by Derek Wilson
Family pride must have played its part in his decision. For Sir John, who had won his spurs on the field of battle and become a trusted companion of the sovereign, it must have been intensely frustrating to see the Dudley barons become objects of fun or pity. Striving to establish his own good name had toughened him and he was now not the sort of man who could stand by and see his once-great family dwindle into obscurity. It would be naive to suppose that personal wealth and prestige did not enter into John’s thinking. If his gamble paid off he stood to become one of the great landholders of the central shires. He already knew that the Lisle title would be his on his stepfather’s death and he was establishing an impressive estate to support the dignity.
Vital as these negotiations were for Sir John, they took place against a background of events that were immensely more momentous. Henry VIII had bludgeoned his way to the marriage annulment that he had so impatiently sought for six years and had found himself new men who were willing and able to do his bidding in the matter. The Norfolk clique had fondly imagined that once they had got rid of Wolsey there would be a return to the authority of the Council and that they would play a leading role in government. They were rudely disappointed. Rule by committee did not suit Henry’s style. He was a consummate actor who lived the dream of glorious imperial power, relying on a trusted subordinate to take care of all administrative matters (and to accept the blame when anything went wrong) and he did not want to change the system. His great good fortune – a fortune he neither deserved nor appreciated – was in being presented with ministers who had the rare talents necessary to handle the multifarious tasks of government. The man who emerged from Wolsey’s shadow was the lateral-thinking genius, Thomas Cromwell.
This self-made lawyer, entrepreneur and jack-of-all-trades was the same age as the Tudor dynasty. The son of a Putney brewer, he had had little in the way of a formal education but, as with many successful men down the centuries, this proved to be a positive advantage: it meant that the windows of his mind were not curtained by second-hand theories and also that he was spurred on to prove himself over against those born with greater advantages. By the 1530s he had travelled widely in Europe, seen military action, amassed a modest fortune through trade, practised successfully as a lawyer, become Wolsey’s indispensable right-hand man and survived the fall of his master by showing Henry possible answers to his most pressing problems – the impasse over his divorce and his empty treasury. Cromwell was, in some ways, a model for John Dudley. He was a man who clearly saw and boldly grasped opportunities that presented themselves. He was never daunted by the big idea. He read voraciously and possessed a library that was large for a non-scholar. No one understood more clearly than he the deep anticlericalism that gripped a substantial section of the populace. In a series of measured steps throughout the 1530s Cromwell acted through parliament to sever the link with Rome, to make his master supreme head of the church in England, to bring to an end the centuries-old monastic tradition; to appropriate for the Crown all the wealth of the dissolved houses, to set up the administrative machinery necessary for selling on, granting or leasing the estates, farms, buildings and building materials that now glutted the property market; to remove objects of ‘superstition’ from all parish churches and to make available to all the people the Bible in English.
In all this he had the eager support of the other man who, with Cromwell, stepped into Wolsey’s ample shoes. Thomas Cranmer was an obscure Cambridge don but more importantly a protégé of the Boleyns when Henry promoted him over the heads of all the English bishops to be Archbishop of Canterbury.
The king now very clearly saw the practical advantage of pursuing the policies advocated by the growing number of Protestant visionaries in his entourage. But he also had a genuine aversion to heresy, a trait which Catholic courtiers and councillors could make use of to frustrate the process of reform. Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor, was the passionate foe of those who were coming to be called Protestants. The Duke of Norfolk was a died-in-the-wool reactionary, who boasted that he never had and never would read the English Bible. Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Salisbury was the leading conciliar Catholic opponent of Cranmer. Beyond these there were several who deeply resented the injustice suffered by Catherine of Aragon and who heartily loathed Anne Boleyn. The remainder of the reign was marked by deep divisions within the inner circle of the king’s advisers and conflict between factions which had their supporters in the court, the City, the nation and the international diplomatic community. Everyone at court had to be careful about what he said and to whom he said it and anyone who was ambitious, as John Dudley certainly was, could not be neutral. The time had come to take sides on the great issues of the day.
There was no doubt that Thomas Cromwell was the man whose patronage could be the most valuable and Sir John was careful to cultivate him. However, we should not assume that he was motivated only by cynical self-interest. The two men had an affinity and Cromwell had good reason for extending his patronage to the soldier–courtier whose star was obviously in the ascendant. He needed supporters among those who were close to the king. The relationship between Cromwell and Dudley was definitely symbiotic. The first evidence we have of it is a note among the ‘remembrances’ Mr Secretary wrote for himself in order to keep tabs on the minutiae of the innumerable items of business that crossed his desk daily. In April 1534 he reminded himself to do something for Sir John Dudley regarding the prestigious household post of vice-chamberlain. Behind this simple aide-memoire lies a significant and convoluted story of family feuds, clashing religious convictions and competition for places at court.
The first strand concerns the vice-chamberlainship. The current holder was Sir John Gage, a well-respected courtier who had long enjoyed the king’s friendship. But, as a staunch Catholic, Gage was rigorously opposed to the new direction of royal policy. His happy relationship with the king came to an end in 1533 when Gage told Henry that he was unable to accept the putting away of Catherine and the installation of Anne as queen. Henry angrily banished him from the court and subsequently ordered him to be examined ‘about the Lady Catherine’. The king relented and no proceedings were taken against Gage but he, for his part, was in no hurry to seek a reconciliation. On the contrary, early the following year he renounced his court office and declared his intention to become a Carthusian monk. This news must have been something of a red rag to Henry, for the Carthusians were the most stubborn opponents of the divorce and, as an order, made no secret of their support of the pope. Under these circumstances the vice-chamberlainship became vacant and John Dudley applied for it.
This is where family conflict enters the story. The prospect of John Dudley benefiting from his action did not please Gage at all. The two men were cousins by marriage, Gage’s wife being the daughter of Richard Guildford, one of Sir Edward’s brothers. Whether there was longstanding personal animosity between the two Johns, as well as political and religious disagreement, we do not know. What is clear is that the events of the next few weeks permanently soured their relations. Dudley’s father-in-law Edward Guildford was by now very infirm. For some months he had been unable to fulfil his duties as Master of the Tower Armouries and Dudley had been deputizing for him. It seemed likely that he was not very long for this world and that the Dudleys would shortly inherit all his property. At the beginning of June 1534 Gage rode down to Leeds Castle in Kent where Guildford was currently living and tried to persuade the old man to make a will in favour of John Guildford, Sir Edward’s closest male relative. The fact that he volunteered the services of a lawyer who was one of his own kinsman and subsequently sought the intervention of Thomas, Lord De la Warr, John Guildford’s brother-in-law, suggests convincingly that Gage was part of a conspiracy to deprive the Dudleys of Jane’s inheritance. Sir Edward cheated them by dying before a testamentary document could be pushed under his pen. Notwithstanding this, John Guildford went immediately to Halden to try to take possession. He claimed that Gage had assured him that his un
cle had fully intended to nominate him as his heir. Such a claim, of course, had no standing in law and the Dudleys were eventually confirmed in possession of Sir Edward’s estate but not before John Guildford and his supporters had mounted a long campaign in which they tried to prove a Dudley–Plantaganet plot to alienate Sir Edward’s property from his family. It was at about the same time that Gage made his peace with the king and resumed his office of vice-chamberlain. We may wonder whether this volte-face was, in part at least, to spite John Dudley. Any such malice, however, could not harm Sir John who, immediately on his father-in-law’s death, had been given the Mastership of the Tower Armouries.
One problem with the fragmentary nature of surviving documentary evidence is the inevitable distortion that it involves. Court records tend to be preserved more carefully than many other kinds of written material and might suggest that our sixteenth-century ancestors spent most of their time invoking the law against each other and, by implication, harbouring grudges or mercilessly pursuing their legal rights. This was certainly not the case with John Dudley. In the 1530s he was engaged in an enormous empire-building exercise. This was largely fortuitous; the death of his mother and his father-in-law, the difficulties of the baronial family and, later, the sudden availability of vast tracts of former monastic land constituted a unique convergence of circumstances of which he energetically took advantage. Some of this activity certainly created ill-feeling and engendered long-running feuds. John had made a permanent enemy in Sir John Gage. But others with whom he was involved in litigation did not allow this to sour their relations. Self-interest often prevailed where a forgiving spirit did not. Sir John Dudley was becoming a man of consequence in good standing with the king and a friend of Thomas Cromwell. Most of his aggrieved relatives set aside prejudice and clamoured for his patronage. Even Arthur, the burglarious priest, made his peace with his upstart cousin and, as a result of John’s influence, was appointed Prebendary of Worcester.
Sir John’s relationship with his stepfather was respectful rather than affectionate. Arthur Plantaganet, Viscount Lisle, had received several marks of royal favour over the years and these culminated in his appointment as Lord Deputy of Calais, a post he took up in June 1533. This was no sinecure (in fact, involvement in the affairs of the tiny colony would bring about Lisle’s downfall) and Arthur and his family had to take up residence on the other side of the Channel. A fortunate result for us is that he had to exchange occasional letters with his stepson. One matter which involved some unpleasant wrangling arose out of the reversions that John sold to Edward Seymour. He asked for and received Arthur’s permission for the transaction and all proceeded very amicably until Seymour discovered and began exploiting a loophole in the legal arrangements. Having undertaken to pay rent on some of the property during Arthur’s lifetime, Seymour discovered that, through a faulty drawing up of the indenture, some land was not covered by this agreement and he declined to make the annual payment to which Lisle had believed himself entitled. Lisle, as he admitted in correspondence with his lawyer, was largely to blame because he had signed certain crucial documents without reading them. Nevertheless, he believed that the two young courtiers had conspired to defraud him and resorted to the law. The dispute dragged on month after month until Lisle’s advisers counselled that, though he had a good moral case, legally he had no leg to stand on. The aggrieved Viscount now appealed directly to Cromwell:
. . . Sir, I sustain great wrong but I remit it wholly into your hand and will abide your award in it . . . But I fear not but the matter being opened unto you as the truth is, you will say that I have sustained great wrong, and also that it were against reason that I should depart from possession during my life. And as touching Sir John Dudley, I think he may say I have rather used me like a father therein than a father-in-law [a sixteenth-century alternative for stepfather], as the King’s highness and the Council doth right well know. And I have little deserved towards them that he so should handle me.7
Another year passed before a conclusion acceptable to all parties was arrived at by order in Chancery.
From all this we might expect to discern a decided tension between Lisle and his stepson but while the lawyers were arguing the two men were exchanging friendly letters. Thus we find Sir John asking Plantaganet to buy a tilt horse for him in France, ‘for I can get none here for no money’ and passing on the latest news from court. He offers to act as host should the king while on progress call at Lisle’s manors of Painswick or Kingston Lisle – no small undertaking when we consider the size of the royal entourage that would expect to be housed and fed in suitable style. He assures his stepfather that if he needs to rest at one of the Dudley estates in Kent on his journey from Calais to London, ‘your lordship shall demand it as your own.’8 But we come closest to gaining a flavour of the relationship in a letter of October 1535. John forwards to Calais an affidavit requiring Lisle’s signature which was important to Dudley as he sought to counter the objections still being raised to his inheritance of the Guildford estate. Patiently he explains to the old man that one of the masters of Chancery has made a fair copy because ‘the other that you have already put your hand to is so scribbled that with pain it can be read.’ The writer, knowing what a poor head Lisle has for business, gives a careful précis of other support documents he is enclosing and cajoles his stepfather into a prompt reply: ‘this week that cometh the matter shall be heard between my adversary and me, wherefore it will be too late to send unto you again.’ He adds that in order to scotch any suggestion that his own marriage to Jane Guildford was part of a deep laid plot he has made it known that Plantaganet was actually against the union. ‘And this I have heard your lordship often say, which I trust is no dishonour to you to have the same reported but rather to your honour.’9 The whole tenor of John’s letters to Lisle is respectful and not without affection.
Guildford’s death brought John into public life in a new capacity; he was voted into parliament to fill the vacancy created by Sir Edward’s demise. There can be no doubt that he served Cromwell’s interest in the Commons nor that his presence at debates gave him a clearer understanding of the arguments being urged in favour of the wide-ranging revolution upon which the government was embarked. Cromwell needed his supporters in the lower house, for not all the measures placed before what has come to be called the ‘Reformation Parliament’ (1529–36) reached the statute book without significant opposition. By the time John took his seat the anti-papal campaign which had begun cautiously with attacks on clerical abuses was reaching a draconian crescendo. The Act of Supremacy formally endorsed Henry’s headship of the English church and required subjects to swear an oath affirming his position as their spiritual leader. Any who refused to do so were, by simple logic, traitors. It was Thomas More’s refusal of this oath that brought him to the block the following summer and which trapped many religious conservatives by making them liable to the appalling sentence of death by hanging, drawing and quartering.
The Supremacy Act was followed by a treason law which made it an offence to
maliciously wish, will or desire by words or writing or by craft imagine, invent, practise or attempt any bodily harm to be done or committed to the King’s most royal person, the Queen’s or their heir’s apparent, or to deprive them or any of them of the dignity, title or name of their royal estates, or slanderously and maliciously publish and pronounce, by express writing or words, that the King our sovereign lord should be heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel or usurper of the crown . . .10
It was now obvious to many that the Tudor regime was assuming dictatorial powers. But there was no longer any part of the political realm that could withstand it. Henry VII had broken the nobility and his son had now brought the church to heel.
But the government did not rely on force majeure alone to obtain the support of Lords and Commons. Men who paraded their enthusiasm for royal policy did so to attract or hold the attention of those who were in a position to reward their loyalty. After M
arch 1536 the Crown was able to be especially generous towards its supporters. That was the month in which the Act for the dissolution of smaller religious houses was passed. Parliamentarians, courtiers and others in the know had been waiting eagerly for this massive land grab, from which they had every hope of profiting. Early the previous year Cromwell had instigated an investigation of all church property and there were few who doubted that this was the precursor to confiscation. The only matter in doubt was the extent of the takeover. In the event, Cromwell decided as a first step to appropriate to the crown all religious houses with an annual value of less than £200 and having fewer than twelve inmates. To no one’s very great surprise the royal investigators concluded that all the monks, nuns and friars of these lesser houses
spoil, destroy, consume and utterly waste as well their churches, monasteries, priories, principal houses, farms, granges, lands, tenements and hereditaments, as the ornaments of their churches and their goods and chattels to the high displeasure of Almighty God, slander of good religion, and to the great infamy of the King’s Highness and the realm . . .11
We must place John Dudley among the enthusiastic supporters of government policy in parliament. He was by now joined hip and thigh to Cromwell. The minister was careful to take no one completely into his confidence but Dudley had definitely been admitted to his trusted inner circle and the two men were jointly involved in a variety of activities, both official and private. Sir John reports the suspicious activities of a Kentish priest. He describes the trial of a horse thief in Lichfield. He shares in land deals with Cromwell. And, in September 1535, he borrows the considerable sum of £1,400 from the minister in order to invest in yet more land in the West Midlands. The build up of his territorial base was proceeding apace and the apparent fact that he did not profit from the first tranche of monastic land to be made available was probably due to his being already financially extended. As soon as he obtained probate of the Guildford estate he set about dismantling it. Although he kept some Kentish property, he disposed of most of it in order to acquire more land in the vicinity of Dudley.
