PORTRAITS

ILLUSTRIOUS PERSONAGES.

PORTRAITS

BIOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS OF THEIR
LIVES AND ACTIONS.

BY

EDMUND LODGE, ESQ., F.S.A.

CABINET EDITION.

IN EIGHT VOLUMES.— VOL. I.

LONDON :
WILLIAM SMITH, 113, FLEET STREET.

LOM.n N .
BRADBilRV AND KVA.NS, PRINTERS, \VH1TBFAIAKS.

JUN 7 1956

\

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE object of the Publisher in undertaking this entirely
new and unprecedentedly cheap edition of a splendid
and justly celebrated Work, is to produce it in such a
shape as shall be accessible to all whose means have
hitherto precluded them from forming an acquaintance
with it in more expensive forms : but in effecting this
end, none of the merits of the original edition, size
alone excepted, will be sacrificed ; while on the other
hand, the diminution of bulk will, by rendering the work
more portable, increase its value with those who in their
wanderings love the companionship of a favourite Author,
or who, when visiting the old halls and castles where
hang the originals of the Portraits adorning the pages
of Lodge, desire to satisfy themselves of the Engraver's
fidelity.

It is probable that the " Cabinet Edition " may be-
come known to many who have hitherto been unaware of
the nature or merits of the work, and to others who,
knowing it by name only, or from a cursory inspection of
the prints, may have regarded it as a mere collection of
splendid engravings, to which the " letter-press " was
attached more for form than use. A few explanatory

VI ADVERTISEMENT.

words, therefore, on these points may not be out of sea-
son when introducing it to, probably, a wider circulation
than even its already great popularity has obtained for it.
Edmund Lodge, the Author of the work now about to
be produced in BO novel a form, was a Member of the
Herald's College, for many years Norroy, and, after-
wards, Clarencieux, King-at-Arms. The greater part
of his life was passed in the study of the History and
Antiquities of his native country, respecting which he
published several valuable works ; but it is on the Biogra-
phies attached to the " Portraits " that his fame chiefly
rests, and on them he expended his best energies. What
is required for such a work, and the reasons why a com-
bination of portrait with biography is especially de-
sirable, cannot be better expressed than in his own
elegant and forcible words : — " It is needless," he ob-
serves in his Preface to the first edition, " to descant
largely on the extended information and delight which
we derive from the multiplication of portraits by en-
graving, or on the more important advantages resulting
from the study of biography. Separately considered,
the one affords an amusement not less innocent than
elegant, inculcates the rudiments, or aids the progress,
of taste, and rescues from the hand of time the perishable
monuments raised by the pencil. The other, while it is,
perhaps, the most agreeable branch of historical literature,
is certainly the most useful in its moral effects ; stating
the known circumstances, and endeavouring to unfold the
secret motives, of human conduct ; selecting all that is

ADVERTISEMENT. Til

worthy of being recorded ; bestowing its lasting enco-
miums and chastisements ; it at once informs and invigo-
rates the mind, and warms and mends the heart. It is,
however, from the combination of portraits and biogra-
phy that we reap the utmost degree of utility and
pleasure which can be derived from them : as, in con-
templating the portrait of an eminent person, we long to
be instructed in his history, so in considering his actions
we are anxious to behold his countenance. So earnest
is this desire that the imagination is generally ready to
coin a set of features, or to conceive a character, to
supply the painful absence of one or the other."

How far Mr. Lodge acted up to his own standard may
be gathered from the following extract from a letter
written by Sir Walter Scott to the publisher of the first
imperial 8vo edition : —

" Mr. Lodge's talents as an Historian and Antiquary are well
known to the public by his admirable collection of ancient letters
and documents, entitled ' Illustrations of British History ;' a book
which I have very frequently consulted, and have almost always
succeeded in finding not only the information required, but col-
lected a great deal more as I went in search of it. ' The present
Work presents the same talents and industry ; the same patient
powers of collecting information from the most obscure and
hidden sources ; and the same talent for selecting the facts
which are the rarest and most interesting, and presenting them
to the general reader in a luminous and concise manner.

" It is impossible for me to conceive a work which ought to be
more interesting to the present age than that which exhibits before
our eyes our ' fathers as they lived,' accompanied with such
memorials of then? lives and characters as enable us to com-
pare their persons and countenances with their sentiments and
actions."

Vlll ADVERTISEMENT.

Did space permit, many other testimonials of the
Author's merit might he adduced.

The history of the various editions of this celebrated
Work is curious, as illustrative of the great change
which a few years, and the rise of a new generation, has
introduced into the system of publication. The first
edition was commenced in 1814, and completed in forty
parts, in folio, at 21. 2s. and 21. 12s. Qd. each, according
to the date of subscription, for plain copies, and 51. 5s.
for those on super-royal paper, with India proofs, the
whole impression being limited to 550 copies. In 1821
an edition in imperial 8vo was issued, in eighty parts, at
Js, 6d. each part, amounting to 30/. for the whole work,
a price which was reduced to 2s. 6rf. each part, or 101.
for the whole (at which it still continues to be sold),
when it came into the hands of the present proprietor.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

1. ELIZABETH OF YORK, QUEEN OF HENRY THE SEVENTH 1502

From the Collection of the Right Honourable the Earl
of Essex, at Cashiobury.

2. THOMAS STANLEY, EARL OF DERBY . . Holbein 1504

From the Collection of the Right Honourable the Earl of
Derby, at Knowsley.

3. MARGARET OF LANCASTER, MOTHER OF KING HENRY

THE SEVENTH 1509

From the Collection of the Right Honourable the Earl of
Derby, at Knowsley

4. CARDINAL WOLSEY Holbein 1530

From the Collection at Christ Church, Oxford.

5. WILLIAM WARHAM, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

Holbein 1532

From the Collection of His Grace the Archbishop of
Canterbury, at Lambeth Palace.

6. SIR JOHN MORE Holbein 1533

From the Collection of the Right Honourable the Earl of
Pembroke, at Wilton House.

7. SIR THOMAS MORE Holbein 1535.

From the Collection of W. J. Lenthal, Esq., at Burford
Priory.

CONTENTS.

8. QUEEN ANNE BULLEN .... Holbein 1536

From ike Collection of the Right Honourable the Earl of
Warwick, at Warwick Castle.

9. QUEEN JANE SEYMOUR .... Holbein 1537

From the Collection of His Grace the Duke of Bedford,
at Woburn Abbey.

10. SIR NICHOLAS CAREW .... Holbein 1539

From the Collection of His Grace the Duke of Buc-
cleuch, at Dalkeith Palace.

11. THOMAS CROMWELL, EARL OF ESSEX . Holbein 1540

From the Collection of Sir Thomas Constable, Bart., at
Tixall.

12. MARGARET TUDOR, SISTER TO KING HENRY THE

EIGHTH ....... Holbein 1541

From the Collection of tlie Most Noble the Marquis of
Lothian, at Newbattle A bbey.

13. CHARLES BRANDON, DUKE OF SUFFOLK . . . 1545

From Oi£ Collection of His Grace the Duke of Bedford,
at Woburn Abbey.

14. CARDINAL BEATOUN 1546

From tlie Original in Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh.

15. HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY . . Titian 1547

From the Collection of His Grace the Duke of Norfolk,
at Arundel Castle.

16. KING HENRY THE EIGHTH .. . . Holbein 1547

From, the Collection of the Right Honourable the Earl of
Egremont, at Pctworth.

CONTENTS.

17. QUKEN CATHARINE PAKR .... Holbein 1548

From the Collection of Dawson Turner, Esq., A.M.,
F.R.A. and L.S.

18. THOMAS, LORD SEYMOUR OF SUDELEY . Holbein 1549

From the Collection of the Most Noble the Marquis of
Bath, at Longleat.

19. SIR ANTHONY DENNY .... Holbein 1549

From the Collection of the Right Honourable the Earl of
Radnor, at Longford Castle.

20. EDWARD SEYMOUR, DUKE OP SOMERSET . Holbein 1552

From the Collection of the Most Noble the Marquis of
Bath, at Longleat.

21. KING EDWARD THE SIXTH . . . Holbein 1553

From the Collection of the Right Honourable the Earl
of Egremont, at Pctworth.

22. JOHN DUDLEY, DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND Holbein 1553

From the Collection of Sir J. S. Sidney, Baronet, at
Penshurst.

23. THOMAS HOWARD, DUKE OF NORFOLK . Holbein 1554

From the Collection of His Grace the Duke of Norfolk,
at Norfolk House.

24. LADY JANE GREY 1554

From the Collection of the Right Honourable the Earl of
Stamford and Warrington, at Enville Hall.

25. HENRY GREY, DUKE OF SUFFOLK . Mark Gerard 1554

From the Collection of the Most Noble the Marquis of
Salisbury, at HafJieM.

CONTENTS.

26. JOHN RUSSELL, FIRST EARL OF BEDFORD . . 1555

From the Collection of His Grace the Duke of Bedford,
at Woburn Abbey.

27. NICHOLAS RIDLEY, BISHOP OF LONDON . . . 1555

From the (higinal,* in the Collection of the Reverend
Henry Ridley, D.D.

28. THOMAS CRANMER, ARCHBISHOP OP CANTERBURY

Flick 1555

From the Colkction in the British Museum.

29. EDWARD COURTENAY, EARL OF DEVONSHIRE

Sir Antonio More 1556

Prom the Colkction of His Grace the Duke of Bedford,
at Woburn Abbey.

30. CARDINAL POLE Titian 1557

From the Collection of the Right Honourable Lord
Arundell, of War dour, at Wardour Castle.

QTTEEN OF HENRY 7
OB. 1502.

QUEEN ELIZABETH, OF YORK,

WIFE TO KING HENRY THE SEVENTH.

ELIZABETH PLANTAGENET, the passive instrument of termi-
nating the mighty contest between the houses of York and
Lancaster, was the eldest of the five daughters of King
Edward the Fourth, by his Queen, Elizabeth Widevile. She
was born in the palace of Westminster, on the eleventh of
February, 1466, the year after her father's marriage. It has
been said that Edward's first intention was to bestow her on
George Nevile, Duke of Bedford, and it is not improbable,
surrounded as he was by dangers in the commencement of
his reign, that he might then have meditated so to purchase
the attachment of one of the most powerful of his subjects.
Security, however, naturally dictated higher views, and she
was engaged, by the treaty of Amiens, in 1470, to the Dau-
phin, afterwards Charles the Eighth ; and the Duchy of
Guienne, or an equivalent in treasure, assigned as her dower.
For the eight succeeding years the match was considered as
certain : she was constantly styled in her father's court, and
in that of France, " Madame la Dauphine :" in 1478 Edward
sent Sir Richard Tonstall, and Langton, a civilian, to perform
in Paris the ceremony of solemnly betrothing ; and a new
treaty, in terms more strict and war}' than the former, was
soon after signed. Louis the Eleventh, however, the most
faithless as well as the most acute politician of his time,
having cultivated as long as was necessary to his great objects
the amity of England by these repeated assurances, in 1483

VOL. I. B

QUEEN ELIZABETH, OF YORK,

suddenly threw off the mask, and married his son to the
heiress of Burgundy ; and Edward, in the midst of mighty
warlike preparations to avenge himself of the affront, was
taken off by death.

The widowed Queen, and her offspring, became now the
most wretched family of the realm. Elizabeth, who had
reached the age of sixteen, fled with her mother from the
persecution of her uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards
Richard the Third, to sanctuary at Westminster, and re-
mained in that miserable security while the tyrant imbrued
his hands in the blood of her brothers, and of her maternal
relations, and seized the crown. In the meantime, Henry
Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, whose power and policy had
mainly contributed to raise him to it, became suddenly, from
causes which have been differently represented by historians,
his bitter enemy, and conspired with Morton, Bishop of Ely,
and afterwards Primate, to place Henry, Earl of Richmond,
on the throne. In order to fortify his title and personal
interest, as well as to unite the two great parties from whose
contention such miseries had already ensued, they agreed, in
the first place, to propose to Margaret Countess of Richmond,
his mother, and to the Queen Dowager, that he should marry
the Princess Elizabeth. The negotiation was full of difficulty
and danger. Sir Reginald Bray, a friend of Morton's, and a
servant to the Countess, was commissioned to open it to his
mistress, who joyfully engaged in it, and dispatched Lewis,
her physician, to lay it before the Queen, then in her volun-
tary imprisonment. The Queen returned for answer, says
Hollinshed, " that all King Edward's friends and dependants
should join with her for the Earl of Richmond, on condition
that he took his corporal oath to marry the Lady Elizabeth,
her eldest daughter ; or, in case she were not living, the
Lady Cecilia her youngest daughter ;" and sent her chaplain,
Christopher Urswick, to make the overture in her name to
Richmond, then in Bretagne, to whom Morton had already
presented himself, on the part of Buckingham ; meanwhile

WIFE TO KING HENRY THE SEVENTH. 3

Bray, and a few other confidential men, were busily employed
at home in forming a party of persons of rank and influence,
taking from each an oath of fidelity and secrecy. Richmond
readily agreed to every part of the plan : disclosed it to the
Duke of Bretagne, from whom he received a promise of
money and troops to support his landing in England ; and,
on Christmas-day, 1483, swore solemnly, in the Cathedral of
Rennes, to abide by the terms proposed by the Queen
Dowager.

A design of such extent and magnitude could not long
have escaped the penetration of Richard. He peremptorily
summoned Buckingham to his presence, who, conscious that
he had now no choice between death on the scaffold and the
chance of war, suddenly appeared in arms ; was abandoned
by his men ; betrayed by an old servant ; and beheaded at
Salisbury. The Earl of Richmond was attainted, and, nar-
rowly escaping from the treachery of the favourite minister
of the Duke of Bretagne, who had been bribed by Richard
to deliver him up, fled to the court of France, and was
received with coolness. Richard, flushed with these suc-
cesses, and knowing that the hopes of the adverse party were
founded chiefly on the marriage, conceived the extravagant
design of offering his own hand, though he had already a
wife, to his niece the Princess Elizabeth. The Queen Dow-
ager, whose unpardonable conduct at that period is spoken
of more at large in another part of this work, was prevailed
on by that marvellous address of which he was so eminent a
master, to quit her sanctuary ; to put that Princess, and her
four sisters, into his hands ; and to use all her endeavours to
attach to his interest those whom she had so lately persuaded
to espouse the cause of Henry. While these strange circum-
stances were passing, Richard's Queen died, at a moment so
convenient to his plan as to render it ridiculous to speak of
suspicion of foul play, and he now made his addresses pub-
licly to Elizabeth, who rejected them with the abhorrence
which might naturally be expected. Buck, a good antiquary

B2

4 QUEEN ELIZABETH, OF YORK,

but a wretched historian, who, for the sake of contradicting
Sir Thomas More, wrote that rhapsodical Life of Richard the
Third on which Lord Orford founded his " Historic Doubts,"
quotes, it is time, a letter from that Princess to the
Duke of Norfolk, which he tells us was preserved in the
Arundelian collection, in which she made the most extra-
vagant professions of her love to the usurper ; but the whole
context of her history, and indeed of that of her time, dis-
credits almost the possibility of the fact. To return, how-
ever, to truth : Henry, having obtained some slender succours
from the French Regency, took up his quarters at Rouen,
for his more ready correspondence with his friends in Eng-
land, and from thence, despairing now of obtaining Eliza-
beth, sent an offer of marriage to the sister of Sir Walter
Herbert, a man of princely wealth and power in Wales,
through whose means he hoped to secure the support of that
country. Fortunately for him, his agent found it impossible
to reach the place of his destination, for had that treaty suc-
ceeded, the whole of those Yorkists who had promised him
their support would have abandoned his cause. The Welsh,
however, were already nearly unanimous in his favour, and
his news from England scarcely less encouraging. He sailed
from the coast of France in August, 1485, and landed at
Haverfordwest ; and Richard, whom this critical state of
affairs had obliged to suspend his suit to Elizabeth, advanced
to meet his rival, and was slain in Bosworth Field.

The Princess was at that time confined in the castle of
Sheriff Button, in Yorkshire. She was invited to repair to
London with all speed ; and Henry, while she was on her
journey, renewed to his Privy Council his promise to marry
her. He had secretly determined, however, to defer the con-
summation till after his coronation, from a jealous apprehen-
sion that some inference of a participation of title with his
Queen might be drawn from the fact of their being crowned
together, and still more from a hope that the Parliament
might be prevailed on previously to settle, as indeed it did,

WIFE TO KING HENKY THE SEVENTH. 5

the crown on himself solely. At length, on the eighteenth
of January, 1486, the marriage was solemnized with uncom-
mon pomp, and celebrated by the whole people of the realm
with a joy scarcely ever paralleled on any similar occasion ;
but the coronation of the Queen was unaccountably deferred
till the twenty-fifth of November, 1488, to the great disgust
of the friends to her family, whom indeed Henry held in a
degree of hatred which the coldness and cunning of his nature
was insufficient to enable him wholly to dissemble.

Elizabeth's history, as connected with public affairs, closes
with her marriage : and the rudeness, the ignorance, or the
fears, of those who have written of the royal persons of her
time, have left the circumstances of her domestic life almost
wholly unrevealed. Lord Bacon tells us that the King " all his
lifetime, shewed himself no indulgent husband towards her,
though she was beautiful, gentle, and fruitful ; but that his
aversion towards the house of York was so predominant in
him, as it found place not only in his wars and councils, but
in his chamber and bed." If she loved her mother with that
genuine filial tenderness which is always heightened by par-
ticipation in calamity, she could not possibly have cherished
much affection for her husband, who persecuted the Queen
Dowager till her death with a severity far beyond the mea-
sure even of the offence which she has been here stated to
have offered to him. One of the first acts of his reign was to
seize all her estates and personal property, and to imprison
her for her life, without any legal proceeding, in the monastery
of Bermondsey.

Queen Elizabeth of York died in childbirth, in the Tower
of London, on her birth-day, the eleventh of February, 1502,
and was buried in Westminster Abbey ; having born to Henry
three sons, and four daughters, in the following order : Arthur,
Prince of Wales, who died of a consumption, at Ludlow
Castle, on the second of April, 1502, in the sixteenth year
of his age ; Henry, who succeeded to his father's crown ;
Edmund, created Duke of Somerset, who died at Hatfield,

6 QUEEN ELIZABETH, OF YORK.

in Hertfordshire, about one year after his birth ; Margaret,
married, first, to James the Fourth, King of Scotland, and
secondly to Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus ; Elizabeth,
who died at Eltham, on the fourteenth of September, 1495,
between the third and fourth years of her age ; Mary, wife
of Louis the Twelfth, King of France, afterwards married to
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk ; and Catherine, the infant
who caused her mother's death, and scarcely survived her.

TIH1OM&S

OF DERBY
OB. I5O4.

THOMAS STANLEY,

FIRST EARL OF DERBY.

Or a family almost as much distinguished for public and
private worth as by the antiquity of its dignities, "and the
extent of its domains, was the eldest son of Thomas first Lord
Stanley, and Knight of the Garter, by Joan, daughter and
heir of Sir Robert Gousill. His ancestors for three genera-
tions had held eminent offices in the State and Court under
the three monarch s of the House of Lancaster, the last of
whom, Henry the Sixth, his father served for many years in
the arduous station of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland ; in nego-
tiating several treaties with Scotland ; and finally, in the
post of Lord Chamberlain of the royal household. The storm
however, in which that dynasty and so many of its friends
perished passed favourably over him, and his heir, the subject
of this memoir, on whom no mark of royal favour seems to
have fallen in the preceding reign, was on the 24th of May,
in the first year of Edward the Fourth, 1461, summoned to
Parliament by the title of Baron Stanley, having previously
succeeded to the great estates of his father, who died in 1459.

We seek in vain in the history of those times for the chain
of anecdote which at once enlivens, elucidates, and connects
the biography of milder and later days. It is however
scarcely to be doubted that the marriage of Lord Stanley,
which occurred about this period with a daughter of Richard
Neville, Earl of Salisbury, whose brother, the celebrated
Warwick, had placed Edward the Fourth on the throne,

8 THOMAS STANLEY,

introduced him to the favour of that Prince. Warwick, the
versatility of whose loyalty is so conspicuous in the story of
that reign, embraced soon after the fallen fortunes of the
House of Lancaster ; importuned Lord Stanley to join him
in arms against Edward ; and received a firm denial. He
was now appointed Steward of the royal household, and in
1474 attended the King in his warlike expedition into France,
for the aid of which he levied from his estates, and equipped,
forty horse, and three hundred archers. In this enterprise
little seems to have occurred worthy of note, but it may be
presumed that proof was not wanting of his military talents,
since in the invasion of Scotland by Richard Duke of Glouces-
ter, in 1482, the command of the right wing of the army,
amounting to four thousand men, was entrusted to his charge,
at the head of which force he carried Berwick by assault, and
performed several other signal services. During his absence
the King died, and Richard returned to assume the supreme
government under the title of Protector.

It was nearly at this period that Lord Stanley married
Margaret of Lancaster, mother of Henry Tudor, Earl of
Richmond, and who had become for the second time a widow,
a match in which, considering subsequent events, it is diffi-
cult to conceive that political views had not some consider-
able share. There was, it is true, no material disparity in
the age or rank of the parties, but the Countess, who was
distinguished for a rigour of devout practice uncommon even
in those times, had made a vow, previously to this her third
marriage, never to admit another husband to her bed, and
Stanley had subscribed to the condition. Richard however
shewed no inclination to prevent their union, and indeed
Stanley seemed daily to rise in his favour. He was appointed
in the following year, with Lord Hastings, to superintend
chiefly the preparations for the young Edward's coronation,
and was so employed when that remarkable scene which
ended in the arrest and death of the latter nobleman, occurred
at the Council Table in the Tower. Stanley received a severe

FIRST EARL OF DERBY. 9

wound in the head, which it can scarcely be supposed was
accidental, from the pole-axe of one of the soldiers introduced
by Richard on that occasion, was taken into custody on the
spot, and committed, with some other Privy Counsellors, to
close confinement.

Amidst the doubts and obscurities which cloud the history
of this period, it is pretty clear that Lord Stanley and the
rest were convinced of Richard's designs on the Crown, and
were preparing to counteract them, probably without having
at that time concerted the means. He was in fact suddenly
placed on the Throne, by a sort of popular election, within a
month after, when Stanley was not only unexpectedly libe-
rated, and replaced in his office of Steward of the Household,
which had been vacated by the death of Edward the Fourth,
but raised to the exalted dignity of High Constable of Eng-
land, and invested with the Garter. The Countess his wife
too was appointed to bear, as she did, the train of Richard's
Queen at her coronation. These splendid instances of the
tyrant's complaisance were dictated by fear. Stanley's eldest
son, Lord Strange, a title which he had derived from his
marriage with the heiress to that Barony, was then strongly
suspected to be taking measures on his estates in Lincolnshire,
to oppose Richard by force of arms, and the usurper hoped
by these favours to his father to reclaim him, and to win the
family to his interest. His authority however was presently
threatened in other quarters of the country, when a stupen-
dous event occurred which for a time disconcerted all the
plans of his opponents. The sons of Edward the Fourth
suddenly disappeared, and were reported to have died. The
declarations of history on this singular subject, and the
doubts which have been cast on them, are equally well
known.

To the difficulties likely to impede the expulsion of Richard
was now added that of determining on a successor to the
throne, and this was solved chiefly by the advice and intrigues
of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, who had largely

10 THOMAS STANLEY,

aided in raising him to it. This great nobleman, who had
suddenly become Richard's implacable enemy, suggested to
the widow of Edward the Fourth, and to the Countess of
Richmond, that marriage between the son of the one and the
daughter of the other, which has been poetically called " the
union of the roses," and proposed that Henry Earl of Rich-
mond, having previously sworn to solemnize such marriage,
should be saluted King of England. This plan, which cost
Buckingham his head, was eagerly adopted by all the parties,
and Richard, on the first intelligence of it, compelled Lord
Stanley to confine the Countess, and discharge all her attend-
ants, and to deliver Lord Strange into his hands, as an hostage
for his father's fidelity. While these matters were passing,
Richmond, who was in France, prepared for the great enter-
prise which had been devised for him, and at length landed
in Wales, in the month of August, 1485, accompanied by a
few Englishmen of distinction who had fled from the tyranny
of Richard, and by a small French military force.

While Henry marched, with occasional reinforcements,
into the heart of the island without opposition, Lord Stanley,
and his next brother, Sir William, embodied and equipped
their dependants, to the number of five thousand men, and
conducted them to the neighbourhood of Lichfield, always
however retiring as Richmond advanced, and concealing with
such address their real intention, that even himself, who had
for many weeks been engaged in the most confidential com-
munication with them, began to suspect their attachment.
Richard too, equally doubtful, but sufficiently employed in
preparing for defence, set out to meet his antagonist without
questioning them on the motive for their rising. Stanley at
length discovered himself to Richmond, whom he met pri-
vately at a village near Tamworth, called Atherston, where,
says Hollinshed's Chronicle, " in a little field, they consulted
how they should give the tyrant battle to the best advantage."
They separated unobserved ; and Richard, who had advanced
to the town of Leicester, having encamped his army on a hill

FIRST EARL OF DERBY. 11

in the neighbouring parish of Bosworth, made his dispositions
for the celebrated action which ensued on the following
morning.

The armies advanced towards each other, but Stanley,
with his force, still stood aloof in dreadful hesitation, as it
should seem, between his affection to the life of his son, who
was a prisoner in Richard's camp, and his regard to his
honour, pledged to Richmond. Richard in that instant dis-
patched a messenger to him, saying, that " he had sworn
by God's death to cut off Strange's head if Stanley did not
instantly join him." The struggle was short. The noble
Stanley, with Roman spirit, answered, that " he had more
sons, and could not promise to come to him at that time,"
and instantly rushed into the battle for Richmond. " The
tyrant," to use the words of the Chronicle lately quoted,
" as he had sworn to do, ordered the Lord Strange to be
beheaded at the instant when the two armies were to engage ;
but some of his council, abhorring that the innocent young
gentleman should suffer for his father's offence, told the
usurper ' now was a time to fight, and not to execute ; '
advising him to keep him prisoner till the battle was over.
The tyrant hearkened to their advice, and commanded the
keepers of his tents to take him into custody till he returned
from the combat. By this means the Lord Strange escaped
the King's revenge, equally bloody and unjust." The keepers
of the tents delivered him to his father, the Lord Stanley,
after the fight, and for saving him were taken into the new
King's favour, and preferred. After the victory, Stanley,
or, as some have said, his brother Sir William, placed on
Richmond's head a crown, which Richard had worn on his
helmet in the battle (absurdly supposed by some writers to
have been the royal diadem, but properly described by Lord
Verulam as "a crown of ornament"), and proclaimed him
King, by the title of Henry the Seventh.

Lord Stanley's expectations of reward for his signal ser-
vices seem to have been moderate, and the proofs of Henry's

12 THOMAS STANLEY.

gratitude were certainly not abundant. On the twenty-
seventh of October, 1485, he was created Earl of Derby ; on
the thirteenth of the same month was nominated a com-
missioner for executing the duties of Lord High Steward at
the coronation ; and on the fifth of the following March was
again appointed Constable of England for his life. On the
occasion of the baptism of Prince Arthur, he was compli-
mented with the office of godfather, and in 1496 was
employed in the treaties of peace concluded in that year,
with the Archduke of Austria and the King of France. He
died, as appears by the probate of his will, in 1504, and was
buried in the north aisle of the priory church of Burscough,
near Latham, in Lancashire, a foundation which owed its
origin to his ancestors. He married, first, Eleanor, daughter
of Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury ; secondly, as has been
already observed, Margaret, mother to King Henry the
Seventh ; but left issue only by his first lady, who brought
him six sons and four daughters. Of the sons, Thomas and
Richard, the two elder, and William, the fourth, died in
infancy ; George, the third son, succeeded to the titles and
estates ; Edward was advanced by Henry the Seventh to the
Barony of Monteagle ; and James, the youngest, was a priest,
and died Bishop of Ely. The daughters were Jane, Catherine,
and Anne, who died young and unmarried ; and Margaret,
who became the wife of Sir John Osbaldeston, of Osbaldeston,
in Lancashire.

ET ©IF LAWCASTTEIR,

MOTHER OF KINO- HEINRY 7T.H
OB. 1509.

MARGARET OF LANCASTER,

MOTHEE TO KING HENRY THE SEVENTH.

WE must form our opinion of this illustrious lady rather
from inferences than from facts. The darkness of the
distant age in which she lived allows us but an uncertain
view of the several features of her character, but cannot
wholly shroud from our observation the mild splendour
which seems to rest on every part of it. She appears to
have united to the strictest piety the practice of all the
moral virtues, and to have chastened, while she properly
cherished, the grandeur of royalty by the indulgence of
domestic affections, and the retired exercise of a mind at
once philosophic and humble. She stepped wisely, it is
true, out of the usual sphere of her sex, to encourage literature
by her example and her bounty, but she cautiously confined
herself within it, to avoid any concern in the government of
the state after Henry had mounted the throne. She loved
him as her son, and obeyed him as her sovereign, with
equal simplicity ; and seemed to have forgotten that, in the
opinion of no small party, he reigned in some measure by her
tacit appointment. History surely has treated her rather
with complaisance than with justice ; but we have lost in
the lapse of years most of the positive evidence of her merits,
and the careless wit of the most accomplished and popular
recorder of biographical anecdotes that our day has produced,
has yet further depreciated those merits by wanton and mis-
placed ridicule.

14 MARGARET OF LANCASTER,

Henry, however, derived from her a most imperfect title,
if any, to the throne. She was the only child of John Beau-
fort, Duke of Somerset, by Margaret, daughter and heir of
John, Lord Beauchamp of Powyke, and widow of Sir John St.
John. Her father was second-born son, but at length heir,
of John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, who was eldest son of
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, by his third Duchess,
Catherine Swinford : but the children of John of Gaunt by
that lady were born before marriage, and had been invested,
by a royal charter, confirmed by Parliament, with all the
rights of legitimacy, save the inheritance of the Crown, with
regard to which that charter is wholly silent. Her first mar-
riage too, the sole issue of which was Henry, though it had
in it yet more of royalty than her birth, was totally out of
the line of that inheritance ; for her husband, Edmund of
Hadham, Earl of Richmond, though better known by the
general description of brother to Henry the Sixth, was in
fact but the son of that Prince's mother, Catherine, daughter
of Charles the Sixth, King of France, by her second husband,
Owen Tudor, a private gentleman of Wales. Such, how-
ever, in that rude age, were the ignorance or the contempt
of law, and the rage of party, that the Lancastrians were
inclined to assert Henry's right under the mere authority of
these shadows of descent, and were cooled and dissuaded by
the prudence of his mother. She remained in retirement,
affecting a perfect unconcern as to public affairs, and such
good- will and submission to Richard the Third, that she came
to London purposely to hold up the train of his Queen at
their coronation. She besought him, with seeming frankness
and simplicity, to receive her son into his presence and
favour, and to permit him to offer his hand to one of the
Princesses, daughters of Edward the Fourth. Meanwhile
she treated secretly with the Duke of Buckingham, who,
from Richard's great friend, had become his bitterest enemy,
and with the Queen Dowager, for that marriage, and settled
with them many of the preliminary steps to the great event

MOTHER OP KING HENRY THE SEVENTH. 15

which succeeded. These negotiations, however, which were
conducted chiefly by Morton, Bishop of Ely, were not long
unknown to Richard. Henry, with his followers, were
attainted, and Margaret, with a lenity which could have
arisen only from fear, was confined to the house of her then
husband, the Lord Stanley, and released by the final over-
throw of Richard.

The exaltation of her son to the throne seems to have been
the signal for her retreat from all public concerns ; but she
did not abandon the Court. We find her constantly a party
in all the splendid feasts and ceremonies of Henry's reign
which have been recorded ; a fact which clearly contradicts
those who have reported that her piety was of a gloomy and
ascetic cast. That she was sincere and regular in devotion
has been abundantly proved, aud penance was one of the
duties enjoined by her church. She practised it therefore
with severity, even to the use of inner garments and girdles
of hair-cloth ; but when the performance of her task per-
mitted, she could throw them off, and with a cheerful heart
enjoy, as well as acknowledge, the blessings which have been
lavished on her. The nature and character indeed of her nu-
merous and splendid public foundations tend to acquit her of
any suspicion of blind and superstitious bigotry, for they were
rather dedicated to learning and charity than to religion ;
and we need no better proof of her affection to those insti-
tutions than the personal attention which she bestowed on
their progress. St. John's and Christ's Colleges, in Cam-
bridge, were erected and endowed at her sole charge. She
founded a perpetual divinity lecture in that University, and
another in that of Oxford, where she constantly maintained
also a great number of poor scholars, under tutors, appointed
and paid by herself ; an alms-house near Westminster Abbey,
for poor women, and a free-school at Wimbourn, in Dorset-
shire. Her constant counsellor in these, and indeed in all
her designs and actions, was her chaplain and confessor, the
wise, learned, pious, and candid John Fisher, for whom, in

16 MARGARET OF LANCASTER,

the year 1504, she obtained the See of Rochester. The fol-
lowing character of her, extracted from the oration delivered
by that prelate at her funeral, the second period in which so
evidently glances at the ruling fault in her son's disposition,
has an air of such simple fidelity, and asserts so many facts
which must have been then of public notoriety, that we can
scarcely doubt its truth, especially if we consider with it the
reputation of him by whom it was pronounced.

" She was bounteous and lyberal to every person of her
knowledge or acquaintance. Avarice and covetyse she most
hated, and sorrowed it full moche in all persons, but specially
in ony that belonged unto her. She was of syngular easyness
to be spoken unto, and full curtayse answere she would make
to all that came unto her. Of marvayllous gentyleness she
was unto all folks, but especially unto her owne, whom she
trustede, and loved ryghte tenderly. Unkynde she woulde
not be unto no creature, ne forgetful of ony kyndeness or
servyce done to her before, which is no lytel part of veray
nobleness. She was not vengeable ne cruell, but redy anone
to forgete and to forgyve injuryes done unto her, at the least
desyre or mocyon made unto her for the same. Mercyfull
also and pyteous she was unto such as was grevyed and
wrongfully troubled, and to them that v/ere in poverty and
sekeness, or any other mysery. She was of a singular wise-
dom, ferre passyng the comyn rate of women. She was good
in remembraunce, and of holdynge memory ; a redy witte she
had also to conceive all thyngs, albeit they were ryghte derke.
Righte studious she was in bokes, which she had in greate
number, both in Englysh, and in Latin, and in Frenshe ; and,
for her exercise, and for the profyte of others, she did translate
divers matters of devocyon out of the Frenshe into Englyshe.
In favour, in words, in gesture, in every demeanour of herself,
so grete nobleness did appear, that what she spake or dyd it
me^ayllousley became her. She had in a maner all that
was praysable in a woman, either in soul or body."

The translations here spoken of by Fisher, at least such of

MOTHER OP KING HENRY THE SEVENTH. 17

them as are now known, were " The Mirror of Gold for the
sinful Soul," from a French translation of a book in Latin,
entitled "Speculum aureum Peccatorum;" and the fourth
book of Gerson's treatise of the Imitation of Christ, also from
a French version of the Latin original. A detailed account
of these infinitely rare pieces, which are among the earliest
essays of English printing, may be found in Ballard's Memoirs
of Learned Ladies.

In treating of one with regard to whom we possess so
few evidences, nothing that has been proved ought to be
omitted. I doubt, however, whether any apology may be
necessary for the insertion of a letter from Margaret to the
King, her son, from Dr. Howard's Collection of Papers,
though the matters to which it relates are of a private, and
indeed insignificant nature ; for the marks which it exhibits
of a mind at once prudent and active, of a kind heart, and
particularly of parental fondness, render it highly interesting.
It is, perhaps, too, the most polished specimen extant of
the epistolary style of her time. I have taken the liberty
only to modernise the obsolete orthography, which, in the
original, would render the whole nearly unintelligible to
most readers.

" My dearest, and only desired joy in this world,
" With my most hearty loving blessings, and humble com-
mendations, I pray our Lord to reward, and thank your
Grace, for that it hath pleased your Highness so kindly and
lovingly to be content to write your letters of thanks to the
French King for my great matter, that so long hath been in
suit, as Master Welby hath showed me your bounteous
goodness is pleased. I wish, my dear heart, if my fortune
be to recover it, I trust you shall well perceive I shall deal
towards you as a kind loving mother ; and, if I should never
have it, yet your kind dealing is to me a thousand times more
than all that good I can recover, if all the French King's
might be mine withal. My dear heart, if it may please

VOL. \»

18 MARGARET OF LANCASTER,

your Highness to license Master Whytstongs for this time to
present your honourable letters, and begin the process of ray
cause, for that he so well knoweth the matter, and also
brought me the writings from the said French King, with
his other letters to his Parliament at Paris, it should be
greatly to my help, as I think ; but all will I remit to your
pleasure ; and, if I be too bold in this, or any of my desires,
I humbly beseech your Grace of pardon, and that your High-
ness take no displeasure.

" My good King, I have now sent a servant of mine into
Kendall, to receive such annuities as be yet hanging upon the
account of Sir William Wall, my Lord's chaplain, whom I
have clearly discharged ; and, if it will please your Majesty's
own heart, at your leisure, to send me a letter, and com-
mand me that I suffer none of my tenants be retained with
no man, but that they be kept for my Lord of York, your
fair sweet son, for whom they be most meet, it shall be a
good excuse for me to my lord and husband ; and then I
may well, and without displeasure, cause them all to be
sworn, the which shall not after be long undone. And,

where your Grace showed your pleasure for the

bastard of King Edward's ; Sir, there is neither that, or any
other thing I may do by your commandment, but I shall be
glad to fulfil to my little power, with God's grace. And, my
sweet King, Fielding, this bearer, hath prayed me to beseech
you to be his good lord in a matter he sueth for to the
Bishop of Ely (now, as we hear, elect) for a little office nigh
to London. Verily, my King, he is a good and well-ruled
gentleman, and full truly hath served you, well accompanied,
as well at your first as all other occasions ; and that causeth
us to be the more bold, and gladder also, to speak for him ;
howbeit my Lord Marquis hath been very low to him in
times past, because he would not be retained with him ; and
truely, my good King, he helpeth me right well in such mat-
ters as I have business within these parts. And, my dear
heart, I now beseech you of pardon of my long and tedious

MOTHER OF KING HENRY THE SEVENTH. 19

writing, and pray Almighty God to give you as long, good,
and prosperous life as ever had Prince, and as hearty bless-
ings as I can ask of God. At Calais Town, this day of
St. Anne, that I did bring into this world my good and
gracious Prince, King, and only beloved son, by

Your humble servant, beadswoman, and mother,

MARGARET R."

This eminent lady was born in 1441, at Bletsho, in Bed-
fordshire. The splendour of her rank, and the vast fortune
to which she was presumptive heir, raised many competitors
for her hand. Of these Edmund de la Pole, afterwards the
last Duke of Suffolk of his family, and Edmund, Earl of
Richmond, of whom some account has been already given,
were selected for her choice, and she determined in favour of
the latter. In an age so fond of miracles, and on an occasion
so important as the marriage of a royal heiress, it is not
strange that her choice should have been ascribed to super-
natural dictation. — " When the Lady Margaret, his mother,"
says Lord Bacon, at the conclusion of his life of Henry the
Seventh, " had divers great suitors for marriage, she dreamed
one night that one in the likeness of a Bishop, in pontifical
habit " (who, by the way, the good Fisher assures us was
St. Nicholas), " did tender her Edmund, Earl of Richmond,
the King's father, for her husband." Richmond died in 1456,
little more than a year after the nuptials, leaving his highly
destined heir at the age of fifteen weeks, and Margaret, not
long after, became the wife of Sir Henry Stafford, second son
to Humphrey, the great Duke of Buckingham, by whom also
she was left a widow. She was once more married, for in
those unhappy days no state could be more perilous than that
of wealthy widowhood ; but, to prove that she sought only a
protector, she took on that occasion a vow of continency,
administered by Bishop Fisher, which is said to be yet extant
in the archives of St. John's College in Cambridge. Her
third husband was Thomas, Lord Stanley, afterwards the
o2

20 MARGARET OF LANCASTER.

first Earl of Derby of his name, whom she likewise survived.
She died on the 29th of June, 1509, three months after the
accession of her grandson, Henry the Eighth, and was buried
in the superb chapel then lately erected in Westminster
Abbey.

.DBMAL WOILSEY.

OB. I53O.

CARDINAL WOLSEY.

THERE is much reason to suspect that few eminent charac-
ters in history have been more misrepresented than that of
Wolsey. The interests, the passions, and the prejudices of
those by whom alone he could have been well known were
combined against him. They consisted of the most enlightened
and powerful of each important class of his countrymen, and
consequently guided the opinions of the rest. The reformers,
of course, shewed him no favour, and the heads of the Anglo-
Romish church beheld with secret anger the monopoly which
he had formed of the favour of the Papal see, and the alacrity
with which he aided the project for Henry's divorce. The
nobility were not less jealous and fearful of his influence than
indignant at the superior splendour assumed by a priest of
obscure origin. When he suddenly declined from the enor-
mous height on which his capricious master had placed him,
policy, as well as inclination, prompted these several parties
to pour the full tide of their vengeance on his reputation ; to
trample, at the foot of the throne, on the ruins of a fallen
favourite ; and, while they flattered Henry and Anne Bullen
by magnifying his defects, and depreciating his merits, to
represent him to the nation as a singular instance of the in-
justice with which fortune sometimes showers her choicest
gifts on the unworthy. The reformation, immediately suc-
ceeding, imposed silence on such as might have been able
and willing to rescue his fame from undeserved obloquy, and

22 CARDINAL WOLSEY.

consigned to utter oblivion all those little interesting and
lively notices which are the safest guides to a correct judg-
ment of the human character. The malice of his enemies
could not however conceal from us that he ruled absolutely
the political system of England during the many years in
which Henry's credit, as a monarch and a man, remained
unsullied, and that the enormities of that reign commenced
as soon as his ministry had concluded ; and that his magnifi-
cence was equalled by his generosity, and his love of learning
by his princely endeavours to diffuse it among his country-
men ; that his wisdom was eminent, and that he possessed
in that rude age the accomplishments of a gentleman and a
courtier in a degree perhaps peculiar to himself.

His very birth was attacked by slander. He is commonly
reported to have been the son of a butcher, of Ipswich, in
Suffolk ; but this tale seems to be satisfactorily refuted by
the will of Robert Wuley (and we have ample evidence that
the Cardinal in early life so spelled his surname), dated the
twenty-first of September, 1496, and recorded in the Bishop's
Court at Norwich : by which he gives all his lands and tene-
ments in the parish of St. Nicholas, in Ipswich, and his free
and bond lands in the parish of Stoke, to Joan, his wife, and
the residue of his possessions to her, and his son Thomas,
whose destination to the clerical profession he expressly
mentions. Of those persons, who evidently possessed pro-
perty of no small consideration, Wolsey was undoubtedly the
offspring. He was born at Ipswich, in the month of March,
1471, and became a student in the University of Oxford so
young, that he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts at the age
of fourteen. He was afterwards elected a fellow of Magdalen
college, and appointed master of the grammar school belong-
ing to that house, where, among his other pupils, he instructed
the three sons of Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, who re-
warded him by the gift of a rectory in Somersetshire, his first
ecclesiastical preferment ; and here we meet with another

CARDINAL WOLSET. 23

story to his prejudice, scarcely credible." Sir Amias Powlett,
a neighbouring magistrate, is said to have punished him with
the stocks, in his own parish, for inebriety ; and we are told
that he fled, overwhelmed with shame, from his cure. Can
this scandalous tradition possibly be reconciled with the
known fact that Deane, Archbishop of Canterbury, received
him at that precise period as a domestic chaplain ?

Upon the death of that Prelate, in the spring of 1504, he
was retained in the same capacity by Sir John Nanfan, an
ancient courtier, in some degree of favour with Henry the
Seventh, and at that time treasurer of Calais, and was by
that gentleman presently after recommended to the King's
service. He was now appointed one of the chaplains in the
royal household, the treasurer of which, Sir Thomas Lovel, a
wise man, and of much weight in Henry's councils and
favour, presently discerned his superior merit, and distin-
guished him by his patronage ; and he gained at the same
time the esteem of Fox, Bishop of Winchester, a minister
who enjoyed the King's peculiar confidence. On the recom-
mendation of these statesmen, Henry, in 1508, sent him to
Flanders, to make a personal communication to the Emperor,
which he performed with such address, and within a period
of time so inconceivably short, that he was received on his
return, both by the King and Council, with the highest
approbation. The rich Deanery of Lincoln, and other eccle-
siastical preferments, were immediately bestowed on him,
and these grants were among the last acts of that reign.

Doubtless he was already well known to Henry the Eighth,
and had probably acquired some share of that Prince's good
graces before the death of the late King ; but historians in
their fondness for referring all that occurs in courts to
intrigue, ascribe his sudden elevation to some political cir-
cumstances of the time. The affairs of the state were then
wholly directed by Thomas, Earl of Surrey, soon after Duke
of Norfolk, Lord Treasurer, and the Bishop of Winchester,

24 CARDINAL WOLSEY.

who held the office of Secretary of State, and the Privy Seal.
Jealousies subsisted between these great men, and Fox is
said to have recommended Wolsey with peculiar earnestness,
in the hope that he might become the instrument of sup-
planting the Treasurer in the King's favour. If this report
be correct, the Bishop' conceived his plan in an evil hour for
himself, for Wolsey presently became so completely master
of Henry's opinions and affections that both Fox and his
rival were forced, for their own credit, to abandon the
administration of affairs which they were no longer suffered
to guide. To gain this ascendancy he had addressed himself
at once to his master's wisdom and weakness ; to his passions
and prejudices ; to his love of science and of pleasure ; to his
ambition for political distinction, and his earnest desire of
despotic rule. Such was Wolsey's discernment, and such
the versatility of his talents, that he fully succeeded in all.

Henry, who on his accession had given him the office of
Almoner, admitted him soon after into the Privy Council ;
loaded him with benefices, among which were the Deaneries
of York and Hereford ; and appointed him first Register, and
then Chancellor, of the Order of the Garter : but he now rose
with the most unparalleled rapidity. In 1513 he was ap-
pointed Bishop of Tournay, in Flanders, and, a few months
after, of Lincoln ; in the autumn of the following year, he
was promoted to the See of York, and succeeded Warham in
the office of Lord High Chancellor; and on the seventh of
September, 1515, obtained the Cardinal's hat. As the Court
of Rome had now honoured him with its highest dignity, so
presently after it invested him with the greatest powers it
had to bestow, by a commission appointing him Legate
a latere, which he received in the following year. In the
mean time his revenues outstript even the measure of his
preferments. He held, together with the See of York, the
Bishopric of Durham, which he afterwards exchanged for
Winchester; fanned, at rents scarcely more than nominal,'

CARDINAL WOLSEY; 25

those of Worcester, Hereford, and Bath, which had been
given by Henry the Seventh to foreigners, who resided in
their respective countries ; and had the rich abbey of St.
Albans in commendam. His presents and pensions from
several princes amounted to an immense annual sum. Such
compliments were common in those days, and were openly
accepted by ministers of state, not as bribes to seduce them
from their loyalty, but as acknowledgments of their fair and
honourable protection in their respective countries of the
just interests of the donors. Indeed Wolsey's bitterest ene-
mies have never ventured to breathe a suspicion on his
fidelity.

His enormous income, which has been computed to exceed
that of the Crown, he expended with a magnificence which,
were it not the best authenticated part of his story, would
seem utterly incredible. His houses, witness that yet remain-
ing at Hampton, were palaces : and his domestic establisment
was a court, maintained with a brilliancy and order which
few sovereign princes could emulate. He had eight hundred
servants, of whom nine or ten were noblemen, fifteen knights,
and forty esquires. He sat on a chair of state, under a
canopy, and was approached with all the marks of respect
paid to royalty, even to kneeling. Henry, who loved
romantic splendour, and abhorred parsimony, encouraged
these superb excesses, and even delighted to witness them.
It has been usual to charge him with unreasonable pride ;
but the imputation will be found to rest only on a few
instances of his jealous exaction of ceremonious deference to
his ecclesiastical rank. Of that sort was his contest with
the Primate Warham, on the question whether his cross
should be borne before him in the diocese of Canterbury ;
a mere question of right and privilege. For the rest, cum-
brous grandeur was the foible of the age, and in whom
could it be more decorous than in him who represented
the ruler of kings, and was himself the most powerful of
subjects.?

26 CARDINAL WOLSEY.

It is less easy to find an apology for his conduct in his
character of Legate. Under the authority of that commis-
sion he persuaded Henry to allow him to erect a jurisdiction
not only wholly new in the method of its constitution but
assuming faculties independent of all law. It affected
chiefly to enforce a just observance of religious and mo-
ral duties, particularly in cases where the means of legal
correction had not been hitherto provided, and openly
assumed, as well over the laity as the clergy, a right of
inquisition and censure which till then had rarely been exer-
cised even ill the wild sallies of an undefined royal pre-
rogative. He strove to invest it with a control over the
ecclesiastical courts, and to arrogate to it appeals from their
judgment in testamentary cases. Warham, a priest of great
humanity and mildness, at length complained to the King of
these excesses, but without effect ; and Wolsey persevered
till a private individual had the courage to prosecute his
judge, who was convicted in a court of law of gross malver-
sation. Henry is said now to have reprehended the Car-
dinal with great severity, and he prudently restrained in
some respects the authority of his court, which, however,
subsisted while he held the office of Legate. Another undue
exertion of his legantine power, less important, gave much
offence. By a mandate, issued under that authority, he
removed the sittings of the Convocation from St. Paul's, its
very ancient place of meeting, to Westminster. This inno-
vation was suggested by his hatred of Warham, whom he
seems to have constantly persecuted by a series of petty
injuries and insults. It is only in his warfare with that
amiable prelate that we discover any abatements of the dig-
nity of Wolsey's mind.

A detail of his political life would necessarily include a
series of historical conjectures and reasonings more extensive
than the plan of this work could allow, and of his personal
story the peculiar circumstances which immediately followed
his death have, as has been before observed, left us little but

CARDINAL WOLSEY. 27

a few important facts, too well known to justify an enlarged
repetition. One step only was wanting to raise him to the
summit of human ambition : he naturally aspired to the papal
chair, and Henry favoured his pretensions. On the death of
Leo the tenth, in 1521, he became a candidate, and, though
the election had ended before the arrival of a person whom
he sent to Rome to cultivate his interests there, obtained a
considerable support. The prekte who succeeded, and took
the name of Adrian the sixth, survived little more than two
years, when Wolsey made a second effort, and again failed. A
letter of great length, despatched by him to his agents at Rome
on this latter occasion, has fortunately been preserved, and
has been more than once published. It will remain a lasting
testimony to the force, the activity, and the elegancy of his
mind ; the delicacy of his feelings, and the exactness of his
honour. The subtlety and minuteness with which he dis-
sects the intrigues of the Conclave, and the directions that
he gives for steering through them without meanness or
duplicity, reflect equal credit on his head and his heart ; and
the whole is delivered in a graceful flow of expression, to
which it may not be too bold to say that no parallel can be
found in the epistolary remains of his time.

Wolsey, though disappointed of the attainment of this
mighty object, retained his accustomed influence in the Court
of Rome. He had carried himself toward Julio de Medicis,
the successful candidate, with an unusual generosity and
sincerity in the affairs of the election, and the new Pontiff,
from gratitude as well as interest, left no means untried for
his gratification. It was about this time that the Cardinal
conceived his superb plan for academical institutions at
Oxford and Ipswich, and the Pope readily granted his license
for the suppression of a multitude of the smaller religious
houses, and the diversion of their revenues to the erection
and endowment of those colleges. Thus, according to Cam-
den, six hundred and forty-five monasteries were dissolved.
The measure excited a general murmur throughout the king-

28 CARDINAL WOLSEY.

dom: the pious proclaimed it to be sacrilegious, and the
poor, whose alms it curtailed, readily joined in the com-
plaint : Henry himself, as is proved by letters from him still
extant, permitted it with reluctance ; but Wolsey was not to
be deterred by ordinary opposition, and Oxford owes her
magnificent Christ Church to his perseverance. His founda-
tion at Ipswich, a projected school of most extensive views,
and admirable constitution, was not wholly completed at the
time of his death, and presently fell to decay. It was per-
haps deemed impolitic to suffer such a monument to his
memory to flourish in the place of his birth.

His influence over the mind of his master seemed to
increase with the years of his ministry, and the uniform
prosperity which waited on his counsels gave, perhaps not
altogether unjustly, a colour of wisdom in the eyes of Europe
to the King's submission to his will ; but he was doomed to
fall a victim to Henry's passion, and his fate was interwoven
with the King's sudden attachment to Anne Bullen. He
was already beheld by that lady with aversion, for he had
prevented her marriage with Lord Percy, whom she tenderly
loved, and he had little room to doubt that she would exert
her utmost influence with the King to his disadvantage.
When he turned his view from his own danger to the fright-
ful effects which the union of Henry to Anne could scarcely
fail to produce both on the Church and the State, he foresaw
the ruin of the grand scheme of policy by which he had so
long and so gloriously governed both ; the downfal of the
ecclesiastical establishment itself ; and the disgrace, both as
a monarch and a man, of his master, whose reputation he had
in a manner created. Convinced of Henry's earnest inclina-
tion to repudiate Catherine, but uncertain of the extent of his
passion for Anne, and despairing of success in opposing both,
he seems to have hoped that by a ready and humble acqui-
escence in the one he might possibly gain the means of
counteracting the other. The warmth too with which he
engaged in the prosecution of the divorce perhaps arose in

CARDINAL WOLSEY. 29

some measure from a private and personal feeling, for the
Emperor Charles the Fifth, nephew to Catherine, had en-
couraged his hopes of the Popedom, and secretly undermined
his interest ; and it has been supposed that his conduct on
this great occasion was influenced by a spirit of revenge.

The process against the Queen was commenced early in
the year 1528, and Wolsey, together with another Cardinal,
sent to England expressly for that purpose, were, by a bull
from Rome, constituted the judges. The novelty of such a
jurisdiction, and the extreme delicacy, as well as importance,
of the case, together with the necessity of repeated references
to the Pope, and constant prevarication in his answers, so
protracted the suit, that at the end of twelve months the
probability of any speedy decision, which had long been
gradually decreasing, seemed utterly hopeless. It was at this
point of time that Wolsey began to decline in the King's
favour. That eagerness for strict truth, which often over-
looks obvious facts to seek it in nice inquiry and endless
conjecture, has induced historical writers to ascribe his dis-
grace to a variety of causes, and each has his favourite
prejudice. One finds it in the vengeance of Catherine and
Anne Bullen : another in the intrigues of the Papal Court ; a
third in the anger of Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, with whom
the Cardinal had a furious quarrel, in open court, on the day
that the Queen's cause was adjourned to Rome ; and a fourth
in the discovery by a courtesan of that city of a letter written
by Wolsey to the Pope's Secretary in direct opposition to the
divorce. After all, it is highly probable that it arose from
two very simple motives in the bosom of Henry himself —
brutal resentment of the delay of the sentence, in opposition
to his will ; and anxiety to begin the reformation, on which
he had now secretly determined, and in the prosecution of
which it was impossible for Wolsey to have become an
instrument.

The Pope's inhibition in the autumn of 1529 of further

30 CARDINAL WOLSEY.

proceedings in England in the matter of the divorce, was
the final signal for Wolsey's fall, which, though not unex-
pected, was sudden. Henry, then on a progress, commanded
his attendance at Grafton in Northamptonshire. It was
their last interview. The King, who received him cour-
teously, and passed, the most part of the day in frequent
private conferences with him, seemed irresolute, but Anne,
who was in the house, and to whom Henry at intervals
repaired, is said to have turned the scale against him. He
returned to London, where he learned that the Attorney-
General was preparing an indictment against him, yet on
the commencement of Michaelmas term he took his seat on
the Chancery Bench with the accustomed solemnities. Two
days after, on the eighteenth of October, the Dukes of
Norfolk and Suffolk, verbally commissioned by Henry, went
to his house, to demand the Great Seal, which he refusing
to deliver without a more authentic command, they pro-
cured a letter to him from the King, on sight of which he
resigned it. His palace of York House, which stood on the
site of Whitehall, with its innumerable precious contents,
were afterwards seized, under the authority of an obsolete
statute which will presently be mentioned, and he was sent
to an unfurnished house at Esher, in Surrey, which belonged
to his See of Winchester, where he fell into a dangerous
illness. The King now again hesitated ; dispatched the
physicians of the Court to attend him ; and sent him, as a
token of regard, a ring which Wolsey had formerly presented
to him. He recovered his health, and was permitted to
remove to the Palace of Richmond, which he had some yeais
before received of Henry, in exchange for Hampton Court ;
and here he received a present from the King of ten thou-
sand pounds, for he was now stripped of all his private
property, as well as of his dignities and offices. This
favourable disposition, however, soon changed, and Henry,
surrounded by numbers who now ventured to declare their

CARDINAL WOLSET. 31

enmity to the humbled favourite, commanded him to retire
to York.

In the mean time his prosecution had been pushed on with
constant vigour. The charges against him were first pre-
ferred in the Star Chamber, on the first of October, by
which Court he was declared guilty of the whole ; and then
remitted to the Parliament, which met on the third of the
following month. The Lords sent down to the House of
Commons an accusation against him, digested into forty-four
articles, unproved, and mostly incapable of proof ; but the
Commons, even in that despotic reign, refused to lend them-
selves to such flagrant injustice, and it was found necessary
to indict him of having procured Bulls from Rome, particu-
larly that by which he was constituted Legate, contrary to
a law of Richard the Second, called "the Statute of Pro-
visors." These alleged offences had been committed by him,
and he had for many years exercised the powers that he
derived from them, not only with the countenance and ap-
probation of the King and Parliament, but under a formal
permission expressly granted by Henry himself. The miser-
able Wolsey, however, durst not produce that license ;
pleaded guilty to the indictment ; declared his ignorance of
the Statute ; and threw himself on the mercy of the tyrant,
who on the twelfth of February, 1530, N.S., granted him a
pardon, the peculiar plenitude of which has been more than
once remarked by our most eminent lawyers.

The sequel of this tragedy is so monstrous that history,
unsupported by the evidence of public records, might have
striven in vain to convince after-ages of its credibility.
Wolsey, having retired to his Archbishoprick of York, and
to the possession of its revenues, which had been restored to
him when he received the royal pardon ; shorn of all other
beams of his former grandeur, and deprived of all hope of
regaining any other portion of it, was suffered to pass little
more than one month in the commencement of a life of

32 CARDINAL WOLSET.

innocence, and piety, and resignation, when he was arrested
by the Earl of Northumberland, at Cawood, one of the
houses of his see, for high treason, grounded on the self-
same charges which had been so lately, and so amply remit-
ted. The events of his few succeeding days are perhaps
more generally known than any other part of our history.
As his persecutors were dragging him on towards London, he
died on the way, broken-hearted, at the Abbey of Leicester,
on the thirtieth of November, 1530.

WDL1LJAIM W A K H AIM
OF C

OS, 1532,

\

WILLIAM WARHAM,

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

THIS very respectable divine, who seems to have owed to
a placid and humble temper, and to an innocent and candid
prudence, the imperfect tranquillity with which for a long
series of years he held the highest ecclesiastical station, in a
time the most inauspicious to churchmen, especially of his
persuasion, was the eldest son of Robert Warham, a small
gentleman, or yeoman, of Hampshire, by Elizabeth, his wife,
and was born at Okeley, in that county, about the year 1456.
He received the education requisite to fit him for the clerical
profession, which at that time included the study of the civil
law, in Winchester School, and at Winchester College, in
Oxford, and was in 1475 admitted Fellow of New College,
where he soon after took the degree of Doctor of Laws. He
quitted the university, in which he had held some reputable
appointments, in 1488, with a high fame for his learning,
and embraced the profession of an advocate in the Arches
Court, in which he practised with much distinction and suc-
cess. He became therefore, soon after his arrival, well
known at the Court, for Henry the Seventh delighted in civi-
lians, and thought them of all others the best qualified for
the management of niceties in affairs of state, particularly in
those of foreign negotiation. Warham was accordingly sent,
in 1493, with Sir Edward Poynings, on an embassy to Philip
Duke of Burgundy, to persuade that Prince to withdraw his
protection from the impostor, Perkin Warbeck ; and dis-

VOL. I. D

34 WILLIAM WABHAM,

charged his mission so well, that Henry, on his return,
appointed him Master of the Rolls. He sat in that office for
nine years ; a delay of preferment which was amply compen-
sated for by the rapidity with which he afterwards rose to
the most exalted stations in Church and State ; for on the
eleventh of August, 1502, the Great Seal was delivered to
him, as Lord Keeper ; within a few weeks after he was
placed in the See of London ; on the first of the following
January was appointed Lord Chancellor ; and, in the ensuing
March, translated to the Primacy. The favour of his master
was marked by the unusual circumstances of pomp and cere-
mony attending his installation at Canterbury, in which
Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, the mightiest peer of
the realm, condescended to officiate in the character of his
Steward of the Household. To these high offices was added
the dignity of Chancellor of that university which had lent
its aid to qualify him for them, to which he was elected on
the twenty-eighth of May, 1506.

His royal patron dying not long after that period, a new
master succeeded, and presently Wolsey, a new planet, or
rather comet, in the sphere of English politics, appeared, and
soon eclipsed all competitors for favour. The mild and sober
character of Warham by no means fitted him for contention
with one whose vivacity and ardour in the execution of his
schemes were equal to the ambition and subtlety with which
they had been projected. Wolsey began by infringing on the
dignified distinctions of the Primacy, one of which was. that
the cross of no other prelate should be elevated in the
same place with that of the Archbishop of Canterbury ; Wol-
sey, however, would have his cross of the See of York borne
before him even in the presence of Warham ; and it has been
said, though improbably enough, that he procured for himself
from the Pope his famous commission of Legate a latere for
the sake of gaining precedency in that peculiar point, to
which end his station of Cardinal was insufficient. He then
invaded the Primate's prerogative by erecting a court at

ARCHBISHOP OP CANTERBURY. 35

Whitehall, for the proving of wills under his separate autho-
rity ; and at length invested himself, in a great measure,
through the efficacy of his Legantine power, with the govern-
ment of the Anglican Church, both in spiritual and temporal
affairs. Warham remonstrated to him in vain, and at last
appealed to the King, by some exertion of whose authority
Wolsey's violence was somewhat curbed, and his anger
against Warham proportionably provoked. Two original
expostulatory letters from the Primate to the Cardinal may
be found in the Cotton collection, the one complaining, at
great length, of Wolsey's interference with the Archbishop's
jurisdiction in a particular case, of no public importance ; the
other, a brief and more general representation of various
injuries. This latter seems to merit insertion here, not only
as a specimen of Warham's epistolary style, which was of the
best of his time, but because the profoundly respectful method
of expression affords so remarkable a proof of the awe in
which Wolsey was held, even by an outraged Metropolitan
of England.

" Please it youre good Grace to understande, I am informed
that your Grace intendithe to interrupte me in the use of the
prerogatives in the whiche my predecessors and I, in the
right of my church of Canterbury, hathe been possessed by
priviledge, custume, and prescription, tyme out of minde ;
and, for the interruption of the same, your Grace is mynded,
as I am informed, to depute Doctour Alan ; whiche if your
Grace shulde do so (considering that not only all myne
officers of my Courts, th' Arches and th' Audience, but also
the Commissarie of my diocesse of Kente, and I myself, not
only in matiers of suite of instance of parteys, but also in
causes of correction dependinge before me and them, be con-
tinually inhibited by your officers) I shulde have nothinge
lefte for me and my officers to do, but shulde be as a shadoo
and ymage of an Archbishop and Legate, void of auctoritie
and jurisdiction, whiche shulde be to my perpetual reproche,

D2

36 WILLIAM WARHAM,

and to my churche a perpetual prejudice. Wherefore, inas-
much as I truste verily in your great goodness that youre
Grace wool not be so extreme against me, and the right of
my church beforenamed, I beseech your Grace, the premisses
considered, to differ and respecte this matter tyll I may have
communycation in this behaulfe with your Grace, when it
shall please youe, at youre leysure ; and, youre pleasure
knowne, I will be redy to give attendance on your Grace ;
beseeching you also to give credence to my chapellaine,
Maister Wellys, this berar, in suche matiers as he will shev/e
youre Grace on my behaulfe. At my manor at Croydon,
the xvii day of Marche.

" At youre Gracis commandment,

" WILL'M CANTUAR."

Wolsey having perhaps abated somewhat of his persecution
of Warham in ecclesiastical matters, attacked him next in his
office of Chancellor. He had long been jealous of the inter-
ference of the Chancery with the authority of his Legantine
Court, and his ambition readily suggested to him the most
effectual remedy for the inconvenience. He became eager to
possess the first lay office under the Crown, and the Arch-
bishop, fatigued with contention, and advancing to old age,
was easily prevailed on to gratify him, in the hope to purchase
by this concession the quiet enjoyment for the remainder of
his life of those rights, at least, of the Primacy which had no
concern with matters of state. He resigned the Great Seal
on the twenty-third of December, 1515, and the King imme-
diately delivered it to the Cardinal. Warham now retired
from all public business except that of his church, and passed
yet many years in his diocese, in a faithful discharge of all the
duties of his high calling ; in the enjoyment of private friend-
ships, and in the cultivation and patronage of literature. He
lived in the strictest intimacy with Erasmus, to whom he
gave the rectory of Aldington, in Kent. They corresponded
with the freedom of equals, and exchanged portraits with the

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 37

affection of brothers. " Erasmus, in one of his epistles," says
Wood, " so commends him for humanity, learning, integrity,
and piety, that in the conclusion he saith, ' Nullam absoluti
prsesulis dotem in eo desideres.' " His liberality was un-
bounded and his contempt of wealth almost blameable. He
expended the immense sum of thirty thousand pounds in
repairing and adorning the different episcopal houses of his
See, and left scarcely sufficient to pay his debts. When he
lay on his death-bed, having occasion to inquire of his steward
what money he had in his hands, and being answered only
thirty pounds, he calmly replied, "Satis viatici ad coelum."

The main fault in his conduct, for which much might be
pleaded in extenuation, considering the characters of the two
masters whom he served, was a servile obsequiousness to
their will on all occasions. When the question of the supre-
macy of Henry the Eighth was propounded to the Convoca-
tion, and Cromwell had concluded his long argument for it,
every mouth in that assembly was sealed by fear ; when the
Primate, after a short pause, declared that " silence was to
be taken for consent," and reported the judgment of the Con-
vocation accordingly. Bishop Burnet tells us that "his
speeches in Parliament were sermons, begun with texts of
Scripture, which he expounded and applied to the business
they were to go upon, stuffing them with the most fulsome
flattery of the King that was possible." That historian,
however, in another part of his chief work, says of him,
with much apparent fairness, that he was, " a great canonist,
an able statesman, a dexterous courtier, and a favourer of
learned men : that he always hated Cardinal Wolsey, and
would never stoop to him, esteeming it below the dignity of
his See : that he was not so peevishly engaged to the learning
of the schools as others were, but set up and encouraged a
more generous way of knowledge ; yet that he was a severe
persecutor of those whom he thought heretics, and inclined
to believe idle and fanatical people, as appeared in the
matter of the Maid of Kent." The truth is that, as the cha-

38 WILLIAM WARHAM.

racter of Archbishop Warham wanted those bold features
which history so readily records, it has been hitherto but
slightly touched on. As a churchman, he seems to have
been pious and sincere : zealous for the persuasion in which
he had been bred, and occasionally proving that zeal in
instances of intolerant severity ; as a statesman, rather
esteemed for honesty and experience than for acuteness : as
a judge, laborious in his attention to the business of his Court,
and pure in his administration of justice : as a man, mild,
cheerful, affable, and benevolent. If we may not reckon
him with the greatest, he may certainly be esteemed among
the best, public men of the age in which he flourished. He died
on the twenty-third of August, 1532, in the house of his
nephew, William Warham, Archdeacon of Canterbury, at
Hackington, near that city ; and was buried with the most
simple privacy in a small chapel, which he had built in his
cathedral for that purpose.

A tradition exists, too ancient, and too respectable, to admit
of reasonable doubt, that the fine picture from which the
present engraving was made was presented by Holbein to
the Archbishop, inclosed in the identical frame in which it
vet remains.

SIR JOHN MORE.

WE know nothing of this gentleman's ancestors. No
record of them remains in the College of Arms, and among
the many who have written the life of his son, though all
strive to combat a prevailing opinion that he came of an
obscure family, not one has attempted to advance a single
fact which might tend to trace his pedigree beyond his
father, the subject of the present Sketch. Sir John More was
bred to the law ; received his professional education in Lin-
coln's Inn ; and acquired a high reputation as an advocate
soon after his appearance at the bar. In 1501, that son,
afterwards the admirable Chancellor, gave high offence to
the Court by opposing in the House of Commons, of which
in very early life he had become a member, a motion for the
impost of a subsidy, and three fifteenths, for the marriage of
the Princess Margaret, daughter of Henry the Seventh, to
James the Fourth, King of Scotland, and his father was im-
mediately after committed, by the royal order, to the Tower.
Of the nature of his accusation (for some specific charge, even
in those days of violence and injustice, must have been alleged)
we are wholly ignorant, but the few who have spoken of the
circumstance agree in ascribing his imprisonment to the
anger excited in the King by the freedom of his son's parlia-
mentary conduct. This is by no means improbable. Revenge
and avarice were the ruling features of Henry's character ;
and having in this instance gratified the former unreasonable
disposition by the punishment of a guiltless person, he pro-
ceeded to feed the latter by the base exaction of a fine of one

40 SIR JOHN MORE.

hundred pounds, on the payment of which More was set at
liberty, and, resuming the exercise of his profession, was
called to the degree of a Serjeant in Michaelmas term, 1505.
He was appointed a Judge of the King's Bench in 1518, and
on that occasion received knighthood ; and, as he never ex-
perienced any further promotion, it may be plausibly inferred
that his abilities were of no superior cast, especially when
we recollect the great source of legal preferment which
existed in his family, for he survived for many years his son's
appointment to the Chancellorship. Sir Thomas, who wrote
his own epitaph, describes his father in it as " Homo civilis,
innocens, mitis, misericors, sequus, et integer :" it may be
reasonably supposed that he would have added sapiens, if
the subject had merited that epithet.

He was to the last degree beloved and respected by his
son, whose constant practice it was, in passing through West-
minster Hall in state, towards his judgment seat in the
Chancery, to step for a minute into the Court of King's
Bench, and kneel to his father for his blessing. From the
little that has been transmitted to us respecting Sir John
More, he appears to have been a worthy, humble, and pru-
dent man. He must have amassed considerable wealth in
the practice of his profession, for he purchased the manor and
extensive estates of Gubbins, more properly Gobions, in the
parish of North Mims, in Hertfordshire, which remained
long in his posterity. He was thrice married : first, to the
daughter of a Mr. Handcombe, of Holywell, in Bedfordshire,
by whom he had his celebrated only son, and two daughters ;
Jane, married to Richard Stafferton ; and Elizabeth, to John
Rastall, father of the eminent judge of that name. Secondly,
to Alice, daughter of John More of Losely, in Surrey, by
whom he had no issue. His third wife is unknown. He
died in 1533, at the age of ninety, of a surfeit, as it is said,
occasioned by immoderate eating of grapes, and was buried
in the Church of St. Laurence, in the Old Jewry.

:

OB. 1535.

SIR THOMAS MORE.

IN composing, several years since, a small sketch of the
life of this admirable person, which has been published in
another biographical collection, I summed up his character
as it appeared to me, in terms which it may be pardonable to
repeat here ; for a second and more exact review of his con-
duct has furnished no ground for change of opinion, and to
alter the diction of a few simple passages which the same
pen could perhaps scarcely otherwise express, would produce
but a silly counterfeit of originality. I shall perhaps take a
similar liberty in a few subsequent instances, in the progress
of the present work, and beg leave, once for all, to offer this
apology for the practice, as well as for having said here so
much on the subject.

1 To say that Sir Thomas More's was the brightest character
oithe age in which he lived, an age which exhibited the
ferocity of uncivilised man without his simplicity, and the
degeneracy of modern manners without their refinement,
were praise beneath his merit ; to challenge the long and
splendid series of English biography to produce his equal at
any period, might be deemed presumptuous ; but, if the wise
and honest statesman, the acute and incorrupt magistrate,
the loyal but independent subject, constitute an excellent
public man ; if the good father, the good husband, and the
good master, the firm friend, the moral though witty com-
panion, the upright neighbour, the pious Christian, and the
patient martyr, form a perfect private character, ecce homoT]
He was born in Milk-street, Cheapside, about the year

42 SIR THOMAS MORE.

1480, the only son of Sir John More, a Judge of the King's
Bench, by his wife the daughter of a Mr. Handcombe, of
Holywell, in Bedfordshire. He acquired the learned lan-
guages at the hospital of St. Anthony in the parish of
St. Benet Fink, in London, then a school of high reputation,
from whence he was' removed to St. Mary Hall, or, as some
have said, to Canterbury College, now Christchurch, in the
university of Oxford. The primate, Cardinal Morton, in
whose family he passed some of his earliest years, in the
character of a gentleman attendant, according to the fashion
of that time, charmed as much by his wit as by his learning,
often said to the great persons at his table, " This child here
waiting, whosoever shall live to see it, will prove a marvel-
lous great man ; " and the prediction soon began to be veri-
fied, for, even at the age of eighteen, the literary fame which
he had acquired provoked the envy of some German critics,
and the praise of others. Erasmus, at that time, wrote to
him in the behalf of Brixius, one of the former class, who
had attacked him in an invective intituled "Antimorus,"
seriously intreating his mercy to that old and experienced
disputant.

Just at this period he left the university, and began to
study the law in New Inn, and afterwards in Lincoln's Inn,
passing his hours of leisure in a circle, of which he naturally
became the centre, composed of those whose wisdom and
learning could best inform, and of those the vivacity of whose
genius could most delight. At the age of twenty-one, when
he had barely been called to the station of an utter barrister,
he was elected a member of the House of Commons, and was
presently distinguished there for a freedom of conduct which,
at that time, could have arisen only from the purest motives.
In that spirit he opposed in 1503 the requisition of a sub-
sidy and three fifteenths, for the marriage of the Princess
Margaret, daughter of Henry the Seventh, to the King of
Scots, with such force and honesty of reasoning that the
rejection of the demand is said to have been ascribed almost

SIR THOMAS MORE. 43

wholly to his endeavours. A privy councillor ran imme-
diately from the house, and told the King, " that a beardless
boy had overthrown all his purpose," and Henry satisfied at
once his anger and his avarice by committing, under some
frivolous pretences, the young senator's father to the Tower
and forcing him to purchase his release by the payment of a
fine of one hundred pounds. More, however, became so
alarmed at the King's resentment, that he retired for a con-
siderable time from the parliament, and from his professional
avocations, and during that interval, which seems to have
been passed in a place of concealment, he studied geometry,
astronomy, and music, in which last he much delighted,
and exercised his pen in historical composition.

He returned at length to his practice at the bar, which
presently became so extensive as to produce, according to
his own report to his son-in-law, and biographer, Mr. Roper,
an annual income of four hundred pounds, equal at least to
five thousand in our days. He remained, however, in dis-
favour at court till after the accession of Henry the Eighth,
who, with all his faults, easily discovered and generally
encouraged, true merit. The King sent for him by Wolsey,
and, on the first taste of his extraordinary powers, deter-
mined to employ him. Foreign negotiation was then held
to be the most essential part of the education of a states-
man. More was directed therefore in 1516 to accompany
Tonstal, Bishop of Durham, one of his intimate friends, to
Flanders, for the renewal of a treaty of alliance with the
Archduke of Austria, afterwards Charles the Fifth, and on
his return was warmly invited by Henry to devote himself
to the service of the Crown, which his prudence, and indeed
his interests, induced him at that time and for some years
after, to decline. The King at length pressed him with
such earnestness that he durst no longer refuse, and in
1519 he accepted the office of a Master of the Requests ;
was soon after knighted, and sworn of the Privy Council ;
and in the succeeding year appointed Treasurer of the Ex-

44 SIR THOMAS MORE.

chequer. More's hesitation had been wholly unaffected. On
the occasion of his becoming a Privy Councillor, he expressed
himself (according to Stapleton, one of his biographers), to
his bosom friend, Bishop Fisher, in these terms ; and the
passage is rendered the more valuable by the features which
it discloses, on such good authority, of Henry's character at
that time : — '[T~am come to the court extremely against my
will, as every body knows, and as the King himself often
twitteth me in sport for it ; and hereto do I hang so un-
seemly, as a man not using to ride doth sit unhandsomely
in the saddleTJ But our Prince, whose special and extra-
ordinary favour towards me I know not how I shall ever
be able to deserve, is so affable and courteous to all men,
that every one who has never so little hope of himself may
find somewhat whereby he may imagine that he loveth him ;
even as the citizens' wives of London do, who imagine that
our Lady's picture, near the Tower, doth smile upon them
as they pray before it. But I am not so happy that I can
perceive such fortunate signs of deserving his love, and of a
more abject spirit than that I can persuade myself that I
have it already : yet, such is the virtue and learning of the
King, and his daily increasing industry in both, that by how
much the more I see his Highness increase in both these
kingly ornaments, by so much the less troublesome this
courtier's life seemeth unto me."

In 1523 he was chosen Speaker of the House of Commons,
and in the following year, says Hakewel, of the House of
Peers. In the former capacity he again distinguisheoMiim-
self by his firm opposition to a subsidy, and, personally, to
Wolsey, who came to the house, in his usual splendour, to
influence the decision by his presence. On a question having
been previously debated whether they should receive him
but with a few attendants, or with his whole train, More is
reported to have said, " Masters, forasmuch as my Lord
Cardinal lately, ye wot well, laid to our charge the lightness
of our tongues, for things uttered out of this house, it

SIR THOMAS MORE. 45

should not in ray mind be amiss to receive him with all his
pomp ; with his maces, his pillars, his poll-axes, his crosses,
his hat, and the great seal too ; to the intent that if he find
the like fault with us, then we may be the bolder, from our-
selves, to lay the blame on those whom his Grace bringeth
with him." The favour of Henry, whose natural generosity
of spirit then perhaps remained unabated, was not impaired
by this unusual freedom : More, in 1526, was appointed
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster ; in the following
year was joined to Wolsey, and others, in an embassy to
the Court of France ; and, in 1529, went with Tonstal to
Cambray, to secure the payment of certain sums due to the
King from Charles the Fifth, his success in which business
won him the highest approbation. He was now Henry's
most esteemed servant, and most familiar companion, but he
had found some reasons to alter his opinion of his master's
character. Roper informs us, that about this time, Henry
coming suddenly, as he frequently did, to dine with More
at his house at Chelsea, and walking long after dinner in the
garden, with his arm about Sir Thomas's neck, Roper, after
the King's departure, congratulated him on so distinguished
a mark of royal kindness, observing that no one except
Wolsey had ever before experienced such condescension.
" I thank our Lord, son," replied More, " I find his Grace
my very good Lord indeed, and I believe he doth as sin-
gularly favour me as any subject within this realm ; how-
beit, son Roper, I must tell thee I have no cause to be proud
thereof, for if my head would win him a castle in France,
it would not fail to go off."

Henry's mind was now wholly occupied by his long-
cherished project of the divorce. He had consulted and
reasoned with More on that great subject, and had met with
a firm opposition. So attached, however, was he to the man,
or so anxious for the sanction of his coincidence, that he
determined to gratify the one, or to bribe the other, by a
grant of the first station under the crown. More was ap-

46 SIR THOMAS MORE.

pointed, on the twenty-fifth of October, 1530, to succeed the
disgraced Cardinal in the office of High Chancellor, which had
never before been held by a layman, and this was the first
serious blow struck by Henry at the power of the priesthood.
He entered on it with melancholy forebodings, which were
too soon verified. With a Christian perfection, which, as
has been well said, and by a dissenter too, was such as made
him " not only an honour to any particular form of Chris-
tianity, but to the Christian name and cause in general,"
his zeal for the Romish Church was equalled only by the
benevolent spirit in which he exercised it. He had for some
time beheld in silent horror the gradual approaches to the
downfall of that church, and was now called to a situation in
which he was compelled either to aid its enemies with his
counsels, and to ratify their decisions by his official acts, or
to incur the severest penalties by his refusal. He virtuously
preferred the latter, and, having persevered to the end in
denying any degree of countenance to the proposed divorce,
on the sixteenth of May, 1533, he resigned the seal, deter-
mined that it should never be placed by his hand on the
instrument by which that process was to be concluded.

The definitive sentence was pronounced and published on
the twenty-third, and the coronation of Ann Boleyn, to whom
the impatient Henry had been for some time united, at least
by the forms of matrimony, was fixed for the thirty-first of
the same month. More, doubtless by the King's order, was
pressed by several of the Bishops who were to officiate, to be
present at the ceremony, for his reputation stood so high in
the kingdom that even the slightest colour of approbation
from him was esteemed important ; but he stedfastly refused,
and boldly declared to those prelates his conviction of the
illegality of the marriage. Henry now sought to move him
by terror. In the ensuing parliament a bill of attainder
against him was agitated in the House of Peers, for misprision
of treason in the affair of that enthusiast, or impostor, who
was called the Holy Maid of Kent, and he was more than

SIR THOMAS MORE. 47

once cited before the Privy Council on other charges, but the
evidence on each proved too weak even for the terrible
fashion of that reign. The act of supremacy, which appeared
in 1534, at length fixed his fate. When the oath prescribed
by it was tendered to him, he declined to take it, and was
committed to the custody of the Abbot of Westminster, and,
on a second refusal, a few days after, to the Tower of London.
Endeavours were now again ineffectually used to win him
by persuasion, while the kind and merciful Cranmer as
vainly endeavoured to prevail on the King to dispense with
the oath in More's case. After fifteen months' imprisonment,
he was arraigned of high treason at the King's Bench bar, for
denying the King's supremacy. Rich, the Solicitor General,
afterwards Chancellor, was the sole witness against him, and
the testimony of that wretch, whose name should be con-
signed to eternal infamy, consisted in the repetition of
speeches which he had artfully drawn from More, during a
visit to his prison, in a familiar conversation, which Rich had
commenced by expressly declaring that he had no commis-
sion to agitate in it any matter regarding the prosecution.
Much even of this evidence Sir Thomas positively denied,
but the jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to be
hanged, drawn, and quartered ; a doom which Henry altered,
in consideration of the high office which he had held. He
was beheaded upon Tower Hill on the fifth of July, 1535,
and his revered head was ignominiously exposed on London
Bridge, from whence after many days, it was privately
obtained by his affectionate daughter, Roper, and by her
placed in the vault of her husband's family, under a chapel
adjoining to St. Dunstan's Church in Canterbury. His body
was interred in the chapel of the Tower, but afterwards
removed, at the solicitation of that lady, to the parish church
of Chelsea, and buried there, in the chancel, near a monu-
ment which he had some years before erected, with an in-
scription written by himself.

Perhaps of all the remarkable persons who adorned or

48 SIR THOMAS MORE.

disgraced the age in which he lived we are the most clearly
acquainted with the life and character of Sir Thomas More ;
and this — though few men have found more biographers, for
his life has been ten times separately written and published
— we owe chiefly to, the perfect candour and sincerity which
distinguished him. His acts and his sayings compose the
history not only of his conduct but of his motives, and left
to those who have written of him only the simple task of
collecting facts, to which the fondest partiality could add no
further grace, and on which even malice could have cast no
blemish. But he lived without enemies, and since his death,
Bishop Burnet only has dared to lift a pen against his me-
mory. In his earnest devotion to the Catholic faith, and to
the See of Rome, he was severe only to himself. The fury of
conflicting zealots was calmed while they reflected on his
virtues ; and when Rome celebrated his canonization with a
just and honest triumph, the Church of England looked on
in silent approbation. In his court no one ever presided
with more wisdom, learning, and perspicacity ; with a more
rigid devotion to justice ; or with more vigilance, impartiality,
and patience ; when he quitted it, he left not a single cause
undecided. The strictness of his loyalty, and his magnani-
mous independence, were always in perfect unison, because
they flowed from one and the same source, an honest heart.
In all the domestic relations the beauty of his life was
unparalleled. Erasmus has left us a glowing picture of him,
retired, at Chelsea, in the bosom of his family. The passage
has been thus translated : " More hath built near London,
upon the Thames, such a commodious house as is neither
mean nor subject to envy, yet magnificent enough. There he
converseth affably with his family ; his wife, his son, and
daughter-in-law ; his three daughters, and their husbands ;
with eleven grandchildren. There is not any man living so
affectionate with his children as he, and he loveth his old
•wife as well as if she were a young maid ; and such is the
excellence of his temper, that whatsoever happeneth that

SIR THOMAS MORE. 40

could not be helped, he loveth it as though nothing could
have happened more happily. You would say there were In
that place Plato's academy ; but I do the house injury in
comparing it to Plato's academy, where there was only dis-
putations of numbers, and geometrical figures, and sometimes
of moral virtues. I should rather call his house a school or
university of Christian religion, for there is none therein but
readeth or studieth the liberal sciences : their special care is
piety and virtue : there is no quarrelling, or intemperate
words, heard ; none seen idle ; which household discipline
that worthy gentleman doth not govern by proud and haughty
words, but with all kind and courteous favour. Every body
performeth his duty, yet there is always alacrity ; neither is
sober mirth anything wanting."

More himself has proved the correctness of Erasmus's
account in the dedication, to an intimate friend, of his
Utopia, by expressions which I cannot help inserting here,
for it is not easy to quit the story of his private life —
" Whilst I daily plead other men's causes," says he (to use
the words of his translator) " or hear them, sometimes as an
arbitrator, other while as a judge : whilst this man I visit
for friendship, another for business, and whilst I am employed
abroad about other men's matters all the whole day, I leave
no time for myself, that is for study : for when I come home
I must discourse with my wife ; chat with my children ;
speak with my servants ; and, seeing this must needs be
done, I number it amongst my affairs, and needful they are,
unless one would be a stranger in his own house : for we
must endeavour to be affable and pleasing to whom either
nature, chance, or choice, hath made our companions ; but
with such measure it must be done that we don't mar them
with affability, or make them of servants our masters, by too
much gentle entreaty and favour. Whilst these things are
doing, a day, a month, a year, passeth. When then can I
find any time to write ? for I have not yet spoken of the time
that is spent in eating and sleeping, which things alonp

VOL. I. K

50 SIR THOMAS MORE.

bereave most men of half their life. As for me, I get only
that spare time which I steal from my meat and sleep ;
which because it is but small, I proceed slowly ; yet, it being
somewhat, I have now at length prevailed so much, as I have
finished, and sent unto you, my Utopia."

The chief singularity of his character, was a continual
disposition to excessive mirth, and the Lord High Chancellor
of England was perhaps the first droll in the kingdom. Lord
Herbert, willing, for obvious reasons, to find fault with him,
and unable to discover any other ground, censures the levity
of his wit ; and Mr. Addison well observes that " what was
philosophy in him would have been frenzy in any one who
did not resemble him, as well in the cheerfulness of his
temper as in the sanctity of his life and manners." Feeling
that gaiety was the result of innocence, he seems to have con-
ceived that the active indulgence of it was a moral duty.
Among other hints of this remarkable opinion which are scat-
tered in his works, speaking of the Utopian burials, at which
he tells us none grieved, he says " when those to whom the
deceased was most dear be come home, they rehearse his
virtuous manners, and his good deeds, but no part is so oft
or gladly talked of as his merry death." That his own was
such is well known. He had not been shaved during his
long imprisonment, and after he had placed his neck on the
block, he raised his hand, and put his beard forward, saying
that it should not be cut off, for it had committed no treason.
His witticisms are to be still found in abundance even in
every ordinary jest-book, and none have been better authen-
ticated.

That Sir Thomas More should have found leisure for most
extensive and various exercise of his pen is truly astonishing.
In his youth he composed some pieces in English verse,
which do him little credit, and would, had they not been his,
have been long since forgotten. They are intituled, "A
merry jest, how a searjeant would learn to play a frier." —
" A rueful lamentation on the death of Elizabeth, wife of

SIR THOMAS MORE. 51

Hfinry the Seventh." — " Certain metres for the Book of For-
tune."— Ballads called " Lewys, the lost Lover," and " Davy,
the dicer," — and nine sets of lines, explanatory of as many
devices painted on certain hangings in his father's house.
The first and last of these are supposed to have been his
earliest productions. His prose works, in English, are a
treatise on the text " Memorare Novissima, et in seternum
non peccabis." — A Dialogue, treating of the worship of Images
and Reliques, praying to Saints, and Pilgrimages, and
" touching the pestilent sects of Luther and Tyndale." — " The
Supplication of Souls," written against Simon Fishe's popular
tract named " The Supplication of Beggars." — " A Confuta-
tion of Tyndale," in nine books. — " An Apology," in answer
to a book intituled " A Treatise of the division between the
Spirituality and Temporality." — " The Debellation of Salem
and Bizance," written in reply to an answer to that Apology. —
" An Answer to the first part of the poisoned book which a
nameless Heretic " (John Frith) " hath named ' the Supper
of the Lord.' " — " A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribula-
tion."— "A Treatise to receive the blessed body of Christ,
sacramentally and virtually both." — The life of Picus, Earl
of Mirandola, translated from the Latin ; and several letters,
among which are many to his family, beautifully illustrative
of his character. All these were collected, and published in
1557, in one very bulky volume, by his sister's son, William
Rastall, the eminent lawyer, together with an English trans-
lation of the Utopia.

His Latin works are the lives of Edward the Fifth, and
Richard the Third, unfinished, which may be found trans-
lated and completed by Bishop Kennet, in the best general
collection extant of English history. The celebrated Utopia,
of which twelve editions have been published in its original
form, eleven in English, two in French, and one in Italian ;
and several smaller works, most of which were printed toge-
ther at Louvain, in 1566, namely, " Expositio passionis
Domini." — " Precationes ex Psalmis." — " Quod pro fide more

E2

52 SIR THOMAS MORE.

fugienda non est." — "Responsio ad convitia Martini Lutheri."
— " Imploratio divini auxilii contra tentationem, cum insul-
tatione contra Daemones, ex spe et fiducia in Deum." — " Epi-
grammata," — "Progymnasmata,"— "Epistolse," — and " Epis-
tola ad Academian\0xon." He also translated the Dialogues
of Lucian into Latin, and wrote annotations on the works of
that author.

Sir Thomas More, when about the age of twenty-four,
married Jane, daughter of John Colte, of Candish, in Suffolk,
and of Newhall in Essex ; by whom he had an only son,
John ; and three daughters, Margaret, wife of William Roper,
of Eltham, in Kent, uncle to the first Lord Teynham ; Eliza-
beth, of John, son and heir of Sir John Dauntsey ; and Cicely
of Giles Heron, of Shacklewell in Middlesex. Their brother,
who has been idly said to have possessed scarcely common
understanding, married an heiress of the family of Cresacre, of
Barnborough, in Yorkshire, and so acquired estates there,
which descended in the male line till the year 1795, when
they fell by marriage to a family of Metcalf, the heir-male of
which assumed, with an honest pride, the surname of his
great ancestor. Sir Ihornas married, secondly, Alice Mid-
dleton, a widow, the " old wife " mentioned by Erasmus, in
a passage lately cited, and we are told by others that she was
ugly, ill-tempered and vulgar : by her he had no issue.

IB(U1L!L!EN«

QUEEN ANNE BULLEN.

ABSTRACTED from the great events in the origin of which
this unhappy fair became accidentally a passive instrument,
there is little in her story but the facts of her sudden ele-
vation and tragical fall to distinguish it from a common tale
of private life, and the faint traces which remain of her con-
duct leave us little room to suppose that the character of her
mind was of a cast less ordinary. Mild, lively, and thought-
less, she seems to have been formed rather to attract than
to maintain affection ; to inspire gaiety and kindness rather
than confidence or respect. The barbarous injustice which
she experienced has excited the pity of succeeding ages, and
our unwillingness to abandon a tender and amiable sentiment
has probably prevented any very strict inquiry into her
errors. To add the unfounded imputation of another murder
to the long catalogue of Henry's crimes seems a more pardon-
able mistake than to brand, perhaps unjustly, the memory of
a most unfortunate woman, whose punishment, if she were
really guilty, had fully expiated her crime.

She was the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Bullen, after-
wards created Viscount Rochford, and Earl of Wiltshire and
Ormond, by Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Howard, second
Duke of Norfolk of his family. It may be said, if the
account of some French writers be correct, that she had
been bred in Courts even from her cradle ; for at the age of
seven years, say they, she was carried to Paris, by Mary,
sister to Henry the Eighth, when she became Queen of
France ; remained with her till, upon the demise of the King

54 QUEEN AXKE BULLEN'.

her husband, the Queen returned to England ; was then
received into the household of Claude, consort to Francis
the First ; and, after the death of that Princess, in 1624,
lived for some time in the family of Margaret of Valois,
Duchess of Alencon* and Berry, sister to Francis, and after-
wards better known as Queen to Henry the Fourth. Lord
Herbert, however, evidently considers her as having attended
Mary to France in the character of an efficient domestic, and
states, in which he could scarcely have been mistaken, that
she returned in 1522. These differences are of small im-
portance. It is certain that not long after her arrival in
England she was appointed a Maid of Honour to Catherine
of Arragon, and that the King became violently enamoured
of her.

A mutual affection at that time subsisted between her and
the Lord Percy, eldest son to the Earl of Northumberland,
and they had privately plighted their troth to each other.
Henry, who had observed their attachment, and dreaded the
result, employed Wolsey, to whose grandeur even the heir
of the house of Percy administered as a menial attendant,
to break their connection, and the Cardinal called the young
Lord into his presence ; chid him with extreme bitterness ;
and, having wrung from him the secret of the proposed
match, commanded him with more than the authority of a
master to abandon it. Cavendish, in his Life of Wolsev,
gives a curious and lengthened detail of their conversation.
Percy having resisted as far as he dared, burst into tears,
and promised obedience, which the Earl, his father, was
summoned from the north to enforce ; and Anne, to disguise
the King's motive for this interference, which was then
wholly unsuspected, even by herself, was banished from the
Court. She was, however, speedily recalled, and in Sep-
tember, 1532, created Marchioness of Pembroke ; Lord
Percy was compelled to marry a daughter of the Earl of
Shrewsbury, and Anne to become the reluctant partaker in a
i hrone : she was privately married to Henry, on the twenty-

QUEEN ANNE SULLEN. 55

fifth of the succeeding January, by Rowland Lee, Bishop of
Lichfield and Coventry, none being present at the ceremony
but her father, mother, and brother ; her uncle, the Duke of
Norfolk ; and Cranmer, who had lately been advanced to the
Primacy.

Amidst the extravagance of passion which led to this
match, political considerations were not entirely overlooked.
Some months before it was solemnised Henry imparted his
resolution, we can scarcely believe in the spirit of mere
friendly confidence, to Francis the First, whom he after-
wards consulted as to the most proper time and method of
publishing it to his subjects. Francis, in his hatred to the
family of the ill-fated Catherine, encouraged it with the
utmost earnestness, and in the October preceding the mar-
riage received Anne, who then accompanied Henry in one of
his magnificent visits to the French coast, with the dis-
tinctions due to a Queen. In the mean time Wolsey's utter
disgrace had been accomplished. He had incurred the utmost
resentment of which Anne was capable, not only by prevent-
ing her union to the man whom she loved, but by endeavour-
ing to destroy the preference bestowed on her by another,
whom she held at least in indifference. The Cardinal, on
the other hand, hated her for her affection to the Protestant
persuasion, which she is said to have imbibed from the
lessons of Margaret of Valois, a Princess of extraordinary
talents, and for the influence over the King which he natu-
rally expected her to exert in favour of the reformation.
Doubtless she contributed largely to his fall, and it is the
only instance that we find in her conduct of departure from
the most inactive feminine softness.

Such had been Henry's impatience, that his divorce from
Catherine was not fully completed when he married Anne.
The definitive sentence was uttered on the twenty-third of
May, 1533, when the new Queen was in the fifth month of
her pregnancy. She was crowned on the first of June, and
in the beginning of September (for there are disputes, which

56 QUEEN ANNE BULLEN.

is singular enough, as to the precise day) produced a daughter,
afterwards Queen Elizabeth ; immediately after which event
the Parliament passed an act, ratifying the divorce ; declaring
the legality of the King's second marriage ; and accordingly
settling the Crown, jn default of male issue from Anne, or
any future wife, on the newly-born Princess. It was ordained
by the same act that all persons above the age of twenty-one
should swear to accept and maintain its provisions ; and that
such as should refuse that oath were to be deemed guilty of
misprision of high treason : and whosoever should speak or
write against the marriage or succession so established, ad-
judged traitors. The first sacrifices to this terrific law were
those excellent persons, Sir Thomas More, and Bishop Fisher.
One year after the birth of Elizabeth, Anne was delivered
of a Prince, who must have died soon after his birth. It
may not be improper to observe somewhat particularly on
this event. Some writers have informed us that she had a
still-born son in January, 1535, and, in their eagerness to add
unnecessarily to the measure of Henry's brutality, ascribe to
that misfortune his vengeance against her, which, as will be
presently seen, burst forth very soon after that period. If
they intended to speak of the child whom I have mentioned,
they have misrepresented two facts, for it was born in Sep-
tember, 1534, and undoubtedly came into the world alive ; if
they alluded to another, it will appear that Henry had a son
by Anne Bullen, who has hitherto never been noticed. In
the Harleian collection is one of those letters which it was
formerly usual to address, in the name of the Queen consort,
to Peers, Lord Lieutenants, and Sheriffs of Counties, on the
birth of an heir to the Crown ; and as the subject, historically
considered, may not be deemed unworthy of the fullest
proof, I will insert the document at length.

" BY THE QUEENE.

" Right trustie and welbiloved, we grete you well ;
and whereas it hath pleased Almightie God, of his infinite

QUEEN ANNE BDLLEN. 57

marcie and grace to send unto us at this tyme good spede m
the delyverance and bringing furthe of a Prince, to the great
joye, rejoyce, and inward comfort of my Lorde, us, and all
his good and loving subjects of this his realme ; for the
inestymable benevolence soo shewed unto us we have noo
little cause to give high thanks, laude, and praising, unto our
said maker, like as we doo, mooste lowly, humblie, and
wth all the inward desire of oure harte. And, inasmuche as
we undoubtedly truste that this oure good spede is to yr great
pleasure, comforte, and consolac~on, we therefore by thies
oure l~res advertise you thereof, desiring and hartely praying
you to give wth us unto Almightie God high thankes, glorie,
laude, and praising, and to praye for the good helth, pros-
p~itie, and contynuell preserva~con of the said Prince accord-
ingly.

" Geven under our Signet, at my Lord's Manor of Grene-
wiche, the vii day of Septemb. in the xxvth yere of my said
Lord'is reigne.

" To our right trustie and

welbeloved the Lord Cobh'm."

Anne's short-lived grandeur subsisted but for three years.
Henry had seen Jane Seymour, and determined to possess
her. In concerting his measures for the removal of the sole
obstacle to his desires, if such a phrase may be applied to
steps so summary that they scarcely seem to have, been the
result of reflection, he disdained even to invent a reasonable
tale, or to mask his inhumanity with artifice. On the first of
May, 1 536, say our historians, he was present with the Queen
at a tournament at Greenwich, in which her brother, the
Viscount Rochford, led the challengers, and Henry Norreys,
Esquire, of the body to the King, and Usher of the Black
Rod, the defendants. In the midst of the entertainment the
King rose, and departed in sullen silence to Westminster,
where he gave instant orders for the apprehension of the
Queen, Rochford, and Norreys. To account for this extrava-

58 QUEEN ANNE BULLEN.

gance, it has been idly reported that Anne had suddenly
awakened his jealousy, by dropping her handkerchief into the
lists, which one of the combatants had taken up, and wiped
his face with it. So eager was Henry for the execution of
his command, that the Queen was arrested on the river by
some of the Privy Council, as she returned to London, and
her first examination actually took place in her barge. She
was suddenly charged with adultery ; and Norreys, together
with Mark Smeton, William Brereton, and Sir Francis Wes-
ton, all of the King's Privy Chamber, were denounced as her
paramours ; to whom was added, monstrous to tell, her own
brother, Rochford, on the accusation of a profligate wife who
detested him. She fell into violent hysterics ; at intervals
vehemently asserted her innocence ; earnestly begged to be
permitted to see the King, which was refused ; and appears
to have been conveyed to the Tower in a state of insen-
sibility. There she was questioned by Sir William Kingston,
the Constable, who was instructed to sift her in familiar con-
versation. She talked wildly and incoherently, for her fits
returned, as is evident from Lord Herbert's account, who
says that " as her language was broken and distracted, be-
twixt tears and laughter, for she used both, little can be
inferred thence." That nobleman has inserted in his history
a long letter of expostulation, said to have been addressed by
her to the King, and dated five days after her arrest, which
has been frequently reprinted by subsequent writers, but he
expresses a just doubt of its authenticity. It was, indeed,
certainly the work of a wiser head, and of a later period.

On the fifteenth of May she was arraigned and tried
by the House of Peers, on which occasion, to give a stronger
colour to the justice of her accusation, her uncle, the Duke
of Norfolk, was barbarously appointed to preside as Lord
High Steward, and her father, surely not willingly, sat among
her judges. Not a tittle of legal evidence was adduced on
her trial, except some loose and uncertain words which had
fallen from her during her imprisonment ; but the obedient

QUEEN ANNE BULLEN. 59

peers pronounced her guilty, and sentenced her to die. Spite,
however, of the abject character which marked that time,
some apprehension was formed that the people might resist
the execution of this enormous decree ; for on the nineteenth,
very early, Kingston wrote thus to Secretary Cromwell.

"Sin,

" If we have not an hour certain, as it may be known in
London, I think here will be but few, and I think a reason-
able number were best ; for I suppose she will declare herself
to be a good woman for all men but for the King at the hour
of her death ; for this morning she sent for me, and protested
her innocency : and now again ; and said to me, ' Mr. King-
ston, I heard say I shall not die afore noon ; and I am sorry
therefore, for I thought to be dead by that time, and past my
pain.' I told her it should be no pain it was so sotell. And
then she said she heard the executioner was very good ; ' and
I have a little neck,' (and put her hand about it) laughing
heartily. I have seen many men and women executed, and
they have been in great sorrow ; and, to my knowledge, this
lady hath much joy and pleasure in death."

Her expressions, as recited in this letter, for we have never
heard that Anne possessed greatness of mind, savour of a
frenzy, by which it may be hoped that she was accompanied
to her last moment. She was beheaded on Tower Hill, a few
hours after it was written, and Henry the next day married
Jane Seymour.

Little doubt has been at any time entertained of her inno-
cence. Camden, in his cursory remarks on Henry's several
marriages, prefixed to his history of the reign of Elizabeth,
says, that the King " falling into new loves, jealousies, rage,
and meditating blood and slaughter, that he might make way
for the new fancy he had for Jane Seymour, he called Queen
Anne to her trial, accusing her, upon a slight suspicion, of
adultery, after she had miscarried of a male child she went

60 QUEEN ANNE BULLEN.

withal. Queen Anne cleared herself so far that the multitude
that stood by judged her to be innocent and merely circum-
vented ; nevertheless, her Peers condemned her," &c. Lord
Herbert, with a more cautious expression, which, however,
little disguises his opinion, tells us that " she was thought
both moderate in her desires, and of discretion enough to be
trusted with her own perfections, as having lived, in the
French Court first, and afterwards in this, with the reputa-
tion of a virtuous lady ; insomuch that the whisperings of
her enemies could not divert the King's good opinion of her,
though yet he was in his own nature more jealous than to be
satisfied easily. ' I do reject all those, therefore,' says Herbert,
' that would speak against her honour in those times they staid
in France. But I shall as little accuse her in this particular of
her affairs at this time. It is enough that the law hath con-
demned her ; and that whether she, or any one else, were in
fault is not now to be discussed. This is certain : that the
King had cast his affection already on Jane Seymour, then
attending on the Queen. But whether this alone were
enough to procure that tragedy which followed may be
doubted in this Prince ; for I do not find him bloody but
where law, or at least pretext drawn from thence, did coun-
tenance his actions."

OB. 1537.

QUEEN JANE SEYMOUR.

THE history of a young woman suddenly elevated from a
private station to a throne, from which she was snatched by
a premature death, when she had graced it for little more
than a single year, cannot reasonably be expected to contain
many circumstances worthy of notice. Wife of one King,
and mother of another, we find little else remarkable in the
life of Jane Seymour, except that she became the accidental
and inactive instrument of raising her family, already of great
antiquity, to the highest degree of rank and power that could
be conferred on subjects.

She was the eldest of the four daughters of Sir John Sey-
mour, of Wolfe Hall, in Wiltshire, Knight, Groom of the
Chamber to Henry the Eighth, and Governor of the Castle
of Bristol, by Margaret, daughter of Sir Thomas Wentworth,
of Nettlestead, in Suffolk. Her connections and accomplish-
ments procured for her the office of a Maid of Honour to
Anne Bullen, and her beauty made her the innocent cause of
her mistress's ruin. Henry conceived a sudden passion for
her, and became disgusted with Anne. Equally a stranger
to sensibility and to morals, his attachment to her soon
became irresistible, and his aversion to the Queen increased
to a degree of dislike little short of hatred. He determined
to make Jane his wife : and the gratification of his desire
was easy to one who was above the ties of law, and to whom
those of conscience were unknown. The unhappy Anne was
accused of adultery, and put to death, and the unfeeling
widower, on the very day, or according to some, on the third

(52 QUEEN JANE SEYMOUR.

day, after her execution, profaned the altar by pledging his
vows to Jane Seymour. This union, according to all our
historians, took place in the last week of May, 1536 ; and on
the eighth of the following month the Parliament passed an
act to settle the Crown on its issue, either male or female, in
exclusion of the Priilcesses Mary and Elizabeth. The issue
of Jane, at least, was first named : but, such was the abject
submission of that body to Henry's pleasure, that the same
act in the conclusion gave him full power to name whom-
soever he might think fit for his successor.

About fifteen months after her marriage, Queen Jane was
delivered of a son, the admirable Edward the Sixth. The
variance and confusion of historical reports as to the date of
the bixth of that Prince are very strange. All agree that it
happened in 1537 ; but Hay ward fixes it to the seventeenth
of October ; Sanders to the tenth ; and most others, rightly,
as we shall see presently, to the twelfth of that month.
The following letter from the Harleian Collection, which was
doubtless circular, to Sheriffs of Counties, &c., would furnish,
if it were wanted, an additional authority for the last of these
dates, as it may be reasonably presumed to have been written
as soon as possible after the birth of the child.

"Bv THE QUENE.

" Trustie and welbeloved, we grete you well ; and, foras--
muche as by the inestimable goodness and grace of Almighty
God we be delivered and brought in childbed of a Prince,
conceived in most lawfull matrimonie between my Lord the
King's Majestie and us ; doubtinge not but, for the love and
affection which ye beare unto us, and to the commonwealth
of this realme, the knowledge thereof should be joyous and
glad tydeings unto you, we have thought good to certifie you
of the same, to th' intent you might not onely render unto
God condigne thanks and praise for soe great a benefit but
alsoe for the longe continuance and preservac~on of the same
here in this life, to the honour of God, joy and pleasure of

QUEEN JANE SEYMOUR. 63

ray Lord the Kinge, and us, and the universall weale, quiett,
and tranquillitie of this hole realm.

" Given under our Signet, att my Lord's Manner of
Hampton Court, the xiith day of October.
" To our trustie and welbeloved
George Soothe, Esquier."

The joy excited by this event was soon abated by the
death of the Queen. It has been said that it was found
necessary to bring the infant into the world by that terrible
method called the Caesarian operation ; and Sir John Hay-
ward, who in composing his life of Edward the Sixth un-
doubtedly sought the truth with all possible industry, posi-
tively states the fact. Other writers, but I know not on
what ground, have treated that report as an idle tale, invented
by the papists, in malice to Henry. It is true that Sanders,
one of the most bitter writers on that side, tells us that the
physicians were of opinion that either the mother or the
child must perish ; that they put the question to the king,
which should be spared, the Queen or his son ? and that he
answered, his son, because he could easily find other wives.
The latter part of this reply has certainly very much the
air of a malicious invention, for Henry, amidst all his crimes,
was an accomplished gentleman ; but whether the anecdote
be true or false, it does not clear up the point in question.
A very short report to the Privy Council of the birth of the
Prince, by her physicians, is extant, in which they state that
the Queen had been happily delivered, and it has been argued
therefrom that the birth could not have been attended by any
peculiarly melancholy circumstance ; but the word " happily"
may perhaps be more properly referred to the production of
a living child, a first-born son, and heir to the Crown, than
to the state of the mother. Whatsoever may tend to correct-
ness as to such a fact cannot, historically speaking, be deemed
insignificant ; I trust therefore to be excused for having been
somewhat minute on a disagreeable subject.

64 QUEEN JANE SEYMOUR.

The date of the Queen's death, as well as that of the birth
of the Prince, has been variously stated. Most of our his-
torians fix it to the fourteenth of October, following probably
Lord Herbert, who says that she was delivered on the
twelfth, and departed two days after ; but the official record
in the College of Arras of the ceremonies of her funeral
informs us clearly on both points ; for the title or preamble
of it is in these words : " An ordre taken and made for the
enterrement of the most high, most excellent, and most
Chrysten Pryncess, Jane, Quene of England and of Fraunce,
Lady of Ireland, and mother to the most noble and puyssant
prince Edward ; which deceasyd at Hampton Courte, the
xxix.th yere of the reigne of our most dread Soveraigne Lord
Kyng Henry the eight, her most dearest husband, the xxiiii.th
day of Octobre, beyng Wedynsday, at nyght, xii of the clock ;
which departyng was the twelf day after the byrthe of the
said Prynce, her Grace beying in childbed. Whose departyng
was as hevy as hath ben hard of many a yere heretofore, for
she was a very gracious Lady, havyng the love of all people."
This document, which is of great length, informs us that she
was buried at Windsor with the utmost pomp. Among
much curious information, it discloses two very remarkable
facts — that all the various devout services which were per-
formed daily for near a month before the funeral, as well as
on the day itself, were strictly after the order of the Romish
ritual ; and that the lately degraded and disinherited Princess
Mary officiated as chief mourner.

SIR NICHOLAS CAREW.

NICHOLAS, a cadet of one of the junior lines of the ancient
baronial House of Carru, or Carew, of Devonshire, was
settled at Beddington, in Surrey, on considerable property
acquired by marriage early in the fourteenth century, and
from him the gentleman whose portrait is here presented was
fifth in descent. He was the only son of Sir Richard Carew,
a Knight Banneret, and Lieutenant of Calais, by Magdalen,
daughter of Sir Robert Oxenbridge, of Ford, in Sussex, and,
at the death of his father, on the twenty- third of May, 1520,
inherited from him estates in Surrey, which had gradually
increased to so vast an extent that it is still traditionally
reported in the neighbourhood of his family mansion that he
might have ridden ten miles from it in any direction without
quitting his own land. Thus personally powerful, descended
from a family already well known to the Crown, which most
of his nearest ancestors had served either in the Court or
State, and in the prime of manhood and high spirit, he fell
as it were naturally into that glittering train which the
chivalrous character of the early years of Henry's reign
attracted to the person of the Monarch, and presently acquired
considerable favour.

He was appointed, about the year 1518, a Gentleman of
the Privy Chamber, an office of which the name only now
remains in the royal household, but which was then invested
with equal trust and dignity : and was soon after employed
by Henry in transacting some affairs, probably relating to
military matters, at Paris. There, during a residence of

66 SIR NICHOLAS CAKEW.

several months, the elegant manners and fashions of that
court are said to have inspired him with a disgust to the
comparative rudeness of his own, which on his return he
declared on several occasions with a plainness so offensive to
the high nobility, and to the King himself, that Henry re-
solved to remove him from his person, and commanded him
to repair to Ruysbanc, in Picardy, a fortress belonging to the
English, of which, to save the appearance of disgrace, he was
appointed governor. This umbrage however was transient
for in 1521 he had so completely regained the good graces of
his Master as to obtain the high distinction of the Garter ;
and in 1524 was raised to the post of Master of the Horse,
and nominated Lieutenant of Calais. A living writer of
much respectability has, by a strange anachronism, ascribed
these promotions to the influence of Anna Bullen, who was
related to him, through a common ancestor, the Lord Hoo
and Hastings ; but Anne was then a child, and probably
wholly unknown to the King, to whom she was not married
till 1532.

He now approached to the station of a favourite ; was
Henry's constant companion in all the splendid and romantic
sports of his court ; administered successfully to his plea-
sures, and was not without some secret share in his counsels.
Fifteen years had thus passed in unremitting favour, when
in December, 1538, he was suddenly arrested ; charged as a
party with Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, and other
eminent persons, in a design to depose the King, and to place
Cardinal Pole on the Throne ; and was beheaded on the third
of March, in the following year.

History affords us very little information on the subject of
this mysterious plot, and yet less of the part which Carew
was alleged to have taken in it, and, in the absence of regular
and correct intelligence, invention and conjecture will ever
be at work to supply the deficiency. Thus Fuller says, to
use his own quaint terms, that " tradition in the family
reporteth how King Henry, then at bowls, gave this Knight

SIB NICHOLAS CAREW. 67

opprobrious language, betwixt jest and earnest, to which the
other returned an answer rather true than discreet, as more
consulting therein his own animosity than allegiance. The
King, who in this sort would give and not take, being no
good fellow in tart repartees, was so highly offended thereat,
that Sir Nicholas fell from the top of his favour to the
bottom of his displeasure, and was bruised to death thereby.
This was the true cause of his execution, though in our
chronicles all is scored on his complying in a plot with
Henry, Marquis of Exeter, and Henry Lord Montague."
Lord Herbert, who seems to have told all that could be
gathered on the subject, informs us that these two noble-
men were found guilty before Thomas Lord Audley, " for
the present sitting as High Steward of England," and that,
" not long after, Sir Edward Nevile, Sir Geoffrey Pole, two
priests, and a mariner, were arraigned, and found guilty also,
and judgment given accordingly. The two lords and Nevile
were beheaded ; the two priests and mariner hanged and
quartered at Tyburn, and Sir Geoffrey pardoned." Having
thus particularised, even to the meanest, a number of the
conspirators who were convicted under some form, at least,
of judicial proceeding, the noble writer immediately adds,
" Sir Nicholas Carew also, Knight of the Garter, and Master
of the Horse to the King, for being of council with the said
Marquis, was beheaded." It should seem then that Carew
was brought to no trial. Lord Herbert concludes, " The
particular offences yet of these great persons are not so fully
known to me that I can say much : only I find among our
records that Thomas Wriothesley, Secretary, then at Brussels,
writing of their apprehension to Sir Thomas Wyat, then his
Highness's Ambassador in Spain, said that the accusations
were great, and duly proved ; and in another place I read
that they sent the Cardinal money/' Hollingshed tells us
that Sir Nicholas, at the time of his death, " made a godly
confession both of his fault and superstitious faith." He
had been throughout his life a steady professor of the faith

F2

68 SIR NICHOLAS CAREW.

of the Romish Church, and this, whatever were the offences
for which he suffered, doubtless added no small weight to
them.

Sir Nicholas Carew was buried in the church of St.
Botolph, Aldgate, in the family vault of the Lords Darcy of
the North, to whose house, as we shall see presently, he was
allied. Ke married Elizabeth, daughter, and at length heir,
of Sir Thomas Bryan, son and heir of Sir Thomas Bryan,
Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and had by her one son,
Sir Francis, and four daughters ; Elizabeth, wife to a gentle-
man of the name of Hall ; Mary, married to Sir Arthur
Darcy, second son of Thomas Lord Darcy of the North ;
Anne, first to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, of Paulersperry,
in the county of Northampton, secondly to Adrian Stokes ;
and Isabella, to Nicholas Saunders, son and heir of Sir
William Saunders, of Ewell in Surrey, cofferer to Queen
Mary. Sir Francis recovered, probably through the favour
of Elizabeth, to whom he was personally known, and who
graced his fine mansion at Beddington with the fearful honour
of more than one visit, a great part of the estates which had
been forfeited by the attainder of his father. He died a
bachelor, and bequeathed them to his nephew Sir Nicholas
Throckmorton, youngest son of his sister Anne, directing him
to assume, as he did, the surname and arms of Carew. The
descendants of the elder line from that gentleman became
extinct in a female, Catherine Carew, who died in 1769,
when the estates passed, under a settlement made by the
will of her father, Sir Nicholas Racket Carew, Baronet, first,
to the heir male of the Fountaynes, of Melton in Yorkshire,
secondly, to that of the family of Gee, of Orpington, in Kent,
each descended by female lines from the subject of this
memoir. Both these remainders have now failed, and the
estates are possessed by the relict of the late Richard Gee,
Esq., whose elder brother assumed the surname of Carew,
under the authority of an act of Parliament.

EARL OF ESSEX.
OB, 1540.

THOMAS CROMWELL,

EARL OF ESSEX.

HENRY the Eighth, in the great work of the Reformation,
employed men of various characters and powers, and saga-
ciously assigned to each that share of the task for which he
was best qualified. It was allotted therefore to Cromwell to
spring the mine which others had secretly dug, and he
accomplished it with a brutal vigour and celerity, which
seemed to be the effect of zeal, while his heart and mind
were wholly unconcerned. Cromwell was more remarkable
for courage than prudence ; for activity and perseverance
than for reflection : nature, habit, and self-interest had com-
bined to render him implicitly obedient ; and gratitude, per-
haps, for his extraordinary elevation had inspired him with
an inflexible fidelity to his master. A soldier of fortune, a
citizen of the world ; unbiassed by parental example, or
domestic affections ; by prejudice of education, or. solitary
enthusiasm : indifferent about modes of religious faith, and
ignorant of political systems ; he fell into the hands of Henry
at the very moment when such a man was peculiarly neces-
sary to the accomplishment of his views ; performed the
service required of him ; and, but for the singularity and
importance of that service, would perhaps long since have
been nearly forgotten.

He was the son of Walter Cromwell, a blacksmith, and
afterwards a brewer, of Putney, in Surrey, and it has been
commonly reported that his mother was a Welshwoman of

70 THOMAS CROMWELL,

the name ot Williams ; but Dugdale, in his Baronage, denies
this, and very reasonably traces the error to its probable
origin. That author conceives that a sister of Cromwell
married a Williams ; for, as he truly tells us, Cromwell had
a nephew of that name, whom he brought into considerable
favour and confidence with the King, and who afterwards
assumed the designation of Williams alias Cromwell. This
nephew, by the way, at length wholly disused the former
surname ; founded a respectable family in Huntingdonshire ;
and became grandfather to the usurper Oliver, a fact which
has been denied by some respectable writers, but of which
there is scarcely room to doubt, Thomas, born of such
parents, received, as might be reasonably expected, a very
narrow education ; but he had learned Latin ; the New
Testament in which language, " gotten by heart," to use the
words of Lloyd, " was his masterpiece of scholarship ;" and
this renders it very probable that it was at first intended to
foster him on the monastic bounty of that church, in the
destruction of which he afterwards had so large a share. Be
this as it might, there can be little doubt that from that, or
some other destination, he ran away, to use a familiar phrase,
from his family, for we find him suddenly in a foreign
country, without friends, money, or views. At length he
obtained employment and subsistence as a clerk in an En-
glish factory at Antwerp, which he soon quitted, and wan-
dered from thence to Rome, with two Englishmen, who in
1510 were deputed from a religious society at Boston, in
Lincolnshire, to solicit the renewal of certain indulgences, or
pardons, as they were called, from Pope Julius the Second.
He is said to have been highly instrumental to the good
fortune of this mission, and Fox, in a long narration, which
must rest on the credit of that singular writer, ascribes his
success to a ridiculous circumstance. The Pope, according
to Fox, took the money which the good Lincolnshire men
had brought with them, but the fate of their petition re-
mained long in suspense ', till Cromwell having learned that

£ARL OF ESSEX. 71

his Holiness was a great epicure, " furnished him with fine
dishes of jelly, after the English fashion, then unknown in
Italy," upon which the boon was presently granted. He
remained long abroad, variously employed, and served as a
soldier, or officer of ordinary rank, under the Duke of Bour-
bon, and is said to have been present at the sacking of Rome
by that prince ; but here seems to be an anachronism ; for
that event occurred in 1527, and it is certain that he had
returned to England, and had been retained by Wolsey two
years before that date.

During his residence in Italy he had an opportunity of ren-
dering an important service to Sir John Russell, afterwards
Earl of Bedford, who at that time resided at Bologna, charged
by Henry with some secret mission adverse to the French
interest. A plan had been laid to seize the person of that
gentleman, and to send him a prisoner to Paris. Cromwell
discovered it ; and not only apprised him of it, but assisted
him in making a precipitate escape. It is highly probable
that Russell recommended him to the Cardinal, into whose
family he was received immediately after that period, in the
character, say all who have written concerning him, of that
prelate's solicitor ; meaning, I presume, as a steward, or
agent for such of his affairs as did not relate to the state. In
that capacity he was largely employed in 1525, in superin-
tending the erection and endowment of Wolsey's two col-
leges at Ipswich and Oxford, and in suppressing the small
monasteries, by the revenues of which it was intended to
maintain them. He became soon after a member of the
House of Commons, and when the articles exhibited against
the Cardinal in 1529 were sent down to that House from the
Peers, defended him against the charge of treason with equal
boldness and acuteness. " From this honest beginning,"
says Lord Herbert, " Cromwell obtained his first reputation."
He soon, however, assumed a different tone. Henry, at the
recommendation, as it is said, of Sir John Russell, and Sir
ftiristopher Jf^es, afterwards Master of the Rolls, took him

LIBRARY:

72 THOMAS CROMWELL,

nearly at that point of time into his service ; and we find
his lately disgraced patron presently after " importuning
him," to use the words of the same noble author, " to induce
the King," so great already was his influence, to spare the
two colleges, " since," said Wolsey, " they are in a manner
opera manuum tuarum." Cromwell answered that " the King
was determined to suppress them, though perhaps he might
refound them in his own name ; and coldly wished Wolsey
to be content."

It has been said that he gained Henry's grace by disclosing
to him the oath taken by the Romish clergy, " to help, retain,
and defend, against all men, the rights of the Holy See," &c.,
and representing to him that it was in fact a virtual dispen-
sation from their oath of allegiance to him. Doubtless Henry
already well knew that it was their practice to subscribe to
such an obligation, and had considered its effect. But then,
adds Fox, who tells us so, " he declared also to the King
how his Majesty might accumulate great riches ; nay, as
much as all the clergy in his realm were worth, if he pleased
to take the occasion now offered ; " and we may reasonably
suppose that the King, in whose bosom the plan of dissolving
the religious houses then secretly rested, must have been highly
gratified by such advice from a man to whom he had probably
already determined to entrust much of the execution of his
scheme, when ripe for disclosure. Cromwell's first employ-
ment afforded a most favourable proof of the subserviency
and the firmness which Henry had hoped to find in him.
He was ordered to endeavour to threaten the clergy, then
sitting in convocation, into an acknowledgment of the King's
supremacy, and to obtain from them a large sum, as a com-
mutation for their punishment for having supported Wolsey's
legatine power, and for having taken the oath lately men-
tioned. He succeeded in both, and extorted one hundred
thousand pounds from the province of Canterbury, and nearly
twenty thousand from that of York. This occurred in 1531.
His favour now became visible to all. He was knighted in

EARL OF ESSEX. 73

that year ; sworn of the Privy Council, and appointed Master
of the King's Jewel House ; and in the next, Clerk of the
Hanaper, a profitable office in the Chancery, and Chancellor
of the Exchequer. In 1534 he became Master of the Rolls,
and a principal Secretary of State, and was about the same
time elected Chancellor of the University of Cambridge ; and
in 1535 at length appeared publicly in the great part which
he was to perform in the Reformation, with the newly
invented title of Visitor-general of all the Monasteries
throughout England.

Spiritual pride is almost unknown to the Church of En-
gland. It may therefore be said, without offence, that the
main object of Cromwell's visitation was the discovery of
matters which might render the monastic institutions odious
or contemptible, and so to furnish pretexts for their dissolu-
tion ; and that it was marked by the most frightful instances
of cruelty, baseness, and treachery. For these charges we
have the authority of very respectable protestant writers.
The principals of some religious houses were induced to
surrender by threats ; those of others by pensions ; and,
when both those methods failed, the most profligate monks
were sought for, and bribed to accuse their governors, and
their brethren, of horrible crimes. Agents were employed
to violate nuns, and then to accuse them, and, by inference,
their respective societies, of incontinence. All who were
engaged in this wretched mission took money of the terrified
sufferers, as the price of a forbearance which it was not in
their power to grant ; and Cromwell himself accepted of
great sums from several monasteries, to save them from that
ruin which he alone knew to be inevitably decreed. He
executed his commission, however, entirely to Henry's satis-
faction, and received the most splendid rewards. On the
second of July, 1536, he was appointed Keeper of the Privy
Seal ; on the ninth of the same month the dignity of a Baron
was conferred on him, by the title of Lord Cromwell of
Okeham, in the county of Rutland ; and on the eighteenth,

74 THOMAS CROMWELL,

the Pope's supremacy being now fully abolished, and the
King declared Head of the Church, he was constituted Vicar-
general and Viceregent over all the Spiritualty, and took his
place in the convocation, sitting there above all the prelates,
as the immediate representative of the King. This appoint-
ment was the signal for the total overthrow of the Roman
Catholic establishment. Cromwell's first act under its autho-
rity was the publication of certain articles for the government
of the church, by which some of the most important points of
the old faith were specifically rejected. Of the seven sacra-
ments, three only were retained ; those of baptism, penance,
and the altar. Preachers were enjoined to teach the people
to confine their belief wholly to the Bible, and the three
Creeds, and to restrain them from the worship of images, or
saints so represented ; and the doctrine of purgatory was
denied, or, at least, declared to be uncertain and unnecessary.
These articles were immediately followed by the prohibition
of worship in the Latin tongue, and by the translation of the
Holy Scriptures into English ; inestimable benefits, for which
our gratitude is justly due to Cromwell, as well as for the
great temporal advantage of parish registers, which were at
the same time ordained to be kept, solely, as it is believed,
on his suggestion.

He was now loaded with new rewards. In 1537, Henry
appointed him Justice of the Forests north of Trent, and, on
the twenty-sixth of August in that year, gave him the Order
of the Garter. In 1539 the castle and lordship of Okeham
were granted to him, and the office of Constable of Caris-
brook Castle ; and, on the seventeenth of April, 1539, he
was advanced to the dignity of Earl of Essex, and to the
office of Lord High Chamberlain ; having on the tenth of the
same month been invested with the lands of the dissolved
monasteries of St. Osyth's Barking, Bileigh, St. John in
Colchester, and ether estates in the county of Essex, consisting
of thirty manors ; and with extensive possessions in those of
Norfolk and Suffolk, among which was the large demesne of

EARL OF ESSEX. 75

the Grey Friars at Yarmouth ; together with a multitude of
manors, lands, and advowsons, in other parts of England, all
from the spoil of the discarded church.

Cromwell, however, thus in the zenith of his greatness,
tottered on the brink of ruin. Already hated by the nobility,
who viewed him as a base intruder on their order ; by the
priesthood, whom he had ruined ; and by the poor, whom he
had deprived of the comforts of monastic hospitality and
bounty ; he became now an object also of the keenest envy
and jealousy. The great house of Vere had been so long
graced by the superb office of Lord Chamberlain, which had
been successively granted to the Earls of Oxford of that name
in succession, even for centuries, that they felt deprived as it
were of an inheritance when it was bestowed on him ; and
the meanness of his origin aggravated their sense of the
injury. The family of Bourchier, many branches of which
remained, were equally mortified to see the Earldom of
Essex diverted from their very ancient blood to that of the
son of a smith. The Howards, always powerful, and just
then most powerful ; and bishop Gardiner, who as an enemy
was in himself a host, and whose favour with Henry was
increasing, detested him. To ward off this danger, he endea-
voured to conciliate the people ; and to that end procured a com-
mission to be erected for the sale, at twenty years' purchase,
of such abbey lands as yet remained with the crown : mean-
while, to divert the attention of Henry from the representa-
tions of his enemies, he engaged that Prince in a treaty of
marriage with Anne of Cleves, whose Lutheran zeal he hoped
successfully to oppose to his Catholic adversaries, and whose
gratitude for conducting her to so splendid a throne he
expected to secure to himself. The King married her with
indifference, and quitted her the next day, with disappoint-
ment, and even loathing ; but the great weight of his resent-
ment fell on Cromwell, by whom he had been persuaded to
wed her.

Henry, from that hour, beheld him with aversion, and

76 THOMAS CROMWELL,

agreed, with his usual readiness on such occasions, to sacri-
fice a man who had no further extraordinary services to
render to him. Cromwell was suddenly arrested at the
Council Board, by the Duke of Norfolk, on the tenth of
January, 1540, and conducted to the Tower ; and, on the
nineteenth of that month, a bill of attainder against him
passed the House of Lords, but was received so coolly by the
Commons that they let it remain with them, with little dis-
cussion, for ten days, and at length testified their disappro-
bation of it by returning it to the Upper House, to which at
the same time they sent another, prepared by themselves,
which the Peers eagerly adopted. Amidst the articles of this
new bill not one can be found to amount, even by the most
forced construction, to treason ; still it was a bill of attainder,
and Cromwell, who so well knew his master, prepared for
the worst. He addressed himself, however, at great length
from his prison to Henry, imploring that his life might be
spared ; and Cranmer seconded his endeavours with remark-
able boldness and freedom of terms, by a remonstrance, which
Lord Herbert has preserved. Cromwell's letter betrays a
miserable abjectness of spirit, and a remarkable poverty of
thought and expression ; Cranmer's abounds with that kind-
ness and magnanimity which equally adorned his character.
" Wher I have bene accusy'd," writes Cromwell, " to your
Magestye of treason, to that I say I never in alle my lyfe
thought wyllyngly to do that thyng that myght or shold dis-
please your Magestye ; and much less to do or say that thyng
which of itself is of so high and abhominable offence, as God
knowyth, who I doubt not shall reveale the trewthe to your
Highnes. Myne accusers your Grace knowyth : God forgive
them. For, as I have ever had love to your honor, person,
lyfe, prosperitye, helthe, welthe, joy, and comfort ; and also
your most dere and most entyerly belovyd sone, the Prynce
his Grace, and your procedyngs ; God so helpe me in this
myne adversitie, and confound yf ever I thought the contrary.
What labors, paynes, and travailes, I have taken, accordyng

EARL OF ESSEX. 77

to my most bounden deutye, God also knowyth : for, yf it
were in my power, as it is in God's, to make your Magestye
live ever young and prosperous, God knoweth I woolde.
If it hadde bene or were in my power to make your Magestye
so puyssant as all the world sholde be compellyd to obey yow,
Christ he knowth I wolde, for so am I of all other most
bounde ; for your Magestye hath bene the most bountifull
Prynce to me that ever was Kyng to his subject — ye, and more
like a dere father (your Magestye not offended) than a mas-
ter. Such hath bene your most grave and godly counsayle
towards me at sundry tymes. In that I have offended I ax
yow mercy. Should I now, for such exceeding goodness,
benygnyte, liberalise, and bounty, be your traytor, nay then
the greatest paynes were too little for me. Should any fac-
cyon, or any affeccyon to any point make me a traytor to
your Magestye, then all the devylls in hell confound me, and
the vengeance of God light upon me, yf I sholde once have
thought yt, most gracious Soverayn Lord," &c.

While Cromwell thus essayed to move the compassion of
Henry by clumsily flattering his ruling appetites, Cranmer,
with a noble simplicity, and with an anxiety to serve his
friend which almost demands pardon for an impious ex-
pression into which it betrayed him, writes thus : — " Who
cannot but be sorrowfull and amazed that he sholde be a
traytor against your Majesty ? He that was so advancyed
by your Majesty ; he who lovyd your Majesty, as I ever
thought, no less than God ; he who studyed always to sett
forward whatsoever was your Majestie's will and pleasure ;
he that caryd for no man's displeasuer to serve your Majesty ;
he that was suche a servant, in my judgement, in wisedome,
diligence, faythefulness, and experyence, as no Prynce in this
realme ever had ; he that was so vigylant to preserve your
Majesty from all treasons, that fewe colde be so secretly con-
ceyved but he detected the same in the begynnyng ? If the
noble Prynces, of happy memorye, Kynge John, Henry III,
and Richard II, had had such a counsaylor about them, I

78 THOMAS CROMWELL.

suppose they sholde never have byn so trayterously aban-
doned and overthrowen as those good Prynces were," &c.
Henry, however, remained unmoved by these, or any other
remonstrances ; and Cromwell was beheaded on Tower Hill
on the twenty-eighth of July, 1540.

It has been asserted that this remarkable man also married
a person of the name of Williams, but this is very uncertain.
Whomsoever might have been his wife, he left by her an only
son, Gregory, who was created Baron Cromwell of Okeham
on the same day that his father was advanced to the Earldom
of Essex ; who married Elizabeth, a sister of Queen Jane
Seymour ; and in whose posterity the title of Lord Cromwell
remained for several generations.

E>'Q>[FS.

SISTER TO KnSTG- HEN: 8*.H
OB. 1541.

MARGARET TUDOR,

QUEEN OF SCOTLAND.

IN all respects but one the character of this lady seems to
have borne to that of her brother, Henry the Eighth of
England, a remarkable similarity. Haughty, magnificent,
and luxurious ; officiously active in affairs of state, and
governing without a system ; capricious in her politics, but
obstinately impenetrable by persuasion ; highly amorous, but
totally insensible to the delicacies of the tender passion, and
not less versatile in her amours than careless of the public
opinion of her inconstancy ; like him, she lived neither be-
loved nor respected, and died wholly unregretted. She was
not however cruel. During twenty-eight years of power,
sometimes nearly unlimited, sometimes abridged, but always
in no small degree existing, not a drop of blood appears to
have been shed by her order,^or even with her connivance
Like her brother, she possessed an understanding at once
solid and lively, with much of that mental refinement, name-
less in her time, which has been since distinguished by the
appellation of taste. There was a striking likeness too in
their countenances. Those to whom the portraits of the
youthful Henry are familiar cannot but perceive the re-
semblance.

It is scarcely necessary to say that she was the eldest
daughter of Henry the Seventh, by Elizabeth, daughter of
Edward the Fourth. There is some variance in the accounts
of the date of her birth, but the best authorities fix it to the

80 MARGARET TUDOR,

twenty-ninth of November, 1489. Her father, while she
was yet in the cradle, meditated to offer her hand to James
the Fourth of Scotland, and, with the view of detaching that
chivalrous prince from a treaty into which he had been
tempted by the Duchess of Burgundy, sister of Edward the
Fourth, in favour of the pretensions of Perkin Warbeck, pro-
posed the marriage in form when she had scarcely reached
her sixth year. James refused ; invaded the English border,
accompanied by Perkin ; and Henry, with the patient and
persevering policy which usually marked his measures,
contented himself with a steady defence, and, soon after
the Scottish King had returned into his own dominions,
reiterated the offer. A negotiation of more than three years
succeeded, during which the monarchs pledged themselves to
an amity for their joint lives, and on the eighth of August,
1503, the marriage was at length celebrated at Edinburgh.
Such was then the value of money, that the portion of the
royal bride was no more than ten thousand pounds ; her
jointure, in case of widowhood, two thousand annually ; and
the yearly allowance for her establishment as Queen Consort,
only one. The nuptials however were distinguished by the
most gorgeous splendour and festivity, of which, as well as
of the Princess's journey from London to Edinburgh, a parti-
cular and very curious account, in the way of diary, by John
Young, Somerset Herald, who attended her, is published in
Leland's Collectanea, from the original manuscript remaining
in the College of Arms.

For ten years after her marriage, the name of Margaret
scarcely occurs in history. Between her husband and herself
a mutual tenderness seems to have subsisted, which withdrew
him from the vague and transient amours in which he had
been used to indulge, while it rendered her indifferent to the
course of public affairs, and the intrigues of factions. The
death of her father, in 1509, was the prelude to important
changes in the political relations of the two countries. Henry
the Eighth however renewed the compact which had been

QUEEN OF SCOTLAND. 81

dissolved by the demise of his predecessor, and more than
two years passed in profound peace, when a variety of minute
causes, some of them merely of a private and domestic nature,
produced fresh discords. Ineffectual negotiations succeeded,
in which the moderation of Henry, who was not yet a tyrant,
and the impetuosity of James, were equally conspicuous.
A new war at length took place, which terminated in the
decisive battle of Flodden, and, on the ninth of September,
1513, rendered Margaret a widow. Her consort, an amiable
and popular Prince, who, had his prudence kept pace with
his good intentions, would have established a splendid fame,
fell in the forty-first year of his age, leaving, of several, only
one legitimate child, James, his successor, at that time little
more than twelve months old.

The King by his will appointed Margaret, now in the
twenty-fourth year of her age, to the Regency, and his
nomination was confirmed by a parliamentary council, com-
posed of such of the nobility as had escaped the late terrible
encounter, together with the heads of the clergy. This
decision, though apparently unanimous, invested her, how-
ever, but with a precarious authority. The influence of
France, which had been for more than a century gradually
increasing in Scotland, was warmly exerted in favour of
John Stuart, Duke of Albany, first cousin to the deceased
King, and presumptive heir to the throne, whose whole life
had been passed in France, whither his father had been
exiled by James the Third, his elder brother. A party pre-
sently embodied itself to support his interest, and Henry,
unaccountably deviating from the character of his nature, as
well as from that of his usual policy regarding Scotland, left
his sister's authority unaided either by war or negotiation.
This forbearance, if we could suspect Henry of the amiable
fault of over-pliancy, might be fairly ascribed to her per-
suasion. She informed him of the measures which were in
agitation for placing Albany at the head of the government ;
declared her indifference to the success of them ; and even

VOL. i. c

82 MARGARET TUDOR,

requested his mediation to promote a good understanding
between herself and Albany, and those by whom his preten-
sions had been forwarded. Her motive, however, presently
discovered itself.

Margaret, immediately after her husband's death, or per-
haps even before it, had abandoned herself to an indiscreet
affection. James left her pregnant of a son, who received
the name of Alexander ; was created Duke of Ross ; and
died in the second year of his age ; and she had scarcely
recovered from the natural abatement of health which fol-
lowed the birth of this child, when to the surprise and regret
of the whole kingdom, she suddenly married Archibald
Douglas, Earl of Angus, an almost beardless youth, as much
distinguished among his compeers by his ignorance and inex-
perience as by the graces of his person and manners. By
the law of Scotland, as well as the terms of the late King's
will, the fact of this imprudent union abrogated her Regency,
but the penalty was not enforced. Angus derived considerable
power from his great domains ; and others among the prime
nobility, enemies to Albany, and to the French interest, still
lent their support to her tottering rule. That prince, vir-
tually Regent, unaccountably delayed his voyage for nearly a
year ; the country became distracted by factions ; and it was
perhaps at this period that Henry first meditated to subjugate
it by artifice. While Margaret, irritated by daily insults,
pressed him to march an army into Scotland to her relief, he
exhorted her to fly with her sons to England, but she rejected
from fear, mixed perhaps with better motives, an expedient
which doubtless would have deluged Scotland with blood.
Albany at length arrived in the spring of 1515, and was received
byher with a complacency which, considering the difficulties
of her situation, was probably in some degree unaffected, but
he denied to her even the mere politeness due to her rank
and her sex. He removed from her, by the harshest exertions
of his new authority, her most favoured servants, and pre-
vailed on the parliament to depute certain peers to demand

QUEEN OF SCOTLAND. 83

of her the custody of her children. She received them at
the principal gate of Edinburgh Castle, her jointure man-
sion, holding the young King by the hand, while his brother,
a helpless infant, appeared near her in his nurse's arms.
As they approached she cried, " Stand — declare the cause of
your coming." They disclosed their commission ; when she
instantly commanded to let fall the portcullis, and ad-
dressed them from within. " This palace is part of my
enfeoffment, and of it by my late husband the King was I
made the sole governess, nor to any mortal shall I yield the
important command ; but I respect the Parliament and
nation, and request six days to consider their mandate ; for
of infinite consequence is my charge, and my counsellors
now, alas ! are few." While Margaret was giving this proof
of a noble and daring spirit, the dastardly Angus gratuitously
testified, in due form of law, that he had besought the Queen
to surrender her infants, in compliance with the requisition
of the Regent and the Parliament.

Margaret now retired with her sons to the castle of Stir-
ling, a fortress of some strength, and on the fifth day de-
manded of the Regent that they should be left in her custody,
offering to maintain them on her dowry. This suit was
rejected, and Albany, with a force of seven thousand men,
proceeded to besiege the castle. The infant King and his
brother were forced from her arms, and placed in the hands
of some noblemen devoted to the Regent, while the Queen
was re-conducted respectfully, but not without some appear-
ance of captivity, to Edinburgh. Angus, whom the Regent
held in the utmost detestation, fled into his own country,
and, joining the Lord Home, appeared in arms against Albany,
who, on his part, endeavoured to amuse Margaret with
insincere negotiation, and, on her disdainful rejection of his
overtures, compelled her to write to the Pope and the King
of France, declaring her approbation of the measures of
his government. A victim thus at once to fraud, to violence,
and to her own folly ; stripped of her revenues, and suffer-

84 MARGARET TUDOR,

ing even almost the utmost evils of poverty, she managed to
concert with Lord Dacre, Warden of the English Marches,
the means of escaping into her own country. Henry agreed
to receive her, and however indignant at her marriage, per-
mitted Angus to accompany her. Amidst difficulties and
danger, and in hourly expectation of childbirth, she arrived
in England on the tenth of October, 1515, and was in fact
delivered eight days after, at Harbottle, in Northumberland,
of a daughter, Margaret, who became at length the wife of
Matthew Stuart, Earl of Lennox, and progenetrix of a long
line of royalty, which yet happily remains.

The Queen, suffering under the usual consequences of this
event, and oppressed by acute anxieties, had proceeded no
further than Morpeth, on her way to London, when she was
seized by a severe illness, which confined here there for many
weeks. During that interval the weak and fickle Angus not
only privately made his peace with the Regent, but left her,
and returned into Scotland, an offence for which she ever
after entertained an unalterable and pardonable resentment.
She arrived not till the beginning of April, 1516, at her
brother's court, where she remained for fourteen months,
at the termination of which, Albany, hoping to lessen by a
temporary retirement the odium which his despicable and
tyrannical government had justly provoked, departed for
France, and Margaret, invited by himself and the Parliament,
and having on her part engaged to leave his now almost
nominal authority undisturbed, arrived in Scotland one week
after he had quitted it ; was replaced in the possession of
her estates and personal property ; and found herself at the
head of a considerable party. Albany had fixed five months
as the term of his absence, and when they were nearly
expired, weary of his regency, and fond of a country in
which his character and habits had been formed, he wrote to
the Queen, desiring her to assume the government. Margaret,
offended and mortified as she had been by her husband, who
had now added to former causes of disgust a glaring infidelity

QUEEN OF SCOTLAND. 85

to her bed, was sensible however that the aid of such a
subject was highly important to the support of the power
thus offered to her. She requested the Council of Peers,
in whose hands the direction of affairs had been left by
Albany, even to recognise him as Regent, and applied
to Henry to the same end, but her suit was unsuccessful with
each : Angus, however, assisted by her influence, insensibly
acquired, during three years of alternate tumult or intrigue,
all the faculties of that station, when Margaret, by a singular
change of policy, if that which was little more than the mere
result of various passions may deserve to be so called, solicited
Albany to return. A proposal which promised him her aid
in the conduct of his government was too tempting to be
refused. He arrived in November, 1521 ; chased her hus-
band from her presence, and compelled him to banish himself
to France ; and assumed, with her entire concurrence, the
supreme rule, and the custody of the young King, her son.

The Regent had scarcely been thus restored, than, some
thing more than the tongue of scandal proclaimed an improper
intercourse between the Queen and himself. Dacre, in a
letter to Henry, even of the following month, says, " There
is marvellous grete intelligence between the Quene and the
Duk, as well all the day as mich of the night ; and, in maner,
they sett not by who knowe it : and, if I durst say it for fere
of displeasure of my Soverein, they ar over tendre ; whereof
if your Grace examyne the Bushop of Dunkeld, of his con-
science, I trust he will shew the truthe." Henry gave the
fullest credit to these reports, and the Queen herself, in one
of her many original letters which have been preserved,
complains to her brother that Wolsey had called her in the
Privy Council " the concubine of Albany." The public
opinion of her dishonour was confirmed by her anxiety to
obtain a divorce from Angus, which, though she had enter-
tained the design from the hour in which he abandoned her
at Morpeth, had not been till now disclosed. In this she
was for the present disappointed, chiefly by the opposition of

86 MARGARET TUDOR,

Hemy, who wishing to use him as a counterpoise to the
renovated power of Albany, repeatedly demanded of her to
receive him again as her husband, in a tone of anger and
reproach ill calculated to persuade a woman of her disposi-
tion : and now, whether in the hope of bribing her brother
to concurrence, or from a mere affection to her native country,
she commenced a secret correspondence with him and his
ministers, in which she disclosed from time to time every
project formed by Albany with relation to England, and by
this useful treachery prevented the most formidable invasion
ever meditated by Scotland, and induced the Regent to dis-
band, in the face of a very inferior force, an army of eighty
thousand men, with which he was on the point of crossing
the border.

The experience even of a few days convinced Albany of
the extent of his error. The Scots taxed him with cowardice ;
the French with treachery ; and he formed a sudden reso-
lution again to quit the country, and to weaken the effect of
the suggestions of his enemies by carrying to Paris, together
with the first news of his unaccountable conduct, the best
apology he could frame for it. He embarked on the twenty-
fifth of October, 1522, having stipulated, on pain of forfeiture
of the Regency, to return before Assumption-day, the fifteenth
of August, in the succeeding year. Henry took advantage of
his departure to institute various intrigues in Scotland, and
addressed himself with success to the love of rule which, in
spite of caprice, invariably distinguished his sister. He pro-
posed that the young King should be solemnly placed on the
throne, and invested with the exercise of the supreme power,
assisted, in fact governed, by the advice of Margaret, and
a select Council. An arrangement which involved the in-
terests of many jarring parties necessarily required time, and
Albany, who had been apprised of it in an early stage of its
progress, arrived shortly after the appointed day, and wholly
thwarted it. The Queen, terrified, and watched on all sides,
meditated to fly once more to England, but Henry opposed

QUEEN OF SCOTLAND. 87

her design. Albany, however, showed no disposition to
resent her defection, and is said to have treated her even
with a polished courtesy, and Margaret, ever versatile, readily
coalesced with him. The lapse, however, of a very few
months finally terminated his rule in Scotland. A second
disgraceful and bloodless retreat, in November, 1524, with
an army which he had raised to invade England, compelled
him to quit for ever a country in which he was now utterly
disgraced, and she instantly joined, without hesitation, her
political influence to that of his constant adversary the Earl
of Arran. Jealous of her brother's interference in the affairs
of Scotland, she had now the satisfaction of accomplishing
without his assistance the plan which he had formed for
investing her son with the sovereignty, through the weight
which she had derived from the accession of Arran. Henry
seemed indisposed to resent this affront, but secretly pre-
pared to undermine their power, by the aid of Angus, who
had at his invitation at length left France, and was awaiting
in London some turn of affairs which might favour his return
to Scotland.

While these matters were passing, Margaret sacrificed her
character and her interests, as a woman and a Queen, to a
new amour. The object of this folly, who had scarcely
reached his twentieth year, was Henry Stuart, second son of
Andrew Lord Evandale, and, incredible as it may seem, she
presently placed this boy in the offices of Lord Treasurer
and Chancellor. Scotland was now in fact without a govern-
ment, and at this period, the winter of 1524, Angus arrived
at Edinburgh, and, with much show of moderation, claimed
his marital rights of the Queen, and offered to her his ser-
vices. It is scarcely necessary to say, that she rejected both.
Angus, as his design had been, joined a party of the justly
incensed nobility, who chose him their leader, and the Par-
liament which was then sitting, appointed him, with six
other Lords, spiritual and temporal, a Council of Regency, in
which the empty title of Principal, with a mere shadow of

88 MARGARET TUDOK,

authority, was allowed to the Queen. The mortified Mar-
garet now retired, with Arran and her minion, to the castle
of Stirling, leaving the King in the hands of Angus and his
party. She stifled, however, her resentment for a time,
and opened a correspondence with Angus, in the hope of
persuading him to consent to a divorce, which she at last
obtained. In the mean time James, who soon became weary
of a sort of captivity to which he was now subjected, pressed
her by secret messengers to devise means for his release.
Two of those irregular military enterprises then so frequent
in Scotland were instituted by her direction with that view,
and not without some hope of recovering her own authority,
but both were fruitless. Her love of rule, and disposition
to political intrigue, were now for a while suspended by the
long solicited sentence of divorce, and in March, 1525, she
became the wife of Henry Stuart, and in a great measure
sacrificed to an unpardonable weakness the slender remains
of her public consequence.

Margaret's importance had indeed now merged into that
of hev son. James was in his fifteenth year, naturally manly
for his age, and distinguished for that precocity of spirit
which the consciousness of high birth seldom fails to excite
in the healthy and robust. He loved his mother, and longed
to maintain to the utmost the splendour of her rank, and to
salve the wounds that she herself had inflicted on her good
name ; while she, in addition to the usual partiality of a
mother, in which she seems to have been by no means want-
ing, was naturally anxious to aid that authority which strove
to exert itself on her behalf. Margaret had always been
popular in Scotland, and Angus found it prudent to relax the
severity with which he had interdicted all intercourse be-
tween them. The Queen was admitted to visit her son for
long intervals, and acquired over him a considerable influ-
ence, which she exerted to the prejudice of Angus. James,
pressed perhaps as well by a sense of duty as by her instances,
determined to escape from the thraldom in which he was

QUEEN OF SCOTLAND. 89

held by that nobleman, and having contrived to fly in dis-
guise from his palace of Falkland, and from the stern custody
•>f Sir George Douglas, the brother of Angus, reached Stirling
in safety, where he found the nobility of his mother's party
prepared to receive him. Fully possessed at length of the
regal authority, he overthrew the whole fabric of govern-
ment lately erected by Angus and his friends, whom he
proscribed, and restored his mother to the dignity of her
proper station, and to the enjoyment of her revenues, with-
out unduly surrendering to her the direction of the affairs of
the state.

Thus unwillingly disencumbered of the cares of sove-
reignty, the restless spirit of Margaret wasted itself on real
or imaginary domestic grievances. She became weary of her
third husband, now decorated by James with the title of
Lord Methven, accused him of squandering her revenues, and
actually instituted a process of divorce from him, which her
son, in compassion to her character, interposed his authority
to suppress. Meanwhile, from the mere thirst of employ-
ment, she condescended for a time to become a spy for her
brother Henry, whose advice and interests in her intervals of
power she had always slighted, and perplexed his measures
with useless intelligence. The King, her son, had married,
and become a widower, and had taken a second wife. His
private affections, and his political interests, had been thus
diverted into new channels, and Margaret's views of influ-
ence had become mere visions. She retired unwillingly,
and became forgotten by all but the little circle of her court,
and, dying at Methven, in June, 1541, was buried in the
church of the Carthusians at Perth.

A vast treasure of the most secret original correspondence
of this remarkable woman fell into the hands of Sir Robert
Cotton, and is extant in our great public repository, the
British Museum. From that source, chiefly through the
medium of a modern historian of Scotland, whose inde-
fatigable labours cannot be too highly prized, this very super-

90 MARGARET TUDOR.

ficial sketch of her story has been derived. To those who
may be desirous to gain a more clear and direct view of the
power and weakness of her mind ; of the elegancy of her
accomplishments, and the meanness of her follies ; I beg
leave to recommend that inspection of the orginals which I
have not neglected.' The character of Margaret Tudor will
be found to stand almost alone among the curious anomalies
of history.

ILE

DUKE OF SUFFOLK.
OB. 1545.

CHARLES BRANDON,

DUKE OF SUFFOLK.

THIS fortunate and gallant man was the son of William,
or, as he is generally styled, Sir William Brandon, (though
it is doubtful whether he was a knight) by Elizabeth,
daughter and coheir of Sir Henry Bruyn, and widow of a
gentleman of the name of Mallory. It may be said that he
had an hereditary claim on the friendship and gratitude of
Henry the Eighth, for his father had appeared among the
first assertors of the late King's title to the throne ; had
forfeited an ample patrimony, and joined that prince in his
exile in Brittany ; returned with him to England ; and fell
in Bosworth field, where he bore the standard of the House
of Lancaster, in the very hour which seemed to promise him
the brightest fortunes. He was slain by the hand of royal
Richard himself.

Charles became in every sense a ward of the Crown ; was
bred in the Court, and chosen by the King as one of the
more familiar attendants on the person of his heir. He
must have been at least five years older than the Prince, for
his father died in 1486, and the young Henry was not born
till 1491. It is probable then that he became rather the
director than the companion, as he has generally been called,
of his master's amusements : and that the observation too
which somewhat riper years perhaps enabled him, even at
that time, to make on Heniy's disposition might have laid
the foundation of that uninterrupted security in which for so

92 CHARLES BRANDON,

many years he alone enjoyed constantly the Royal favour.
With a sufficient understanding for higher spheres of action,
he seems, and indeed in such a reign it was a proof of his
sagacity, to have adopted by choice the character of a mere
courtier ; but he moved in it with a rare dignity, and envy,
malice, and duplicity seem to have been unknown to him.
" The gallants of the Court," says Lord Herbert, in his his-
tory of the year 1513, " finding now the King's favour shining
manifestly on Wolsey, applied themselves much to him ; and
especially Charles Brandon, who, for his goodly person,
courage, and conformity of disposition, was noted to be most
acceptable to the King in all his exercises and pastimes."
This is the sole record against him of anything like subser-
vience or flattery.

Henry, on mounting the throne, appointed him one of the
Esquires of the Body, and Chamberlain of the Principality
of Wales. In 1513 he first appeared in warlike service ;
was present in that desperate action with a French squadron
which occurred early in the spring of that year off Brest ;
and on his return was created a Peer by the title of Viscount
L'Isle. That dignity was conferred on him on the fifteenth
of May, and on the last day of June he embarked with Henry
on that invasion of France which was distinguished by the
successful siege of Therouenne, and by the action vulgarly
called the Battle of Spurs, in a supposed allusion to the
swiftness with which the French fled from the field, but
which in fact obtained its name from the village of Spours,
near which it was fought. He commanded the vanguard of
the English army in that service, after which he marched
with the King into Flanders, where, having reduced Tournay,
they were met at Lille, and splendidly entertained by the Em-
peror Maximilian. Here he is said not only to have made
some impression on the heart of that Monarch's daughter, the
Archduchess Margaret, but even to have aspired to her
hand. " I find," says Herbert again, " some overture of a
match between Charles Brandon, now Lord Lisle, and the

DUKE OF SUFFOLK. 93

Princess Margaret ; which, though it took no effect, was not
yet without much demonstration of outward grace and favour
on her part." He was destined, however, to obtain a consort
yet more illustrious. The Princess Mary, second sister to
Henry, had been married in the autumn of 1514 to Louis the
Twelfth of France ; a political union of youth and beauty to
debilitated old age. Brandon, now Duke of Suffolk, having
been so created on the first of the preceding Februaiy, was
sent, with the flower of the English nobility, to grace the
nuptials : and it has been said, that his skill and courage in
the justs, which formed a part of the celebration, and which
chanced to be contended with more than usual fierceness,
captivated the affections of the Queen. It is more reasonable
however to suppose, nor is the conjecture altogether unsup-
ported by historical evidence, that she had flattered his hopes
long before she quitted England. Be the fact as it may, the
good Louis died within three months after his marriage, and
his youthful Dowager, within very few days after, was secretly
married to the Duke of Suffolk, which ceremony was publicly
repeated soon after at Calais, and finally at Greenwich, on
the thirteenth of May, 1515.

It is difficult to reconcile Henry's conduct to his character
with regard to this affair. He made at first a slight show of
resentment, but was presently appeased ; and the return of
his favour was accompanied by a grant to the Duke of the
great estates which had formerly belonged to Edmund de
la Pole, Earl of Suffolk. Is it possible that friendship and
love could have extorted this tribute from haughtiness and
tyranny ; or was it the result of mere policy, cold in its
motives, and accidentally just in its consequence ? We
can perhaps find no better clue to the solution of the question
than in Lord Herbert's account of this the most important
circumstance of the Duke's life, which take in the words of
the historian, who, in speaking of the treaty of peace then
pending with France, for which Suffolk was the first pleni-

94 CHARLES BRANDON,

potentiary, concludes thus — "Together with the proposing
of this treaty, our King sent a letter to the Queen, his sister,
wherein he desired to know how she stood affected to her
return to England ; desiring her withal not to match without
his consent. She, on the other side, who had privately en-
gaged her affections to Charles, Duke of Suffolk, made no
great difficulty to discover herself to both Kings," (meaning
Francis the First, who had succeeded her late hushand, and
her brother Henry ;) " entreating Francis to mediate this
marriage, and our King to approve it. Unto the former
Francis easily agreed, though once intending to propose a
match between her and the Duke of Savoy ; but our King,
for the conservation of his dignity, held a little off : however,
he had long since designed her to Suffolk. The Queen also,
believing that this formality was the greatest impediment,
did not proceed without some scruple, though protesting, as
appears by an original, that if the King would have her
married in any place save where her mind was, she would
shut herself up in some religious house. Thus, without any
great pomp, being secretly married, the Queen writ letters
of excuse to the King her brother, taking the fault, if any
were, on herself : and together for the more clearing the Duke
of Suffolk, professed that she prefixed the space of four days
to him, in which, she said, unless he could obtain her good
will, he should be out of all hope of enjoying her : whereby
as also through the good office of Francis, who, fearing that
our King by her means should contract some greater alliance
did further this marriage, our king did by degrees restore
them to his favour ; Wolsey also not a little contributing
thereto, while he told our King how much better bestowed
she was on him than on some person of quality in France."
Suffolk, in addition to the probable advantages of this affinity
to the throne, derived immense wealth from his marriage to
Mary. Her jointure was sixty thousand crowns annually,
and tue personal property which she was allowed to bring to

DUKE OP SUFFOLK. 95

England was estimated at two hundred thousand, together
with a celebrated diamond, of immense price, called " le
Miroir de Naples."

In 1515, on some occasion of disgust between him and
Wolsey, he retired for a considerable time into the country :
but Henry loved him too well to sacrifice him to the
favourite, and the duke, on his part, had too much nobleness
of spirit to oppose Wolsey by any other means than those of
an honest and open resentment, which seems ever after to
have subsisted. He returned to the Court with unimpaired
favour ; was among the first of Henry's gallant companions
»*i the romantic festivities of 1520, which distinguished the
King's famous interview with Francis the First in Picardy ;
and in 1523 invaded France at the h^ad of twelve thousand
men. The circumstances of that expedition afford a curious
proof of the imperfection of the military economy of those
days, even in the two greatest military powers of Europe ;
for while the utmost efforts of the French were insufficient
to prevent that small force, aided by eight thousand Germans,
from penetrating within eleven leagues of Paris, Suffolk, on
the other hand, having gained that mighty advantage, found
himself obliged to retrace his steps precipitately to Calais, to
save his men from dying of hunger. Henry was highly dis-
pleased at this retreat, and the Duke wisely deferred his
voyage to England till he had appeased his master's choler.

In the eventful period which shortly followed he .became
unavoidably an actor in the great scenes which distinguished
it. He was a witness in 1529 in the inquiry on which the
King grounded his claim of divorce from Catherine ; sub-
scribed to the articles preferred by the Parliament against
Wolsey ; and also to the declaration addressed by the Peers
in the same Parliament to Pope Clement the Seventh, by
which they threatened to abolish the supremacy of the Holy
See in England, should the Pontiff deny his consent to the
dissolution of the marriage. He fell indeed into all the

96 CHARLES BRANDOX.

measures which led to the Reformation with a readiness
which, if it were not the result of insincerity, might perhaps,
at best, be ascribed to an indifference as to all modes of
religious faith ; and Henry afterwards rewarded his com-
pliance by grants of abbey lands to a vast amount. In 1536
he commanded the troops which were then hastily raised to
march against the insurgents of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire ;
and in 1544 once more attended Henry to France, and
was appointed General of the army sent to besiege Bou-
logne, which he reduced after a siege of six weeks. His
health was probably at that time declining, for he made his
will immediately before his departure, and died on the four-
teenth of August, in the following year. By that instrument,
which is dated the twentieth of June, 1544, he orders that a
cup of gold should be made of his collar of the Garter, and
given to the King ; that the ceremonies of his funeral should
be conducted with a frugality and plainness very unusual at
that time ; to use his own words, " without any pomp or
outward pride of the world ; " and that his body should be
buried in the collegiate church of Tatteshall, in Lincolnshire.
He was interred, however, with great magnificence, by the
special command of the King, and at his charge, in St. George's
Chapel, at Windsor.

The Duke, at the time of his death, held the posts of Chief
Justice in Eyre of all the King's Forests, and Great Master
(or, as we now say, Lord Steward) of the Royal Household ;
and these appear to have been the only public appointments
of note that were at any time conferred on him. He had
been four times married. First, to Margaret, daughter of
John Neville, Marquis Montacute, and widow of Sir John
Mortimer, from whom he was divorced, apparently at her
suit, because he had, previously to their nuptials, privately
signed a contract of marriage with Anne, daughter of Sir An-
thony Browne, Lieutenant of Calais. He took that Lady to
his second wife, and had by her two daughters : Anne, born

DUKE OF SUFFOLK. 97

before marriage, who became the wife of Edward, Lord Powis ;
and Mary, who married Thomas, Lord Mounteagle. The
Queen Dowager of France brought him a son, Henry, who
was created Earl of Lincoln, and died young ; and two
daughters, Eleanor, wife of Henry Clifford, Earl of Cumber-
land, and Frances, married, first to Henry Grey, Duke of
Suffolk, and then to Adrian Stokes. By his fourth Lady,
Catherine, daughter and heir of William Lord Willoughby of
Eresby, he had two sons, Henry and Charles, who survived
him only for the space of six years, for they died of the
sweating sickness, at the Bishop of Lincoln's palace at Bugden,
on the same day, the fourteenth of July, 1551.

The original of the following short letter from the Duke,
and his last Duchess, to Lord Cobham, then Governor of
Calais, is in the Harleian collection. I insert it merely as a
specimen of the familiar epistolary style of him who was
esteemed the most polite nobleman of his time.

" After my right hartie comenda~cons to yor good Lord-
shipp, wl like thanks aswell for yor gentell lr~e dyrected to
me from Callays of the xvnth of this instant, as also for
yor qwailes, which this p~sent mornyng I have receyved by
yor servant. And where you desier to knowe in what p~t in
Kent I shall remayn, to th'entent you wold from tyme to
tyme signifye to me of such newes as be currant ther,
for yor soo doing I geve unto you most harty thanks. For
aunswere wherunto you shall understand that, as far as I
knowe yet, I shall demure in this town : but, whersoeV I
shall be, you shall have knowlege therof from tyme to tyme.
I fynde myself moch beholding to my Lady, yor bedfellow,
who hath sent me venison, and made me good chere.

" Also, as tuching Lightmaker ; for a complaynt that
he shuld make : By my trouth, my Lord, beleve me he
nevr complayned to me of any suche mattr ; but indede he
told me that the displeashur that was was for that another of
his countrey wold have taken away his men ; and, as long as

VOL. I. H

98 CHAELES BRANDON, DUKE OF SUFFOLK.

ne snail behave hymself honestly, I hartely desier you to
oeare and owe unto hym yor good wyll and favor, for my
saice ; and, yf he doo otherwyse, then to be unto him no
woorse thenne you wold be to another. Thus fare yor Lord-
shipp right hartely well. From Rochester, the xixth of June.
" Yor Lordshipp's assured freend,

" CHARLYS SUFFOLKE."
"MY LORD,

" W^ my harte thankes for yor gentle remembrans, I
lekewys mayk to you my harte comendesens.
" Yor pouer frend,

" KATHERINK SUFFOULK."

CAROflWAl, JBEATOO

OB, 1546.

CARDINAL BEATOUN.

DAVID BEATOVN, for his talents, for the loftiness of his
spirit, for his complete monopoly of royal favour, and his
unbounded power in the government both of Church and
State, may be not unaptly called the Wolsey of Scotland ;
but he was not, like that great man, the child of obscurity,
nor the builder, from, the foundation, of his own fortunes.
His family was even illustrious, for he was descended from
the old French house of Bethune, connected by more than
one marriage with the ancient earls of Flanders, and cele-
brated for having produced, among other branches dignified
with the same rank, that of the ever-memorable Maximilian,
Duke of Sully. The credit of his name had been raised in
Scotland, where his peculiar line had existed for more than
two centuries in the character of respectable country gentle-
men, by his uncle, James Beatoun, Archbishop of St. Andrews,
and Lord Chancellor, a statesman of great parts and power,
and he was the son of John Beatoun, of Balfour, elder bro-
ther to that Prelate, by Isabel, daughter of David Money-
penny, of Pitmilly, in the county of Fife. He was born in
1494, and received an admirable education at home, and in
the University of St. Andrews, under the eye of his uncle,
who sent him, when approaching manhood, to France, with
the double view of completely qualifying him in the Univer-
sity of Paris for the ecclesiastical profession, and of intro-
ducing him advantageously to the Duke of Albany, who
resided in that country, and who was then about to accept
the office of Regent of Scotland during the minority of his

Hi

100 CARDINAL BEATOUN.

great-nephew, James the Fifth. Both objects were attained.
David gained the highest credit by the success of his studies,
and the Duke employed him, even while he was prosecuting
them, in several affairs at the court of France in which the
public interests oL Scotland were involved ; and, upon the
death, in 1519, of the Scottish resident minister in Paris,
appointed him to that office. His uncle in the meantime
laboured with the most affectionate zeal to advance him at
home, and, on being translated in 1523 from the Archbishopric
of Glasgow to the Primacy, resigned the rich and mitred
Abbey of Aberbrothock ; prevailed on the Regent to give it
to his nephew, and on the Pope to grant him for two years a
dispensation, waving the forms of acceptance required by the
Church, in order that he might perform without interruption
his diplomatic duties at Paris.

He returned, and took his seat in the Parliament, in 1525.
During his mission important changes had occurred in the
government : the Regent had been displaced, and the Primate
deprived of the office of Chancellor, and driven into retire-
ment, by the party headed by the Earl of Angus, husband of
the Queen Mother ; but Beatoun's prospects seem to have
been in no degree clouded by those circumstances, for he had
not been many weeks in Scotland when he was appointed
by the Parliament one of the six members from that body to
whom the charge of the King's person and education was
specially committed. Younger, more polite, and perhaps
more artful, than his colleagues, it is not strange that the
youthful James should have selected him from them for his
companion and confidant. As the mind of the King advanced
to maturity, to these lighter impressions was added the weight
of Beatoun's splendid and commanding abilities, and motives
of policy soon after intervened on either side to consummate
the ascendancy which he at length gained. In the mean time
Angus, who had governed not only the realm but the King
with a control too sharp and haughty to be lasting, was over-
thrown by one of those sudden turns at that time so frequent

CARDINAL BEATOUN. 101

in his country; the Primate returned, not to resume his
former power in the State, but to endeavour to obtain it for
his nephew, whom he now named as his coadjutor, and whom
the King presently after placed in the office of Lord Privy
Seal. That appointment, which under the Scottish monarchy
actually invested him who held it with all the confidence
which its denomination implies, was conferred on Beatoun
in 1528, and from that period he was considered to be, as in
fact he was, the King's chief minister and favourite.

Scotland was then divided into two powerful and furious
factions ; the French, which included nearly all the clergy,
and consequently a great majority of those of the common
people who were not subject to the bond of clanship ; and
the English, consisting of a formidable number of the nobility,
some of whom were actuated by personal enmity to indi-
viduals of the Court or Council ; others by an habitual
jealousy of foreigners ; and not a few by the bribes of Henry
the Eighth. The young King and Beatoun became mutually
attached to the former party ; the one, from his sincere devo-
tion to the ancient faith, and the horror with which he
regarded the efforts directed against it by his uncle, King
Henry, to which seems to have been added an earnest desire
to many a Princess of France; the other, because he had
entered into secret engagements with Francis the First, to
secure to him a lasting alliance with Scotland, and had
received from that Prince in return the most solemn assu-
rances of friendship and favour. With these predispositions
both in master and servant, James in 1533 dispatched him to
Paris, professedly to demand in marriage the Princess Mag-
dalen, sister to the King, but he was privately charged with
business of higher importance, and seems in this mission to
have negotiated and concluded a secret treaty with Francis,
and in some measure with the Emperor and the Pope, for the
protection of the Catholic religion, and necessarily therefore
in opposition to all the views then entertained by our Henry.
He returned fullv successful in all that he had undertaken.

102 CARDINAL BEATOUN.

but the marriage was postponed in consequence of the ill
state of health of the Princess at that time, nor was it cele-
brated till 1536, when James, attended by Beatoun, made a
long visit to the Court of France, and wedded her in person.

The young Queen died within two months after her arrival
in Scotland, and the King, anxious to avoid reiterated offers
from Henry and the Emperor of the hand of the Princess
Mary of England, sent Beatoun again to the French Court, with
proposals to Mary of Lorraine, daughter to the Duke of Guise.
During this negotiation, which seems to have occupied some
considerable time, he received at length publicly the strongest
marks of Francis's partiality. In November, 1537, that
Prince signed an ordinance permitting him to hold benefices
and purchase estates in France, and presently after bestowed
on him the rich Bishopric of Mirepoix, in Upper Languedoc.
He returned in the following July, bringing with him the new
Queen. His uncle, the Archbishop, who had become infirm,
timid, and indolent, had for some years privately delegated
to him almost the whole authority of the Primacy, but the
natural mildness of that Prelate sometimes interposed to
moderate the zeal of the coadjutor : the reigning Pope, Paul
the Third, on the other hand, determined to encourage it.
Hoping yet to retain to the Holy See the allegiance of Scot-
land, and anxious therefore to place without delay at the head
of her church a man at once wise, resolute, and active,
as well as sincerely devoted to the Papacy, he selected Bea-
toun for that service. Willing, however, to leave to* so
ancient and faithful a son as the Primate at least the name of
his dignity, the Pontiff devised the means of giving him a
superior without depriving him of his See, by raising his
nephew to the dignity of a Cardinal. He was elected to the
Purple on the twentieth of December, 1538, and within a few
months after succeeded, on the death of his uncle, to the
Archbishopric of St. Andrews.

He now pressed for a special legantine commission, but
the Pope answered that the Primacv annexed to his See con-

CARDINAL BEATOUN. 103

stituted him what in the language of the Church was termed
"Legatus natus," and invested him with sufficient eccle-
siastical authority in Scotland. James, who at first seconded
with earnestness his suit for that distinction, seems to have
desisted at the instance of Henry. That Prince, who now
considered Beatoun as a formidable adversary, had lately dis-
patched to Scotland Sir Ralph Sadleir, a minister not less
remarkable for fidelity than acuteness, for the sole purpose of
effecting his ruin : and James, though he refused, with a
laudable firmness, to listen to insinuations against a favourite
servant, which were not only malicious but ungrounded, per-
haps yet deemed it prudent to concede in this single instance
to the angry feelings of his uncle. A most exact and curious
recital of Sadleir's conversations with James on the subjects
of his mission, highly creditable as well to the heart as to the
understanding of the Scottish Prince, may be found in a
letter of great length from the Ambassador to his master, in
the publication of " Sadleir's State Papers."

The conduct of Beatoun under this disappointment amply
proved that his attachment to the Romish Church, and to its
head, was not to be shaken by any selfish considerations. He
determined to prove the degree of that power which the Pope
had decided to be sufficient, and in the spring of 1540 went
to St. Andrews with a pomp and splendour which had never
before been used by any Primate of Scotland, attended by
a numerous train of the first nobility and gentry; by the
Archbishop of Glasgow, Lord Chancellor ; many other Pre-
lates ; and nearly the whole body of the clergy. Having
arrived there, he convened them in a sort of general ecclesi-
astical council, under his presidency, in the cathedral ; repre-
sented to them the imminent perils which threatened the
Church ; and laid before them the measures which he had
devised for its defence. His suggestions were received with
unanimous approbation, and processes were not only insti-
tuted, even in their first sitting, against several of the re-
formers, but a sentence of confiscation and the stake was

104 CARDINAL BEATOTTN.

passed on a Sir John Borthwick, one of the most distinguished
among them, who, on having been previously cited to appear
before this assembly, had fled into England, where he was
gladlv received by Henry, and soon after employed by that
Prince in a mission on the affairs of the reformation to the
Protestant Courts 'of Germany. Borthwick was burned in
effigy, his goods seized, and all intercourse with him pro-
hibited under pain of excommunication. The Cardinal, thus
encouraged, proceeded with vigour against the enemies of his
Church, and, naturally enough, incurred from them the
denomination and odium of a persecutor, which those who
may take the trouble to disentangle the truth from the jarring
and obscure historical accounts of that time, will find to have
been very unjustly cast on him. The most romantic tales
have been told of his furious severity. The celebrated
Buchanan, who had been charged with heresy, and confined,
and who, as a grave writer ridiculously observes, " would
certainly have been put to death, had he not escaped out of
prison," tells us that Beatoun had presented to the King
a roll of three hundred and sixty of the principal nobility
and gentry of Scotland as proper objects of prosecution ; and
in another part of his history cites a circumstance which will
be presently mentioned, to show the enormous cruelty of his
natural disposition. Neither of these reports are in any
degree supported by any other writer of that time ; but the
best apology for Beatoun's memory with respect to such
charges is in the historical fact that only four or five persons
suffered death on the score of religious difference during his
long government of the Church of Scotland.

Certain too it is that as his influence over the mind of the
King, his master, was unbounded, so was his choice of means
-by which to stem the torrent of the reformation wholly un-
controlled. In all political as well as religious affairs, James
obeyed him with the subserviency of a pupil. When Henry
the Eighth proposed a conference with that prince, early in
his reign, at York, James, anxious to maintain peace with his

CARDINAL BEATOUN. 105

uncle, and curious to behold the splendid novelties of the
English Court, eagerly accepted the invitation. The time
for the meeting was fixed, and all arrangements made for his
journey, when Beatoun suddenly interposed his authority;
and compelled the King, to the great offence of Henry, to
break the appointment, and prepare for war. With yet mor*>
facility he induced his master to that invasion of England
in 1542, which ended in the terrible overthrow of the Scots
on Solway Moss. James, who survived that great misfortune
but for a few weeks, is said by most historians to have died
of a broken heart, occasioned by his bitter reflections on it ;
while a few obscure writers have insinuated that the Cardinal
destroyed him by poison, a slander invented in the blindness
of malice, and utterly rejected by the sobriety of common
sense. His influence over James subsisted to the last hour
of that Prince's life. Beatoun persuaded him, a few hours
before his dissolution, to sign a will, nominating himself, and
the Earls of Argyll, Huntly, and Arran, a Council of Regency,
to govern the Kingdom in the name of the infant Mary.
The validity of this instrument, which had been solemnly
proclaimed in Edinburgh, was presently questioned by the
English faction, and soon after annulled, on the coarse and
ready pretence that it had been forged by the Cardinal. No
steps were taken to prove this charge, and indeed it seems to
have been a mere invention, to apologise for depriving him
of that power which was now to fall for a time into the
hands of his enemies. He was stripped accordingly of all
authority in the government, and in a manner banished to
his diocese, and James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, who was
presumptive heir to the Crown, was, in the spring of 1543,
chosen by the Parliament sole Regent.

The first step made by the party which had thus gained
the ascendancy was to entertain a proposal made by Henry
for the marriage of his son, Edward, to Mary, then in her
cradle. To this, of all public measures, it was known that
Beatoun would be most averse. It was determined, therefore,

106 CARDINAL BEATOUN.

before it came to be discussed in Parliament, to prevent his
attendance in that assembly, and he was suddenly seized,
and imprisoned in the castle of Blackness. His conduct now
unveiled the seemingly magical power which he had so long
exercised, the simple result of transcendent faculties of mind,
and of a courageous heart. This superiority ensured to him,
in an age comparatively artless, the attachment of many of
the first men in Scotland, who bowed instinctively to his
mighty talents, and were now ready to obey his mandates,
though issued through the grates of a prison. To these
natural means was added the weight of his ecclesiastical
influence. Arran, a weak and irresolute man, terrified at
the boldness of the measure which he had been made the
instrument of executing, was easily prevailed on to connive
at the Cardinal's removal to St. Andrews by the Lord Seaton,
to whose custody he had been committed, and whom he had
gained to his interest. There, still in some measure in the
character of a prisoner, he summoned a meeting of the clergy ;
vehemently excited their opposition to the English marriage,
as the only means of preserving the Church ; and, with little
difficulty, engaged them to raise money for the equipment of
troops, should force become necessary for the attainment
of their object. Meanwhile he concerted measures with the
Earls of Huntly, Argyll, Bothwell, and Murray, for gaining
possession of the persons of the young Queen and the Queen
Dowager, who were accordingly carried off by those noble-
men from Linlithgow to Stirling, and for preventing the
meeting of the Parliament, in which they failed. It was
convened on the 25th of August, 1543, and ratified under the
great seal the treaties with England for a peace, and for the
marriage, in concert with the Regent, who set out on the
following day to St. Andrews, where he proclaimed the Car-
dinal a rebel, and in the same week met him privately,
received absolution at his hands, and surrendered himself
implicitly to his direction.

Beatoun, for the short remainder of his life, swayed the

CARDINAL BHATOUN. 107

will of the Regent with a power even more unlimited than
that to which the late King had submitted. Very soon after
their reconciliation, Gawen Dunbar, Archbishop of Glasgow,
who had held the office of Chancellor for seventeen years
with the highest reputation, was compelled to relinquish it
to the Cardinal, who resigned that of the Privy Seal, in favour
of John Hamilton, Abbot of Paisley, to whose influence over
Arran, his natural brother, he had been much indebted in the
late singular political revolution. A single step remained at
once to fulfil the dearest wish of his heart, and to crown the
triumph of his ambition. He demanded of the Regent to
solicit for him at the Court of Rome the appointment of
Legate a latere. The request was made, and seems to have
been granted, without hesitation, and he was raised to that
superb ecclesiastical station on the thirtieth of January, 1543,
0. S., by the same Pope who had formerly denied it to him.
He commenced without delay the exercise of the extensive
faculties with which it had invested him ; held a solemn
visitation to his own diocese, attended by the Regent and others
of the highest public functions in the realm, to inquire into
the state of religious opinions and practices ; endeavoured to
reclaim the moderate reformers by arguments and threats ;
and proceeded with severity against a few self-devoted zealots
whose furious demeanour had left him no choice but to aban-
don them or his Church to inevitable destruction. At Perth
five persons, of the lowest order, were put to death,, not for
espousing the doctrines of the reformation, but for having
insulted by the grossest indecencies the established worship
of the land. On his return, he convened an assembly of the
clergy at Edinburgh, which he opened with a speech of dis-
tinguished impartiality. Christianity, he said, laboured under
the greatest peril, for which he knew but two remedies, each
of which he had resolved to administer ; the one a vigorous
prosecution of those who professed or encouraged the new
modes of faith ; the other, a reformation of the scandalous

108 CARDINAL BEATOTUT-

and immoral lives of the Catholic clergy, which had furnished
an ample pretext for separation.

Had he proceeded no further he might have escaped the
censure of persecution from the many Protestant writers, for
we have no account of him from the pens of those of his own
Church, who have given that colour to his character ; but he
now determined to attack the leader of the Scottish reformers,
and it was for his prosecution of George Wishart that they
consigned his name to the most lasting odium. Wishart was
a person of considerable talents and learning, a persuasive
and indefatigable preacher, and a man of the most exem-
plar)' morals. His conduct exhibited, together with the
most overheated zeal, a mildness and patience of temper,
and an innocency of manners and conversation, that not only
recommended, but endeared, him to all with whom he could
obtain intercourse. The Church of Rome could not have
had a more formidable enemy, nor could there perhaps have
been found among its opponents any other man so certain of
deriving from extremity of punishment the title of martyr.
Beatoun, who had long beheld his progress with increasing
uneasiness, at length prevailed with the Regent to issue an
order for his apprehension, and is said to have accompanied
the Earl of Both well into East Lothian, of which county that
nobleman was hereditary sheriff, to ensure its success.
Wishart was conducted to the Castle of Edinburgh, from
whence, at the request of the Queen Dowager, who always
adhered to the Cardinal, the Regent directed that he should
be transferred to St. Andrews, where Beatoun immediately
prepared for his trial, and summoned the Prelates of the
realm to assemble there for that purpose on the twenty-
seventh of February, 1545, 0. S. It was suggested at their
first meeting, to lessen the responsibility of the clergy, that
application should be made to the Regent to grant a special
commission constituting some eminent layman to preside, to
which the Cardinal agreed. Arran was at first willing to

CARDINAL BEATOUN. 109

concede this point, but, on the advice of a zealous Protestant,
to which persuasion indeed he was himself inclined, he
returned, to use the words of Spotswood, this answer, " That
the Cardinal would do well not to precipitate the man's trial,
but to delay it until his coming ; for, as to himself, he would
not consent to his death before the cause were well exa-
mined ; and if the Cardinal should do otherwise, he would
make protestation that the man's blood should be required
at his hands." Beatoun, enraged at this perhaps first instance
of the Regent's resistance to any dictate of his, rejoined, adds
Spotswood, " That he wrote not unto the Governor as though
he depended in any matter upon his authority, but out of a
desire he had that the heretic's condemnation might proceed
with a show of public consent, which since he could not
obtain, he would be doing himself that which he held most
fitting." Wishart was accordingly tried on eighteen articles
by the Prelates, and condemned to be burned. The sentence
was executed at St. Andrews on the second of March, in the
presence, says Buchanan, of the Cardinal, " who sat opposite
to the stake, in a balcony hung with tapestry and silk hang-
ings, to behold and take pleasure in the joyful sight ;" while
the sufferer cried, from the midst of the flames, " He who
now so proudly looks down on me from yonder lofty place
shall ere long be as ignominiously thrown down as now he
proudly lolls at his ease." These circumstances, so memo-
rable, are not mentioned by any writers except Buchanan,
and those who have copied from or quoted him, arid there
is little doubt that the barbarous triumph of the Cardinal,
and the prophecy of the martyr, are mere creatures of his
invention.

The Cardinal's death indeed occurred so speedily after
that of Wishart, and from circumstances so strange and unex-
pected, that, had such a prognostication really been uttered,
all Europe, in an age so fond and credulous of wonders,
would have rung with the fame of its accomplishment. Bea-
toun, universally envied for his greatness; constantly de-

110 CARDINAL BEATOUN.

tested by a powerful party in the State ; by another not less
formidable in the Church ; and by a neighbouring Potentate
as remarkable for a vindictive spirit as for his freedom from
all scruples of conscience with regard to the means of gratify-
ing it ; was destined to fall by the hands of assassins actuated
by motives of anger for private causes. On the twenty-ninth
of May, 1546, five gentlemen, Norman Lesley, eldest son,
and John Lesley, brother, to the Earl of Rothes ; William
Kirkaldy, of Grange ; Peter Carmichael, of Fife ; and James
Melville ; having previously concerted their plan with great
circumspection, entered the castle of St. Andrews, early in
the morning, with very few followers. Having secured the
porter, by whom (as he well knew all of them) they had been
readily admitted within the walls, they appointed, says Spots-
wood, " four of their company to watch the chamber where
the Cardinal lay, that no advertisement should go unto him,
and then went to the several chambers in which the servants
lay asleep, and calling them by their names, for they were
all known unto them, they put fifty of his ordinary servants,
besides the Vorkmen, masons, and wrights, who were
reckoned above a hundred (for he was then fortifying the
castle) to the gate, permitting none to stay within but the
Governor's eldest son, whom they thought best to detain
upon all adventures. This was performed with so little
noise as the Cardinal did not hear till they knocked at his
chamber. Then he asked who was there ? John Lesley
answered, ' My name is Lesley.' ' Which Lesley,' said the
Cardinal, ' is that Norman 1 ' It was answered that he must
open to those that were there. The answer gave him notice
that they were no friends, therefore making the door fast, he
refused to open. They calling to bring fire, whilst it was in
fetching he began to commune with them, and, after some
speeches, upon their promise to use no violence, he opened
the door, but they rushing in with their swords drawn, did
most inhumanly kill him, he not making any resistance.
Thus fell perhaps the greatest man in almost every point

CARDINAL BEATOUN. Ill

of consideration that his country ever produced. His vast
talents and his consequent power have combined to pre-
serve that regular chain of the circumstances of his public
life, of which I have here attempted to give an abstract,
while the history of many of his contemporaries who held
high offices in the State is almost unknown. In the story of
one of whom so much has been told, and that too by his
enemies, it is at all events unlikely that any just dispraise
should have been omitted, and it must be confessed that,
with the exception of some religious severities, his public
conduct has been left free of blame. Of his private character
less is known. He publicly indulged in a licentiousness not
uncommon with the eminent clergy of his time, and lived in
open concubinage with a lady of a noble family, Marian
Ogilvie, by whom he had six children, of which his eldest
daughter was married a few weeks before bis death to the
heir of the then Earl of Crawf urd, and respectable descend-
ants from some of the others yet remain in Scotland. Some
Latin works of his pen are said to remain in manuscript ; an
account of his negotiations with the King of France and the
Pope ; a Treatise of the Supremacy of St. Peter over the
other Apostles ; and a Collection of his Speeches and Dis-
courses on several occasions.

1H1EPJI&Y WOW A

EARL OP SURREY.
OB, 1547.

HENRY HOWARD,

EARL OF SURREY.

THE character of this extraordinary young man reflects
splendour even on the name of Howard. With the true
spirit and dignity of an English nobleman, and with a per-
sonal courage almost romantic, he united a politeness and
urbanity then almost peculiar to himself, and all those mild
and sweet dispositions which blandish private life. He is
said to have possessed talents capable of directing or thwarting
the most important state affairs ; but he was too honourable
to be the instrument either of tyranny or rebellion, and the
violent reign under which he had the misfortune to live
admitted of no medium. He applied his mind, therefore,
to softer studies ; and nearly revived, in an age too rude to
enjoy fully those beauties which mere nature could not but
in some degree relish, the force of imagination and expres-
sion, the polished style, and the passionate sentiments, of the
best poets of antiquity.

He was born about the year 1518, the eldest son of
Thomas, third Duke of Norfolk, by his second lady, Eliza-
beth, daughter of Edward Strafford, third Duke of Bucking-
ham. The place and method of his education are unknown,
or at least very doubtful. The ordinary report of history is
that he was bred with Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, a
natural son of Henry the Eighth, with whom he certainly con-
tracted an early and strict friendship, and to whom his sister
was afterwards married Anthony Wood says that he was a

114 HENRY HOWARD,

student of Christ Church, but the name of neither of these
young noblemen is to be found in the records of the uni-
versity. On the thirteenth of February, 1532, he was con-
tracted in marriage to Frances, daughter of John de Vere,
fifteenth Earl of Oxford ; and in the succeeding year was in
the glittering train <which attended the King to his celebrated
meeting on the French coast with Francis the First. Henry,
on the very day of his return from that brief expedition, was
married to Anne Boleyn. She was first cousin to Surrey,
the magnificence of whose family views seemed now to be
consummated by this superb alliance, which was to be so
soon and so mournfully broken. He appears, however, to
have avoided all ostentation of the fruits of these advantages,
and to have lived for some years in modest retirement,
attending to his domestic duties — for his marriage was now
completed, and he had a son — and sacrificing at his leisure
largely to the muse. In this long interval we scarcely hear
of him, except as an attendant, in the character of Deputy
Earl Marshal, on the Duke, his father, when that nobleman
presided as Lord High Steward on the trial of his kinswoman,
the unfortunate Anne, in 1536 ; and as one of the chief
mourners at the funeral, in the following year, of her suc-
cessor, Jane Seymour. Yet this was the period which many
writers, misled by one erroneous authority, represent him as
having passed in Italy, in amours and in triumphs, which an
industrious editor of his works has of late years proved to be
wholly imaginary.

In the spring of 1541, he peculiarly distinguished himself
in the jousts and tournaments instituted in honour of the mar-
riage of Henry to Anne of Cleves, and in the autumn of the
same year we find him in his first public employment. On
some hostile demonstrations on the part of France, he was
joined in commission with the Earl of Southampton and the
Lord Russell, to visit, and inquire into the state of defence
of, the English possessions on that coast. A singular con-
trast of circumstances occurred to him presently after his

EARL OF SURREY. 115

return. On the twenty-third of April, 1542, he was invested
with the Order of the Garter ; and on the thirteenth of the
succeeding July was imprisoned in the Fleet, on the ground
of a desperate quarrel with a private gentleman, and remained
closely confined for some weeks, when he was released, on
submitting to be bound to keep the peace in the then great
sum of ten thousand marks ; nor was this the only feud in
which he was engaged about that time. Such contests were
then of almost daily occurrence among young men of rank,
and furnished no argument either of ill temper or ill manners.
Personal courage was their cardinal virtue, and in days of
public peace they had no other means of evincing that they
possessed it. The time, however, approached for his giving
proofs more graceful and becoming. He had hitherto seen
no military service, but in a predatory incursion of a few days
on the Scottish border, in which he accompanied his father.
In the mean while, however, we find him once more a pri-
soner in the Fleet, and on charges, or rather on one charge,
so wild and extravagant as to remind us instantly of the
often-quoted line of the poet — " Great wit to madness," &c.
In the spring of 1543, Surrey was accused to the Privy
Council, by the Lord Mayor and Recorder of London, of
having eaten flesh in Lent, and this he answered effectually
by pleading a dispensation. But it was added that he had
been accustomed to traverse the streets of London in the dead
of the night, to break windows by shots from his cross-bow.
He acknowledged the truth of the charge, but his defence
was yet more strange than his fault. He alleged that he had
done so in the hope of correcting the licentious and corrupt
manners of the citizens, by impressing them with the idea
that such attacks, by means unheard and unseen, were super-
natural warnings from Providence of impending vengeance.
No writer durst repeat this most extravagant tale, were it
not verified by Surrey himself in one of his poems, and even
Viy the grave authority of the original minutes of the Privy
Council yet extant.

i 2

116 HENRY HOWARD,

His durance was probably of very short continuance, for in
the succeeding July he made his first active military essay as
a volunteer in the troops sent, under the command of Sir
John Wallop, to aid the Emperor in his invasion of France,
and was present in the unsuccessful siege of Landrecy. That
General, in a dispatch to Paget, the Secretary of State, says,
" My Lord of Surrey hath lost no time since his arrival at
the army, for he visiteth all things that be meet for a man of
war to look upon for his learning, and such a siege hath not
been seen this long time in these partes." Thus qualified by
some experience, and abundant inclination, he was appointed
Marshal of the army with which Henry invaded France in
the summer of 1544, of which the Duke, his father, com-
manded the vanguard. In this formidable expedition, which
the King professed to direct immediately against the capital,
but in which he merely meditated the capture of Boulogne,
Surrey was equally distinguished in several partial actions by
his prudence and bravery, till he was at length borne off the
field, desperately, and, as it was believed, mortally wounded.
He again passed over to the French coast in the end of the
following summer, where he found a body of three thousand
troops, who were directed to put themselves under his com-
mand. He was appointed Governor of Guisnes, and then of
Boulogne, which with surprising activity he put into that
state of defence which its importance demanded. His vigi-
lance was unceasing, as was his success in the enterprises
which he almost daily undertook against the French quarters
in his neighbourhood. He seemed to have gained the confi-
dence of Henry, with whom he was allowed to correspond
immediately on the conduct of the war, when a check which
he suddenly received in an action with their main body, near
Montreuil, where the English infantry, which he that day
personally commanded, basely abandoned him, gave great
offence to that capricious Prince. No expression of anger,
however, immediately occurred, but he was soon after virtu-
ally superseded by the appointment of Seymour, Earl of

EABL OF SURREY. 117

Hertford, to the chief command in France, and received
intimation that the King desired to confer with him on the
state of Boulogne, which he had no sooner left than a suc-
cessor in the government of that town was appointed, and
soon after his arrival in London, he was sent a prisoner to
Windsor Castle.

Such has been the received report of this precise period of
Surrey's life, but more modern inquiry has brought to light
many unconnected notices which lead us to infer that his
partial military failure was probably but a secondary cause of
disgust in •the irregular mind of his master. The most re-
markable of these are contained in a letter from the Duke,
his father, to the Lords of the Council, in which he requests
them to thank the King for having advertised him of his son's
" foolish demeanour ; " and adds, " Well, I pray God he may
often remember, and not trust too much to his own wit ; "
and, " I desire you that my son may be so earnestly handled,
that he may have regard hereafter so to use himself that he
may give his Majesty no cause of discontent." It is almost
needless to observe that these passages could not by possi-
bility have been meant to refer to any fault or fortune in his
military conduct. The true import of them will probably
ever remain unknown. In the mean time it has been thought
that Hertford, then the rising favourite, and of consequence
jealous of the Howards, had prejudiced the king against him.
Certain it is that Surrey, irritated to the utmost by the revo-
cation of his command in France, had indulged in bitter and
contemptuous remarks and sarcasms on Hertford, to whose
influence he ascribed it, and had even menaced him with
revenge under a new reign, a threat most offensive to Henry,
whose health was then daily declining ; and Hertford is
supposed to have heard and repeated those speeches to the
King. These, however, are but conjectures : all that can be
safely affirmed is, that amidst this obscurity the downfall of
Surrey originated.

His restraint in Windsor Castle was short. We find him

118 HEXRY HOWARD,

afterwards a party in several Court ceremonies in tne pre-
sence of the King, who is recorded to have treated him on
those occasions with complacency. But on the twelfth of
December, 1546, he was suddenly arrested, as was the Duke,
his father, who had on that day arrived in London. It
should seem that nothing in the shape of evidence against
Surrey had been yet collected, or, if it had, that the Privy
Council was ashamed to hear it, for, on his appearance before
them, silence was scarcely broken but by his demand of a
public trial. He was committed to the Tower, and some
weeks passed before that ceremony, for it deserved no better
name, was permitted. At length he was indicted at Norwich
of high treason, on the sole charge of having quartered on his
shield the arms of Edward the Confessor, which was con-
strued a tacit claim to the regal succession, and a special
commission was issued for his trial in the Guildhall of
London. To give some colour of impartiality to the pro-
ceeding, a jury was summoned from Norfolk, the county
most under the influence of his family. In addition to the
solitary accusation of the indictment, no fact was proved
against him but that he had used a coronet somewhat re-
sembling a royal crown, which was stated by his sister, the
Duchess of Richmond, who, strange to tell ! voluntarily pre-
sented herself for that purpose, as well as to disclose some
vague private conversations which had passed between them.
On these charges, incredible as it might seem, he was found
guilty of high treason, and on the nineteenth of January,
1547, two days after his mock trial, and only nine before the
death of the tyrant to whose insane barbarity he fell a sacri-
fice, was beheaded on Tower Hill. His body was interred
near the scene of his death, in the church of All-hallows,
Barking, but was removed from thence, in the year 1614, to
Framlingham, in Suffolk, where it lies under a superb monu-
ment, erected to his memory by his second son, Henry, Earl
of Northampton.

The Earl of Surrey's lady, who was remarried to John

EARL OF SURREY . 1J9

Stayning, a genileman of the county of Somerset, has already
been mentioned. He left issue by her two sons — Thomas,
who became fourth Duke of Norfolk of his family ; and
Henry, of whom we have just now spoken: and three
daughters — Jane, married to Charles Neville, sixth and last
Earl of Westmoreland ; Catherine, to Henry, nineteenth
Lord Berkeley ; and Margaret, to Henry, seventh Lord
Scrope of Bolton.

MENKY THE EIGHTH.
OB, 1547,

KING HENRY THE EIGHTH.

THIS Monarch — and surely to no one who ever swayed a
sceptre was that title, in its strictest sense, more justly due
— was born on the twenty-eighth of June, 1491. He had at
once the education of a Prince and a Prelate, and indeed it
has been said that his frugal father had intended to place
him at the head of the English church : the premature death
however of his elder brother, Arthur, invested him with the
inheritance to the throne, which he mounted, upon the death
of Henry the Seventh, on the twenty-second of April, 1509.
His accession was marked by the most auspicious circum-
stances : his kingdom was in a state of perfect tranquillity
at home, and in amity with all the nations of Europe, and
the treasure left to him by his father was enormous : his
youth, his fine person, the liveliness of his disposition, his
love of splendoui, and his devotion to manly and vigorous
exercises, won the hearts of his subjects, and the union in
himself of the two mighty Houses which had so long con-
tended for the Crown had fixed unquestionably his right, and
augmented his power to rule them. His reign began with a
popular sacrifice, and Sir Richard Empson, and Edmund
Dudley, who had been the chief ministers to his father's
avarice, were led to the scaffold ; meanwhile the question,
big with such unforeseen and mighty consequences, of his
nnrriage to Catherine of Arragon, widow of his brother
Arthur, was agitated as a matter of state policy, and speedily
settled, and they were espoused on the third of June, follow-
ing his father's death.

122 KING HENRY THE EIGHTH.

It was unlikely that a Prince young, haughty, wealthy,
and inexperienced, should allow his country long to enjoy
the advantages of peace. Pope Julius the Second, whose
genius was altogether warlike and political, had been for some
time engaged in a quarrel with France on the affairs of Italy
which had divided the powers of the continent into two
rancorous parties. He had made overtures to Henry, and the
more effectually to gain his assistance, had offered not only
to declare him head of the Italian league, but to transfer to
him the title of " Rex Christianissimus," so highly cherished
by the French Monarchs. Henry consented, and the more
readily because Ferdinand, his Queen's father, had lately
adopted the same course. It was agreed that he should
invade France from the Spanish frontier, which he did, with
ten thousand men, to little purpose, while his naval force
engaged with better success in the English Channel. In the
mean time Ferdinand affected to perform his part by march-
ing an army into Navarre, a neutral country, with the secret
view, which he accomplished, of annexing the most of it to
his own dominions, and leaving the rest to be taken posses-
sion of by the French, and virtually abandoned the league.
Henry however continued to prosecute his part of the war
with vigour ; renewed with Leo the Tenth the engagements
which he had made with Julius, lately deceased ; induced the
Emperor, by the payment of a large subsidy, to declare
against France ; and in the summer of 1513 passed over into
that country in person, at the head of a powerful army, to
make a campaign of three months, more distinguished by
its romantic splendour and gallantry than by any important
military exploits. It was during this his short absence that
the war with Scotland, in which its King, James the Fourth,
paid with his life the forfeit for his attachment to France,
began and ended ; and Henry received the trophies of the
victory of Flodden Field while he was besieging Tournay,
which surrendered to him on the following day. A few
months however produced a peace with France. Henry,

KING HENRY THE EIGHTH. 123

enraged by new duplicities on the part of his father-in-law,
and also of the Emperor Maximilian, not only signed sud-
denly a treaty of alliance with Louis, but gave his beautiful
sister Mary in marriage to that Prince, who was nearly forty
years older than herself, and who survived the nuptials
scarcely three months.

It was at this period that the King's favour to that extra-
ordinary person Thomas Wolsey became evident. He was
now Dean of Lincoln, in which station Henry had found him
when he succeeded to the Crown, and so necessary had his
presence become to his master, that when the army was
equipped for the late voyage to France, the care of victual-
ling it was ridiculously committed to him, as a pretext for
his personal attendance. He was seen soon after the King's
return the sole director of his policy, and the chief partner
in his pleasures. He was invested, as it were at once, with
the richest and most powerful ecclesiastical dignities of the
realm ; was appointed High Chancellor ; and at length cre-
ated a Cardinal. Francis the First, who had succeeded to the
throne of France, and the Emperor Charles the Fifth, the
two most powerful Princes of Europe, conscious of his influ-
ence over Henry, courted him with adulation even servile.
In their contest for the friendship of our Monarch, Charles,
who was the better politician, prevailed. Francis had paid
Henry the compliment of soliciting that interview with him
which passed on the French coast in 1520 with such chival-
rous magnificence, but Charles had visited him in his own
dominions immediately before his departure to it ; won his
heart with schemes of grandeur ; and, which was probably
more effectual, presented Wolsey with the revenues of two
rich bishoprics in Spain, and promised his interest in raising
him to the Popedom, to which he already aspired. A war
ensued between these Princes in the succeeding year, and a
treaty, in which Henry assumed ineffectually the character
of mediator, and his interference ended in an offensive alli-
ance between himself, the Emperor, and the Pope, against

124 KIXG HEX BY THE EIGHTH.

Francis This negotiation, by which he engaged to invade
France in the following summer with forty thousand men,
was concluded at Bruges by Wolsey.

Soon after the King's return, Edward Stafford, Duke of
Buckingham, the nlost powerful subject in the realm, was
put to death for having alluded to some remote possibility
that he might succeed to the Crown. This has usually been
ascribed to the resentment of Wolsey, who had a private
quarrel with him, but perhaps ought more properly to be
considered as the commencing article in the long catalogue of
Henry's rapacities and cruelties.

Little remained of the great wealth left by his father, and
the attainder of Buckingham furnished a rich prize to an
almost exhausted treasury. It was indeed about this period
that Henry's character began to assume that deformity, the
records of which have tended to cast doubts on the truth of
history. Unemployed for a short interval of peace, and
burning for distinction wheresoever it might possibly be
found, he burst forth suddenly the polemic champion of that
Church which he soon after found it convenient to demolish ;
attacked Luther, and the new doctrines, with all the weapons
of school divinity, in which he was well versed ; and presented
his book to the Pope, who rewarded his apparent zeal by
conferring on him the title of " Defender of the Faith." He
now received a second visit from the Emperor, and renewed
with him the treaty of the preceding year ; the promised in-
vasion of France followed, and passed over in comparatively
insignificant depredations near the coast in Brittany and Nor-
mandy. A war with Scotland, of the same inferior character,
succeeded, and was prosecuted with indifferent success for
more than a year. Henry's object in all his intercourse with
that country, either as a friend or an enemy, was to detach
it from its alliance with France, but his policy was not suf-
ficiently refined to deceive that deep-sighted people in nego-
tiation, and his purse was too weak to furnish the means of
decisive warfare. It was now that he began to raise money

KING HENRY THE EIGHTH. 125

by forced loans, and by what were called benevolences ;
became perplexed and irritated by their tedious operation ;
summoned a Parliament and convocation, and, finding them
unwilling to grant him the supplies which he required, awed
them into compliance by threatening to cut off the heads of
those among them who most steadily opposed themselves to
his will.

France, however seriously menaced, had hitherto suffered
little from the efforts of her powerful enemies, when the
rashness of her monarch plunged his affairs suddenly into the
deepest calamity. He had determined to attempt the con-
quest of the Milanese ; invaded Italy ; and, having laid
siege to Pavia, was unexpectedly attacked by the Imperial-
ists ; his army completely routed under the walls of that
city, and himself taken prisoner. Henry, whose conduct in
his league with Charles, and in the management of his own
share of the war, had already displayed little policy, now
took a step which astonished Europe. Incited by some per-
sonal slights which he had of late received from the Em-
peror, as well as by a jealousy of his overweening power*
and perhaps yet more by a capricious generosity, he formed
a treaty with the French Regent, and engaged to procure
Francis his liberty. That Prince however soon after ob-
tained it by an almost pardonable breach of his parole, and
on the eighteenth of September, 1527, concluded at London
an alliance with Henry, who took this occasion to renounce
for ever all claim to the Crown of France.

While these matters passed, events not less important than
surprising were silently approaching in England. The King
had resolved to repudiate Catherine. On that great affair,
certainly the most considerable in itself and in its conse-
quences, and perhaps the best known and understood in our
modern history, it would be impertinent to dilate here. It
may not be too bold to say, that all question on his real
motives to this determination has long ceased. No one will
now venture to urge on his behalf those scruples of conscience

126 KING HENRY THE EIGHTH.

for which his earlier apologists gave him credit. Nay, we
seek in vain for a single act in Henry's life which might
authorise us even to suspect that he had a conscience. His
incitements in this case were of the most simple and ordinary
nature — an appetite too gross to be expressed in the terms
which might properly denote it, and a policy too obvious to
deserve the praise of sagacity — his inclination to the person
of Anne Bullen, and his desire to become the father of an
heir with unquestionable title to the crown. The Pope,
Clement the Seventh, naturally timid, and at that time a
prisoner in the hands of the Emperor, who was nephew to
Catherine, evaded all endeavours to induce him to dissolve
the marriage by his own authority, but at length consented
to grant a commission to Wolsey, and another Cardinal
chosen by himself, to try its validity. The King and Queen
were cited to appear before them, and obeyed the summons.
Henry of course acknowledged the authority of the court,
but Catherine demurred, and, having justified herself on the
spot in an unexpected address to the King, the prudent and
pathetic features of which will always render it a classical
ornament to our history, departed, and refused all future
attendance. The Court however proceeded, though slowly,
in the exercise of its functions, and the convocations of
Canterbury and York decreed at length the invalidity of the
marriage. Henry was in daily expectation of a definitive
sentence, when the Pope suddenly adjourned the final con-
sideration of the cause to Rome, where a favourable decision
was hopeless.

The wrath excited in the King's mind by this disappoint-
ment was somewhat appeased by the sacrifice of Wolsey,
whose favour had been for some time declining. Parties the
most discordant joined in accelerating his fall. Catherine
and her rival were equally his enemies. His favour at Rome
had been impaired by his assiduity in promoting the divorce,
and he had offended the English clergy by conniving at those
partial spoliations of the church which formed a prelude to

KING HENRY THE EIGHTH. 127

the Reformation. He was detested by the nobility for
usurping a magnificence which they could not reach. Above
all, Henry had determined to renounce the authority of the
Papal See, a resolution to the practice of which Wolsey's
ecclesiastical and political existence could not but have been
a constant impediment. He was prosecuted under an obso-
lete law, for the breach of which he had long since received
a general indemnity, signed by the King ; received an ample
pardon ; was again prosecuted on the same charges ; and
saved himself from the axe by dying of a broken heart.
Henry now attacked the whole body of his clergy, under
colour of the authority of the same statute, and they pur-
chased their pardon by the payment of a great sum ; pro-
ceeded to deprive the church of Rome of an important part
of the ancient revenue which it derived from England ; and
procured a vote of parliament, ordaining that any censures
which the Pope might issue against those acts should be
utterly disregarded. In the mean time the Queen despatched
an appeal to Rome on the question of the divorce, and he
received a citation to answer it, which he did very effectually
by almost instantly marrying Anne Bullen. The evidence
which had been given, and the decree uttered by the convo-
cations two years before, were now deemed all-sufficient,
and Cranmer, the Primate, with no other authority, by a
formal sentence annulled the King's marriage with Catherine,
and ratified his union with Anne. The parliament how-
ever presently after confirmed that sentence, and by a
special act settled the inheritance of the Crown on the issue
of Anne. The same Parliament declared the King " the only
supreme head of the Church of England."

Henry, to whom all modes of faith were indifferent, had
not perhaps yet contemplated the establishment in England
of the new persuasion. His objects were, first, to shake off
the Papal authority, and then to render the wealth of the
Church subservient to his occasional necessities. The Re-
formation was but an incidental consequence of his efforts to

128 KING HEN'RY THE EIGHTH.

those ends. At this period therefore, while he shed the
blood of several persons, at the head of whom were the
illustrious More and Fisher, for asserting the Pope's supre-
macy, he consigned many to the stake for denying the
Catholic tenets. He had already suppressed a great number
of the smaller religious houses, and his Parliament had pos-
sessed him of their revenues, and was proceeding to bolder
confiscations, when his attention was for a moment diverted
to a domestic concern. Anne's charms had ceased to please,
and he had given way to a new sensual partiality. His
unfortunate and beautiful Queen, to whose innocence pos-
terity has implicitly subscribed, was put to death, with
several other persons, among whom was her brother ; and
on the same day, or, as some say, on the third day after, he
married Jane Seymour, the daughter of a private gentleman.
A Parliament not less subservient than that which had set-
tled the crown on his issue by Anne, paid him on this
occasion the compliment of bastardising his daughters by his
two former Queens, and decreeing the inheritance to the fruit
of this new marriage.

As the breach with the Pope widened, the certainty of a
total change in the national religion became daily more mani-
fest. The convocation, in which those of the two persuasions
were nearly equally balanced, at length promulgated, with
Henry's sanction, certain articles of faith, comprising a
heterogeneous mixture of the doctrines of each party, some
of which evidently pointed at the downfall of the regular
priesthood. The people, moved not less by the actual inte-
rest which they had in the maintenance of that body than by
their own pious feelings, rose in enormous masses, which for
want of leaders were presently subdued ; and Henry, in
defiance, proceeded without delay to the suppression of the
larger monasteries, and the assumption of their extensive
revenues. Still however he hesitated on the unqualified
rejection of the old religion. An unaccountable caprice
prompted him to become the champion of transubstantiation.

KING HENKY THE EIGHTH. 129

He was even absurd enough to debate that question publicly
in Westminster Hall, in all the pomp of royalty, surrounded
by the Peers spiritual and temporal, with an obscure indi-
vidual, who was presently after committed to the flames for
maintaining his opinion in that conference, and many others
were about the same time burned also for denying the real
presence. He found the system lately framed by the con-
vocation utterly impracticable, and endeavoured to simplify
and explain it by extorting from the Parliament that terrific
act well known by the name of the Law of the Six Articles,
in which the most favourite tenets of the Church of Rome
were enforced by penalties of unheard-of severity : at the
same time he flattered the reformers by many concessions ;
particularly by an unqualified permission to use in their
family worship the English version of the Scriptures, but
this liberty was soon after confined to gentlemen and mer-
chants. There was, however, no safety, amidst the various,
and frequently contradictory regulations of this time, for
those who professed either faith with undisguised zeal, and
numbers of each were put to death, frequently with circum-
stances of wanton barbarity. New forms of doctrine and
discipline were now contrived. A compendium of tenets
was published under the title of " The Institution of a Chris-
tian Man," varying in many instances from those which had
preceded them ; and this again was shortly after followed by
the publication of an improved scheme of orthodoxy, entitled
" The Erudition of a Christian Man." These, particularly
the latter, are believed to have been composed by Henry's
own hand, and were certainly uttered under the express
authority of the King and Parliament. Fortunately for the
unhappy people who were doomed to submit to his rule, he
became at length bewildered amidst the confusion which
himself had created, and left the jarring elements of his
reformation to be reconciled and arranged by the wiser heads,
the more sincere hearts, and the cleaner hands of his suc-
voi,. i. K

130 KING HENRY THE EIGHTH.

cessors. All activity in this great work now ceased but that
of the accuser, the judge, and the executioner.

Jane Seymour had died in giving birth to a son, afterwards
Edward the Sixth, and Henry had been for two years a
widower, when he resolved to seek a consort in the Pro-
testant Courts of Germany. Cromwell, whom he had raised
from the most abject obscurity, and whose busy and profit-
able agency in what may be called the financial branch of
the reformation had made him a minister of state and a
favourite, proposed to him Anne, daughter of the Duke of
Cleves. The connection was politically desirable, and a
portrait of the Princess by Holbein had obtained the King's
approbation. He espoused her, but on her arrival in Eng-
land, finding her coarse, both in person and manners, con-
ceived an unconquerable dislike to her, which he expressed
to his confidants by calling her " a great Flanders mare."
He completed the marriage, however, and, for a while con-
cealing from others his aversion, employed himself in devising
the most convenient means by which he might dispose of her,
when a new object of appetite cut short his deliberations.
He became enamoured of Catherine Howard, a niece to the
Duke of Norfolk, who might at this time be called his chief
minister, and whose envy and hatred concurring with the
disgust which Cromwell had excited in Henry's mind by
promoting his late unlucky marriage, wrought suddenly the
downfall of that remarkable child of various fortunes. Crom-
well was arrested by Norfolk at the Council Board, attainted
of treason and heresy, and beheaded, without examination or
trial ; Anne was divorced without a single legal plea against
her, or a tittle of evidence, and it was declared high treason
to deny the dissolution of her marriage ; and the perpetration
of all these enormities by an English Parliament, together
with the celebration of the nuptials of Henry with Catherine
Howard, occupied but the space of six weeks, in the summer
of the year 1540.

KING HENRY THE EIGHTH. 131

Catherine possessed youth, beauty, talents, and politeness,
and the raptures with which Henry professed to cherish this
new connection exceeded all ordinary bounds. Not con-
tented with offering up a prayer in his own chapel in testi-
mony of his gratitude for it, he commanded the Bishop of
Lincoln to compose a regular form of public thanksgiving to
the same effect. In the midst of these extravagancies, it was
communicated to him by Cranmer that she had indulged,
before her marriage, and perhaps after, in the most profligate
libertinism, and had even chosen her paramours from among
the servants of her grandmother, the old Duchess of Norfolk.
He is said to have wept when he received the intelligence.
The Queen, and the parties with whom she had offended,
were proceeded against by attainder, and put to death. Two
remarkable acts of Parliament were now passed ; the one
constituting it high treason to conceal in future any know-
ledge, or even strong suspicion, of similar guilt in a Queen
Consort ; and the other, as though to reach the climax of
absurd tyranny, enacting that any woman whom the King
might propose to marry, having previously forfeited her
honour, should also be subjected to the penalties of high
treason if she did not disclose her guilt to him previously
to her nuptials.

It was fortunate for Henry, amidst the difficulties, public
and domestic, into which for the last ten years he had
plunged himself and his people, that it should have suited
the interests of neighbouring States to remain at peace
with him. The Emperor, as a man his bitter enemy, was
restrained by high political motives from attacking him.
Francis, on the other hand, was his friend, as well from
inclination as policy. Scotland had been too much distracted
by factions during the long minority of his nephew, James
the Fifth, to become an aggressor. Henry himself at length
interrupted this apparent concord. Excited by a jealousy
not unreasonable of the intimate union which existed be-
tween the two latter princes, and by private resentment, not

132 KING HENRY THE EIGHTH.

only because Francis had given in marriage to James, a
Princess whom he intended to have demanded for himself,
but on the score of a personal slight which he had received
from the King of Scots, he seized the first moment of leisure
to break with both'. He invaded Scotland with a powerful
army, and was at first repulsed ; when James, flushed by the
deceitful advantage, determined, against the sense of his
nobility and commanders, to pursue his invaders into their
own country ; was utterly routed at Solway Frith ; and died,
ae is said, of grief, on the fourteenth of December, 1542,
exactly three weeks after his defeat. With him this short
war also expired ; a treaty was concluded, the principal fea-
ture of which was a stipulation for the marriage of his infant
daughter, afterwards the celebrated Mary, to the young Prince
of Wales, which it is almost needless to say was never
fulfilled.

The articles concluded on, however, especially the latter,
were beheld by the Scots with disgust and dread. They saw
their country falling gradually under the domination of Henry,
and appealed to the old friendship of Francis, who readily
engaged to assist them, in the very probable event of a
renewal of warfare with England, with troops and money.
This negotiation soon became known to Henry, and he lost
no time in resenting it. He suddenly established a league
with the Emperor, and they agreed to furnish an army, each
of twenty-five thousand men, for the invasion of France,
chiefly under the pretence of chastising its King for having
formed an alliance with the Grand Signer. Henry now assem-
bled his Parliament, which not only granted him ample
supplies for the prosecution of this new war, but went even
further than any of its compliant predecessors towards sur-
rendering into his hands the whole legislative authority. It
expressly recognised and strengthened a former law by which
the King's proclamations were declared equivalent to statutes,
and constituted a tribunal for facilitating the operation of
such manifestations of the royal will, and for punishing those

KINO HENRY THE EIGHTH. 133

who might disobey them. The year in which he received
this monstrous concession, 1543, was further rendered some-
what remarkable by an event of smaller importance ; his
marriage with Catharine Par, the widow already of two
husbands.

The high-sounding confederacy between Henry and the
most powerful Prince in Europe produced no important
results. Their first campaign, in which no very active part
fell to the English, ended with little actual advantage to
either party, and with increased credit to the military repu-
tation of France ; and the second was more distinguished by
a peace, in the treaty for which Henry was not even named,
suddenly concluded between the Emperor and Francis, than
by any notable exploit in the field. It had been in fact a
war of sieges, and Henry's reduction of Boulogne, which sur-
rendered to him in person, may perhaps be considered as its
most important feature. He returned, full of chagrin, to the
consolation of yet further augmented power. « A new Parlia-
ment, which met in the first of the two years of the war,
had, in submission to his dictates, recognised the right of his
daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, to their proper places in the line
of succession to the throne ; empowered him, however, to ex-
clude them, should they incur his displeasure ; left unrepealed
the act by which they had formerly been declared illegi-
timate ; and, finally, invested him expressly with the right,
should he chance to be left childless, to give the Crown,
by his will, or by letters patent, to whomsoever he might
think fit. Not content with enacting these fearful absurdities,
this Parliament not only absolved him of his obligation to
repay a late loan, but actually ordained that such of the
lenders as had already been reimbursed should refund into
the Exchequer the several sums which they had respectively
received.

Before Henry passed over into France, he renewed the war
with Scotland. A powerful army, which had been trans-
ported by sea to Leith, marched to Edinburgh, which they

134 KING HENRY THE EIGHTH.

plundered, and mostly burned, and, having horribly ravaged
the country to the east of that city, returned almost without
loss. Another inroad, made in the autumn of the same year,
1544, was less successful. The English were chased within
their own borders, leaving behind them many slain, and more
prisoners ; were reinforced, and became again in their turn
the assailants. At length, after a year had passed in that
barbarous predatory warfare which distinguished the border
contests, a treaty of peace was signed with the King of France,
in which Scotland, at the instance of that Prince, was
included. Henry, thus disengaged, once more recurred to
ecclesiastical speculations. Some remnants of Church pro-
perty yet remained untouched. The same Parliament from
which he had of late received such surprising proofs of a
blind and senseless devotion, now possessed him of the reve-
nues of the chantries, hospitals, and free chapels, and even
of those of the universities. The latter he graciously de-
clined to accept, and hence only, with the exception of his
foundation of Trinity College, Cambridge, acquired the repu-
tation of an encourager of learning, and a patron of science.
So accustomed had the nation become to the expectation of
his arbitrary invasions of property, and of its own practice
of an implicit submission to them, that it hailed this forbear-
ance as an emanation of the highest generosity, and acknow-
ledged it by the most absurd and misplaced flattery.

In his renewed labours to establish a uniformity of faith,
or at least worship, he was still perplexed by doubts and
difficulties. The Prelates, Cranmer and Gardiner, the one a
zealous Protestant, and a man of pure simplicity, the other,
the very crafty but determined advocate for the old religion,
were alternately his advisers, and his endeavours to select
truth and justice from the contrariety of their counsels, were
alike destitute of piety or wisdom. He sought to soothe the
irritation which he suffered from these vexations and disap-
pointments, and from a rapid abatement of health, by new
acts of persecution. Several persons were brought to the

KING HENEY THE EIGHTH. 135

stake for denying, or rather for doubting, his favourite doc-
trine of transubstantiation, and the Queen herself was saved
by her own wit and sagacity from falling a victim to his
suspicion that she wavered on that delicate point. But a
most unexpected sacrifice of another sort closely impended.
Henry had secretly determined to shed the blood of his
faithful and long tried minister and general, the Duke of
Norfolk, and of his admirably accomplished son, the Earl of
Surrey. They were suddenly arrested, and, without a single
proof of guilt, indeed almost without a single specific charge,
arraigned of high treason, and condemned to die. It were
charity to the memory of the tyrant to suppose, and it is
somewhat strange that a conjecture seemingly so obvious
should not before have occurred, that this last superlative
enormity might be ascribed to the insanity which sometimes
increases the horrors of approaching death. Be this as it may,
Surrey was led to the scaffold, and presently after, Henry,
having on that very day, the twenty-eighth of January, 1547,
signed an order for the execution of the Duke on the morrow,
himself expired.

CATHARflWI

OB. 1548.

QUEEN CATHARINE PAR.

OF this Lady, in whose society Henry the Eighth, sated
with the gratification of all the rudest passions and appetites,
at length sought the charms of domestic comfort, history
gives us less information than might have been expected.
She certainly possessed considerable talents, and with less
discretion might perhaps have acquired a greater fame. Sud-
denly elevated from private life to sovereign dignity, and by
the hand of the most cruel and capricious Prince of his time,
she had to dread equally the envy of the rank from which
she had been removed, and the jealousy of him who had
raised her from it. To shun those perils, she avoided as
much as possible all interference in public affairs ; devoted
to the studies for which an admirable education had qualified
her most of the hours which could be spared from the kindest
attention to the King's increasing infirmities ; and infused
into her conversation with all others, an invariable affability,
and a simplicity and even humility of manners, which, in
one of her station, perhaps bordered on impropriety. She
descended from a family of no great antiquity, but which
had been somewhat distinguished in public service, and was
one of the two daughters of Sir Thomas Par, of Kendal, by
Maud, daughter and coheir of Sir Thomas Greene, of Greene's
Norton, in Northamptonshire. She had been married in
early life to Edward Borough, eldest son of Thomas, Lord
Borough of Gainsborough ; who dying soon after, she took to
her second husband John Nevile, Lord Latimer, by whom
also she was left a widow having had no children by either.

138 QUEEN CATHARINE PAR.

Henry married her, his sixth Queen, at Hampton Court, 011
the twelfth of July, 1543, when she was about the age of
thirty-four. " In the concluding another match," says Lord
Herbert, with some archness, " he found a difficulty ; for, as
it had been declared death for any whom the King should
marry to conceal her incontinency in former time, so few
durst hazard to venture into those bonds with a King who
had, as they thought, so much facility in dissolving them.
Therefore they stood off, as knowing in what a slippery estate
they were if the King, after his receiving them to bed,
should, through any mistake, declare them no maids. So
that now he fixed upon the Lady Catharine Par, widow to
the Lord Latimer, who, as she was esteemed ever a lady of
much integrity and worth, and some maturity of years, so
the King, after marriage, lived apparently well with her, for
the most part."

Only a single instance, indeed, of discord between them
has been recorded, and it had nearly proved fatal to her.
Catharine was a zealous Protestant : Henry, having gained
the private ends at which he aimed in the reformation, had
of late years judged it convenient to soothe the Church of
Rome with some concessions. With this view he enjoined
the observation of his memorable six articles, and prohibited
the publication of English translations of the New Testament.
The Queen had presumed to argue with him on these, and
other imperfections, in the performance of his great work ;
and the Romanists of the court and council, who secretly
entertained strong hopes of the re-establishment, at least in
good part, of the ancient faith, began to consider her as a
formidable enemy, and determined to use all means to ruin
her. A singular opportunity soon presented itself to them,
the origin and consequences of which I shall relate somewhat
in detail, not only for the sake of probable truth, but for the
simple and impressive terms of the unacknowledged authority
on which all historians of that reign have given somewhat of
the anecdote, in such scraps, more or less, as happened best

QUEEN CATHARINE PAR. 139

to agree with their several humours, or to suit their con-
venience. That authority is John Fox, whom I quote from
Mason's abridgment of his vast hook ; and it seems highly
probable, from considerations which the compass of this
work will not allow me to state, that the relation was
derived from Catharine herself, and it may, perhaps, be in
her own words.

After some introductory matter, we are told that " the
King, in the later end, grew oppiniate, and would not bee
taught, nor contented withaH by argument ; yet towards her
he refrained his accustomed manner, for never handmaide
sought more to please her mistresse than she to please his
humour; and she was of such singular beauty, favour, and
comely personage, wherein the King was greatly delighted.
But Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, Wrisley " ( Wriothesley)
" Lord Chancelor, and others of the King's privy chamber,
practised her death, that they might the better stop the pas-
sage of the gospell ; and, having taken away the patronesse
of the professors of the truth, they might invade the remainder
with fire and sword ; but they durst not speake to the King
touching her, because they saw the King loved her so well.
At length the King was sicke of a sore legge, which made
him very froward, and the Queene being with him, did not
faile to use all occasions to moove him zealously to proceed
in the reformation of the church. The King shewed some
tokens of mislike, and broke off the matter, and knit up the
arguments with gentle words, and, after pleasant talke, she
took her leave. The Bishop of Winchester being there, the
King immediately upon her departure, used these words —
' It is a good hearing when women become such clarks, and
much to my comfort to come in mine old age to be taughte
by my wife.' Then the Bishop shewed a mislike that the
Queene would so much forget herselfe to stand in argument
with his Majestic, whose judgement and divinitie he extolled
to his face above Princes of that and other ages, and of doc-
tors professed in divinitie : and that it was unseemly for any

140 QUEEN CATHARINE PAR.

of his subjects to argue with him so malapertly ; and that it
was greevous to all his councellors and servants to heare the
same : inferring how perilous it hath ever been for a Prince
to suffer such insolent words of a subject, who, as they are
bold against their Sovereigne's words, so they want not will,
but strength, to overthwart them in deeds."

Fox, having detailed much similar argument used by Gar-
diner, tells us that " he crept so farre into the King at that
time, that he, and his fellowes, filled the King's mistrustful
minde with such feares that the King gave them warrant to
consult together about drawing of articles against the Queene
wherein her life might be touched. Then they thought it
best to begin with such ladies as she most esteemed, and
were privy to all her doing ; as the Lady Harbert, after
Countesse of Pembroke, the Queene's sister ; and the Lady
Lane," (who was her first cousin,) " and the Lady Tirwit,
all of her privy chamber ; and to accuse them upon six arti-
cles ; and to search their closets and coffers, that they might
finde somewhat to charge the Queene ; and that being founde,
the Queene should be taken, and carried in a barge by night
to the Tower, of which advice the King was made privy by
Gardiner, and the Lord Chancellor, to which they had the
King's consent, and the time and place appointed. This
purpose was so finely handled that it grew within few daies
of the time appointed, and the poore Queene suspected
nothing, but after her accustomed manner, visited the King,
still to deale with him touching religion, as before."

We are then told that a copy of the articles of accusation
was accidentally dropt by one of the council, and somehow
found its way to the Queen, who was thereupon, as well she
might, suddenly taken dangerously ill ; that Henry visited
her with such appearance of kindness that she soon after
became sufficiently recovered to repair to his apartment,
where he artfully contrived to turn the conversation to their
old topic of -debate. " But the Queene," says Fox, " per-
ceiving to what purpose this his talke tended, ' Your Majestie

QUEEN CATHARINE PAR. 141

doth well know/ quoth shee, ' and I am not ignorant of,
what great weaknesse by our first creation is allotted to us
women, to be subject unto man as our head, from which head
all our direction must proceed. And, as God made man
after his own image, that, being indued with more speciall
gifts of perfection, hee might be stirred to meditate heavenly
things, and obey his commandements, so he made woman of
man, of whom, and by whom, she is to bee commanded and
governed, whose womanly weaknesse ought to bee tolerated
and ayded, that by his wisedome, such things as be lacking
in her might be supplied : Therefore, your Majestie being so
excellent in ornaments of wisedome, and I so much inferiour
in all respects of nature, why doth your Majestie in such
defuse causes of religion require my judgement, which, when
I have uttered and said what I can, yet I must and will
referre my judgement in this and all causes to your Majestie's
wisedome, as my onely anker, supreme head, and the governor
heere on earth next unto God 1 '

" ' Not so, by St. Mary,' said the King, ' You are become
a doctor, Kate, to instruct us.'

" She answered, ' Your Majesty hath much mistaken mee,
who have ever thought it preposterous for the woman to
instruct her husband, but rather to learn of him ; and, where
I have beene bold to hold talke with your Majestie whereof
there hath seemed some difference in opinion, I have not done
it to maintaine opinion, but to minister talke, that your
Majestie might with less griefe passe the paine of your
infirmitie, being attentive to your talke ; and that I might
receive some profit by your Majestie's learned discourse,
wherein I have not missed any part of my desire, alwaies
referring myselfe in such matters to your Majestie.'

" ' Then,' said the King, ' tendeth your argument to no
worse end ? Then wee are now -as perfect friendes as evere
wee were.' And he embraced her, and kissed her : saying
it did him more good to heare these words than if he had
heard newes of a hundred thousand pound fallen to him.

142 QCEEN CATHARIXE PAR.

" On the day that was appointed for the aforesaid tragedy
the King went into his garden, whether the Queene, being
sent for, came, onely the three ladies ahovenamed waiting on
her ; with whom the King was as pleasant as ever hee was
in his life. In the middest of his mirth, the houre appointed
being come, the Lord Chancelor cometh into the garden, with
forty of the King's guard at his heeles, with purpose to take
the Queene, with the three ladies, to the Tower ; whom the
King, sternly beholding, called him to him, who, on his
knees, whispered to the King. The King cal'd him knave,
arrant knave, and beastly foole . and commanded him to avant
out of his presence ; which words the Queene heard, though
they were low spoken. Then he departed, with his traine,
the whole mould of his device broken. The Queene, seeing
the King so chafed, spoke for the Lord Chancelor. ' Ah,
poore soule,' quoth hee, ' thou little knowest how evill hee
deserveth this grace at thy hands : he hath been towards
thee, sweetheart, an arrant knave, and so let him goe.' " The
matter and manner of this narrative will furnish a sufficient
apology for so lengthened a quotation.

Catharine's attachment, however, to the reformed religion
was perhaps not wholly useless to Henry. When he departed
in 1544 on his famous expedition to the coast of France, he
appointed her Regent during his absence, to awe, as Lord
Herbert conceives, the Papists, who well knew her aversion
to them, and it seems to have been the only mark of his poli-
tical confidence that she ever received. He bequeathed to
her by his Will, in which he acknowledges " her great love,
obedience, chasteness of life, and wisdom," in addition to her
jointure, three thousand pounds in plate, jewels, and furni-
ture, and one thousand pounds in money, a wretched legacy,
valuable even as money then was, to a Dowager Queen.

Slenderly provided for, obnoxious to a very powerful party,
and not without some previous tenderness towards the object
of her choice, she sought protection in a fourth marriage with
Thomas Lord Seymour of Sudely, Lord Admiral of England,

QUEEN CATHARINE PAR. 143

and brother to the Protector Somerset, which produced to
her the most fatal consequences. The Admiral, in whom all
other passions and sentiments gave way to that most inordi-
nate ambition, which, for the time, he had gratified by
marrying the widow of his King, presently conceived a
scheme for mounting yet a step higher by espousing the
Princess Elizabeth, some curious circumstances of his inter-
course with whom will be found in their proper place in this
work. While Catharine laboured under the miseries of
jealousy on that account, she was assailed by the envy of the
Duchess of Somerset, " a woman," says the chief writer on
the reign of Edward the Sixth, "for many imperfections
intolerable, but for pride monstrous." Neglected by a hus-
band whom she loved, insulted by an inferior, and beholding
a rival in her daughter-in-law, the Queen's constitution sunk
under an accumulation of so many griefs. It has been com-
monly asserted that she died in child-birth, a report which,
adverting to the fact that she had been childless in three
previous marriages, might reasonably be doubted, notwith-
standing the proof which we have from one of her own
letters to her husband that she believed herself to be preg-
nant. It has been said, too, with yet less probability, that
she was taken off by poison. Both these statements may
perhaps be fairly traced to the same source, the confession
of her attendant, the Lady Tyrwhit, (see Hayne's and Mur-
din's State Papers,) given in evidence on another occasion.
That document informs us that the Queen, two days before
her death, said, " that she dyd/ere(qu. feel ?) such things in
herself that she was suer she cold not lyve." That she used
also these words : " My Lady Tyrwhit, I am not wel han-
delyd ; for thos that be abowt me caryth not for me, but
standyth lawghyng at my gref ; and the more good I wyl to
them, the less good they wyl to me." That the Admiral,
whom she then had by the hand, said, " Why, sweethart, I
wold you no hurt : " to which she replied aloud, " No, my
Lord, I think so ; " and imedyetly she said to him, in his

144 QUEEN CATHARINE PAR.

ere, " but, my Lord, you have geven me many shrowd
tauntes." Afterwards, says Lady Tyrwhit, she spoke to
him " very rowndly and shartly (qu. sharply ?) sayeng, My
Lord, I would have' geven a thowsand markes to have had
my full talke with Hewyke the first day I was deliueryd,
but I doorst not, for displeasyng of you." The evidence for
the child-birth and the poisoning seems then to rest on the
Queen's having used the words " delivered " and " fear ; "
for the other speeches ascribed to her in this conversation
were but the ordinary reproaches which any woman might
be expected to utter to an unkind husband.

She died at Lord Seymour's seat at Sudely, in Gloucester-
shire, on Wednesday, the fifth of September, 1548, and was
buried in the chapel of the castle. In 1782, her tomb was
opened, and the face, particularly the eyes, on removing the
cerecloth which covered that part of her embalmed corpse,
are said to have been found in perfect preservation. A de-
tailed account of this exhibition, and of the odious negligence
with which the royal remains were afterwards treated, may
be found in the ninth volume of Archseologia.

Catharine was learned, and a lover of learning. The fame
of her affection to literature, as well as to religion, induced
the University of Cambridge to implore her intercession
with Henry on the occasion of the act which placed all col-
leges, chantries, &c., at the King's disposal. She published,
in 1545, a volume of Prayers and Meditations, " collected,"
as the title informs us, " out of holy woorkes ; " and in some
editions of this little book, for it was many times reprinted,
may be found fifteen psalms, and some other small devotional
pieces, mostly of her original composition. She wrote also
" The Lamentation of a Sinner, bewailing the Ignorance of
her blind Life ;" meaning the errors of Popery, in which she
had passed the earlier part of it. This was printed after her
death, with a preface written by Secretary Cecil, afterwards
Lord Burghley. In the former of these volumes we find this
prayer " For men to saye entring into battayle," which

QUEEN CATHARINE PAR. 145

affords a fair example at once of the benignity and humility
of her disposition, and of the character of her style. " 0
Almighty Kinge, and Lorde of hostes ! which, by thy angells
thereunto appointed, doest minister both warre and peace ;
and which diddest give unto David both courage and strength,
being but a little one, unarmed, and unexpert in feats of
warre, with his slinge to sette uppon and overthrown
the great huge Goliath ; our cause being just, and being
enforsed to entre into warre and battaile, we most humbly
beseche thee, 0 Lord God of hostes, sooe to turn the hearts
of our enemyes to the desire of peace that no Christian
bloud be spilt ; or els graunt, 0 Lorde, that, with small
effusion of bloud, and to the little hurt and dommage of
innocentes, we may, to thy glory, obtayne victory ; and that,
the warres being soone ended, we may all with one heart
and minde knitte together in concorde and unitie, laude
and prayse thee, which livest and reignest world without
end. Amen."

1

THOMAS* ILOKE) § EYMOUJ K,
OF SUDELEt.

OB. 154-9.

THOMAS, LORD SEYMOUR

OF SCDELEY.

THIS eminent person, who seems to have possessed all the
qualities necessary to form what the world usually calls a
great man, except patience, was the third son of Sir John
Seymour, of Wolf Hall, in Wiltshire, by Margaret, daughter
of Sir Henry Wentworth, of Nettlested, in Suffolk. His
family, which had stood for ages in the foremost rank of
English gentry, was suddenly elevated by the marriage of
his sister Jane to Henry the Eighth. It is well known that
Edward, his eldest surviving brother, was by that Prince
created Viscount Beauchamp, and Earl of Hertford, and that
in the succeeding reign he was appointed by the council
governor of the infant King, and Protector of the realm ;
obtained the dignity of Duke of Somerset, and perished on
the scaffold. Both were eminently distinguished for military
skill and gallantry, but Thomas had the advantage in talents ;
was remarkable for a general firmness of mind, a daring spirit
of enterprise, and the loftiest ambition. He had served with
the utmost merit and applause in Henry's wars against the
French, and, in or about the year 1544, was placed for life
in the post of Master of the Ordnance : on the accession of
his nephew, Edward the Sixth, he was constituted Lord
Admiral of England, created Baron Seymour of Sudeley, in
Gloucestershire, and elected a Knight of the Garter. Till
this period, these great men had manifested a mutual cor-
diality and confidence. The constant favour of Henry had
i 2

K3 THOMAS, LORD SEYMOUR

left no room for alarm in the timid breast of the one, and
the haughty strictness of his rule had curbed the swelling
pride of the other, but the death of that imperious Prince
was the signal for their total disunion. The features of a
plan of aggrandisement which could not but have been pre-
meditated presently disclosed themselves xa the conduct of
Seymour, and the most prominent of them appeared in his
determination to connect himself with royalty by marriage.
It has been said, but the report is unsupported by historical
evidence, that he first attempted to win the affections of the
Princess Mary. If it were so, his advances must have been
made, which is highly improbable, during her father's reign,
for immediately after that Prince's death he paid his ad-
dresses to the Queen Dowager, Catharine Par, and with so
little reserve that their more than ordinary intimacy became
presently evident to the whole Court. Catharine was easily
persuaded, for he had been a favoured suitor before her mar-
riage to the King, and accepted him for her fourth husband,
long before the formality of her ostensible mourning for
Henry had expired.

The discord between the brothers may be historically
traced almost to the precise period of this marriage, and has
been wholly ascribed to it by a writer equally remarkable for
vehemence of prejudice, and carelessness of truth. Sanders,
the well-known literary champion of Romanism, not content
with observing, which he might probably have done with
justice, that their quarrel originated in the hatred conceived
by the Protector's lady, Anne Stanhope, a woman of into-
lerable pride and malice, against Catharine, would persuade
us that its entire progress, and tragical termination, were
directed solely by her influence. " There arose," says San-
ders, " a very great contest between Queen Catharine Par
and the Protector's wife who should have the precedence ;
and the contest rested not in the women, but passed to the
men : and when the emulation continually increased, the
Protector's wife would not le.t her husband alone, till at last

OF SUDELEY. 149

it came to pass that the Protector, who, although he ruled
the King yet was ruled by his wife, must cut off his brother,
that nothing might be an hindrance to her will." Hay ward,
the able historian of that reign, without seeking for a corro-
boration of this tale, for which he would have sought in vain,
has adopted Sanders's report, and even enlarged on it, in
more than one of those florid passages so frequent in his
interesting work. The only document, however, on record
which tends to prove, and that rather obscurely, even that
any jealousy subsisted on the score of the marriage is a
letter from Catharine to the Admiral, in the year 1548, pre-
served in Haynes's State Papers, which commences with
these words, and then turns to other subjects. " Thys
schalbe to advertysche yow that my Lord your brother hathe
thys afternone a lyttell made me warme. Yt was fortunate
we war so much dystant, for I suppose els I schulde have
bitten him. What cause have they to feare havynge such a
wyffe ?" The truth is that Seymour, from the very hour of
Edward's accession, had been meditating the means of sup-
planting his brother in the King's affections, and in the
exercise of his public authority.

The Protector was not long unapprised of these designs.
Even so early as the summer of 1547, while he was fighting
victoriously in Scotland, he received intelligence that his
brother was engaged in great and dangerous intrigues against
him at home. Led astray as well by goodness of heart as
weakness of judgment, he had framed the fantastic theory of
building the strength of his government on the affection of
the people, and had therefore courted the Commons at the
expense of the Aristocracy. Seymour availed himself of this
error, and industriously fomented the discontent which it
had excited among the nobles, but his rashness impelled
him to premature steps. Without sufficient preparation, he
endeavoured to prevail on them to propose in Parliament the
abrogation of his brother's high faculties, and the election of
himself to the station of Guardian of the King's person ;

150 THOMAS, LORD SEYMOUR

artfully, however, and with an affected modesty, declining
the office of Protector, with the double view of securing to
his own interests him who might eventually be elected to it,
and of controlling his government by the exercise of a secret
influence over the royal mind. He even prevailed on Ed-
ward to write a letter to the Parliament, desiring them to
appoint him to the first of those trusts. His suggestions,
however, were received with coldness and disgust, and he
resented the disappointment with the undisguised anger and
the unguarded speeches of one to whom a just right had
been denied. The Protector, on his return, unwillingly pre-
pared to proceed against him as a public criminal, and
accepted with eagerness the concessions and apologies which
he was at length prevailed on to offer, but those motions on
the Admiral's part were wholly insincere, and his ambitious
resolutions perhaps acquired new force from the privacy with
which he was now compelled to cherish them.

Artifice indeed seems to have been foreign from his nature,
but he had no alternative but to practise it or to abandon
his designs. He again addressed himself secretly to the
young King ; endeavoured to inflame his passions with the
desire of independent sway ; told him that he was " a poor
King, and could not pay his own servants," and soothed the
generosity of his disposition by supplying him privately with
money ; but the purity of Edward's heart, and the superi-
ority of his mind, rendered these stratagems fruitless, while
his affection to his uncles induced him, till the secret was at
length wrung from him, to conceal them. In the mean time
an increasing intimacy, of a singular and mysterious nature,
was observed to subsist between the Admiral and the young
Elizabeth, who had been placed, upon the death of her father,
under the care of the Queen Dowager, and remained an
inmate in her family after her marriage to Seymour. Eliza-
beth had then scarcely passed her fourteenth year, and his
attentions to her seem to have commenced with those inno-
cent freedoms which it is usual to take with children.

OP SUDELEY. 151

Catharine herself was often a party in their levities. But it
was not long before he addressed himself to her with
privacy, or in the presence only of some of her principal
attendants, whom it is evident he had secured to his inte-
rests. Elizabeth, on her part, became enamoured of him,
and the Queen, after indulging an easy and unsuspicious
temper, even to absurdity, was at length jealous, and pro-
cured the removal of the object of her uneasiness to the
custody of others. On these curious circumstances history,
which is not at all surprising, has been wholly silent. They
have been disclosed by the publication, in that fine col-
lection, Haynes's State Papers, of the unwilling testimonies
of several persons preparatory to the prosecution of the
Admiral, to which I must refer the reader for particulars too
numerous, and, in some instances, too gross, to be here
recited. The motives to his conduct in the pursuit of this
amour, for so it must be called, are scarcely doubtful. If
the princess had surrendered her honour to his importunities,
she could have bribed him to secrecy only by submitting to
become his wife, a condescension which in that case he cer-
tainly intended to exact. Catharine, it is true, was then
living, and in good health, but might easily have been put
out of the way. A man at once powerful, active, ambitious
and unprincipled, could at that time scarcely encounter an
insurmountable difficulty. She died very soon after, not by
poison, as has been reported, but in childbirth, and circum-
stances which presently succeeded effectually arrested the
progress of the Admiral's designs on Elizabeth.

Some time, however, was yet allowed to him for the con-
trivance of new schemes. Those considerations which led
Edward's Council to put the Princess Elizabeth into the
hands of Catharine Par had induced them to place Jane Grey
also, who was next in succession to the Crown, in the same
custody. After the death of Catharine, the Marquis of
Dorset, father to Jane, became desirous to recal his daughter
into the bosom of her family. Seymour under various pre-

J52 THOMAS, LORD SEYMOUR

texts, resisted his importunities, and, on being earnestly
pressed, secretly represented to the Marquis the probability,
should she still be permitted to remain under the protection
of himself and his mother, that he might contrive to unite
her in marriage to the young King. This overture, such was
the coarseness of the age, was accompanied by a present of
five hundred pounds, and Dorset accepted it, and submitted.
The Admiral was actuated in this negotiation by two motives.
Dorset, though a man of weak intellect, possessed a powerful
influence, derived from his lady's relation in blood to the
throne, from his great estates, and, above all, from the inno-
cence and integrity of his character. Seymour was anxious
to ensure his support ; but this was not all ; the Protector,
or, perhaps, rather his lady, had proposed their heir as a
husband for Jane, and the Admiral was not less eager to
thwart their views, than in the pursuit of his own. To his
envy of his brother's greatness a private injury had lately
added the desire of revenge. Henry had bequeathed to the
Queen Dowager some estates, and certain valuable jewels,
to the possession of neither of which she had been admitted.
After her death, Seymour, seemingly with strict justice,
claimed them of the Council, and that body, under the
direction, as he conceived, of the Protector, refused to admit
his claim.

Somerset, however, seems to have acted, through the whole
of their contest, with the most exemplary patience and mode-
ration, resulting from a rooted tenderness for his brother ;
but new discoveries, rapidly succeeding each other, at length
compelled him, not only for his own security, but for that
of the realm, to interpose his authority. In addition to the
instances that have been already given of Seymour's dan-
gerous disposition, it now appeared that he had seduced by
presents and promises almost all those persons who had
ready access to the King's person, and were most in his con-
fidence ; that he had propagated the most injurious reports
of the secret policy of his brother's government, asserting,

OF SUDELEY. 153

among a multitude of other calumnies, that he was raising
in Germany a mercenary force, by the aid of which he
intended to establish a despotism in England ; that he had
established a formidable influence in every county of the
realm ; had computed that he could raise even among his
own tenants, servants, and retainers, ten thousand men ; had
actually provided arms for their use ; and had gained to his
interests Sir John Sharington, Master of the Mint at Bristol,
who had engaged to supply him with money to equip them.
The Protector, thoroughly informed on all these points, still
hesitated. He endeavoured once more to try the effect of
entire confidence and affectionate persuasion ; reasoned and
entreated with the coolness and impartiality of a disinterested
friend ; and strove, even at this late period, to reclaim his
brother's kindness and duty by new favours and distinctions.
Seymour, among whose faults treachery and deceit appear
to have had no place, received these condescensions with a
haughty sullenness, and would engage for nothing ; and
Dudley, Earl of Warwick, whose secret plans for raising
himself on the ruins of the family of Seymour were already
approaching to maturity, seized the opportunity afforded by
this obstinacy of persuading the Protector to give up to his
fate a man by whose talents and courage they would pro-
bably have been rendered abortive. Somerset, thus influ-
enced, deprived his brother of the office of Admiral, and on
the sixteenth of January, 1549, 0. S., signed a warrant for
his imprisonment in the Tower.

A committee of three Privy Councillors was now deputed
to take those examinations from which most of the foregoing
particulars of Seymour's offences have been derived ; the
result was digested into thirty-three articles, which were
laid before the Privy Council ; and that assembly went pre-
sently after in a body to the Tower to interrogate himself,
but he refused to answer ; demanded time to consider the
charges ; and a public trial, in which he might be confronted
with the witnesses. This was denied, and it was deter-

154 THOMAS, LORD SEYMOUR OF SUDELEY.

mined to prosecute him by a bill of attainder. No other
instance perhaps can be found in which that suspicious and
unpopular process had been at any time conducted with so
much justice andx fairness. It occupied exclusively the at-
tention of the Parliament from the twenty-fourth of February
till the fifth of March, and the multifarious facts alleged
were canvassed with the most scrupulous exactness. The
Peers, by whom it was passed unanimously, paid the com-
pliment, unusual in those days, to the lower House, of per-
mitting such of their own body as could give evidence on the
case to be there examined viva voce ; and in the latter
assembly, more than four hundred members being on that day
present, it was opposed only by nine or ten voices. The
Protector, now, with a reluctant hand, signed a warrant for.
Seymour's execution, and, on the twentieth of March, he
suffered death on Tower Hill, in a sullen silence, and with
a courage so ferocious and desperate, as to have given occa-
sion to Bishop Latimer to say, in his fourth sermon, that
" he died very dangerously, irksomely, horribly ; so that his
end was suitable to his life, which was very vicious, profane,
and irreligious."

Lord Seymour was never married, but to Catharine Par,
who left to him an only daughter, Mary, born in September,
1548, who survived him, and was restored in blood almost
immediately after his death, but died an infant.

ANTHONY IDENWY.

OB, 1549.

SIR ANTHONY DENNY.

AMIDST the horrible extravagances of ferocity and caprice
which stain the annals of Henry the Eighth, we discover
that he was not incapable of firm, and even tender, friend-
ship. His attachments of this kind were few, but lasting,
and their most remarkable objects were Brandon and Denny,
the servants and companions of his younger days, from whom
his affection seems never to have swerved. Denny appears
to have had one of those unostentatious characters which
seldom long survive their owners ; to have avoided entirely
the envied labours of the State ; and, after his youth had passed
away, even the splendour and the festivities of the Court.
His merits, however, have not been left wholly unrecorded ;
but the best presumption of his general worth may be founded
perhaps on the total silence of detraction, in a time equally
factious, unprincipled, and uncharitable.

Some writers have insisted on the antiquity of his family,
but the truth is that he was very ordinarily descended.
Dugdale expressly says that he could discover none of his
ancestors beyond his father, respecting whom also gross mis-
takes have been made in all printed authorities, in which he
is uniformly stated to have been Thomas Denny, and to
have married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Mannock. The
Thomas who did so marry, was in fact one of the elder bro-
thers of Anthony, who was the fourth, but at length second
surviving son of Edmund Denny, first a clerk, afterwards
remembrancer, and at length a Baron of the Exchequer, and
their mother was Mary, daughter and heir of a gentleman

156 SIR ANTHOXY DEXXY.

of the name of Troutbeck. Anthony was born on the
eighteenth of January, in the year 1500 ; commenced his
education at St. Paul's school ; and completed it in St. John's
College, in Cambridge, from whence he carried with him an
eminent reputation for universal learning. By what good
fortune he obtained his introduction to the Court we are
wholly ignorant, but it must have been at a very early time
of life, and he seems to have acquired almost immediately
not only Henry's favour, but his confidence. He was made a
gentleman of the Privy Chamber, then an office immediately
about the royal person, to which he was soon after brought
yet nearer by the appointment of Groom of the Stole. He
became the King's constant and familiar attendant in all his
progresses, and in his magnificent excursions to the con-
tinent ; combated with him in the jousts, and relieved the
conversation of his private table by mingling with its gaieties
the sober charms of science.

He had probably been an early convert to the new system
of faith, for which, at all events, he showed an extraordinary
zeal in the very commencement of the Reformation in Eng-
land ; but he is nowhere stigmatised as a persecutor, and
indeed seems to have shunned all concern in the active
measures by which that great event was accomplished. Few
men, however, partook more largely in the spoil of the
ancient Church. Henry granted to him in 1537 the dis-
solved Priory of Hertford, the manor of Butterwick, in the
parish of St. Peter, in St. Alban's, and the manors of the
Rectory, and of the nunnery in Cheshunt, and of Great
Amwell, all in the county of Hertford ; and in 1540, several
valuable lands, part of the possessions of Waltham Abbey,
in Essex, to which about the same time was added a lease
for thirty-one years of all the remaining estates of that rich
house, the whole of which were afterwards gradually ob-
tained in fee from Edward the Sixth by himself, and his
widow. On the sixteenth of January, 1541, nearly all the
demesnes of the yet more wealthy Abbey of St. Alban's were

SIR ANTHONY DENNT. 157

settled by Act of Parliament on him and his heirs, including
•the manors, advowsons, and most of the lands, of eleven
parishes, together with many extensive farms in others. To
these enormous gifts, amounting at the least to twenty thou-
sand acres, in that part of the kingdom which was then in
the highest state of cultivation, and all within thirty miles
of the metropolis, the King added in 1544 the great ward-
ship of Margaret, only daughter and heir of Thomas Lord
Audley, the intermixture of whose estates with his own con-
tributed to raise his influence in Essex and Hertfordshire into
a sort of dominion. He represented the latter county in the
first Parliament of Edward the Sixth, as it is scarcely to be
doubted he had also in the preceding reign ; a fact of no
great importance, which a large chasm in our public records
leaves in uncertainty.

He had not the distinction of Knighthood till after 1541,
about which time he was sworn of the Privy Council ; and
on the thirty-first of August, 1546, he was joined in a com-
mission with two other trusty servants of the Crown to sign
all public instruments in the King's name. Henry had
fallen into such weakness as to be incapable of performing
that office with his own hand, and a stamp was prepared for
his use about that time, in imitation of his signature. It is
probable therefore that this high trust was exercised by
Denny and his colleagues merely for the short interval
between the commencement of the King's inability and the
completion of the stamp, which it has been pretty well ascer-
tained Henry used to apply with his own hand. In the
succeeding January he attended his master's death-bed, and
in the performance of his last duty gave a signal proof of
his fortitude, as well as of his piety and fidelity. " The
King continued in decay," says Burnet in his History of the
Reformation, " till the twenty-seventh of the month, and
then, many signs of his approaching end appearing, few
would adventure on so unwelcome a thing as to put him in
mind of his end, then imminent ; but Sir Anthony Denny

158 SIR ANTHONY DENNY.

had the honesty and courage to do it, and desired him to pre-
pare for death, and remember his former life, and to call on
God for mercy, through Jesus Christ. Upon which the
King expressed his grief for the sins of his past life, yet he
said he trusted in the mercies of Christ, which were greater
than they were. Then Denny moved him to call in the aid
of a pious minister, and the King desired him to send for
Archbishop Cranmer," &c. Henry appointed him of the
Council to Edward the Sixth, and one of the executors of his
will, in which he bequeathed to him a legacy of three hun-
dred pounds.

Sir Anthony Denny did not long survive his royal friend.
He died, little past the prime of life, at Cheshunt, on the
tenth of September, 1549, Among the poems of Henry,
Earl of Surrey, we find some lines, of no great interest,
which seem to have been designed for his epitaph, and were
therefore probably the work of some other pen, as Surrey
died three years before him.

" Death, and the King, did, as it were, contend
Which of them two bare Denny greatest love :
The King, to show his love can far extend,
Did him advance his betters far above :
Near place, much wealth, great honour, eke him gave,
To make it known what power great princes have.

But when Death came, with his triumphant gift,
From worldly carke he quit his wearied ghost,
Free from the corpse, and straight to heaven it lift.
Now deem that can who did for Denny most :
The King gave wealth, but fading and unsure :
Death brought him bliss that ever shall endure."

An epistle, however, addressed to him by Roger Ascham,
affords us some view of his character, particularly in the
following remarkable passage — " Religio, doctrina, respublica.
omnes curas tuas sic occupant ut extra has tres res nullum

SIR ANTHONY DENNY. 159

tempus consumas." But the largest tribute extant to his
memory is to be found in an heroic poem, by Sir John Cheke,
published in Strype's life of that eminent person, from which
I will beg leave to insert rather a long extract.

" Deneius venit ad superos, mortalia linquens,
Britannos inter clarus —

Quis dignam illius factis vocem, quis premiere verba
Possit, et excelsas laudes aequare canendo ?
Quae pietas, et quanta viri ? Quis fervor in illo
Religionis erat ? Quam purus cultus in illo
Caelestis patris ? Quanta in Christum fidei vis
Extitit illius sacrata morte redempti ?
Munera qua rursum ? Quos & libavit honores
Justitiaeque speique Deo ? Quae victima laudis
Cassa fuit ? Grati cordisque orisque diurna
Hostia, quam saepe est hominum divumque parenti
Oblata in Christo. Christinam baud immemor unqnam
Ille fuit, propter divinam sanguine fuso,
Mortem mortales quae primum conciliavit,
Peccati, scelerisque, ruina, et pendere presses.
Quid memorem Henricum claro de stemmate Regem,
Henricum octavum terras, marisque potentem ?
O quibus hie studiis, quo ilium est amplcxus amore,
Quem side subjectumque bonum, servumque fidelem
Scribat, et officia haec haud parvo munere pcnsans,
Ostendit se herumque bonum, Regemque benignum.
Consiliumque lepos quantum superadditus auget,
Et juvat optatas ad res bene conficioudas,
Ille alios tantum superat, qui flectere mentem
Henrici potuit, miscens nunc utile dulci,
Seria nunc levibus texens, nuuc grandia parvis.
Quam facilem cursum hie aliis ad vota sequenda
Fecerat, atque aditum multis facilem patefecit ?
Quam bona multa aliis, et quam mala nulla cuiquam
Intulit ? Et laudem summam virtutis habebat
Hujus, qui nullos nee apertos laeserat hostes," &c.

Sir Anthony Denny married Joan, daughter of Sir Philip

160 SIR ANTHONY DENNY.

Champernoun, of Modbury, in Devonshire, a lady of remark-
able beauty and talents, and a zealous supporter of the re-
formed religion, which she openly avowed, to her great
hazard. Fox has recorded that she sent money by her ser-
vants to the amiable and courageous Anne Ayscue, who after-
wards suffered death at the stake, when a prisoner in the
Compter. She brought him two sons, and three daughters.
Henry, the eldest son, married, first, Honora, daughter of
William, Lord Grey of Wilton ; and, secondly, Elizabeth,
daughter of John, Lord Grey of Pyrgo ; and had by the former
an only son, Edward, who was by James the First created
Baron Denny, of Waltham, in Essex, and by Charles the
First, Earl of Norwich, which dignities became extinct at
his death, as he left an only daughter, his sole heir, wife to
James Hay, Earl of Carlisle. Sir Edward Denny, second son
<>f Sir Anthony, married Margaret, daughter of Peter Edge-
cumbe, of Mount Edgecumbe, in Devonshire, by whom he
was the ancestor of a family of his name now remaining in
Ireland. The daughters were, Douglas, wife of Richard Dyve ;
Mary, married to Thomas Astley, a Groom of the Privy
Chamber ; and Honora, to Thomas Wingfield.

DITKE OV SOMERSET
OB, 1552.

EDWARD SEYMOUR,

DUKE OF SOMERSET.

EVEN a faint sketch of the life of such a person as the Pro-
tector Somerset can scarcely be expected in a work like this.
Inseparable from the history of all the great public transac-
tions of a very important period, and enveloped in the
mysteries of faction, it presents a theme not less for argu-
mentative disquisition than for extended and exact narration.
A treatise embracing both would be a great historical acqui-
sition, but he who is bound to confine such a subject to the
limits of a brief memoir must be content to restrict himself
to a dry detail of facts, or to an imperfect series of conjec-
tures and presumptions.

The Protector was the eldest of the six sons of Sir John
Seymour, of Wolf Hall, in Wiltshire, by Margaret, daughter of
Sir Henry Wentworth, of Nettlested, in Suffolk. His father,
who, though the heir of a long line of wealthy and powerful
ancestors, had passed his life in the courts and armies of
Henry the Seventh and Eighth, placed him, while yet a youth,
in the view of the latter of those princes, recommended as
well by the best education of the time, for he had studied
profitably in both Universities, as by a turn for military gal-
lantry, and an eminent sweetness of temper. The King
received him favourably, ^nd permitted him to accompany
the Duke of Suffolk in his expedition to the coast of France
in August 1523, where his bravery in several actions was re-
warded by that nobleman with the honour of knighthood,

1. ii

162 EDWARD SEYMOUR,

conferred in the field. He returned to distinguish himself
in the warlike sports of the court in which Henry so much
delighted ; was one of the chosen party which graced Wol-
sey's splendid embassy to Paris in 1527 ; and attended the
King at his celebrated interview with Francis the First in
1532, holding at that time the honourable, but now obsolete,
office of Esquire of the royal body.

Having thus slowly attained to that station, and perhaps
indulging little hope of further preferment, an event occurred
which ranked him suddenly among the highest in the realm.
Henry became enamoured of his sister Jane, and, even before
his passion for her was publicly known, raised her to the
throne. On the fifth of June, 1536, a few days after the
marriage, Seymour was raised to the dignity of Viscount
Beau champ, and on the eighteenth of October, in the ensuing
year, created Earl of Hertford. The untimely death of the
Queen, which occurred just at that period, caused no diminu-
tion of the royal favour towards him, but Henry, unwilling
to expose her family to the envy of the court, prudently de-
layed to advance him to high offices ; nor was he placed in
any but the comparatively insignificant posts of Chancellor
and Chamberlain of North Wales, and Governor of Jersey,
till 1540, when he was sent Ambassador to Paris, to settle
some disputes as to the boundaries of the English territory
in France. On his return, in the beginning of the following
year, he received the Order of the Garter, and in 1542 was
appointed Lord Great Chamberlain for life. In the mean
time the King had sought to gratify his passion for military
fame by giving him a command in the forces not long before
sent into Scotland, under the Duke of Norfolk, in which he
acquitted himself so well that on the declaration of war
against the Scots in 1544 the first of the three divisions of
the powerful army then despatched into that country was
intrusted wholly to his charge, together with the important
office of Lieutenant General of the North. At home new
marks of favour and confidence awaited him : Henry, who

DUKE OF SOMERSET. 163

this year crossed the channel to the siege of Boulogne, named
him one of the four counsellors by whose advice the Queen
was to be directed, and commander- in-chief on any occasions
of military service which might occur during his absence.
Amidst these ample engagements he pined for warlike enter-
prise ; obtained the King's permission to join him before
Boulogne ; and distinguished himself there by the most signal
skill and bravery in several actions after the reduction of the
town, as well as by the sagacity which he displayed in the
treaty of peace with Francis which presently followed. On
his return from France he was elected Chancellor of the
University of Cambridge, and Henry, who died soon after,
included him in the number of his executors, to whom, in the
nature of a Council of Regency, he intrusted the guardianship
of his son.

One of the first acts of that Council was to invest him with
the supreme government, and the title of Protector of the
realm, and Governor of the King's person ; and one of the
first purposes to which he applied his authority was to use
the King's name in advancing himself to the dignity of Duke
of Somerset. To remove the imputation of vanity so likely
to attend such a step, a curious expedient was devised. Some
other eminent persons were at the same time raised to the
Peerage, and others promoted in it, and each individually
testified for all the rest that it was the declared intention of
the late King to have bestowed on them the titles now con-
ferred, which was done therefore but in obedience to his
pleasure. The Protector assumed also, about the same time,
the great office of Earl Marshal, for life.

Edward's reign commenced with a war against the Scots.
A treaty for his marriage to their infant Queen had been
earnestly agitated by Henry, who on his death -bed com-
manded that it should be carried on with all assiduity, and
the Protector zealously resumed it, but was baffled by delays
and evasions. Any pretext for an invasion of that country
was in those days welcome. Twenty thousand men, ad-
M 2

164 EDWARD SEYMOUR,

mirably equipped, were marched into Scotland by Somerset
in person, and gained a complete victory in the sanguinary
and decisive battle of Musselborough, almost without loss.
His return was hailed with marks of respect and love, amount-
ing almost to adoration. Charmed by the fickle voice of the
multitude, it was perhaps now that he conceived an unrea-
sonable affection to popularity, and fondly sought to strengthen
his authority by resting it on the ever-doubtful basis of public
esteem.

His vain endeavours to this end produced universal disgust.
To ingratiate himself with the nobility, who as yet held the
spoils of the ancient church but by precarious tenure, he ap-
plied himself with vigour to destroy every vestige of its prac-
tice. Shortly after his arrival from Scotland he issued in-
junctions for the removal from churches of all images, and
other visible objects of worship, and despatched commission-
ers into every part of the kingdom to enforce the execution.
The commonalty, with whom the march of the reformation
had been more tardy, perhaps because it administered nothing
to their temporal interests, highly resented this harsh and
sudden subversion of their inveterate habits, which even
Henry for the time had left undisturbed. On the other hand,
he attempted to win the mass of the people by an ordinance
as summary and unexpected, not only prohibiting the enclo-
sure of commons and waste lands, but charging those who
had already made enclosures to lay them again open. It is
needless to say that such persons were almost wholly of the
higher order, and it will readily be conceived that they con-
sidered this regulation as a heinous injury. A fever of dis-
content presently raged throughout the realm. Insurrections
burst forth in several counties on the score of religion. In
others the people, impatient of the delay and unwillingness
with which the enclosers restored to them a property their
right to which had now acquired a new guarantee, rose in
thousands, and having broken down the fences which had de-
barred them, proceeded, according to the invariable practice

DUKE OF SOMERSET. 165

of mobs, to spoil the mansions and the goods of the offenders.
In the mean time a powerful party vras secretly formed
against him in the court.

At the head of this faction was his brother, Thomas Lord
Seymour, of Sudeley, whom he had advanced at the com-
mencement of Edward's reign to that dignity, and to the
office of Lord Admiral of England. The conduct of that
nobleman towards the Protector, and its motives, and the
lenity, and even tenderness, which he experienced to the last
at the hands of his injured brother, may be found treated of
at large in this work, in a memoir appropriated to himself.
The Admiral, after long delays, was put to death for repeated
treasons ; but a more formidable adversary presently ap-
peared. John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, a man of consider-
able talents, and equally ambitious and intrepid, was the
Protector's secret enemy, and, from motives as well of anger
as of envy, had determined to accomplish his ruin. Somerset,
to gratify his brother, had deprived Warwick of the great
office of Lord Admiral, which he had filled with abundant
credit during the five concluding years of the late reign, and
the offence was never forgiven. Warwick, however, dis-
sembled till after the fall of Lord Seymour. He had pri-
vately encouraged that nobleman in his practices against the
Protector, whom, on the other hand, he urged to resent them
to the utmost. A majority of the Privy Council was now
united against Somerset, and Warwick eagerly undertook to
be their leader ; they seceded suddenly from the main body,
assuming the authority of the whole, and indeed the govern-
ment of the realm ; and this step was concerted with such
secrecy that the Protector seems to have been wholly unap-
prised of its approach. They humbly averred to the King,
and indeed not untruly, that his uncle had on most occasions
contemned their advice, and issued a proclamation to the
same effect. Somerset abandoned his authority with pusil-
lanimous precipitation. Articles of accusation were drawn
up, and he acknowledged the justice of them on his knees at

166 EDWARD SEYMOUR,

the Council table. He then signed a confession to the same
purpose, which was presented to the Parliament, and that
assembly, having first examined him by a committee, stripped
him of all his offices, and, by way of fine, of estates to the
annual value of two thousand pounds. Here his prosecution
ceased for the time ; he was released from the Tower, where
he had suffered a very short imprisonment ; and was soon
after discharged of his fine. These matters occurred in the
winter of 1549.

The plenitude of power of which he had been deprived
now passed into the hands of Warwick, who seemed to be
fully appeased by the sacrifice. A personal reconciliation
between them, apparently sincere, was wrought through the
mediation of the amiable Edward, who even prevailed on
Warwick to give his eldest son in marriage to one of Somer-
set's daughters. The Duke, who possessed most of the
qualities which bestow comfort and ornament on private life,
laid down, perhaps with little regret, a burthen which neither
his talents nor his temper 'had well fitted him to support ;
but Warwick, by whose ambitious and ardent spirit such
moderation was utterly inconceivable, and who had injured
Somerset too deeply ever to forgive him, still suspected and
hated him. Popular affection had in some degree attended
the Duke in his retirement, and, though wholly forsaken by
the powerful, and possessing none of the qualities of a de-
magogue, his influence was yet dreaded. Warwick, now
Duke of Northumberland, at length determined to deprive
him of life, and he was arrested on the sixteenth of October,
1551, together with several of his intimates and retainers,
among whom some through purchased treachery, and othen
from careless imprudence, had divulged to the spies of North-
umberland the facts on which his accusation was to be
formed, and which were to be proved by no other than their
own evidence.

Northumberland's utmost influence seems to have been
exerted to induce the Privy Council, servile as it was, to con-

DUKE OF SOMERSET. 167

sent that he should be brought to a trial on charges which
any grand jury of later days would have rejected with horror
and disdain. After repeated examinations, that process,
however, took place on the first of the succeeding December,
twenty-seven peers forming the court. It was alleged against
him that he had meditated insurrections to subvert the
government, and had conspired to assassinate certain noble-
men at a banquet in the house of the Lord Paget, and, in-
credible as it may seem, three of these, Northumberland, the
Marquis of Northampton, and the Earl of Pembroke, had the
effrontery to sit that day among his judges. On the first class
of charges he was indicted of high treason ; on the second of
felony ; but no overt act tending to either was adduced, nor
was any proof made but of some vague and uncertain speeches,
uttered in the freedom of familiar conversation ; neither was he
allowed to confront the witnesses, for this wretched evidence
was delivered in the form of written depositions. Spite of the
vengeance of the prosecutor, and the gross partiality of the
court, it should seem that he might have been saved by slight
exertions on his own part of common prudence ; but he made
no defence ; uttered no clear denial of the charges ; nor did
he except with firmness against the palpable irregularities of
the process ; but wasted his time in unmeaning apologies,
and sought to move the compassion of his judges by such
plaints as usually result from the depression produced by
conscious demerit. In the end, he was acquitted of treason,
but convicted of the felony, and condemned to die. He suf-
fered on Tower Hill, on the twenty-second of January, N. S.
with a deportment and a speech which had little in them to
denote the man who had ruled kingdoms, and commanded
armies, or to afford any clear inference either of his innocence
or guilt.

The Protector was twice married. By his first lady,
Catharine, daughter and coheir of Sir William Fillol, of
Woodlands, in Dorsetshire, whom he repudiated, he had an
only son, Edward. He married, secondly, Anne, daughter of

168 EDWARD SEYMOUR, DUKE OF SOMERSET.

Sir Edward Stanhope, of Hampton, in the county of Notting-
ham, to whose pride, insolence, intriguing spirit, and control
over his conduct, some writers have ascribed most of his mis-
fortunes and errors,. She brought him a numerous issue, of
which Edward, the eldest son, was appointed his heir, under
a special entail, created by act of Parliament (the only son
by the first marriage being about the same time disinherited,
as well of the titles as of the estates), and from this second
son descended that line of Dukes of Somerset which failed in
1750. He had also by his Duchess, Anne Stanhope, two
younger sons ; Henry, and another Edward ; and six daugh-
ters ; Anne, first married, as has been already stated, to John
Dudley, Earl of Warwick, eldest son to John, Duke of North-
umberland ; secondly, to Sir Edward Unton, of Wadley, in
Oxfordshire, Knight of the Bath ; Margaret, and Jane, who
died unmarried, as did the fifth daughter, Catherine ; Mary,
married, first, Andrew, eldest son to Sir Richard Rogers, of
Bryanstone, in the county of Dorset ; secondly, to Sir Henry
Peyton ; and Elizabeth, wife to Sir Richard Knightley, of
Fawsley, in Northamptonshire. On the extinction, alluded
to above, of the male line from the eldest son of this second
marriage, the Dukedom reverted at length to the heir male of
Edward, the disinherited son of the first, from whom the
present Duke of Somerset is lineally descended. The public
and private history of these family affairs, of which as much
has been here stated as is consistent with the views of this
work, is little known, and of great curiosity.

KING EDWARD THE SIXTH,

THE son of Henry the Eighth by Jane Seymour, was horn at
Hampton Court on the 12th of October, 1537, and died at
Greenwich on the 6th of July, 1553.

The annals of this Prince present little more to our view
than the strange events which attended the struggle between
Seymour and Dudley for the possession of his person and
authority. The bloody war with Scotland, and the dangerous
insurrections which succeeded at home, occupied the ardent
minds and employed the talents of those chiefs during the
first two years of his reign ; but the return of national peace
gave birth to the bitterest discord between them ; and their
wisdom and bravery, which in the late public exigencies had
shone resplendently in the council and in the field, presently
sank into the contracted cunning and petty malice of factious
politicians. The Protector sought to intrench himself in the
stronghold of popular favour, and was perhaps the first Eng-
lish nobleman who endeavoured to derive power or security
from that source : his antagonist, too proud and too artful to
engage in an untried scheme, humiliating in its progress and
uncertain in its event, threw himself into the arms of a body
of discontented Nobles, lamenting the fallen dignity of the
Crown, and the tarnished honour of their order. He proved
successful : the Protector was accused of high treason, and
suffered on the scaffold, and the young king was transferred
to Dudley, together with the regal power.

These circumstances, well known as they are, will be
found to throw a new lustre on Edward's character. In this

170 KING EDWARD THE SIXTH.

convulsed time, so adverse to every sort of improvement
either in the morals, or less important accomplishments of
the youthful Prince ; under the disadvantages of an irregular
education, a slighted authority, and a sickly constitution ; he
made himself master of the most eminent qualifications.
VVith an almost critical knowledge of the Greek and Latin
languages, he understood and conversed in French, Spanish,
and Italian. He was well read in natural philosophy, astro-
nomy, and logic. He imitated his father in searching into
the conduct of public men in every part of his dominions,
and kept a register in which he wrote the characters of such
persons, even to the rank of Justices of the Peace. He was
well-informed of the value and exchange of money. He is
said to have been master of the theory of military arts, espe-
cially fortification ; and was acquainted with all the ports in
England, France, and Scotland, their depth of water, and
their channels. His journal, recording the most material
transactions of his reign from its very commencement, the
original of which, written by his own hand, remains in the
Cotton Library, proves a thirst for the knowledge not only of
political affairs at home and of foreign relations, but of the
laws of his realm, even to municipal and domestic regula-
tions comparatively insignificant, which, at his age, was truly
surprising. " This child," says the famous Cardan, who fre-
quently conversed with him, " was so bred, had such parts,
was of such expectation, that he looked like a miracle of a
man ; and in him was such an attempt of Nature, that not
only England but the world had reason to lament his being
so early snatched away."

With these great endowments, which too frequently pro-
duce haughty and ungracious manners, we find Edward mild,
patient, beneficent, sincere, and affable ; free from all the
faults, and uniting all the perfections, of the sovereigns of his
family who preceded or followed him : courageous and
steady, but humane and just ; bountiful, without profusion ;
pious, without bigotry ; graced with a dignified simplicity of

KING EDWARD THE SIXTH. 171

conduct in common affairs, which suited his rank as well as
his years ; and artlessly obeying the impulses of his perfect
mind, in assuming, as occasions required, the majesty of the
monarch, the gravity of the statesman, and the familiarity of
the gentleman.

Such is the account invariably given of Edward the Sixth ;
derived from no blind respect for the memory of his father,
whose death relieved his people from the scourge of tyranny ;
without hope of reward from himself, whose person never
promised manhood ; with no view of paying court to his
successor, who abhorred him as a heretic, or to Elizabeth,
whose title to the throne he had been in his dying moments
persuaded to deny ; but dictated solely by a just admiration
of the charming qualities which so wonderfully distinguished
him, and perfectly free from those motives to a base par-
tiality, which too often guide the biographer's pen when he
treats of the characters of Princes. Concerning his person,
Sir John Hayward informs us that " he was in body beau-
tiful ; of a sweet aspect, and especially in his eyes, which
seemed to have a starry liveliness and lustre in them." —
This description is fully justified by the present copy of his
portrait.

The Journal however kept by this regal child, which has
been already slightly mentioned, is so highly illustrative of
important parts of his character, and corroborates in so many
instances the reports which we have derived from his eulo-
gists, that it would be blameable to suffer these notices of
him to go forth unaccompanied by a specimen at least of a
document so extraordinary. We will take for this purpose,
without any care of selection, his entries for the months
of July and August, 1551, made when he was in his four-
teenth year.

JULY.

" 1. Whereas certain Flemish ships, twelve sail in all, six
tall men-of-war, looking for eighteen more men-of-war, went
to Diep, as it was thought, to take Monsieur le Mareschal by

172 KING EDWARD THE SIXTH.

the way, order was given that six ships being before prepared,
with four pinnaces and a brigandine, should go, both to con-
duct him, and also to defend if anything should be attempted
against England by carrying over the Lady Mary. — 2. A
brigandine sent to Diep, to give knowledge to Monsieur le
Mareschal of the Flemings coming, to whom all the Flem-
ings vailed their bonnet. Also the French Ambassador was
advertized, who answered that he thought him sure enough
when he came into our streams, terming it so. — 2. There
was a proclamation signed for shortening the fall of the
money to that day, in which it should be proclaimed and
devised that it should be in all places of the realm within
one day proclaimed. — 3. The Lord Clinton and Cobham was
appointed to meet the French at Gravesend, and so to con-
vey him to Duresme Place, where he should lie. — 4. I was
banqueted by the Lord Clinton at Deptford, where I saw the
Primrose and the Mary Willoughby launched. The French-
men landed at Rye, as some thought for fear of the Flemings,
lying at the Land's End, chiefly because they saw our ships
were let by the wind that they could not come out. — 6. Sir
Peter Meutas, at Dover, was commanded to come to Rye, to
meet Monsieur le Mareschal, who so did ; and after he had
delivered my letters, written with mine own hand, and made
my recommendations, he took order for horses and carts for
Monsieur le Mareschal, in which he made such provision as
was possible to be for the sudden. — 7. Monsieur le Mares-
chal set forth from Rye, and in his journey Mr. Culpepper,
and divers other gentlemen, and their men, to the number of
1000 Horse, well furnished, met him, and so brought him to
Maidstone that night. — 7. Removing to Westminster. —
8. Monsieur le Mareschal came to Mr. Baker's, where he
was well feasted and banqueted. — 9. The same came to my
Lord Cobham 's to dinner, and at night to Gravesend. Pro-
clamation was made that a testourn should go at 9d, and a
groat at 3d, in all places of the realm at once. At this time
came the sweat into London, which was more vehement

KING KDWA11D THE SIXTH. 173

than the old sweat ; for if one took cold he died within
three hours ; and if he escaped it held him but nine hours,
or ten at the most : also if he slept the first six hours,
as he should be very desirous to do, then he roved, and
should die roving. — 11. It grew so much ; for in London the
10th day there died 100 in the liberties, and this day 120 ;
and also one of my gentlemen, another of my grooms, fell
sick and died ; that I removed to Hampton Court, with very
few with me. The same night came the Mareschal, who
was saluted with all my ships being in the Thames, fifty and
odd, all with shot well furnished, and so with the ordnance
of the Tower. He was met by the Lord Clinton, Lord
Admiral, with forty gentlemen, at Gravesend, and so brought
to Duresme Place. — 13. Because of the infection at London
he came this day to Richmond, where he lay, with a great
band of gentlemen, at least 400, as it was by divers esteemed,
where that night he hunted."

"July 14. He came to me at Hampton Court at nine of
the clock, being met by the Duke of Somerset at the wall-
end, and so conveyed first to me ; where, after his Master's
recommendations and letters, he went to his chamber on the
Queen's side, all hanged with cloth of Arras, and so was the
hall, and all my lodging. He dined with me also. After
dinner, being brought into an inner chamber, he told me he
was come, not only for delivery of the Order, but also for
to declare the great friendship the King his master bore me,
which he desired I would think to be such to me as a father
beareth to a son, or brother to brother ; and although there
were divers persuasions, as he thought, to dissuade me from
the King his master's friendship, and witless men made
divers rumours, yet he trusted I would not believe them :
furthermore, that as good ministers on the frontiers do great
good, so ill much harm ; for which cause he desired no inno-
vation should be made on things had been so long in contro-
versy by hand-strokes, but rather by commissioners' talk.
I answered him that I thanked him for his order, and also

174 KING EDWARD THE SIXTH.

his love, &c. and I would show love in all points. For
rumours, they were not always to be believed ; and that I
did sometime provide for the worst, but never did any harm
upon their hearing. For Ministers, I said, I would rather
appease these controversies with words than do anything by
force. So after, he was conveyed to Richmond again. —
17. He came to present the Order of Monsieur Michael,
where, after with ceremonies accustomed he had put on the
garments, he and Monsieur Gye, likewise of the Order, came,
one at my right hand, the other at my left, to the Chapel ;
where, after the Communion celebrated, each of them kissed
my cheek. After that they dined with me, and talked after
dinner, and saw some pastime, and so went home again."

"18. A proclamation made against regraters and fore-
stallers, and the words of the statute recited, with the
punishment of tne offenders. Also letters were sent to all
officers and sheriffs for the executing thereof. — 19. Another
proclamation made for punishment of them that would blow
rumours of abasing and enhancing of the coin, to make
things dear withal. The same night Monsieur le Mareschal
St. Andre supped with me : after supper saw a dozen courses ;
and, after, I came, and made me ready. — 20. The next morn-
ing, he came to me to mine arraying, and saw my bedcham-
ber, and went a hunting with hounds, and saw me shoot, and
saw all my guards shoot together. He dined with me ;
heard me play on the lute ; ride ; came to me to my study ;
supped with me ; and so departed to Richmond. — 19. The
Scots sent an ambassador hither for receiving the treaty,
sealed with the Great Seal of England, which was delivered
him. Also I sent Sir Thomas Chaloner, clerk of my council,
to have the seal of them, for confirmation of the last treaty,
at Northampton. — 17. This day my Lord Marquess and the
commissioners coming to treat of the marriage, offered, by
later instructions, GOO'OOO crowns ; after, 400'000I ; and so
departed for an hour. Then, seeing they could get no better,
came to the French offer of 200'000 crownes, half to be paid

KING EDWARD THE SIXTH. 175

at the marriage, half six months after that. Then the
French agreed that her dote should be but lO'OOO marks of
lawful money of England. Thirdly, it was agreed that if I
died she should not have the dote, saying they did that for
friendship's sake, without precedent. — 19. The Lord Mar-
quess having received and delivered again the treaty, sealed,
took his leave, and so did all the rest. At this time there
was a bickering at Parma between the French and the Pa-
pists : for Monsieur de Thermes, Petro Strozzi, and Fonti-
vello, with divers other gentlemen, to the number of thirty,
with fifteen hundred soldiers, entered Parma. Gonzaga, with
the Emperor's and Pope's band, lay near the town. The
French made sallies, and overcame, slaying the Prince of
Macedonia, and the Signer Baptista, the Pope's nephew. —
22. Mr. Sidney made one of the four chief gentlemen. — 23.
Monsieur le Mareschal came to me, declaring the King his
master's well-taking my readiness to this treaty, and also how
much his master was bent that way. He presented Monsieur
Bois Dolphine to be Ambassador here; as my Lord Marquess
the 19"" day did present Mr. Pickering. — 26. Monsieur le
Mareschal dined with me ; after dinner saw the strength of
the English archers. After he had so done, at his departure
I gave him a diamond from my finger, worth by estimation
150', both for pains, and also for my memory. Then he took
his leave. — 27. He came to a hunting to tell me the news,
and show me the letter his master had sent him ; and doubt-
less of Monsieur Termes' and Marignan's letters, being Am-
bassador with the Emperor. — 28. Monsieur le Mareschal
came to dinner in Hyde Park, where there was a fair house
made for him, and he saw the coursing there.— 30. He came
to the Earl of Warwick's ; lay there one night ; and was
well received. — 29. He had his reward, being worth 3000'.
in gold, of current money ; Monsieur de Gye, 1000' ; Mon-
sieur Chenault, 1 000' ; Monsieur Movillier, 5001 ; the Secre-
tary, 500' ; and the Bishop of Peregrueux, 500'."

170 KING EDWARD THE SIXTH.

AUGUST.

" 3. Monsieur le Mareschal departed to Bologne, and had
certain of my ships to conduct him thither. — 9. Four and
twenty Lords of the Council met at Richmond, to commune
of my sister Mary's matter : who at length agreed that it was
not meet to be suffered any longer ; making thereof an instru-
ment, signed with their hands, and sealed, to be on record.
— 11. The Lord Marquess, with the most of his band, came
home, and delivered the treaty sealed. — 12. Letters sent for
Rochester, Inglefield, and Walgrave, to come the 13th day, but
they came not till another letter was sent to them the
13th day. — 14. My Lord Marquess's reward was delivered at
Paris, worth 500' ; my Lord of Ely's, 200'; and Mr. Hobbey's,
ISO1; the rest, all about one scantling. Rochester, &c. had
commandment neither to hear, nor to suffer, any kind of ser-
vice but the common and orders set forth at large by Parlia-
ment ; and had a letter to my lady's house from my Council
for their credit ; another to herself from me. Also appointed
that I should come and sit at Council when great matters
were debating, or when I would. This last month Monsieur
de Termes, with 500 Frenchmen, came to Parma, and
entered safely ; afterwards, certain issued out of the town,
and were overthrown ; as Scipiaro, Dandelot, Petro, and
others were taken, and some slain : after, they gave a skirmish ;
entered the camp of Gonzaga, and spoiled a few tents, and
returned. — 15. Sir Robert Dudley and Barnabe sworn two of
the six ordinary gentlemen. The last month the Turk's navy
won a little castle in Sicily. — 17. Instructions sent to Sir
James Croftes for divers purposes, whose copy is in the
Secretary's hands. The Testourn cried down from 9d to 6d ;
the groat from 3d to 2d; the 2d to ld; the penny to a half-
penny ; the halfpenny to a farthing, &c. — 1. Monsieur
Termes and Scipiero overthrew three ensigns of horsemen at
three times ; took one dispatch sent from Don Fernando to
the Pope concerning this war, and another from the Pope to

KING EDWARD THE SIXTH. 177

Don Fernando ; discomfited four ensigns of footmen ; took
the Count Camillo of Castilion ; and slew a captain of the
Spaniards. — 22. Removing to Windsor. — 23. Rochester, &c.
returned, denying to do openly the charge of the Lady Mary's
house, for displeasing her. — 26. The Lord Chancellor, Mr.
Comptroller, the Secretary Petre, sent to do the same com-
mission.— 27. Mr. Coverdale made Bishop of Exeter. — 28.
Rochester, &c. sent to the Fleet. The Lord Chancellor, &c.
did that they were commanded to do to my sister, and her
house. — 31. Rochester, &c. committed to the Tower. The
Duke of Somerset, taking certain that began a new conspiracy
for the destruction of the gentlemen at Okingham, two days
past executed them with death for their offence. — 29. Certain
pinnaces were prepared to see that there should be no con-
veyance over-sea of the Lady Mary secretly done. Also
appointed that the Lord Chancellor, Lord Chamberlain, the
Vice-chamberlain, and the Secretary Petre, should see by all
means they could whether she used the Mass ; and if she did,
that the laws should be executed on her chaplains. Also
that when I came from this progress to Hampton Court or
Westminster, both my sisters should be with me till further
order were taken for this purpose."

As no apology may perhaps be necessary either for the
matter or the extent of these extracts, I will venture to close
the tribute thus irregularly collected and devoted to the
memory of this Prince with two additional documents of some
curiosity ; the first, a paper addressed to some unknown
person, all written with his own hand, with which I have
been just now favoured by an ingenious friend, who trans-
cribed it from the original in the Ashmolean collection at
Oxford. It is clear that it may be referred to the great and
tragical discord between the Protector and his brother ; and
that the innocent Edward, then but at the age of ten years,
had been called on to disclose the matters adverse to the
Protector which had passed in his conversations with the

I. N

178 KING EDWARD THE SIXTH.

Admiral, in order that they might be used as evidence
against that nobleman. The connection of the paper with
the history of Edward seems to confer some value on it, nor
is it without marks of the premature sagacity which distin-
guished him.

Sf

The Lord Admirall cam to me at the last pliament,
and desired me to wryght a thyng for him. I asked him
what ? He sayd it was non ille ; ' it is for the Quene's
maters.' I sayd if it were good the Lordes wold allow it : if
it were ill, I wol not wright in it. Then he sayd he wold
take in better part if i wrought. I desired him to let me
alon. I asked Chek whether it wer good to wright, and he
sayd no. He sayd ' wSn this tow yere at lest ye must take
upon yow to be as ye are, or ought to be, for ye shall be able,
and then yow may give your men somwhat ; for your unkle
is old, and i trust wil not live long.' I sayd it wer better
for him to die befor. He sayd ' ye ar a beggarly King. Ye
have no monie to pay or to geve.' I sayd that Mf Stanhop
had for me. Then he sayd that he wold geve Fouler ; and
Fouler did geve the monie to divers men as I bad him ; as to
Master Chek, and the bokbinder, and other. He told me
thes thinges oftentimes. Fouler desired me to geve thankes
to my Lord Admirall for his gentilnes to me, and praised him
to me verie much. E.R.

"In the moneth of September, An.D. 1547, the Lord
Admirall told me that min unkle, beeing gon into Scotland,
shuld not passe the peesse w'out losse of men, a great number
of men, or of himself, and that he did spend much monie in
vain. After the returne of min unkle he sayd that i was toe
bashful in mi maters, and that I wold not speake for mi
right. I sayd I was wel enoughe. When he went to his
centre he desired me not to beleve men that wold sclaunder
him till he cam himself. E. R."

KING EDWARD THE SIXTH. 179

The second is an extract from the original draft of a letter
from the Lords of the Council to the English Ambassador at
the Court of the Emperor, which may be found among the
Cecil Papers in the Illustrations of British History, &c., dis-
closing some slight particulars of Edward's final disease,
which seems to have not been elsewhere described otherwise
than generally.

" After of hrte comendations. We must nede be sorry
now to write that which cometh both sorrowfully from us,
and shall, we well knowe, w? the like sorrowe be taken of
yow ; but, such is the almighty will of God in all his crea-
tions, that his ordJ in them may not be by us resisted. In
one worde we must tell yow a greate heap of infelicite. God
hathe called owte of this world of soveraigne Lord the vi? of
this moneth ; whose man! of dethe was such toward God as
assureth us his sowk is in the place of eternall joye, as, for
yo' owne satisfaction p~tly ye may p~ceve by the copye of
the words which he spake secretly to hym selfe at the
mome~t of his dethe. The desease whfof his Ma!7 died was
the desease of the longs, which had in them 11 grete ulceres,
and were putrefied, by meanes whfof he fell into a consump-
tion, and so hath he wasted, being utterly incurable. Of this
evill, for the e~portance, we adv"tise you, knowing it most
comfortable to have bene ignorant of it ; and the same ye
maye take tyme to declare unto the Emp'or as from us," &c.

N2

JO MM DUDLEY,

DUKK OP NORTHUMBEfiiAND.
OB, 1553,

JOHN DUDLEY,

DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND.

TYRANNY and faction are the alternate followers, if not
the necessary consequences, of each other. The furious and
fearless spirit of Henry the Eighth had awed into inactivity
those contending passions which under his inexperienced
successor burst forth therefore with increased violence. Hence
the six years of the amiable and beneficent Edward were
stained even perhaps by more enormities than had disgraced
the long reign of his barbarous father ; for that philosophy of
faction, if the expression may be allowed, which in our days
bestows impunity on the leaders, and transfers the penalties
to the innocent community, was then unknown, and every
political contest ended in the bloodshed of some of its authors.
The minority of the Monarch, the rich spoils of the reform-
ation, and the confusion in which Henry had left the suc-
cession to the throne, presented to the minds of the ambitious
the most extravagant visions of power. The subject of the
present memoir chose the last as the means of increasing a
grandeur already too lofty; and by failing in the attempt
forfeited his life, and acquired an eminent station in history,
without exciting either pity or respect.

He was born in the year 1502, and his infancy was marked
by the most unfavourable circumstances. His father, Edmund
Dudley, a descendant from the ancient Barons Dudley, was
one of the two chief ministers to the avarice of Henry the
Seventh, and was put to death, together with his colleague,

182 JOHN DUDLEY,

Empson, in the first year of the succeeding reign. It has
been said that there was more of policy than justice in this
act of severity, and the restoration in blood of the son a
very few months after favours that opinion. The influence
however of his mother, Elizabeth, who was a coheir of the
Greys, Viscounts Lisle, a title which was afterwards revived
in her second husband, Arthur Plantagenet, perhaps did much
towards procuring that grace. By her, who was equally
illustrious for her high birth and eminent virtues, he was
brought to the court about the year 1523, in the autumn of
which he attended Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, in his
expedition into France, and was knighted for his gallant
conduct there. On his return he attracted the notice of
Wolsey, whom he accompanied on his embassy to Paris in
1528, and through whose favour he obtained the office of
Master of the Armoury in the Tower, and on the fall of that
minister attached himself to Cromwell, who, after the mar-
riage, so fatal to himself, of Henry the Eighth to Anne of
Cleves, procured for him the appointment of Master of the
Horse to that Princess. Such were the insignificant steps
which this extraordinary person first mounted on his progress
towards almost unlimited power.

He was one of the handsomest men of his time ; excelled
in military exercises ; and was peculiarly distinguished by
his adroitness and rich equipment in tournaments. Henry,
till he arrived at middle age, generally selected his favourites
from such persons, and those qualifications, perhaps, first
recommended Dudley to his good graces. Hitherto undis-
tinguished, but in the inauspicious stations of a retainer to
two disgraced ministers, and a servant in the household of a
detested Queen, the King suddenly took him into the highest
favour ; bestowed on him in 1542, on the death of his father-
in-law, the dignity of Viscount Lisle, and, immediately after,
the Order of the Garter, and the office of High Admiral of
England for life. He commanded, in that capacity, in the
succeeding year, a formidable expedition to tie coasts of

DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND. 183

Scotland, in which he seems, Lord Herbert only having left
a hint to the contrary, to have been completely successful,
as well in the military as in the naval part of his commission,
for he commanded the vanguard of the army which had
sailed in his fleet. This service performed, he instantly
embarked for Boulogne, then besieged by the King in person ;
assisted considerably in the reduction of the place, and was
appointed governor of it. Henry, however, had further views
in selecting him for that office. He had discovered in Dudley's
mind a quick and penetrating judgment, united to that gallant
courage which he so much admired. He knew that France
was then secretly straining every nerve to equip a fleet for
the invasion of England, and it was of the utmost importance
to him to place such a man at a point equally apt for ob-
servation, and for active service. The consequence fully
prqved the sagacity of his arrangement. The French force
suddenly put to sea, and Dudley, with a fleet much inferior,
not only effectually repulsed it, but attacked, in his turn,
the enemy's coast, and destroyed the town of Treport, and
several adjacent villages in Normandy. These circumstances
led to the treaty of peace with Francis the First of the
seventh of June 1545, for the ratification of which he was
appointed a commissioner.

Henry, who survived that event not many months, con-
stituted him one of the sixteen executors to his will, and
those eminent persons were invested by him also with the
guardianship of the young Edward. The Earl of Hertford,
soon after Duke of Somerset, who was the King's maternal
uncle, prevailed however on the majority of them to declare
him Protector, and here, though Dudley made no open oppo-
sition to the appointment, originated the enmity between
those two great men. One of the Protector's first acts was
to bestow on his brother Thomas, Lord Seymour, the post of
High Admiral, which had been held with so much credit by
Dudley, and which he was now compelled to relinquish,
under the show of a voluntary resignation. It is true that he

184 JOHN DUDLEY,

received magnificent compensations, for on the very day that
the patent was passed to his successor, the seventeenth of
February, 1547, he was appointed Great Chamberlain of
England, and created Earl of Warwick, a title the dignity of
which was presently after highly enhanced by a gift from the
Crown of the castle and manor of that town, to which were
added grants of many other estates of great value, but the
revocation of his commission of Admiral still rankled in his
bosom. He endeavoured to conceal his disgust from Somer-
set, and the Protector, on his part, affected not to perceive it.
Their characters were dissimilar, even to positive opposition,
but they were necessary to each other. The Protector, with
many admirable talents for a statesman in more composed
times, was mild, timid, and irresolute ; Warwick was active
and courageous ; sudden, and seldom erroneous in judgment,
and always prompt in execution. Somerset had already risen
to the highest exaltation, but felt his inability to maintain
himself there by his own resources ; while Warwick, on whom
the prospect of his own future deceitful glory had not yet
opened, sullenly determined to place himself for a time on
that heavy but powerful wing which he was not at present
able to clip. While he acted however with the Protector,
he served him with zeal and fidelity. He commanded the
English army in Scotland under Somerset, in the quality of
his Lieutenant-General, and the signal victory of Mussel-
borough has been ascribed by those of our historians who
wrote nearest to his time, to his conduct and courage ; and
signalised himself immediately after as a statesman in a nego-
tiation at Paris, where he dexterously contrived at once to reject
steadily the demand by the French King, of Boulogne, and to
avert the conflict which was expected to follow that refusal. In
the mean time the Protector's government assumed a more
despotic form, and many of his measures were unfortunate.
The war in Scotland, which it is said would have occupied
only the campaign of 1547, had the vigorous plan suggested
by Warwick been adopted, was feebly and expensively

DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND. 185

managed ; strange feuds occurred between Somerset and his
brother, which ended in the Admiral's attainder and execu-
tion ; the people became discontented, and at length broke
out into a formidable insurrection, in many parts of the king-
dom. Warwick was sent against them in Norfolk, at the
head of an army which had been raised to serve in Scotland ;
defeated them in a general action ; prevailed on them to give
up their leaders ; and treated the rest with a mildness which
would have done honour to a more civilised age.

Hitherto this great man had preserved a noble character,
but irresistible temptations were at hand. The Lords of the
King's guardian council, to whom the Protector had of late
allowed little share in the government of the State, became
indignant, and conspired to divest him of his authority.
Warwick possessed all the talents, as well as the temper, for
the leader of such a band, and fell, as it were naturally, into
that station. The Protector was imprisoned, and the Earl
took his place in the favour and confidence of the King,
which he soon after effectually fixed by releasing Somerset,
whom Edward sincerely loved, from the Tower, and consent-
ing, at the request of that Prince, to the marriage of his heir
to the daughter of his fallen adversary, which was solemnized
in the King's presence on the third of June, 1550. About the
same time his office of High Admiral was restored to him ; he
resigned the place of Lord Great Chamberlain, and accepted
that of Steward of the Royal Household ; was soon after ap-
pointed Earl Marshal ; and on the eleventh of October, 1551,
was raised to the dignity of Duke of Northumberland.
Within very few days after, Somerset was suddenly accused
of an intention to murder him, and on the first of December
following was brought to a trial by his Peers. The mysterious
circumstances of his case, on which our historians are much
disagreed, will be mentioned somewhat at large in their proper
place in this work. Suffice it therefore to say here that he
was convicted of felony, and on the twenty-second of the
succeeding month was beheaded. In considering of this

186 JOHN DUDLEY,

sanguinary catastrophe, and of the steps which led to it, it is
difficult to believe that Northumberland was wholly innocent,
but impossible either to say that he was guilty, or to guess
at the probable measure of his guilt. Perhaps the strongest
presumption to be urged in his favour, inasmuch as it tends
to strengthen the opinion that Somerset was fairly charged
with the crime for which he suffered, may be founded on the
fact that the just, acute, and affectionate Edward made no
effort to save his uncle's life, nor does he, in his Journal, that
most curious historical collection, express any regret for the
Protector's awful fate.

Northumberland now ro.se to the possession of absolute
dominion. The King submitted himself wholly to his direc-
tion ; and the nobility, variously swayed, by affection, in-
terest, or fear, were divided into humble agents of his govern-
ment, and silent spectators of his grandeur. At this remark-
able juncture Edward's health suddenly declined, and his
recovery presently became hopeless. Northumberland, who
could scarcely indulge the reasonable hope even of an humble
and obscure impunity under a legitimate successor to the
throne, conceived, with his usual boldness and impetuosity,
the extravagant project of placing on it the grand-daughter of
a sister of Henry the Eighth, having first made her the wife
of one of his sons. This was the admirable Jane Grey, who
was married to the Lord Guildford Dudley, in May, 1553.
Edward, always too compliant, and now worn out by sickness,
was easily prevailed on to acknowledge her visionary right,
and the Judges were bribed, cajoled, or threatened, till they
submitted to draw letters patent for the disposal of the Crown
to her, which the King signed on the twenty-first of June,
fourteen days before his death. It would be impertinent and
useless to enlarge here on great points of English history
already so frequently and so minutely detailed. From the
hour of the King's departure Northumberland's high spirit
and presence of mind seem to have forsaken him. On the
tenth of July, he caused Jane to be proclaimed Queen ; and

DUKE OP NORTHUMBERLAND. 187

placed her for security in the Tower. On the fourteenth, he
left London, to try the temper of the country, and reached,
at the head of a feeble force, the town of Bury St. Edmunds.
Discouraged by the indifference of the people he returned to
Cambridge, and there, on the twentieth of the same month,
having heard of the defection of his pretended friends in
London, he pusillanimously proclaimed Queen Mary, throw-
ing his cap into the air in token of his joy and loyalty. Henry
Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, arrived the next day with an order
to arrest him, which he received with childish expressions of
grief and contrition. He was conveyed to London, and, on
the eighteenth of August, arraigned before his Peers, and
condemned to die. Two days after, he wrote to the Earl of
Arundel the following letter, which remains in the Harleian
collection, a melancholy testimony of the truth of those his-
torical relations which have been hitherto nearly incredible,
of the utter abasement of spirit into which this great man
fell under the reverse of his fortunes.

" Hon~ble Ld and in this my distress my especiall refuge,
most wofull was y" newes I receyved this eveninge by
Mr. Lieutenant, that I must prepare my selfe ag" to morrowe
to receyve my deadly stroke. Alas, my good Ld, is my crime
so heynows as noe redempc'on but my bloud can washe away
y" spottes thereof 1 An old proverbe there is, and yt is most
true, y' a lyving dogge is better than a dead lyon. Oh y' it
would please her good Grace to give me life, yea y* life of a
dogge, y' I might but lyve, and kisse her feet, and spend
both life and all, in her hon'able services, as I have y* best
part allready under her worthy brother, & her most glorious
father. Oh y* her mercy were such as she would consyder
how little profitt my dead and dismembered body can bringe
her ; but how great and glorious an honor it will be in all
posterityes, when y" report shall be y' soe gracious &
mighty a Queen had graunted life to soe miserable &
penitent an abject. Your hon'ble usage and promises to me
since these my troubles have made me bold to challenge this

J88 JOHN DUDLEY,

kindness at your handes : Pardone me if I have done amiss
therein, & spare not, I pray, your bended knees for me in
this distresse. Y" God of heaven, it may be, will requite it
one day on you or your's ; and if my life be lengthened by
your mediae" on, & my good Ld Chancellor's, to whom I have
alsoe sent my blurred L™, I will ever vowe it to be spent at
your hon'able feet. Oh, good my Lord, remember how sweet
life is, & how bitter ye contrary. Spare not your speech and
paines, for God I hope, hath not shutt out all hopes of com-
fort from me in y' gracious, princely, and woman-like harte,
but y' as the dolefull newes of death hath wounded to death
both my soule & bodye, so y' comfortable newes of life shall
be as a new resurrec'con to my wofull heart. But, if noe
remedy can be founde, eyther by imprisonm', confiscation,
banishm', and the like, I can saye noe more but God grant me
patyence to endure, and a heart to forgive, the whole world.
" Once yo' fellowe and lovinge companion, but now
worthy of noe name but wretchednes & misery.

J. D."

The next day, the twenty-second of August, 1553, he was
brought out to suffer execution on Tower Hill, where he
uttered a long speech to the multitude, in the same strain of
miserable humiliation. Fox, to blacken Mary and her go-
vernment, informs us that he had a promise of pardon, " even
if his head were on the block," which that address tended to
contradict, and which indeed is fully refuted by the terms of
his letter to Lord Arundel. It is true that, contrary to the
profession of his life, he declared himself on the scaffold a
son of the Romish Church, a very natural artifice at such a
moment. He seems indeed to have been indifferent as to
modes of faith, and perhaps, to religion in general.

Dudley married Jane, daughter of Sir Edward, and sister
and heir of Sir Henry Guldeford, or Guildford, as commonly
called, by whom he had eight sons, and five daughters.
Henry, the eldest, was killed at the siege of Boulogne, at the

DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND. 189

age of nineteen ; Thomas, died an infant ; John, who bore
the title of Earl of Warwick, and died a few months after
the death of his father ; Ambrose, who was restored to that
title by Queen Elizabeth ; Robert, who became also in that
reign Earl of Leicester, and the great favourite of that
Princess ; Guildford, who has been mentioned, and whom
his father's ambition led to the scaffold ; Henry, killed at the
siege of St. Quintin's, in 1557 ; and Charles, who died in
infancy. The daughters were Mary, wife of Sir Henry
Sidney, and mother to the admirable Philip ; Catherine, mar-
ried to Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon ; Margaret,
Temperance, and another Catherine, who died infants.

DUKE OF KORFOLK.
OB. 1554.

THOMAS HOWARD,

DUKE OF NORFOLK.

THIS most exalted person, who was the eldest of the eight
sons of Thomas, second Duke of Norfolk of his family, and
Lord High Treasurer, by Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Sir
Frederic Tylney, of Ashwellthorpe, in Norfolk, was created
Earl of Surrey by patent, on the first of February, 1513,
when his father was restored to the Dukedom, which had
been forfeited by the attainder of John, the first Duke, on the
accession of Henry the Seventh. His first public service, at
a very early age, was in the command of a ship of war
in the force sent in 1511 against Sir Andrew Barton,
whom most of our historians absurdly call the " famous
Scottish pirate," and he had an eminent share in the naval
victory in which that brave commander was killed. He soon
after accompanied Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, in his
expedition into Spain against the French, and, the Marquis
falling sick, had then the command of the English army. In
1513, upon the death of his younger brother, Sir Edward, he
was appointed to succeed him as Lord Admiral of England,
and immediately after, to use the words of a very honest
historian, " so completely scoured the seas that not a fisher
boat of the French durst venture out." That service per-
formed, he landed in Scotland with the same troops which
had been so successful at sea ; for the military of that time
acted indifferently in both duties ; and sent a gallant and reso-
lute defiance to the King of Scots, which Lord Herbert in his

192 THOMAS HOWARD,

history has detailed at a length of which the limited nature
of this work will not allow the repetition ; nor was this a
vain threat, for he commanded, together with his brother
the Lord Edmund, the vanguard at the battle of Flodden,
and had an eminent share in the merit of the signal victory
obtained there.

There is a chasm in his history from that date till 1521,
when he was appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland. It has
been said that he was placed in that arduous office to avoid
the opposition which was expected from him to the prosecu-
tion of his father-in-law the Duke of Buckingham, whose
ruin Henry and Wolsey had previously determined on. If
this be true, the fact casts on his character all the lustre
which ancient loyalty derived from a disregard of selfish
interests and affections, for both his civil and military govern-
ment in Ireland were eminently distinguished by their wis-
dom, vigilance, moderation and activity ; and having, with a
dreadful but necessary severity, subdued the insurrection
which on his arrival he found raging in almost every part of
the island, he quitted it in January, 1523, loaded with the
gratitude and caresses of the civilised Irish, and leaving a
Parliament then sitting, from the measures of which, under
his auspices, they had obtained the most signal benefits. In
the May following his return, he was again at sea ; escorted
the Emperor Charles the Fifth to this country ; and was by
that monarch appointed Admiral of all his dominions. Un-
der the authority of that commission he joined the ships of
Flanders with the English fleet, and made a descent on the
coast of Brittany, when he burned the town of Morlaix, and
other places, and laid waste the French borders, and after-
wards extended his irruption into Picardy.

On the fourth of the following December, upon his father's
resignation, he was raised to the office of Lord Treasurer, and
on the sixth of February received a commission as General-
in-chief of the army then appointed to serve against the
Scots, to which was secretly annexed the most ample confi-

DUKE OF NORFOLK. 193

dence and power with regard to the political affairs of Eng-
land with that country. He returned for a short time in
the summer of 1524 to take possession of his dignities and
estates, and resuming soon after his charge in Scotland,
accomplished the main object which Henry at that time had
in view, by detaching the young King of Scots from the
subjection in which he was held by the Regent, Duke of
Albany, or, in other words, by placing him under the control
of England. This service was rewarded by a grant of addi-
tional territory to his already immense domains.

The memorable fall of Wolsey, who had been his father's
bitter enemy, happening soon after, he, together with Charles
Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, was commissioned to demand
from that degraded favourite the great seal. It has been said
that, on the Cardinal's reluctant delay to obey the King's
subsequent order for his residence in his see of York, the
Duke sent a message to him by Cromwell, threatening, on his
longer stay, to " tear him with his teeth." This very impro-
bable story rests, I believe, wholly on the account given by
Stowe, whose honesty and simplicity occasionally misled him
to give credit to very idle tales. All that we know with
certainty of the Duke which has any relation to Wolsey,
beyond the little which has been already related, is that his
name appears among those of the Lords who signed the
articles of impeachment against the Cardinal, and that Henry
soon after granted to him the monastery of Felixtow in
Suffolk, which was one of the many estates that had been
allotted to the endowment of the colleges which that prelate
was about to erect in Oxford and Ipswich.

He took a very active part in promoting the measure of
Henry's divorce from Catherine ; subscribed, with many
other Peers, the bold declaration which on the first agitation
of that great affair was sent to Rome, and which, in hand-
some terms, threatened the Holy See with Henry's assump-
tion of the Supremacy in case of the Pope's opposition to it ;
and presided in several negotiations with that Pontiff and

194 THOMAS HOWARD,

Francis I. The wisdom and stedfast fidelity with which
those services, so very acceptable to the King, were per-
formed, procured him new marks of favour, and he received
from the Crown in 1534 a further grant of estates, and in the
same year was appointed to the exalted, and then most
powerful, office of Earl Marshal of England, which had been,
seemingly for that purpose, vacated by the resignation of the
Duke of Suffolk. He was also in that year once more con-
stituted Lord Deputy of Ireland.

In 1536 he was again sent Ambassador to Paris, to endea-
vour, through the mediation of Francis the First, to procure
a reversal of the Pope's decree of censure against Henry on
account of the divorce ; and in the following year performed
perhaps the most signal service to be found in the history of
his long and various ministry, by subduing the insurgents in
Yorkshire, who were headed by Robert Aske. He displayed
on that occasion all the talents of an able general and an
acute politician, for he was compelled by the superior force
of his opponents to relinquish his military operations, and to
have recourse to negotiation, and conducted himself in each
capacity with such address that the insurrection was sup-
pressed almost without bloodshed. It is worthy of remark,
as it proves the unlimited confidence which Henry then
reposed in this great man, that he was well known to favour
all the religious and many of the civil, claims of the insur-
gents ; and it would be difficult to find a parallel instance of
the equal maintenance of loyalty and private principle under
similar circumstances.

It was soon after this period that Henry's passion for the
Lady Catherine Howard, and his consequent determination
to repudiate Anne of Cleves, discovered themselves. Crom-
well, who had made the match with Anne, instantly applied
himself with all diligence to oppose both those dispositions ;
and the Duke, who already disliked him for the active part
he had taken in the Reformation, naturally conceived the
highest degree of resentment against the man who endea-

DUKE OF NORFOLK. 195

voured to impede his niece's progress to the station of Queen
Consort. On the thirteenth of June, 1540, he impeached
Cromwell at the Council Board of high treason, and, six
weeks after, that extraordinary man fell a sacrifice to the
caprice of his inhuman master, which in this instance was
sustained by the jealousy of the nobility, and the prejudices
of the people. On the twenty-ninth of January following
that event, the Duke was appointed Lieutenant General of all
the King's forces beyond the river Trent, and, on the first of
September, 1542, Captain General of the army in the North,
at the head of which he ravaged the frontiers of Scotland in
the succeeding March. He was soon after nominated com-
mander of the rear, and then of the vanguard, of the English
army in France, appointments which the peace that speedily
followed rendered almost useless.

While he was engaged in these services the short-lived
elevation of Queen Catherine was suddenly and tragically
terminated, and the disgust which her frailty had excited in
Henry's inexorable heart extended itself to her family. This
motive aggravated the effect of jealousies already conceived
on account of the Duke's professed attachment to the ancient
religion, and of the immense power and wealth with which
the King himself had so largely contributed to invest him.
Henry dreaded that all the influence of each would be applied
to the re-establishment of that religion, and to the support of
the right of succession, in his issue by Catherine of Arragon ;
and determined on his death-bed that the Duke, and his ad-
mirable son the Earl of Surrey, should not survive him.
Even amidst the last struggles of expiring nature, he held
out temptations to any who would furnish evidence against
these eminent persons, and, these endeavours proving fruit-
less, accused them of high treason merely on an inference
drawn from their having quartered with the armorial ensigns
of their family the royal arms of England, and those of Ed- '
ward the Confessor. He accomplished, as is well known, his
dreadful purpose with regard to the Earl, and the Duke
o2

196 THOMAS HOWARD,

escaped almost miraculously. Broken down by age, infirmity,
and solitary imprisonment, he sought for mercy to his family
by concessions and apologies, the effect of which was turned
.against himself. lie was prosecuted by a bill of attainder,
which was hurried through both Houses of Henry's too obe-
dient Parliament, and a warrant was despatched on the twenty-
ninth of January, 1547, for his execution ; but the King died
on the preceding night, and the Privy Council judged it unfit
to stain the first days of the new reign with the best blood of
the country.

The reformers, however, availed themselves with a secret
joy of the pretexts against the Duke which Henry had be^
queathed to them. He was kept a close prisoner in the
Tower during the six years that Edward the Sixth sat on the
throne, and was not released till the third of August, 1553,
the very day on which Mary made her public entry into
London to take possession of the throne, when he was im-
mediately restored, simply by her sovereign fiat, to his dig-
nities and estates. The Parliament soon after confirmed this
extraordinary mark of grace and power by an act of repeal of
his attainder, in which, with an ill-merited complaisance to
the memory of Henry, they laid on their predecessors all the
blame of the Duke's persecution. At the end of a fortnight
from his liberation, such were the sudden changes of fortune
in those days, he presided as Lord High Steward on the trial
of his bitter enemy John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland.
In the following year he raised and equipped his tenants and
dependents, and marched at their head against Sir Thomas
Wyat. It was the first public service in which he was un-
fortunate. They were wrought on by artful suggestions of
the purity of the cause they had been called on to oppose, to
desert to the insurgents ; and the Duke, now more than
eighty years of age, at that period retired from all public
concerns, and died at his seat at Kenninghall in Norfolk,
on the twenty-fifth of August in the same year, 1554. He
was buried at Framlingham in Suffolk, leaving, as appears

DUKE OF NORFOLK. 197

by the inquisition taken after his death, notwithstanding the
repeated spoils that his ancestors and himself had suffered,
fifty-six manors, and thirty-seven advowsons, with many
other considerable estates.

Thomas, third Duke of Norfolk, married first, Anne,
daughter of King Edward the Fourth, who brought him one
son, Thomas, who died young, — on the fourth of August, 1508,
and was buried at Lambeth : secondly, Elizabeth, daughter of
Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, by whom he had two
sons, Henry, the celebrated Earl of Surrey, and Thomas, who
in the first year of Elizabeth was created Viscount Howard
of Bindon, in the county of Dorset ; and one daughter, Mary,
married to Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, a natural son
to Henry the Eighth.

«0 AM H

OB, 1554,

THE LADY JANE GREY,

FOR it is perhaps more prudent to adopt the inveterate
absurdity, almost invariably used in this instance, of desig-
nating a married woman by her maiden surname, than to incur
the charge of obscurity or affectation by giving her that of
her husband. It is most difficult to guess in what motive
this singular folly could have originated, more especially as
her ephemeral greatness, and its tragical termination, the
only important circumstances of her public history, arose out
of the fact of her union with him. It is needless however,
and perhaps nearly useless, to attempt to solve that difficulty,
and on this question between common sense and propriety on
the one hand, and obstinate habit on the other, I am content
to take the wrong side.

This prodigy of natural and acquired talents, of innocence
and sweetness of temper and manners, and of frightful and
unmerited calamity, was born in 1537, the eldest of the three
daughters of Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, by the Lady
Frances, daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and
of his illustrious consort, Mary, Queen Dowager of France,
and youngest sister of Henry the Eighth. The story of her
almost infancy, were it not authenticated by several whose
veracity was as unquestionable as their judgment, would be
wholly incredible. Her education, after the fashion of the
time, which extended the benefits and the delights of erudi-
tion to her sex, was of that character, and was conducted by
John Aylmer, a protestant clergyman, whom her father enter-
tained as his domestic chaplain, and who was afterwards

200 LADY JANE GREY.

raised by Elizabeth to the see of London. For this gentleman
she cherished a solid esteem and respect, mixed with a child-
ish affection which doubtless tended to forward the success
of her studies. Those sentiments arose in some measure out
of domestic circumstances. That elegant and profound
scholar, and frequent tutor of royalty, Roger Ascham, in-
forms us in his " Schoolmaster," that, making a visit of cere-
mony on his going abroad to her parents at their mansion of
Broadgate in Leicestershire, he found her in her own apart-
ment, reading the Phaedon of Plato in the original, while her
father and mother, with all their household, were hunting in
the park. Ascham expressing his surprise that she should
be absent from the party, she answered, to use his own
words, " All their sport in the park I wisse is but a shadow
to that pleasure that I find in Plato — alas, good folk, they
never knew what true pleasure meant." "And how," re-
joined Ascham, " came you, Madam, to this deep knowledge
of pleasure ; and what did chiefly allure you to it, seeing not
many women, but very few men, have attained thereto ? " To
this she replied, with a sweet simplicity, that God had blessed
her by giving her sharp and severe parents, and a gentle
schoolmaster ; " for," addde she, " when I am in the presence
either of father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit,
stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, dancing,
or doing anything else, I must do it, as it were, in such
weight, measure, and number, even so perfectly as God made
the world, or else I am sharply taunted, and cruelly threatened,
till the time come that I must go to Mr. Aylmer, who teacheth
me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to
learning, that I think all the time nothing whilst I am with
him ; and thus my book hath been so much my pleasure, and
bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more, that in respect
of it all other pleasures in very deed be but trifles and very
troubles unto me."

Whether Ascham's first knowledge of her extraordinary
attainments occurred at this period is unknown, but he cer-

LADY JANE GREY. 201

tainly gave soon after the strongest proofs of the respect in
which he held them. A long letter remains, perhaps one of
many which he addressed to her, in which he declares his
high opinion of her understanding as well as of her learning,
and requests of her not only to answer him in Greek, but to
write a letter in the same language to his friend John Stur-
mius, a scholar whose elegant latinity had procured him the
title of " the Cicero of Germany," that he might have an
indifferent witness to the truth of the report which he would
make in that country of her qualifications. He speaks of
her elsewhere with an actual enthusiasm. " Aristotle's
praise of women," says he, " is perfected in her. She pos-
sesses good manners, prudence, and a love of labour. She
possesses every talent, without the least weakness, of her
sex. She speaks French and Italian as well as she does
English. She writes elegantly, and with propriety. She
has more than once spoken Greek to me, and writes in Latin
with great strength of sentiment." Sir Thomas Chaloner,
also her contemporary, not only corroborates Ascham's par-
ticulars of her erudite accomplishments, but adds that " she
was well versed in Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic ; that she
excelled also in the various branches of ordinary feminine
education ; played well on instrumental music, sung exqui-
sitely, wrote an elegant hand, and excelled in curious needle-
work, and, with all these rare endowments, was of a mild,
humble, and modest spirit." Fuller, who lived a century
after her, condensing, with the quaint eloquence which dis-
tinguished him, the fruit of all authorities regarding her
with which he was acquainted, says that " she had the inno-
cency of childhood, the beauty of youth, the solidity of
middle, the gravity of old age, and all at eighteen ; the birth
of a princess, the learning of a clerk, the life of a saint, and
the death of a malefactor for her parents' offences."

Her progress from this beautiful state of innocence and
refinement to that dismal end was but as a single step, and
the events relative to her which filled the short interval

202 LADY JANE GREY.

were matters rather of public than of personal history. By a
marvellous fatality this admirable young creature was doomed
to become the nominal head and actual slave of faction, and
a victim to the most guilty ambition. The circumstances of
the great contest for rule between the Protector Somerset and
Dudley which distinguished the short reign of Edward the
Sixth will be found elsewhere largely treated of in this work.
The latter having effected the ruin of his antagonist, em-
ployed his first moments of leisure in devising the means of
maintaining the vast but uncertain power which he had so
acquired. Among these the most obvious, and perhaps the
most hopeful, was the establishment of marriage contracts
between his own numerous issue and the children of the most
potent of the nobility, and thus, early in the year 1553, the
Lady Jane Grey, for whose father he had lately procured the
Dukedom of Suffolk, became the consort of his youngest son,
Guildford Dudley. He was secretly prompted however to
form this union by the conception of peculiar views, not less
extravagant than splendid. Edward, the natural delicacy of
whose frame never promised a long life, had shown some
symptoms of pulmonary disease, and the confusion and un-
certainty which the brutal selfishness of his father Henry
had entailed on the succession to the crown suggested to the
ardent and unprincipled Northumberland the possibility of
diverting it into his own family under such pretensions as
might be founded on the descent of his daughter-in-law.

The absurdity of this reverie, legally or indeed rationally
considered, was self-evident. Not to mention the existence
of the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, who might indeed
plausibly enough be said to stand under some circumstances
of disinherison, Jane descended from a younger sister of
Henry, and there was issue in being from the elder ; nay her
own mother, through whom alone she could claim, was
living ; and the marriages both of her mother and her grand-
mother had been very fairly charged with illegality. Opposed
to these disadvantages were the enormous power of the

LADY JANE GRET. 203

party which surrounded Northumberland ; his own complete
influence over the mind of the young King ; and the affection
which an agreement of age, talents, tempers, and studies,
had produced in Edward towards his fair kinswoman, and
which the Duke and his creatures used all practicable arti-
fices to increase. The nuptials were celebrated with great
splendour in the royal palace, and the King's health, pre-
sently after rapidly declined, insomuch that Northumber-
land saw no time was to be lost in proceeding to the con-
summation of his mighty project. Historians, with a licence
too commonly used by them, affect to recite with much
gravity the very arguments used by him to persuade Edward
to nominate Jane his successor, of which it is utterly im-
possible that they should have been informed. All that can
be truly said is that he gained his point to the utmost of his
hopes and wishes.

The King was induced, apparently with little difficulty, to
agree to certain articles, previously sanctioned by the Privy
Council, declaring her next heir to the Crown, and, for some
reason long since forgotten, but probably because it was
expected that he would be the most pliable, Sir Edward
Montague, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, was selected
from the Judges, to digest and methodise them, with the aid
of the Attorney and Solicitor General, into the strictest form
that they could devise. Montague however, whose own
account of his share in the transaction is extant, demurred.
Having at first vainly endeavoured to withdraw himself
entirely from the task, he sought to gain time, perhaps in
expectation of the King's death, by beseeching to be allowed
to consult the statutes, and all other authorities which might
have any relation to so high a subject. Urged at length,
with a vehemence no longer to be resisted, to proceed, he
reported to the Council that the proposed measure was not
only contrary to law, but would, if he were to obey their
command, subject themselves, as well as him, to the penal-
ties of high treason. Northumberland at that moment

204 LADY JANE GREY.

entered the council chamber in the utmost extravagance of
fury ; called Montague a traitor ; swore that he would " fight
any man in his shirt" who might gainsay the King's inclina-
tion ; and was actually about to strike the Chief Justice, and
Bromley, the Attorney General. They retired, and when
they were next summoned, the King, being present, reproved
them sharply for delaying the duty required of them. At
length, over-awed, they consented, on condition of receiving
an authority under the Great Seal, and a general pardon ;
and the instrument being prepared, the rest of the judges
were required to attend, and to sign it, which was accord-
ingly done by all, except one, Sir James Hales, a Justice of
the Common Pleas, and a man otherwise unknown, who, to
his endless honour, stedfastly refused to the last. The Pri-
mate, Cranmer, with that unfortunate irresolution which
formed the only distortion in the symmetry of his beau-
tiful character, approved of Jane's succession, but objected to
the mode of accomplishing it ; contended, perhaps with more
vigour than might have been expected of him, but in the
t-nd submitted, and signed, with the rest of the Council, not
only the document which had been prepared by the lawyers,
but also a second, by which they bound themselves in the
strictest engagement on oath to support her title, and to pro-
secute with the utmost severity any one among them who
might in any degree swerve from that obligation.

The letters patent, confirming to Jane the succession to
the throne, were signed by Edward on the twenty-first of
June, 1553, and on the sixth of the next month he expired.
Of these events, and even of the mere scheme for her fatal
elevation, she is said to have been kept in perfect ignorance .
The King's death indeed was sedulously concealed from all
for a few days, which Northumberland employed in endea-
vouring to secure the support of the city, and to get into his
hands the Princess Mary, who was on her way to London
when it occurred. She was however warned of her danger,
and retreated ; asserted without delay her title to the Crown

LADY JANE GREY. 205

in a letter to the Privy Council ; and received an answer full
of disdain, and professions of firm allegiance to her uncon-
scious competitrix. While these matters were passing,
Northumberland, and the Duke her father, repaired to Jane,
and having read to her the instrument which invested her
with sovereignty, fell on their knees, and offered her their
homage. Having somewhat recovered from the astonish-
ment at first excited by the news, she intreated with the
utmost earnestness and sincerity that she might not be made
the instrument of such injustice to the right heirs, and insult
to the kingdom, and that they would spare her, her husband,
and themselves, from the terrible dangers in which it could
not but involve them. Her arguments however were un-
availing, and no means were left to her but a positive refusal,
in which perhaps the strength of mind which she certainly
possessed might have enabled her to persist, when the
Duchess, her mother, and the young and inexperienced Guild-
ford, were called in, and to their solicitations she yielded.
She was now escorted in regal state to the Tower, on her
entry into which it is remarkable that her train was borne
by her mother, and in the afternoon of the same day,
the tenth of July, was proclaimed in London with the usual
solemnities.

In the mean time Mary, who had retired to Kenninghall
in Norfolk, assumed the title of Queen, and found her cause
warmly espoused by many of the nobility, and nearly the
whole of the yeomanry and inferior population of that and
the adjacent counties. Those who ruled in the metropolis,
and who, having fondly considered her as a fugitive, had
stationed some ships on those coasts to intercept her on her
expected flight to Flanders, were now suddenly compelled to
raise a military force to oppose to the hourly increasing mul-
titude of her supporters. Eight thousand horse and foot
were collected with surprising expedition, the command of
which was assumed by Northumberland, and it was agreed

206 LADY JANE GREY.

that Suffolk should remain in London to conduct the govern-
ment, an unlucky transposition arising from Jane's anxiety
for the personal safety of her father, whose best experience
was in martial affairs, while Dudley, with all the arts of a
statesman, possessed few of those qualities which win the
hearts of soldiers, or bespeak success in the field. At the
head however of this force he marched from London on the
fourteenth of July, having taken leave of the Council in a
short address from which his doubts of their fidelity may be
clearly inferred. They were in fact at that moment agreed
to betray the extravagant and unjust cause which they had so
lately sworn to support. Even on the following day their
intrigues became so evident that Suffolk, in the barrenness
of political invention, commanded in the name of the Queen
that the gates of the Tower should be kept constantly closed
to prevent the mischief which he apprehended from their
communication with the adverse party. The Lord Trea-
surer with great difficulty procured egress for a few hours,
and returned with the news that the naval squadron which
had been equipped with the view of seizing the person of
Mary had revolted to her, and letters were received from
Northumberland pressing for reinforcements, and reporting
the gradual defection of his troops on their march. The
Council now affected the warmest zeal, and eagerly repre-
sented the impossibility of raising such succours other-
wise than by their personal appearance among their tenants
and dependants, most of them offering to lead to the field
such forces as they might respectively raise. Suffolk, de-
ceived by these professions, and by the earnestness of their
despatches to other powerful men in the country to the same
effect, consented to release them from their imprisonment, for
such it actually was. He did so, and they repaired, headed
by the Earls of Shrewsbury and Pembroke, to Baynard's Castle,
the house of the latter of those noblemen, who had but a
few weeks before married his heir to a sister of the unfor-

LADY JANE GREY. 207

tunate Jane, where they determined to proclaim Queen
Mary, which was done on the same day, the nineteenth of
July, 1553.

Jane received from her father the news of her deposition
with the patience, the sweetness, and the magnanimity, which
belonged to her surprising character. She reminded him
with gentleness of her unwillingness to assume the short-
lived elevation, and expressed her hope that it might in some
measure extenuate the grievous fault which she had com-
mitted by accepting it ; declared that her relinquishment of
the regal character was the first voluntary act which she had
performed since it was first proposed to raise her to it ; and
humbly prayed that the faults of others might be treated
with lenity, in a charitable consideration of that disposition
in herself. The weak and miserable Suffolk now hastened
to join the Council, and arrived in time to add his signature
to a despatch to Northumberland, requiring him to disband
his troops, and submit himself to Queen Mary, which how-
ever he had done before the messenger arrived. Jane, whose
royal palace had now become the prison of herself and her
husband, saw, within very few days, its gates close also on
her father, and on his. The termination of Northumber-
land's guilty career, which speedily followed, is well known ;
but Suffolk, for some reasons yet undiscovered, was spared.
It has been supposed that his Duchess, who remained at
liberty, and is said to have possessed some share of the
Queen's favour, interceded successfully for him ; and why
may we not ascribe this forbearance to the clemency of Mary,
in whose rule we find no instances of cruelty but those which
originated in devout bigotry, — a vice which while engaged in
its own proper pursuits inevitably suspends the operation of
all the charities of nature ?

There is indeed little room to doubt that she meditated
to extend her mercy to the innocent Jane and her youthful
spouse. They were it is true arraigned and convicted of
high treason on the third of November following the date of

208 LADY JANE GREY.

their offence, and sentenced to die, but the execution was
delayed, and they were allowed several liberties and indul-
gences scarcely ever granted to state prisoners under their
circumstances, ^he hopes however thus excited were cut
short by the occurrence of Sir Thomas Wyat's rebellion, in
which her father, while the wax was scarcely cold on his
pardon, madly and ungratefully became an active party,
accompanied by his two brothers. Thus Mary saw already
the great house of Grey once more publicly in array against
her crown. The incentives to this insurrection are some-
what involved in mystery, and have been variously reported.
The avowed pretence for it was an aversion to the Queen's
proposed marriage with Philip of Spain, but there is strong
reason to believe that with this motive was mixed, at least
in ths breasts of the leaders, a secret intention to re-assert the
claim of Jane ; and Bishop Cooper, a contemporary historian,
tells us plainly in his Chronicle, that the Duke of Suffolk,
" in divers places as he went, again proclaimed his daughter."
Be this however as it might, it was now resolved to put her
to death without delay, and it is pretty well authenticated
that the Queen confirmed that determination with much
reluctance and regret.

Jane received the news without discomposure, and became
even anxious to receive the final blow, but here the bigotry
of Mary interfered, and she commanded that no efforts
should be spared to reconcile her to that church which arro-
gantly denies salvation to those who die not in its bosom.
She suffered the importunities, and perhaps the harshness, of
several of its most eminent ministers, with equal urbanity
and firmness. At length she was left to Feckenham, Mary's
favourite chaplain, and afterwards Abbot of Westminster,
a priest who united to a steady but well-tempered zeal an
acute understanding, and great sweetness of manners, and by
him, according to the fashion of the day, she was invited to
a disputation on the chief points of difference between the
two churches. She told him that she could not spare the

LADY JANE GREY. 209

time ; " that controversy might be fit for the living, but not
for the dying ; and intreated him, as the best proof of the
compassion which he professed for her, to leave her to make
her peace with God." He conceived from these expressions
that she was unwilling to quit the world, and obtained for
her a short reprieve, which when he communicated to her
she assured him that he had misunderstood her, for that, far
from desiring that her death might be delayed, "she expected,
and wished for it, as the period of her miseries, and of her
entrance into eternal happiness." He then led her into the
proposed conference, in which she acquitted herself with a
firmness, a power of argument, and presence of mind, truly
astonishing. Unable to work the slightest impression, he
left her, and she sat calmly down to make a minute of the
substance of their discourse, which she signed, and which
may be found in most of our ecclesiastical histories. She
now addressed a farewell letter to her father, in which, with
much mildness of expression, though certainly with less be-
nignity of sentiment than is usually ascribed to her, she
repeatedly glances at him as the author of her unhappy fate.
She wrote also to her sister, the Lady Katherine Herbert, in
the blank leaves of a Greek Testament, which she requested
might be delivered as her legacy to that lady, an epistle in
the same language, the translation of which, however fre-
quently already published, ought not to be omitted here.

" I have sent you, my dear sister Katherine, a book, which,
although it be not outwardly trimmed with gold, or the
curious embroidery of the artfullest needles, yet inwardly it
is more worth than all the precious mines which the vast
world can boast of. It is the book, my only best loved
sister, of the law of the Lord. It is the testament and last
will which he bequeathed unto us wretches and wretched
sinners, which shall lead you to the path of eternal joy ; and
if you with a good mind read it, and with an earnest desire
follow it, no doubt it shall bring you to an immortal and

i. P

210 LADY JANE GREY.

everlasting life. It will teach you to live and to die. It
shall win you more, and endow you with greater felicity,
than you should have gained by the possession of our woful
father's lands ; for as if God had prospered him you should
have inherited his honours and manors, so if you apply dili-
gently this book, seeking to direct your life according to the
rule of the same, you shall be an inheritor of such riches as
neither the covetous shall withdraw from you, neither the
thief shall steal, neither yet the moths corrupt. Desire,
with David, my dear sister, to understand the law of the
Lord thy God. Live still to die, that you by death may
purchase eternal life ; and trust not that the tenderness of
your age shall lengthen your life, for unto God, when he
calleth, all hours, times, and seasons, are alike, and blessed
are they whose lamps are furnished when he cometh, for as
soon will the Lord be glorified in the young as in the old.
My good sister, once again more let me intreat thee to learn
to die. Deny the world, defy the devil, and despise the
flesh, and delight yourself only in the Lord : Be penitent for
your sins : and yet despair not : Be strong in faith, yet pre-
sume not : and desire, with St. Paul, to be dissolved, and to
be with Christ, with whom even in death there is life. Be
like the good servant, and even at midnight be waking, lest
when death cometh, and stealeth upon you like a thief in
the night, you be with the servants of darkness found sleep-
ing ; and lest for lack of oil you be found like the five foolish
virgins, or like him that had not on the wedding garment,
and then you be cast into darkness, or banished from the
marriage. Rejoice in Christ, as I trust you do ; and, seeing
yon have the name of a Christian, as near as you can follow
the steps, and be a true imitator of your master Christ Jesus,
and take up your cross, lay your sins on his back, and always
embrace him.

" Now, as touching my death, rejoice as I do, my dearest
sister, that I shall be delivered of this corruption, and put

LADY JANE GREY. 211

no incorruption ; for I am assured that I shall for losing a
mortal life win one that is immortal, joyful, and everlasting,
to which I pray God grant you in his blessed hour, and send
you his all-saving grace to live in his fear, and to die in the
true Christian faith, from which in God's name I exhort you
that you never swerve, neither for hope of life nor fear of
death ; for, if you will deny his truth to give length to a
weary and corrupt breath, God himself will deny you, and
by vengeance make short what you by your soul's loss would
prolong ; but if you will cleave to him, he will stretch forth
your days to an uncircumscribed comfort, and to his own
glory : to the which glory God bring me now, and you here-
after when it shall please him to call you. Farewell once
again, my beloved sister, and put your only trust in God,
who only must help you. Amen.

" Your loving sister,

" JANE DUDLEY."

This letter was written in the evening of the eleventh of
February, 1554, N.S., and on the following morning she
was led to execution. Before she left her apartment she had
beheld from a window the passage of her husband to the
scaffold, and the return of his mangled corse. She then sat
down, and wrote in her tablets three short passages, in as
many languages. The first, in Greek, is thus translated —
" If his slain body shall give testimony against me before
men, his blessed soul shall render an eternal proof of my
innocence before God." The second, from the Latin —
" The justice of men took away his body, but the divine
mercy has preserved his soul." The third was in English —
" If my fault deserved punishment, my youth and my im-
prudence were worthy of excuse ; God and posterity will
show me favour." This precious relique she gave to the
Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Brydges, soon after cre-
ated Lord Chandos. Endeavours had been incessantly used

212 LADY JANE GREY.

to gain her over to the Romish persuasion, and Feckenham
embarrassed her by his exhortations even to the moment of
her death, immediately before which, she took him by the
hand, and thanked 'him courteously for his good meaning, but
assured him that they had caused her more uneasiness than
all the terrors of her approaching fate. Having addressed to
those assembled about her a short speech, less remarkable
for the matter which it contained than for the total absence
even of an allusion to her attachment to the reformed church,
she was put to death, fortunately by a single stroke of
the axe.

D IE m KY GREY

DUKE OF SUFFOLK.
OB. 1554,

HENRY GREY,

DUKE OF SUFFOLK.

THIS nobleman, who, by an inversion which rarely occurs
in the history of a family, derived all his public importance
from his offspring, was the eldest son and heir of Thomas
Grey, second Marquis of Dorset, by Margaret, daughter of
Sir Robert Wotton, of Bocton Malherbe, in Kent, and relict
of William Medley. The antiquity and splendour of his
name and descent are so well known that it is unnecessary
to speak of them : of his character and conduct, considering
him individually, and as a free agent, we have scarcely any
intelligence. " He was a man," says Sir John Hayward, in
his Life of Edward the Sixth, " for his harmless simplicity,
neither misliked nor much regarded :" but he was the father
of that distinguished example of universal excellence, Jane
Grey, and it is chiefly on that ground that his memory can
found any claim to historical recollection.

He had been at an early age contracted by his father to
Catherine, eldest daughter to William Fizalan, Earl of
Arundel, whose heir and successor, Henry, Lord Maltravers,
was at the same time espoused to his sister, the Lady Cathe-
rine Grey. The Marquis's marriage proved fruitless, and the
vanity of forming an alliance with royalty suggested to him,
soon after the death of his father, which happened in 1530,
the iniquitous expedient of repudiating his innocent wife.
The Lady Frances Brandon, daughter of Charles, Duke of
Suffolk, by Mary, Queen Dowager of France, sister to Henry

214 HENRY GREY,

the Eighth, encouraged his addresses ; and, as that despot
approved of their nnion, it is almost needless to say that the
divorce was accomplished without difficulty. He married
Frances Brandon, and had by her three daughters, of whom
Jane was the first-born.

He had been admitted into the number of the early com-
panions and intimates of Henry, and is said to have been
brave and generous ; perhaps in other words daring in tour-
naments, and careless of expense in his equipments for them,
and for other gorgeous gallantries of the court. He left it
however soon after his second marriage, and retired unam-
bitiously to his great estates, where be remained for many
years in a magnificent privacy, occupied in the usual sports
and hospitalities of the country, and in the indulgence, as we
are told by one author, of some taste for letters ; a report
which derives additional credit from the extensively learned
education bestowed on his children, so remarkably exem-
plified in that of Jane. The circumstances which withdrew
him from this honourable and happy retirement have been so
fully stated in a sketch of the life of that lady, already given
in this work, that it would be impertinent here to do much
more than refer to them, and his own subsequent story will
present little more than the barren detail of the conduct of a
mere instrument in the hands of another. It will be seen
there that Dudley, having pulled down his great antagonist
the Protector Somerset, and gained possession of the person
and mind of the youthful and declining Edward, conceived
the extravagant idea of availing himself of Dorset's royal
marriage as a means to seize on the crown. When in 1551
he procured for himself the Dukedom of Northumberland, he
obtained for the Marquis that of Suffolk, and used all other
artifices to attach him to his interest. Suffolk however was
not yet gained over, for when, at the close of the same year,
the Protector was tried by his Peers on charges of high
treason, the most material of which was an alleged design to
kill Dudley, after the trial, " the Lords," to use again the

DUKE OF SUFFOLK. 215

words of Hayward, " went together, and first the Duke of
Suffolk nobly said that he held it not reasonable that, this
being but a contention between private subjects, under pre-
tension thereof any mean action should be drawn to intention
of treason." Northumberland carefully concealed the vex-
ation which he suffered from this opposition ; Suffolk was
presently gratified with the office of Justice in Eyre of all
the King's Forests ; and soon after appointed Lord Warden of
the east, west, and middle Marches towards Scotland.

It was about this time that Northumberland proposed to
him the marriage of his third son, Lord Guildford Dudley,
with the ill-fated Jane, and met with a ready acquiescence.
Edward, who was evidently sinking under an incurable
malady, was prevailed on to nominate her as his successor
to the crown, which only the earnest solicitations of her
family induced her most unwillingly to accept. In the mean
time the vigilance of Mary's friends, and the sudden defection
of several of the most powerful of Northumberland's party,
left Suffolk barely time for the empty ceremonies of swear-
ing allegiance, and doing homage, to the ephemeral regality of
his daughter. He feebly affected for a few days to direct
the measures of her government, while his more guilty coad-
jutor marched, at the head of an army, to meet the adhe-
rents of Mary in the field, but to submit to them with the
most abject meanness. Suffolk, on receiving the news,
followed his example in London, and having first stripped
his daughter of the ensigns of royalty, joined the Privy
Council, which had declared for Mary, in their expressions
of loyalty to her. This artifice however, if such it may
deserve to be called, proved too shallow. He was arrested,
and sent to the Tower, where Jane and her husband were
already imprisoned ; and after a short confinement, was re-
leased without trial or penalty, for reasons which historians
have in vain endeavoured to discover.

The fate of his family at this period rested on the pru-
dence of his conduct. Justice, and even vengeance, if it was

216 HENRY GREY, DUKE OF SUFFOLK.

entertained in the bosom of Mary, had been satisfied by the
sacrifice of Northumberland, and of several of his associates.
The rigours of the imprisonment of Jane and Guildford
Dudley had been gradually relaxed, and the execution of
their sentence of death more than once formally respited.
Mary was known to have betrayed an inclination to spare
them. In this critical hour, when a mere passiveness on his
part seemed to promise the happiest effects, Suffolk, without
men, without money, without any apparent object, not only
rushed wildly, with two of his brothers, into Sir Thomas
Wyat s rebellion, but on his way to the quarters of the
insurgents, again proclaimed his daughter Queen in the towns
through which he passed. A new scene of blood was now
opened. Jane and her husband were presently led to the
scaffold, and the Duke, who seems not to have reached his
destination, was betrayed by one of his servants to the Earl
of Huntingdon, who had been sent to arrest him at the head
of a strong body of horse. He was brought by that noble-
man to London on the eleventh of February, 1554, and
lodged in the Tower, and on the twenty-third of the same
month was beheaded.

It has been already observed that this Duke had, in ad-
dition to Jane, two younger daughters ; they were Catherine,
•wife first of Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, from whom
she was divorced, and secondly of Edward Seymour, Earl of
Hertford ; and Mary, most meanly married to Martin Keys,
gioom porter at the court.

JOMIM KtLJSSELtL

FIRST EARL OF BEDFORD.

OB, 1555,

JOHN RUSSELL,

FIRST EARL OF BEDFORD.

WE have here the founder of that immense fortune, and
the first bearer of most of those exalted dignities, which still
distinguish his posterity. He sprung however from no mean
origin. His ancestors had been for nearly four centuries in
the first rank of English gentry, holding of the Crown, in the
county of Dorset, a Baronial estate, which, on the failure of
the elder line of the family, devolved on that from which he
descended. Several of them had held municipal appoint-
ments of considerable trust and honour ; others had sat in
the House of Commons ; and his grandfather, Sir John
Russell, filled the office of Speaker early in the reign of
Henry the Sixth. He was the eldest son of James Russell,
of Kingston, the estate above alluded to (son and heir of that
Sir John) by his first wife, Alice, daughter and heir of John
Wyse, a gentleman of that county.

He owed his introduction at the court of Henry the Seventh
to a mere accident. Philip, Archduke of Austria, and King
of Castile, say our historians, having been shipwrecked in
January 1505, at Weymouth, whither he was driven by a
great storm, on his passage from Flanders to Spain, was enter-
tained by Sir Thomas Trenchard, one of the chief persons of
that part of Dorsetshire, in whose house he lived splendidly, till
Henry had received the news of his arrival, and invited him
to the Court. It chanced that Sir Thomas sent for his cousin,
Mr. Russell, then lately returned from his travels, with great

218 JOHN RUSSELL,

fame, as Dugdale informs us, for his skill in foreign languages,
to wait on the royal stranger, who was so much pleased by
the conversation of his visitor, that he took the young man
in his company to Windsor ; recommended him strongly to
Henry ; and thus opened the way to his future fortune. It
should seem, however, from certain historical circumstances
which it is needless to state here, that the hospitable enter-
tainment of the Austrian prince in Dorsetshire was in reality
nothing less than an honourable captivity ; that Trenchard
might be considered rather as his gaoler than his host ; and
that Russell was appointed to watch him on the way to
London, and to deliver his person safely to the King, a ser-
vice very likely to please a Prince of Henry's character.
Whether these conjectures be well or ill founded, it is certain
that Mr. Russell made his first appearance at Court on that
occasion, and that the King immediately appointed him a
gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and distinguished him from
his fellows by a more than ordinary degree of kindness.

Henry the Eighth, who succeeded to the throne about four
years after this event, received him with increased favour.
They were about the same age, and Russell possessed most
of the qualities which usually attracted, however seldom they
might secure, that Prince's favourable notice — a sedate and
clear understanding ; a courageous heart ; and a learned
education, finished and polished by foreign travel. We find
him in that remarkable selection of youthful gallantry made
by the King in 1513, to grace his invasion of France, where
during the siege of Therouenne, Russell, with two hundred
and fifty men, recovered a piece of ordnance from ten thou-
sand French, under the command of one of their ablest
generals ; and afterwards, with singular bravery, cut off a
large supply of provisions which the enemy had sent towards
the town. The latter of these services was so eminently
distinguished, that our old chronicles have affected to preserve
the very terms of a dialogue on it, between him and the
King, who, when he saw him after his return from performing

FIRST EARL OP BEDFORD. 219

it, believed that he had not yet set out. " I," cried Henry,
"while we are fooling the town is relieved." "So it is
indeed," answered the other, " for I have sent them two
thousand carcases, and they have spared me twelve hundred
waggons of provision." " I, but," said the King, " I sent
after you to cut off the bridge Dreban." " That," replied
Russell, " was the first thing I did ; wherefore I am upon my
knees for your Majesty's grace and pardon." " Nay then,"
concluded the King, " by'r Lady thou hast not my pardon
only, but my favour too." He was not less active at the
siege of Tournay ; was one of Henry's commissioners in 1518
for the restoration of that strong city to France ; and in 1522,
sailed again to the French coast, jn that expedition which
was commanded by the Earl of Surrey as Admiral, when he
received knighthood from that nobleman for his good service
at the sacking of Morlaix.

In 1523 he was first invested with the ministerial cha-
racter; sent Ambassador to Rome, and from thence, with
great secrecy, even, says Lord Herbert, " in disguised habit,"
to Charles Duke of Bourbon, to foment the difference then
subsisting between that Prince and the King of France. He
prevailed on the Duke to join openly the alliance between
Henry and the Emperor, and was personally engaged in most
of the warlike enterprises which followed that junction. In
1525 he fought at the celebrated battle of Pavia ; in 1532
attended Henry at his interview with Francis the First ; and
in 1536 was named, with Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and Sir
Francis Bryan, to sit in judgment on the Lincolnshire insur-
gents. On his return from that employment he was appointed
Comptroller of the Household, and, towards the end of the
same year, was sworn of the Privy Council.

On the twenty-ninth of March, 1538, he was created Baron
Russell, of Cheneys, in the county of Buckingham, an estate
which he had acquired by his wife ; and in 1540, on the
dissolution of the greater monasteries, became enriched be-
yond all precedent, by grants from their spoil, particularly

220 JOHN RUSSELL,

in Devonshire, where he obtained, together with the borough
and town of Tavistock, the entire demesne of its very rich
abbey, comprising nearly thirty manors, with many large
estates in other parts of the county, as well as in those of
Bucks and Somerset. In 1541 he was constituted Lord
Admiral of England and Ireland, and President of the coun-
ties of Devon, Dorset, Cornwall, and Somerset ; and, in the
conclusion of that year, on some occasion of difference be-
tween his master and Francis the First, was sent with a
military force into Picardy. On the third of December, 1543,
the custody of the Privy Seal was committed to him ; and in
1545, when Henry attacked Boulogne in person, he com-
manded the vanguard of the besieging army. The King,
who died in the succeeding year, appointed him one of the
sixteen executors to his will, who formed a Council of Regency
for the administration of affairs during the minority of Edward
the Sixth.

At the Coronation of that Prince he exercised the venera-
ble and dignified office of Lord High Steward of England,
and soon after received from the Crown a grant of the great
estates of the dissolved monastery of Woburn, in Bedford-
shire, which has since become the chief residence of his heirs.
A formidable insurrection in the western counties, in 1549,
against the measures of the reformation, which were then
pursued with the utmost vigour, called him again into mili-
tary service. In his character of Governor of those provinces
he patiently endeavoured by every possible exertion of the
civil authority to restore order, and, finding all such efforts
ineffectual, placed himself at the head of the best armed
force that he could muster, and attacked the insurgents with
very inferior numbers. Of the straits to which he was
frequently reduced, and the dangers to which he was ex-
posed, in this unequal warfare ; the judgment and bravery
with which he extricated himself from them ; and his final
complete success ; a very lengthened and particular account,
still highly interesting to those who inhabit that part of the

FIRST EARL OF BEDFORD. 221

island, may be found in Hollinshed's Chronicle, and there
only. It was an eminent public service, and he was rewarded
accordingly ; for on the nineteenth of January, 1549, O.S.,
he was created Earl of Bedford.

During his absence in the West commenced the attack on
the Protector Somerset, which, though for a while suspended,
terminated two years after in the tragical death of that great
person. A large body of the Peers, prevailed on through the
artifices of Dudley, afterwards Duke of Northumberland, had
combined against the Protector, and shown themselves in
open insurrection. He solicited the support of those whom
he esteemed his friends, and of those who had remained
neutral. A letter from the Protector, probably circular, to
the Earl of Bedford, together with two from the Earl in
answer, have been preserved also by Hollinshed.

" After our right hartie commendations," says the Duke,
" to your good Lordship, Here hath of late risen such a con-
spiracie against the King's Majestic and us as never hath
beene scene, the which they can not mainteine, with such
vaine letters, and false tales surmised, as was never ment or
intended on us. They pretend and saie that we have sold
Bullonge to the French, and that we doo withhold wages
from the soldiers, and other such tales and letters they doo
spread abroad, (of the which if anie one thing were true we
would not wish to live,) the matter now being brought to a
marvellous extremitie, such as we would never have thought
it could have come unto, especiallie of those men towards
the King's Majestie and us, of whome we have deserved no
such thing, but rather much favour and love. But the case
being as it is, this is to require and praie you to hasten you.
hither to the defense of the King's Majestie, in such force
and power as you maie, to shew the part of a true gentleman,
and of a verie friend ; the which thing we trust God shall
reward, and the King's Majestie, in time to come, and we
shall be never unmindfull of it too. We are sure you shall

222 JOHN RUSSELL,

have other letters from them, but, as ye tender your dutie to
the King's Majestic, we require you to make no staie, but
immediatelie repaire, with such force as ye have, to his High-
nesse, in his castell at Windsor, and the rest of such force as
ye maie make to follow you. And so we bid you right
hartilie farewell. From Hampton Court, the sixt of October.
" Your Lordship's assured loving friend,

"EDWARD SUMMERSET."

" To this letter," continues Hollinshed, " of the Lord Pro-
tector's, sent the sixt of October, the Lord Russell, returning
answer againe vpon the eight of the said moneth, first lamented
the heavie dissention fallen betweene the Nobilitie and him,
which he tooke for such a plague, as a greater could not be
sent of Almightie God vpon this realme, being the next waie,
said he, to make us of conquerors slaves ; and like to induce
vpon the whole realme an universall thraldome and calamitie,
vnless the mercifull goodnesse of the Lord doo help, and
some wise order be taken, in staieng these great extremities.
And, as touching the Duke's request in his letters ; for as
much as he had heard before of the broile of the Lords, and
feared least some conspiracie had beene meant against the
King's person, he hasted forward, with such companie as he
could make, for the suertie of the King, as to him appteined.
Now, perceiving by the Lords' letters sent vnto him the same
sixt daie of October, these tumults to rise vpon privat causes
betweene him and them, he therefore thought it expedient
that convenient power should be levied, to be in a readinesse
to withstand the woorst, what perils soever might issue, for
the preservation both of the King and State of the realme
from invasion of forren enemies, and also for the staieng of
bloudshed, if anie such thing should be intended betwixt
the parties in the heat of this faction. And this he
thinking best for the discharge of his allegiance, humblie
besought his Grace to have the same also in speciall regard
and consideration ; first, that the King's Maiestie be put in

FIRST EARL OF BEDFORD. 223

no feare ; and that if there be anie such thing wherein he
hath given iust cause to them thus to proceed, he would so
conforme himselfe as no snch privat quarrels doo redound to
the publike disturbance of the realme ; certifieng moreover
the Duke that, if it were true, which he understood by the
letters of the Lords, that he should send about proclamations
and letters for raising up of the commons, he liked not the
same ; notwithstanding he trusted well that his wisdome
would take such a waie as no effusion of bloud should
follow."

" And thus ranch being conteined in his former letters
the eight of October, in his next letters againe, written the
eleventh of October, the said Lord Russell, rejoising to heare
of the most reasonable offers of the Lord Protector made to
the Lords, wrote vnto him, and promised to doo what in the
uttermost power of him (and likewise of Sir William Her-
bert, joined togither with him) did lie, to worke some honor-
able reconciliation betweene him and them ; so as, his said
offers being accepted and satisfied, some good conclusion
might issue, according to their good hope and expectation ;
signifieng, moreover, that, as touching the levieng of men,
they had resolved to have the same in readinesse for the
benefit of the realme, to occurre all inconveniences what-
soever, that either by forren invasion or otherwise might
happen : and so, having their power at hand to draw neere,
whereby they might have the better opportunitie to be soli-
citors and meanes for this reformation on both parts, &c.
And thus much for the answer of the Lord Russell to the
Lord Protector's letter."

These answers savour more of the caution of a politician
than of the cordiality of a friend, or even the complaisance of
a courtier. They were written, however, in a moment of
great doubt and difficulty. The Earl seems, for no other
intelligence remains of his conduct amidst that tenible con-
tention, to have steered, probably with equal honesty and
wisdom, an even course between the two parties. Certain it

224 JOHN RUSSELL,

is that the downfall of Somerset neither increased nor dimi-
nished the favour in which he had been long held. During
the greatest violence of the struggle it was his good fortune
to he sent, with Lord Paget, Sir William Petre, and Sir John
Mason, to treat of a peace with France, which was concluded
at Guisnes, nearly at the same time when the flames of the
faction at home were quenched by the blood of the Protector.
He did not long survive the accession of Mary. His last
public service was in an embassy of ceremony to Philip of
Spain, whom he escorted in 1554 from Corunna to London,
and introduced to that Princess as a bridegroom. He died at
his house in the Strand, London, on the fourteenth of March
in the following year, and was buried at Cheneys, leaving by
his Countess, Anne, daughter and sole heir to Sir Guy Sap-
cote, and widow of Sir Thomas Broughton, of Tudington, in
Bedfordshire, an only child, Francis, his worthy and mag-
nificent successor.

History affords us little on which to found a judgment of
the first Earl of Bedford's character. His friends have neg-
lected to transmit to posterity an account of those merits
which could challenge so vast an extent of royal favour : his
enemies too have been silent as to faults, which their envy of
that favour might naturally have led them to record. The
detail of his services here given, is sufficient to assure us that
he possessed no mean abilities, and if the conduct of such a
man has escaped detraction, it justly demands our good
opinion. The mighty Edmund Burke, it is true, with that
magical eloquence which could almost immortalise or anni-
hilate the characters of those whom he favoured or disliked,
but with the doubtful justice which always attends effusions
of anger, levelled a general censure at the memory of this
nobleman, to avenge an offence offered by his heir nearly
three centuries after his death. If history could have fur-
nished a single accusation against him, that memorable
philippic would certainly have recorded it ; but it charges
him only with having received great rewards, and barely
insinuates that he might not have deserved them.

F&O DLEY,
BISHOP OF LOKDO^T.
OB, 1555,

NICHOLAS RIDLEY,

BISHOP OF LONDON.

THIS exemplary divine was no otherwise distinguished
from his fellow labourers in the Reformation, than by a piety
perhaps more humble and sincere, and a zeal more fervid.
He seemed to have been born, as well as educated, for the
ecclesiastical profession, and possessed every qualification to
adorn, if the expression may be allowed, as well as to serve
a church. He had however the misfortune to live at a period
when the clergy of his country had no alternative but to
abjure the faith in which they had been bred, or to retire
into obscurity and poverty; and he hesitated not to adopt
the former course. Certainly the history of those frightful
times cannot furnish an example of a purer or more consistent
proselyte ; yet it is difficult to imagine views merely spiritual
in the conversion of the Catholic chaplain of a Protestant
Primate to the religious profession of his lord.

Little is known of Ridley's parentage. A collateral kins-
man, of his surname, who several years since took great pains
to collect all that had been related of him, could only inform
us that his father was a third son of an ancient family, seated
at Willimondswike, in Northumberland, and descended from
a long series of knights, and it is well known that the name
still flourishes in great respectability in that province. We
learn however, from the same authority, that he had two
uncles, Lancelot, an elder, and Robert, a younger, brother of
his father, both clergyman of some distinction, and that the

226 NICHOLAS ETDLEY,

latter took on himself to provide for the education of the
young Nicholas. This engagement was strictly performed,
for, after having been well grounded at the always respectable
school of Newcastle on Tyne, he was removed to Pembroke
Hall, in Cambridge, and went a few years after to complete
his studies at the Sorbonne, and afterwards at the celebrated
university of Louvain.

He had however in the mean time taken his degrees, in
1522 of Bachelor, and in 1524 of Master, of Arts, and had
already established at Cambridge a considerable reputation
for a critical skill in the learned languages, particularly the
Greek, and was not less esteemed as a deeply read theo-
logian, and an acute disputant. He returned from Louvain
to his college in 1529, having added to those qualifications
during his absence what was then esteemed the perfection of
pulpit argument and eloquence. He became the favourite
preacher; was chosen in 1533 senior proctor; and, in the
following year, University orator and chaplain. It was at
this time that Henry required the two Universities to exa-
mine the Scriptures on the grand question of the Pope's
supremacy. Their report to the King is well known. Ridley
not only went with the stream, but argued against the Papal
claim with equal warmth and ingenuity, and it is probable
that he then betrayed a leaning towards the new doctrines in
spiritual matters, for he was soon after invited by Cranmer
to reside in his house, as one of his domestic chaplains, and
in the spring of 1538 the Archbishop gave him the Vicarage
of Herne, in Kent. In the succeeding year, on the passing
of the act of the Six Articles, he had the boldness to preach
publicly against that tremendous statute, to the most remark-
able provision of which, the prohibition of marriage to the
clergy, his patron was known to have rendered himself ob-
noxious. His gradual abandonment of the Church of Rome
it must be confessed now attended the steps of Cranmer's
defection with a singular regularity, and his preferment
advanced in the same measure. In 1540 he was appointed

BISHOP OF LONDON. 227

a chaplain to the King ; in the next year a prebendary of
Canterbury ; and in 1545 obtained a stall in the Church of
Westminster.

In the mean time those of the old Church, justly alarmed
by his popularity as a preacher, made various efforts to silence
him. In 1541 his brother prebendaries of Canterbury exhi-
bited a complaint against him at the Archbishop's Visitation,
for having impugned the law of the Six Articles, and after-
wards accused him at the Quarter Sessions for Kent, of
directing that the Te Deum should be sung in English in his
Church of Herne, and of preaching against auricular con-
fession. These charges were at length brought, probably on
the suggestion of Cranmer, before the Privy Council, when
the King referred them to the decision of that Prelate, by
whom they were presently quashed. It was not however
till shortly before the death of Henry that Ridley completely
embraced the Protestant faith. He had not yet rejected
transubstantiation ; and it is remarkable that in this last
article of his conversion he once more accompanied Cranmer.
We are told indeed by Fox, and others, that he employed
nearly the whole of the year 1545 in reading and reflecting
on this celebrated tenet, in utter retirement at his Vicarage ;
and Cranmer, in the preface to his treatise on the Sacrament,
ascribes his own renunciation to the effect of his chaplain's
arguments. At all events, this change in their profession
may be said to have been simultaneous.

The doubts and fears of the reformers having been removed
by the death of the capricious tyrant, Ridley gave the reins
to his zeal and his eloquence. He presently gained the
esteem of the young Edward, already a judge and a patron of
merit. The fellows of Pembroke Hall, of which he had now
been for some time master, having given him a living in
the diocese of Norwich, the presentation to which was
claimed by the Bishop, he was admitted to it by the express
command of the King ; and on the fourth of September, 1547
was promoted to the see of Rochester. In the succeeding
42

228 NICHOLAS RIDLEY,

year he was one of the divines to whom was intrusted the
great task of composing the common prayer, and was soon
after joined in commission with Cranmer and others for the
correction of the schism of the Anabaptists, and the removal
of other excrescences which had already deformed the new
system of faith. In the execution of this latter office he un-
happily made himself a party in some horrible acts of per-
secution, the most remarkable of which were the proceedings
against Joan Bocher, or Joan of Kent, and a Dutchman,
named Paris, who were burned alive, the one for denying the
humanity, the other the divinity, of Christ. In the same
year, 1539, he presided in a public disputation at Cambridge
on the subject of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and
^he result was a decision against transubstantiation, for the
purpose of obtaining which the Conference had in fact
been held.

Towards the close of the same year Bonner, Bishop of
London, was deprived, and Ridley, who had been one of the
commissioners by whose sentence he was ejected, was ap-
pointed to succeed him ; and here a most amiable light is
thrown on Ridley's character by the accidental preservation
of some of those minute circumstances which make us better
acquainted with men's characters than whole volumes of the
most honest biography — " He took care," says my authority,
" to preserve from injury the goods, &c. belonging to Bonner,
allowing him full liberty to remove them when he pleased.
Such materials as Bonner had purchased for the repair of
his house and church, the new Bishop employed to the uses
'or which they were designed, but he repaid him the money
which he had advanced for them. He took upon himself
the discharge of the sums which were due to Bonner's servants
for liveries and wages ; and that the mother and sister of that
prelate, who lived near the palace at Fulham, might not be
losers in consequence of his own promotion, he always sent
for them to dinner and supper, constantly placing Mrs. Bon-
ner at the head of the table, even when persons of high rank

BISHOP OF LONDON. 229

were his guests ; often saying ' By your Lordship's favour,
this place of right and custom is for my mother Bonner ; ' as
if he had succeeded to the relation as well as office of her
son." These small notices are the more valuable, because very
little has been transmitted to us as to his private character.
I have met with scarcely anything of that sort on which we
may safely rely, except in a letter from William Turner
(physician to the Protector Somerset, and who had been
Ridley's fellow collegian) to Fox, who seems to have applied
to him for personal matter of Ridley to insert in his Mar-
tyrology. Turner, after extolling him as a disputant and a
scholar, enlarges, in the strongest terms, on his charitable
disposition ; the sweetness of his temper and manners, and
the warmth of his attachments ; and instances his friendship
for Edmund Grindal, afterwards Primate, whom Turner calls
his " Fidus Achates."

The first steps indeed of Grindal's progress to supreme
dignity in the English Church were made under his guidance
and patronage. This is in some measure proved by an
original letter from Ridley to Sir John Cheke, which remains
in the library of Emanuel College, and which it will not be
impertinent to insert here, as a specimen of Ridley's energetic
style : —

" Master Cheke,

" I wish you grace and peace. Sir, in God's cause, for God's
sake, and in his name, I beseech you of your pain and fur-
therance towards men of God's word. I did talk with you
of late what case I was in concerning my chaplains. I have
gotten the good will and grant to be with me of three
preachers, men of good learning, and, as I am persuaded, of
excellent virtue, which are all able, both with life and learn-
ing, to set forth God's word in London, and in the whole
diocese of the same, where is most need, of all parts of Eng-
land, for thence goeth example, as you know, into all the
rest of the King's Majesty's whole realm. The men's names

230 NICHOLAS RIDLEY,

be these : Master Grindal, whom you know to be a man of
virtue and learning. Master Bradford, a man by whom I am
assuredly informed God hath and doth work wonders in get-
ting forth of his word. The third is a preacher the which,
for detecting and confuting the Anabaptists and Papists in
Essex, both by his preaching and writing, is now enforced to
bear Christ's cross. The two first be scholars in the Uni-
versity : the third as poor as either of the other twain. Now
there is fallen a Prebend in Paul's, called Cantrell's, by the
death of one Leyton. This Prebend is an honest man's living
of xxxiv. pounds, and better, in the King's books. I would
give it with all my heart to Mr. Grindall, and so I should
have him continually with me. The Council hath written to
me to stop the collation, and say The King's Majesty hath
determined it unto the furniture of his stable. Alas, Sir, this
is an heavy hearing. Is this the fruit of the gospel 1 Speak,
Mr. Cheke, speak, for God's sake, for God's cause, unto whom-
soever you may do any good withall ; and, if you will not
speak, then I beseech you let this my letter speak.

" From Fulham, this present, the xxnnth. day of July, 1561.
" Your's in Christ,

"Nic. LONDON."

Ridley's promotion to the See of London seemed to rein-
vigorate the activity of his zeal. He presently made a
diocesan visitation, in which he caused the altars in all the
churches to be demolished, and replaced by the simple tables
still in use. He was now appointed by the Privy Council,
jointly with Cranmer, to compose a regular code of the Pro-
testant faith, which having comprised in forty-two articles,
it was sanctioned by the King in Council, and published
under the royal authority. Having perhaps imbibed some
portion of vanity from the praise which he had been so long
used to receive for the acuteness and eloquence of his argu-
mentation, he determined about this time to apply them to-
wards the conversion of the Princess Mary, and with that view

BISHOP OF LONDON. 231

waited on her, at her residence at Hunsdon House. The nar-
ration of what passed in that visit, at least as creditahle to
the Princess as to the Bishop, is too curious to he here omit-
ted, and I give it nearly in the very words of Fox.

" Her highness received him in the presence chamber ;
thanked him for his civility, and entertained him with very
pleasant discourse for a quarter of an hour ; said she remem-
bered him at Court, when chaplain to her father, and men-
tioned particularly a sermon of his before her father, at the
marriage of Lady Clinton, that now is, to Sir Anthony
Browne ; and then, leaving the presence chamber, she dis-
missed him to dine with her servants. After dinner she sent
for him again, when the Bishop in conversation told her that
he did not only come to pay his duty to her Grace by waiting
on her, but, further, to offer his service to preach before her
the next Sunday, if she would be pleased to admit him. Her
countenance changed at this, and she continued for some
time silent. At last she said, ' I pray you, my Lord, make
the answer to this yourself.' The Bishop proceeding to tell
her that his office and duty obliged him to make this offer,
she again desired him to make the answer to it himself, for
that he could not but know what it would be ; yet, if the
answer must come from her, she told him that the doors of
the parish church should be open for him if he came, and
that he might preach if he pleased, but that neither would
she hear him, nor allow any of her servants to do it.

" ' Madam,' said the Bishop, ' I trust you will not refuse
God's word.' ' I cannot tell,' said she, ' what you call God's
word : that is not God's word now that was God's word in
my father's days.' The Bishop observed that God's word
was all one at all times, but had been better understood and
practised in some ages than others : upon which she could
contain no longer, but told him — ' You durst not for your ears
have preached that in my father's days that now you do ;'
and then, to show how able she was in this controversy, she
added — ' As for your new books, I thank God I never read

232 NICHOLAS RIDLEY,

any of them : I never did, and never will.' She then broke
out into many bitter expressions against the form of religion
at present established, and against the government of the
realm, and the laws made in her brother's minority, which she
said she was not bound to obey till the King came of perfect
age, and when he was so, she would obey them ; and then asked
the Bishop if he was one of the Council ; and, on his answer-
.Tig no, ' You might well enough,' said she, ' as the Council
goes now-a-days ;' and parted from him with these words :
' My Lord, for your civility in coming to see me I thank you ;
but for your offer to preach before me I thank you not a whit.'
After this, the Bishop was conducted to the room where he
had dined, where Sir Thomas Wharton gave him a glass of
wine, which when he had drank he seemed confounded, and
said, ' Surely I have done amiss ;' and being asked how, he
reproached himself for having drank in that place where
God's word had been refused ; ' whereas,' said he, ' if I had
remembered my duty, I ought to have departed immediately,
and to have shaken the dust from my feet, as a testimony
against this house.' " Even if Mary had attempted to con-
vert him, he could scarcely have used a more furious speech.
A sad reverse of fortune awaited this poor prelate, and
even now closely impended over him. An incurable pulmo-
nary malady soon after seized on the incomparable Edward,
and with the decline of his health faded the views of the
reformers. Not long before his death, Ridley having deli-
vered before him, with great fervour of eloquence, a discourse
on the duties of charity and beneficence, the King sent for
him in the evening, to confer with him more at large on the
subjects of his sermon, and it is the tradition, that Christ's
Hospital, and those of St. Bartholomew, St. Thomas, and
Bridewell, owe their foundation, or rather their endowments,
to the effect produced on the King's mind by his communi-
cation with Ridley on that day. Edward survived but for a
few weeks, and Jane Grey became the forlorn hope of the
Protestants. Ridley exerted his utmost powers of persuasion

BISHOP OF LONDON. 233

in the public support and justification of her title to the
Throne, and, on the utter failure of the enterprise at the head
of which she had been cruelly placed, tendered his homage
to Mary, and besought her mercy. He had however now
added the crime of rebellion to what she deemed obstinate
heresy, and could scarcely have hoped for forgiveness, even
from the most clement prince, under her circumstances.

He was presently committed to the Tower of London,
where he remained for eight months, in a less rigorous con-
finement than Cranmer, and others, who were imprisoned
there for the same causes. It has been thought that Mary
was inclined to spare him ; an inference drawn from the
fact that more strenuous endeavours were used with him to
persuade him to recant than towards any of his fellow-pri-
soners. The firmness however of his resistance does honour
to his memory. He was removed, together with Cranmer
and Latimer, to Oxford, and compelled to waste what may
be called his dying breath in new disputations on the real
presence, and other dogmas of the ancient Church. At length
he was brought to trial, and, on the first of October, 1555,
condemned to die for heresy. The fifteenth of the same
month was appointed for the execution of the sentence, and
neither ancient nor modern history can produce a finer ex-
ample of an heroism, at once splendid and modest, than was
displayed in the demeanour with which he met his frightful
fate. He perished at the stake, in company with his ancient
friend Latimer, and with unnecessary suffering, caused by the
mismanagement of those to whom the preparations for the
tragedy had been entrusted.

Bishop Ridley was author of a number of devout and con-
troversial pieces, which have been printed, and long since
forgotten. 1. "Injunctions of Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of
London, to his diocese" — 2. " A Treatise concerning Images
not to be set up nor worshipped in Churches " — 3. " A brief
Declaration of the Lord's Supper "—4. " The Way of Peace
among all Protestants," in a Letter to Bishop Hooper — 5. "A

23 i NICHOLAS RIDLEY, BISHOP OF LONDON.

Letter of Reconciliation to Bishop Hooper" — 6. " A piteous
Lamentation of the miserable State of the Church of England
in the time of the late Revolt from the Gospel" — 7. " A
Comparison between the comfortable Doctrine of the Gospel
and the Traditions of the Popish Religion" — 8. " Account of
the Disputation held at Oxford" — 9. " A friendly Farewell,"
written during his imprisonment there — 10. " A Treatise on
the Blessed Sacrament."

THOMAS <D R A N

AJICHBLSHOP OF C
OB. 1556,

THOMAS CRANMER,

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

CRANMER, unlike the generality of the clergy of his time,
was of very respectable birth. His family was originally
seated at Sotherton, in Suffolk, from whence his grandfather
removed to Aslacton, in Nottinghamshire, on his marriage
with the heiress of a most ancient house which bore the name
of that parish, and whose estates he acquired by the match.
The Archbishop was the second son of Thomas Cranmer, of
Aslacton, by Agnes, daughter of Laurence Hatfield, of Wil-
loughby, in the same county ; and was born at the former
place on the second of July, 1489. Strype informs us that
the education of his childhood was entrusted to " a rude and
severe parish clerk" (meaning, I suppose, the minister of his
father's parish) " of whom he learned little, and endured
much ; " and that at the age of fourteen he became a student
of Jesus College, in Cambridge, and in due time was elected
a fellow of that house, and took his degree of Master of Arts.
His academical career was for a while arrested by an unbe-
coming match, into which he was probably led by that kind
and easy nature which has been always ascribed to him. We
are told particularly of his wife, that she was a relation to
the hostess of the Dolphin Inn, opposite to Jesus Lane, in
Cambridge, and resided there, doubtless in the character of a
servant. The marriage of course deprived him of his fellow-
ship, and this good man, destined to become the second per-
son in the State, retired meekly to live with his wife at the

236 ARCHBISHOP CRAXMER.

inn, perhaps enjoying there, such is the delusion and uncer-
tainty of human prospects, that peace, and tranquil security,
which was ever denied to his future grandeur. Within a
year however she died in childbirth : Cranmer, such was the
affection of his college towards him, was immediately re-
stored to his fellowship ; and in 1523 was admitted Doctor
in Divinity, and appointed Reader of the Theological Lecture
in his own college, and an examiner of candidates for divinity

He remained, thus employed, in the University till 1529,
when an accident made him known to the King. The plague
then raged in Cambridge, and Cranmer had taken refuge in
the house of a Mr. Cressy, to whose wife he was related, at
Waltham Abbey, in Essex, and had carried thither with him
the sons of that gentleman, who were his college pupils. It
happened during his short residence there that Edward Fox,
at that time Almoner to the King, and afterwards Bishop of
Hereford, and the celebrated Stephen Gardiner, came to visit
his host : and the legality of Henry's proposed divorce from
Catharine of Arragon, for which he was then suing at Rome,
becoming the topic of conversation, those eminent persons,
to whom Cranmer's reputation at Cambridge was not entirely
unknown, engaged him in the discussion. He ventured to
say that he thought the King's reference to the Holy See was
totally unnecessary ; would produce tedious delay, and in
the end prove ineffectual ; that the question whether a man
might lawfully marry his brother's widow appeared to him
to have been already clearly decided by the authority of the
Scriptures ; but that the safest method for the King to pursue
would be to lay that question before the most learned divines
of his two Universities, and to abide by their decision. Fox
and Gardiner, who were good courtiers, as well as good
Catholics, conscious that the King would highly relish the pro-
posal, hastened to inform him of it, and honestly, or unwarily,
mentioned the name of the author ; on which Henry is said
to have exclaimed, " This man hath gotten the sow by the

ARCHBISHOP CRANMER. 237

right ear." He commanded Cranmer to wait on him without
delay ; formed presently a high opinion of his talents and his
learning ; and directed him to digest in the form of a general
treatise all his arguments on the subject of the divorce ; and,
in order to his undisturbed application to that task, placed
him in the house of Thomas, Earl of Wiltshire, where he
became the friend and favourite of that nobleman's daughter,
the beautiful and ill-fated Anne Bullen, whom Henry already
meditated to take to his second wife. These matters are said
to have occurred in August, 1529.

When he had completed his book, the King sent him to
Cambridge, to dispute for the positions which he had ad-
vanced in it, and the decision soon after publicly declared by
that University against the legality of the marriage with
Catharine has been ascribed by historians chiefly to the inge-
nuity of his reasoning, a compliment to the justice of which,
whatever we might be inclined to place to the score of
Henry's fearful influence, or of the undoubted dictates of
religion and morality, it would be impertinent in this place
to controvert. Be that however as it might, certain it is that
he had already acquired so great a degree of credit with his
master that he placed him at the head of those divines and
civilians who were attached to the Earl of Wiltshire's em-
bassy in the following year to the courts of Rome, Paris, and
Brussels, and instructed to argue there for the divorce. He
had the boldness to present his book to the Pope, and to
propose a public disputation on the question, which was
civilly declined ; but he pressed so closely for some sort of
decision, that the Conclave was at length forced into the
impious absurdity of uttering a judicial declaration that the
marriage was against the law of God, but that yet the Pope
had the power of dispensing with it. Leaving Rome, he
travelled with the ambassador through Germany, and at
Nuremberg became acquainted with Osiander, a celebrated
Protestant divine of that city, with whom he sojourned for a
considerable time, and prevailed on him to write a treatise

238 ARCHBISHOP CBANMER.

on incestuous marriages, in reference to the King's case. But
he had a stronger motive for prolonging his stay at Nurem-
berg. He had again fallen, in the midst of his grave occu-
pations, into the Snare of Love : and before he left that city
was privately married to the niece of Osiander. This con-
nection appears to have been attended by but little comfort,
for, on his return he left her in Germany ; after a time, sent
for her to England ; and for five years together seemed to
have no intercourse with her beyond an indifferent acquaint-
ance ; and even this he thought it prudent to relinquish, on
the appearance in 1539 of the famous Six Articles, two of
which forbade the marriage of priests, under the pain of
death, when he sent her again to her family. He had by
this lady (a fact which has escaped the notice of all who
have written concerning him) a son and a daughter. I find
in the journals of Parliament that a bill passed the Commons
on the ninth of March, 1562, for " the restoration in blood
of Thomas and Margaret, children of the late Archbishop
Cranmer."

To return to his public life. It should seem that the King
had gradually imparted to Cranmer the whole of his con-
fidence with regard to all his affairs in Germany, for we find
him, singly, treating with the Emperor, the Elector of Saxony,
and other princes of the empire, on every matter of import-
ance in which England was then concerned with them. He
returned however in November, 1532, and was immediately
named to succeed Warham, who had died in the preceding
August, in the See of Canterbury ; thus leaping at once from
the Archdeaconry of Taunton, and a single benefice, so insig-
nificant that the name of the parish has not been preserved,
to the highest ecclesiastical dignity of his country. The
truth is, that Henry had found in him a man of considerable
talents, united to a candid and grateful mind : humble and
pliant as to all temporal affairs, but stedfastly attached to the
new faith, a sort of obstinacy at that moment most convenient
to his master's purposes. Strype has recorded, not so much to

ARCHBISHOP CEAKMEB. 239

Cranmer's credit, a long detail of his coquetry with the King
as to his acceptance of this mighty dignity, in which the
simple folly of Nolo Episcopari is absolutely burlesqued. He
professed to decline it, not on the allegation, usual in such
cases, of his own insufficiency, but because he could not
endure the necessary appointment by the Pope, knowing his
Majesty to be the Supreme head of the Church. Henry*
affecting to treat this as a new opinion, put him on the proof,
and Cranmer quoted an host of texts. The King, good man,
was staggered, and referred the question to some chosen civi-
lians, who determined that Cranmer might, without offence to
his conscience, accept the Archbishopric at the hands of the
Pope, and afterwards protest against his spiritual authority.
He submitted, and was consecrated on the thirtieth of March,
1543, when he took the usual oath of fidelity to the Pope, and
at the same time recorded a long declaration, in which, unhap-
pily, we find the following words. " Non intendo per hujus-
modi juramentum aut juramenta, quovis modo me obligare,
quominus libere loqui, consulere, et consentire valeam, in
omnibus et singulis reformationem religionis Christianas, gu-
bernationem Ecclesiae Anglicanae, aut praerogativum Coronse
ejusdem."

The first important public act of the new Primate was to
pronounce the sentence of divorce between Henry and Ca-
tharine : the second, to marry that Prince to Anne Bullen.
Though his interest was strengthened by the elevation of
that unfortunate lady, it was not injured by her fall ; and
yet, much to the credit of his heart, he had ventured, on her
commitment to the Tower, to intercede for her with her
savage husband. Indeed his zeal and activity in the great
work of the Reformation had rendered him an instrument
indispensably necessary to the King's designs. While Crom-
well was busily demolishing the fabric of the ancient religion,
Cranmer, with a gentler hand, raised the new one from its
ruins ; and, if the Church of England owes the strength and
solidity of its structure to the power of Henry, the praise of

240 ARCHBISHOP CRANMER.

its beautiful symmetry, and of the simple grandeur of all its
parts, is due to the judgment, the mildness, and the patience,
of the Archbishop. The story of a man so employed affords
but few personal circumstances ; and a history of the reform-
ation is in fact the public life of Cranmer. In the prosecu-
tion of his mighty task he encountered considerable obstacles ;
was frequently contradicted, and sometimes endangered. Few
among his contemporary prelates were sincere reformers,
though all had abjured the Papal authority. Among them,
Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, not less distinguished by
his sagacity than by his malignity, and the detestable Bonner,
Bishop of London, were his bitterest enemies. At their
secret instigation a long list of frivolous articles was pre-
ferred against him in 1543, by some clergy of his own
diocese, for mal-administration, and irreligious practices, in
his metropolitan church ; and, that prosecution having justly
ended in the utter shame and ruin of his accusers, he was
charged in the House of Commons with heresy against the
Sacrament of the Altar. This attack also failed, but in the
following year a heavier blow was struck at him, for he was
impeached to the King by a party, doubtless a majority, in
the Privy Council, of endangering the safety of his Majesty,
and of the realm, by dividing the people into a variety of
heretical sects ; on which it was demanded that he might
forthwith be committed to the Tower, in order to his judicial
examination. He was now saved by the special interposition
of the King's absolute authority. Henry, having affected to
consent to his imprisonment, sent privately for him in the
night, and apprised him of his critical situation. Cranmer,
stout in the defence of his doctrine and his practice, replied
that he was well content to be committed, so that he might
be afterwards indifferently heard. " 0 Lord," rejoined the
King, (to use the words given to him by Fox,) " what fond
simplicity ! so to permit yourself to be imprisoned, that every
enemy of your's may take advantage against you. Do not
you know that when they have you once in prison, three or

ARCHBISHOP CRANMER. 241

four false knaves will soon be procured to witness against
you, and condemn you ; which, else, being now at liberty,
dare not once open their lips, or appear before your face ? "
and hereupon gave him a ring, which was his usual token to
the Council when he had determined to take the consideration
of any matter from them to himself. They summoned the
Archbishop to appear before them the next morning, and,
after having subjected him to the indignity of waiting for an
hour among servants in their antechamber, called him in ;
recited their charges against him at great length ; and con-
cluded by informing him of their resolution to make him
prisoner ; when he produced the ring, and the assembly,
breaking up in coufusion, waited on the King, who reproached
them of falsely accusing his faithful servant, and terrified
them into a show of reconciliation with him. Shakspeare has
detailed the circumstances of this incident in his play of
Henry the Eighth with much historical fidelity.

Henry at his death bestowed no peculiar mark of favour
on Cranmer. He was named, it is true, in the King's will as
one of the sixteen executors, and guardians to the youthful
successor, a distinction which could scarcely have been with-
held from any one in his high office. Edward's minority,
however, and the affection of the Protector Somerset to the
Protestant cause, left his inclination and his power to proceed
in the Reformation wholly uncontrolled. Gardiner and Bon-
ner were committed to prison, and deprived ; as were Heath,
Bishop of Worcester; Day, of Chichester ; and Tunstall, of
Durham ; but Cranmer's triumph over them was marked by
mildness and humanity. The death of Somerset, and the
accession of Dudley to vice-regal power, mighty as the oppo-
sition had been of those two great men, impaired neither his
power nor his credit, for Dudley was, or affected to be, a
zealous Protestant, and Cranmer meddled little in temporal
affairs, unless they were importantly connected with those of
the Church, and therefore had few political enemies. Unhap-
pily, his exalted situation necessarily forced him to take a

1. B

242 ARCHBISHOP CRANMER.

decided part on the great state question of the succession,
which distinguished the close of this reign. After having
argued with equal boldness and acuteness in the Council, and
with the King himself, in support of Mary's title to inherit
the Crown, he was at last prevailed on by Edward himself,
as it is said, in a personal conference, to subscribe to the
Will by which that Prince had, on his death-bed, bequeathed
it to Jane Grey, and this inexcusable vacillation sealed the
ruin which before seemed ready to overwhelm him.

On the accession of Mary, the whole weight of her ven-
geance, and that of her hierarchy, burst upon him with irre-
sistible fury. • He was included in the act of attainder of the
adherents of Jane, and in November, 1553, adjudged guilty
of high treason for the part he had taken in her cause. He
sued for mercy with the most submissive humility, and was
tantalized with a pardon for that offence, which was granted
merely to aggravate, as it should seem, the bitter chastise-
ment which awaited him. Apparently in the same spirit, he
was sent, in custody, from the Tower, together with Ridley
and Latimer, to Oxford, to hold a public disputation on mat-
ters of Faith, with a select number of Romanists from the
two Universities and the Convocation, deputed by the whole
body of Mary's Bishops, not only for that purpose, but to
deal judicially with the venerable prisoners. Here Cranmer
adhered to his principles with a noble constancy, and on the
twentieth of April, 1554, two days after the disputation,
was again brought before this singular court ; required to
recant ; and, on his refusal, condemned as a heretic. He
was now remanded to his prison, till a confirmation of his
sentence should be obtained from Rome ; instead of which
the Pope ordered a new trial, under his own authority, and
directed Cardinal Pole, his Legate, to issue a commission for
that purpose. On the twelfth of September, in the following
year, Cranmer appeared before the commissioners, at the head
of whom was Brooks, Bishop of Gloucester, in St. Mary's
church in Oxford ; and, after some slight form of trial, was

ARCHBISHOP CRANMER. 243

again vehemently exhorted to renounce his errors, and again
firmly refused : whereupon he was declared contumacious,
and cited to appear personally at Rome within eighty days,
to which he agreed. In the mean time letters arrived from
the Pope to the King and Queen, demanding that he should
receive immediate condemnation, and be delivered over to
the secular arm. This mandate was accompanied by an
order to Bonner, and Thirleby, Bishop of Ely, to degrade him
publicly, which ceremony was performed in the most mor-
tifying and humiliating manner that vulgar malice could
contrive.

All however was not yet lost. Cranmer, with the crown
of martyrdom suspended but by a hair over his head, was still
a formidable adversary. His courageous maintenance of that
faith from either the letter or spirit of which he had never
for an instant swerved, was a weapon which his enemies
could not have wrested from him : but, alas ! he let it fall
from his hand, and the glory of the Saint was lost in the
weakness of the man. Seduced, as Lord Herbert gives us
room to suppose, by hopes treacherously held out to him, in
an evil hour he signed a written recantation of all his doc-
trines. The rest is horrible to relate. Having thus sacri-
ficed a splendid reputation in this world, and hazarded his
salvation in the next, for the sake of a small remnant of
mortal life, which he must have passed in disgrace and obscu-
rity, an order was secretly issued for his execution. He
was led to St. Mary's Church to hear a sermon, and placed
opposite to the pulpit, which was mounted by a friar, who
exhorted him to persist steadfastly in the faith which he
had lately embraced, and that to death itself, " which," added
the Friar, " it is the will of the magistrate to inflict on you
this day!"

In this dreadful moment Cranmer sprung above himself,
and nearly redeemed all that he had lost. " He rose from
his seat," says Bishop Godwyn, " and, without the smallest
discovery of fear, made an excellent speech to the people, in

R2

244 ARCHBISHOP CKANMER.

which, having premised many things concerning reformation
of life and morals, he repeated the principal heads of his
doctrine, and briefly explained his faith, affirming that in the
power of the Pope was contained and established the King-
dom of Antichrist ; and, finally representing how heinously
he had offended God by renouncing the truth, he declared
therefore his resolution that his right hand, which had so im-
piously sinned in subscribing the doctrines proposed by the
enemies of truth, should be the first to suffer punishment."
He was hurried directly from the Church to the place of exe-
cution. " There he stood," continued Godwyn, as translated
by Bishop Kennet, in a strain of expression which could not
be amended, " exposed, the most piercing spectacle in the
world, sufficient, one would think, not only to extort com-
passion from his enemies, but to melt inanimate things into
tears ; the Primate of England, that lately flourished in the
highest honour and authority with Princes ; most venerable
for his great sanctity of life, for his age, person, learning,
gravity, and innumerable excellencies of mind ; now by the
malice of the Romanists, drest in a ridiculous old habit ;
baited with scurrility, and contemptuous revilings ; and drag-
ged to a most inhuman and tormenting death. When he was
bound to the stake, as soon as the fire was kindled, he raised
his left hand to Heaven, and, thrusting out the other, held it
in the flames, not removing it, except once to stroke his beard,
till it was quite consumed. At last, as the flame increased,
lifting up his eyes, he cried out, Lord, receive my spirit ! and,
continuing as motionless as the stake to which he was tied,
endured the violence of the torture till he expired."

Archbishop Cranmer was the author of a multiplicity of
devotional and controversial works. We have of his writings
in print, his treatise on the unlawfulness of Henry's first
marriage, which has already been mentioned. — Several Let-
ters to that Prince and his ministers, and to some foreign
divines. — Three discourses on the matter of the King's book,
entitled, " The Erudition of a Christian Man" — a great part

ARCHBISHOP CRANMEB. 245

of what was called " The Bishop's Book" — Queries in order
to the correcting of several abuses in religion — Queries con-
cerning reformation, with answers — A resolution of seventeen
questions concerning the Sacraments — A collection of pas-
sages out of the Canon Law, to show the necessity of reform-
ing it — Answers to the fifteen articles of the Devonshire
rebels in 1549 — A defence of the true and Catholic doctrine
of the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ ; which
having been attacked in an answer by Gardiner, Cranmer
rejoined in a second tract on the same subject — A Preface to
the English translation of the Bible. A Catechism of Chris-
tian doctrine — The first part of the Book of Homilies — An
answer to Dr. Richard Smith, who had written against his
books on the Sacrament — A Confutation of unwritten Veri-
ties— Reasons which led him to oppose the Six Articles —
Answers to some Queries concerning Confirmation — Consider-
ations offered to King Edward the Sixth in favour of a further
Reformation — A Manifesto against the Mass — and a Manual
of pious prayers. All, or nearly all, these Works may be
found, either originally printed, or reprinted, in the collections
of Fox, Burnet, and Strype.

His manuscript remains are perhaps equally voluminous,
for several of his Tracts which are known to have existed,
are still undiscovered. Two very large volumes, written by
his own hand, on all the great points at issue between the
two Churches, are in the King's Collection in the British
Museum ; and there are, or were, six or seven more in the
library at Hatfield. Burnet mentions two other volumes,
which he examined ; and many of his original letters are in
the Cotton Library. Strype states that he left also a declara-
tion in two books, against the Pope's Supremacy ; a treatise,
in two books, against the Pope's Purgatory ; another, con-
cerning justification ; and an Argument against the sacrifice
of the Mass, composed during his imprisonment ; but does
not inform us whether in manuscript, or printed.

The original from which the present engraving is taken is

246 ARCHBISHOP CKANMEB.

a singular cariosity, independently of its great intrinsic merit ;
for it is the only known specimen of an artist whose very
name has escaped the observation of Lord Orford, Pilkington,
Bryan, and others, who have favoured us with notices of pic-
torial biography — it is inscribed " Gerbicus Flicciis faciebat,"
and by a label which appears on another part of the picture
we are informed that it was painted in the fifty-seventh year
of the Archbishop's life.

COURTB^WAY,

EARL OF DEVONSHIRE.
08:1556.

EDWARD COURTENAY,

EARL OF DEVONSHIRE.

WE view the circumstances of this Nobleman's short life
through the mists of fear and prejudice. An unhappy fatality,
as it might seem, had connected him, even from the hour of
his birth, with the highest public considerations, in a time
peculiarly marked by cruelty and suspicion. Many who
knew the truth of his story, and might have been inclined to
tell it with fidelity, shrunk probably from so hazardous a
disclosure, and remained nearly silent. Of those who have
touched on it more at large, some seem to have been confined
by party spirit, and others by an authority not unwelcome
to their religious and political bigotry, to the relation of
a few facts which tend rather to excite curiosity than to
afford information. Even from them, however, we are ena-
bled to infer with accuracy that he was accomplished, innocent,
and miserable.

His misfortunes originated solely in his illustrious descent.
His father, Henry Courtenay, tenth Earl of Devonshire of
his family, whose mother was the Princess Catherine, daughter
of King Edward the Fourth, had been one of the ephemeral
favourites of Henry VIII., who having advanced him to the
title of Marquis of Exeter, caused him, a few years after, to
be accused of high treason, in having corresponded by letter
with his banished kinsman Cardinal Pole ; convicted without
proof, and beheaded. His mother, Gertrude, daughter of
William Blount, Lord Montjoy, was in the following year,

248 EDWARD COURTENAY,

by a monstrous perversion of law, attainted without trial,
but her life was spared. Edward, their only son, the sub-
ject of this Memoir, was born about the year 1526, and,
immediately after the death of his father, though then only
twelve years of age, was committed to the Tower " lest he
should raise commotions," says the author of the History of
the Courtenay Family, " by revenging his father's quarrel."
Thus dreadfully do injustice and fear ever attend and aggra-
vate each other ! He remained there, painful to relate, a
close prisoner, for fifteen years. The clemency usually
ascribed to the reign of Edward VI., which indeed owes the
reputation of mildness and justice merely to a comparison
with the deeper horrors of that which preceded it, afforded
him no relief. He was even one of the six persons who were
specially excepted from the general pardon granted at Ed-
ward's coronation. Mary, however, immediately after her
accession, visited his prison, where this unfortunate young
man, together with the Duke of Norfolk, Bishop Gardiner,
and the Duchess of Somerset, presented themselves to her
on their knees upon Tower Hill, when she kindly raised and
kissed them, saying, " These be my prisoners ;" and on the
third of September, 1558, exactly one month afterwards,
restored to him the Earldom of Devonshire, by a new patent
of creation, together with such of his father's great estates
as had not yet been granted away by the Crown. Prince, in
his " Worthies of Devon," and some others, add that the dig-
nity of Marquis of Exeter was also at the same time revived
in him, but this is an error.

Mary's benignity towards him has been so generally
ascribed by historians to a personal affection, that the fact
can scarcely be doubted. Fuller, whose words I quote for
the sake of conciseness, and who ought never to be quoted
unless his account be supported, as it is in great measure in
this instance, by the testimony of more cautious writers,
tells us, in his " Holy State," that " this most noble young
Earl was a person of lovely aspect ; of a beautiful body

EARL OF DEVONSHIRE. 249

sweet nature, and royal descent : all which concurring in
him, the Queen cast an obliging countenance upon him, and,
as it was generally conceived, intended him an husband for
herself ; of which report hath handed down to us this con-
firmation : that when the said Earl petitioned the Queen for
leave to travel, she advised him rather to marry, ensuring
him that no lady in the land, how high soever, would refuse
him for an husband ; and, urging him to make his choice
where he pleased, she pointed herself out unto him as plainly
as might consist with the modesty of a maiden, and the
majesty of a Queen." Others, with much improbability, add
that he was one of the prisoners recommended to her by her
Privy Council among whom to choose a husband. Bishop
Godwyn, an historian of deserved credit, and who was then
in existence, says, according to Rennet's translation, that
" there were three at that time allotted by common fame for
her choice : Philip, Prince of Spain ; Cardinal Reginald Pole ;
and Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter," (for so the Bishop always
styles him.) " The two latter had their country, and the
splendour of their ancestors, to recommend them ; and there
were hopes that under either of them the liberty and pri-
vileges of the kingdom would be preserved. Affinity of
blood was respected in them all. Pole was much in the
Queen's affection for his gravity and holy life, joined with
the greatest courtesy and prudence ; and Courtenay for his
youth, good humour, and his courtly address : but some sus-
picions were raised against the latter as if he favoured the
reformation."

The correctness of the report that he had made a tender
impression on the heart of Mary is here rather favoured than
opposed. Those who have delivered it down to us add, that
he treated her advances with indifference, because he was
warmly attached to her sister Elizabeth. Burnet seems to
have believed the whole, for he says, in the History of the
Reformation, " The new Earl of Devonshire was much in her
favour, so that it was thought she had some inclinations to

250 EDWARD COURTENAY,

marry him ; but he, either not presuming so high, or really
having an aversion to her, and an inclination to her sister,
who of that moderate share of beauty that was between
them had much <the better of her, and was nineteen years
younger, made his addresses with more than ordinary con-
cern to the lady Elizabeth, and this did bring them both
into trouble." Sir Thomas Wyat, on the contrary, when he
was taken prisoner, acccused the Earl of having engaged in
his conspiracy in resentment of the Queen's having refused
to take him for her husband ; and of a consequent design to
depose her, and obtain the throne by marrying Elizabeth ;
and upon this charge both the Princess and the Earl were
committed to the same prison from which he had been only
six months before released. Wyat however when he was
led to execution, confessed that he had invented it in the
hope of saving his life, and intreated that he might be con-
ducted to the apartment of the Earl of Devonshire, which
being permitted, he besought the Earl, on his knees, to
pardon the wicked slander which he had falsely uttered.
Several respectable writers, following Fox, whose partiality
is seldom considered with sufficient caution, say that Gar-
diner, in his malice to Elizabeth, contrived this interview,
and then reported to the Council that Wyat had solicited it
for the purpose of exhorting the Earl to confess his guilt,
and that of the Princess. But Wyat, on the scaffold, (and
here I will use not only Fox's words, but his authority, for
he durst not have stated falsely what had been so lately pro-
claimed in the hearing perhaps of thousands,) told the people,
" Whereas it is noised abroad that I should accuse the Lady
Elizabeth, and the Lord Courtenay : it is not so, good people ;
for I will assure you that neither they, nor any other now
yonder in hold, were privy to my rising before I began, as
I have declared no less to the Queen and Council, and it is
most true."

The Earl was detained in the Tower till the twenty-fifth
of May, 1554, when he was removed in the night to Fother-

EARL OF DEVONSHIRE. 251

inghay Castle, in Northamptonshire, and there still kept in
close imprisonment till the spring of the following year ;
when Philip, to gain popularity among his new subjects, for
the view which we have of his character allows no hope of a
better motive, procured the enlargement of the Earl, as well
as of the Princess, who was at that time confined in the royal
house of Woodstock. The miserable Courtenay, conscious
that he should ever remain an object of suspicion, made the
first use of that liberty which he had so little known, to im-
plore the Queen's permission to quit England : which having
obtained, he travelled through France and Italy, and at length
determined to sit down at Padua, in the fruitless hope of
passing there in quiet the remainder of a life which had
hitherto been distinguished by the most undeserved and un-
exampled persecution. Within a few weeks, however, after
his arrival, he was seized by a distemper which, within four-
teen days from its first appearance, carried him off, on the
fourth of October, 1556, not without strong, and probably
well-founded, suspicions of poison, administered at the insti-
gation of emissaries from the land which had given him his
ill-fated birth. He was buried in the Church of St. Anthony
in Padua, where a superb monument remains, or lately re-
mained, to his memory, with the following uncouth inscrip-
tion; which I insert because it affords, from a somewhat
singular source, a corroboration of some of the most important
circumstances of a story involved in much uncertainty, and
frequently disfigured by wilful misrepresentation.

" Anglia quern genuit, fueratque habitura patronum,
Corteneum celsa haec continet area Ducem.
Credita causa necis Regni affectata cupido,
Reginae optatum tune quoque connubium :
Cui regni proceres non consensere, Philippo
Reginam Regi jungere posse rati.
Europam unde fuit juveni peragrare necesse,
Ex quo more misero contigit ante diem.

252 EDWARD COUKTENTAY, EARL OF DEVONSHIRE.

Anglia si plorat defuncto principe tanto
Nil mirum ; domino deficit ilia pio.
Sed jam Cortenius caslo, fruiturque, beatis :
Cum doleant Angli, cum sine fine gemant.
Cortenei probitas igitur, praestantia, nomen,
Dum stabit hoc Templurn vivida semper erunt.
Anglia hinc etiam stabit, stabuntque Britanni,
Conjugii optati fama perennis erit.
Improba naturae leges libitina rescindens,
Ex asquo juvenes, pracipitatque senes."

. The elder male line of the great House of Courtenay became
extinct by the death of this young nobleman, and the remains,
still considerable, of its vast estates fell by inheritance to the
heirs of the four sisters of his great-grandfather, who had
married into the ancient western families of Tretherf, Arundel
of Talverne, Mohun, and Trelawney.

CARDINAL POLE.

REGINALD POLE, a noble example to the age in which he
lived, stood almost alone, without acquiring the degrees of
distinction which he justly merited. The splendour of his
birth forbade his mixing with a clergy generally sprung from
the most ordinary ranks of the people, and the native candour
and generosity of his heart restrained him from taking any
share in those secret intrigues, those pious frauds, which
were then the venial faults of the rulers of a falling church.
He was in a great measure disqualified, not only by the
sweetness of his temper and the politeness of his breeding,
but by the large scope of his mind, for controversies in which
the most obscure and insignificant subtleties were always
discussed with ill nature and ill manners. His aversion to
persecution made him a silent and inactive member of those
ecclesiastical commissions which in his own country derived
credit from his name ; and a sincere Christian humility,
joined to that dignified spirit which ruled his conduct in tem-
poral affairs, detached him from the parties which agitated
the Conclave, and besieged the Papal throne. Thus in his
own time more admired than understood ; respected, but not
imitated ; and of habits too widely dissimilar from those of
others of his own station to admit easily of comparison ; it is
rather his character than his history that has been trans-
mitted to posterity. It is the common fate of good counsels
that have been rejected, and of worthy examples that have
been contemned to pass in a great measure unrecorded.

254 CARDINAL POLE.

The blood of the House of York flowed largely in his veins,
and he was doubly related to royalty. He was the fourth
and youngest son of Richard Pole, Lord Montague, cousin-
german to Henry the Seventh, by Margaret, daughter of
George, Duke of Clarence, brother to Edward the Fourth.
He is said to have been born in the month of March, 1500,
at Stoverton Castle, as Camden informs us, the seat of his
father, in Staffordshire. Designated from his earliest infancy
for the clerical profession, he was sent at the age of seven
years to commence his education with the Carthusians of the
monastery of Sheen in Surrey, and afterwards to the Car-
melites of the White Friars, in London, from whence, when
about twelve years old, he removed to Oxford, and was
entered a nobleman of Magdalen College, where he studied
under those eminent scholars, Thomas Linacre and William
Latimer. It is perhaps unimportant to record those steps
which may be considered as mere formalities of advance-
ment in one whom power had predestined to fill the highest
station in his profession, but we find that on the nineteenth
of March, 1517, he was appointed Prebendary of Yoscomb,
and on the tenth of April, 1519, of Yatminster Secunda,
both in the church of Salisbury ; and that he was, about the
same time, Dean of Wimbourne Minster in Dorsetshire, and,
shortly after, Dean of Exeter. Henry the Eighth now sent
him, with a large allowance, and a retinue becoming his rank,
to Italy, and he settled at Padua, where he was presently
surrounded by the ablest and more erudite of that country,
and acquired in their society those final graces and refine-
ments of education which even learning can never attain but
in the warmth and freedom of good conversation.

Having passed seven years at Padua, Venice, and Rome, he
returned home, and, remaining in the court barely long enough
to receive the homage which it was eager to pay to his talents
and acquirements, modestly retired to a small house at Sheen,
where for two years he prosecuted his studies and devotions
with severity, and bestowed his hours of relaxation on such of

CARDINAL POLE. 255

his old Carthusian masters as still survived. He quitted
this retreat upon the first rumours of Henry's inclination to
dissolve his marriage with Catherine of Arragon, to which he
was utterly averse ; and, in order to avoid the necessity of
giving unwelcome advice to the King, by whom he was cer-
tain to be consulted on that difficult subject, went to Paris,
under the pretence of completing his studies. He was soon
however followed thither by the question which Henry,
by Cranmer's advice, had determined to lay before all
the learned of Europe — " Whether it were lawful for a
man to marry the widow of a brother, to whom she had
borne no issue ? " and he was commanded by the King to use
his best endeavours to prevail on the French Universities,
particularly that of Paris, to answer negatively. He con-
trived to excuse himself from this employment, and, for the
time, to evade giving a direct opinion. The King became
displeased ; and Pole's family advised him to return to Eng-
land, and to that simplicity of life which might prevent
suspicion. He came accordingly, after a year's absence, and
resumed his former habitation at Sheen , where he had scarcely
seated himself when Henry, who had now determined to
sound the inclinations of the most eminent for power or
learning of his own subjects on the question of his divorce,
besieged him with emissaries, who pressed him vainly for his
concurrence. The See of Winchester, and afterwards that of
York, were offered to him as the price of his concession, but
he still declined to utter any judgment on the matter, and
begged only to be left in peace. His brothers were at last
induced to endeavour to move him by representations of the
ruin to his family that would inevitably follow his refusal,
and with which they had actually been threatened, and his
kind nature now gave way. He consented to wait on the
King, and to dissemble those scruples which he could not
abandon. In his audience he long remained mute ; but at
length nobly sacrificing passion to conscience, and safety to
sincerity, burst into that flow of powerful argument in which

250 CARDINAL POLE.

he was so great a master, and finally exhorted the King to
desist from his purpose. Henry during their discourse is
said frequently to have laid his hand on his dagger. Pole
however escaped with no further punishment at that time
than the loss of favour, and availed himself of this precarious
interval of forbearance to solicit the King's permission once
more to leave the country.

He now resided for a year at Avignon, and removed from
thence to his favourite Padua, where he had not long been
before a messenger arrived from Henry, not only again to
urge his concurrence in the divorce, but in the greater matter
of the King's assumption of the supremacy. As this Prince
had already denounced the penalties of high treason against
those of his subjects who might oppose that act, it is clear
that his meaning was now to reduce Pole to implicit obe-
dience, or virtually to sentence him to banishment. He sent
also, under the pretence of argumentative persuasion, a book
which had been published iu England by Richard Sampson,
Bishop of Chichester, intituled " Oratio hortatoria ad obedi-
entiam Regis, contra Papam." Pole in answer, declared his
total disapprobation both of the divorce, and the separation
from the See of Rome, and soon after addressed to the King
his large treatise, composed in four months, and subsequently
published at Rome, " Pro Unitate Ecclesiastica," in which
he not only answered the chief points of Sampson's oration,
but openly exhorted Henry to return to his obedience to the
Pope, and called on the Emperor Charles the Fifth to resent
the injury done to his aunt, the repudiated Queen. Henry,
who, with all his faults, was seldom treacherous, now dis-
sembled his anger, in the double hope of preventing the pub-
lication of this book, and of getting the person of the author
into his power. He sent therefore, specially by post, a mild
message, from which it might have been inferred even that
his resolutions were somewhat shaken, requiring Pole to
return to England, for the purpose of discussing more at large
some particular passages in his treatise, which he answered

CARDINAL POLE. 257

by a direct refusal, and by a spirited reiteration of his former
counsel. It was doubtless of that book, though Strype seems
to think that it referred to some other, now unknown, that
Cranmer, in a letter which may be found in the Appendix to
Strype's Life of that prelate, thus expressed himself to Thomas
Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire. " As concerning the Kyng his
cause," says Cranmer, " Mayster Raynold Poole hathe wrytten
a booke nioche contrary to the Kynge hys purpose ; wythe
such wytte that it apperith that he myght be, for hys wyse-
dome, of the Cownsell to the Kynge his Grace, and of such
eloquence, that if it were set forthe, and knowne to the
comen people, I suppose yt were not possible to persuade
them to the contrary." Such was the testimony borne to
the talents of this eminent person by his most determined
adversary.

The King now proceeded to deprive him of his ecclesias-
tical preferments, and of the large pension which even to this
time he had received, and soon after caused him to be pro-
claimed a traitor, offering a reward to any who should kill
him. The favour of the Court of Rome naturally kept pace
with Henry's vengeance, and in January, 1536, Paul the Third
created him a Cardinal, and soon after appointed him Legate
to the Court of France, and afterwards, at the desire, as it
should seem, of the Emperor, to Flanders. He had not been
long at Paris when he was secretly informed that Henry had
written to the French King to deliver him up as a rebel sub-
ject, and fled therefore precipitately to Cambray, and thence
to Liege ; nor was his mission to the Low Countries more
successful, for the Queen Regent, intimidated by the threats
of Henry, refused to receive him in his legantine character.
He was therefore recalled by the Pope, and travelled through
Germany to Rome, from whence he accompanied Paul to
Nice ; negotiated a peace between the Emperor and Francis
the First ; and soon after travelled, with all possible privacy,
into Spain, and from thence to Paris, to engage those Princes,
and others, to abandon their designs against the Turk, and to

258 CARDINAL POLE.

form a league for the restoration of the ancient faith, and of
the papal authority, in England. While these matters were
passing in 1539, Henry, with a savage meanness, wreaked
his vengeance on the Cardinal's family. His mother, and
two of his three brothers, were brought to trial, chiefly on
the charge of having corresponded with him, and condemned
to die. The younger, Sir Geoffery Pole, wrought on by his
fears, was induced to accuse the rest of an incredible design
to depose the King, and raise the Cardinal to the throne,
and received therefore a pardon ; but the Lord Montague
suffered death, and his venerable mother, heir of the great
House of Plantagenet, after two years' imprisonment, was
also brought, at the age of seventy, to the scaffold, where,
says Lord Herbert, " being commanded to lay her head on the
block, she refused, saying, ' So should traitors do, but I am
none ; ' neither did it serve that the executioner told her it
was the fashion : so turning her grey head every way, she
told him, if he would have her head, to get it as he could ; so
that he was constrained to fetch it off slovenly ! "

Pole, overwhelmed probably by these domestic miseries,
now passed some years nearly in inactivity, and the Pope,
anxious to preserve him from Henry's fury, sent him to
Viterbo, with the honorary character of Legate. He resided
there till 1546, when on the meeting, in the beginning of
January, of the Council of Trent, he was deputed thither,
with two other Cardinals, to represent the Pontiff. He was
obliged by ill health to leave the Council sitting, and to retire
again for a time into privacy, and during that interval his great
enemy, King Henry, was taken off by death. Paul the Third
dying in 1549, Pole was twice elected, if it may be so said, to
the Popedom. He was opposed by the Cardinals in the French
interest, and the first determination of the Conclave in his
favour was made amidst tumult and party rage. He refused
it therefore as irregular, and not sufficiently deliberate ;
whereupon his friends reluctantly proceeded to a new scru-
tiny, and the former election was confirmed, late in the

CARDINAL POLE. 259

evening of the same day, by a clear majority of voices. They
repaired to his apartment to notify it, and to adore him,
according to the custom, but he had retired to rest. " He
received them with anger," says the translator of that passage
in his life, written by his friend Ludovico Baccatelli, " telling
them that he would not have a thing, which was to be feared
rather than desired, carried on tumultuouslyand rashly, but
decently and orderly : that the night was not a proper time :
God was a God of light, and not of darkness ; and therefore
it ought to be deferred till day came." These answers were
ill suited to the pride and the vivacity of Italians, and on a
third scrutiny, the Cardinal del Monte was elected, and took
the name of Julius the Third. From that Pontiff, who was
Pole's particular friend, he obtained leave to retire from all
public concerns at Rome, and seems at that time to have re-
solved to pass the remainder of his life in a devout seclusion.
He fixed his abode at a monastery, in the territory of Verona,
where he remained for nearly four years, when the unex-
pected death of Edward the Sixth drew him suddenly from
his retirement.

Of Mary's attachment to that form of Christianity which
Pole so sincerely professed, it is unnecessary to speak ; and
he, above all men, possessed those talents which were best
calculated to aid its restoration in England. The Pope there-
fore, soon after the Queen's accession, nominated him Legate
to her Court, and he set out towards London in the end of
October, 1554. A slight and ineffectual opposition to his
appointment was offered by the Emperor. Some advances
had been already made towards a treaty of marriage between
his son, Philip of Spain, and the Queen, but it was rumoured
that she had betrayed an inclination to bestow her hand on
the Cardinal, and well known that a large party in England
preferred him to the Spaniard. The marriage with Philip
however was soon after celebrated, and Pole arrived in Lon-
don just upon the meeting of Mary's second Parliament, on
the eleventh of November. One of its first acts was to reverse

260 CARDINAL POLE.

his attainder ; the King and Queen paid him the extraordinary
compliment of going in person to assent to that single bill ;
and the Cardinal took his seat among the Peers. In the
long catalogue which history furnishes of the triumphs of
worldly interests over principle and conscience, perhaps no
one can be found more remarkable than that which imme-
diately followed, and in a single hour suspended the effect of
twenty-five years' labour. " A little after his coming," says
the translator of Bishop Godwin's history of the reign of
Mary, " both Houses being assembled, and the King and
Queen being present, the Lord Chancellor having notified the
Cardinal's grateful arrival, Pole himself, in his native tongue,
made a long speech, full of extraordinary acknowledgments
to their Majesties, to the Lords and Commons, by whose
favour, his banishment and proscription being repealed, he
was restored to the rights and privileges of his native country.
' And the best return,' he said, ' which in duty and gratitude
he could make for so great an obligation was this — that>
since by the late schism they had become exiles from the
unity of the Church, and the kingdom of heaven, he would,
by authority from Christ's Vicar, bring them back to the fold,
and so restore them to their heavenly inheritance. Therefore
he exhorted them ingenuously to acknowledge and detest the
errors of the late times, and with sincere alacrity of mind to
accept and retain the benefit which God, by the Vicar's
Legate, offered to them, for since he was come with the keys,
to open to them the church gates, nothing now remained
than, that as they had opened a way for his return, by abro-
gating the laws which had made him an exile, so they should
abrogate all those laws too which, being lately made against
the Apostolical See, wholly separated them from the body of
the Church.'

" After he had made a long harangue," continues the Bishop,
" to this effect, and ransacked antiquity to show how reli-
giously their forefathers were devoted to the See of Rome, the
gravity of his countenance, his smooth language, and the elegant

CARDINAL POLE. 261

method of his discourse, so sensibly affected the devotees of
Popeiy, that they helieved themselves just then regenerated
to the hopes of salvation : yet there were some of the House
of Commons who strenuously opposed the submitting again
to the Roman yoke : but, in fine, by the pressing instances of
the King and Queen, all things were concluded to the Car-
dinal's satisfaction : the Pope's former authority in this realm
was restored ; and the title of Supreme Head of the Church
abrogated from the Crown. A petition for absolving the
clergy and laity from the crime of heresy was presented by
the Bishop of Winchester, Lord Chancellor to the Legate,
who pronounced the absolution, in English, to all the estates,
kneeling. After this they went in procession to the Chapel
Royal, singing Te Deum ; and on the Sunday following, the
Bishop of Winchester in his sermon related the particu-
lars of that day's proceeding."

The Cardinal's soon proved however a painful, and indeed
but a nominal, pre-eminence. Mary, gloomy, morose, and
revengeful, and, as may be feared, in her very nature cruel,
was easily led to reject the wise and temperate plans which
he seems to have formed, and to set at nought those mild, as
well as wise, counsels which would probably have perpetuated
the Romish religion in England. Gardiner, barbarous as
herself, and with powers of mind which, though of a different
cast, were equal to those of Pole, obtained her ear, and laid
the foundation of those measures which have rendered her
name a blot on the page of history. He regarded Pole too
with the jealousy of a rival, and thirsted for the Primacy,
vacant by the deprivation of Cranmer, which Mary had
designed for the Cardinal, and which he now held in seques-
tration. In the spirit of hatred which soon arose out of these
causes, Gardiner intrigued at Rome for the dignity of the
Purple, and to induce the new Pope, Paul the Fourth, of the
family of Caraffa, who had been always Pole's bitter enemy,
to transfer the legantine character from that prelate to him-

262 CARDINAL POLE.

self. Gardiner however died while he was eagerly prose-
cuting these schemes, and three months after, on the fifteenth
of February. 1556, the next day after Cranmer's execution,
Pole was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury. In the mean
time the Pope proceeded to deprive him of the office of
Legate, and invested another with that character, but Mary
refused to admit him into her kingdom, and, after a sharp
contest, which she maintained with a becoming and laudable
spirit, Pole was reinstated. But the hand of death then
hovered unseen over the mistress and the servant. He was
soon after attacked by a feverish complaint, in which he lin-
gered for several weeks, while Mary also gradually sunk
under an unknown malady. She died on the seventeenth of
November, 1557, and the Cardinal, whose departure was
probably accelerated by receiving the news, survived her
exactly sixteen hours. He was buried with great state in the
Cathedral of Canterbury, but with no other epitaph than
this short inscription, " Depositum Cardinalis Poli."

The productions of Pole's pen, as might be expected, were
very numerous. In addition to his book De Unitate, which
has been mentioned, he addressed to Henry the Eighth a de-
fence of that work, and another to Edward the Sixth. His
other printed writings are " Reformatio Angliae, ex Decretis
Reg. Poli"— "De Concilio"— " De Baptismo Constantini
Imperatoris" — "De Summi Pontificis Officio et Potestate,"
and other tracts on that subject — " Oratio in Materia de
Pace" — "Oratio ad Imperatorem contra Evangelicos" — and
" A Treatise of Justification," with which are printed trans-
lations of several small ancient works, chiefly on the same
subject. He left also in manuscript, according to Anthony
Wood — " Comment, in Esaiam" — " Comment, in Davidis
Hymnos" — " Catechismus" — " Dialogus de Passione Christi"
— "De Natali Die Christi"— "De Modo Concionandi"— A
Discourse unfinished, addressed to Philip and Mary, of
restoring the Goods to the Church, and three Homilies. He

CARDINAL POLE. 263

had likewise been for several years employed, as we learn
from the same authority, in collecting with the greatest care
the various readings and emendations of the text of Cicero's
works, together with the critical observations of all his
learned friends on that author, with the intention of pub-
lishing a complete edition. This classical curiosity is it
seems totally lost, as are probably most of the rest of his
unpublished works.

LODGE, EDMUND.

Portraits of ' illustrious
personages, vol. 1

DA
28

v.l