Ida A. Taylor

“ At Lord Dorset’s house, though with closed doors, the condition of religious affairs must have supplied constant matter for discussion; and Jane will have listened to the conversation with the eager attention of an intelligent child, piecing together the fragments she gathered up, and gradually realising, with a thrill of excitement, as she became old enough to grasp the significance of what she heard, that men and women were suffering and dying in torment for the sake of doctrines she had herself been taught as a matter of course. ”

“ Speculations and forecasts as to the consequences had Edward lived are unprofitable. Yet one wonders what, grown to manhood, he would have become—whether the gentle lad, pious, studious, religious, the modern Josiah, as he was often called, would have developed, as he grew to maturity, the dangerous characteristics of his Tudor race, the fierceness and violence of his father, the melancholy and relentless fanaticism of Mary, the absence of principle and sensuality of Elizabeth. ”

“ Durham House, appropriated in his days of prosperity by Somerset—to the indignation of Elizabeth, who laid claim to the property—had been forfeited to the Crown upon his attainder, and was the dwelling of his more fortunate rival; and, as if to drive the lesson further home, the very cloth of gold and silver lent from the royal coffers to deck the bridal party had been likewise drawn from the possessions of the ill-starred Duke. The dead furnished forth the festal array of the living. ”

“ The safety, if not the life, of the man chiefly responsible for the conspiracy which had made her what she was, hung upon their loyalty to their vows, and Northumberland must have known it. But Lady Jane was to have her way, and the Council, waiting upon her, brought the welcome news to the Queen, who humbly thanked the Duke for reserving her father at home, and besought him—she was already learning royal fashions—to use his diligence. ”

“ It was a situation momentous alike to men whose fortunes had been staked upon the young King’s life, and to others honestly and sincerely solicitous regarding the welfare of the realm and the consequences to the new religion should his eldest sister succeed to the throne.
Every one of the Lords of the Council and officers of the Crown, with almost all the Bishops, save those who had suffered captivity and deprivation, had personal reasons for apprehension. Scarcely a single person of influence or power could count upon being otherwise than obnoxious to the heir to the crown. ”

“ We build up the unrecorded days of childhood from the79 few short years that followed; and reading backwards, and fitting the fragments of a life into its place, we find it difficult to believe that Jane Grey’s laughter rang like that of other undoomed children through the pleasant Chelsea gardens, that she shared with a whole heart in the games of her playfellows, or that the strange seriousness of her youth did not envelope the small, sedate figure of the child. ”

“ What she adored yesterday, to-day is her pastime. And if I now permit her to adorn and crown me, I must to-morrow suffer her to crush and tear me to pieces”—proceeding to cite Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn as examples of those who had, to their own undoing, worn a crown. “If you love me sincerely and in good earnest,” she is made to say, “you will rather wish me a secure and quiet fortune, though mean, than an exalted condition exposed to the wind, and followed by some dismal fall.” ”

“ At Court, as elsewhere, each of these three parties were standing on their guard, ready to parry or to strike a blow when occasion arose, jealous of every success scored by their opponents. The fall of Cromwell had inspired the Catholics with hope, and, with Gardiner as Minister and Wriothesley as Chancellor, they had been in a more favourable position than for some time past at the date of the King’s last marriage. It had then been assumed that the new Queen’s influence would be employed upon their side—an expectation confirmed by her friendship with the Princess Mary. ”

“ Henry, found in conversation with his attendant gentlemen, gave his wife a courteous welcome, entering at once—contrary to his custom—upon the subject of religion, as if moved by a desire of gaining instruction from her replies. Read in the light of what Katherine already knew, this new departure may well have been viewed by her with misgiving; and she hastened to disclaim the position the King appeared anxious to assign her. The inferiority of women being what it was, she said, it was for man to supply from his wisdom what they lacked. ”

“ The Duke of Norfolk, developing, as age crept upon him, an unwonted desire for peace and amity, had lately devised a method of terminating the feud between his heir and the Seymour brothers, so powerful, by reason of their kinship to Prince Edward, in the State. Not only had he revived a project for uniting his widowed daughter, the Duchess of Richmond, to Thomas Seymour, Lord Admiral, Katherine Parr’s former lover, but had made a further proposal to cement the alliance between the rival houses by marrying three of his grandchildren to Hertford’s children. ”

“ It was a strange arrangement; the more so that it was evidently concluded before the marriage of the late King’s widow to Seymour, a man one would imagine to have been in no wise fit to be entrusted with the sole guardianship of the little girl. But Dorset was ambitious; the favour of the King’s uncle, with the possibility of securing the King himself as a son-in-law, was not lightly to be forgone; and the sacrifice of Jane was made, not for the last time, to her father’s interest. ”

“ It does not appear whether or not Mary took the admonitions of her nine-year-old Mentor to heart. The pleasures of court life are not likely to have exercised a perilous fascination over the Princess, her spirits clouded by the memory of her melancholy past and the uncertainty of her future, and probably represented to her a more or less wearisome part of the necessary routine of existence. ”

“ It is impossible to avoid the conviction that, in spite of a surface boldness, the nobles of his day were apt to turn craven where personal danger was in question. On the battlefield valour was common enough, and when once hope was over men had learnt—a needful lesson—to meet death on the scaffold with dignity and courage. But so long as a chance of life remained, it was their constant habit to abase themselves in order to escape their doom. ”

“ The charge of poisoning was not so uncommon as to make it strange that it should be thought to have been instrumental in removing an obstacle from the path of an ambitious man. In Lady Jane’s pitiful letter to her cousin she stated—doubtless in good faith—that poison had twice been administered to her, once in the house of the Duchess of Northumberland—when the motive would have been hard to find—and again in the Tower, “as I have certain evidence.” ”

“ It was not the fault of Henry’s advisers that his aged father did not follow him to the grave. To have cleared Surrey out of their path was much; but it was not enough. The Duke’s heir gone, there were many eager to share amongst themselves the Norfolk spoils; Henry was ready to send his old servant to join his son; and only the King’s death, on the very night before the day appointed for the Duke’s execution, saved him from sharing Surrey’s fate. On January 28, 1547, nine days after the Earl had been slain, Henry was dead.
The end can have taken few people by surprise. ”

“ God save the King!’ The good Duke all the while stayed, and, with his cap in his hand, waited for the people to come together.”124
Whatever had been Sir Anthony’s errand, it had not been one of mercy; and when the excitement following upon the panic was calmed the doomed man and the crowd were alike aware that the people had been misled by hope, and that no pardon had been brought. It is at such a moment that a man’s mettle is shown. With admirable dignity Somerset bore the blow. ”

“ In spite of his unpopularity amongst the nobles, and though, to judge by the entries in the royal diary, the course of events was followed by his nephew with cold indifference, Somerset was not without his partisans. Constant to their old affection, the attack upon him was watched by the common people with breathless interest, accentuated by the detestation universally felt for the man who had planned his destruction. Hatred for Northumberland joined hands with love for Somerset to range them on his side. The political atmosphere was charged with excitement. ”

“ Northumberland, is expressed in every line. Should England prove disloyal, misfortune will overtake it as a chastisement for its sin; the Gospel will be plucked away and the Lady Mary replaced by so cruel a Pharaoh as the ragged bear. Her Grace—in marked contrast to the sentiments commonly attributed to the Duke—is doubtless more sorrowful for her brother than glad to be Queen, and would have been as glad of his life as the ragged bear of his death. ”

“ Some at least must have felt that property and life hung in the balance. But it was Northumberland who, as he had most to lose, had most to fear. The practical head of the State, and wielding a power little less than that of Somerset, he had amassed riches and offices to an amount bearing witness to his rapacity. In matters of religion he had been as strong, though less sincere, in his opposition to the Church claiming Mary’s allegiance as his predecessor. ”

“ Wriothesley, now Earl of Southampton, remained the solitary genuine adherent of the old faith belonging to the Council. His lack of caution in putting the great seal into commission without the authority of his colleagues afforded them an excuse for ousting him from his post of Chancellor; he was compelled to resign his office, and received orders to confine himself to his house, whilst Hertford, become Duke of Somerset, took advantage of his absence to obtain letters patent by which he became virtually omnipotent in the State. ”

“ The story of Katherine’s arraignment and condemnation will have spread through the land, with her protestations that, though not excusing the sins and follies of her youth—she was seventeen when she was done to death—she was guiltless of the action she was specially to expiate at the block; whilst men may have whispered the tale of her love for Thomas Culpeper, her cousin and playmate, whom she would have wedded had not the King stepped in between, and who had paid for her affection with his blood. ”

“ Most of the men accepted the alternative of throwing in their lot with Wyatt and his company, leaving their leaders to return without them to London. “Ye should have seen,” adds the diarist, from whom these details and many others of this episode are taken, “some of the Guard come home, their coats turned, all ruined, without arrows or string in their bow, or sword, in very strange wise; which discomfiture, like as it was very heart-sore and displeasing to the Queen and Council, even so it was almost no less joyous to the Londoners and most part of others.” ”

“ Could a man, acting by warrant of the great seal of England, and by the authority of the Council, be accused of high treason? And further, could he be judged by those who, implicated in the same offence, were his fellow-culprits?
The argument was quickly disposed of. If, as Mr. Tytler supposes,192 the Duke’s intention was to appeal to the sanction of the great seal affixed to Edward’s will, the judges preferred to interpret his plea, as most historians have concurred in doing, as referring to the seal used during Lady Jane’s short reign ”

“ At nine o’clock the scaffold was ready, and Sir John Gates, with young Lord Warwick, were brought forth to receive Communion in the chapel (“Memorandum,” says the chronicler again, “the Duke of Somerset’s sons stood by”) . By one after the other, their abjuration had been made, and the priest present had offered what comfort he might to the men appointed to die.
“I would,” he said, “ye should not be ignorant of God’s mercy, which is infinite. And let not death fear you, for it is but a little while, ye know, ended in one half-hour. ”

“ Of regret upon the part of friends or kinsfolk there is singularly little token. As they had fallen from his side in life, so they held apart from him in death. If Elizabeth mourned him she was already too well versed in the world’s wisdom to avow her grief, and is reported to have observed, on his execution, that a man had died full of ability (esprit) but of scant judgment.95 Whether or not the Lord Protector was troubled by remorse, he was not likely to make the public his confidant; and Katherine, the woman who had loved him so devotedly, was dead. ”

“ Upon Cranmer, if upon any one, Somerset, who had done more than any other person to establish religion upon its new basis, should have been able to count, if not for support, for a loyal opposition. But fear is strong and—again it must be repeated—fidelity to the unfortunate was no feature of the times; and by both Archbishop and Paget the cause of the falling man was abandoned. Not only did they secretly embrace the cause of the party headed by Warwick, but private directions were furnished by Paget as to the means to be employed in seizing the person of the Duke. ”

“ Nevertheless the Queen acted openly, and so far her husband had testified no dissatisfaction. Yet the practice must have served to accentuate the dividing line of theological opinion, already sufficiently marked at Court; some members of the royal household, like Princess Mary, holding aloof; others eagerly welcoming the step; the Seymours, Cranmer, and their friends looking on with approval, whilst the Howard connection, with Gardiner and Wriothesley, took note of the Queen’s imprudence, and waited and watched their opportunity to turn it to their advantage and to her destruction. ”