemed indifferent to his fate. “Let the law take its course,” Edward reportedly remarked. He signed his uncle’s death warrant, and when the execution was carried out on January 22, 1552, he had very little to say about it in his journal: “The Duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Tower Hill between eight and nine o’clock in the morning.”
The apparent lack of family feeling the young king showed over his uncle’s violent demise would be even more evident when he moved against his sisters.
Edward VI is often thought of as a sickly boy who barely made it through his six-year reign. In fact, though, he was quite vigorous, with a love of tennis, hunting, and other sports. It was not until January 1553 that the fifteen-year-old king began to ail significantly.
“He does not sleep except when he is stuffed with drugs,” one medical observer reported on May 28. “The sputum which he brings up is livid, black, fetid and full of carbon; it smells beyond measure.… His feet are swollen all over.”
With his body failing, King Edward was determined to preserve the religious revolution inaugurated during his reign. He cut his Catholic sister, Mary, out of the succession, and even his Protestant sister, Elizabeth, as well.† The crown would descend instead upon his Protestant cousin Lady Jane Grey—granddaughter of Henry VIII’s younger sister Mary Tudor (see Tudor family tree, this page)—who was quickly married that May to Northumberland’s son Guildford. The daughters of Henry VIII, stripped of their birthright and declared bastards, were to “live in quiet order, according to our appointment.”
It was an act “both remarkable and revolutionary,” wrote Chris Skidmore. “Edward was abandoning his family, turning against the traditional laws of inheritance and his late father’s wishes. Instead, he would create a new dynasty, one founded upon the one true faith.”
Having completed this betrayal of Mary and Elizabeth, Edward VI died on July 6, 1553, mostly likely of tuberculosis. One queen succeeded him as his disease-wracked corpse moldered unburied; another was in for the fight of her life.
* Josiah was an ancient king of Judah who came to the throne at the age of eight, destroyed pagan altars and images, and restored the true scripture to his people.
† Both Mary and Elizabeth were declared “illegitimate and not lawfully begotten” in Edward’s “Devise for the Succession,” and thus unfit to inherit.
3
Lady Jane Grey (1553):
The Nine Days Queen
She is now called Queen, but is not popular.
—BAPTISTA SPINOLA
Although she was called “queen,” Lady Jane Grey was never anointed as such, nor recognized by the majority of the people.
As King Edward VI lay gasping his final breaths, the Duke of Northumberland scurried to seize power. He had already forced the marriage of his son Guildford to the king’s designated successor, Lady Jane Grey. Now he tried to coax the legitimate queen, Edward’s sister, Mary, back to London. The duke sent word that Mary’s place was by her dying brother’s side. But it was a trap, for while Northumberland’s words were soothing, his intent was lethal. “It is to be feared that as soon as the king is dead they will attempt to seize the princess,” reported the imperial ambassador.
Mary heeded the warning about the duke’s plans for her destruction. Instead of going to attend to her brother at Greenwich, she headed north to her estate at Kenninghall, barely escaping before her home was raided by Northumberland’s son Robert. The duke was incensed, declaring that Mary had “gone towards the provinces of Norfolk and Suffolk, being the coast opposite Flanders, with intent to involve the kingdom in troubles and wars, and bring in foreigners to defend her pretensions to the crown.”
While one queen fled Northumberland’s clutches, another squirmed miserably within them. Poor Jane Grey had no desire to rule England, or right. “Her nightmare lay in her awareness that she had become the prisoner of a power-hungry, unscrupulous junta, led by the man whom she feared above all others,” wrote biographer Alison Plowden. The frightening father-in-law who had been foisted upon her would now complete his unscrupulous rise to power by seeing her crowned.
The teenaged girl was horrified to find her parents, once tyrannical figures in her life,* now kneeling in obeisance among other powerful personages. This seemed to make real her inescapable fate. Queen Jane was then taken to the Tower, where English monarchs traditionally held court before their coronations. Baptista Spinola, a Genoese merchant, recorded the scene:
Today I saw Lady Jane Grey walking in a grand procession to the Tower. She is now called Queen, but is not popular, for the hearts of the people are with Mary, the Spanish Queen’s [Katherine of Aragon’s] daughter.… She walked under a canopy, her mother carrying her long train, and her husband Guildford walking by her, dressed all in white and gold, a very strong boy with light hair, who paid her much attention. The new Queen was mounted on very high chopines [shoes with a specially raised cork sole] to make her look much taller, which were concealed by her robes, as she is very small and short. Many ladies followed, with noblemen, but this lady is very heretical [Protestant] and has never heard Mass, and some great people did not come into the procession for that reason.†
Reaction to the news of Jane’s accession had indeed been decidedly cool, though not because she was Protestant. Mary was simply the rightful queen. “No one present showed any sign of rejoicing” when Jane was proclaimed, an imperial envoy reported, “and no one cried ‘Long Live the Queen!’ except the herald who made the proclamation and a few archers who followed him.” Any dissension was ruthlessly crushed by Northumberland’s henchmen. One young barman named Gilbert Pot was arrested “for speaking of certain words of Queen Mary, that she had the right title.” He was then set upon a pillory and had his ears lopped off.
Jane herself was painfully aware of how illegitimate her rule was, and that she was Northumberland’s puppet. Even so, since she had been used for her Tudor bloodline, she was not about to share power with her nonroyal spouse. “I sent for the earls of Arundel and Pembroke,” Jane later wrote to Queen Mary, “and said to them, that if the crown belonged to me I should be content to make my husband a duke, but would never consent to make him king.”
This decision of Jane’s, which seems to have dominated most of her brief two-week reign, infuriated not only Guildford Dudley, with all his kingly pretensions, but also his mother, the grasping Duchess of Northumberland, who, Jane wrote, “persuaded her son not to sleep with me any longer as he was wont to do.” After that, she related, “I was compelled to act as a woman who is obliged to live on good terms with her husband; nevertheless I was not only deluded by the Duke and the Council, but maltreated by my husband and his mother.”
While Queen
Jane was preoccupied with her pouty husband and nasty in-laws, Queen Mary was a fugitive with few prospects. Even the envoys of her powerful ally and cousin, Emperor Charles V, believed her cause to be hopeless. The Duke of Northumberland seemed invincible.
“Dudley had with him some three thousand mounted men and foot soldiers, thirty cannon from the Tower, and as many cartloads of ammunition,” wrote Mary’s biographer Carolly Erickson. “He controlled the capital, the government, the treasury, and the queen. No commander was superior to him in experience or skill; he seemed to have every advantage.”
But, for all that, the people hated him. To most he was a wicked upstart, mad with power. Mary, on the other hand, was Henry VIII’s own daughter—a princess who had endured much pain and heartbreak, and who was now being denied her birthright by a monster. In a steady procession, people began to rally to her banner. It was a spontaneous eruption of support by a people unwilling to see their rightful queen displaced.
Mary had been reminded by the council that she had been “justly made illegitimate and uninheritable to the Crown Imperial of this realm,” and warned not to bother the loyal subjects of “our Sovereign Lady Queen Jane.” Now Northumberland was preparing to answer her impudence.
It was Jane Grey’s father, the Duke of Suffolk, who was originally charged with subduing the growing movement around Mary and capturing her. Upon learning this, however, Jane burst into tears and begged that her father remain with her in London. The task then fell to Northumberland and his sons. “Since ye think it good,” the duke said to the council, “I and mine will go, not doubting of your fidelity to the Queen’s majesty which I leave in your custody.”
Northumberland was wily enough to know that the men around him were all driven by self-interest, and that by leaving London he was exposing himself to betrayal should events turn in Mary’s favor. Thus, he reminded them that he and his companions were risking their lives “amongst the bloody strokes and cruel assaults” of the enemy with the trust that the council would protect their interests at home. He warned anyone who might violate that trust and “leave us your friends in the briars and betray us” that he could in turn destroy them. More important, it would be a damnable betrayal of the sacred oath of allegiance they had sworn “to this virtuous lady the Queen’s highness, who by your and our enticement is rather of force placed therein [upon the throne] than by her own seeking and request.” The duke then concluded by praying that the council “wish me no worse speed in this journey than ye would have to yourselves.”
As Northumberland’s force prepared to leave London to “fetch in the Lady Mary … to destroy her grace,”‡ the rightful queen of England was rallying her supporters at Framlingham Castle, a stronghold she possessed near the Suffolk coast. It was a vivid display of royal might as Mary rode among the thousands gathered in her name, stirring them into battle. “Long live our good Queen Mary!” they shouted. “Death to traitors!”
It was far from the reception Northumberland received. “The people press to see us, but not one sayeth God speed us,” the duke noted to a companion as they rode through the village of Shoreditch. In addition to the lack of popular support for his mission, Northumberland was faced not only with dissension among his own ranks but with desertion as well. Then came the crowning blow to his cause: A fleet of seven warships he had sent up the coast to prevent Mary from escaping now switched to her side. “After once the submission of the ships was known in the Tower,” wrote an eyewitness, “each man then began to pluck in his horns.”
The betrayal Northumberland had feared became real as he received “but a slender answer” from the council on his request for reinforcements. As town after town came out for Mary, the men who had sworn allegiance to Jane less than two weeks earlier abruptly switched sides. On the afternoon of July 19 they publicly proclaimed Mary queen, prompting a spontaneous eruption of joy in the city.
“As not a soul imagined the possibility of such a thing,” one eyewitness reported, “when the proclamation was first cried out the people started off, running in all directions and crying out: ‘The Lady Mary is proclaimed Queen!’ ”
While people celebrated wildly in the streets, Lady Jane was all but abandoned in the Tower. Even her father walked away, but not before ripping down the royal cloth of estate that had hung over her chair. Meanwhile, Northumberland surrendered in Cambridge without a struggle. He was arrested by one of his own confederates, the Earl of Arundel, who only a week before had sworn to die for him.
“I beseech you, my lord of Arundel, use mercy towards me, knowing the case as it is,” Northumberland said.
“My Lord,” answered Arundel, “ye should have sought for mercy sooner; I must do according to my commandment.”
The once mighty duke was pelted with stones and insults by the outraged populace as he was led to the Tower in chains. “A dreadful sight it was,” wrote the imperial envoy Simon Renard, “and a strange mutation for those who, a few days before, had seen the Duke enter London Tower with great pomp and magnificence when the Lady Jane went there to take possession, and now saw him led like a criminal and dubbed traitor.”
With her mortal enemy now locked away, Queen Mary rode triumphantly into London among cheering crowds. She was dressed to dazzle in purple velvet, adorned with pearls and precious stones. And though she bore the marks of bitterness and deprivation that had stolen her youth, she was prepared to be merciful to her enemies.
Northumberland would, of course, have to die for his high crimes, which he did after making a dramatic repudiation of the Protestant faith he had espoused, but Lady Jane would be spared. The so-called Nine Days Queen swore to Mary in a long letter that she had never willingly participated in Northumberland’s plans: “For whereas I might have taken upon me that of which I was not worthy, yet no one can ever say either that I sought it … or that I was pleased with it.”
Though Jane remained in the Tower, it was expected that she would be released before long. After all, her father was free after having been forgiven for his part in Northumberland’s conspiracy, and her mother enjoyed high favor in the court of her cousin the queen.
All seemed well until Mary made a momentous decision that would rock the kingdom, destabilize her throne, and destroy Jane Grey.
* Jane once confided to a tutor her miserable situation at home: “For when I am in the presence of either Father or Mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else, I must do it as it were in such weight, measure and number, even so perfectly as God made the world; or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea presented sometimes with pinches, nips and bobs and other ways … that I think myself in hell.”
† Spinola also left a vivid description of the teenaged usurper: “This Jane is very short and thin, but prettily shaped and graceful. She has small features and a well-made nose, the mouth flexible and the lips red. The eyebrows are arched and darker than her hair, which is nearly red. Her eyes are sparkling and reddish brown in color. I stood so near her grace that I noticed her color was good but freckled. When she smiled she showed her teeth, which are white and sharp. In all a gracious and animated figure. She wore a dress of green velvet stamped with gold, with large sleeves. Her headdress was a white coif with many jewels.”
‡ As recorded in the diary of a London merchant by the name of Henry Machyn.
4
Mary I (1553–1558): Bloody Mary’s Burning Desire
This marriage renders me happier than I can say.
—QUEEN MARY I
Queen Mary I became the first woman to rule England in her own right after defeating the Duke of Northumberland and his puppet, Jane Grey, in 1553. The Catholic queen’s five-year reign was a disaster, most notably because of her fierce persecution of Protestants, which has blighted her reputation ever since. Even her marriage was a failure.
Shortly before she became infamous as Bloody Mary, England’s first queen regn
ant was a blushing bride. She had come to the throne in 1553, after enduring decades of appalling abuse and neglect. Her father had cruelly discarded her mother, Katherine of Aragon, and terrorized Mary as a young woman for refusing to acknowledge herself as a bastard and him as Supreme Head of the Church in England. Then, under the reign of her fanatically Protestant half brother, Edward VI, she was threatened for practicing her Catholic faith and, in the end, deprived of her rightful place in the succession. Now, a year after her triumphant accession, the woman who once described herself as “the unhappiest lady in Christendom” was absolutely giddy with anticipation.
The queen’s betrothed was her younger cousin Philip of Spain, son of Emperor Charles V. Mary had been reluctant about the match at first, fearing not only the reaction of her xenophobic subjects to a foreign prince but Philip’s reaction to her. She was pushing forty and was totally inexperienced with the opposite sex. Philip, on the other hand, was eleven years younger and known for his way with the ladies. It took some gentle coaxing from the emperor, in whom she put all her trust, before the queen was convinced. Once she was, Mary became like a giggly schoolgirl. All her hopes and dreams were now focused on Philip, the dashing prince who she believed would not only help her bring England back to the pope in Rome but would satisfy her deepest longings for love.
The queen told the emperor’s representative, Simon Renard, that he “had made her fall in love with [Philip],” then added jokingly that “his Highness might not be obliged to him for it, though she would do her best to please him in every way.”
One person stood in the way of the queen’s happiness, however, and that was Lady Jane Grey. Mary had forgiven her young cousin for accepting the crown, and was even prepared to release her from the Tower. But then a rebellion broke out in opposition to the queen’s proposed marriage to Philip, and Jane’s father, the Duke of Suffolk, was one of the ringleaders. The rebels were decisively crushed, but Simon Renard made it clear to the queen that the emperor would never allow his son to come to England while Jane Grey still lived as the focus of future uprisings. “Let the Queen’s mercy be tempered with a little severity,” Charles V said. And so on February 12, 1554, the Nine Days Queen, not yet seventeen years old, lost her head.*
Behind the Palace Doors Page 3
