CHAPTER XIV

THE LADY JANE MARRIES THE LORD GUILDFORD

The execution of the Duke of Somerset left the stage clear for Northumberland, who was now all-powerful.[181] More cunning than his predecessor, he avoided offending the nation by assuming the title of “Protector,” and rousing his colleagues’ jealousy by styling himself “Highness.” Little cared he whether he sat on the King’s right hand or on his left, so long as his young sovereign obeyed him implicitly--on this point he was resolved. His ambition was sordid enough: he had no care for the people, but a great deal for his own advancement to wealth and power; and his wife and children were as greedy and ambitious as himself. He had flattered the Catholics, and if Princess Mary had been younger, and willing to marry one of his sons, the religious history of England might have been different. Somerset had always entertained a friendly feeling for Mary, who was kind to his wife, while he hated Elizabeth; Northumberland loathed both Henry VIII’s daughters equally. Almost his first act on entering office, nominally as Great Master of the Household or Lord High Steward, but virtually as Lord Protector of the Realm, was to annoy Mary by opening up the question of her chaplains, and her right to have Mass said in her private chapel--a blunder which nearly resulted in a war with the Emperor, her cousin, to whom the Princess appealed. Then he lent Cranmer a hand in persecuting the Anabaptists. The fires of Smithfield flared up once more. Joan Bocher, and Peter of Paris a Dutchman, were put to death, though Cranmer found it hard to get Edward VI to set his hand to the warrant for Joan’s execution. With great alacrity, then, Northumberland pushed on Somerset’s iconoclastic vandalism, till he made our glorious cathedrals and churches as bare as meeting-houses. Shiploads of holy images, chalices, pictures, and painted windows were carted out of the churches, defaced, destroyed, or sold, and carried abroad, even as far as Constantinople, where a cargo of “imaugys” from England fetched a high figure among the Catholics of Pera and Galata. So wanton was the destruction of Church linen at this time that the citizens, disgusted at seeing it burnt at the street corners, petitioned Northumberland to hand it over to the hospitals.

The Catholics, perceiving they had gained nothing in return for the help they had given Northumberland, retired into obscurity, to wait for better days; whilst the Reformers acclaimed the zeal of a man who fought so fiercely against the faith in which he eventually elected to die. It presently occurred to the Lord High Steward that the young King was failing fast. The servants about the Court saw death in the boy’s pale face and shrunken form, and heard its stealthy advance in his feeble voice and hacking cough. To curry favour for himself, Northumberland allowed the dying monarch greater freedom than he had hitherto enjoyed. Sports and pastimes were arranged for his amusement, and if we may believe his _Journal_, he enjoyed them after his own fashion. Nobody had been so kind to him since his uncle Thomas’s death! But sports and pastimes could not galvanise the attenuated lad into fresh vigour, and he grew worse every day, watched with anxious eyes by Northumberland and Suffolk, and above all by Cranmer, whose hopes were concentrated in him.

Since his accession to great wealth the Duke of Suffolk had gradually abandoned Bradgate for London and fixed his family’s abode at Sheen,[182] in the abbot’s buildings of the once opulent Carthusian monastery, which he had adapted as a private residence.[183] Here the Suffolks resided towards the end of the year 1552 and during the early part of the momentous year 1553. The house, a large and noble structure, with a long Gothic gallery running from end to end, stood close to the venerable palace built by Edward the Confessor. It was supposed to be haunted--the place was often disturbed after dark by the sound of footsteps, the rustle of ghostly garments, and the mutter of unearthly voices; but the most ghastly incident of all was one which struck sudden terror into the hearts of the Duke and Duchess as they paced the gallery in the gloaming. All at once a skeleton hand and arm thrust itself from the wall, and brandished in their faces a sword, or, as some said, an axe, dripping with blood. It should be remembered that the Lady Frances was now in possession of nearly all the Carthusian property in and about London, which had been granted by Henry VIII to her father, Charles Brandon, and which she had lately inherited from her stepbrothers; and this spectre may have been contrived by some friend of the exiled Brotherhood to impress on the Duchess and her brood the sacrilegious origin of this wealth, which certainly did not bring them good luck.

Nearly opposite to this uncanny residence stood Syon or Sion House, an ancient Bridgetine convent which had been presented at the Dissolution to the late Duke of Somerset, and which his rival, the Duke of Northumberland, had filched from his widow. As the scene of the most dramatic event in Lady Jane Grey’s short life, it still retains considerable historical interest; but although much of the old convent is standing, the cloisters and other portions have been hidden under the plaster and stucco of an exceedingly ugly structure of the debased Victorian villa type.[184]

Northumberland, although he had not yet evolved the scheme of marrying his only bachelor and youngest son to Jane Grey, none the less considered the amity of the Suffolks too valuable an asset to be neglected. At this time Northumberland’s power and certainly his secrets were largely shared by his ally, the Duke of Suffolk, who never took any initiative or made a step in any direction without the consent of his all-powerful friend, who knew him to be a “weakling.”[185]

Northumberland, it would seem, did not at first intend Guildford for Lady Jane Grey, but for the Lady Margaret Clifford, whose right to the throne was at this time considered less disputable, she being Henry VIII’s own grand-niece, eldest daughter of the Lady Eleanor Brandon, the younger sister of the Duchess of Suffolk. Born after the nullification of Charles Brandon’s marriage with Lady Mortimer, her legitimacy was indisputable, whereas the enemies of the Suffolks were busily engaged about this time (1552) in spreading a report that Jane was illegitimate, her mother, the Lady Frances, having come into the world during the lifetime of the said Lady Mortimer. This insinuation was probably made by Lady Powis, Brandon’s eldest daughter by his second wife, Anne Browne. At one moment this matter of Lady Jane’s illegitimacy came very near saving her life, but Queen Mary, to whom the matter was represented, refused, it is said, to take such a possibility into consideration, out of respect for the memory of her aunt, the Queen-Duchess of Suffolk, whose marriage would have been invalidated if this assumption had been proved. Among Catholics, however, Lady Jane’s legitimacy was much disputed, and the Lady Eleanor prudently refused to encourage any great intimacy between her daughter and Northumberland’s son; she and her family, indeed, kept themselves in the background as much as they possibly could. At last, even though the boy-King had been induced to take an interest in the projected marriage, and had written both to Northumberland and to the Earl of Cumberland on the subject, the Duke altered his mind, and in 1553, with the casual fashion of those days, having decided to marry Guildford to the Lady Jane, he “offered” the Lady Margaret Clifford to his own younger brother, Sir Andrew Dudley.[186]

Perhaps that which finally decided Northumberland to abandon his first project was the unguarded and compromising language used by a certain Mrs. Huggones, a former servant of the widowed Duchess of Somerset. This good woman’s tongue having been loosened on one occasion by too liberal potations--the conversation is said to have taken place during supper--openly lamented the Duke of Somerset’s misfortunes (the incident occurred about August 1552), called the young King an unnatural nephew, and vivaciously remarked she wished she “had the jerking of him.” She added that Lord Guildford Dudley was to marry the daughter of the Earl of Cumberland, the match having been planned by the King, and finally, “with a stoute gesture,” she cried, “have at the Crown, with your leave.” Further, she used “unseemly saiyenges, neither meet to be spoken, nor conseyled of any hearer.” Sir William Stafford, in whose house at Rochford, in Essex, the affair apparently occurred, wrote to the Privy Council an account of these injudicious remarks. On 8th September, Mrs. Huggones was arraigned before Sir Robert Bowes, Master of the Robes, and Sir Arthur Darcy, Lieutenant of the Tower, acting for the Privy Council. She denied what had been said of her, and expressed great admiration for Northumberland. “And, moreover, she being examined of the last article concerning the marriage of the Lord Guildford Dudley with the Earl of Cumberland’s daughter, she deposeth that she heard it spoken in London (but by whom she now remembereth not) that the King’s ma^{ty} had made such a marriage, and so she told the first night that she came to Rochford to supper, showing herself to be glad thereof, and so she thought that all the hearers were also glad at that marriage.”[187] Maybe the fact that her daughter was becoming the subject of popular gossip was another incentive to the proud Lady Eleanor to place obstacles in the way of Northumberland’s proposal.[188]

There is no evidence that any of the Reformers visited the Suffolks at Sheen, but it is probable they did so, for the success of the Northumberlands’ scheme depended on the zeal of Lady Jane for Protestantism being kept at fever heat; and we may therefore conclude her Reforming friends were frequent guests at the ex-monastery.

The foreign Reformers were at this time very active all over England. Cranmer was particularly engaged with them, sending the smartest among them to lecture at Oxford and Cambridge, and inviting the great Melanchthon, and even Calvin himself, to visit England and preach, although the religious opinions of both were very different from his own. He even proposed to Calvin the formation of a sort of Protestant œcumenical council in London in opposition to the Council of Trent. In March 1552, he wrote to Calvin: “Our adversaries are now holding their Council at Trent for the establishment of their errors. Shall we neglect to call together here in London a godly synod for restoring and propagating the truth?”

There is nothing in Reformation correspondence so interesting or so curious as the _Zurich Letters_--no writings so rich in details and revelations. The tone of these old letters, of Melanchthon, Calvin, Cranmer, Hooper, Conrad Pellican, Œcolampadius, Hilles, Hales, Gualter, Fagius, Stumphius, Ab Ulmis, Bullinger, Bucer, etc. etc., is strangely modern. It is easy to imagine oneself to be reading the documentary evidence of some great modern revolutionary scheme for “the betterment of humanity.” All these worthies held themselves in a “godly” light uncommon to the rest of mankind. They, and they only, brandished the torch of truth, albeit they did not by any means hold identical views on even the most vital points of Christian faith--but they were as one when face to face with their common enemy, the Pope, and the religion he represented, and any blow dealt at Lutheranism was an equal joy to them. Cranmer would have burnt half of them to cinders for their “heresies” had they been Englishmen--he sent Anne Askew and Joan Bocher to the stake for holding “errors” which coincided with those of some of his foreign friends, Stumphius, Fagius, and Calvin, for instance! He would have hanged a Briton for stating in plain English his belief in predestination--but none the less invited over to a synod the great teacher of that desperate doctrine. These men were, no doubt, in earnest, and have left some strange details of their doings which throw floods of light on the history and mentality of the times in which they lived. They believed themselves to be so many God-appointed apostles, and addressed each other as “father in Christ,” even substituting for their common Teutonic names rich-sounding classical ones--Œcolampadius, Stumphius, Massarius, Utenhovius, Terentianus, Vadianus, Osiander, Dryander, Ochianus, etc. They would willingly have suffered death heroically and patiently for what they believed to be the truth. On the other hand, they could hate like very devils; Mary to them was Jezebel or Ataliah, Philip, Satan, Pole, a hell-hound, and the Pope, the Scarlet Whore and worse than the Devil. They could not speak decently of their adversaries; and it is precisely here that we see their influence on the youthful Jane--the reason why, if she really wrote the letter to Harding after his reversion to Catholicism, she employed a viragoish language unworthy of so gentle a Christian.

We have no positive proof of how the two families, of Northumberland and Suffolk, passed their time in the more genial months of the years 1552-3, when the Thames is pleasantest, especially in the neighbourhood where they had elected to pitch their respective camps. The two Dukes and their Duchesses cannot always have been engaged in political intrigues; they must have given themselves some occasional recreation, and we may imagine that archery, tennis, and other sports, dancing, music, and such amusements, were frequently indulged in at Sheen and Sion, the two state barges incessantly crossing and recrossing the river, from one mansion to the other. We can picture the scene on the lawn in front of Sion, down which the handsome Duchess of Northumberland often went to welcome the Lady Frances and her daughters as they landed from their barge, leading them, with the stately ceremony of those days, from the water-gate to the terrace in front of the former convent, and so into the cloisters along which the sisterhood of St. Bridget had so often and so recently passed in solemn procession to their now ruined chapel. And then came the gay romp in the hall and the merry games of the young folk, in which even the austere little Lady Jane would condescend to mingle, to the righteous consternation, doubtless, of her friends from Zurich and Geneva. Here, too, must have come the handsome Ambrose Dudley, lately married to the Lady Anne Seymour;[189]--but did that lady visit the house of the man who had compassed the ruin and death of her father? And here Robert Dudley, afterwards the famous Earl of Leicester, may have brought his affianced wife, the fair Amy Robsart of _Kenilworth_ fame. And the Lady Mary Sidney, Northumberland’s elder daughter, and wife of Sir Henry Sidney, soon to become the mother of one of the most illustrious men of the Elizabethan age, no doubt joined the circle with her clever young husband. In these hours of relaxation, when the dark undertakings to which the politics of those bloody days forced them were forgotten, these youths overflowed with animal spirits, and it is more than likely that Jane and her sister Katherine, and even the little Lady Mary, romped merrily with their guests. It was a romping age, the good old healthy country dances were in high favour, and the best performer was he who could lift his lady highest off the ground, or could cross his legs twice in a pirouette before he touched the floor again! Northumberland himself was famous as a dancer of extraordinary elegance and skill. That the Calvinism in which they had dabbled had not as yet stirred up Henry of Suffolk and his Tudor consort to a proper pitch of “godliness” is evident, for a company of players who had enacted comedies, tragedies, and tragi-comedies at Tylsey in the previous year, repeated their performances at Sheen in the winter of 1552-3, and brought a smile, perchance, to the pale lips of the studious Lady Jane, and evoked a hearty laugh from her materialistic mother, who, for aught we know to the contrary,--let us hope it was not so!--may already have begun to allow a certain ginger-headed Master Adrian Stokes, His Lordship’s Groom of the Chambers, to pay her compliments which a great Princess and an honest woman ought to have nipped in the bud. Tradition has it that Northumberland and his colleague of Suffolk often played a game of chess together, and that Suffolk would wax irritable if Northumberland won more often than himself.

No doubt, as soon as the Cumberland affair was broken off, and Northumberland had decided to marry his son to Lady Jane, Guildford was thrown as much into the young girl’s society as was possible in those days of rigid etiquette, when maidens of rank were not often allowed out of the sight of their parents and governesses. But there is no record of any love-making between the young folk: on the contrary, there is plenty of evidence that the girl disliked her suitor. About a week before the wedding her parents ordered her to marry the young gentleman, and, according to Baoardo,[190] she at first stoutly refused, “her heart,” she said, “being plighted elsewhere.” The Duke harshly reiterated his command and, according to the Italian chronicler, even struck his daughter several hard blows, whilst the broad red face of the Lady Frances purpled threateningly. The Duke told Jane her marriage had been ordained by no less a person than King Edward himself, and sharply inquired “whether she intended to disobey her King as well as her father?” Poor Jane, aching from his blows, could scarcely stammer her reply, “that she could not marry with Guildford since she was already contracted to another” and that with her father’s consent,--she doubtless alluded to the young Earl of Hertford, the late Duke of Somerset’s son. But what could a forlorn little girl of less than sixteen do, surrounded, as Jane was, by people whom she believed to be all-powerful? She had been so “nipped and pinched and bobbed” in her youth for an ill-constructed Latin verse or a faulty translation of a Greek sentence,[191] that her spirit was already more or less broken; she gave a reluctant consent at last; and straightway the two Duchesses began their wedding preparations. Milliners and haberdashers, glove-makers, embroiderers and Italian silk merchants flocked to Sion and Sheen to display their gewgaws and rich stuffs. Let us hope the little bride-elect derived some childish pleasure from all this finery, the ostentatious display of which must have thrown her Calvinistic friends into hysterics of righteous indignation. And thus, long before she went to the Tower and thence to her unmerited doom, Jane’s life was made a burden to her. Like the forlorn bride of Lammermoor, she was the victim of cruel parents, and one only wonders her young mind did not totter under the weight of so much woe!

Lord Guildford Dudley was born about 1533, and was consequently not yet of age, as Queen Mary afterwards remarked to the Imperial Ambassador. He was in his nineteenth year at the time of his ill-omened marriage. The Duchess of Northumberland, his mother, was granddaughter of that Lady Guildford who had been governess to Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII, and to whom occasional allusion is made in early Tudor documents as “Moder Guildford.” This lady had contrived to offend Louis XII of France, who packed her off to England the day after he married the English Princess. Thus the great-grandson of the governess and the granddaughter of the royal pupil eventually became man and wife. Lord Guildford Dudley’s case is believed to be the first instance, in this country, of the bestowal of a family instead of a Christian name at baptism; in stricter Catholic times it had been illegal to baptize a child by any name but that of a saint. Guildford was a tall, well-built youth, of very fair complexion.[192] In contrast with his splendid colouring and light-brown hair, he had the soft brown eyes which lend so peculiar a charm to the authentic portraits of his father, whose darling he was.[193] The Northumberland family was proverbially beautiful;--Robert, the famous Earl of Leicester and lover of Queen Elizabeth, was considered the handsomest man of his time. Guildford Dudley had a second name, James or Diego, received at his christening from a Spanish[194] nobleman, the famous Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, a trivial circumstance, apparently, but fatal in its consequences, for, as we shall see, it was largely a foolishly worded letter from this godfather that brought Guildford to the block.

It is uncertain whether Jane’s wedding was celebrated towards the end of May or in the beginning of June[195] (1553), but the former is the date generally received. Three marriages occurred on the same day: the first that of Lady Jane Grey and Guildford Dudley; the second between Lord Herbert,[196] eldest son of the Earl of Pembroke, and the Lady Katherine Grey, younger sister of Guildford’s bride; whilst the third was between Henry, Lord Hastings, eldest son of the Earl of Huntingdon, and Lady Katherine, the young sister of Lord Guildford Dudley. On the same day, little Lady Mary Grey, barely eight years of age, was solemnly betrothed to her equally youthful kinsman, Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton.

Lady Jane Grey’s wedding seems to have been exceptionally magnificent. Strype tells us that to increase its splendour and solemnity, the Master of the Wardrobe, Sir Andrew Dudley, had orders to deliver to the various parties much rich apparel and jewels out of the royal wardrobe.[197] As the King’s “table diamond” was delivered to the Princess Mary about this time, it seems probable that she also attended the wedding. These articles were not new, but consisted of velvets, brocades, pieces of cloth of gold, of silver, etc., the property of the late Duke of Somerset and of his Duchess, who was still a prisoner in the Tower; which had been forfeited to the King, on their attainder. Thus was poor Jane’s bridal party bedecked with the finery of her father’s victim, who preceded her by a few months only on the road to the bloodstained scaffold. The French Ambassador also mentions the exceptional pomp displayed at this wedding, but gives no details.

No contemporary account of this particular ceremony is in existence,[198] but the general custom was for the bride, attired in a dress highly ornamented with gold and embroidery, her hair hanging down, curiously waved and plaited, to be led to the church “between two sweet boys, with bride laces, and rosemary tied about their silken sleeves.” Before the bride was carried “a fair bride cup, of silver gilt,” “therein was a goodly branch of rosemary, gilded very fair, and hung about with silken ribbands of all colours; next there was a noise of musicians, that played all the way before her.”[199] Then followed a train of virgins in white, crowned with fresh flowers, with their hair hanging loose, some bearing bride cakes, and others garlands, adorned with gold. Last came the bridegroom, splendidly apparelled, with young men following close behind. There were scarves and gloves, an “epithalamium” and masques and dances; and “all the company was decked out with the bride’s colours, in every form and fantasy.”

When Jane’s marriage took place, the populace, though far from pleased with the exorbitant pretensions of the Duke of Northumberland, could not forbear admiring the bridegroom’s extreme beauty of person. The bride was considered pretty, but small and freckled. She must have come, in all her bridal bravery, from Suffolk House in the Strand to Durham House, for it was the custom then, as it is still, for the bride to start from her paternal roof, and meet the bridegroom at the church door or even at the altar. The Church of St. Mary-le-Strand having been destroyed by Somerset, the service was undoubtedly held in the private chapel of the ex-palace of the Bishops of Durham, then the town residence of Northumberland.

Edward VI was too ill to attend the wedding, and there is no direct evidence that either of the Princesses, his sisters, were present; though, as we have already said, Princess Mary may have been. Their absence, however, points to their fear of Northumberland’s sinister intentions. The young King made his cousin, Jane, and Lady Katherine Grey some wedding gifts of jewels and plate.

Burke says in his _Tudor Portraits_, though on what authority he does not tell us, that on the morning of her fatal marriage, “Lady Jane’s headdress[200] was of green velvet, set round with precious stones. She wore a gown of cloth of gold, and a mantle of silver tissue. Her hair hung down her back, combed and plaited in a curious fashion ‘then unknown to ladies of qualitie.’ This arrangement was said to have been devised by Mrs. Elizabeth Tylney, her friend and attendant, who was with her to the end. The bride was led to the altar by two handsome pages, with bride lace and rosemary tied to their sleeves. Sixteen virgins, dressed in ‘pure white,’ preceded the bride to the altar. Northumberland and his family were remarkable on this occasion for the splendour of their costumes. We have seen that they were jays in borrowed plumes. A profusion of flowers was scattered along the bridal route, the church bells gave a greeting, and the poor received beef, bread and ale for three days.”

Ascham reports that the wedding was “conducted much in the old Popish fashion,” and adds, curiously enough, as a rider to this observation, that “Northumberland, notwithstanding his pretended zeal for the Reformation, was a Papist at heart.” He was quite right, as events proved, though it should be remembered that at this time of transition the order of the marriage ceremony, unlike that for funerals, had not yet been formulated according to the Reformed rite.

Every item in this tragic story would seem predestined to increase its fateful horror. Part of Jane’s wedding dower was the estate of Stanfield in Norfolk,[201] which has more than once been associated with scenes of horror, not the least dreadful being the Rush murder, in the second half of the last century. This property belonged at one time to the Robsart family, and was believed by many to be the birthplace of the fair Amy, Countess of Leicester, who was really, however, born at Syderstone, an adjacent manor.

In the letter to Queen Mary, dated August 1553, quoted by Pollino,[202] and written, according to him, from the Tower, Jane Grey relates the manner of her existence between her marriage and Edward’s death. “The Duchess of Northumberland,” she says, “promised me at my nuptials with her son, that she would be contented if I remained living at home with my mother. Soon afterwards, my husband being present, she declared that it was publicly said that there was no hope of the King’s life (and this was the first time I heard of the matter), and further she observed to her husband, the Duke of Northumberland, ‘that I ought not to leave her house,’ adding ‘that when it pleased God to call King Edward to His mercy I ought to hold myself in readiness, as I might be required to go to the Tower, since His Majesty had made me heir to his dominions.’ These words told me off-hand and without preparation, agitated my soul within me, and for a time seemed to amaze me. Yet afterwards they seemed to me exaggerated, and to mean little but boasting, and by no means of consequence sufficient to hinder me from going to my mother.” Evidently Jane expressed these sentiments very frankly, for she proceeds: “The Duchess of Northumberland was enraged against my mother and me. She answered ‘that she was resolved to detain me,’ insisting, ‘that it was my duty at all events to remain near my husband, from whom I should not go.’ Not venturing to disobey her, I remained at her house four or five days.” These days were most likely spent at Durham House. “At last,” continues Lady Jane, “I obtained leave to go to Chelsea for recreation” (meaning perhaps change of air), “where I very soon fell ill.” Her illness was a struggle for life or death, the suffering so acute as to lead her to imagine she had been poisoned. The mention of this attack of what we should now call nervous breakdown, lends an indisputable air of authority to Jane’s letter as given by Pollino. There was really no earthly reason why anybody should attempt her life--it was certainly too precious to the Dudleys for the Duchess, an eminently respectable if an autocratic woman, to wish to see it prematurely ended. It is well known that this fear of being poisoned frequently seizes on people in time of distress.

Chelsea Manor House, which had lately been in the possession of the Duke of Somerset, had fallen, with other property, into the hands of Northumberland, and thence he dates certain letters to Cecil and his other colleagues.[203] Lady Jane apparently preferred going to Chelsea to stopping at Durham House; and so departed without her husband, although so recently married. Guildford was not present at the scene at Sion (on 9th July) when the Crown was offered to his wife, which points to his having been left in bachelor solitude at Durham House. Possibly the absence of her mother-in-law from the Chelsea establishment accounts for the bride’s preference for that suburban residence; and having married Guildford without entertaining the least affection for him, she probably did not desire his presence either.

The pomp and splendour of these nuptials were the last gleam of gaiety in the reign of Edward VI. A very short time afterwards, the poor young King grew so pitifully weak that Northumberland thought it was time to carry his great projects into execution. Otherwise, as he clearly saw, he and his friends must not expect to continue long in power, or even in security: all his efforts, his overthrow of Somerset, and the rest, would be rendered useless if his royally born daughter-in-law was not named by the King himself as the lawful successor to the throne.