Ten Tudor Statesmen

by Arthur D. Innes

It would appear, however, that it would be difficult to find two men whose ideas were more thoroughly antagonistic than those of Somerset and Northumberland: a view not very easily reconcilable with the popular verdict, which seems to regard Somerset as being a weaker if rather more amiable edition of his rival. It is certainly well that the latest detailed study of the Protector’s career should have at least sufficed to make the old method of treating him inexcusable for the future. Without accepting all Mr. Pollard’s inferences as to his subject’s abilities and character, it must be recognised that the portrait presented in his England under Protector Somerset, if somewhat “flattered,” will have to be seriously reckoned with by all future historians of the period.

PROTECTOR SOMERSET

From a Painting by Holbein

Nevertheless, it may be doubted whether the impression left by that volume is quite what the author intended to convey. The suggestion certainly is that the Protector was really a great man who only failed because he was too much in advance of his age. But in fact, while he possessed certain qualities essential to the great statesman though by no means requisite for a successful politician, he lacked others which are necessary to either character. Some of the projects for which he laboured most strenuously were wrecked, not because they were out of reach, but because of his own inherent incapacity for adapting means to ends; and the general effect of his efforts was not to bring the objects he had in view within nearer reach, but to make them more difficult of attainment than they were before. Failure is no condemnation. Wiclif failed, and Huss failed; but they made the Reformation possible. Somerset failed, and there was hardly one of his aims which had been advanced a single step by his action. A statesman, to deserve the title in its full sense, must be an idealist in his aims, but practical in his methods. The unpractical statesman may deserve our sympathy and our admiration; but we may not therefore give him the full meed of applause which belongs to the benefactors of the race or nation. The unpractical idealist may be invaluable when he is a voice only. When the control of public affairs falls into his hands, he is a public danger.

II
THE PROTECTOR AND HIS PROBLEMS

Edward Seymour was born about 1505: of good family, but not of high rank, though there was a strain of Plantagenet blood on the mother’s side. At any rate, the Seymours were connected with the Court, and the future Protector was still a boy when he was holding offices associated with Royalties. When Henry VIII. tired of Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour was the new spouse on whom his choice fell. The marriage naturally brought advancement to her brother; and though she did not long survive the birth of her son, Seymour, who had by this time been appointed to the Privy Council and raised to the earldom of Hertford, continued to enjoy favours as a man of undoubted talents and attractive personality—and uncle of the heir apparent. Favours, however, meant very little in the way of power. He discharged various functions and took part in sundry military operations in France and Scotland; but apart from one smart action near Boulogne, very little real credit attaches to his performances, which consisted for the most part in sacking the city of Edinburgh, and laying waste the Scottish border with rather more than usual in the way of burning and devastation.

Such as they were, however, these achievements sufficed to bring him some prestige as a commander. If there was nothing particularly brilliant about them, the same comment applies generally to those of his fellows and rivals. There was no one marked out by his talents to take up the reins of government when the king should die and be succeeded by a nine-year-old son. But it was fairly obvious that either the Howards, or Hertford in virtue of his relationship to the young Edward, must occupy the leading position. Intrigues and the folly of Surrey turned the scale against the Howards; Surrey and his father were both attainted; the former was executed and the latter escaped only through Henry’s death. Hertford was inevitably the man of the hour.

There was no manner of doubt about the succession. Henry left only one son, and that son’s legitimacy was unchallenged. But by a wholly unique measure, Henry had been empowered to fix by will not only the course of succession after his son but the method of carrying on the government during Edward’s minority. The will, when produced, was found to vest the control in a council of executors, giving priority to none, but remarkable as excluding Bishop Gardiner from the list. The genuineness of the document has been disputed, but probably without sufficient reason. At any rate, as it stood, its provisions were very far from satisfying Hertford’s ambitions, and it is hard to see how any one could have had a personal interest in giving it such a shape. Certainly he had none, and his immediate efforts were directed to inducing the new Council to alter its own constitution fundamentally. For two days the king’s death was kept secret, while Hertford laid his plans in conjunction with Paget, who had possession of the will. When the Council was summoned and the will produced, a proposal was immediately sanctioned appointing Hertford Lord Protector of the realm and of the king’s person. The assent of the king and the peers was formally obtained, and a few weeks later the appointment was confirmed by the king’s authority under the Great Seal. In the interval there had been a general distribution of honours, Hertford himself being made Duke of Somerset. Also the one member of the Council from whom serious opposition was to be feared, Wriothesley the Lord Chancellor (now made Earl of Southampton), justified his own removal by transgressing his powers. Somerset’s position was thus for the time at least made impregnable.

Henry VIII. himself and his second great minister Cromwell had conducted the government of the country on autocratic lines under colour of parliamentary forms, until Parliament itself assigned, not to the Crown as such, but to Henry personally, what amounted to the power of legislation by Royal Proclamation. Somerset, though without this statutory power, continued to make a free use of proclamations, such being in effect the system to which the country had become accustomed. He did not appreciate the change which had taken place. For the successful exercise of those powers a personality was needed which commanded unquestioning obedience, coupled with an unerring sense of the limits of endurance in the subjects. In neither respect was the Protector endowed with the necessary qualities.