| Code | GB/187/N0043 |
| Dates | 1504-1553 |
| Person Name | Dudley; John (1504-1553); 1st Duke of Northumberland, 1st Earl of Warwick, Viscount Lisle; royal servant |
| Epithet | royal servant |
| Title | 1st Duke of Northumberland, 1st Earl of Warwick, Viscount Lisle |
| Surname | Dudley |
| Forenames | John |
| DatesAndPlaces | Earl of Warwick, 1547-1553. |
| Nationality | Dudley, John, duke of Northumberland (1504–1553), royal servant, was born in London, the eldest of three sons and heir of Edmund Dudley (c. 1462–1510), administrator, of Atherington in Sussex, and his second wife, Elizabeth (1482×4–1525/6), daughter of Edward Grey, first Baron Lisle, and his wife, Elizabeth, and sister and coheir of John Grey, second Baron Lisle. He was named for his grandfather John Dudley (d. 1502) of Atherington, the second son of John Sutton (or Dudley), first Baron Dudley. His brothers were Sir Andrew Dudley (c. 1507–1559) [see under Sutton, Henry (d. 1564?)] and Jerome (d. in or after 1555).
Childhood, youth and early career, 1504–1532
At the time of John Dudley's birth his father was a highly trusted servant of Henry VII. Nothing is known of his early childhood, but it was probably spent at his father's main house in Candlewick Street, London. The king's death in April 1509 led directly to Edmund Dudley's downfall and execution on 17 August 1510. All his children were under six at that time, and presumably remained with their mother, although it is not known where, all his property being forfeit to the crown.
On 12 November 1511 Elizabeth Dudley remarried, her second husband being Arthur Plantagenet (b. before 1472, d. 1542), the illegitimate son of Edward IV. Plantagenet was granted such of Edmund Dudley's lands as still remained in the hands of the crown but not, apparently, the custody of any of his children. Either at the time of Elizabeth's marriage, or very soon afterwards, John was placed in the care of Edward Guildford (c. 1479–1534), a well-connected esquire of the body, who was formally granted his wardship in February 1512. At the same time John Dudley was restored in blood 'being not yet eight years old' and his father's attainder was annulled by statute (Statutes of the Realm, 11 vols., 1810–28, 3 Hen. VIII c. 19). Why this arrangement was made, and on whose initiative, is not known, and there are some hints that Plantagenet felt aggrieved about it.
Guildford seems to have received little for his pains beyond the modest profits of those lands which Edmund Dudley had enfeoffed to his son's use before his attainder. His principal seat was at Halden in Kent, and it was there that the young John Dudley was brought up. He probably had only the haziest memory of his father, and the attainder—so obviously a matter of political convenience—seems to have cast no shadow upon his childhood, although in later life he complained that Edmund Dudley had been treated unfairly. John Dudley would have left his mother's care in any case at about seven to be brought up in a friendly household, so he had lost nothing by becoming Guildford's ward. There is no direct evidence of that upbringing, which seems to have been entirely conventional. As an adult Dudley was literate in English, but claimed to have no knowledge of Latin, which probably means that he had forgotten the little he had learned. He had no conventional intellectual skills, and it is unlikely that his interest in cosmography and navigation was acquired as a child. He was almost certainly taught at home by a tutor, which was the normal education provided for the son (or ward) of a substantial gentleman, and probably shared his lessons with Guildford's own children, Richard and Jane [see below]. Consequently, instead of following his father in the study of the law he followed his guardian to become a soldier and courtier.
In 1514 Guildford became master of the Tower armouries and ex officio master of ceremonies for Henry VIII's jousts, a very responsible and high profile position at court at that time. By twelve or thirteen Dudley would have been old enough to have served as a page under his guardian, but there is no mention of his having done so. He must at some point have been introduced to the court, because in 1521, aged seventeen, he was selected to serve in Cardinal Thomas Wolsey's retinue during his abortive mission to negotiate peace between François I of France and the young emperor, Charles V. This was a purely educational trip—he was given no specific task—but it represented his first small exposure to public life. Guildford had been appointed knight marshal of Calais in 1519, and in 1522 with the outbreak of war with France he gave his young ward a very minor command within the garrison. Dudley seems to have gained his first taste of military service in the minor skirmishes which took place around the pale towards the end of that year. At about the same time he became betrothed to Jane Guildford. Whether this was by his wish or hers—or someone else's—is not known. He appears to have felt that the arrangement was made by his mother and Guildford, but the subsequent marriage was happy and fruitful. Richard Guildford seems to have been a sickly or inadequate youth (at least in his father's eyes), and Dudley was always favoured before him. This could have caused serious problems later had not Richard Guildford predeceased his father.
Meanwhile, when Charles Brandon, first duke of Suffolk, was appointed to lead an army royal against France in 1523 Guildford was among his senior officers, taking Dudley in his retinue. The campaign was a failure, but on 7 November the nineteen-year-old Dudley was knighted by the duke. Suffolk was somewhat generous with knighthoods at this point, perhaps because he had nothing else to be generous with, and this gesture may have been no more than a favour to his old friend Guildford, but his action attracted no criticism, either at the time or later. Dudley, who subsequently acquired a reputation for physical courage, had distinguished himself at the crossing of the Somme. By 1524 he was back at court as an esquire of the body. Since the rise of the privy chamber during Henry VII's reign this no longer implied a close relationship with the king, but it was a position of honour, made more significant by the fact that Dudley also began to appear prominently among the jousters. Guildford was in a good position to give him his chance in this respect, but the fact that he was able to grasp the opportunity and to gain Henry VIII's favour in consequence tells us that he had both courage and skill. Jousting was a demanding occupation in 1524.
Jane Guildford reached her sixteenth birthday in 1525, and John his twenty-first, and they must have married before the end of the year. By 1528 they had at least two, and probably three children, although the exact dates of birth are not known. Their eight sons included John Dudley, earl of Warwick 1527?–1554 [see below], Ambrose Dudley, earl of Warwick (c. 1530–1590), Henry Dudley 1531?–1557 [see below], Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester (1532/3–1588), and Guildford Dudley (c. 1535–1554); their daughters were Mary Sidney (1530x35–1586) and Katherine Hastings, later countess of Huntingdon (c. 1538–1620).
Because Dudley had not been required to sue livery of his lands there is no exact record of what he inherited. The value was estimated at £200 a year, and he probably received more as Jane Guildford's jointure, which would have given him a reasonable competence for a man in his position. Where the young couple lived is not clear either, but it was probably upon one of the manors in Surrey or Sussex which Dudley is known to have held later. In 1527 he again accompanied Wolsey to France, but he was never in the cardinal's service, and was unaffected by his fall in 1529. His only known patron was Guildford, and Guildford himself was the king's man. Neither followed the contemporary rule that an aspiring hop needed a strong pole. By 1530 Dudley was an active and successful courtier, but he always seems to have been guided by his own reading of Henry's mind rather than by allegiance to any particular court party. This had its risks, but avoided dependence upon intermediaries for favour. At some point between 1525 and 1528 his mother, Lady Elizabeth Plantagenet, died. This should have conferred upon him the barony of Lisle, but Plantagenet had already been created Viscount Lisle and Dudley's claim (if he put it forward) was not recognized. He may have inherited some property from his mother, but the bulk of her estate was also tied up in a life interest to Lisle, so he seems to have benefited hardly at all from her death. During the critical years 1528 to 1532, when the court was becoming increasingly divided over Henry's great matter, Dudley kept a low profile—so low that no one commented upon his alignment at all. He was not yet important enough to get himself into danger, but he remained at court, not making any attempt to promote a career in the country. He did not even serve upon a commission of the peace for Surrey or Sussex (for which he was well qualified by 1525) until 1531.
By 1532 Dudley was a minor member of what at this point was the Boleyn / Cromwell party, which was clearly in the ascendant by the end of that year. Perhaps as a result, in March he gained his first office, the constableship of Warwick Castle, which he held jointly in survivorship with the established favourite, Sir Francis Bryan. A number of minor offices (which were not shared) were granted with the constableship, carrying fees of about £45 a year, and enough status in the county for him to be added to the commission of the peace during the same year. At the age of about twenty-eight Dudley's career begins to emerge from the shadows. He obtained his first wardship, that of Anthony Norton of Worcestershire, and stood surety for a substantial sum which his friend Sir Edward Seymour borrowed from the king.
Royal service, 1532–1544
Also during 1532 Dudley entered into a complex, and eventually acrimonious, financial relationship with his kinsman, Edward Sutton (known as Dudley), fourth Baron Dudley (c. 1515–1586), the grandson of his grandfather's elder brother. Lord Dudley was deep in debt, partly as a result of his father's extravagance, and partly his own incompetence. Dudley loaned him £1400, for which he bound himself to repay £2000 over five years at an annual interest rate of about eight per cent. At the same time Lord Dudley appears to have borrowed smaller sums from other people, and to have mortgaged most of his estate to Dudley for another £6000. Dudley must himself have borrowed to raise a capital sum of nearly £7500, which he probably did at a favourable rate through contacts in London. From his point of view it was purely a business arrangement, and when Lord Dudley began to get into trouble with his repayments Dudley had no option but to apply pressure. Lord Dudley, however, does not seem to have understood this, and complained loudly that a kinsman could so misuse him. By 1533 he was thoroughly mired, but received little sympathy from Thomas Cromwell, then the near all powerful secretary. Eventually Dudley foreclosed on the mortgage, and in 1537 Lord Dudley sold his entire estate to a London syndicate, who were probably John Dudley's financial backers, and now became his feoffees to uses. By 1540 he had moved his principal seat from Sussex to Dudley Castle in Worcestershire and was known as Sir John Dudley of Dudley.
By 1534 his father-in-law and patron was obviously ailing, and Dudley took over Guildford's parliamentary seat as knight of the shire for Kent, and his mastership of the Tower armoury (10 July). Now that the king had virtually retired from jousting this latter office had lost some of its importance, but it was still a position of prestige, and Dudley was supervising the making of armour for Henry as late as 1540. Guildford died on 4 June 1534, leaving his nephew, John Guildford (b. in or before 1508, d. 1565), as his principal heir. Dudley however, pursued claims against the estate, both on his own and his wife's behalf. Cromwell arbitrated the quarrel, but it is not known how successful the Dudley claim was. What is clear is that Dudley, although not unscrupulous, was a shrewd and hard-headed man of business. This can also be seen in his land dealings. By 1535 he had already sold his reversionary interest in his mother's estate, and by 1536, in spite of sitting for the county in the House of Commons, he had parted with most of his land in Kent to Cromwell, who was keen to build up an estate close to London. At the same time he was buying land in Staffordshire and the Welsh marches. The fall of the Boleyns in that year did not touch him because he had already attached himself to the victorious Cromwell, the price of whose favour was no doubt the Kentish lands at a favourable rate. Later in 1536 he commanded 200 Sussex men against the Pilgrimage of Grace, but did not see any active service. At about this time Cromwell posited appointing him vice-chamberlain and captain of the guard, but either changed his mind or was overruled by the king, because the appointment was not made. Instead he received in 1537 the honourable but not particularly exciting post of chief trencher, at £50 a year (16 February 1537 to 12 January 1553). In spite of Cromwell's favour, and the increasing prosperity of his landholdings, at the age of thirty-four Dudley was still only a minor office-holder and middle-ranking courtier. However, in February 1537 he was appointed a vice-admiral to keep the narrow seas. There was no war, and his service in that capacity was low key, but the king was pleased with his achievement and Dudley seems to have found the sea congenial. He was mostly occupied in chasing pirates between July and September, and his reports, of which a number survive, give a lively impression of the difficulties of dealing with an elusive quarry, and with the channel weather. He also went on embassy with Sir Thomas Wyatt the younger to Spain in October, but his role in the mission was a subordinate one, not much more distinguished than that in Wolsey's abortive mission ten years earlier.
In spite of his sea service, by 1540 Dudley had still obtained no major preferment. Appointment as master of the horse to Anne of Cleves did not represent the hoped for breakthrough at court, and in June disaster befell his friend and mentor Cromwell. Dudley had been close enough to Cromwell to make it prudent for him to retire from the court for a few months, and his domestic affairs probably benefited from some attention. However, the conservative victory was less decisive than it appeared, and by the end of 1541 he was back at court, giving close support to Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, in unravelling the distasteful and dangerous story of Catherine Howard's infidelities. The arrest and imprisonment of his stepfather, Lisle, on 19 May 1540 on suspicion of Catholic sympathies may have been an embarrassment, but Dudley was by this time a recognized member of the reforming party in religious matters, so he was not touched by the association. He later claimed to have embraced the new ideas before 1540, and his contemporary reputation supports that. On 3 March 1542 Lisle died in prison, and nine days later Dudley was created Viscount Lisle 'by the right of his mother, Lady Elizabeth, sister and heir to Sir John Grey, Viscount Lisle, who was late wife to Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle, deceased' (LP Henry VIII, 17.163). So he owed his title neither to his service nor his wealth, but simply to his kinship. Although by custom Dudley could have inherited the barony of Lisle from his mother, once his stepfather's life interest was ended, the viscountcy was a new creation by letters patent, and reflected the king's favour. No chief minister followed Cromwell, and for the remainder of Henry's reign the court was divided between conservative and reforming groups. The former was a somewhat uneasy alliance between survivors of the old nobility such as Thomas Howard, third duke of Norfolk, and William FitzAlan, eleventh earl of Arundel, and senior prelates like Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, and Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop of Durham. These men were close to the king in terms of their religious policy, but suspect for their political pretensions. Against them stood a group of service nobles led by Seymour, now earl of Hertford, closely allied to Cranmer, and Henry's last queen, Katherine Parr. The king trusted these people, but suspected them (rightly) of heretical inclinations. To this latter group belonged the new Viscount Lisle. Within the court the conflict swung backwards and forwards, and it was not until the last months of 1546 that Henry's political suspicions overcame his theological ones, and the reformers emerged as clearly victorious. The Howards were disgraced, Gardiner was rusticated, and the list of executors of the king's will was dominated by Hertford, Cranmer, Sir William Paget—and Lisle.
Lisle's political progress between 1542 and 1547 was very marked. He was knight of the shire for Staffordshire in the heart of his new landed base in 1542. On 8 November that year, as Henry prepared to renew his war with France by attacking Scotland, Lisle was appointed warden-general of the Scottish marches. It was twenty years since he had seen any military service, and the appointment was a political one. He played no part in the victory at Solway Moss on 25 November, but had to deal with a Scotland left in chaos by that defeat, and by the death of James V a few days later. He often did not know who he was supposed to deal with, but his reports disclose a sharp and pragmatic mind. He dealt successfully with the Scottish regency council, and made some progress in building up a party among the border lairds who could see an accommodation with England as being to their greatest advantage.
Henry decided to follow up his victory by pressing the Scots for a marriage alliance between their infant queen Mary and his own five-year-old son, Prince Edward, and bound the Scottish lords taken prisoner at Solway Moss to purchase their freedom by swearing to support this match. Lisle's progress with the border lairds supported this policy effectively, and although the warden-general achieved no spectacular success the king was pleased with his service. However, precisely because it was a political rather than a military position, Lisle was soon agitating for a move, and only two months after his appointment he was promoted to higher things. On 26 January 1543 he became lord high admiral and thus an ex officio member of the privy council. Deeply immersed in the affairs of the north it was three months before he could come south to take up his new duties. He was sworn of the privy council on 23 April, and nominated a knight of the Garter on the same day (installed on 5 May). In less than a year he had moved from being a frustrated middle-ranking courtier to a great officer of state.
This success (a little belated from Lisle's point of view) was not owed to any particular talent—certainly not great military ability—but to hard political graft. He was competent, did what he was bidden, and the king trusted him. However, as lord high admiral he was a conspicuous success. Henry had had a standing navy for over twenty years, but its administration had developed in a ramshackle and unplanned fashion. In 1545 and 1546 the structure was overhauled, the number of officers augmented from three to seven, and a professional salary structure established. The officers were then constituted into the king's council for marine causes, and became a department of state with defined responsibilities and a considerable degree of autonomy. This structure, which was the most developed in Europe at the time, gave the English navy the edge over its rivals in mobilization, supply, victualling, and logistics for the remainder of the century. The extent to which Lisle was personally responsible for the ideas embodied in this institution is not known, but as lord high admiral at the time he was formally responsible, and such a pragmatic and businesslike arrangement bears the stamp which all his projects show. As a fleet commander he was successful without ever winning a battle. Full-scale battles at sea were rare at this date, and in 1544 he supported both Hertford's campaign against Edinburgh and Henry's siege of Boulogne. The Scottish regent, James Hamilton, second earl of Arran, having signed a treaty accepting the English marriage proposal at Greenwich in 1543, then defected to the French party, to Henry's enormous indignation, and Hertford's punitive expedition was the result.
The French war, 1544–1546
The king's obsessive siege of Boulogne, which was successful in September 1544, cost him his alliance with the emperor and left him in dangerous isolation against the French and the Scots. This did not dent Henry's satisfaction, and he wasted no time in arranging for the government and defence of his conquest. For this front line responsibility he might have been expected to choose his favourite soldier, Hertford, but instead he entrusted it to the lord high admiral. Lisle was less than delighted by this demonstration of trust, fearing that he might lose the admiralty, by which he clearly set great store. However, he need not have worried. After four months he was recalled from Boulogne, and in January 1545 began to mobilize the fleet for what was likely to be a busy and dangerous summer. François was determined to recover Boulogne, and by June was assembling a fleet of some 300 ships for that purpose. Lisle determined upon a pre-emptive strike, and on 25 June attempted to enter the Seine estuary with 160 ships. The weather frustrated him and no more than a skirmish resulted, but the lord high admiral had shown a better grasp of large-scale tactics than anyone had a right to expect. His French antagonist, Claude d'Annebaut, also had a problem because his large fleet was ready well ahead of the army which it was supposed to accompany, and could not be kept on hold. Consequently, on 19 July he moved against Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. Although his intentions are uncertain, this was a very dangerous moment for the English. Lisle confronted him in the Solent with about 200 ships. Partly because of the fickle winds, and partly because the English were obviously ready for him, d'Annebaut backed off, mindful that his main objective was supposed to be Boulogne. This confrontation is best known for the controversial loss of the Mary Rose, which cost over 500 lives, but the engagement was really a victory for the new admiralty.
D'Annebaut discharged his main function, landing 7000 troops at Boulogne, and then brought a part of his fleet back to the Sussex coast, apparently looking for a fight. Lisle went after him with seventy ships, and the two fleets met on 15 August. However, after an exchange of gunfire the French unexpectedly retreated under cover of darkness. It was subsequently learned that plague had broken out in the fleet, and d'Annebaut was forced to return and demobilize. Lisle thus emerged victorious without having fought a battle, but having shown a conspicuous ability to be ready for one. The battle orders which he issued in August 1545 also show a tactical awareness which was altogether new in English sea commanders, who were usually noted for their extreme conservatism. Lisle was familiar with the latest French and Spanish ideas, and envisaged fighting his fleet in functional squadrons to make better use of their firepower, which was a major advance upon the mêlée of one-to-one encounters envisaged in Thomas Audley's fleet orders of 1530. The lord high admiral's stock was understandably raised. As early as January 1544 Eustache Chapuys, the well informed imperial ambassador, had thought him to be one of Henry's must influential privy councillors, and when Suffolk died in August 1545 some thought that Lisle would inherit his unique place in the king's estimation. That did not happen, and Lisle secured no further preferment during Henry's life, but his services did not go unrewarded. He acted along with Paget as a principal commissioner for the negotiation of peace with France from 17 April to 14 June 1546, and his good personal relations with d'Annebaut were a significant factor in the success of that mission. Henry was able to retain Boulogne, at least for the time being, and was able to keep his options open in Scotland.
The peace treaty was signed, and appropriately it was Lisle who was sent to the French court to receive François's ratification on 1 August. In recognition of this achievement he was granted a number of former ecclesiastical properties, including the substantial priory of St John, Clerkenwell, and the opportunity to purchase from the crown on favourable terms lands in Birmingham and Richard's Castle. When the subsidy assessments were drawn up towards the end of 1545 his lands were valued at £1376 a year. This was almost certainly an underassessment, but it made him the eighth or ninth richest peer, outranking several earls. He was also by this time a gentleman of the privy chamber, and his income from fees and the other perquisites of office amounted to at least £1000 per year. When the king died on 28 January 1547 Lisle was one of the richest as well as one of the most important subjects of the crown.
By contrast little is known of Lisle's domestic life. Although he spent so much of his time at court he seems not to have owned a London house, and his wife is scarcely ever mentioned. He rented a house in Holborn, but she probably remained in Worcestershire, looking after her growing family. Eight children survived to adulthood, six sons and two daughters. Nothing is known about their education, but the second son, John Dudley, earned generous praise from the mathematician Dr John Dee, and the two sons who survived into Elizabeth I's reign, Ambrose and Robert Dudley, were both regarded as polished gentlemen. It was later claimed that Dee had been their tutor, but by the time of his known association with Dudley the latter's sons were all grown men. Mary Dudley, mother of Sir Philip Sidney, had received the benefit of a good education too. Robert Dudley seems to have shared the lessons of the young Prince Edward in the 1540s, but how long that arrangement continued is not apparent. Lisle's eldest son and heir, Sir Henry Dudley (1525/6–1544), served under his father in the Boulogne campaign of 1544, and died of an illness not long after the capture of the town, aged eighteen. None of Lisle's surviving letters from the period allude to his loss, but whether this was stoicism or the random survival of evidence is not clear. Other letters suggest that he was an affectionate parent, who showed a proper concern for his children's welfare, and that Henry Dudley, who was then newly knighted, had been his favourite. Even Lisle's worst enemies (who were numerous) never alleged any sexual scandal against him, and his family life seems to have been a model of propriety.
The protectorate, 1547–1549
Henry's death in January 1547 converted the reformers' ascendancy into power. Edward was a little over nine years old, and a longish minority was in prospect. Within a few days Hertford, Edward's maternal uncle, and his friends set about converting Henry's somewhat indeterminate arrangements into a workable regency. Hertford became lord protector and governor of the king's person on 31 January and was promoted duke of Somerset. Thomas Wriothesley, Baron Wriothesley, remained lord chancellor and became first earl of Southampton; Lisle became earl of Warwick and on 17 February lord great chamberlain; and Sir Thomas Seymour became Baron Seymour of Sudeley and lord high admiral. These arrangements were not effected as smoothly as the official records make them appear. Seymour was deeply disgruntled at getting only a barony, and thought he should have been made the governor. Southampton was strongly opposed to the powers conferred on the new lord protector, and was consequently disgraced by him in March. Warwick was gratified by his title, and by his court office, which satisfied his long felt need for estimation, but was not particularly happy to lose the admiralty. Seymour secured a sort of revenge on his brother by marrying Katherine, the dowager queen, against the lord protector's wishes, and relations between the two brothers steadily deteriorated. It was alleged in Elizabeth's reign that Warwick had encouraged Seymour's disaffection for reasons of his own, but no contemporary evidence from 1547 suggests that. All the indications are that at that time Somerset and Warwick were working closely together and in reasonable harmony. Outside observers thought that the earl was the second or third most important person in England, and well satisfied with his position. He received a legacy of £500 in Henry VIII's will, and in March a grant of the manor, castle, and town of Warwick, together with extensive properties in eleven counties to an annual value of £498, following his elevation to the title. In spite of his concern with estimation he made no attempt to create an old-fashioned power base for himself in the west midlands, and in fact had sold most of this grant within a few months of receiving it, buying elsewhere for reasons which are now impossible to recover. He subsequently repurchased much of this land.
Somerset believed that he had a duty to complete the old king's unfinished business in Scotland, and in autumn 1547 he made another attempt to enforce the defunct treaty of Greenwich. In September he crossed the Tweed at the head of about 18,000 men, with Warwick as his lieutenant and commander of the cavalry. The resulting battle of Pinkie on 10 September was an overwhelming English victory, but it achieved little, except to make French intervention more likely. Warwick distinguished himself by his personal courage, receiving warm compliments from the lord protector and another £100 worth of land as a reward, but he kept a low profile for the remainder of the year, and may have been suffering from one of those bouts of ill health which become increasingly noticeable over the last six years of his life. There was still no suggestion of a rift with Somerset at this time. Odete de Selve, the French ambassador, considered them to be close allies, and many petitioners approached Warwick because of his presumed influence with the lord protector. In March 1548 he was appointed president of the king's council in the marches of Wales, and soon afterwards gave his first hint of dissatisfaction with Somerset's style of government when his proposals for appointments which he thought should have been in his gift were ignored.
By summer 1548 Somerset's administration was running into increasing difficulties. His policy of controlling Scotland through strategic garrisons was proving an expensive failure, and his attempts to defend what some saw as traditional social values by prohibiting enclosure and changes of land use were alienating the aristocratic support upon which he depended. There were enclosure riots, and in June the French sent an expeditionary force of 6000 men to Scotland. The English garrisons were forced out over the next eighteen months, and Mary, queen of Scots, was betrothed to the dauphin, François. In August 1548 she departed for France, and the lord protector's Scottish policy, to which he had devoted so much energy and money, was in ruins. Warwick disapproved of Somerset's agrarian policy, and clashed bitterly with the commonwealth man John Hales, but he assiduously maintained good relations with Somerset's familiars, Sir John Thynne and William Cecil, and at the end of 1548 still seems to have thought good relations with the lord protector to be the best guarantee of his own interests. He warmly supported the moves towards protestantism which produced the first Book of Common Prayer in January 1549, and conservatives noted with disapproval that the mass had been discontinued in his household by the end of 1547.
By the end of 1548 Somerset's relations with Seymour had also reached a crisis. Katherine had died in September, and Seymour began a reckless and irresponsible bid to secure the hand of the fifteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth. He also attempted to use the House of Lords to annul his brother's patent. Having discovered that the under-treasurer of the Bristol mint, Sir William Sharrington, was corrupt, he persuaded or browbeat him into illicitly coining large sums of money which he spent on weapons, claiming that he had a substantial following who would support his cause. In January 1549 the lord protector felt compelled to act. Seymour was arrested and charged with treason. He was not tried by his peers, but condemned by act of attainder and executed on 20 March. This may have been because he refused to answer some of the charges, or perhaps because the evidence was insecure. It was later claimed that Warwick engineered this situation as part of a plot to destroy Somerset, but he said at the time that he had tried to reconcile the brothers. Every effort was made to blacken Seymour's name, but there is no contemporary evidence that Somerset was seriously weakened by the execution of his brother. The privy council solidly supported him, accepting that he had no option, and expressed their sympathy with his painful dilemma.
Nevertheless all was not well between lord protector and privy council. The latter had become increasingly marginalized as Somerset grew more autocratic, and less sensitive to either advice or criticism. With more persistence than good sense he began to mobilize in spring 1549 to recover the initiative in Scotland, but was forced to abandon his plans when rebellion, riots, and other major disorders engulfed about fifteen English counties in June and July. In some places, particularly in Devon and Cornwall, the introduction of the new Book of Common Prayer at Whitsun was the trigger, but most of the troubles were caused by economic grievances. Sometimes it was the alleged loss of homes and employment to enclosing landlords, more often the engrossing of common land by those with the greatest interests. In many cases the protesters were encouraged to act by the belief that the king and the lord protector were sympathetic to their cause, a belief encouraged by the enclosure commissions which Somerset had established to determine the extent of the problem (1 June 1548, 11 April 1549). In spite of strenuous warnings that subjects should not take the law into their own hands yeomen farmers and minor gentlemen like the brothers Robert and William Kett in Norfolk were often convinced that it was the greater gentry, who dominated county government, who stood in the way of a policy wanted by both the crown and the common people. These protests enjoyed very different fortunes. In many counties strong local leadership either suppressed or pacified the troubles, and significantly it was in two places where the dominant county nobility, the Howards and the Courtenays, had recently been removed, Norfolk and Devon, that matters got out of hand. At first Somerset was reluctant to act firmly, partly because he saw the justice of some of the demands, and partly because it took time to recall his forces (many of them foreign mercenaries) from the Scottish border. This proved disastrous.
The coup against Somerset, 1549
Eventually, in mid-August John Russell, first Baron Russell, put down the western rebellion, but in Norfolk the first attempt under William Parr, marquess of Northampton, was defeated in late July, and if the rebels had had any aggressive strategy or political leadership the situation could have become serious. However, because they saw themselves simply as a protest movement they merely repeated their demands and waited for the next government move. In this crisis Somerset called upon his most trusted ally and skilled soldier, Warwick, who moved against the camp on Mousehold Heath outside Norwich on 23 August. Warwick had not fought this kind of campaign before, but he had good and reliable troops and a clear strategic objective. Going about his task carefully and systematically he retook the city of Norwich and defeated the rebels at the so-called battle of Dussindale on 27 August. About 2000 of the insurgents were killed on the field, but Warwick refused to allow the local gentry to exact revenge for the humiliation which they had suffered, and, in sharp contrast to what was taking place in the west country, judicial executions following the rising numbered only a few dozen.
By early September Warwick was back in the capital, but he did not disband his troops, and his attitude towards the lord protector seems to have undergone a radical change. In July his amicable correspondence with Sir John Thynne, Somerset's steward, came to an end, and according to François Van der Delft, the imperial ambassador, it was then that he joined a group of leading peers who were plotting the duke's overthrow. The others, particularly Henry FitzAlan, twelfth earl of Arundel, and Southampton, were religious conservatives who were already attempting unsuccessfully to persuade Princess Mary to accept the regency. Whether Warwick was the leader, or merely the most powerful member of this group is not clear, but the troops which he had retained since the Norfolk campaign proved vital to the outcome of the coup. Most of the privy council rallied to the conspirators, and gathered in London at the beginning of October. Somerset was with the king at Hampton Court when he discovered what was afoot on 5 October. Apart from the king's guard of about 200 men he had no troops, and he issued a general summons to Edward's loyal subjects to defend him against a traitorous plot. This was a major error, reinforcing the privy councillors' claim that he was favouring the commons against their natural lords. There was a strong response from the commons to Somerset's pleas for assistance and thousands gathered at Hampton Court, but nothing of military significance, and on 6 October the lord protector removed the king to the greater security of Windsor Castle. At that point it also became clear that Russell and Sir William Herbert, leading the forces in the west, would not commit their forces to Somerset's cause. A tense stand-off then followed as letters passed between those with the king, particularly Paget and Cranmer, and the council in London. On 10 October, realizing that no useful help was coming, and having strained his relations with the young king, Somerset surrendered.
This was a negotiated settlement that Sir Philip Hoby brokered in which Somerset agreed to surrender and even give up his protectorship, 'if ye will again for your partes use equitie' (TNA: PRO, SP 10/9/26, M. fols. 39v–40r). Probably the key figures behind this were Warwick and Cranmer, who shared a common interest in continuing the lord protector's religious reforms, although for rather different reasons. After the coup Somerset was imprisoned and the protectorate dissolved (13 October), and the privy council assumed a collective responsibility for government, ostensibly under the leadership of Southampton. A religious reaction was generally expected, and Van der Delft was puzzled by Cranmer's continued presence on the privy council. As late as 7 November the ambassador believed that Southampton was still the leader, but in fact his influence was waning, and the appointment of the protestant Henry Grey, third marquess of Dorset, to the privy council at the end of November signalled that Warwick's power was growing. Realizing that they were losing ground, in December a group of conservative privy councillors led by Southampton apparently decided to try and remove Warwick by condemning Somerset as a traitor, and then alleging Warwick's complicity in his crimes. Warned in advance, probably by William Paulet, Baron St John, on 13 December Warwick staged a dramatic scene, declaring that Southampton did 'seek his [Somerset's] bloude and he that seekethe his bloude woulde have myne also' (BL, Add. MS 48126, fol. 16r). The privy council rallied to him and the conservative leaders were removed. Shortly afterwards Somerset was allowed to compound for his offences and was released into house arrest. The conservative plot may have been real, or it may have been fabricated, but the outcome was decisive. Warwick became the unchallenged leader, assuming the title of lord president of the privy council in February 1550, and the policy of religious reform continued. He was again briefly lord high admiral from 28 October 1549 to 14 May 1550. At this time he relinquished his office of chamberlain (1 February 1550), becoming instead great master of the royal household on 20 February.
Lord president of the privy council, 1550–1552
Throughout this period of domestic crisis England had been at war. In August 1549, seeing his opportunity, Henri II had attacked Boulogne. Most of the Boullonais was quickly overrun, but the town itself held out, and repeated attacks were defeated. Faced with a financial crisis at home, with characteristic pragmatism Warwick decided to cut his losses. Capitalizing on Henri's own difficulties, and the failure of his military strategy, in March 1550 he sold Boulogne back to the French for the equivalent of £180,000. He then redeployed the garrison to improve domestic security and used the money to pay off some of the king's debts. Later in the year he also quietly abandoned Somerset's aggressive policy towards Scotland. Military expenditure continued to be high because a protestant England had few friends abroad, so the navy, and the garrisons of Berwick and Calais were maintained at full strength, but this was nothing like as costly as waging war. By 1550 the crown was £300,000 in debt, inflation had risen by about 75 per cent in two years, and the sterling exchange rate had collapsed. Warwick's policy of retrenchment was thus not only urgent but long overdue. Unfortunately, although he knew what had to be done he could not resist the temptation for one last round of debasement before finally listening to the advice of his London friends, including Sir Thomas Gresham, and restoring a sound level of purity to the mint output. Unfortunately he also made the mistake of announcing his intention in advance. The decline was halted, and some confidence restored, but the problem was not solved because the privy council judged that it could not afford to recall the base coin. However, by strict economy, and by appointing Gresham as the king's agent in Antwerp early in 1552, Warwick managed to restore the exchange rate, and made a start on reducing the burden of debt. Some loans were recycled, and some recalled to London where the support of the city reduced the difficulty of servicing them. Warwick's declared intention of removing the king's debts was aimed at least as much at gratifying his supporters in London as easing the administrative burden on the privy council.
The social tensions of 1549 had not gone away, but Warwick avoided his predecessor's critical mistake. No one believed that he had any sympathy with agrarian malcontents, justified or not. He judged that the unity of the ruling class was more important for the preservation of order than strict social justice and, in the circumstances of a minority, he was right. It was for this reason that he restored the privy council to an effective administrative body, licensed his friends and allies to maintain men in their liveries, regularized the appointment of lords lieutenant from 1550, and distributed favours and rewards with a generous hand. For all these things he was severely criticized, both at the time and since, but as long as Edward was alive the policy worked. Not only was there no repetition of 1549, but conservative gentry who detested his continued protestant reforms nevertheless enforced them rather than give the commons another excuse for rebellion. The severe outbreaks of sweating sickness which afflicted the country in 1551 and 1552 probably helped to keep the lid on discontent, but the critical factor was that the privy council and the county commissions spoke with a single voice. It was this urgent need for unity which made Somerset such a problem. The former lord protector was restored to the privy council in April 1550, and both he and Warwick made public gestures of reconciliation, particularly the marriage between the earl's eldest surviving son, John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, and Anne Seymour, the duke's daughter, which took place on 3 June 1550.
Unfortunately Somerset lacked his supplanter's pragmatic realism. He did not like Warwick's repressive social policy, or his tentative friendship with France, and he was deeply offended by the abandonment of his Scottish policy. Nor was he prepared to retire with a good grace. Rumours gathered around him from mid-1550 on, and some of Warwick's enemies tried to use him by hinting at his restoration to power. Apart from making his dissatisfaction with Warwick obvious, and failing to discourage his over-zealous adherents, Somerset confined his activity to intrigue. However, after making several indirect and unsuccessful attempts to persuade him to desist Warwick decided that the danger of another split in the ruling élite was too grave to be ignored. This attack was presaged by Warwick's promotion to duke of Northumberland on 11 October 1551. Northumberland bought support through granting titles: Dorset was promoted duke of Suffolk, St John to marquess of Winchester (having already been made earl of Wiltshire), and Herbert to earl of Pembroke. On 16 October Somerset was arrested, and was tried on 1 December on charges of treason which were largely fabricated, as was the custom in such cases. When he was acquitted and the crowds outside thought he would go free there were scenes of rejoicing in London which demonstrated how right Northumberland had been to fear him. However, Somerset was convicted of felony under the statute of 3 & 4 Edward VI c. 5 for having assembled an illegal force—an offence of which he was probably guilty—and executed on 22 January 1552. Somerset was destroyed by a combination of ruthlessness and trickery, but he was partly the author of his own downfall. The privy council remained united, as was politically necessary, despite his death.
By this time Edward was fourteen; precocious, opinionated, and very much aware of who he was. Somerset, who never seems to have noticed that the boy was growing up, had made the serious mistake of ignoring him, except for ceremonial purposes. During the crisis of October 1549 he had given his sovereign lord a severe fright and a bad cold by hastily removing him from Hampton Court to Windsor, and there was no affection thereafter in their relationship. Edward was easily convinced of his uncle's guilt at the time of his final fall. Northumberland did not make the same error, controlling the privy chamber through his office of great master. He knew (or thought he knew) that the king would achieve his majority in October 1555, and he had no intention of losing his influence at that point. Whatever his own religious views he judged that Edward's adolescent enthusiasm for radical protestantism was not a passing phase, and did everything in his power to humour him. He even risked making an enemy of his erstwhile ally Cranmer by advancing the more radical protestantism of men he favoured such as John Hooper and John Knox. Cranmer resented being outbid in Erastianism, and perhaps suspected that Northumberland's radicalism was largely assumed—or 'carnal' as he put it.
Edward was completely convinced, and the duke's personal ascendancy became unshakeable. According to one contemporary French observer the young king would do nothing without consulting Northumberland, whom he regarded as almost a father. Northumberland also took great pains with the king's political education, recruiting the services of William Thomas, one of the clerks of the privy council, to help by introducing the king to political essays, along Machiavellian lines, and even staging special meetings of the privy council for Edward to practise the skills of kingship. Perhaps even those taking part hardly knew how real these exercises were. Northumberland's main service to the crown during these years was the restoration of effective conciliar government, and the establishment of a relationship between king and privy council which he envisaged as surviving into the time of Edward's personal rule. The fact that his own authority would probably be confirmed and reinforced by this process accounts for the largely negative opinions which his efforts attracted from contemporaries. He was not an idealist, but like Cromwell he had a political strategy: to reduce the king's debts, to consolidate his position as supreme head of the church, and to reinforce the privy council's administrative machinery. He also encouraged the boy to take more vigorous exercise, which Edward greatly enjoyed, particularly archery and running at the quintain. Fortunately he was too young for the dangerous sport of jousting.
The rewards of power
For John Dudley political power also brought generous rewards. After his fall he was bitterly denounced for his pride and greed, but in fact what he gained was not out of proportion to his position. He became earl marshal on 20 April 1551 and warden-general of the marches of Scotland on 20 October. The latter position carried the apparently large fee of £1333 6s. 8d. per annum, but out of that he was supposed to maintain the warden's retinue, and even if it had all been profit it would not have compared with the £5333 6s. 8d. a year which Somerset had awarded himself in 1547. The charge that Northumberland intended to add the palatinate jurisdiction of Durham and much diocesan property to his growing estates in the north is not substantiated by the position which he actually achieved, which was that of steward of the crown lands in the north and leader of the king's tenants (2 May 1553). The choice of Northumberland as his ducal title may be significant, but he had handled the Warwick lands fairly cavalierly, and there is no more sign of his having a power base in the north than in the west midlands. He continued to trade in land, as he had done all his life, and between 1550 and 1553 acquired property with a capital value of about £40,000. Some of this was indeed granted on terms which amounted virtually to gift, but much was purchased or obtained by exchange, and some was sold almost immediately. When he fell his lands were valued at £4300 per annum; great wealth, but not as great as that of Somerset, or indeed of the Talbot earls of Shrewsbury. His promotion to duke of Northumberland gave him the highest dignity possible for a subject. He had at last satisfied his craving for estimation, but he made no attempt to follow it up with the creation of a ducal retinue. He had a household of more than 200, including many gentlemen, and several residences, but his devoted personal following was very small; a few soldiers like Sir John Gates. His estate was large, but constantly changing, and he had no manred in the traditional sense. His power base was the central government, and he could not command the loyal following of a Stanley, or a Talbot, or even a FitzAlan. He also used the crown's resources to buy support, although that did not have the damaging effect which has sometimes been alleged. As long as Edward was alive this preserved the unity of the government, but few of those who had benefited from his patronage felt beholden to Dudley personally. He was what Henry VIII had made him, a service peer on a grand scale, not an overmighty subject.
The succession crisis, 1553
The true nature of Northumberland's position was ruthlessly exposed by the events of 1553. At the beginning of the year the king was unwell. He was not sickly by nature, and had cast off previous infections with encouraging resilience, so at first anxiety was muted. However on 1 March he was forced to open the parliament with a special ceremony at Whitehall Palace instead of the usual procession at Westminster, and his physicians began to be concerned. By the end of the month he was better. In April he was able to take the air and a normal recovery was expected. However, that did not happen, and he was still ill in May. By then some pessimists, including Jehan Scheyfve, the imperial ambassador, were declaring that his sickness was mortal, but as late as the end of that month some who were in a position to know pronounced that he was recovering. In early June Edward collapsed, and even the most sanguine recognized that his days were numbered. Months before, perhaps before his illness had commenced, Edward had toyed with ideas about the succession, and jotted them down. They were not very coherent, but they show him to have been obsessed with legitimacy, and with a male succession. Bypassing both his half-sisters as illegitimate he started with an unborn son of his cousin Frances Grey, duchess of Suffolk (1517–1559), and proceeded through the even more remote sons of her young daughters. This was not serious politics. It was never discussed by the privy council, and was not mentioned in the parliament. It is not even certain that anyone other than Edward knew of the existence of the ‘Device’. However, when the king collapsed it came urgently into the public domain. There was no Salic law in England and a female successor would have to be considered. No one wanted the duchess of Suffolk as queen, so the ‘Device’ was altered to settle the succession on her eldest daughter, Lady Jane Grey (1537–1554) 'and her heires masles' (Inner Temple Library, Petyt MS 538/47, fol. 317r).
The responsibility for this somewhat bizarre outcome has been fiercely debated ever since. The most commonly held view is that Northumberland bullied or persuaded the dying boy to designate an heir whom he considered to be biddable and amenable to his own designs. Jane had married his son Guildford on 21 May with the king's blessing, and if Northumberland could not have the puppet king he had been preparing, then he would have a puppet queen instead. The marriage between Jane and Guildford had been designed to bring that about. It is impossible to disprove this theory, which now has centuries of credibility, but there is some contemporary evidence against it. In the first place the marriage was part of a wider scheme of dynastic alliances, and Jane had not been the duke's first choice for his son; nor, at the time of the marriage, did anyone suggest that it had significance for the succession. Secondly, the king was almost sixteen, and very conscious of his responsibilities. Much as he may have respected Northumberland this was not a decision for a subject. Nor is it likely that anyone other than the king would have ventured to treat a statute so cavalierly. The ‘Device’ is in his own hand, and no one would have altered it without his full knowledge and consent. Moreover, when his law officers demurred at the breach of his father's statute it was (and could only have been) Edward who commanded them upon their allegiance to obey him, asserting that he would obtain parliament's assent retrospectively. Northumberland was totally committed to do the king's bidding, but such an attitude was inevitable in the circumstances, and does not prove that he was the originator of the scheme. He certainly had little to hope for from Mary, whom he had bullied unmercifully since 1550 over her religious nonconformity, but he would have had no reason to obstruct Elizabeth's succession, except that the king would have it so.
The real question is not how the scheme to settle the crown on Jane came about, but why it was adhered to when Edward died on 6 July and his driving will was removed. In this connection Northumberland's leadership was certainly critical. Against all sorts of doubts and uncertainties it was he who insisted that Edward's wishes should be respected and the claim which Mary promptly advanced rejected on 10 July. Whether this was calculated self interest, a reckless gamble, or an honest endeavour to honour a commitment, is not known. What is known is that there was no real planning for a coup of the kind which a seasoned politician like Northumberland would surely have made if his scheme had been premeditated. His actions after 6 July bear every sign of hasty improvisation. For about five days he held the privy council together, and most outside observers believed that he would succeed, but as soon as he was compelled to leave London to face the growing force which Mary was building around her in Norfolk conciliar unity collapsed.
Northumberland was personally unpopular, largely because he seems to have been incapable of establishing cordial relations with any of his colleagues, or indeed with anyone else apart from his wife and children. Moreover, what he was trying to do was generally regarded as unlawful. Even the protestants, in whose interests he claimed to be acting, distrusted and disliked him. Most of them declared for the lawful heir, in spite of the threat which she represented, although according to John Foxe the men of Suffolk attempted to make their allegiance conditional. For the majority who were not protestants Mary's high profile conservatism was an asset rather than a liability. Within a few days the duke's political position collapsed, and the fact that he had no old-fashioned affinity to fall back on left him totally exposed. When most of his troops deserted he surrendered at Cambridge on 23 July, along with his sons and a few friends, and was imprisoned in the Tower of London two days later.
Trial, death, and reputation
The last weeks of Northumberland's life were a sad anticlimax for a man who had frequently displayed high levels of political skill. Tried for high treason on 18 August he claimed to have done nothing save by the king's command and the privy council's consent. Implicitly that argument was accepted for events before 6 July, but he was inevitably convicted for having acted on Jane's (invalid) authority after Edward's death. It was in this context of imminent death that he took the notorious step of renouncing the protestantism which he had long been promoting. Northumberland's religion has always been a matter of controversy, and this spectacular change of course has probably done more than anything else both to shape his image as the stereotypical wicked duke, a reverse figure of the godly, as well as good, duke of Somerset, and to fuel doubts as to whether he had any true religion at all.
In fact Dudley's conversion to an evangelical religion had taken place at much the same time as Seymour's. He himself assured Sir William Cecil in December 1552 that 'I have for xx yere stand to oon kynd of religion in the same which I doo nowe profes' (TNA: PRO, SP 10/15/66, M. fol. 137r), and this is borne out by the dedication to him of a Latin epigram by Nicholas Bourbon, published in 1538 but probably written in 1535, which urges him and his wife to continue to follow the banners of Christ. Clearly Bourbon saw him as one of the group of evangelicals who gathered round Anne Boleyn. Informed comment from 1546–7 similarly placed him firmly in the reformist camp. The imperial ambassador Eustache Chapuys, for instance, on 29 January 1547 described Dudley as one of the new king's 'stirrers-up of heresy'. Less than a year earlier he had not been so far committed as to be unwilling to put pressure on the radical protestant Anne Askew, but it is significant that she rebuked him and his colleague Baron Parr of Kendal, saying 'it was great shame for them to counsell contrarye to their knowlege' (Bellin, 96). By December 1547 it was reported that mass was no longer said in his house.
During Edward VI's reign there were no doubts of Dudley's religious allegiance. He was a committed supporter of protestantism who also favoured reducing the powers of bishops and the confiscation of their estates. In part his stance was anti-papal. He owned a copy of Bernardino Ochino's Dialoge of the Unjuste Usurped Primacie of the Bishop of Rome (1549), and was also the dedicatee of one of John Bale's attacks on papistry. But it is significant that Bale also declared that he had always known Dudley as 'a most mighty, zealous, and ardent supporter, maintainer, and defender of God's lively word' (MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant, 53). Nor was Bale's the only voice raised in praise of Dudley's religious zeal. As late as 28 February 1553 John Hooper, an advanced reformer, praised him as 'a diligent promoter of the glory of God' (Robinson, 1.99).
His collapse later in 1553, following the failure of his attempt to divert the succession from Princess Mary, appalled English protestants, not least his own daughter-in-law, who angrily denounced him: 'wo worthe him! he hathe brought me and my stocke in most myserable callamyty and mysery by his exceeding ambicion' (Nichols, 25). But it is noteworthy that Jane did not impugn Northumberland's religious sincerity; ambition, and simple fear of death, were her charges—'But life was swete, it appeered; so he might have lyved, you wyl saye, he dyd (not) care howe' (ibid., 26). A sudden breakdown of faith, both in himself and in the religion which had long underpinned his actions, at a time of overwhelming crisis, is certainly suggested by Northumberland's very moving letter to the earl of Arundel on the eve of his execution, begging him to move the queen to mercy: 'O that it would please her good grace to give me life, yea, the life of a dog, that I might live and kiss her feet … O my good lord remember how sweet life is, and how bitter ye contrary' (Loades, 269). In his letter the duke referred to his long service to the crown. In a time of agonized fear it may have been easy for him to be persuaded, or to have persuaded himself, that his defeat was a sign of God's wrath at his having deserted both the guiding principle of his secular life—loyalty to the Tudor dynasty—and the religion of his fathers, and to have turned for succour to the Catholicism he had once spurned.
Northumberland's appeal for clemency fell on deaf ears. Having extracted every propaganda advantage which he was willing to give, Mary had him executed at Tower Hill on 22 August. He made a carefully stage-managed speech before his death, in which he departed from the script in references to the recent plot to advance Jane to the throne, but otherwise said what the government wanted to hear. In particular he warned the crowd to remain loyal to the Catholic church, and to 'beware and take hede that yow be not ledde—and deceavyd by thes sedycyowse and lewde preachers that have openid the booke and knowe not how to shutt yt'. Protestantism, he said, caused God to plague the realm 'with warres commocions rebellyon pestelence & famyne besydes manye more greate and grevouse plagues to the greate decaye of our commonwealthe' (BL, Cotton MS Titus B. ii, fols. 144v–145r). The speech was printed by John Cawood, the royal printer, with Latin and German translations, and widely circulated. He was buried at the Tower of London.
Beyond his own family few tears were shed for Northumberland and the 'black legend' of his pride, greed, and tyranny in power developed almost immediately, not least because he became a convenient scapegoat for all those who had accepted Jane, and because Mary had to find excuses for those whom she wished to employ. Until recently he has received very little credit for the major services which he performed in maintaining a viable government from 1549 to 1553. Nor is it always remembered that it was his patronage of the visionary Dee and the ageing Sebastian Cabot, and his close relations with |
Dudley, John, duke of Northumberland (1504–1553), royal servant, was born in London, the eldest of three sons and heir of Edmund Dudley (c. 1462–1510), administrator, of Atherington in Sussex, and his second wife, Elizabeth (1482×4–1525/6), daughter of Edward Grey, first Baron Lisle, and his wife, Elizabeth, and sister and coheir of John Grey, second Baron Lisle. He was named for his grandfather John Dudley (d. 1502) of Atherington, the second son of John Sutton (or Dudley), first Baron Dudley. His brothers were Sir Andrew Dudley (c. 1507–1559) [see under Sutton, Henry (d. 1564?)] and Jerome (d. in or after 1555).
Childhood, youth and early career, 1504–1532
At the time of John Dudley's birth his father was a highly trusted servant of Henry VII. Nothing is known of his early childhood, but it was probably spent at his father's main house in Candlewick Street, London. The king's death in April 1509 led directly to Edmund Dudley's downfall and execution on 17 August 1510. All his children were under six at that time, and presumably remained with their mother, although it is not known where, all his property being forfeit to the crown.
On 12 November 1511 Elizabeth Dudley remarried, her second husband being Arthur Plantagenet (b. before 1472, d. 1542), the illegitimate son of Edward IV. Plantagenet was granted such of Edmund Dudley's lands as still remained in the hands of the crown but not, apparently, the custody of any of his children. Either at the time of Elizabeth's marriage, or very soon afterwards, John was placed in the care of Edward Guildford (c. 1479–1534), a well-connected esquire of the body, who was formally granted his wardship in February 1512. At the same time John Dudley was restored in blood 'being not yet eight years old' and his father's attainder was annulled by statute (Statutes of the Realm, 11 vols., 1810–28, 3 Hen. VIII c. 19). Why this arrangement was made, and on whose initiative, is not known, and there are some hints that Plantagenet felt aggrieved about it.
Guildford seems to have received little for his pains beyond the modest profits of those lands which Edmund Dudley had enfeoffed to his son's use before his attainder. His principal seat was at Halden in Kent, and it was there that the young John Dudley was brought up. He probably had only the haziest memory of his father, and the attainder—so obviously a matter of political convenience—seems to have cast no shadow upon his childhood, although in later life he complained that Edmund Dudley had been treated unfairly. John Dudley would have left his mother's care in any case at about seven to be brought up in a friendly household, so he had lost nothing by becoming Guildford's ward. There is no direct evidence of that upbringing, which seems to have been entirely conventional. As an adult Dudley was literate in English, but claimed to have no knowledge of Latin, which probably means that he had forgotten the little he had learned. He had no conventional intellectual skills, and it is unlikely that his interest in cosmography and navigation was acquired as a child. He was almost certainly taught at home by a tutor, which was the normal education provided for the son (or ward) of a substantial gentleman, and probably shared his lessons with Guildford's own children, Richard and Jane [see below]. Consequently, instead of following his father in the study of the law he followed his guardian to become a soldier and courtier.
In 1514 Guildford became master of the Tower armouries and ex officio master of ceremonies for Henry VIII's jousts, a very responsible and high profile position at court at that time. By twelve or thirteen Dudley would have been old enough to have served as a page under his guardian, but there is no mention of his having done so. He must at some point have been introduced to the court, because in 1521, aged seventeen, he was selected to serve in Cardinal Thomas Wolsey's retinue during his abortive mission to negotiate peace between François I of France and the young emperor, Charles V. This was a purely educational trip—he was given no specific task—but it represented his first small exposure to public life. Guildford had been appointed knight marshal of Calais in 1519, and in 1522 with the outbreak of war with France he gave his young ward a very minor command within the garrison. Dudley seems to have gained his first taste of military service in the minor skirmishes which took place around the pale towards the end of that year. At about the same time he became betrothed to Jane Guildford. Whether this was by his wish or hers—or someone else's—is not known. He appears to have felt that the arrangement was made by his mother and Guildford, but the subsequent marriage was happy and fruitful. Richard Guildford seems to have been a sickly or inadequate youth (at least in his father's eyes), and Dudley was always favoured before him. This could have caused serious problems later had not Richard Guildford predeceased his father.
Meanwhile, when Charles Brandon, first duke of Suffolk, was appointed to lead an army royal against France in 1523 Guildford was among his senior officers, taking Dudley in his retinue. The campaign was a failure, but on 7 November the nineteen-year-old Dudley was knighted by the duke. Suffolk was somewhat generous with knighthoods at this point, perhaps because he had nothing else to be generous with, and this gesture may have been no more than a favour to his old friend Guildford, but his action attracted no criticism, either at the time or later. Dudley, who subsequently acquired a reputation for physical courage, had distinguished himself at the crossing of the Somme. By 1524 he was back at court as an esquire of the body. Since the rise of the privy chamber during Henry VII's reign this no longer implied a close relationship with the king, but it was a position of honour, made more significant by the fact that Dudley also began to appear prominently among the jousters. Guildford was in a good position to give him his chance in this respect, but the fact that he was able to grasp the opportunity and to gain Henry VIII's favour in consequence tells us that he had both courage and skill. Jousting was a demanding occupation in 1524.
Jane Guildford reached her sixteenth birthday in 1525, and John his twenty-first, and they must have married before the end of the year. By 1528 they had at least two, and probably three children, although the exact dates of birth are not known. Their eight sons included John Dudley, earl of Warwick 1527?–1554 [see below], Ambrose Dudley, earl of Warwick (c. 1530–1590), Henry Dudley 1531?–1557 [see below], Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester (1532/3–1588), and Guildford Dudley (c. 1535–1554); their daughters were Mary Sidney (1530x35–1586) and Katherine Hastings, later countess of Huntingdon (c. 1538–1620).
Because Dudley had not been required to sue livery of his lands there is no exact record of what he inherited. The value was estimated at £200 a year, and he probably received more as Jane Guildford's jointure, which would have given him a reasonable competence for a man in his position. Where the young couple lived is not clear either, but it was probably upon one of the manors in Surrey or Sussex which Dudley is known to have held later. In 1527 he again accompanied Wolsey to France, but he was never in the cardinal's service, and was unaffected by his fall in 1529. His only known patron was Guildford, and Guildford himself was the king's man. Neither followed the contemporary rule that an aspiring hop needed a strong pole. By 1530 Dudley was an active and successful courtier, but he always seems to have been guided by his own reading of Henry's mind rather than by allegiance to any particular court party. This had its risks, but avoided dependence upon intermediaries for favour. At some point between 1525 and 1528 his mother, Lady Elizabeth Plantagenet, died. This should have conferred upon him the barony of Lisle, but Plantagenet had already been created Viscount Lisle and Dudley's claim (if he put it forward) was not recognized. He may have inherited some property from his mother, but the bulk of her estate was also tied up in a life interest to Lisle, so he seems to have benefited hardly at all from her death. During the critical years 1528 to 1532, when the court was becoming increasingly divided over Henry's great matter, Dudley kept a low profile—so low that no one commented upon his alignment at all. He was not yet important enough to get himself into danger, but he remained at court, not making any attempt to promote a career in the country. He did not even serve upon a commission of the peace for Surrey or Sussex (for which he was well qualified by 1525) until 1531.
By 1532 Dudley was a minor member of what at this point was the Boleyn / Cromwell party, which was clearly in the ascendant by the end of that year. Perhaps as a result, in March he gained his first office, the constableship of Warwick Castle, which he held jointly in survivorship with the established favourite, Sir Francis Bryan. A number of minor offices (which were not shared) were granted with the constableship, carrying fees of about £45 a year, and enough status in the county for him to be added to the commission of the peace during the same year. At the age of about twenty-eight Dudley's career begins to emerge from the shadows. He obtained his first wardship, that of Anthony Norton of Worcestershire, and stood surety for a substantial sum which his friend Sir Edward Seymour borrowed from the king.
Royal service, 1532–1544
Also during 1532 Dudley entered into a complex, and eventually acrimonious, financial relationship with his kinsman, Edward Sutton (known as Dudley), fourth Baron Dudley (c. 1515–1586), the grandson of his grandfather's elder brother. Lord Dudley was deep in debt, partly as a result of his father's extravagance, and partly his own incompetence. Dudley loaned him £1400, for which he bound himself to repay £2000 over five years at an annual interest rate of about eight per cent. At the same time Lord Dudley appears to have borrowed smaller sums from other people, and to have mortgaged most of his estate to Dudley for another £6000. Dudley must himself have borrowed to raise a capital sum of nearly £7500, which he probably did at a favourable rate through contacts in London. From his point of view it was purely a business arrangement, and when Lord Dudley began to get into trouble with his repayments Dudley had no option but to apply pressure. Lord Dudley, however, does not seem to have understood this, and complained loudly that a kinsman could so misuse him. By 1533 he was thoroughly mired, but received little sympathy from Thomas Cromwell, then the near all powerful secretary. Eventually Dudley foreclosed on the mortgage, and in 1537 Lord Dudley sold his entire estate to a London syndicate, who were probably John Dudley's financial backers, and now became his feoffees to uses. By 1540 he had moved his principal seat from Sussex to Dudley Castle in Worcestershire and was known as Sir John Dudley of Dudley.
By 1534 his father-in-law and patron was obviously ailing, and Dudley took over Guildford's parliamentary seat as knight of the shire for Kent, and his mastership of the Tower armoury (10 July). Now that the king had virtually retired from jousting this latter office had lost some of its importance, but it was still a position of prestige, and Dudley was supervising the making of armour for Henry as late as 1540. Guildford died on 4 June 1534, leaving his nephew, John Guildford (b. in or before 1508, d. 1565), as his principal heir. Dudley however, pursued claims against the estate, both on his own and his wife's behalf. Cromwell arbitrated the quarrel, but it is not known how successful the Dudley claim was. What is clear is that Dudley, although not unscrupulous, was a shrewd and hard-headed man of business. This can also be seen in his land dealings. By 1535 he had already sold his reversionary interest in his mother's estate, and by 1536, in spite of sitting for the county in the House of Commons, he had parted with most of his land in Kent to Cromwell, who was keen to build up an estate close to London. At the same time he was buying land in Staffordshire and the Welsh marches. The fall of the Boleyns in that year did not touch him because he had already attached himself to the victorious Cromwell, the price of whose favour was no doubt the Kentish lands at a favourable rate. Later in 1536 he commanded 200 Sussex men against the Pilgrimage of Grace, but did not see any active service. At about this time Cromwell posited appointing him vice-chamberlain and captain of the guard, but either changed his mind or was overruled by the king, because the appointment was not made. Instead he received in 1537 the honourable but not particularly exciting post of chief trencher, at £50 a year (16 February 1537 to 12 January 1553). In spite of Cromwell's favour, and the increasing prosperity of his landholdings, at the age of thirty-four Dudley was still only a minor office-holder and middle-ranking courtier. However, in February 1537 he was appointed a vice-admiral to keep the narrow seas. There was no war, and his service in that capacity was low key, but the king was pleased with his achievement and Dudley seems to have found the sea congenial. He was mostly occupied in chasing pirates between July and September, and his reports, of which a number survive, give a lively impression of the difficulties of dealing with an elusive quarry, and with the channel weather. He also went on embassy with Sir Thomas Wyatt the younger to Spain in October, but his role in the mission was a subordinate one, not much more distinguished than that in Wolsey's abortive mission ten years earlier.
In spite of his sea service, by 1540 Dudley had still obtained no major preferment. Appointment as master of the horse to Anne of Cleves did not represent the hoped for breakthrough at court, and in June disaster befell his friend and mentor Cromwell. Dudley had been close enough to Cromwell to make it prudent for him to retire from the court for a few months, and his domestic affairs probably benefited from some attention. However, the conservative victory was less decisive than it appeared, and by the end of 1541 he was back at court, giving close support to Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, in unravelling the distasteful and dangerous story of Catherine Howard's infidelities. The arrest and imprisonment of his stepfather, Lisle, on 19 May 1540 on suspicion of Catholic sympathies may have been an embarrassment, but Dudley was by this time a recognized member of the reforming party in religious matters, so he was not touched by the association. He later claimed to have embraced the new ideas before 1540, and his contemporary reputation supports that. On 3 March 1542 Lisle died in prison, and nine days later Dudley was created Viscount Lisle 'by the right of his mother, Lady Elizabeth, sister and heir to Sir John Grey, Viscount Lisle, who was late wife to Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle, deceased' (LP Henry VIII, 17.163). So he owed his title neither to his service nor his wealth, but simply to his kinship. Although by custom Dudley could have inherited the barony of Lisle from his mother, once his stepfather's life interest was ended, the viscountcy was a new creation by letters patent, and reflected the king's favour. No chief minister followed Cromwell, and for the remainder of Henry's reign the court was divided between conservative and reforming groups. The former was a somewhat uneasy alliance between survivors of the old nobility such as Thomas Howard, third duke of Norfolk, and William FitzAlan, eleventh earl of Arundel, and senior prelates like Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, and Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop of Durham. These men were close to the king in terms of their religious policy, but suspect for their political pretensions. Against them stood a group of service nobles led by Seymour, now earl of Hertford, closely allied to Cranmer, and Henry's last queen, Katherine Parr. The king trusted these people, but suspected them (rightly) of heretical inclinations. To this latter group belonged the new Viscount Lisle. Within the court the conflict swung backwards and forwards, and it was not until the last months of 1546 that Henry's political suspicions overcame his theological ones, and the reformers emerged as clearly victorious. The Howards were disgraced, Gardiner was rusticated, and the list of executors of the king's will was dominated by Hertford, Cranmer, Sir William Paget—and Lisle.
Lisle's political progress between 1542 and 1547 was very marked. He was knight of the shire for Staffordshire in the heart of his new landed base in 1542. On 8 November that year, as Henry prepared to renew his war with France by attacking Scotland, Lisle was appointed warden-general of the Scottish marches. It was twenty years since he had seen any military service, and the appointment was a political one. He played no part in the victory at Solway Moss on 25 November, but had to deal with a Scotland left in chaos by that defeat, and by the death of James V a few days later. He often did not know who he was supposed to deal with, but his reports disclose a sharp and pragmatic mind. He dealt successfully with the Scottish regency council, and made some progress in building up a party among the border lairds who could see an accommodation with England as being to their greatest advantage.
Henry decided to follow up his victory by pressing the Scots for a marriage alliance between their infant queen Mary and his own five-year-old son, Prince Edward, and bound the Scottish lords taken prisoner at Solway Moss to purchase their freedom by swearing to support this match. Lisle's progress with the border lairds supported this policy effectively, and although the warden-general achieved no spectacular success the king was pleased with his service. However, precisely because it was a political rather than a military position, Lisle was soon agitating for a move, and only two months after his appointment he was promoted to higher things. On 26 January 1543 he became lord high admiral and thus an ex officio member of the privy council. Deeply immersed in the affairs of the north it was three months before he could come south to take up his new duties. He was sworn of the privy council on 23 April, and nominated a knight of the Garter on the same day (installed on 5 May). In less than a year he had moved from being a frustrated middle-ranking courtier to a great officer of state.
This success (a little belated from Lisle's point of view) was not owed to any particular talent—certainly not great military ability—but to hard political graft. He was competent, did what he was bidden, and the king trusted him. However, as lord high admiral he was a conspicuous success. Henry had had a standing navy for over twenty years, but its administration had developed in a ramshackle and unplanned fashion. In 1545 and 1546 the structure was overhauled, the number of officers augmented from three to seven, and a professional salary structure established. The officers were then constituted into the king's council for marine causes, and became a department of state with defined responsibilities and a considerable degree of autonomy. This structure, which was the most developed in Europe at the time, gave the English navy the edge over its rivals in mobilization, supply, victualling, and logistics for the remainder of the century. The extent to which Lisle was personally responsible for the ideas embodied in this institution is not known, but as lord high admiral at the time he was formally responsible, and such a pragmatic and businesslike arrangement bears the stamp which all his projects show. As a fleet commander he was successful without ever winning a battle. Full-scale battles at sea were rare at this date, and in 1544 he supported both Hertford's campaign against Edinburgh and Henry's siege of Boulogne. The Scottish regent, James Hamilton, second earl of Arran, having signed a treaty accepting the English marriage proposal at Greenwich in 1543, then defected to the French party, to Henry's enormous indignation, and Hertford's punitive expedition was the result.
The French war, 1544–1546
The king's obsessive siege of Boulogne, which was successful in September 1544, cost him his alliance with the emperor and left him in dangerous isolation against the French and the Scots. This did not dent Henry's satisfaction, and he wasted no time in arranging for the government and defence of his conquest. For this front line responsibility he might have been expected to choose his favourite soldier, Hertford, but instead he entrusted it to the lord high admiral. Lisle was less than delighted by this demonstration of trust, fearing that he might lose the admiralty, by which he clearly set great store. However, he need not have worried. After four months he was recalled from Boulogne, and in January 1545 began to mobilize the fleet for what was likely to be a busy and dangerous summer. François was determined to recover Boulogne, and by June was assembling a fleet of some 300 ships for that purpose. Lisle determined upon a pre-emptive strike, and on 25 June attempted to enter the Seine estuary with 160 ships. The weather frustrated him and no more than a skirmish resulted, but the lord high admiral had shown a better grasp of large-scale tactics than anyone had a right to expect. His French antagonist, Claude d'Annebaut, also had a problem because his large fleet was ready well ahead of the army which it was supposed to accompany, and could not be kept on hold. Consequently, on 19 July he moved against Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. Although his intentions are uncertain, this was a very dangerous moment for the English. Lisle confronted him in the Solent with about 200 ships. Partly because of the fickle winds, and partly because the English were obviously ready for him, d'Annebaut backed off, mindful that his main objective was supposed to be Boulogne. This confrontation is best known for the controversial loss of the Mary Rose, which cost over 500 lives, but the engagement was really a victory for the new admiralty.
D'Annebaut discharged his main function, landing 7000 troops at Boulogne, and then brought a part of his fleet back to the Sussex coast, apparently looking for a fight. Lisle went after him with seventy ships, and the two fleets met on 15 August. However, after an exchange of gunfire the French unexpectedly retreated under cover of darkness. It was subsequently learned that plague had broken out in the fleet, and d'Annebaut was forced to return and demobilize. Lisle thus emerged victorious without having fought a battle, but having shown a conspicuous ability to be ready for one. The battle orders which he issued in August 1545 also show a tactical awareness which was altogether new in English sea commanders, who were usually noted for their extreme conservatism. Lisle was familiar with the latest French and Spanish ideas, and envisaged fighting his fleet in functional squadrons to make better use of their firepower, which was a major advance upon the mêlée of one-to-one encounters envisaged in Thomas Audley's fleet orders of 1530. The lord high admiral's stock was understandably raised. As early as January 1544 Eustache Chapuys, the well informed imperial ambassador, had thought him to be one of Henry's must influential privy councillors, and when Suffolk died in August 1545 some thought that Lisle would inherit his unique place in the king's estimation. That did not happen, and Lisle secured no further preferment during Henry's life, but his services did not go unrewarded. He acted along with Paget as a principal commissioner for the negotiation of peace with France from 17 April to 14 June 1546, and his good personal relations with d'Annebaut were a significant factor in the success of that mission. Henry was able to retain Boulogne, at least for the time being, and was able to keep his options open in Scotland.
The peace treaty was signed, and appropriately it was Lisle who was sent to the French court to receive François's ratification on 1 August. In recognition of this achievement he was granted a number of former ecclesiastical properties, including the substantial priory of St John, Clerkenwell, and the opportunity to purchase from the crown on favourable terms lands in Birmingham and Richard's Castle. When the subsidy assessments were drawn up towards the end of 1545 his lands were valued at £1376 a year. This was almost certainly an underassessment, but it made him the eighth or ninth richest peer, outranking several earls. He was also by this time a gentleman of the privy chamber, and his income from fees and the other perquisites of office amounted to at least £1000 per year. When the king died on 28 January 1547 Lisle was one of the richest as well as one of the most important subjects of the crown.
By contrast little is known of Lisle's domestic life. Although he spent so much of his time at court he seems not to have owned a London house, and his wife is scarcely ever mentioned. He rented a house in Holborn, but she probably remained in Worcestershire, looking after her growing family. Eight children survived to adulthood, six sons and two daughters. Nothing is known about their education, but the second son, John Dudley, earned generous praise from the mathematician Dr John Dee, and the two sons who survived into Elizabeth I's reign, Ambrose and Robert Dudley, were both regarded as polished gentlemen. It was later claimed that Dee had been their tutor, but by the time of his known association with Dudley the latter's sons were all grown men. Mary Dudley, mother of Sir Philip Sidney, had received the benefit of a good education too. Robert Dudley seems to have shared the lessons of the young Prince Edward in the 1540s, but how long that arrangement continued is not apparent. Lisle's eldest son and heir, Sir Henry Dudley (1525/6–1544), served under his father in the Boulogne campaign of 1544, and died of an illness not long after the capture of the town, aged eighteen. None of Lisle's surviving letters from the period allude to his loss, but whether this was stoicism or the random survival of evidence is not clear. Other letters suggest that he was an affectionate parent, who showed a proper concern for his children's welfare, and that Henry Dudley, who was then newly knighted, had been his favourite. Even Lisle's worst enemies (who were numerous) never alleged any sexual scandal against him, and his family life seems to have been a model of propriety.
The protectorate, 1547–1549
Henry's death in January 1547 converted the reformers' ascendancy into power. Edward was a little over nine years old, and a longish minority was in prospect. Within a few days Hertford, Edward's maternal uncle, and his friends set about converting Henry's somewhat indeterminate arrangements into a workable regency. Hertford became lord protector and governor of the king's person on 31 January and was promoted duke of Somerset. Thomas Wriothesley, Baron Wriothesley, remained lord chancellor and became first earl of Southampton; Lisle became earl of Warwick and on 17 February lord great chamberlain; and Sir Thomas Seymour became Baron Seymour of Sudeley and lord high admiral. These arrangements were not effected as smoothly as the official records make them appear. Seymour was deeply disgruntled at getting only a barony, and thought he should have been made the governor. Southampton was strongly opposed to the powers conferred on the new lord protector, and was consequently disgraced by him in March. Warwick was gratified by his title, and by his court office, which satisfied his long felt need for estimation, but was not particularly happy to lose the admiralty. Seymour secured a sort of revenge on his brother by marrying Katherine, the dowager queen, against the lord protector's wishes, and relations between the two brothers steadily deteriorated. It was alleged in Elizabeth's reign that Warwick had encouraged Seymour's disaffection for reasons of his own, but no contemporary evidence from 1547 suggests that. All the indications are that at that time Somerset and Warwick were working closely together and in reasonable harmony. Outside observers thought that the earl was the second or third most important person in England, and well satisfied with his position. He received a legacy of £500 in Henry VIII's will, and in March a grant of the manor, castle, and town of Warwick, together with extensive properties in eleven counties to an annual value of £498, following his elevation to the title. In spite of his concern with estimation he made no attempt to create an old-fashioned power base for himself in the west midlands, and in fact had sold most of this grant within a few months of receiving it, buying elsewhere for reasons which are now impossible to recover. He subsequently repurchased much of this land.
Somerset believed that he had a duty to complete the old king's unfinished business in Scotland, and in autumn 1547 he made another attempt to enforce the defunct treaty of Greenwich. In September he crossed the Tweed at the head of about 18,000 men, with Warwick as his lieutenant and commander of the cavalry. The resulting battle of Pinkie on 10 September was an overwhelming English victory, but it achieved little, except to make French intervention more likely. Warwick distinguished himself by his personal courage, receiving warm compliments from the lord protector and another £100 worth of land as a reward, but he kept a low profile for the remainder of the year, and may have been suffering from one of those bouts of ill health which become increasingly noticeable over the last six years of his life. There was still no suggestion of a rift with Somerset at this time. Odete de Selve, the French ambassador, considered them to be close allies, and many petitioners approached Warwick because of his presumed influence with the lord protector. In March 1548 he was appointed president of the king's council in the marches of Wales, and soon afterwards gave his first hint of dissatisfaction with Somerset's style of government when his proposals for appointments which he thought should have been in his gift were ignored.
By summer 1548 Somerset's administration was running into increasing difficulties. His policy of controlling Scotland through strategic garrisons was proving an expensive failure, and his attempts to defend what some saw as traditional social values by prohibiting enclosure and changes of land use were alienating the aristocratic support upon which he depended. There were enclosure riots, and in June the French sent an expeditionary force of 6000 men to Scotland. The English garrisons were forced out over the next eighteen months, and Mary, queen of Scots, was betrothed to the dauphin, François. In August 1548 she departed for France, and the lord protector's Scottish policy, to which he had devoted so much energy and money, was in ruins. Warwick disapproved of Somerset's agrarian policy, and clashed bitterly with the commonwealth man John Hales, but he assiduously maintained good relations with Somerset's familiars, Sir John Thynne and William Cecil, and at the end of 1548 still seems to have thought good relations with the lord protector to be the best guarantee of his own interests. He warmly supported the moves towards protestantism which produced the first Book of Common Prayer in January 1549, and conservatives noted with disapproval that the mass had been discontinued in his household by the end of 1547.
By the end of 1548 Somerset's relations with Seymour had also reached a crisis. Katherine had died in September, and Seymour began a reckless and irresponsible bid to secure the hand of the fifteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth. He also attempted to use the House of Lords to annul his brother's patent. Having discovered that the under-treasurer of the Bristol mint, Sir William Sharrington, was corrupt, he persuaded or browbeat him into illicitly coining large sums of money which he spent on weapons, claiming that he had a substantial following who would support his cause. In January 1549 the lord protector felt compelled to act. Seymour was arrested and charged with treason. He was not tried by his peers, but condemned by act of attainder and executed on 20 March. This may have been because he refused to answer some of the charges, or perhaps because the evidence was insecure. It was later claimed that Warwick engineered this situation as part of a plot to destroy Somerset, but he said at the time that he had tried to reconcile the brothers. Every effort was made to blacken Seymour's name, but there is no contemporary evidence that Somerset was seriously weakened by the execution of his brother. The privy council solidly supported him, accepting that he had no option, and expressed their sympathy with his painful dilemma.
Nevertheless all was not well between lord protector and privy council. The latter had become increasingly marginalized as Somerset grew more autocratic, and less sensitive to either advice or criticism. With more persistence than good sense he began to mobilize in spring 1549 to recover the initiative in Scotland, but was forced to abandon his plans when rebellion, riots, and other major disorders engulfed about fifteen English counties in June and July. In some places, particularly in Devon and Cornwall, the introduction of the new Book of Common Prayer at Whitsun was the trigger, but most of the troubles were caused by economic grievances. Sometimes it was the alleged loss of homes and employment to enclosing landlords, more often the engrossing of common land by those with the greatest interests. In many cases the protesters were encouraged to act by the belief that the king and the lord protector were sympathetic to their cause, a belief encouraged by the enclosure commissions which Somerset had established to determine the extent of the problem (1 June 1548, 11 April 1549). In spite of strenuous warnings that subjects should not take the law into their own hands yeomen farmers and minor gentlemen like the brothers Robert and William Kett in Norfolk were often convinced that it was the greater gentry, who dominated county government, who stood in the way of a policy wanted by both the crown and the common people. These protests enjoyed very different fortunes. In many counties strong local leadership either suppressed or pacified the troubles, and significantly it was in two places where the dominant county nobility, the Howards and the Courtenays, had recently been removed, Norfolk and Devon, that matters got out of hand. At first Somerset was reluctant to act firmly, partly because he saw the justice of some of the demands, and partly because it took time to recall his forces (many of them foreign mercenaries) from the Scottish border. This proved disastrous.
The coup against Somerset, 1549
Eventually, in mid-August John Russell, first Baron Russell, put down the western rebellion, but in Norfolk the first attempt under William Parr, marquess of Northampton, was defeated in late July, and if the rebels had had any aggressive strategy or political leadership the situation could have become serious. However, because they saw themselves simply as a protest movement they merely repeated their demands and waited for the next government move. In this crisis Somerset called upon his most trusted ally and skilled soldier, Warwick, who moved against the camp on Mousehold Heath outside Norwich on 23 August. Warwick had not fought this kind of campaign before, but he had good and reliable troops and a clear strategic objective. Going about his task carefully and systematically he retook the city of Norwich and defeated the rebels at the so-called battle of Dussindale on 27 August. About 2000 of the insurgents were killed on the field, but Warwick refused to allow the local gentry to exact revenge for the humiliation which they had suffered, and, in sharp contrast to what was taking place in the west country, judicial executions following the rising numbered only a few dozen.
By early September Warwick was back in the capital, but he did not disband his troops, and his attitude towards the lord protector seems to have undergone a radical change. In July his amicable correspondence with Sir John Thynne, Somerset's steward, came to an end, and according to François Van der Delft, the imperial ambassador, it was then that he joined a group of leading peers who were plotting the duke's overthrow. The others, particularly Henry FitzAlan, twelfth earl of Arundel, and Southampton, were religious conservatives who were already attempting unsuccessfully to persuade Princess Mary to accept the regency. Whether Warwick was the leader, or merely the most powerful member of this group is not clear, but the troops which he had retained since the Norfolk campaign proved vital to the outcome of the coup. Most of the privy council rallied to the conspirators, and gathered in London at the beginning of October. Somerset was with the king at Hampton Court when he discovered what was afoot on 5 October. Apart from the king's guard of about 200 men he had no troops, and he issued a general summons to Edward's loyal subjects to defend him against a traitorous plot. This was a major error, reinforcing the privy councillors' claim that he was favouring the commons against their natural lords. There was a strong response from the commons to Somerset's pleas for assistance and thousands gathered at Hampton Court, but nothing of military significance, and on 6 October the lord protector removed the king to the greater security of Windsor Castle. At that point it also became clear that Russell and Sir William Herbert, leading the forces in the west, would not commit their forces to Somerset's cause. A tense stand-off then followed as letters passed between those with the king, particularly Paget and Cranmer, and the council in London. On 10 October, realizing that no useful help was coming, and having strained his relations with the young king, Somerset surrendered.
This was a negotiated settlement that Sir Philip Hoby brokered in which Somerset agreed to surrender and even give up his protectorship, 'if ye will again for your partes use equitie' (TNA: PRO, SP 10/9/26, M. fols. 39v–40r). Probably the key figures behind this were Warwick and Cranmer, who shared a common interest in continuing the lord protector's religious reforms, although for rather different reasons. After the coup Somerset was imprisoned and the protectorate dissolved (13 October), and the privy council assumed a collective responsibility for government, ostensibly under the leadership of Southampton. A religious reaction was generally expected, and Van der Delft was puzzled by Cranmer's continued presence on the privy council. As late as 7 November the ambassador believed that Southampton was still the leader, but in fact his influence was waning, and the appointment of the protestant Henry Grey, third marquess of Dorset, to the privy council at the end of November signalled that Warwick's power was growing. Realizing that they were losing ground, in December a group of conservative privy councillors led by Southampton apparently decided to try and remove Warwick by condemning Somerset as a traitor, and then alleging Warwick's complicity in his crimes. Warned in advance, probably by William Paulet, Baron St John, on 13 December Warwick staged a dramatic scene, declaring that Southampton did 'seek his [Somerset's] bloude and he that seekethe his bloude woulde have myne also' (BL, Add. MS 48126, fol. 16r). The privy council rallied to him and the conservative leaders were removed. Shortly afterwards Somerset was allowed to compound for his offences and was released into house arrest. The conservative plot may have been real, or it may have been fabricated, but the outcome was decisive. Warwick became the unchallenged leader, assuming the title of lord president of the privy council in February 1550, and the policy of religious reform continued. He was again briefly lord high admiral from 28 October 1549 to 14 May 1550. At this time he relinquished his office of chamberlain (1 February 1550), becoming instead great master of the royal household on 20 February.
Lord president of the privy council, 1550–1552
Throughout this period of domestic crisis England had been at war. In August 1549, seeing his opportunity, Henri II had attacked Boulogne. Most of the Boullonais was quickly overrun, but the town itself held out, and repeated attacks were defeated. Faced with a financial crisis at home, with characteristic pragmatism Warwick decided to cut his losses. Capitalizing on Henri's own difficulties, and the failure of his military strategy, in March 1550 he sold Boulogne back to the French for the equivalent of £180,000. He then redeployed the garrison to improve domestic security and used the money to pay off some of the king's debts. Later in the year he also quietly abandoned Somerset's aggressive policy towards Scotland. Military expenditure continued to be high because a protestant England had few friends abroad, so the navy, and the garrisons of Berwick and Calais were maintained at full strength, but this was nothing like as costly as waging war. By 1550 the crown was £300,000 in debt, inflation had risen by about 75 per cent in two years, and the sterling exchange rate had collapsed. Warwick's policy of retrenchment was thus not only urgent but long overdue. Unfortunately, although he knew what had to be done he could not resist the temptation for one last round of debasement before finally listening to the advice of his London friends, including Sir Thomas Gresham, and restoring a sound level of purity to the mint output. Unfortunately he also made the mistake of announcing his intention in advance. The decline was halted, and some confidence restored, but the problem was not solved because the privy council judged that it could not afford to recall the base coin. However, by strict economy, and by appointing Gresham as the king's agent in Antwerp early in 1552, Warwick managed to restore the exchange rate, and made a start on reducing the burden of debt. Some loans were recycled, and some recalled to London where the support of the city reduced the difficulty of servicing them. Warwick's declared intention of removing the king's debts was aimed at least as much at gratifying his supporters in London as easing the administrative burden on the privy council.
The social tensions of 1549 had not gone away, but Warwick avoided his predecessor's critical mistake. No one believed that he had any sympathy with agrarian malcontents, justified or not. He judged that the unity of the ruling class was more important for the preservation of order than strict social justice and, in the circumstances of a minority, he was right. It was for this reason that he restored the privy council to an effective administrative body, licensed his friends and allies to maintain men in their liveries, regularized the appointment of lords lieutenant from 1550, and distributed favours and rewards with a generous hand. For all these things he was severely criticized, both at the time and since, but as long as Edward was alive the policy worked. Not only was there no repetition of 1549, but conservative gentry who detested his continued protestant reforms nevertheless enforced them rather than give the commons another excuse for rebellion. The severe outbreaks of sweating sickness which afflicted the country in 1551 and 1552 probably helped to keep the lid on discontent, but the critical factor was that the privy council and the county commissions spoke with a single voice. It was this urgent need for unity which made Somerset such a problem. The former lord protector was restored to the privy council in April 1550, and both he and Warwick made public gestures of reconciliation, particularly the marriage between the earl's eldest surviving son, John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, and Anne Seymour, the duke's daughter, which took place on 3 June 1550.
Unfortunately Somerset lacked his supplanter's pragmatic realism. He did not like Warwick's repressive social policy, or his tentative friendship with France, and he was deeply offended by the abandonment of his Scottish policy. Nor was he prepared to retire with a good grace. Rumours gathered around him from mid-1550 on, and some of Warwick's enemies tried to use him by hinting at his restoration to power. Apart from making his dissatisfaction with Warwick obvious, and failing to discourage his over-zealous adherents, Somerset confined his activity to intrigue. However, after making several indirect and unsuccessful attempts to persuade him to desist Warwick decided that the danger of another split in the ruling élite was too grave to be ignored. This attack was presaged by Warwick's promotion to duke of Northumberland on 11 October 1551. Northumberland bought support through granting titles: Dorset was promoted duke of Suffolk, St John to marquess of Winchester (having already been made earl of Wiltshire), and Herbert to earl of Pembroke. On 16 October Somerset was arrested, and was tried on 1 December on charges of treason which were largely fabricated, as was the custom in such cases. When he was acquitted and the crowds outside thought he would go free there were scenes of rejoicing in London which demonstrated how right Northumberland had been to fear him. However, Somerset was convicted of felony under the statute of 3 & 4 Edward VI c. 5 for having assembled an illegal force—an offence of which he was probably guilty—and executed on 22 January 1552. Somerset was destroyed by a combination of ruthlessness and trickery, but he was partly the author of his own downfall. The privy council remained united, as was politically necessary, despite his death.
By this time Edward was fourteen; precocious, opinionated, and very much aware of who he was. Somerset, who never seems to have noticed that the boy was growing up, had made the serious mistake of ignoring him, except for ceremonial purposes. During the crisis of October 1549 he had given his sovereign lord a severe fright and a bad cold by hastily removing him from Hampton Court to Windsor, and there was no affection thereafter in their relationship. Edward was easily convinced of his uncle's guilt at the time of his final fall. Northumberland did not make the same error, controlling the privy chamber through his office of great master. He knew (or thought he knew) that the king would achieve his majority in October 1555, and he had no intention of losing his influence at that point. Whatever his own religious views he judged that Edward's adolescent enthusiasm for radical protestantism was not a passing phase, and did everything in his power to humour him. He even risked making an enemy of his erstwhile ally Cranmer by advancing the more radical protestantism of men he favoured such as John Hooper and John Knox. Cranmer resented being outbid in Erastianism, and perhaps suspected that Northumberland's radicalism was largely assumed—or 'carnal' as he put it.
Edward was completely convinced, and the duke's personal ascendancy became unshakeable. According to one contemporary French observer the young king would do nothing without consulting Northumberland, whom he regarded as almost a father. Northumberland also took great pains with the king's political education, recruiting the services of William Thomas, one of the clerks of the privy council, to help by introducing the king to political essays, along Machiavellian lines, and even staging special meetings of the privy council for Edward to practise the skills of kingship. Perhaps even those taking part hardly knew how real these exercises were. Northumberland's main service to the crown during these years was the restoration of effective conciliar government, and the establishment of a relationship between king and privy council which he envisaged as surviving into the time of Edward's personal rule. The fact that his own authority would probably be confirmed and reinforced by this process accounts for the largely negative opinions which his efforts attracted from contemporaries. He was not an idealist, but like Cromwell he had a political strategy: to reduce the king's debts, to consolidate his position as supreme head of the church, and to reinforce the privy council's administrative machinery. He also encouraged the boy to take more vigorous exercise, which Edward greatly enjoyed, particularly archery and running at the quintain. Fortunately he was too young for the dangerous sport of jousting.
The rewards of power
For John Dudley political power also brought generous rewards. After his fall he was bitterly denounced for his pride and greed, but in fact what he gained was not out of proportion to his position. He became earl marshal on 20 April 1551 and warden-general of the marches of Scotland on 20 October. The latter position carried the apparently large fee of £1333 6s. 8d. per annum, but out of that he was supposed to maintain the warden's retinue, and even if it had all been profit it would not have compared with the £5333 6s. 8d. a year which Somerset had awarded himself in 1547. The charge that Northumberland intended to add the palatinate jurisdiction of Durham and much diocesan property to his growing estates in the north is not substantiated by the position which he actually achieved, which was that of steward of the crown lands in the north and leader of the king's tenants (2 May 1553). The choice of Northumberland as his ducal title may be significant, but he had handled the Warwick lands fairly cavalierly, and there is no more sign of his having a power base in the north than in the west midlands. He continued to trade in land, as he had done all his life, and between 1550 and 1553 acquired property with a capital value of about £40,000. Some of this was indeed granted on terms which amounted virtually to gift, but much was purchased or obtained by exchange, and some was sold almost immediately. When he fell his lands were valued at £4300 per annum; great wealth, but not as great as that of Somerset, or indeed of the Talbot earls of Shrewsbury. His promotion to duke of Northumberland gave him the highest dignity possible for a subject. He had at last satisfied his craving for estimation, but he made no attempt to follow it up with the creation of a ducal retinue. He had a household of more than 200, including many gentlemen, and several residences, but his devoted personal following was very small; a few soldiers like Sir John Gates. His estate was large, but constantly changing, and he had no manred in the traditional sense. His power base was the central government, and he could not command the loyal following of a Stanley, or a Talbot, or even a FitzAlan. He also used the crown's resources to buy support, although that did not have the damaging effect which has sometimes been alleged. As long as Edward was alive this preserved the unity of the government, but few of those who had benefited from his patronage felt beholden to Dudley personally. He was what Henry VIII had made him, a service peer on a grand scale, not an overmighty subject.
The succession crisis, 1553
The true nature of Northumberland's position was ruthlessly exposed by the events of 1553. At the beginning of the year the king was unwell. He was not sickly by nature, and had cast off previous infections with encouraging resilience, so at first anxiety was muted. However on 1 March he was forced to open the parliament with a special ceremony at Whitehall Palace instead of the usual procession at Westminster, and his physicians began to be concerned. By the end of the month he was better. In April he was able to take the air and a normal recovery was expected. However, that did not happen, and he was still ill in May. By then some pessimists, including Jehan Scheyfve, the imperial ambassador, were declaring that his sickness was mortal, but as late as the end of that month some who were in a position to know pronounced that he was recovering. In early June Edward collapsed, and even the most sanguine recognized that his days were numbered. Months before, perhaps before his illness had commenced, Edward had toyed with ideas about the succession, and jotted them down. They were not very coherent, but they show him to have been obsessed with legitimacy, and with a male succession. Bypassing both his half-sisters as illegitimate he started with an unborn son of his cousin Frances Grey, duchess of Suffolk (1517–1559), and proceeded through the even more remote sons of her young daughters. This was not serious politics. It was never discussed by the privy council, and was not mentioned in the parliament. It is not even certain that anyone other than Edward knew of the existence of the ‘Device’. However, when the king collapsed it came urgently into the public domain. There was no Salic law in England and a female successor would have to be considered. No one wanted the duchess of Suffolk as queen, so the ‘Device’ was altered to settle the succession on her eldest daughter, Lady Jane Grey (1537–1554) 'and her heires masles' (Inner Temple Library, Petyt MS 538/47, fol. 317r).
The responsibility for this somewhat bizarre outcome has been fiercely debated ever since. The most commonly held view is that Northumberland bullied or persuaded the dying boy to designate an heir whom he considered to be biddable and amenable to his own designs. Jane had married his son Guildford on 21 May with the king's blessing, and if Northumberland could not have the puppet king he had been preparing, then he would have a puppet queen instead. The marriage between Jane and Guildford had been designed to bring that about. It is impossible to disprove this theory, which now has centuries of credibility, but there is some contemporary evidence against it. In the first place the marriage was part of a wider scheme of dynastic alliances, and Jane had not been the duke's first choice for his son; nor, at the time of the marriage, did anyone suggest that it had significance for the succession. Secondly, the king was almost sixteen, and very conscious of his responsibilities. Much as he may have respected Northumberland this was not a decision for a subject. Nor is it likely that anyone other than the king would have ventured to treat a statute so cavalierly. The ‘Device’ is in his own hand, and no one would have altered it without his full knowledge and consent. Moreover, when his law officers demurred at the breach of his father's statute it was (and could only have been) Edward who commanded them upon their allegiance to obey him, asserting that he would obtain parliament's assent retrospectively. Northumberland was totally committed to do the king's bidding, but such an attitude was inevitable in the circumstances, and does not prove that he was the originator of the scheme. He certainly had little to hope for from Mary, whom he had bullied unmercifully since 1550 over her religious nonconformity, but he would have had no reason to obstruct Elizabeth's succession, except that the king would have it so.
The real question is not how the scheme to settle the crown on Jane came about, but why it was adhered to when Edward died on 6 July and his driving will was removed. In this connection Northumberland's leadership was certainly critical. Against all sorts of doubts and uncertainties it was he who insisted that Edward's wishes should be respected and the claim which Mary promptly advanced rejected on 10 July. Whether this was calculated self interest, a reckless gamble, or an honest endeavour to honour a commitment, is not known. What is known is that there was no real planning for a coup of the kind which a seasoned politician like Northumberland would surely have made if his scheme had been premeditated. His actions after 6 July bear every sign of hasty improvisation. For about five days he held the privy council together, and most outside observers believed that he would succeed, but as soon as he was compelled to leave London to face the growing force which Mary was building around her in Norfolk conciliar unity collapsed.
Northumberland was personally unpopular, largely because he seems to have been incapable of establishing cordial relations with any of his colleagues, or indeed with anyone else apart from his wife and children. Moreover, what he was trying to do was generally regarded as unlawful. Even the protestants, in whose interests he claimed to be acting, distrusted and disliked him. Most of them declared for the lawful heir, in spite of the threat which she represented, although according to John Foxe the men of Suffolk attempted to make their allegiance conditional. For the majority who were not protestants Mary's high profile conservatism was an asset rather than a liability. Within a few days the duke's political position collapsed, and the fact that he had no old-fashioned affinity to fall back on left him totally exposed. When most of his troops deserted he surrendered at Cambridge on 23 July, along with his sons and a few friends, and was imprisoned in the Tower of London two days later.
Trial, death, and reputation
The last weeks of Northumberland's life were a sad anticlimax for a man who had frequently displayed high levels of political skill. Tried for high treason on 18 August he claimed to have done nothing save by the king's command and the privy council's consent. Implicitly that argument was accepted for events before 6 July, but he was inevitably convicted for having acted on Jane's (invalid) authority after Edward's death. It was in this context of imminent death that he took the notorious step of renouncing the protestantism which he had long been promoting. Northumberland's religion has always been a matter of controversy, and this spectacular change of course has probably done more than anything else both to shape his image as the stereotypical wicked duke, a reverse figure of the godly, as well as good, duke of Somerset, and to fuel doubts as to whether he had any true religion at all.
In fact Dudley's conversion to an evangelical religion had taken place at much the same time as Seymour's. He himself assured Sir William Cecil in December 1552 that 'I have for xx yere stand to oon kynd of religion in the same which I doo nowe profes' (TNA: PRO, SP 10/15/66, M. fol. 137r), and this is borne out by the dedication to him of a Latin epigram by Nicholas Bourbon, published in 1538 but probably written in 1535, which urges him and his wife to continue to follow the banners of Christ. Clearly Bourbon saw him as one of the group of evangelicals who gathered round Anne Boleyn. Informed comment from 1546–7 similarly placed him firmly in the reformist camp. The imperial ambassador Eustache Chapuys, for instance, on 29 January 1547 described Dudley as one of the new king's 'stirrers-up of heresy'. Less than a year earlier he had not been so far committed as to be unwilling to put pressure on the radical protestant Anne Askew, but it is significant that she rebuked him and his colleague Baron Parr of Kendal, saying 'it was great shame for them to counsell contrarye to their knowlege' (Bellin, 96). By December 1547 it was reported that mass was no longer said in his house.
During Edward VI's reign there were no doubts of Dudley's religious allegiance. He was a committed supporter of protestantism who also favoured reducing the powers of bishops and the confiscation of their estates. In part his stance was anti-papal. He owned a copy of Bernardino Ochino's Dialoge of the Unjuste Usurped Primacie of the Bishop of Rome (1549), and was also the dedicatee of one of John Bale's attacks on papistry. But it is significant that Bale also declared that he had always known Dudley as 'a most mighty, zealous, and ardent supporter, maintainer, and defender of God's lively word' (MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant, 53). Nor was Bale's the only voice raised in praise of Dudley's religious zeal. As late as 28 February 1553 John Hooper, an advanced reformer, praised him as 'a diligent promoter of the glory of God' (Robinson, 1.99).
His collapse later in 1553, following the failure of his attempt to divert the succession from Princess Mary, appalled English protestants, not least his own daughter-in-law, who angrily denounced him: 'wo worthe him! he hathe brought me and my stocke in most myserable callamyty and mysery by his exceeding ambicion' (Nichols, 25). But it is noteworthy that Jane did not impugn Northumberland's religious sincerity; ambition, and simple fear of death, were her charges—'But life was swete, it appeered; so he might have lyved, you wyl saye, he dyd (not) care howe' (ibid., 26). A sudden breakdown of faith, both in himself and in the religion which had long underpinned his actions, at a time of overwhelming crisis, is certainly suggested by Northumberland's very moving letter to the earl of Arundel on the eve of his execution, begging him to move the queen to mercy: 'O that it would please her good grace to give me life, yea, the life of a dog, that I might live and kiss her feet … O my good lord remember how sweet life is, and how bitter ye contrary' (Loades, 269). In his letter the duke referred to his long service to the crown. In a time of agonized fear it may have been easy for him to be persuaded, or to have persuaded himself, that his defeat was a sign of God's wrath at his having deserted both the guiding principle of his secular life—loyalty to the Tudor dynasty—and the religion of his fathers, and to have turned for succour to the Catholicism he had once spurned.
Northumberland's appeal for clemency fell on deaf ears. Having extracted every propaganda advantage which he was willing to give, Mary had him executed at Tower Hill on 22 August. He made a carefully stage-managed speech before his death, in which he departed from the script in references to the recent plot to advance Jane to the throne, but otherwise said what the government wanted to hear. In particular he warned the crowd to remain loyal to the Catholic church, and to 'beware and take hede that yow be not ledde—and deceavyd by thes sedycyowse and lewde preachers that have openid the booke and knowe not how to shutt yt'. Protestantism, he said, caused God to plague the realm 'with warres commocions rebellyon pestelence & famyne besydes manye more greate and grevouse plagues to the greate decaye of our commonwealthe' (BL, Cotton MS Titus B. ii, fols. 144v–145r). The speech was printed by John Cawood, the royal printer, with Latin and German translations, and widely circulated. He was buried at the Tower of London. |
| Source | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |
| RelatedRecord | GB/187/N0090 |
| GB/187/N0042 |