CHAPTER XIII

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF SOMERSET

In the earlier stages of his struggle for power, when he felt himself insecure with the Protestant party, Warwick had endeavoured to secure Catholic support by promising the old religion a satisfactory amount of freedom; but no sooner was he safe in his saddle, during Somerset’s imprisonment (1549-50), than he became its inveterate enemy. The Protector had made an effort to liberate Gardiner, but Warwick kept him more closely confined than ever. During the new ruler’s term of office, the internal disorders of the country continued as acute, in every detail, as under Somerset’s régime; all military works fell into decay, no new ships of war were built, fortifications came to a standstill, and many troops were disbanded. The coinage was debased, though the Protector had worked hard to improve it; the tribunals were as corrupt as at any period. To ensure the passing of his vigorous religious measures, and carry on his administration, Warwick “packed” both Parliament and Council with his own staunchest followers. It was almost a piece of good fortune for him when Somerset was released from the Tower, for so great was the general dissatisfaction with his administration that he would probably have been overthrown in his turn.

During the winter of 1549-50, Somerset, confined in the gloomy old fortress, was striving to retrieve his tottering fortunes. His first move was to sign (in December) a confession of “his guilt, presumption, and incapacity.” Early in January 1550, a bill, brought before Parliament and passed in both Houses, promised him his life, on condition that he forfeited his estates to the King, gave up his positions, and paid a fine of £2000 a year in land. He attempted to appeal against the extent of the forfeiture, but the Council grew so menacing that the fallen Protector, with visions, it may be, of Tower Hill and the block before his eyes, thought it best to pocket his grievance. So on 2nd February he wrote to the Council expressing his gratitude to the King for sparing his life and treating him so leniently. According to a letter from Ab Ulmis to Bullinger, dated from Oxford, 4th December 1551, Warwick generously made an effort to save the Duke by imploring him in court to throw himself upon the mercy of the King, which he did. On the 4th of that same month he was released, after giving a bond of £10,000 as a guarantee of good behaviour, and on the peculiar conditions that he should not go more than four miles away from the Council, nor yet come to the meetings unless summoned; further, if the King went near the palace at Sheen or Somerset’s own house at Sion (in one or other of which two places he was to abide), the former Protector was to depart instantly. The Duke’s full pardon was given on 16th February. At the same time, all those who had been imprisoned with him were released, after being mulcted in heavy fines.

Immediately after his liberation Somerset joined the Court at Greenwich, and was shortly afterwards made a Privy Councillor! Indeed, before many months were over he had regained his former position and influence over the King so completely that Warwick considered it safer to become, at least publicly, reconciled to him. For this purpose he arranged a marriage between John, Viscount Lisle,[171] his own eldest son, and the Lady Ann Seymour, Somerset’s eldest daughter. This marriage took place on 3rd June (1550) at the royal palace at Sheen, and in the King’s presence. On the following day occurred yet another aristocratic wedding, also attended by His Majesty, that of Warwick’s third son, Sir Robert Dudley, afterwards famous as the Earl of Leicester of Elizabeth’s reign, with that renowned heroine of romance, Amy Robsart. Sir Walter Scott, in his _Kenilworth_, falls into the error--unless, indeed, he wilfully disregarded facts for the sake of artistic effect--of placing the scene of this marriage in Devonshire, and of describing it as clandestine. On the contrary, it was quite an open affair, mentioned by King Edward in his _Diary_ in the already quoted entry for 4th June 1550, relating to the cruel sport of duck-pulling. The King seems to have attended this wedding, but he was too ill to be present at the far more important marriages of his two cousins three years later. About this time, the summer of 1550, the ex-Protector’s forfeited lands were restored to him, and he was allowed to reconstitute his household as in the past.

In February 1550 a proposal was brought before Parliament for the restoration of Somerset to the office and title of Lord Protector, and was only quashed by the prorogation of that body. He seemed in a fair way of regaining his old position of power, and the Dorsets, thinking no doubt that it would be well to be on friendly terms with him, began to bethink themselves once more of the old project of marriage between their eldest daughter, Lady Jane Grey, and young Hertford, who had once been on such intimate terms in their family circle that, as we have seen, the Lady Frances had on more than one occasion called him her “son.” She now wrote to Cecil[172] referring to some service Somerset had rendered her--this may have been her reason for reviving the matrimonial project--and stated incidentally that she much desired a match between his (Somerset’s) son and her daughter, but “that she wished to let the parties have their free choice.” Somerset does not, however, appear to have approved of the plan, for there is no evidence that he did anything now to further it, and when it was originally proposed he had allowed the matter to fall into abeyance. It is not at all improbable that the lady’s letter, if communicated to him, put him on his guard against traps such as the wily Dorsets might set for him and his son. The incident is not devoid of interest, as demonstrating how the Dorsets never ceased their intrigues and matrimonial schemes, and also how even Warwick’s best friends were none too sure of his eventual success, now his rival was again at large. The Dorsets were evidently anxious to have a foot in each camp; but this time they failed, and ended by falling back on Northumberland’s youngest son as a husband for the much-enduring Jane.

Meanwhile, Warwick was contemplating, by no means complacently, the honours and favour heaped upon the rival for whose ruin he was only awaiting some favourable opportunity. His first chance of proving his unvarying hatred of the Protector came on 15th October of the year 1550, on the occasion of the death of the aged Lady Seymour. This event placed her son, as we have already seen, in a quandary--a State funeral, such as was due to the King’s grandmother, would have enabled Warwick to accuse him of a fresh assumption of regal dignity; a private funeral, on the other hand, might be maliciously construed into disrespect shown to the sovereign. Wherefore Somerset consulted the Council as to what should be done. The reply, as already mentioned, was that a State funeral was not at all necessary, nor even any formal Court mourning, since such observances served “rather to pomp than to any edifying,” an opinion peculiar to the Council, for in the preceding August a State funeral (that of Lord Southampton) had been organised with all possible “pomp.” This denial of the honour due to Lady Seymour’s remains did not, of course, proceed from any idea of economy or Puritanism, but merely from the Council’s desire to insult Somerset and his family. It was an opportunity neglected, for if Seymour had insisted upon a State funeral, the events of the following year might have been anticipated, and the accusation of usurping regal honours brought against him at once. Another curious fact in connection with this funeral is that Somerset--a shining light amongst Reformers--wrote to ask Gardiner to “offer up Mass for the health of his mother’s soul after her death” (!)[173]

Another method adopted by Warwick was that already employed by Sudeley in his struggle with his elder brother, of spreading calumnies against his rival through the agency of a third person, and ensuring their reaching the King’s ears. After a time these tales began to make their impression on his juvenile Majesty, though Somerset, for his part, was working hard to recover the King’s favour entirely, and consolidate his own position. Rich, the Lord Chancellor, an infamous traitor, gave him his aid and acted as his spy, keeping him informed of every movement made by Warwick and his party. One of Rich’s letters on this subject, addressed merely “To the Duke,” was handed by mistake to the Duke of Norfolk, next to Warwick, Somerset’s bitterest enemy; thus each opponent had some idea of his adversary’s plans. Still, so subtle was Warwick’s work that there was no movement against Somerset visible enough to justify him in taking open measures; there was nothing for it but to bide his time, and do his best, meanwhile, to ingratiate himself with the King. In public, the rivals appeared the best of friends, and, to maintain this pleasant fiction, Somerset, on 11th October 1551, attended what must have been a painful ceremony to him--the investiture of Warwick with the title of Duke of Northumberland in the Great Hall of Hampton Court.[174] The mortification caused by this evidence of his rival’s growing power, a power he could not openly attack, must have been bitter indeed.

Side by side with Northumberland’s intrigues, the national discontent, of which we have already given instances, and which had been intensified by Northumberland’s brief term of office, was a potent factor in the eventual ruin of the Protector: for we may be sure Somerset’s enemies took good care to father Northumberland’s misrule on his rival. It would be useless for our purpose, though easy indeed, to cite further and numerous instances of the universal disorder into which the realm had fallen. Suffice to say that the England of this period strongly resembled France under the Directory. Everything was upside down. The faith of the people had received a staggering blow, from which it would take nearly a hundred years to recover, and then only in a measure, for to this day the masses of the lowest class of the people of England remain in terrible darkness, alike indifferent to influences religious and moral. In the reign of Henry VII, and in the first years of Henry VIII, no hale man or woman dreamt of missing Mass on a Sunday: under Edward VI, Latimer complained that the churches were deserted, and Gardiner describes the lower classes as gradually falling into a state of paganism. This relaxation of religious observance influenced the popular morals, and in every class the domestic habits of the country were most disreputable. So bad was the condition of things, in fact, that Northumberland and his party came to realise that Somerset’s worst enemy was himself; in other words, that the general discontent and misery arising from his maladministration--or, to be just, in some cases from causes over which he had no control--furnished a more powerful argument against him than the spiteful inventions of his opponents. They must have felt confident that any blow they struck at him would meet with little or no opposition, but rather with encouragement from the people, who had turned the cold shoulder on his appeal at Hampton Court some two years previously.

Accordingly, on 16th October 1551, the Duke of Somerset was suddenly re-arrested in the Council Chamber[175] at Hampton Court, and taken to the Tower to await his trial on charges made against him to Northumberland by Sir Thomas Palmer, “a brilliant but unprincipled soldier.” Palmer asserted that Somerset and his friends had plotted to raise the North of England against Northumberland; that he had intended to secure the Tower, to incite the populace of London to revolt, to seize the Great Seal, with the aid of the City apprentices, and, finally, to murder the Duke and his principal supporters at a supper in Lord Paget’s house. There would seem to have been but little truth in these charges; Northumberland at a later date, at any rate, confessed that they were fabrications, and Palmer, before his death, described them as the products of Northumberland’s fertile imagination. This second trial of the Lord Protector took place on 1st December in Westminster Hall. The judges were seven and twenty peers, amongst them all the prisoner’s enemies--Northumberland, Northampton, and Pembroke, with the Marquis of Winchester as President. The business was conducted with the unfairness which distinguished nearly all the political trials of this period; no witnesses for the prosecution were produced in person, but their depositions were read. The indictments accused Somerset of plotting to lay hands on Northumberland and others, to seize the Great Seal and the Tower, and to deprive the sovereign of his kingly power; he was also charged with having incited the citizens of London to rebel against the King. The official indictment made no mention of his supposed intention of assassinating Northumberland; neither was Paget, in whose house it was alleged the murder was to have taken place, ever tried for his share in the plot. This melodramatic accusation would, in fact, seem to have been entirely dropped at the last moment. Somerset, who denied the charges, was acquitted of treason on the first count, but found guilty on that of felony for inciting the citizens to revolt. There is ample evidence that he never did anything of the kind. Winchester, a few months back his enthusiastic ally, pronounced the death sentence on the unhappy man. Its effect upon him was sudden and staggering. He became pale, and fell upon his knees before Northumberland, Northampton, and Pembroke, who turned their backs whilst he besought the people to pray for him and his family. And so he was ordered back to the Tower to prepare for death. The count of treason not having been proved, the axe did not face the prisoner on the way back to his cell, and “the people, supposing he had been clerely quitt, when they see the axe of the Tower put downe, made such a shryke [shriek] and castinge up of caps, that it was heard into the Long Acre beyonde Charing crosse.”[176] This must have cheered him greatly. He may have thought and hoped that the people loved him still.

King Edward is said to have expressed considerable anxiety on his uncle’s account, but his distress did not prevent him from indulging, according to his own statement, notwithstanding his delicate health, in exceptionally riotous Christmas festivities.[177] The popular joy over his acquittal on the charge of treason proved fatal to Somerset, for it convinced Northumberland more than ever of the necessity of destroying his rival. Holinshed sarcastically informs us that “Christmas being thus passed and spent with much mirth and pastime, it was thought now good to proceed to the execution of the judgment against the Duke of Somerset.” Notwithstanding the frequency of such events, the execution of so great a nobleman produced a considerable impression throughout London. Though every precaution was taken to prevent the assembling of an unusual crowd, Tower Hill was black with people long before dawn on 22nd January 1552, the day of doom. The vast assembly had gathered in the expectation of the Duke’s reprieve rather than of his death. There was an extraordinary muster of halberdiers, men-at-arms, sheriffs and their officers. At eight o’clock Somerset was brought forth. He faced the axe manfully, knelt down and said his prayers, and then, rising to his feet, made a speech. Unlike most of his peers, he did not deny with his last breath the religion he had helped to promulgate; there was nothing he regretted less, said he, when on the brink of his bloody fate, than his endeavours “to reduce religion to its present state, and he exhorted the people to continue steadfast in the Reformation principles, and thereby escape the wrath of God.” Just as he was about, according to custom, to take formal leave of the crowd, great confusion was caused by the arrival of a body of soldiers with bills and halberds, who had received orders to attend the execution. Arriving late, these men dashed towards the scaffold, and their onrush, combined with some noise as of thunder,--“a great sound which appeared unto many above in the element as it had been the sound of gunpowder set on fire in a close house bursting out,”--terrified the mob, and an awful panic ensued: spectators standing on the edge of the Tower moat lost their balance and fell into the water, and not a few were trampled underfoot and others broke their necks. Presently, in the midst of the hubbub, during which Somerset was left so unguarded that, it is said, he might easily have escaped, Sir Anthony Browne was seen riding towards the spot. The mob, somewhat recovered from its consternation, imagined he was bringing a reprieve, and shouted, “A pardon, a pardon!” casting their caps and cloaks into the air. But Sir Anthony brought no message of mercy with him. The doomed Duke had been standing quietly on the edge of the scaffold, watching the turmoil. He too, when he heard the shouts of “Pardon!” imagined his nephew had remembered him; but he soon realised his error. The hectic colour which for a moment had flushed his cheeks with the gleam of hope faded as, in a ringing voice, he concluded his interrupted speech; and that done, he bestowed his rings on the headsman, said a few words to the Dean of Christchurch, bared his neck, knelt on the straw, and laid his head on the block. Another instant and the axe had fallen. Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and first Lord Protector of England, was buried in the Church of St. Peter-ad-Vincula within the Tower on the north side of the choir, between the coffins of the Queens Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard; the funeral rites were those of the Church of England, as then constituted, “but hurried and simple as for a pauper.”[178]

The character of Edward Seymour has been the subject of much discussion; but it would seem fair to seek a _via media_ between the over-severe condemnation of some historians and the exaggerated praise of others. If we cannot exalt him to the high pedestal upon which he has been set by Mr. Pollard, we need not fall into the error of degrading him to the low level assigned him by eighteenth-century historians. Somerset must not be judged by modern standards. If the balance of good and evil in his character is considered, and we contemplate him by the light of the middle sixteenth century, we may even come to share the opinion of a large section of the London populace of his day--mostly those of the Protestant party, be it said--who looked on him as an admirable and God-fearing man,[179] who did his best to free the people from much of the superstition, oppression, and injustice from which it suffered. His faults, his ambition and lust of power, were very human; and the evils of his administration were largely due to the condition to which Henry VIII’s misrule had reduced the country. The age in which he lived was very unpropitious to statesmen and leaders of men, for, no matter how intelligent they might be, some rival lurking in the shade was sure to be ready to trip them up and take their place at the first opportunity. On the whole, Somerset seems to have worked for what he believed to be the interests of his King and the good of the Protestant religion, to which he was consistently faithful. His domestic life was clean, and in an age of place-hunters and libertines Edward Seymour was one of the most respectable men. Neither entirely mediocre nor altogether great, the Duke of Somerset may be described as _un grand homme manqué_--one who just missed greatness.

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NOTE.--A long letter from a Reformer named Francis Burgoyne, written from London to John Calvin on 22nd January 1552, gives a most detailed account of the Duke of Somerset’s execution, and an analysis of his character which is of great interest. He says: “Hence arise our tears, hence arises the all but universal distress, that on this very day, about 9 o’clock, the Duke of Somerset of pious memory, when hardly any person looked for or suspected such an event, was led out publicly to execution. I myself was not present at the sight ... but many of my friends related to me what they had seen and heard.” Then follows a long account, given to Burgoyne by Utenhovius, of Somerset’s last speech, continuing that “he spake all this ... with a look and gesture becoming the firmness of a hero, and the modesty of a Christian; (they say) that he was splendidly attired, as he used to be when about to attend upon the King, or to appear in public on some special occasion; that he gave the executioner some gold rings which he drew from his fingers, together with all his clothes; only to a certain gentleman, the Lieutenant of the Tower of London ... he gave his sword and upper garment. What weeping, and wailing, and lamentation, followed upon the death of this nobleman, it is as difficult to describe as to believe. It is stated by some persons who belong to the household of some of the Councillors ... that by the Royal indulgence the capital punishment had been remitted, with a free pardon, while the Duke was yet in prison, and that whole Council sent to inform him of it more than once; but when he rejected with contempt the grace that was offered to him, (I know not whether in reliance on his own innocence, or on the favour of the King and some other parties, or on his own influence, and wealth, and rank, or on some other delusive persuasion), the whole Council were at length so irritated by this conduct, that they determined that they would no longer endure that excessive arrogance of the man.... It is quite evident, in my opinion, that the deceased nobleman, like other men, was not without his faults, and those perhaps more grievous than could be passed over by God without punishment in this life.... This man was endowed and enriched with most excellent gifts of God both in body and mind, but is not that the best gift, that God has chosen the light of the Gospel to shine forth by his instrumentality throughout this Kingdom.... I do not now mention how God had so exalted him, from being born in a private station, that as the late King’s brother-in-law, the brother of a Queen, the uncle of the present King, he had no one here superior to him in any degree of honour, and then especially, when appointed Lord Protector of the Realm, he was all but King, or rather esteemed by everyone as the King of the King.” Burgoyne then passes to the subject of Somerset’s religion: “During almost the whole time when we were both of us here, he had become so lukewarm in the service of Christ as scarcely to have anything less at heart than the state of Religion in this country. Nor indeed did he retain in this respect anything worthy of commendation, excepting that, as far as words go, he always professed himself a Gospeller when occasion required such acknowledgement.” “It is notorious to every one in this Kingdom,” he continues, “that he was the occasion of his brother’s death, who, having been convicted on a charge of treason which no one could prove against him by legal evidence, and of which when brought to execution he perseveringly denied the truth, was beheaded owing to his information, instigated by I know not what hatred and rivalry against his brother.... In fine, that very act, for which he was last of all thrown into prison, was both unworthy of a Christian such as he professed himself to be, and also sufficiently shews that the most part of the crimes which I have laid to his charge, have their foundation in truth. For he was himself the head and author of a certain conspiracy against the Duke of Northumberland, lately called the Earl of Warwick, whom he pursued with the most unrelenting hatred, as having been foremost in depriving him of the rank of Protector, and being himself regarded from that time by the King’s Councillors as occupying that office; the Duke of Somerset, I say, gained over some accomplices in this conspiracy even from among the Council itself (who are now in prison awaiting the King’s pleasure respecting them), by which it was agreed among them, that on the Duke of Northumberland being dispatched (together with any of his friends who should oppose their views) either by violence, or in secret, or in any other way, they should place the entire administration of the Kingdom in their own hands, but that the Duke of Somerset should be invested with the chief authority, or even be restored to the order of Protector.” The writer, after saying that “at his death he manifested some favourable marks of Christian penitence,” concludes: “Two reasons are present to my mind which increase my regret; one of them is, that we have lost so great a man, and one who was not so entirely corrupted but that there remained some hope both of his reformation, and also that the interest of the Gospel would in any case be advanced by his authority and protection, since there is certainly the greatest scarcity and want of such characters in this country.”[180]