CHAPTER XV 1553 The King dying--Noailles in England--Lady Jane married to Guilford Dudley--Edward's will--Opposition of the law officers--They yield--The King's death.

The King was becoming rapidly worse, and as his malady increased upon him, strange suspicions were afloat amongst the people, their hatred to Northumberland giving its colour to their explanation of the situation. He himself, or those upon whom he could count, were ever with the sick boy, and hints were uttered—as was sure to be the case—of poison. For this, murmured the populace, had the King’s uncles been removed, his faithful nobles disgraced; and the condition of public opinion caused the Duke, alarmed at its hostility, to publish it abroad that Edward was better.142

In May a rally appears to have in fact taken place, giving rise in some quarters to false hopes of recovery, and Mary wrote to offer her congratulations to her brother upon the improvement in his health. On May 13 the new French ambassador, Noailles, whose audience had been deferred from day to day, was informed by the Council that their master was so much better that he would doubtless be admitted to the royal presence in the course of a few days. The doctors told a different story, and Noailles believed the doctors. A diplomatist himself, he knew the uses of lying perhaps too well to condemn it severely. That the King was dying was practically certain, and though those whose object it was to conceal the fact lest measures should be concerted to ensure the succession of the rightful heir, might do their best to disguise the fact, the truth must become known before long.

Meantime the French envoy, in the interest of the reformed party in England—not by reason of their religion, but as opposed to Mary, the Emperor’s cousin—was quite willing to play into Northumberland’s hands, and to assist him in the work of spreading abroad the report that the King’s malady was yielding to treatment. He and his colleagues were accordingly conducted to an apartment near to the presence-chamber, where they were left for a certain time alone, in order to convey the impression that they had been personally received by the sovereign. Some days later it was confessed, but as a peril past, that Edward had been seriously ill. He was then stated to be out of danger, and the ambassadors were admitted to his presence, finding him very weak, and coughing much.143 The rally had been of short duration. Hope of recovery had, in truth, been abandoned; and those it concerned so intimately were forced to face the situation to be created by his death. 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. That most of them would be displaced from their posts was to be expected. 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. During the preceding autumn the iconoclastic work of destruction had been carried on in the metropolitan Cathedral; the choir, where the high altar had been accustomed to stand, had been broken down and the stone-work destroyed.144 Gardiner and Bonner, who, as prominent sufferers for the Catholic cause, would have Mary’s ear, were in prison. For all this Northumberland, with the King’s Council as aiders and abettors, was responsible. Not a single claim could be advanced to the liking or toleration of the woman presently to become head of the State. If safety was to be ensured to the advisers of her brother, steps must be taken at once for that purpose. Northumberland and Suffolk set themselves to do so.

It was on May 18 that Noailles and his colleagues had been at length permitted to pay their respects to the sick boy. On Whitsunday, the 23rd—the date, though not altogether certain, is probable—three marriages were celebrated at Durham House, the London dwelling-place of the Duke of Northumberland. On that day the eldest daughter of the Duke of Suffolk became the wife of Lord Guilford Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland’s fourth and, some say, favourite son; her sister Katherine was bestowed upon Lord Herbert, the earl of Pembroke’s heir—to be repudiated by him the following year—and Lady Katherine Dudley, Northumberland’s daughter, was married to Lord Hastings.144

The object of the threefold ceremony was clear. The main cause of it, and of the haste shown in carrying it through, was a dying boy, whose life was flickering out a few miles distant at Greenwich. It behoved his two most powerful subjects, Northumberland and Suffolk, to strengthen their position as speedily as might be, and by this means it was hoped to accomplish that object.

The place chosen for the celebration of the weddings might have served—perhaps it did—to host and guests as a reminder of the perils of those who climbed too high. 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.

That day, with its splendid ceremonial—the marriages took place with much magnificence in the presence of a great assembly, including the principal personages of the realm—presents a grim and striking contrast to what was to follow. None were present, so far as we know, with the eyes of a seer, to discern the thin red ring foretelling the proximate fate of the girl who played the most prominent part in it, or to recognise in death the presiding genius of the pageant. Yet the destiny said in old days to dog the steps of those doomed to a violent death and to be present at their side from the cradle to the grave must have stood by many, besides the bride, who joined in the proceedings on that Whitsunday. Where would Northumberland be that day year? or Suffolk? or young Guilford Dudley? or, a little later, the Bishop who tied the knots?

How Jane played her part we can only guess, or what she had thought of the arrangement, hurriedly concluded, by which her future was handed over to the keeping of her boy husband. Whether willing or unwilling, she had no choice but to obey, to accept the bridegroom chosen for her—a tall, handsome lad of seventeen or nineteen, it is not clear which—and to make the best of it. Rosso indeed, deriving his information from Michele, Venetian ambassador in London, and Bodoaro, Venetian ambassador to Charles V., states that after much resistance, urged by her mother and beaten by her father, she had consented to their wishes. It may have been true; and, standing at the altar, her thoughts may have wandered from the brilliant scene around her to the room at Greenwich, where the husband proposed for her in earlier days was dying. She might have been Edward’s wife, had he lived. She can scarcely have failed to have been aware of the hopes and designs of her father, of those of the dead Admiral, and of others; she had, in a measure, been brought up in the expectation of filling a throne. But the plan was forgotten now. Edward was to be the husband neither of Jane nor of that other cousin, not of royal blood, the daughter of his sometime Protector, whose father was dead and mother in the Tower; nor yet of the foreign bride, well stuffed and jewelled, of whom he had himself bragged. He was dying, like any other boy of no royal race, upon whose life no momentous issues hung. From his sick-bed he had taken a keen interest in what was going forward, appearing, says Heylyn, as forward in the marriages as if he had been one of the principals in the plot against him.145 He might be fond of Jane, but even had he loved her—which there is nothing to show—he was too far within the shadow of the grave to feel any jealousy in seeing her handed over to another bridegroom.

At the demeanour of the little victim of the Whitsun sacrifice we can but guess. Grave and serious we picture her, as it was her wont to be, with the steadfast face depicted by the painters of the day—far, in spite of Seymour’s boast, from being “as handsome as any lady in England,” but with a purity and simplicity, a stillness and repose, restful to those who looked into the quiet eyes and marked the tranquillity of the countenance. Did she, in her inward cogitations, divine that there was danger ahead? If so we can fancy she was ready to face it. Were it God’s will, then let it come. Peril was the anteroom, death the portal, of the eternal city—the heavenly Jerusalem in which she believed.

Such was the image printed upon the time by the woman-child who was never to know maturity, as it lived in the tender and loving remembrance of her contemporaries, the delicately sculptured figure of a saint in the temples of the iconoclasts.

By the country at large the sudden marriages were regarded with suspicion. “The noise of these marriages bred such amazement in the hearts of the common people, apt enough in themselves to speak the worst of Northumberland, that there was nothing left unsaid which might serve to show their hatred against him, or express their pity for the King.”146 Overbearing and despotic, the merciless “bear of Warwick,” as he was nicknamed, was so detested that by some the failure of his scheme was afterwards ascribed rather to his unpopularity than to love for Mary. Yet it was Northumberland who, with the blindness born of a sanguine ambition, was to trust, six weeks later, to the populace to join with him in dispossessing the King’s sister, for whom they had always shown affection, and in placing his daughter-in-law and her boy-husband upon the throne. So glaring a misapprehension of the situation demands explanation, and it is partly supplied by a French appreciation of the Duke’s character. According to M. Griffet, he was more heedful to conceal his own sentiments than capable of discerning those of others; a man of ambition who neither knew whom to trust nor whom to suspect; who, blinded by presumption, was therefore easily deceived, and who nevertheless believed himself to possess to the highest degree the gift of deceiving all the world.147 Such as he was, he had deceived himself to his undoing.

Meantime Lady Jane’s marriage had made for the moment little change in her manner of life. She had answered the purpose for which she was required, and was permitted temporarily to retire behind the scenes. It is said—and there is nothing unlikely in the assertion—that, the ceremony over and obedience having been rendered to her parents’ behest, she entreated that she might continue with her mother for the present. She and her new husband were so young, she pleaded. Her request was granted. She was Guilford Dudley’s wife, could be the wife of no other man, and that was, for the moment, sufficient.

There was much to think of, much to do. Measures had to be taken to keep the King’s sisters at a distance, lest his old affection, for Elizabeth in particular, reawakening might frustrate the designs of those bent upon moulding events to their advantage. Above all, there was the pressing necessity of inducing the King to exclude them by will from their rightful heritage. On June 16 Noailles had again been conferring with the doctors, and had learnt that, in their opinion, Edward could not live till August. Ten days later Northumberland came from Greenwich to visit the envoy, and to prevent his going to Court. He then told the Frenchman that, nine days earlier, the King had executed his will in favour of the Duke’s daughter-in-law, Lady Jane148—“qui est vertueuse, sage, et belle,” reported the envoy to his master some three weeks later.149

Of the manner in which the will had been obtained full information is available. It was not out of love for Northumberland that Edward had yielded to his representations. The Throckmorton MS.150 asserts that Edward abhorred the Duke on account of his uncle’s death. Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, in attendance on the King, should be a good authority; on the other hand, he was opposed to the Duke’s designs. Whether or not the latter was personally distasteful to the boy, it was no difficult matter to represent the situation in a fashion to lead him to believe the sole alternative was the course suggested to him. Conscientious, pious, scrupulous to a fault, and worn by disease, the future of religion could be made to hang upon his fiat, and the thought of Mary, a devout Catholic, or even Elizabeth, who might marry a foreign prince, seated upon the throne, filled him with apprehensions for the welfare of a people for whom he felt himself responsible. Yet he, with little to love, had loved both his sisters, and the thought of the sick lad, torn between duty and affection, a tool in the hands of unprincipled and ambitious men who could play on his sensitive conscience and over-strained nerves at will, and turn his piety to their advantage, is a painful one.

The Duke’s arguments lay ready to his hand. Religion was in danger, the Church set up by Edward in jeopardy; the work that he had done might be destroyed as soon as he was in his grave. How could he answer it before God were he, who was able to avert it, to permit so great an evil? The remedy was clear. Let him pass over his sisters, already pronounced severally illegitimate by unrepealed statutes of Parliament, and entail the crown upon those who, under his father’s will, would follow upon Mary and Elizabeth, the descendants of Mary Tudor, known to be firm in their attachment to the reformed faith.

Edward yielded. Given the circumstances, the power exercised by the Duke over him, his physical condition, his fears for religion, he could scarcely have done less. With his own hand he drew up the draft of a will which, amended at Northumberland’s bidding, left the crown in unmistakable terms to Lady Jane and her heirs male. It had now to be made law and accepted by the Council.

On June 11 Sir Edward Montagu, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Sir Thomas Bromley, another Justice of the same court, Sir Richard Baker, Chancellor of the Augmentations, and the Attorney- and Solicitor-General were called to Greenwich, and were introduced into the King’s apartment, Northampton, Gates, and others being present at the interview. If what took place on this occasion and at the other audiences of the legal officers with the King, as recorded by themselves, is naturally, as Dr. Lingard has pointed out, represented in such a manner as to extenuate their conduct in Mary’s eyes, there seems no reason to doubt that Montagu’s account is substantially true.151

In his sickness, Edward told them, he had considered the state of the realm, and of the succession, should he die without leaving direct heirs; and, proceeding to point out the danger to religion and to liberty should his sister Mary succeed to the throne, he ordered them to “make a book with speed” of his articles.

The lawyers demurred, but the King, feverishly eager to put an end to the business, and conscious perhaps that if the thing were not done quickly it might not be done at all, refused to listen to the objections they would have urged, dismissing them with orders to carry out his pleasure with haste. For all his gentleness and piety, Edward was a Tudor, and no less peremptory than others of his race.

Two days later—it was June 14—having deliberated on the question, the men of law acquainted the Council with their decision. The thing could not be done. To make or execute the “devise” according to the King’s instructions would be treason. The report was made to Sir William Petre at Ely Place; but the Duke of Northumberland was at hand, and came thereupon into the Council-chamber, “being in a great rage and fury, trembling for anger, and, amongst all his ragious talk called Sir Edward Montagu traitor, and further said he would fight any man in his shirt in that quarrel.” It was plain that no technical or legal obstacles were to be permitted to turn him from his purpose.

The following day the law-officers were again called to Greenwich. Conveyed in the first place to a chamber behind the dining-room, they met with a chilling reception. “All the lords looked upon them with earnest countenances, as though they had not known them;” and, brought into the King’s presence, Edward demanded, “with sharp words and angry countenance,” why his book was not made?

Montagu, as spokesman for his colleagues, explained. Had the King’s device been executed it would become void at the King’s death, the Statute of Succession passed by Parliament being still in force. A statute could be altered by statute alone. On Edward’s replying that Parliament should then shortly be called together, Montagu caught at the solution. The matter could be referred to it, and all perils saved. But this was not the King’s meaning. The deed, he explained, was to be executed at once, and was to be afterwards ratified by Parliament. With growing excitement, he commanded the officers, “very sharply,” to do his bidding; some of the lords, standing behind the King, adding that, did they refuse, they were traitors.

The epithet was freely bandied about in those days, yet it never failed to carry a menace; and Montagu, in as “great fear as ever he was in all his life before, seeing the King so earnest and sharp, and the Duke so angry the day before,” and being an “old weak man and without comfort,” began to look about for a method of satisfying King and Council without endangering his personal safety. In the end he gave way, consenting to prepare the required papers, on condition that he might first be given a commission under the great seal to draw up the instrument, and likewise a pardon for having done so. Northumberland had won the day.

It was afterwards reported that when the will was signed a great tempest arose, with a whirlwind such as had never been seen, the sky dark and fearful, lightning and infinite thunder; one of the thunderbolts accompanying that terrible storm falling upon the miserable church where heresy was first begotten.... “This accident was observed by many persons of sense and prudence, and was considered a great sign of the avenging justice of God.”152

The Council, undeterred by the manifestations of divine wrath, were not backward in endorsing the deed. Overborne by the Duke, probably also influenced by the apprehension of a compulsory restoration of Church spoils should Mary succeed, they unanimously acquiesced in the act of injustice. To a second paper, designed by the Duke to commit his colleagues further, twenty-four councillors and legal advisers set their hands. By June 21 the official instrument had received the signatures of the Lords of the Council, other peers, judges, and officers of the Crown, to the number of 101. The Princesses had been set aside, and the fatal heritage, so far as it was possible, secured to Lady Jane. The King, at the direction of her nearest of kin, had in effect affixed his signature to her death-sentence.

When Northumberland was assured of success he gave a magnificent musical entertainment, to which the French ambassador was bidden. Three days earlier it had been reported to Noailles that Edward was at the point of death, and he was surprised at the merry-making and the good spirits prevalent. The affair, it was explained to him, was in honour of the convalescence of the King, who had been without fever for two days, and whose recovery appeared certain.153 The envoy doubtless expressed no incredulity, and congratulated the company upon the good tidings. He knew that Edward was moribund, and understood that the rejoicings were in truth to celebrate the approaching elevation to the throne of Northumberland’s daughter-in-law.

Was she present? We cannot tell; but it was the Duke’s policy to make her a prominent figure, and Noailles’ description of her beauty and goodness implies a personal acquaintance.

It only remained for Edward to die. All those around him, with perhaps some few exceptions amongst his personal attendants, were eagerly awaiting the end. All had been accomplished that was possible whilst he was yet alive, and Northumberland and his friends were probably impatient to be up and doing. His sisters were at a distance, his uncles dead, Barnaby Fitzpatrick was abroad, and he was practically alone with the men who had made him their tool. The last scene is full of pathos. Three hours before the end, lying with his eyes shut, he was heard praying for the country which had been his charge. “‘O God,’ he entreated, ‘deliver me out of this miserable and wretched life, and take me among Thy chosen; howbeit not my will, but Thine, be done. Lord, I commend my spirit to Thee. O Lord, Thou knowest how happy it were for me to be with Thee. Yet, for Thy chosen’s sake, send me life and health, that I may truly serve Thee. O my Lord God, bless Thy people and save Thine inheritance. O Lord God, save Thy chosen people of England. O Lord God, defend this realm from Papistry and maintain Thy true religion, that I and my people may praise Thy holy Name, for Jesus Christ His sake.’

“Then turned he his face, and seeing who was by him, said to them:

“‘Are ye so nigh? I thought ye had been further off.’

“Then Doctor Owen said:

“‘We heard you speak to yourself, but what you said we know not.’

“He then (after his fashion, smilingly) said, ‘I was praying to God.’”154

The end was near.

“I am faint,” he said. “Lord, have mercy upon me, and take my spirit”; and so on July 7, towards night, he passed away. On the following day Noailles communicated to his Court “le triste et piteux inconvÉnient de la mort” of Edward VI., last of the Tudor Kings.

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