by David Belbin
‘They mean to kill me,’ he said, as we hurried out of the palace.
I made no reply. I’d always thought of the Council as they. It scared me that now my uncle did, too. But I was distracted. It was bitterly cold when we left, yet, waiting in the Base Court, there was a huge crowd. Trumpeters announced my arrival. We crossed the moat, which was newly filled. Uncle Edward urged me to step forward. I took a deep breath and raised my hand.
‘Good people,’ I said, ‘I pray you to be good to us – and to our uncle.’
The crowd cheered. My uncle stepped forward and took my hand. When the crowd calmed a little, he made a speech.
‘I shall not fall alone. If I am destroyed, the King will be destroyed. Kingdom, commonwealth – all will be destroyed together.’ Then, to my surprise, he pulled me forward. ‘It is not I they shoot at,’ he shouted. ‘This is the mark they shoot at!’
That said, he led me into the courtyard, where we mounted our horses. As we rode out, I waved the jewelled dagger that my father had given me. The crowd cheered. I wanted to speak to them but Uncle Edward made us hurry on.
Our small party rode through the night. The autumnal air sent chills right through me. The journey was long and I wasn’t looking forward to arriving. Windsor was a drab, uncomfortable castle. I didn’t care to spend long there.
My uncle and I said little to each other as we rode. We were the same blood. He took my loyalty for granted. I believed him when he said we were both in danger. Yet this was worse than when Uncle Thomas had tried to break into my room. Then, the danger quickly passed. Only my dog had died. But now, if all the Council were against me, anything could happen. I might meet the same fate as Thomas. My sister Mary might be queen by the end of the week. Catholics across the land would rejoice. And my reforms would be over before they’d really begun.
We rode through the cold, windy night, arriving just before dawn. I went inside. The shabby castle was chilly and ill prepared for a visit. After I’d eaten a cold breakfast, there was a great commotion outside. When I went to look, there were three hundred men waiting. Archbishop Cranmer was at the front, having brought most of the men from Hampton Court. His long white beard (which he never cut in memory of my father) twisted in the chill wind.
‘What do you do here at such an hour?’ I asked the Archbishop.
‘Sir, suffice it that we are here,’ he replied.
I knew then that they were there to defend the castle from a siege.
12 John Dudley
I tried to sleep but dozed only briefly. I dreamt that Dudley was at the gates of Windsor Castle, ordering me to return to London. John Dudley, the Earl of Warwick, had been a renowned general during my father’s reign. During the recent uprisings, he had proved himself to be the greatest general we had. Even so, some people didn’t like him. They said he was too cagey, that he weighed up every situation until he saw how he could take advantage. But that was the way everybody behaved at court. Except for me. I was king by divine right. I had no need to manipulate others.
John Dudley was born a commoner, the son of one of my father’s lawyers. He had risen far. He was a Protestant who stayed friendly with the Catholics at court. Unlike Uncle Edward, John Dudley was a politician.
The next morning I woke to find I had a cough. I’d caught a chill during the ride. Normally, when I was ill, everyone fussed over me. Any person with the slightest illness was kept away. The best doctors were called for. That day, though, there were higher priorities. I wrapped up warm and concealed my discomfort.
Messengers sped between London and Windsor all day. My cold got worse. I began to feel I was in prison. I was a king, destined to live in the lap of luxury. I took the gardens and galleries of Hampton Court for granted. Windsor Castle was bleak, draughty. I did not want to die in a place like this.
Archbishop Cranmer tried to persuade my uncle to go to London, to negotiate. Nobody wanted a civil war and maybe he could prevent it. But Uncle Edward was proud, and wary. While he had me, he had power. We shared the same family blood. I could not desert him. I didn’t know what he’d do if I tried to. That night, he asked me to write to the Council. I stayed up late, coughing and spluttering, trying to decide what to put.
I needn’t have bothered. In the morning, my uncle dictated the words I must use to defend him before the Council: Each man hath his faults, he his and you yours … he meaneth us no hurt… He is our Uncle, whom you know we love … Proceed not to extremities against him. My uncle added his own assurances of good behaviour. I wished he had let me write my own letter. If they recognised my genuine voice, the members of the Council might do as I asked. But the letter was sent off with a messenger. We waited anxiously for a response.
The reply was a long time in coming. When it did arrive, the letter was written by John Dudley and delivered by Sir Philip Hoby. In it the Council begged the Protector not to frighten me and promised to treat him fairly. This letter, I later discovered, had already been read out to the crowds in London. The people supported Dudley. And why shouldn’t they? Uncle Edward’s time as Protector had not been a success. We had lost the war in Scotland. Prices had gone up by three times since my father’s reign.
Sir Philip Hoby told my uncle that he could keep his freedom and most of his lands if he surrendered the Protectorship.
My cold, meanwhile, was no better. I sweated, shivered and sneezed.
Two days later Sir Philip returned with a written promise from the lords of the Council. If my uncle submitted to arrest, he could keep his honours and his property. This was read out to me, in Uncle Edward’s presence. When he had finished, Hoby turned to me.
‘My Lord,’ he said, ‘don’t be afraid. If you should come to any harm, I will lose this.’ He was pointing at his neck. Then he pledged his loyalty to me.
My uncle withdrew into himself. He was angry and shaken. It was hard to know what he was thinking. He certainly didn’t confide in me. If he was worried about my health, he didn’t show it. Finally, he said to Sir Philip, ‘I will receive their lordships tomorrow.’
He stamped out of the room and I had to spend my third night in the castle, coughing and sweating and fearing for my life.
When I woke the next morning, my cold had mysteriously vanished. The lords of the Council had already arrived from London for breakfast at Windsor. After meeting my uncle, they lined up to kiss my hand. The Protector, they told me, had agreed to be placed under guard.
There followed a long meeting in which the members of the Council told me what was going on. There were many charges against my uncle, most of them to do with theft. He had, for instance, kept the thousand gold crowns that the City of London had given me on the day of my coronation. According to the Council, Uncle Edward had made himself rich while he kept me short of money. I still found it hard to believe that my wise, religious uncle was such a hypocrite. His greatest offence was the flight to Windsor which had made me ill. Putting the King’s life at risk was a serious crime. Uncle Edward was to be imprisoned in the Tower.
13 King at Last
I didn’t visit Uncle Edward in the Tower. Dudley persuaded me not to go. Instead, I promised my uncle mercy. When I told this to the Council, they seemed unsure of what to do. Dudley stood up and addressed them passionately. ‘My lords, we must return good for evil. It is the King’s will that his uncle should be pardoned, and it is the first matter he has asked of us. We ought to accede to His Grace’s wishes.’
Nobody spoke against him. Everything, I realised, had changed. From that meeting on, I felt as though I was finally, truly king.
On October 12th it was my twelfth birthday. Dudley came to see me. He wished me a happy birthday and then told me what was going on.
‘The Council has agreed there is no need to replace the Protector.’
‘Surely, with so many on the Council, you still need a leader?’ It was as clear to me as it was to everyone else that Dudley had assumed that role.
‘Yes, but your father’s will did not menti
on the need for a Protector. The Council has elected me as their president. I am happy to serve you in every way possible. But I say to you, Your Grace, in my view, you are as much king at twelve as you will be at twenty or forty. Your divine powers flow from your majesty, not from your age. You are the law, only answerable to our Lord God.’
I acknowledged this statement with a dismissive bow, remembering that Uncle Edward had once said something similar, then kept power to himself. Inwardly, though, I was pleased. When Dudley asked if there was anything he could do for me, I at once mentioned money. He told me that I could have as much as I wanted.
‘I would also like the return of my tutor, John Cheke, from Cambridge.’
‘He’s a fine man,’ Dudley said. ‘The university will be unhappy to lose him, but I shall send for him at once.’
He then begged permission to visit me at Hampton Court.
In a matter of days, it seemed, everything was sorted out to my satisfaction. Dudley made it clear that he supported my religious views. He even read a short book about religion which I’d written for my uncle the year before. My uncle had never got round to looking at it. Dudley had it published.
There were twenty-nine charges against Uncle Edward. Most concerned the theft of money or land. He admitted all the crimes and appealed for mercy. We fined him £2,000. This punishment, combined with the loss of the Protectorship, seemed enough. He was released from the Tower and told to live as a private man, keeping himself always at least ten miles from the King’s person. Two months later, he was allowed to return to court. His lands were restored and he was invited to eat dinner at my table.
Imprisonment had changed my uncle. His beard was greyer and his face was sallow, but it was more than that. His arrogance had gone. So had his passion. He was a defeated man.
In recognition of his great work as President of the Council, I decided to make Dudley, already Earl of Warwick, the Duke of Northumberland. He comes to see me often. We practise archery together and he consults me on every aspect of running the kingdom. Uncle Edward left the economy in a terrible mess, but at least the uprisings are over. John Dudley supports my religious reforms. He’s keeping a close eye on my sister Mary. When we meet, I argue with her, but in a friendly fashion. She says she’s too old to change her religion. We agree to disagree. This is easier for me than it is for her. In the end, to win the argument, all I have to do is stay alive. As long as I am king, Protestantism will remain the country’s official religion.
The other day, John Cheke suggested that I keep some kind of journal, a chronicle of my reign. I must not include my thoughts and feelings, only what happens. Even so, the act of writing things down makes me think about them in greater depth. I will have to choose my words more carefully than I have here. A king must not show fear or favour. So I end this account, with the country in good hands and my own spirits higher than they have ever been before.
Part Two: 1553
14 Royal Progress
I am fifteen. At night I sleep in the bed my father died in. Curiously, it is a kind of comfort. Doctors come and go, never telling me what they think. It is treason to predict the death of a king. Even to cast my horoscope could cost the astrologer his life. But you don’t need to be an astrologer to guess my future.
I kept the journal for two and a bit years, but I’ve given the thing up now. It was a waste of time, a schoolboy exercise. In it, I recorded the battles, religious reforms, even my engagement (to a French princess I never met), the masques and tournaments, the parades and the speeches I made. I would write down what happened, only what happened. Like this, written at the beginning of the year: The Duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Tower Hill between eight and nine o’clock in the morning.
That’s right. Both of my uncles are dead now. Uncle Edward died with more dignity than his brother. People cried outside the Tower. They say he was plotting against John Dudley: my uncle wanted to set up a coup to defeat Dudley, who’d done the same thing to him. The way I saw it, either man could dominate the Council on his own, but they couldn’t work together. So one of them had to go. Dudley, being the more ruthless, struck first.
It’s odd. My uncle became more popular after he stopped being Protector. The crowds cheered him before his execution. When a rumour spread that he’d been reprieved, there was dancing in the streets. Nobody believed the charges against him. Maybe his coup would have succeeded, if he hadn’t had his head chopped off first.
Now nobody trusts Dudley. They say that, for everything he does, he has at least four reasons. He’s too clever for his own good. I think he’s been unlucky. It’s the weather, you see. Under Uncle Edward, there were uprisings, but we had good harvests. Since Dudley took over, we’ve had nothing but rain. There was an epidemic of sweating sickness, too. Thousands died. John Cheke was nearly one of them. We’ve had no uprisings, only small riots. People are too sick to rebel.
I feel cheated. Haven’t I been a good little king? So healthy, so clever. So interested in religion, they talk about me becoming a saint. I’d have settled for becoming as good a king as my father. Just this spring, Dudley had Parliament bring forward the date of my majority. I will become all-powerful king next year, on my sixteenth, rather than my eighteenth birthday. I don’t know if I’ll last that long.
It was the Royal Progress that did me in. Dudley’s idea was for me to travel across the southern counties of the kingdom, staying in grand houses on the way. I would seal my popularity in the country and strengthen my alliances with the great families of my kingdom. At first, I enjoyed myself. But soon there was too much to do, too many people who wanted a piece of my time. I got fed up of making speeches, opening shipyards, crowds full of people wanting to touch me.
In August, after two months on tour, I was pale and ill. I thought I’d made a good recovery from the measles earlier in the year. The doctors insisted it was only exhaustion. We cancelled the rest of the tour, blaming lack of money. I stopped at Windsor, too ill to travel further. An Italian doctor told me all I needed was rest.
But then there were many disputes over my second prayer book, which occupied much of my energy. Christmas and New Year passed peacefully enough, but now I feel worn out.
I was plump as a child and hated it. I grew to loathe my fat-faced portrait. Over the last two years I have grown lean. My voice and face have become manly. But now my cheeks swell again, as does my belly. My image in a mirror sickens me. It is not fat, for I scarcely eat. There are other symptoms. I have a cough I can’t get rid of. I spit blood. I have a sickness. The doctors won’t tell me what it is.
The Council think all I care about these days is religion, but I keep my ear to the ground. Dudley has started acting friendly to my sister, Mary. He’s sent her money and authorised repairs to her estates. That can only mean one thing.
15 Succession
Forgive me if I make no sense, or repeat myself. I’m feverish. At the beginning of February, I took walks in the park and felt my health slowly recover. Then March approached and I felt worse than before. The month was set aside for a special Parliament to raise much needed money. I was too ill to travel to Westminster, so I opened the Parliament at Whitehall instead. This month, April, I came by water to my palace at Greenwich. As I left Whitehall there were loud gun salutes, both from the Tower and from three large ships, about to set off for Newfoundland. The noise made my head ache and I did not enjoy the journey as I usually do.
I have to put my house in order. I want to see my sister Elizabeth. She’s the one. She will be queen if I die young. Mary has always been in poor health. She won’t last. So Elizabeth will succeed. Unless Mary kills her. Which she might. There’s no love lost there. But Elizabeth knows how to play the game. Since her time living with Uncle Thomas and my stepmother, she has behaved impeccably, a true Protestant princess. Yet if I die, and Mary becomes queen, Elizabeth would convert to Catholicism, just to please her. She’s no fool.
What if Mary manages to marry, though, have a c
hild? She’s thirty-six, an old and ugly thing. But a queen is a queen. Some mighty men will be interested. Catholic men. Queen Catherine, my stepmother, had a baby at thirty-five, though it killed her. If Mary has a child … then the whole thing would go down the drain. If only I was old enough to marry and father a child. Bring me that clever girl, Lady Jane, the one my uncle Thomas wanted me to have. You were right, uncle! She’ll do. Sorry, you’re dead, aren’t you? I’ll see you soon, Uncle Thomas, pay back that money I owe you.
The old witch came to see me. They kept her waiting for three days but, in the end, they had to let her in. Hard to believe we were so close when I was a little boy. Last time I saw my sister Mary, I spent a couple of hours trying to persuade her to convert. She said that she was too old for a new religion. In the end we had to agree to disagree. Which is rubbish. Because we both know that, in this world, all that matters is how you prepare for the next world. Everything else is vanity.
Mary was shocked when she saw me. Didn’t even try to hide it. She wouldn’t get close, afraid of infection I suppose. I was too weak to say much. I coughed a lot and spat blood. She didn’t stay long. As soon as she’d gone, I cancelled the child masque which we’d planned for that night. Better to send the little mites home than let them catch a killing cold from their king.
Why should my bastard sister become queen? The tide of history is with me, and people are slowly changing. Many towns are setting up grammar schools. They want their children to be able to read and write. They name the schools after me. When the young can read for themselves, they will learn to love and obey the true religion. That’s all I care about, the religion that my father began but which Mary wants to destroy.
