Lady Jane Grey

by Plowden, Alison

  In drawing up his son’s marriage treaty, Charles V was leaning over backwards in his efforts to take account of the delicate susceptibilities of the English and Philip himself was being instructed to choose his retinue with the greatest care, bearing in mind that they would be going to a country where strangers were not liked. ‘It is impossible’, wrote the Emperor, ‘to exaggerate the importance, both for present and future purposes, of gaining popularity and goodwill.’ Philip, too, must remember from the outset to ‘converse and be friendly with the English, behaving to them in a cordial manner’.32 Unfortunately, despite these good intentions, the English were currently in the grip of one of their periodic attacks of xenophobia, and many otherwise quite level-headed people were allowing themselves to be carried away by the scaremongering of such interested parties as the French ambassador and the radical Protestants, who were busy spreading rumours that a horde of Spaniards, all armed to the teeth, was poised to invade their shores, and that England was about to become a province of the Empire with the Pope’s authority reimposed by force. Nor were professors of the Gospel reassured by the fact that as from 20 December the Latin mass, such as was ‘most commonly used in the realm of England in the last year of the reign of our late sovereign lord King Henry VIII’, would again become the only legal form of divine service and married priests would no longer be allowed to minister to their parishioners.

  As the year drew to a close public alarm and suspicion were reaching the point where Antoine de Noailles felt the time had come to indicate how the situation could most profitably be exploited. Mary might have refused Courtenay, but there was always Elizabeth, ‘and from what I hear’, he wrote to the French king on 14 December, ‘it only requires that my Lord Courtenay should marry her, and that they should go together to the counties of Devonshire and Cornwall. Here it can easily be believed that they would find many adherents, and they could then make a strong claim to the crown, and the Emperor and the Prince of Spain would find it difficult to suppress this rising.’

  Certainly Elizabeth and Courtenay would have made a powerful combination. Indeed, the romantic appeal of this handsome, well-matched young couple, both of the English blood royal, ought to have been irresistible – but for one serious snag. ‘The misfortune’, admitted de Noailles, ‘is that the said Courtenay is of such a fearful and timid disposition that he dare not make the venture.’33 It was exasperating when so many influential people would have been willing to help, but there was no denying the fact that, for all his patrician breeding and winning ways, Courtenay had turned out to be a poor creature, with a vicious streak beneath the charm. He was plainly untrustworthy and would doubtless go to pieces in a crisis. However, de Noailles, who had to work with the material available, continued to hope that, carefully handled, he would make a useful tool. As for Elizabeth, the ambassador seems to have taken her cooperation for granted. Whether he had any grounds, other than his own wishful thinking, for making this assumption it is impossible to say; but if the princess ever did seriously contemplate raising a rebellion against her sister, the chicken-hearted Courtenay was surely the last person with whom she would willingly have joined forces.

  Nevertheless, ambitious plans for armed resistance against the proud Spaniard and ‘the coming in of him or his favourers’ were now being laid. They were still maturing on 2 January when the Imperial envoys, led by Count Egmont, arrived ‘for the knitting up of the marriage of the queen to the King of Spain’. Egmont and his colleagues landed at the Tower wharf to be greeted by ‘a great peal of guns’ from the Tower batteries, while on Tower Hill a reception committee headed by Edward Courtenay was waiting to conduct them ceremoniously through the city to Westminster, but ‘the people, nothing rejoicing, held down their heads sorrowfully’. On the previous day the embassy servants had been pelted with snowballs, but at least nothing was actually thrown at the distinguished visitors.34

  The treaty was signed on 12 January 1554 and three days later Stephen Gardiner addressed the assembled court in the presence chamber at Westminster, informing them officially of the queen’s forthcoming marriage and promising that ‘the queen should rule in all things as she doth now; and that there should be of the council no Spaniard, neither should [any Spaniard] have the custody of any forts or castles; neither bear rule or office in the queen’s house or elsewhere in all England’.35 Philip was to observe all the laws and customs of the country, and if Mary died first he would have no claim on the realm.

  This should have been enough to satisfy the most exacting Englishman, but unfortunately the rising tide of panic and prejudice sweeping the country could no longer be stemmed by reason. The mindless rallying cry – ‘We will have no foreigner for our king’ – had temporarily driven out common sense, and within a week word reached London that Sir Peter Carew was up in Devonshire ‘resisting of the King of Spain’s coming’. Almost simultaneously news came in that Sir Thomas Wyatt, son of the poet, was up in Kent ‘for the said quarrel, in resisting the said King of Spain’; that Sir James Crofts had departed for Wales ‘as it is thought to raise his power there’; and that the duke of Suffolk and his brothers had mysteriously vanished from Sheen.

  The fourfold rising had originally been timed for March – to coincide with better weather and the expected date of Philip’s arrival – but that ‘young fool of a Lord Courtenay’, always the weak link, had lost what little nerve he possessed and blabbed to Gardiner; either that, or the Lord Chancellor, becoming suspicious, had wormed a confession out of his protégé. At any rate, he told all he knew about ‘the enterprise of Peter Carew and his companions’.36 The other conspirators, not knowing to what extent their plans had been betrayed, but too deeply committed to draw back, were thus scrambled into premature action.

  The movement in the West Country had always depended heavily for success on Courtenay’s presence, on the prestige of his name and his strong family connections with the area. Without him it died at birth and Peter Carew was obliged to leave hurriedly for France, while James Crofts never even got as far as Wales. But in Kent things were different. By 26 January Thomas Wyatt and his friends had taken possession of Rochester and the crews of the royal ships lying in the Medway had gone over to him with their guns and ammunition.

  A hastily mustered force, consisting of men of the queen’s guard and the city’s trained bands under the command of that ancient warhorse the duke of Norfolk, was dispatched to counter the threat, but the Londoners and a good proportion of the guard promptly defected to the rebels amid rousing cries of ‘We are all Englishmen!’ In the words of one Alexander Brett, they preferred to spend their blood in the quarrel of ‘this worthy captain Master Wyatt’ and prevent at all costs the approach of the proud Spaniards who, as every right-thinking Englishman knew, would treat them like slaves, despoil them of their goods and lands, ravish their wives before their faces and deflower their daughters in their presence.37

  Thus encouraged, Wyatt pressed on towards the capital and on 30 January he was camped around Blackheath and Greenwich, putting London into an uproar of alarm and confusion, and for a couple of tense days the loyalty of the citizens hung in the balance. It was Mary herself who really saved the situation. Reacting like a true Tudor, she ignored advice to seek her own safety and marched into the city to make a fighting speech in the crowded Guildhall that not even Elizabeth could have bettered. ‘I am come’ she said, ‘in mine own person, to tell you what you already see and know, how traitorously and rebelliously a number of Kentish men have assembled against us and you. …’ All this pother about her marriage, she declared scornfully, was no more than a ‘Spanish cloak’ to cover an attack on her religion and she went on:

  Now, loving subjects, what I am ye right well know – I am your Queen, to whom at my coronation, when I was wedded to the realm and the laws of the same, you pronounced your allegiance and obedience. And that I am the right and true inheritor of the crown, I take all Christendom to witness. My father possessed the same regal estate, and to him ye
always showed yourselves most faithful and loving subjects; and, therefore, I doubt not that ye will so show yourselves likewise to me. … Good subjects, pluck up your hearts, and like true men stand fast against these rebels, both our enemies and yours; and fear them not, for I assure you, I fear them nothing at all.38

  Her audience rose to her, and when Wyatt reached Southwark on 3 February he found the bridge closed and defended against him.

  It was a long time since London had last had an army at its gates and ‘much noise and tumult was everywhere’ as shops were shuttered, market stalls hastily dismantled and weapons unearthed from store. Children stared wide-eyed at the Lord Mayor and his aldermen riding about the streets in unaccustomed battle array, ‘aged men were astonished’ and women wept for fear.39 The queen had refused to allow the Tower guns to be turned on the rebels in case the innocent inhabitants of Southwark were harmed, and after three days’ uneasy stalemate Wyatt withdrew his men from the bridge foot, marching them upriver to Kingston, where they crossed to the northern bank and turned eastward again. But the steam had gone out of them now. They were tired and hungry and too much time had been wasted. Yet still they came trudging on through the western suburbs, reaching Knightsbridge on the morning of Ash Wednesday, 7 February. There followed some rather indecisive skirmishing with the royal forces, commanded by the earl of Pembroke, round St James and Charing Cross, and there was some panic at Whitehall when, in the general turmoil, a cry of treason was raised within the palace as a rumour spread that Pembroke had gone over to the enemy. ‘There’, remarked one observer, ‘should ye have seen running and crying of ladies and gentlewomen, shutting of doors, and such a shrieking and noise as it was wonderful to hear.’ But although her very presence chamber was full of armed men and the sporadic gunfire from Charing Cross was clearly audible, the queen stood fast, sending word that she would tarry to see the uttermost. She asked for the earl of Pembroke and was told he was in the field. ‘Well then,’ answered Mary, ‘fall to prayer, and I warrant you we shall hear better news anon; for my lord will not deceive me I know well.’

  On this occasion, at least, her confidence was not misplaced. Wyatt and some of his followers got through Temple Bar and on down Fleet Street, but found Ludgate barred and strongly held by Lord William Howard, the Lord Admiral. It was the end for Wyatt. He himself had ‘kept touch’, as he said, but when it came to the point his friends in the city had failed him. He sat for a while in the rain on a bench outside the Belle Sauvage inn and then, realising it was hopeless, turned back towards Charing Cross. Fighting flared again briefly as Pembroke’s men came up and the men round Wyatt prepared to sell their lives dearly, but the bloodshed was stopped by Norroy herald who approached Wyatt and begged him to give himself up, rather than ‘be the death of all these your soldiers’, and adding: ‘Perchance ye may find the queen merciful.’ Wyatt, soaked, exhausted and confused, hesitated for a moment and then yielded.40

  The rebellion was over and the grim business of rounding up the prisoners began. But the queen’s troubles were only just beginning, for either she must bow to the will of the people, so violently expressed, and abandon her marriage plans, or she must stand firm. Mary did not hesitate. Deeply hurt, angry and bewildered, she knew she must stand firm and that meant she could no longer afford the luxury of showing mercy.

  SIX

  THE END OF THE LADY JANE

  If my faults deserve punishment, my youth at least and my imprudence were worthy of excuse. God and posterity will show me favour.

  Jane Grey

  Jane of Suffolk and her husband were to lose their heads, might indeed have already done so, wrote Simon Renard to the Emperor on the day after that momentous Ash Wednesday.1 It was, of course, inevitable that Jane Grey would be the first victim of the government’s new hard-line policy. Innocent she might have been of any complicity in the duke of Northumberland’s coup, and innocent she undoubtedly was of complicity in Wyatt’s rebellion – but this did not alter the fact that her continued existence had now come to represent an unacceptable danger to the state. Her own father’s recent behaviour alone made that abundantly clear.

  Henry Grey, duke of Suffolk, who owed his life and liberty entirely to Mary’s generosity, had repaid her by attempting to raise the midland shires against her marriage and had been deeply involved with Wyatt. Summoned to court on 26 January, he told the messenger that he was on the point of hastening to the queen’s side. ‘Marry’, quoth he, ‘I was coming to her grace. Ye may see I am booted and spurred ready to ride; and I will but break my fast and go.’2 Instead he rode northwards and was next heard of at Stony Stratford. He subsequently turned up in the towns of Leicester and Melton Mowbray, issuing proclamations against the Spanish marriage and ‘to avoid strangers out of the realm’, but he gathered little or no support. ‘I trust your grace meaneth no hurt to the queen’s majesty,’ said the mayor of Leicester anxiously. No, no, answered Suffolk, laying his hand on his sword. ‘He that would [do] her any hurt, I would this sword were through his heart, for she is the mercifullest prince, as I have truly found her … in whose defence I am and will be ready to die at her foot.’3 All the same, Coventry barred its gates to him and by this time the earl of Huntingdon was in hot pursuit.

  Increasingly isolated, and ‘perceiving himself destitute of all such aid as he looked for among his friends in the two shires of Leicester and Warwick’, the duke fled to his nearby manor of Astley, where he and his brother John ‘bestowed themselves in secret places’ within the park.4 The story goes that they were betrayed by a keeper named Underwood, and that the duke was found concealed in the trunk of a hollow tree and Lord John buried under a pile of hay. Some accounts add the picturesque detail that the duke’s hiding place was sniffed out by a dog, whose barking led the hunters to their quarry.5

  The assertion that Suffolk had re-proclaimed his daughter during this unprofitable excursion round the shires appears to be false – certainly it is explicitly denied by the Chronicles of Holinshed and Stowe. But either way it hardly matters. What did matter was that Jane had been nominated as heir by the late King Edward, who was now equipped with a fully formed Protestant halo, and that she had once been publicly proclaimed queen. What was more likely, in the present highly volatile political situation, than that she might again be used as the figurehead of some Protestant plot? Few people urged this view more strongly than men like the earls of Arundel, Pembroke and Winchester, so recently prominent Protestant plotters themselves, and who – with the prospect of the imminent arrival of a strong-minded Spanish consort before them – were more than ever anxious to see any awkward reminders of their past indiscretions permanently obliterated. ‘They that were sworn chief of the council with the Lady Jane, and caused the Queen [Mary] to be proclaimed a bastard through all England,’ wrote a contemporary (he was Bishop Ponet, Gardiner’s successor in the see of Winchester), ‘… afterwards became counsellors, I will not say procurers, of the innocent Lady Jane’s death: and at this present are in the highest authority in the Queen’s house.’6 This seems to indicate that even at this eleventh hour Mary would have saved Jane if she could, but neither Mary, for all her obstinate, conscientious courage, nor Jane, with her formidable intellectual capacity and passionate intensity of conviction, was a match for the desperate, ruthless men who surrounded them. Both in their different ways were the helpless prisoners of their circumstances.

  Guildford Dudley was to die with his wife, and their execution date was originally fixed for Friday 9 February. But although the queen had been unable to save her cousin’s life, she was determined to make a last-minute effort to save her soul, and Dr Feckenham, the new Dean of St Paul’s, was sent over to the Tower with a few days’ grace to see what he could do with this especially obdurate heretic. In his late thirties, comfortably stout and pink-faced, John Feckenham had a reputation for persuasiveness. A kind-hearted man, able and sensible, he was also unusually liberal for a cleric in that embattled age. Jane received him politely, telling h
im that he was welcome, if his coming was to give Christian exhortation, and prepared to engage in the stimulating cut and thrust of theological debate for what would surely be the last time. But when Feckenham began by expressing sympathy for her ‘heavy case’, she cut him short. ‘As for my heavy case, I thank God, I do so little lament it that rather I account the same for a more manifest declaration of God’s favour toward me, than ever he showed me at any time before.’ Therefore, there was no need for anyone to lament or be grieved over her present predicament, it ‘being a thing so profitable for my soul’s health’.

  She defended the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone, parrying Feckenham’s ‘St Paul saith, “If I have all faith without love, it is nothing”,’ with a sharp retort: ‘True it is; for how can I love him whom I trust not, or how can I trust him whom I love not? Faith and love go both together, and yet love is comprehended in faith.’ Of course it was right for a Christian to do good works ‘in token that he followeth his master Christ’. But ‘when we have done all, yet we be unprofitable servants, and faith only in Christ’s blood saveth us’.

  The discussion then touched on the correct scriptural number of sacraments. Jane would only allow two – the sacrament of baptism, by which ‘I am washed with water … and that washing is a token to me that I am the child of God’; and the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, ‘a sure seal and testimony that I am, by the blood of Christ, which he shed for me on the cross, made partaker of the everlasting kingdom’.

  ‘Why? What do you receive in that sacrament?’ demanded Feckenham. ‘Do you not receive the very body and blood of Christ?’ This, of course, was always the crux of any argument between the two creeds, and Jane’s response came prompt and confident. ‘No, surely I do not so believe. I think that at the supper I neither receive flesh nor blood, but bread and wine; which bread when it is broken, and the wine when it is drunken, put me in remembrance how for my sins the body of Christ was broken, and his blood shed on the cross.’