House Of Treason: The Rise And Fall Of A Tudor Dynasty (34 page)

Of course, Norfolk faced a barrage of questions on many occasions.
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At times, his memory conveniently failed him on tricky issues, but on others he was remarkably frank. On 13 October, he confirmed his knowledge of no less than three plots to free Mary Queen of Scots - but he denied any knowledge of Ridolphi’s invasion plans.

By January 1572, the Council had different concerns. Catholic supporters of Norfolk had come up with a series of harebrained schemes to rescue him from the Tower, using a portable canvas bridge across the moat, and also planned to murder Cecil, now created Lord Burghley. Kenelm Berney and his accomplice Edmund Mather planned to assassinate the minister - ‘the chief cause of [Norfolk’s] trouble’ - at Charing Cross with an arquebus (or musket), the killer crossing the Thames by waiting boat and then fleeing by horse into Surrey. They also plotted to rescue the duke at his arraignment, armed only with pistols.
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Another plan was to take Burghley’s sons hostage, ‘for pawns for us, which should be sent to the Duke of Alva . . . that if we miscarry here, they might die the same death’. They would communicate with Norfolk by writing on some Holland cloth and then get his Italian tailor to line his breeches with the fabric. A new pair had recently been delivered and Norfolk had mournfully told his tailor: ‘It is said, I shall not live to wear these hose out.’

He might well be dejected. Burghley was now planning his trial, prudently placing great emphasis on security. His roughly scribbled notes estimated how many men would be necessary to thwart any rescue attempt or to subdue disorder:

Norfolk knew he was doomed. He was tried by his peers at Westminster Hall on 16 January 1572, with George Talbot, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, sitting as Lord High Steward. Just after half past eight, the court went into session and Norfolk was brought to the bar with Hopton and Carew on each arm, preceded by the headsman’s axe, now appearing at another Howard’s trial for treason. Then

as the indictment was read out to him:

Norfolk asked for legal representation but was refused, and the duke answered bitterly: ‘I am brought to fight without a weapon.’ After pleading not guilty to the charges, he appealed for justice and a fair trial and admitted: ‘My memory was never good. It is now much worse than it was, before troubles, before cares, before closeness in prison, evil rest, have much decayed my memory, so as I pray God, that this day it will not fail me.’ He added: ‘Another time I will forgive it.’

Written evidence was produced from his servants which included some testimony that had been falsified. They were not called into court, so Norfolk had no opportunity to cross-examine them. The duke admitted:

The banker spoke to Norfolk of his imprisonment at Walsingham’s home; about Mary Queen of Scots and that he should ‘treat with the Duke of Alva for money for her’.

Norfolk had been trapped in a web partially of his own foolish making. There is little doubt that Ridolphi was a government
agent provocateur
who formed the bait for a trap and the duke’s lack of foresight, or common sense, allowed him to be ensnared. The peers took an hour and a quarter to find him guilty of treason. Sentence was passed, and the axe blade was turned towards him. Norfolk had few words left to say:

Beating his chest he told his peers: ‘I will not desire any of you to make any petition for my life. I will not desire to live. And my lords, seeing you have put me out of your company, I trust shortly to be in better company.’
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Norfolk, expecting imminent execution, scribbled a last letter to the queen on 21 January, signing the note ‘with the woeful hand of a dead man’.
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He also wrote a poignant letter to his children from the Tower, including, for their enlightenment, some final lessons about life. To his eldest son, Philip, Earl of Arundel, he insisted: ‘Serve and fear God above all things. I find the fault in myself that I have been too negligent in this point.’

Norfolk believed his son ‘Thom’ would be made a ward of the queen, but Philip was sure to ‘have your brother William left still with you, because, poor boy, he has nothing to feed cormorants with; to whom you will as well be a father as a brother’.
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A separate enclosure urged Philip to make use of ‘Sir Thomas Cornwallis’ but ‘beware of him, and all other Papists’. He commended Lord Henry Howard ‘my brother and your uncle. There is no one who may stand you in better stead. He has been so natural, as for my sake, he has brought himself into trouble.’
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All these letters are signed plain ‘Thomas Howard’. The dukedom was already attainted and all honours had been stripped from him. Sir Gilbert Dethick, Garter King of Arms, had ordered his heraldic accoutrements - banner, helmet, crest and stall plate - to be taken from St George’s Chapel, Windsor, and hurled into the castle ditch, in his degradation from the Order.
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The duke also wrote a farewell to his faithful steward William Dix on a page of the fifth edition of the New Testament of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, printed and published in 1566 by Richard Jugge, ‘printer to the queen’s majesty’. Unsurprisingly, his thirteen lines form a harrowing letter:

On one of the book’s endpapers is an ink inscription demonstrating that the duke disposed of a number of his books to his friends, writing a last message in each. The note relates to a quarto copy of Richard Grafton’s
Chronicle or History of England
, published in 1570,
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which had this letter, containing Norfolk’s regrets about the recent history of the Howard family, written on a leaf:

Sadly it is not possible to identify the recipient.

On 26 February, he sat down to write his ‘last confession and to my remembrance, true in all points upon the which I might take to my death’. He humbly recalled ‘my life, my former misspent and ill-ordained life’ and protested ‘even before the Lord that I have been a Protestant [underlined] ever since I know’. But he confessed ‘that my dealings have been given just suspicion that I should be a Papist or a favourer of Papists’.

Norfolk agreed he had received letters about Ridolphi’s mission and, when his secretary Barker brought two letters from the agent and the Pope, he had read and concealed them. The document ends:

He also wrote a lengthy will and attached to it a chequer roll listing the houses he thought ‘fit for my children to keep . . . and also what number of persons I find convenient to attend them’. Five houses are suggested: Framlingham Castle, Suffolk, Flitcham, Lopham and Thetford lodges in Norfolk and, of course, Kenninghall. The duke ordained that Philip should have ‘two gentlemen to attend in his chamber’ and one yeoman usher, together with a schoolmaster for his education. The Howard household should have a second tutor ‘to teach the younger sons’ and one more ‘to teach them languages’. There was also a chaplain, two laundry men, one porter, four yeoman waiters, two grooms of the stables, an usher of the hall for William and three persons in the cellar, buttery and pantry.

Norfolk asked to be buried in the Howard mortuary chapel at Framlingham and ‘there laid in that tomb whereat my loving wives are buried’. He asked his executors ‘to bestow no further charge of any new tomb upon me, otherwise then, a statue of me set in the wall or laid upon that tomb as they shall think most fit’.
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Elizabeth hesitated and havered over the death warrant. She signed it on 9 February 1572 and then delayed its implementation. It was addressed to Sir Thomas Bacon, ‘Lord Keeper of our Great Seal of England’, and in the awful legal jargon of state retribution, it rehearsed that ‘Thomas duke of Norfolk, late of Kenninghall . . . for sundry treasons by him committed and done was the 16th day of January arraigned and tried . . . by his peers and found guilty’.