John Dudley and his allies were confident Mary would accept the overthrow of her father’s will by her brother, just as she had accepted those parts overthrown by the Protectorate in 1547, with land grants once again being used to sweeten the pill. As for Elizabeth, the Imperial ambassador heard that John Dudley’s eldest son would be divorced so he would be free to marry her. But from Elizabeth herself there was silence. Like Mary she was playing her cards close to her chest, watching and waiting on events. Edward’s Secretary of State, who also happened to be the surveyor of her estates, William Cecil, may have been her eyes and ears at court.
At Greenwich on 10 May there was a brief and brilliant distraction from the gloom cast over the court by Edward’s illness. The Company of Merchant Adventurers had sent three ships down the river to Greenwich to salute the king before they headed to seek a north-west passage to China. When news reached the palace of the ships’ approach, ‘the courtiers came running out and the common people flocked together standing very thick upon the shore, the Privy Council they looked out of the windows of the court and the rest ran by to the tops of the towers’.18 The ships were being towed by rowboats filled with sailors dressed in blue, while other sailors stood on the ships’ decks waving to their friends. There was no sign of the king, however, and as the guns fired their salutes before the ships sailed away on their voyage of discovery, he continued to lie in agony in his rooms.
Two days later the Imperial ambassador reported that it was considered certain Edward would die, and to contain the rumours that this was the case, three people who were overheard talking of it had ‘their ears torn off’. The marriages or betrothals of all the royal women who were still single, and not passed over in Edward’s will, were now to go ahead. The first were those of Lady Jane Grey and her pretty blonde sister, the twelve-year-old Katherine Grey. They took place during the last week in May, with Katherine’s groom, the fifteen-year-old son of William Herbert, brought from his sickbed to the ceremony.19 Edward sent gifts ‘of rich ornaments and jewels’, but it was becoming rapidly evident that he would not live long enough to see Jane or Katherine bear a son.
About a week later Edward made a small but important change to his will. He drew a line through the provision that Frances would rule as governor if he died before any male heirs were born, and inserted two short phrases above the line. The throne was to pass to Frances’ male heirs, but in the absence of such issue ‘before my death’ the throne was to pass to Lady Jane Grey ‘and her’ heirs male. Since Frances was not pregnant and had no sons, she was, effectively, ruled out as governor with the throne passing directly to Jane as queen regnant. The doctors suggested that Edward might live until September when Parliament was due to assemble, and his will could then be confirmed by statute. But since his survival for that length of time was uncertain, Edward summoned his senior judges to ratify his will immediately.
Edward could no longer hold down food and was weakened by a violent bout of fever. Nevertheless, when his judges arrived he gathered what strength remained to give them his instructions and secure his legacy of a Protestant England. The judges would later claim they only drew up the document after threats issued by John Dudley. But one way or another, they gave the will legal force, and Edward then summoned Frances to see him.20 She had little choice but to accept his decisions, as others would now be asked to do. On 21 June the nobility and leading officials were all asked to sign the document the judges had drawn up. It drew attention to the illegitimacy of Edward’s sisters, who were, Edward noted, only of ‘the half blood’, and gave stark warnings of the dangers of their marrying foreigners.21 By contrast there was praise for the Grey sisters, described as ‘natural born here within the realm, and . . . very honourably brought up and exercised in good and godly learning, and other noble virtues’.22 The Privy Council, Archbishop Cranmer, the officers of the household, civic dignitaries, and twenty-two peers all signed it and swore a solemn oath to uphold its provisions.
Elizabeth’s acceptance of the will was to be bought, as Mary’s had been, or so Dudley believed. On 26 June he acquired a reversionary interest in several of Elizabeth’s estates, including her largest land-holding at Missenden, Buckinghamshire; this gave him first refusal if the property became available either through the death of the owner or a proposed change of ownership, such as reversion to the Crown.23 Elizabeth would only have agreed to this if she had been promised something better in exchange. We don’t know what this was, but her first biographer, William Camden, recalled she was offered ‘a certain sum of money and great possession of land’ to accept Jane Grey as queen. Elizabeth had chosen to make the best of a bad situation.24
With the September parliament less than three months away, doctors and faith healers were ordered to do anything they could to keep Edward alive. This included, reputedly, dosing him with arsenic, and Edward’s subjects began saying that John Dudley was poisoning the king and intended to hand the country over to the French.25 It was clearly in France’s interest that Charles V’s cousin, Mary Tudor, not inherit, and the rumours grew after Dudley was seen entering the residence of the French ambassador.26 What he actually sought was the promise of French backing in the event that the emperor attacked England on Mary’s behalf when Edward died. The French were happy to give it.
On Sunday 2 July the contents of the king’s will were signalled to the public for the first time, with church services excluding the usual prayers for Mary and Elizabeth.
The following day, as Mary travelled to London to see her brother, she was warned Edward’s death was imminent. On 5 July news reached John Dudley that Mary was heading away from court for her house, Kenninghall, at the heart of her estates in Norfolk. From there she could flee to Flanders and the emperor. Dudley was persuaded to play it safe and ordered his third son, Guildford’s elder brother, Lord Robert Dudley, to pursue Mary with a small number of horsemen and bring her to London.
Edward was fading fast. Between eight and nine in the evening of 6 July he sighed ‘I feel faint.’ Gathered into the arms of a gentleman servant, he began to pray: ‘Lord have mercy on me and take my spirit.’ Edward’s reputation is that of a cold boy, remembered for signing the death warrants of his uncles, and whose religious beliefs associate him with the dour Puritanism of the Commonwealth a century later. But what little we glimpse of Edward the boy, rather than Edward the king, is of an affectionate youth prone to hero worship, keen to do the right thing, and with a boyish enthusiasm for funny acrobats, exciting sports and adventure. As Edward drew his last breaths, far away in the North Sea two of the three ships that had fired their salutes in farewell in May had scattered in the winds; but one captain heading into the unknown held his course, until he ‘sailed so far that he came at last to the place where he found no night at all, but a continual light and brightness of the sun shining on the mighty sea’.27 Edward’s suffering was over and the last Tudor king was dead. But the Tudor women were not finished yet.
Part Three
SETTING SUN: THE TUDOR QUEENS
Let men that receive of women authority, honour, or office, be most assuredly persuaded, that in so maintaining that usurped power, they declare themselves enemies to God.
JOHN KNOX, THE FIRST BLAST OF THE TRUMPET AGAINST THE MONSTROUS REGIMENT OF WOMEN (1558)
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NINE DAYS
AT TWO O’CLOCK ON THE HIGH-SUMMER AFTERNOON OF MONDAY 10 July 1553, Jane Grey’s barge arrived at the Watergate near the Tower. A sparse crowd was gathering to watch her formal procession to the fortress, which she would claim as all monarchs did on the eve of their coronation. Her young husband Guildford Dudley was with her, along with her mother and ladies, while other members of the nobility followed behind in their barges. As Jane reached the top of the steps John Dudley and his fellow councillors greeted her. A famous account given by the Italian merchant and knight Baptista Spinola adds an intimate description of the sixteen-year-old as the procession gathered and began to make its way slowly and with due p
omp down the streets:
This Jane is very short and thin, but prettily shaped and graceful. She has small features and a well-made nose the mouth flexible and the lips red. The eyebrows are arched and darker than her hair, which is nearly red. Her eyes are sparkling and light hazel. I stood so long near Her Grace, that I noticed her colour was good, but freckled. When she smiled she showed her teeth, which are white and sharp. In all, a graziosa persona and animata [animated]. She wore a dress of green velvet stamped with gold, with large sleeves. Her headdress was a white coif with many jewels. She walked under a canopy, her mother carrying her long train, and her husband Guilfo [Guildford] walking by her, dressed all in white and gold, a very tall strong boy with light hair, who paid her much attention. The new queen was mounted on very high chopines [clogs] to make her look much taller, which were concealed by her robes, as she is very small and short. Many ladies followed, with noblemen, but this lady is very heretica and has never heard Mass, and some great people did not come into the procession for that reason.
It paints a vivid picture of Jane before the great gates of the Tower closed behind her. Unfortunately, like so much about Jane’s life and reign, Spinola’s report is a clever mixture of fact and fiction. The description of a smiling girl was composed in 1909 by a historical novelist turned biographer called Richard Davey and has been slavishly quoted by historians ever since.1 In describing a teenager so small she has to wear stacked shoes to give her height, he paints a picture of innocence and vulnerability that chimes with myths concerning Jane Grey developed over centuries. They depict her in the appealing guise of a child victim who is never a player in her own fate. The real Jane was a far more interesting, as well as more ambivalent figure, than the idealised girl of this tradition.
On the eve of her coronation Jane Grey was less than two years younger than Henry VIII had been when he became king. She had not sought the crown that Edward had bequeathed her, but she believed that the Mass, for which Mary risked so much, was evil. Since only God could make a king, it can have been of little surprise to Jane that she had been chosen over Mary.2 The gathering crowd watching her procession were puzzled, however, not only that Mary (who had been accepted as Edward’s heir for a decade) had been passed over, but so had Jane’s mother, who was carrying her train. If Frances Brandon had transmitted her place in line of succession to a son this would have been understood and accepted – Margaret Beaufort had transmitted her right to her son, Henry VII – but for Henry VIII’s niece to serve her own daughter was a worrying reversal of the natural order.
At around four o’clock Jane and her glittering following disappeared behind the Tower’s huge walls. The gates closed, trumpets blew and the heralds began to read the royal proclamation of ‘Jane, by the Grace of God, Queen of England, France and Ireland’. It explained that Edward had appointed Jane his heir in letters patent, signed by himself along with his nobles, councillors, judges and ‘divers other grave and sage personages’; that Mary and Elizabeth had been excluded as illegitimate and because they might choose a husband who would impose a foreign government, and bring a ‘free realm into the tyranny and servitude of the Bishop of Rome’. When the heralds had finished reading they again proclaimed ‘Jane, Queen of England’ and cheered. In the crowd, however, people were shocked and some were also angry.
This was not yet a Protestant country. The break with Rome was recent in historical terms and had been deeply traumatic, while to the majority of Englishmen Protestantism remained an alien creed, begun in Germany.3 The proclamation also begged the question, what qualifications did Lord Guildford Dudley have to be a King of England? He had no royal blood. His grandfather was Henry VII’s servant Edmund Dudley, remembered for running a virtual protection racket in London and executed for treason in 1510. His father, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, had been Lord President of a hated regime. When in the previous year he had tried to marry Guildford to Jane’s cousin, Lady Margaret Clifford, there had been malicious rumours that he was aspiring to the crown. This was easier to believe now: after all, wives were expected to obey their husbands, and Jane’s husband was his son.
When the proclamation was read again at Cheapside a boy cried out that Mary was the rightful queen. Not that this mattered much. Even the Imperial ambassadors judged that Queen Jane had achieved a fait accompli. They advised Mary’s cousin and most powerful ally, Charles V, to accept that she had been passed over, arguing that ‘All the forces of the country are in [John Dudley’s] hands, and my Lady [Mary] has no hope of raising enough men to face him.’ As for the common sort, ‘there are troops posted everywhere to prevent the people from rising in arms or causing any disorder’.4 Mary was, however, about to demonstrate that she was made of sterner stuff than the Imperial ambassadors.
Mary’s reputation has, like Jane’s, been shaped for centuries by a combination of sexual and religious prejudice. In Mary’s case this is further complicated by the fact it is the heirs of her ideological opponents who have written her story. Even in the twenty-first century some popular historians continue to describe her as a hysterical, weak little woman, easily dominated by men. We are told ‘her upbringing . . . had not given her the skill of leadership’ and that she had ‘none of the guile and shrewdness necessary to succeed in the fickle world of Tudor politics’.5 She is ever the dark, damp little cloud to her sister Elizabeth’s glorious sun. Yet the truth is that Elizabeth had enjoyed far less useful training in the ‘skill of leadership’ than Mary had.6
Mary had been raised as her father’s heir until well into her teens and since 1543, aged twenty-seven, she had been her brother’s heir. For the previous five years Mary had also been a great landed magnate, a role held almost exclusively by men, but one in which she had had the example of her childhood governess, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury. The influence of Mary’s mother, Katherine of Aragon, also remained important. The late queen had played up to gender expectations, but the same woman who had sewn the banners for the army at Flodden had been prepared to send James IV’s head to her husband as a personal gift. Even Henry VIII had spoken with awe of Katherine of Aragon’s fierceness in war. Mary, far from having ‘none of the guile and shrewdness necessary’ for Tudor politics, knew very well the necessity of compromise and duplicity when playing for high stakes, especially from a position of weakness. She was also capable of acting with extraordinary courage and ruthlessness.
That morning a messenger from Mary had arrived at the Tower. When the message was read at Jane’s council table, those who heard it were ‘greatly astonished and troubled’. It demanded their allegiance to her as their rightful queen, ‘by act of parliament and the last testament and will’ of Henry VIII, and promised if they now returned to their duty, she would take their support for Jane thus far ‘in gracious part’. Mary needed the backing of the elite and this was her first bid to win back their loyalty. The shock for Jane’s council was that this meant the peaceful transition of power they had expected was to be denied them. Jane would have to fight for her crown. Fear of a brutal and protracted struggle, such as the wars of the previous century that had ended in the extirpation of the houses of York and Lancaster, was even more profound than the personal fear that if they picked the losing side they would pay for it with their lives. When Jane’s mother and mother-in-law were told of Mary’s letter they burst into tears.7 Bloodshed was inevitable.
The next day Jane’s proclamation was posted across London. It warned of severe punishment for those who opposed her and an example was set immediately with the boy who had cried out for Mary at Cheapside: he had his ears cut off. Jane now had to raise an army, and on Wednesday 12 July, Londoners were offered ten pence a day to fight in defence of her crown. It was not expected to be a long war. Jane announced that her coronation would be delayed for only two or three weeks and, in anticipation of her victory, she was brought the crown jewels to peruse.8
Yet worrying news was coming in by the hour. Mary had issued her own proclamation, declaring
herself queen in Norfolk and parts of Suffolk, and it was evident she was using her tenants and wider affinity as the platform from which to launch her claim. Mary’s household officers had been preparing for weeks, possibly months, for her exclusion from the succession, using her networks as the leading Catholic in England, as well as those of a great landowner. Knights and gentlemen were reported to be rallying to her cause, along with ‘innumerable companies of the common people’.9
Something had changed in England: in 1501 when Henry VII was ill, his children were overlooked as his possible heirs, with people showing a preference for the de la Poles, children of Edward IV’s sister, Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk, or Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, senior descendant of Thomas of Woodstock. In 1519 – ten years after Henry VIII came to the throne – the Venetian ambassador reported a continuing preference for Buckingham, while the last de la Pole was still in Europe hoping for his chance. By 1525 these two men were dead, and at the end of Henry’s reign the Tudors were being associated in the public mind not with their obscure Welsh antecedents, but as the family of the union rose, just as he had wished. In striking contrast to the fate of Edward V, the elder of the princes in the Tower, Edward VI had reigned for his natural lifespan, and now ordinary English people were rallying to a Tudor queen.
John Dudley, who had defeated the 1549 rebellion in Norfolk, was given the task of commanding Jane’s army against Mary. He left London on 14 July at the head of ‘the fairest band of gentlemen and others that hath been lightly seen upon a sudden’ and a ‘fearsome’ artillery train. But as he headed north-east, to the west a gentry-led rebellion exploded in the Thames Valley. Jane’s claim was a complex one, easily derided as no more than a clever fraud. Mary was soon being proclaimed in Buckinghamshire, while other counties were also turning against Jane as a ‘queen of a new and pretty invention’.10 It was in East Anglia, however, where the towns had been quick to proclaim Jane queen a few days earlier, that the rebel numbers were growing fastest. Mary had raised her standard at Framlingham Castle in Suffolk and even the Protestant elite of the region was being recruited to her cause.
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