by Derek Wilson
Item, Harper of Staffordshire was hardly dealt withall . . .
Item, one Cooke of Coventry was sore dealt withall . . .
Item, one Windial, a poor man in Devonshire, lay long in prison and paid £100 upon a very small cause . . .
Item, the Baron of Elton and Sir Southward of Lancashire and Sir Andrew Fortescue had very sore ends upon office of intrusions.
Foreigners had not escaped the scrutiny of royal agents:
Item, Peter Centurion, a Genoese, was evil entreated and paid much money and upon malicious ground, in my conscience.
The government had made use of biased and unreliable informants:
Item, one Simms, a haberdasher without Ludgate, paid and must pay £500 for light matters only upon surmise of a lewd quean . . .
Item, my Lady Perceval paid and must pay £1,000 for a light matter only upon the surmise of a lewd priest . . .
William Curtis, customer of London, and his sureties upon the light information of one untrue man paid £500.
Dudley even hinted at duplicity on the king’s part:
Item, Sir John Pennington paid 200 marks upon an obligation of 500 marks wherein he was bound not to depart without the king’s licence and yet for truth I was by when the king took him by the hand at his departure.5
Edmund was still compiling his damning catalogue when Henry VII died on 21 April 1509. His death was both expected and yet caught several people unprepared. The heir to the throne was still two months short of his majority – close enough to be of no real significance except to any bent on challenging the prince’s right of inheritance. There might well be demonstrations in favour of rival claimants. There were certainly Yorkist sympathizers waiting impatiently for the end of the regime and ready to set messengers galloping into the shires with the news. At the very least there would be crowds of angry petitioners thronging Westminster to obtain redress of their grievances. For the old king’s leading councillors and courtiers there was one overriding priority, survival. They needed to ensure a trouble-free succession and the continuance of their own positions of power and influence at the side of the new king. For two days Henry’s death was kept secret while members of the cabal made their plans. Some went to and from the royal bedchamber at Greenwich with smiles on their faces and nothing about their demeanour which might betray the doleful tidings. Others accompanied the new king to the Tower where they remained, ‘closely and secret’ according to Hall,6 arranging the precise sequence of events which would ease the transition to the reign of the second Tudor. They readily decided that public anger would be best assuaged if they could convince people that the harsh regime of Henry VII was to be buried with him; that the son was an altogether different proposition from the father. The most dramatic way to signal England’s emergence from a winter of discontent would be to throw some of the late king’s ministers to the wolves.
The contemporary chronicler, despite his immense admiration for Henry VIII, was quite clear about the seamy scheming which underlay the persecution of the selected victims. Scapegoats were put forward, Hall said, either ‘by malice of them that with their authority in the late King’s days were offended, or else to shift [to others] the noise of [blame for] the straight execution of penal statutes in the late King’s days’.7 There must have been much argument and anxious pleading behind locked doors as to who was to be given the black spot. If everyone who had been a party to Henry VII’s fiscal methods were to be brought to the bar of public opinion few would have escaped condemnation. It would be helpful to know about the rivalries and jealousies that pervaded the court and which came to a head in these frantic hours. Men scurried about the ancient, uncomfortable chambers and anterooms of the Tower’s royal lodgings, sought audience with the new king, forged alliances and activated their clientage networks. Those who had shared with the Prince of Wales in the camaraderie of the tiltyard and the tennis court and those whose mature counsel had rendered them indispensable to the king were in the strongest positions. Among the more vulnerable members of the royal entourage were those who had concentrated all their efforts on serving their royal master without giving sufficient thought to building personal power bases.
Four names came top of the poll of those whom the evolving administration of the second Tudor could most readily jettison: Sir Edward Belknap, William Smith, Sir Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley. Belknap, has his brief place in the record as a courtier/lawyer appointed by Henry VII in the summer of 1508 as Surveyor of the King’s Prerogative. This office came into being as part of the ongoing modernization of the bureaucracy connected with royal revenue. Henry had decided that the activities of the Council Learned needed the oversight of an individual and the fact that he was still casting an eagle eye over his prerogative rights must cast some doubt on his concern that he and his agents might have been over-zealous. As soon as Henry died Belknap realized that he had been left holding a hot potato. He hastily resigned and thereby ensured that his name was removed from the hit-list. Smith was not so lucky. At the beginning of Henry VII’s reign he had been a page in the royal chamber, an attendant who looked after the king’s clothes and helped him to dress. He was soon receiving little rewards and marks of approval, usually in the form of cash payments. These led to leases of Crown estates and numerous minor administrative offices, mostly in the north-west. By the turn of the century he was building up a tidy territorial empire. But he by no means abandoned his important position at the centre, becoming an indispensable agent of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Council Learned in the Law. Being away from court at the critical time, he was unable to marshal the support of influential friends. Orders went out from the Council for his arrest. He was brought back to London, stripped of all his offices and tried as an arch-informer. He spent several months in prison but once the new reign had got into its stride he was allowed to retire quietly to his Staffordshire estates.8
The death of Henry VII was made public on the evening of 23 April. The following morning members of the royal guard rode into Walbrook Ward to demand the surrender of Edmund Dudley and Richard Empson. They conducted the disgraced ministers, doubtless past jeering crowds, along Candlewick Street and Eastcheap to the Tower. The purge continued over the next few days as notorious promoters associated with Empson and Dudley were rounded up and exhibited in various pillories around the city. ‘Howbeit, the most craftiest knave of all, called John Baptist Brimald, escaped and came to Westminster and there took sanctuary.’9 Once the prisoners were safely lodged in the Tower, the new king and his Council had leisure to decide what to do with them. Their immediate inclination was to charge them, like Smith, with extortion. This was, after all, what most people wanted to see them punished for. But the men in power soon realized that such a course was fraught with problems, particularly since, to gain maximum propaganda effect there would have to be public show trials. Whatever the accused might say in their own defence would be sure to reflect on the late king and other members of his regime. Clever lawyers that they were, they would argue effectively that they had acted within the law, in obedience to their master’s wishes and in collaboration with their conciliar colleagues. Both men could point to the fact that they were so completely in the confidence of Henry VII that he had nominated them as executors of his will. Under the circumstances, it took several weeks for the government to decide how to achieve the condemnation of Empson and Dudley while avoiding serious consequences.
The charge eventually brought against the two scapegoats, in July, was one of high treason. Empson and Dudley, it was alleged, had plotted to gain control of the country by massing armed troops in London, seizing the new king (presumably by a direct assault on the Tower!) and setting up a regency council. The two main advantages of this scheme were that witnesses could be bribed or threatened to provide the necessary evidence and that, since the supposed crime had taken place during the new reign, the accused would not have the opportunity to introduce material relating to the former regime. The principal disadvantage was
the inherent improbability of the charge. The government proceeded cautiously, leaving nothing to chance. They decided to try the prisoners separately and to keep them apart to prevent them colluding in their defence. Empson was moved to Northampton for his trial, which did not take place until October. Dudley, by contrast, was arraigned on 16 July before a special commission of oyer and terminer (a judicial hearing to enquire into alleged crimes). The humiliating exhibition was staged in the cavernous Guildhall, where the largest number of gloating Londoners could be gathered to witness the degradation of the hated minister.
The accusation ran:
. . . on the quinzaine of St John Baptist, 1 Henry VIII that Edmund Dudley conspired with armed forces to take the government of the King and realm, wrote several letters to Edward Sutton of Dudley, knight, Thomas Turbeville, Thomas Ashburnham, William Scott, knight, Henry Long, Thomas Kynaston and John Mompeson to repair to him with all their power and caused these letters to be delivered to Richard Page and Angel Messenger, whereupon a multitude of armed persons came to London to the parish and ward aforesaid . . .10
The named correspondents seem to have been Edmund’s neighbours and tenants in the south of England, with the exception of his cousin, Baron Dudley. They were all in a parlous situation: the only way they could avoid implication in the ‘plot’ was to say what the prosecutors wanted them to say. ‘Co-operation’, on the other hand, might well bring its rewards. Can it have been entirely coincidental that Baron Dudley was admitted to the Order of the Garter on 18 May? As for the jury, any body of London citizens could be relied upon to react with alarm and indignation to the suggestion that Edmund Dudley planned to bring a small army into the City.
The verdict was a foregone conclusion and Dudley was, accordingly, convicted on 18 July. Even though the motivation of his accusers was wholly political, their case cannot have been built entirely on sand. In all probability Edmund did send the letters he was accused of sending. If he was one of the few royal servants to know of Henry’s death within hours of its occurrence, he would have shared the anxiety felt by all his colleagues in the inner circle and the realization that adequate safeguards needed to be put in place to ensure his own safety and a smooth transition to the new reign. In all likelihood every senior member of the regime did exactly what Dudley did: alerted his clients to be ready with arms and men to stave off any sudden crisis. It would always be possible to put a sinister gloss on such activity and that, it seems, is what brought down those few earmarked by the prominent court faction to bear the sins of the many.
How had Edmund Dudley spent the twelve weeks between his arrest and trial? It may have taken some days for him to get over the initial shock of disbelief, anger and fear but then he applied himself to attempts to escape his predicament. His first thought was to appeal to his former colleagues. He tried to make contact with the venerable Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester and Lord Privy Seal, and doubtless messages were despatched to other members of the Council, some of whom were working only a matter of yards away within the confines of the Tower. They were as ready to offer succour as they would have been to visit someone suffering from plague. Realizing that he was totally on his own and hampered as he was by not knowing the details of the charge being preferred against him, Dudley settled to preparing his defence. His confinement was probably not very arduous. He could afford to pay for reasonable quarters and luxuries not enjoyed by the common run of prisoners. He had books, ink and paper and time in plenty to employ his agile legal mind marshalling cogent arguments. In the event they availed him nothing. No one who had been closely involved in the workings of what passed for royal justice could have imagined that a state prisoner in Dudley’s position had the remotest chance of being acquitted. When he returned to his prison quarters after the trial he knew that a very unpleasant death awaited him, sooner rather than later.
It was now that he sat down with piles of his own records to write his ‘petition’, the document we have already referred to in which he listed eighty-four examples of royal extortion. The document was addressed to Fox and Sir Thomas Lovell, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Constable of the Tower by
me, Edmund Dudley, the most wretched and sorrowful creature, being a dead man by the king’s laws and prisoner in the Tower of London, there abiding life or death at the high pleasure of my sovereign lord (to whom I never offended in treason or thing like to it to my knowledge, as my sinful soul be saved) . . .11
Ostensibly Dudley wrote as one of the principal executors of the late king’s will to remind his fellow executors of their master’s wish that justice should be done to all who had suffered wrong. His motives, he declared, were the repose of Henry VII’s soul and the discharging of those still subject to bonds. ‘It were against reason and good conscience’, he argued, that ‘these manner of bonds should be reputed as perfect debts, for I think verily his inward mind was never to use them.’12
There is no reason to doubt Dudley’s religious sensibilities. He believed, as most contemporaries did, that the dead suffered spiritual consequences if their sins were left unforgiven. Despite his confinement he knew that men were murmuring against the late king. Even Bishop Fisher, preaching the oration at Henry’s funeral, had hinted at the unpopularity of the deceased now being openly voiced: ‘Ah, King Henry, King Henry, if thou were alive again, many a one that is here present now would pretend a full great pity and tenderness upon thee.’13 Dudley was loyal to his master to the end – and beyond. But there was more to his petition than that. He was drawing his plight to the attention of the new regime’s leaders and, while offering no overt criticism of Henry VII, was distancing himself morally from the late king’s decisions. He was also subtly reminding them that they had been just as involved as he in the policies of the old order. The recipients of this document took note of it – in secret. While using the information to alleviate the suffering of some of the individuals listed by Dudley, they continued to ignore the author.
At his trial in the autumn Empson rounded on his judges with an eloquent vigour which could only have confirmed for the survivors of the regime change just how potentially dangerous he and Dudley could be to them:
. . . whoever yet saw any man condemned for doing justice, especially when by the king, the chief dispenser of the laws, the whole frame of the proceeding hath been warranted and confirmed? . . . And will you alone hope to escape this heavy judgement? If contrary to all equity and example, you not only make precedents for injustice and impunity, but, together with defaming, would inflict a cruel death on those who would maintain them, what can we then expect but a fatal period to us all? . . . Only, if I must die, let me desire that my indictment be entered on no record, nor divulged to foreign nations; lest, from my fate, it be concluded, that in England all law and government are dissolved.14
He was, of course, sentenced and sent back to the Tower to await the king’s pleasure. After that – nothing. Weeks passed and neither the prisoners nor their families were given any news about the date of execution. They must all have begun to hope. Perhaps, like Smith, the condemned men would be quietly released after a suitable interval and allowed to retire into provincial obscurity. Some of Henry VIII’s councillors may even have suggested a show of royal clemency and there is just a chance that a few consciences were itching. The ex-ministers were not entirely without friends at court; it was even rumoured that the new queen, Catherine of Aragon, might use her influence on their behalf. Hope and fear prowled warily around each other like the lions and the mastiffs sometimes sent to bait them in the royal menagerie not a stone’s throw from the Tower’s prison accommodation. Then, with the new year, came fresh confusion. Parliament was summoned and its members took the opportunity to add their voices to the chorus of condemnation against the prisoners. A bill confirming the attainders of Empson and Dudley passed both houses. Yet it never received the royal assent and this piece of business lapsed when the members were sent home.
However, the renewed threat had been enough
to spur Edmund Dudley into making a desperate escape bid – or, at least, planning such a bid. When he heard that his attainder was being discussed in parliament he made preparations for a breakout with his brother, Peter, and a ‘kinsman’, James Beaumont. The escape was to have been effected with the aid of two of his servants. The scheme was abandoned for two reasons: his men refused to have anything to do with it and the parliamentary process was aborted. The failure of the attainder apparently persuaded the prisoner that royal mercy might yet rescue him and we would not know that Dudley had ever conceived of escaping from the Tower if news had not leaked out via one ‘Brimley’ in whom he had rashly confided. After this Dudley concentrated his efforts to secure his own future in completing his political treatise, The Tree of Commonwealth.
We must assume that he hoped, by this work, to impress the king with his political maturity; to show that he was the sort of seasoned and talented councillor that a young ruler needed at his side. Had he known the new monarch better he would have realized that Henry was far more interested in enjoying his sudden wealth, power and freedom than in poring over an elaborate and intricate piece of political allegory. The Tree of Commonwealth was nothing if not comprehensive as a manual for the edification of a Renaissance prince.
The effect of this treatise consisteth in three special points, that is to say: first in the remembrance of God and of the faith of his holy Church, with which every Christian prince hath need to begin; secondly of some conditions and demeanours necessary in every prince both for his honour and for the surety of his continuance; thirdly of the tree of commonwealth, which toucheth people of every degree, of the conditions and demeanours which they should be of.15
Dudley began with a Polonius-like lecture. The king should be a loving father to the English church and appoint conscientious bishops. He should care for the universities and encourage learning. He must be faithful to all foreign alliances. He ought to avoid dangerous sports. And Dudley (mercifully oblivious of the future) advised Henry VIII that if he remained true to his wife, God would bless him with healthy heirs.
