The Dukes (9 page)

Jane died twelve days after the birth of her son, casting the King
into genuine grief; he wore mourning for her, a consideration he did
not show for his other wives. Her death consolidated the position at
Court of her brothers, to whom the King looked for consolation.
There was no stopping them. Hertford became Captain-General in
the north, revealing an unsuspected talent for battle when he raided
Scotland in 1545 and within two weeks had burnt seven monasteries,
sixteen castles, five towns, and 243 villages.
¹¹
At the dissolution of the
monasteries, he was granted lands which included Maiden Bradley
in Wiltshire, where his descendant, the present Duke of Somerset, now
lives.

The Howards grew restive. Another one of their number, Catherine
Howard, had lost her head, while Edward and Thomas Seymour,
who came from nowhere, continued to sit in the sunshine of royal
favour. It was intolerable for Norfolk's son, the brilliant and impet­uous Earl of Surrey. This man graces our anthologies with some of
the loveliest poetry written in the English language, and introduced
the Petrarchan sonnet to English literature. At the age of ten he had
fallen in love with nine-year-old Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, daughter
of the Earl of Kildare (and ancestor of the Dukes of Leinster), and
had addressed to her some of his most beautiful sonnets expressing
the ideal of Platonic love. He had then married Lady Frances de
Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford. This man, whose poem
The
Happy Life
recommends "no grudge nor strife . . . wisdom joined with
simplicity", and exhorts the reader to be "contented with thine own
estate", this man was before all else a Howard. He possessed the
Howard vanity and arrogance in abundant measure, allied with a
poetic sensibility which unleashed passions beyond rational control.
Even for the sixteenth century, when birth and rank counted for far
more than they do now, Surrey was unduly impressed with his
ancestry. Jealous of the rise of the Seymours, he made a foolish move;
he had his arms quartered with the arms of Edward the Confessor,
thus claiming royal blood. He wanted to prove the superiority of his
descent to that of the Seymours. In purely factual terms, Surrey was
perfectly justified in quartering the royal arms, since he was descended
through the Mowbray family from Thomas Brotherton, son of
Edward I, and Richard I had permitted the Mowbrays the quarter­ing. However, it was a dangerous gesture, knowing the antipathy of
the Seymours and their power to express it. Surrey and his father
were accused by the Seymours of treasonable designs, and were
committed to the Tower.

There then followed the most unseemly squabble. The Howards'
fate was not helped by dissension within the family. The Duke of
Norfolk's private life had been the subject of gossip for some time. He
and his wife had been forever quarrelling, and had eventually
separated, as a result of the Duke's taking a mistress. What really
rankled was that the mistress, Elizabeth Holland, was a washerwoman
from the Duke's own household. The Duchess told Cromwell that
Mistress Holland was "a churl's daughter, who was but a washer in
my nursery eight years".
¹²
For a man from whom aristocratic snobbery
came as fire from his nostrils, the Duke showed a remarkable lapse in
taste. The affair rent the family asunder. The Duchess claimed she
was afraid to enter the house. "He keeps that harlot Bess Holond and
the residue of the harlots that bound me and pinnacled me and sat on
my breast till I spat blood, and I reckon if I come home I shall be
poisoned."
¹³
The affair is too distant now for us to judge whether she
was being melodramatic, but the family appear to have believed it.
Surrey took his father's side, but his wife, his daughter, and his
mistress all testified against him to the Seymours. Matters were made
worse by the daughter's statement that her brother (Surrey) had
rigidly adhered to the old Catholic religion, an admission which
cannot have pleased the King, and which further antagonised
Seymour, who was a convinced Protestant. Father and son were
attainted; their fall was absolute. The Earl of Surrey was beheaded
on 21st January 1547, a martyr to vanity; he died for a trivial cause,
which appears to the modern mind as mere "showing off", but which,
in the nervous and agitated times of Henry VIII, was high treason.
His father the Duke signed a confession, was about to lose his head,
but was saved by the death of the King the night before the execution
was due to take place.

It is odd how, in these early days, the fortunes of the Seymours
continued to follow the demise of the Howards so closely. Only one
week after the execution of Surrey, Henry VIII died (28th January
1547). Edward Seymour lost no time in seizing power; with the
Howards out of the way, the "old nobility" could hinder him no longer
with their petulant pride. He did not announce the king's death
immediately, but first fetched the new King, Edward VI his nephew,
who was now ten years old, and brought him to London. With the
King's person in his custody, Seymour proclaimed himself Lord
Protector of the Realm, releasing the secret of Henry's death and
Edward's accession, and secured the right to act independently of the
Privy Council's advice. Only one member of the Council strongly
objected to this
coup d'etat
- Wriothesley. A few days later Seymour
created himself Baron Seymour, and on 16th February Duke of
Somerset.

The warrant creating this dukedom is a unique document. It bears
the signature of the boy king, "Edward", but it bears in addition a
number of other signatures, among which can be seen "E. Somerset"
who, in all logic, can hardly have existed, under
that name,
to put
his signature to a document which would enable him
thenceforth,
to
bear that name. The warrant may still be seen at the Public Record
Office.

His brother Thomas was appointed Lord High Admiral of
England and elevated as Lord Seymour of Sudeley (Sudeley Castle in
Gloucestershire was where Thomas went to live with his new wife,
Queen Catherine Parr, after being turned down by Princess Elizabeth).
The Seymours had never imagined such heights of power; together
the brothers ruled England, their nephew was king in theory, and the
new Duke of Somerset was king in fact. The official designation by
which he permitted himself to be called had a royal ring about it:
"Edward, by the grace of God, Duke of Somerset".
¹⁴
He addressed the
King of France as "brother".

The Lord Protector achieved much in the field of religious reform
during his reign. He was, indeed, the first Protestant ruler of Eng­land. He allowed priests to marry, issued a proclamation against
ceremonies, removed images, and enforced the use of English in
church services, all measures regarded as extremely radical at the
time; he was thought a "rank Calvinist",
¹⁵
and did openly correspond
with Calvin. He was, however, intoxicated with the taste of power,
and overstretched the forbearance of those about him. He was far too
ready to line his own pocket, acquiring for himself vast properties
from monastic lands, far more than might be regarded as reasonable,
and a huge personal fortune. The high regard in which he obviously
held himself was his undoing. He thought that he could proceed
along the path of self-indulgence without hindrance, as long as the
child king was at his bidding. He built a sumptuous palace in the
Strand - Somerset House - and erected there a court of requests.
The last straw was his making a stamp of the King's signature, which
was an impudent admission that the power of the royal authority was
entirely in his grasp.

Ironically, it was a family squabble which turned the tables against
the Seymours, as it had against the Howards. The Duke of Somerset
and his brother the Lord Admiral fell out almost as soon as they
acquired power, and were virtually sworn enemies for the rest of their
lives. As they were in control of the country, their strife did not make
for harmonious government. Even their wives quarrelled over prece­dence, the Duchess claiming a higher status than the Queen Dowager.
Thomas Seymour was jealous of his brother's supreme authority; he
thought that the Lord Protectorship should have been shared equally
between them. Since Somerset had control of the King, Thomas
Seymour would have control of his sister the Princess Elizabeth.
When this failed, he turned his attentions to Lady Jane Grey (who
lived with him and his wife Catherine Parr at Sudeley). Then he
attempted to seduce the eleven-year-old boy king away from the Pro­tector's authority by the most elementary ruse: he sent him secret
pocket-money. When he thought that he had the boy's confidence he
made a fatal miscalculation. He planned to kidnap him. With master
keys to the royal palaces, it was no trouble for Seymour to gain access
to his nephew. In the middle of a winter night, Seymour and some
confederates stole to the door of the King's bedroom. As he fumbled
with the lock, the King's pet spaniel barked, and Seymour ran the
dog through with his sword. But it was too late. The alarm was
raised, Seymour was arrested and conveyed to the Tower.

Lord Seymour of Sudeley was beheaded on his brother's orders on
Tower Hill in 1549, two years after the same fate had befallen
Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, for whose execution Seymour had
actively striven. It is a pity that history has no truck with the moral
principles of poetic justice, for here would be a splendid example of
the principle at work.

The following year, the Duke of Somerset himself began his decline.
He was deprived of his Protectorship (to which, anyway, he had had
no right in Henry VIII's will) and all other offices, was later impris­oned in the Tower, and finally found guilty of inciting the London
citizens to rebellion. The Duke's execution in 1552 provoked scenes of
unheard-of lamentation, for in spite of the man's rapaciousness and
unbridled ambition, he enjoyed considerable popularity with the
people. The period of his rule had been mercifully free from religious
persecution, and ordinary people slept more soundly in their beds
than they had done for a hundred years or more. They knew also
that he had a deeply felt concern and sympathy with the poorer
working classes, whose part he often took. Londoners always know in
their bones when they are ruled by someone with their interests at
heart, and they cherish him accordingly. They felt this for Charles II,
for Elizabeth I, for George VI, and for Lord Protector Somerset.