The effect of these latest innovations was to bring the English Church still further into line with the austere Genevan or Calvinist model so admired by Jane Grey and her mentors; the Forty-two Articles of Religion published early in 1553 not only rejected transubstantiation and purgatory but embraced the Calvinistic doctrines of predestination and justification by faith alone. Whether or not this trend was maintained, however, obviously depended heavily on the king who, if he survived, would soon now be casting off the tutelage of his Council.
If he survived. … It was neither wise nor tactful to say such things aloud, but those with long memories must surely at times have recalled the unfortunate mortality record among young Tudor males when looking at their present king. There could still have been old men alive who would remember the death at Ludlow half a century before of the fifteen-year-old Arthur, prince of Wales. Edward’s bastard half-brother Henry Fitzroy had died at seventeen and his cousin Henry Brandon at twelve – not to mention all the boy babies who had died in their cradles. Nor was Edward himself the big, strong-looking child his father had been. His fair colouring and slender physique promoted an appearance of fragility which encouraged the emissaries of those Catholic powers alarmed by evidence of his increasingly belligerent Protestantism to drop hopeful hints in their dispatches that the king of England was not likely to live long.
All the same, at fourteen Edward seemed healthy enough. The legend of the pale, consumptive little boy confined for long hours in a stuffy schoolroom dies very hard but in fact, apart from a malarial-type fever contracted when he was four years old, he seems never to have suffered even a day’s illness during childhood. His timetable had always included provision for outdoor exercise and training in the sports and pastimes proper for kings and as he grew into his teens he would spend every spare moment on the tennis court, in the tiltyard or shooting at the butts. The Spanish ambassador reported that the king was beginning to exercise himself in the use of arms and enjoyed it heartily. The French ambassador complimented him on the dexterity of his sword-play, declaring that his majesty had ‘borne himself right well’, and receiving the modest reply from Edward that it was a small beginning, but as time passed he hoped to do his duty better.
Edward had also by this time begun to do his duty in other ways. On 14 August 1551 he had recorded in his Journal that it was ‘appointed that I should come to, and sit at Council when great matters were in debating, or when I would’,29 and shortly afterwards the Emperor’s ambassador reported that the king was now usually present at Council meetings ‘especially when state business is being transacted’. Informed observers, though, were in no doubt as to where the real power still lay and it was noted that Northumberland’s relationship with Edward was far closer than ever Somerset’s had been. According to one French account, ‘whenever there was something of importance that he [Northumberland] wanted done or spoken by the king without anyone knowing that it came from him, he would come secretly at night into the prince’s chamber after everyone was abed. … The next morning this young prince would come to his council and, as if they came from himself, advocate certain matters – at which everyone marvelled, thinking they were his own ideas.’30 John Dudley would listen deferentially to the royal opinion, while being careful to ensure that his own viewpoint should always be uppermost in Edward’s mind before he slept.
At the same time it was an important part of his strategy to bring Edward forward and introduce him to the more glamorous aspects of kingship and generally ensure that he was kept happy and entertained. A true Tudor, the king thoroughly appreciated the treats and attentions being showered on him. He was still keeping regular study hours, but under Northumberland’s tactful guidance his horizons were widening every day and he gave every sign of enjoying every minute of the experience.
Then in March 1552 Edward went down with a high temperature and a rash. He himself later recorded that ‘I fell sick of the measles and the smallpox’, but this would surely have been a lethal combination and the illness was more likely to have been an attack of measles or possibly chickenpox. He seemed to make a good recovery and was well enough to attend a St George’s Day service at Westminster Abbey, wearing his Garter robes. At the end of April the court moved out to Greenwich, where the king reviewed his men-at-arms on Blackheath and ran at the ring with the lords and knights in his company. On 27 June, apparently in his usual health and spirits, he left for Hampton Court on the first stage of an ambitious progress through the south and west which took him to Portsmouth by way of Guildford, Petworth, Cowdray Park, Chichester and Bishop’s Waltham. From there he went on to the Earl of Southampton’s house at Tichfield and then to Southampton, Beaulieu, Christchurch and Salisbury, where he stayed with the earl of Pembroke at Wilton. The return journey was made by way of Winchester, Basing, Newbury, Reading and Windsor, reaching Hampton Court again on 28 September.
The progress had been a triumphant personal success for the king, who had never travelled so far afield before, but the programme had been an exhausting one and people noticed that he looked pale and thin. That unlucky bout of measles, coming as it did just at the most dangerous age for Tudor boys and followed by a strenuous summer, had fatally weakened him so that by the time he got back to Westminster, two days before his fifteenth birthday, it seems highly probable that tuberculosis was already established. Girolamo Cardano, the eminent Italian physician and mathematician, had several conversations with Edward during October and was impressed by ‘the excellent wit and forwardness that appeared in him’ and thought him ‘a boy of wondrous hope’ – but at the same time he could see ‘the mark in his face of death that was to come too soon’.31
On 30 November Edward stopped writing in his Journal. Christmas was kept at Greenwich, where a more than usually elaborate round of festivities had been arranged, possibly to distract attention from the worrying fact that the king was now far from well. When Mary came up to London early in February he was running a fever and it was three days before he was able to see her, but the Emperor’s ambassador reported that the princess was received with noticeably more attention and courtesy than on previous occasions. A party of 100 gentlemen of the royal household, headed by Northumberland’s eldest son, had gone out ‘some way from the town to meet her’ and all the great ladies, headed by the duchesses of Suffolk and Northumberland, escorted her as she rode from her house in Clerkenwell through Fleet Street to Westminster, where ‘the Duke of Northumberland and the members of the Council went to receive her even to the outer gate of the palace, and did duty and obeisance to her as if she had been Queen of England’.32 No one had yet admitted that there was anything seriously the matter with the king, but the significance of the new respect being shown to his heir was unmistakable. Edward was still in bed and Mary sat beside him while they chatted amicably about safe subjects, ‘making no mention of matters of religion’.
Edward stayed in his room for the rest of the month and seemed, wrote the Imperial ambassador, ‘to be sensitive to the slightest indisposition or change, partly at any rate because his right shoulder is lower than his left and he suffers a good deal when the fever is upon him, especially from a difficulty in drawing his breath, which is due to the compression of the organs on the right side. It is an important matter for consideration’, continued Jehan de Scheyfve, ‘especially as the illness is increasing from day to day, and the doctors have now openly declared to the Council … that the king’s life is threatened, and if any serious malady were to supervene he would not be able to hold out long against it.’33 However, Edward rallied temporarily in March and was able to open the second parliament of his reign, although the Lords and Commons had to go to him and a much-curtailed ceremony took place within the precincts of the palace. He stayed at Westminster over Easter, still suffering from catarrh and a cough, and on 11 April was moved back to Greenwich, always his favourite residence. De Scheyfve reported on the 28th that he was no better and had only shown himself once, in the gardens, the day after his
arrival. The ambassador had heard ‘from a trustworthy source’ that the king was becoming steadily weaker. ‘The matter he ejects from his mouth is sometimes coloured a greenish yellow and black, sometimes pink, like the colour of blood.’34 On 12 May de Scheyfve had another gruesome bulletin for the Emperor:
The physicians are now all agreed that he is suffering from a suppurating tumour on the lung, or that at least his lung is attacked. He is beginning to break out in ulcers; he is vexed by a harsh, continuous cough, his body is dry and burning, his belly is swollen, he has a slow fever upon him that never leaves him.35
The government was still making every effort to conceal the gravity of the king’s condition from the public but although several people were imprisoned and ‘set upon the pillorie’ for uttering ‘most false and untrue reports touching the king’s majesty’s life’, it was impossible to stop the rumours spreading and as spring turned into summer the atmosphere in the city was thick with speculation and alarm.
FOUR
JANE THE QUENE
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 daughter. … This lady is very heretical and has never heard Mass.
Baptista Spinola, 10 July 1553
On 10 May 1553 three ships of the Company of Merchant Venturers, led by Hugh Willoughby in the Bona Esperanza and Richard Chancellor in the Edward Bonaventure, set out from the Port of London on a voyage of discovery to Muscovy and ‘unknown parts of the North Seas’. The fleet dropped downstream as far as Deptford and on the following day sailed past Greenwich, discharging their ordnance and shooting off their pieces in salute. They were watched by the king from a window of the palace, but this would be the last time that Edward was glimpsed by anyone outside the court and the common people who had flocked together, ‘standing very thick upon the shore’, were beginning to whisper that the king was dying, poisoned perhaps by the duke of Northumberland who planned to seize the throne for himself.
Everyone knew that the duke’s power would end with Edward’s death and few people believed that he would give up without a struggle, but Northumberland himself appears to have been gripped by a curious lethargy during the early months of 1553. He was no longer a young man, fifty on his last birthday, and his health was poor. He seemed tired, depressed and out of sorts, and in a letter to a trusted underling, William Cecil, dated 3 January, spoke of his careful heart and weary body, and of his desire to escape from ‘the multitude of cravers’ who daily hung about his gate clamouring for money and favours. What comfort was there for him, he asked mournfully, after his long travail and troublesome life, ‘and towards the end of my days?’ He had always served the king faithfully and now he wanted only to seek relief from his burdens. What, after all, should he wish any longer in this life, that had seen such frailty in it?1 But there could be no honourable retirement for a man in John Dudley’s place – having once mounted the tiger of ambition there was no way to go but on, for the sake of his family if for no other reason, and John Dudley was nothing if not a devoted husband and father.
It is impossible to be certain when he finally came to terms with the fact that the king was dying, although the inference is that he clung to a desperate hope of his recovery for far longer than was reasonable. As late as 7 May he was telling Cecil of ‘the joyful comfort which our physician hath this two or three mornings revived my spirit with, all which is that our sovereign lord doth begin very joyfully to amend, they having no doubt of the short recovery of his highness’.2
Whether or not the duke really believed the doctors, he was by this time beginning to weigh his options. These were limited. If the provisions of Henry VIII’s will were followed, Mary would succeed, and at least up until the end of April Northumberland was keeping her regularly informed about the state of her brother’s health and, according to de Scheyfve, had recently sent her a present of a blazon of her full arms as princess of England, which she had not borne since the days of the divorce. ‘This’, wrote the ambassador, ‘all seems to point to his desire to conciliate the said Lady and earn her favour, and to show that he does not aspire to the crown, as I said in my preceding letters.’3 Nevertheless, if Mary were to become queen, the best Northumberland could hope for must be total political extinction; the worst (and more likely), bodily extinction at the hands of the public executioner – he had made too many bitter enemies among the Catholics and other right-wingers who would surround her.
If Mary could somehow be excluded, there was always Elizabeth, now in her twentieth year, still unmarried and uncommitted except, perhaps, to the more moderate Protestant faction. Jehan de Scheyfve thought at one time that the duke was planning to use her as his instrument, either by marrying her to his eldest son, after first causing him to divorce his wife, ‘or else that he might find it expedient to get rid of his own wife and marry the said Elizabeth himself ‘.4 But Northumberland had no time to waste on such elaborate manoeuvres and, in any case, was well enough acquainted with Elizabeth Tudor to know that she would be nobody’s cat’s-paw. The princess had always been careful to keep on friendly terms with the duke, but there is absolutely nothing to suggest that she ever for a moment considered linking her fortunes with him, or indeed that he ever approached her on the subject. This left the Suffolk girls.
The previous year Northumberland had proposed his only remaining unmarried son, Guildford, as a match for the twelve-year-old Margaret Clifford, daughter of Eleanor Brandon, but this had been turned down by the young lady’s father. Now, suddenly on a date around the end of April or beginning of May 1553, the betrothal was announced of Guildford and Jane Grey. Lady Jane, it seems, had also attempted to reject Guildford Dudley but had been forced to consent to the engagement ‘by the urgency of her mother and the violence of her father, who compelled her to accede to his commands by blows’.5
The authority for this incident, which is faithfully and circumstantially retold by all Jane’s biographers, comes from a contemporary though second-hand report by two Italians, one of whom, Raviglio Rosso, visited England the following year on a courtesy mission from the duke of Ferrara, while the other was Federigo Baoardo, or Badoer, ambassador from the republic of Venice resident at the court of Emperor Charles V in Brussels. The Italians, especially the Venetians, were usually well informed, but they were also great gossips and these accounts are necessarily based on gossip and hearsay – not that there is anything inherently improbable about the story if Jane really did attempt to defy her parents. Once the Suffolks had dreamt of seeing their eldest daughter become queen consort of England. Now that an unimaginably greater prize was being dangled before them, they would certainly have dealt ruthlessly with opposition.
The reason given for Jane’s alleged recalcitrance was that she considered herself already contracted to Edward Seymour, earl of Hertford, an attractive and intelligent young man whose eligibility had, of course, died with his father. She is also said to have disliked Guildford Dudley, then about seventeen or eighteen years old. As the youngest of a large family and reputedly his mother’s favourite, Guildford may have been a little spoilt. A handsome boy, he may also have been a little conceited – though all the Dudleys were good-looking. Apart from this, there does not seem to have been anything very serious known against him; and marriage, as Jane would have been well aware, offered the only possible avenue of escape from the tyranny of home. Her recoil was, therefore, more likely to have been caused by fear and distrust of her prospective father-in-law than by any special repugnance for her prospective husband. It was noticeable that outside his own immediate family circle most people, even his political allies, tended to fear and distrust John Dudley, duke of Northumberland.
Whatever the truth of the matter, any rebellion was quickly suppressed. The duke and duchess of Suffolk had long since thrown in their lot with the Dudleys, and Jane’s attitude towards her fiancé became outwardly correct, if unenthusiastic
. Despite the convention that there should at least be some ‘liking’ between a betrothed couple, no one ever pretended that this was anything but an alliance cold-bloodedly arranged for the political, financial and dynastic advantage of the families concerned. (William Cecil heard later that the marchioness of Northampton, wife of Katherine Parr’s brother, William, had been employed as go-between.) Arrangements for two other highly significant family alliances were also concluded at this time. Katherine Grey, now thirteen, was betrothed to Lord Herbert, the earl of Pembroke’s heir, and a Dudley daughter, another Katherine, to Lord Hastings, son of the earl of Huntingdon and doubly descended from Plantagenet stock. Thus Northumberland and Suffolk hoped to secure the future support of Pembroke and Huntingdon, both influential figures on the political scene. Thus, too, the Dudleys had finally succeeded in breaking into the magic circle of royal kinship.
Jane Grey was married on Whit Sunday, 21 May, at Durham House, the duke of Northumberland’s London residence, one of the great riverside mansions lying between Temple Bar and Charing Cross – the millionaires’ row of Tudor London. It was, in fact, a triple wedding, creating a threefold line of defence, for Katherine Grey was married on the same day to the young Lord Herbert and Katherine Dudley to Henry Hastings. In spite of the haste with which the occasion had had to be organised, a great effort had been made to create an atmosphere of relaxed grandeur. ‘For the more solemnity and splendour of this day, the master of the wardrobe had divers warrants to deliver out of the King’s wardrobe much rich apparel and jewels.’ These were to be delivered to the three brides, their mothers and Lord Guildford Dudley, and included ‘certain parcels of tissues, and cloth of gold and silver’ once, ironically enough, the property of the duke and duchess of Somerset.6
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