The Other Tudors (14 page)

Richmond’s widow, Mary Howard, was approached two years after his death with an offer of marriage. A letter from Sir Rafe Sadyler to Cromwell, dated July 1538, puts the case for Jane Seymour’s brother, Thomas. This turned out to be part of an elaborate plot by Jane’s brother, and to a lesser extent, her father, to regain influence over the King.

The family to which Mary Howard belonged had aspirations to greatness, but were latecomers to the nobility, despite their title. The first Earls of Norfolk had been the Bigods, under the Norman William I. When the family line died out, Edward I resurrected the title, raised to a dukedom, for his youngest son, Thomas of Brotherton. In 1397 the dukedom passed through marriage to the Mowbrays until James, the 5th Duke, died in 1476. This last male Mowbray left an infant heiress who was married to Richard, Duke of York, the younger of Edward IV’s sons. Little Anne Mowbray died before her husband met his mysterious end in the Tower of London with his older brother, Edward V. The Mowbray title fell into abeyance, although the Mowbray name and bloodline survived through female lines. One of these was through little Anne’s great-aunt, Margaret de Mowbray, who had married Sir Robert Howard.

On little Anne Mowbray’s death, Richard III formally gave the title of Duke of Norfolk to Sir John Howard of Stoke Neyland. Besides being the son of Margaret de Mowbray, sister of the 2nd Duke, he was a renowned warrior and supporter of Richard and his party, who later became Constable of the Tower of London. Being Richard’s man, however, meant that the title was lost when Sir John Howard died at Bosworth fighting for the King; it took his son 20 years to get his title back from Henry VIII. Sir John’s grandson, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, was the father of Mary, Dowager Duchess of Richmond, and Henry, Earl of Surrey.

For a time, back in 1536, it looked as if the Howard star was in the ascendant. So popular with the King was Surrey that Anne Boleyn even suggested that he should marry the ‘bastard’ Princess Mary. There was every chance that Richmond would become King and Mary Howard would be Queen. As Richmond’s closest friend, Surrey could expect to play a major role in government. It may also have entered his mind that if Richmond should die without heirs, why should he not nominate his brother-in-law or nephew as his successor? However, with the death of Richmond and the birth of Prince Edward to Jane Seymour, everything changed. Power now lay with the Seymours.

In 1543, after Anne Boleyn’s execution, Norfolk decided that his family should regain their influence by allying with the Seymours, brothers to Queen Jane and uncles to the future King Edward. To this end, he suggested to his widowed daughter that she entertain the offer of marriage from Thomas, the younger of the brothers. Although Surrey was, in general, violently opposed to the men about the King, as typified by the Seymours who came from the lesser nobility, he foresaw a way of gaining control of the throne, using his sister, and was apparently in favour of this particular match.

The whole plan was laid bare when the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Surrey were suddenly arrested on charges of treason. Sir Richard Southwell (one of the accusers), John Gates and Wymond Carew went immediately to Kenninghall to question Mary Howard and Elizabeth Holland, the Duke’s mistress. They arrived at the house so unexpectedly that Mary had just risen, and was dressed in a loose robe, a type of housecoat. According to these gentlemen, she was ‘sore perplexed, trembling and like to fall down’ when she realised that her father and brother were accused of treason. She fell to her knees and protested their innocence, although she qualified her support of her brother by saying of him ‘she noteth [him] to be a rash man.’ The three gentlemen searched the house; they found nothing in Mary’s rooms, since she had sold most of her property to pay her debts when her husband died.
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However, they found a quantity of jewels in Elizabeth Holland’s rooms. This lady, the daughter of the Duke’s steward, had been the Duke’s mistress for some years. The Duchess of Norfolk lived separately from her husband, partly because of this scandal. Elizabeth’s jewels and property were officially confiscated, the house was inventoried and locked up, and the ladies were escorted to London for further questioning. Once there, under further interrogation, Mary admitted the plan by her family to marry her to Seymour, ‘while her brother also desired, wishing her withal to endear herself so into the King’s favour, as she might the better rule here as others had done and that she refused.’ Surrey’s plan had been that she should pretend to agree to marry Seymour, but that she should, in fact, attempt to entrap the King into a romantic liaison, so that her brother could control the King through her.

Sir Gawen Carew gave evidence of a conversation he had had with Mary some time previously about her brother. She told Carew about the offer from Seymour, and Surrey’s advice that: ‘… she should in no wise utterly make refusal of him [Seymour], but that she should leave the matter so diffusely that the King’s Majesty should take occasion to speak with her again; and thus by length of time it is possible that the king should take such a fantasy to you that ye shall be able to govern like unto Madame de’Éstampes.’ This lady was the powerful mistress of Francis I, far more influential than his queen. Mary Howard then told Carew how she felt, ‘whereupon she defied her brother and said that all they should perish and she would cut her own throat rather than she would consent to such a villainy.’
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In her testimony, Mary repeated remarks by both her father and brother criticising the number of commoners now gathered around the King. Elizabeth Holland, desperate to cooperate and get her jewels back, supported Mary Howard’s testimony. She agreed about Surrey, but added that the Duke had not approved of Surrey changing his coat of arms to include the royal arms of Brotherton, and had forbidden her to embroider it on any of the household linens or otherwise display it.

Henry VIII was bedridden during one of his periods of ill health, but daily reports of the trial of Norfolk and Surrey were sent to him. Copies survive with the King’s notes on the points being made, which were sent back to the judges. One reads, ‘If a man compassing himself to govern the realm do actually go about to rule the king and should for that purpose advise his daughter or sister to become his harlot … what this importeth?’
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In the event, Norfolk and Surrey were both convicted and sentenced to death; Norfolk was sent to the Tower to await his execution, but Surrey’s death warrant was signed immediately. He was beheaded on 19 January 1547. He left behind him a wife (Frances Vere, the daughter of the Earl of Oxford) and five children – Jane, Thomas (now Earl of Surrey), Katherine, Henry and Margaret. The children were removed from their mother’s care and housed with their aunt, Mary Howard, living first at Mountjoy House, in Knight Rider Street, her London residence since her husband’s death. At Christmas 1551, Mary received an annuity of £100 towards their household expenses, and the same amount the following year. The Duke, still in the Tower, was allowed £80 a year for his keep; his gaoler was Sir John Markham.

The children were soon moved to Reigate Castle, where they continued their education. Unlike her brother and father who were Catholic, the Dowager was a Protestant, and she hired John Foxe, a Protestant cleric, as the children’s tutor. Foxe was a fine scholar. Whilst acting as their teacher, he wrote his
Tables of Grammar
, published in 1552. He is, of course, better known for another of his works,
The Book of Martyrs
.

The fortunes of the children changed radically when Mary Tudor became Queen. During the reign of Edward VI, Norfolk remained in the Tower while Mary Tudor stayed at Kenninghall, the Norfolk family house. When Edward VI died and Princess Mary was summoned to London in a plot by Northumberland, Duke of Somerset, to prevent her taking the throne, it may have been the Norfolk servants at Kenninghall who helped to persuade her to go to Framlingham instead. It was from there that she mounted her successful campaign to secure the throne as Mary I.

As she rode on London, Queen Mary was joined by Anne, Duchess of Norfolk, and one of her first actions was to order the release of the Duke. He was Earl Marshall at her coronation, and Lord High Steward at the coronation banquet. The Dowager Countess of Surrey and her children were summoned to rejoin the family at Mountjoy Place in London. The Duke now took responsibility for his grandchildren, and one of his first moves was to hire a Catholic priest, John White, to be their new tutor and to re-educate them as Catholics. Foxe had wisely already left the household at Reigate and gone abroad to Flanders.

The Duke was not angry with his daughter. He left her the sum of £500 in his will, in acknowledgement of her care for the children during his imprisonment. He died on 25 August 1554, aged 80, and was succeeded by his grandson Thomas. This young man had learned nothing by the experiences of his father and grandfather. He was heavily involved in a plot whereby he was to marry Mary, Queen of Scots, and gain the throne by murdering Elizabeth I. He was arrested for treason and died, like his father, on the scaffold.

Mary Howard died in December 1557, and was buried at Norwich Cathedral with all the pomp due to her station. The mourning procession included the Dean and Canons of the Cathedral, the Mayor and Aldermen, the chief officers of the Duke’s household with white staves, the Garter King at Arms and heralds following the Howard banners. The chief mourner was her sister-in-law, the Dowager Countess of Surrey, now remarried to Thomas Steynings.

I
n 1516, Catherine of Aragon had a daughter, Mary, who lived and thrived. The Queen was delighted with her new baby and now knew she was capable of bearing a living child. The King, happy in the knowledge that he had a daughter as well as a thriving bastard son, could look forward to the birth of a lawful heir with renewed confidence.

However, in 1518, a new plan was hatched, since Catherine had failed to have a living son. The Princess was betrothed to the dauphin of France; and one of the clauses in the marriage contract allowed that if Henry VIII had no son, Mary and the dauphin would rule England. The French came to London in September, and the English went over to Paris in December, for signature of the contract. Catherine, in the meantime, had given birth to an eight-month, stillborn daughter. The Venetian Ambassador, Giustinian wrote that it was ‘the sole fear of the kingdom that it may pass through this marriage into the power of France.’
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The Ambassador to France was Sir Thomas Boleyn, an experienced European diplomat. He had sprung from humble beginnings (his grandfather had been a merchant), but marriages into various noble families by his grandfather, father and himself had moved the Boleyns to a higher social position. Sir Thomas was the kind of man to appeal to the King; he was a keen sportsman, a skilled jouster and an excellent diplomat, and his marriage to Elizabeth, the daughter of the Duke of Norfolk gave him the entrée to the King’s immediate circle.

It was at this time that Cardinal Wolsey set in motion a piece of diplomacy that became known as the Treaty of London. An agreement was drawn up whereby more than 20 European states, including England, France and the Holy Roman Empire, agreed to a universal peace. As part of this, Henry VIII held a meeting with Charles V of Spain who had also just been elected Holy Roman Emperor (his maternal grandparents were Ferdinand and Isabella, rulers of Castile and Aragon; his paternal grandfather was Maximilian, the last Emperor). Despite the Treaty of London two years previously, in May 1520 Charles visited England to formulate a tentative alliance against France. Despite the previous promise of marriage to the French dauphin, discussions now included a suggestion that Charles should marry the four-yearold Princess Mary.

However, Henry had not completely abandoned the idea of a French alliance. In celebration of the peace, in 1519, he had agreed to a meeting with Francis I on French soil which eventually took place on 7 June 1520 at the site that became known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold.