CHAPTER XX 1553 Trial and condemnation of Northumberland--His recantation--Final scenes--Lady Jane's fate in the balances--A conversation with her.

The great subject of interest agitating the capital, when the excitement attending the Queen’s triumphal entry had had time to subside, was the approaching trial of the Duke of Northumberland and his principal accomplices. On August 18 the great conspirator, with his son, the Earl of Warwick, and the Marquis of Northampton, were arraigned at Westminster Hall, the Duke of Norfolk, lately himself a prisoner, presiding, as High Steward of England, at the trial.

Its issue was a foregone conclusion. If ever man deserved to suffer the penalty for high treason, that man was Northumberland. His brain had devised the plot intended to keep the Queen out of the heritage hers by birth and right; his hand had done what was possible to execute it. He had commanded in person the forces arrayed against her, and had been taken, as it were, red-handed. He must have recognised the fact that any attempt at a defence would be hopeless. Two points of law, however, he raised: 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; and, thus understood, the authority of a usurper could not be allowed to exonerate her father-in-law from the guilt of rebellion. As to his second question, so long as those by whom he was to be judged were themselves unattainted, they were not disqualified from filling their office. Sentence was passed without delay, the Duke proffering three requests. First, he asked that he might die the death of a noble; secondly, that the Queen would be gracious to his children, since they had acted by his command, and not of their own free will; and thirdly, that two members of the Council Board might visit him, in order that he might declare to them matters concerning the public welfare. The trial had been conducted on a Friday. The uncertainty prevailing as to the condition of public sentiment in the city may be inferred from the fact, that, when the customary sermon was to be preached at Paul’s Cross on the following Sunday, it was considered expedient to have the preacher chosen by the Queen surrounded by her guards, lest a tumult should ensue. The state of feeling in the capital must have been curiously mixed. Mary was the lawful sovereign, and had been brought to her rights amidst universal rejoicing. Northumberland was an object of detestation to the populace. Yet, whilst the Queen was undisguisedly devoted to a religion to which the majority of her subjects were hostile, the Duke was regarded as, with Suffolk, the chief representative and support of the faith they held and the Church as by law established. If his adherence to Protestant doctrine, as was now to appear, had been a matter of policy rather than of conviction, it had been singularly successful in imposing upon the multitude; though, according to the story which makes him observe to Sir Anthony Browne that he certainly thought best of the old religion, “but, seeing a new one begun, run dog, run devil, he would go forward,” he had been at little pains to conceal his lack of genuine sympathy with innovation.193 When the speech was made, suspicion of Catholic proclivities would have been fatal to his position and his schemes. The case was now reversed. He was about to forfeit, by the fashion of his death, the solitary merit he had possessed in the eyes of a large section of his countrymen; to throw off the mask, however carelessly it had been worn; and to give the lie, at that supreme moment, to the professions of years.

It is said that, in consequence of the request he had preferred at his trial that he might be visited by some members of the Council, he was granted an interview with Gardiner and another of his colleagues, name unknown; that the Bishop of Winchester subsequently interceded with the Queen on his behalf, and was sanguine of success; but that, in deference to the Emperor’s advice, Mary decided in the end that the Duke must die.194 To Arundel, in spite of the little encouragement he had received at Cambridge to hope that the Earl would prove his friend, Northumberland wrote, begging for life, “yea, the life of a dog, that he may but live and kiss the Queen’s feet.”195 All was in vain. Prayers, supplications, entreaties, were useless. He was to die.

Of those tried together with him, two shared his sentence—Sir Thomas Palmer and Sir John Gates. Monday, August 21, had been fixed for the executions, Commendone, the Pope’s agent, delaying his journey to Italy at Mary’s request that he might be present on the occasion.196 For some unexplained reason, they were deferred. It was probably in order to leave Northumberland time to make his recantation at leisure; for he had expressed his desire to renounce his errors “and to hear Mass and to receive the Sacrament according to the old accustomed manner.”197

The account of what followed has been preserved in detail. At nine in the morning the altar in the chapel was prepared; and thither the Duke was presently conducted by Sir John Gage, Constable of the Tower, four of the lesser prisoners being brought in by the Lieutenant. Dying men, three of them, and the rest in jeopardy, it was a solemn company there assembled as the officiating priest proceeded with the ancient ritual. At a given moment the service was interrupted, so that the Duke might make his confession of faith and formally abjure the new ways he had followed for sixteen years, “the which is the only cause of the great plagues and vengeance which hath light upon the whole realm of England, and now likewise worthily fallen upon me and others here present for our unfaithfulness; ... and this I pray you all to testify, and pray for me.” After which, kneeling down, he asked forgiveness from all, and forgave all.

“Amongst others standing by,” says the narrator of the scene, “were the Duke of Somerset’s sons,” Hertford and his brother, boys scarcely emerged from childhood; watching the fallen enemy of their house, and remembering that to him had been chiefly due their father’s death.

Other spectators were some fourteen or fifteen merchants from the City, bidden to the chapel that they might witness the ceremony and perhaps make report of the Duke’s recantation to their fellows.

The news of what was going forward must have spread through the Tower, partly palace, partly dungeon, partly fortress; and men must have looked strangely upon one another as they heard that the leader principally responsible for all that had happened in the course of the last month, to whom the safety of the Protestant faith had been war-cry and watchword, had abjured it as the work of the devil. Where was truth, or sincerity, or pure conviction to be found?

Of Lady Jane, during this day, there is but one mention. The limelight had been turned off her small figure, and she had fallen back into obscurity. Yet we hear that, looking through a window, she had seen her father-in-law led to the chapel, where he was, in her eyes, to imperil his soul. But whether she had been made aware of what was in contemplation we are ignorant.

The final scene took place on the succeeding day. 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. What shall I say? I trust to God it shall be to you a short passage (though somewhat sharp) out of innumerable miseries into a most pleasant rest—which God grant.”

As the other prisoners were led out the Duke and Sir John Gates met at the garden gate. Northumberland spoke.

“Sir John,” he said, “God have mercy on us, for this day shall end both our lives. And I pray you, forgive me whatsoever I have offended; and I forgive you, with all my heart, although you and your counsel was a great occasion thereof.”

“Well, my Lord,” was the reply, “I forgive you, as I would be forgiven. And yet you and your authority was the only original cause of all together. But the Lord pardon you, and I pray you forgive me.”

So, not without a recapitulation of each one’s grievance, they made obeisance, and the Duke passed on. Again, “the Duke of Somerset’s sons stood thereby”—the words recur like a sinister refrain.

The end had come. Standing upon the scaffold, the Duke put off his damask gown; then, leaning on the rail, he repeated the confession of faith made on the previous day, begging those present to remember the old learning, and thanking God that He had called him to be a Christian. With his own hands he knit the handkerchief about his eyes, laid him down, and so met the executioner’s blow.

Gates followed, with few words. Sir Thomas Palmer, having witnessed the ghastly spectacle, came last. That morning, whilst preparations for the executions were being made, he had been walking in the Lieutenant’s garden, observed, says that “resident in the Tower” in whose diary so many incidents of this time have been preserved, to seem “more cheerful in countenance than when he was most at liberty in his lifetime”; and when the end was at hand, he met it, as some men did meet death in those days, with undaunted courage, and with a heroism not altogether unaffected by dramatic instinct. Though apparently implicitly included amongst the prisoners who had made their peace with the Church, he is not recorded to have taken any prominent part in the affair, and his dying speech dealt with no controversial matters, but with eternal verities confessed alike by Catholic and Protestant. At his trial he had denied that he had ever borne arms against the Queen; though, charged with having been present when others did so, he acknowledged his guilt. He now passed that matter over, with a brief admission that his fate had been deserved at God’s hands: “For I know it to be His divine ordinance by this mean to call me to His mercy and to teach me to know myself, what I am, and whereto we are all subject. I thank His merciful goodness, for He has caused me to learn more in one little dark corner in yonder Tower than ever I learned by any travail in so many places as I have been.” For there he had seen God; he had seen himself; he had seen and known what the world was. “Finally, I have seen there what death is, how near hanging over every man’s head, and yet how uncertain the time, and how unknown to all men, and how little it is to be feared. And why should I fear death, or be sad therefore? Have I not seen two die before mine eyes, yea, and within the hearing of mine ears? No, neither the sprinkling of the blood, or the shedding thereof, nor the bloody axe itself, shall not make me afraid.”

Taking leave of all present, he begged their prayers, forgave the executioner, and, master of himself to the last, kneeling, laid his head upon the block.

“I will see how meet the block is for my neck,” he said, “I pray thee, strike me not yet, for I have a few prayers to say. And that done, strike in God’s name. Good leave have thou.”

So the scene came to an end. The three rebels whose life Mary had taken—no large number—had paid the forfeit of their deed. That night the Lancaster Herald, a dependant of the Duke of Northumberland, more faithful to old ties and memories than those in higher place, sought the Queen, and begged of her his master’s head, that he might give it sepulture. In God’s name, Mary bade him take his lord’s whole body and bury him. By a curious caprice of destiny the Duke was laid to rest in the Tower at the side of Somerset.198 There, in the reconciliation of a common defeat, the ancient rivals were united.

The three chief victims had thus paid the supreme penalty. The rest of the participators in Northumberland’s guilt, if not pardoned, were suffered to escape with life. Young Warwick had shared his father’s condemnation, and, finding that the excuse of youth was not to be allowed to avail in so grave a matter, had contented himself with begging that, out of his goods, forfeited to the Crown, his debts might be paid. Returning to the Tower, he had afterwards followed his father’s example in abjuring Protestantism, and had listened, with the older victims, to the words addressed by the priest to the men appointed to die. Whether or not he had been aware that he was to be spared, Mass concluded, he had been taken back to his lodging and had not shared the Duke’s fate.

Northampton’s defence had been a strange one. He had, he said, forborne the execution of any public office during the interregnum and, being intent on hunting and other sports, had not shared in the conspiracy. The plea was not allowed to stand, but though he, like Warwick, was condemned, he was likewise permitted to escape with life. As Warwick’s youth may have made its appeal to Mary, so she may have remembered that Northampton was the brother of her dead friend, Katherine Parr, and have allowed that memory to save him.

Lady Jane’s fate had hung in the balances. By some she was still considered a menace to the stability of her cousin’s throne. Charles V.’s ambassadors, representing to the Queen the need of proceeding with caution in matters of religion, urged the necessity of executing punishment upon the more guilty of those who had striven to deprive her of her crown, clemency being used towards the rest. In which class was Jane to be included? The determination of that question would decide her fate. At an interview between Mary and Simon Renard, one of the Emperor’s envoys, it was discussed, the Queen declaring that she could not make up her mind to send Lady Jane to the scaffold; that she had been told that, before her marriage with Guilford Dudley, she had been bestowed upon another man by a contrat obligatoire, rendering the subsequent tie null and void. Mary drew from this hypothetical fact the inference that her cousin was not the daughter-in-law of the Duke of Northumberland’s, adding that she had had no share in his undertaking, and that, as she was innocent, it would be against her own conscience to put her to death.

Renard demurred. He said, what was probably true, that it was to be feared that the alleged contract of marriage had been invented to save Lady Jane; and it would be necessary at the least to keep her a prisoner, since many inconveniences might be expected were she set at liberty. To this Mary agreed, promising that her cousin should not be liberated without all precautions necessary to ensure that no ill results would follow.199

This interview must have taken place shortly before Northumberland’s death; for on August 23 the Emperor, to whom it had been duly reported, was replying by a reiteration of his opinion that all those who had conspired against the Queen, as well as any concerned in Edward’s death, should be chastised without mercy. He advised that the executions should take place simultaneously, so that the pardon of the less guilty should follow without delay. If Mary was unable to resolve to put “Jeanne de Suffolck” to death, she ought at least to relegate her to some place of security, where she could be kept under supervision and rendered incapable of causing trouble in the realm.

That Mary had decided upon this course is clear, and there is no reason to believe that Lady Jane would have suffered death had it not been for her father’s subsequent conduct. In the meantime, she remained a prisoner in the Tower, and on August 29, eleven days after the executions on Tower Hill, she is shown to us in one of the rare pictures left of her during the time of her captivity. On that day—a Tuesday—the diarist in the Tower, admitted to dine at the same table as the royal prisoner, placed upon record an account of the conversation.

Besides Lady Jane, who sat at the end of the board, there was present the narrator himself, one Partridge,200 and his wife—it was in “Partridge’s house,” or lodging within the Tower, that the guests met—with Lady Jane’s gentlewoman and her man. Her presence had been unexpected by the diarist, as he was careful to explain, excusing his boldness in having accepted Partridge’s invitation on the score that he had not been aware that she dined below.

Lady Jane did not appear anxious to stand on her dignity. Desiring guest and host to be covered, she drank to the new-comer and made him welcome. The conversation turned, naturally enough, upon the conduct of public affairs, of which Lady Jane was inclined to take a sanguine view.

“The Queen’s Majesty is a merciful Princess,” she observed. “I beseech God she may long continue, and send His merciful grace upon her.”

Religious matters were discussed, Lady Jane inquiring as to who had been the preacher at St. Paul’s the preceding Sunday.

“I pray you,” she asked next, “have they Mass in London?”

“Yea, forsooth,” was the answer, “in some places.”

“It may be so,” she said. “It is not so strange as the sudden conversion of the late Duke. For who would have thought he would have so done?” negativing at once and decidedly the suggestion made by some one present that a hope of escaping his imminent doom and winning pardon from the Queen might supply an explanation of his change of front. “‘Pardon?’ repeated the dead man’s daughter-in-law. ‘Woe worth him! He hath brought me and our stock into most miserable calamity and misery by his exceeding ambition. But for the answering that he hoped for life by his turning, though other men be of that opinion, I utterly am not. For what man is there living, I pray you, although he had been innocent, that would hope of life in that case; being in the field against the Queen in person as general, and, after his taking, so hated and evil spoken of by the commons? and at his coming into prison so wondered at as the like was never heard by any man’s time? Who was judge that he should hope for pardon, whose life was odious to all men? But what will ye more? Like as his life was wicked and full of dissimulation, so was his end thereafter. I pray God I, nor no friend of mine, die so. Should I who [am] young and in my fewers [few years?] forsake my faith for the love of life? Nay, God forbid, much more he should not, whose fatal course, although he had lived his just number of years, could not have long continued. But life was sweet, it appeared; so he might have lived, you will say, he did [not] care how. Indeed the reason is good, he that would have lived in chains, to have had his life, by like would leave no other means attempted. But God be merciful to us, for He saith, whoso denyeth Him before men, He will not know in His Father’s Kingdom.’” The conviction of Northumberland’s daughter-in-law that his recantation had not been a mere device designed to lengthen his days may be allowed in some sort to weigh in favour of the man she hated; and it is also fair to remember that if his first abjuration may be accounted for by a lingering hope that it might purchase life, any such expectation must have been abandoned before the final repetition of it upon the scaffold. In Lady Jane’s eyes, however, there seems to have been little to choose between a sham apostacy and a genuine reversion to his older creed.

“With this and much like talk the dinner passed away,” and with exchange of courtesies the little company separated. The brief shaft of light throwing Lady Jane’s figure into relief fades and leaves her once more in the shadow—a shadow that was to deepen above her till the end. It was early days of captivity still. Yet one discerns something of the passionate longing of the prisoner for freedom in her wonder that life in chains could be accounted worth any sacrifice.

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