Robin Tremayne / A Story of the Marian Persecution

by Emily Sarah Holt

“I pray God avert the same, if His will is!” exclaimed Isoult.

This was the beginning of the first riots in Cornwall and Devon. There were tumults elsewhere, but the religious riots were worst in these parts. They began about the chantries, the people disliking the visitation: and from that they went to clamouring for the re-enactment of the Bloody Statute. On the 4th of June there were riots at Bodmin and Truro; and Father Giles, then priest at Bodmin, and a “stout Papist,” helped them to the best of his ability. But on the 6th came the King’s troops to Bodmin, and took Father Giles and others of the rioters, whom they sent to London to be tried; and about the 8th they reached Truro, where Mr Boddy, the King’s Commissioner for the chantries, had been cruelly murdered five days before. For a little while after this, all was quiet in Bodmin; but the end was not come yet.

Father Giles, the priest of Bodmin, was hanged at London on the 7th of July for his share in the riots: and Government fondly imagined that the difficulty was at an end. How fond that imagination was, the events of the following year revealed.

Anthony Monke, the eldest child of Mr Monke and Lady Frances, was born in the summer of 1548 (date unknown). In June of that year, a civil message from the Protector reached Bishop Gardiner at Farnham, requesting him to preach at Court on the 29th, Saint Peter’s Day, following. This message perturbed Gardiner exceedingly. James Basset found him walking up and down his chamber, his hands clasped behind him, uttering incoherent words, indicative of apprehension; and this continued for some hours. On the 28th the Bishop reached London; on the 29th he preached before the King; and on the 30th he was in the Tower. Probably the wily prelate’s conscience, never very clear, had already whispered the cause before he quitted Farnham.

On the 8th of September, at Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire, died the Lutheran Queen, Katherine Parr. She had taken a false step, and had lived to mourn it. Neglecting the command not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers, she had married Sir Thomas Seymour very shortly after King Henry’s death. It can be no lack of charity to call a man an unbeliever, a practical Atheist at least, whose daily habit it was to swear and walk out of the house when the summons was issued for family prayers. Poor Katherine had all the piety on her own side, but she had not to bear the penalty she had brought on herself long. She left behind her a baby daughter, Mary Seymour, who was sent to the care of the Duchess of Suffolk; for very soon after the Queen’s death, Seymour was arrested and committed to the Tower. He died on Tower Hill, on the 20th of March following. That Seymour was a bad man there can be no question; whether he really were a traitor is much more doubtful. The Lutheran party accused his brother the Protector of having brought about his death. It might be so; yet any evidence beyond probability and declamation is lacking. “It was Somerset’s interest to get rid of his brother; therefore he is responsible for his death.” This may be assertion, but it surely is not argument.

Meanwhile in high places there was a leaven quietly working, unperceived as yet, which was ere long to pervade the whole mass. The government of Edward the Sixth had come into power under the colours of the Gospel. The Protector himself was an uncompromising Gospeller; and though many Lords of the Council were Lutherans, they followed at first in his wake. There was one member of the Council who never did so.

Nearly fifty years before that day, Henry the Seventh, whose “king-craft” was at least equal to that of James the First, had compelled the young heiress of Lisle, Elizabeth Grey, to bestow her hand upon his unworthy favourite, Edmund Dudley. It is doubtful whether she was not even then affianced to Sir Arthur Plantagenet (afterwards Lord Lisle), whose first wife she eventually became; but Henry Tudor would have violated all the traditions of his house, had he hesitated to degrade the estate, or grieve the heart, of a son of the House of York. This ill-matched pair—the covetous Edmund and the gentle Elizabeth—were the parents of four children: the first being John Dudley, who was born in 1502. It is of him I am about to speak.

His countenance, from a physiognomist’s point of view, might be held to announce his character. The thick, obstinate lips, the cruel, cold blue eyes, intimated with sufficient accuracy the disposition of the man. Like all men who succeed, Dudley set before him one single aim. In his case, it was to dethrone Somerset, and step into his place. He held, too, in practice if not in theory, the diabolical idea, that the end sanctifies the means. And to hold that view is to say, in another form, “I will be like the Most High.”

Such was John Dudley, and such the goal at which he aimed. And he just touched it. His hand was already stretched forth, to grasp the glittering thing which was in his eyes the crown imperial of his world, and then God’s hand fell on him out of Heaven, and “he was brought down to Hell, to the sides of the pit.”

We shall see how this man prospered, as the tale advances: how he said in his heart, “There is no God.” But to Isoult Avery it was a standing marvel, how John Dudley could be the brother of Frances Monke. And the distance between them was as wide as from Hell to Heaven; for it was the distance between a soul sold to the devil, and a temple of the Holy Ghost.