A Popular History of England, From the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria; Vol. II

by François Guizot

The demands of the insurgents and the aim of the insurrection were of a very different nature, according to the various parts of the country in which they were found. The south almost everywhere claimed the re-establishment of the old religion; the men of Devonshire, at the head of whom marched Humphrey Arundel, were secretly urged by the priests; they laid siege to Exeter, and Lord Russell, badly provided with men and supplies, could not effectually succour the town. The proclamations of the young king in vain succeeded each other in answer to the inquisitions of the insurgents. Exeter was closely pressed for five weeks, and famine was already in the city, when Lord Russell, having received troops and money, at length defeated the rebels and caused the siege to be raised; the insurrection was drowned in blood, and the soldiers ravaged the country. Arundel and some of the chiefs were taken to London, where they were executed.

The insurrection in Norfolk had a more political character; it had begun in like manner by the question of the enclosures; a tanner of Norwich, named Ket, had placed himself at the head of the insurgents, and had established his camp upon a little elevation called Moushold Hill, at the gates of Norwich. There, surrounded by malcontents from the environs, to the number of twenty thousand, it is said, he declaimed against the oppression of the commoners by the nobles, and against the new religious service, asserting that he had only taken arms with the object of placing around the king honest councillors, favourable to the wishes of the people. A first attack upon the rebels, directed by the Marquis of Northampton, completely failed; they had been allowed time to assemble: they pillaged at their ease in the environs; then they gathered together again under the Reformation Tree, as they called an oak in the centre of their camp, bringing with them the noblemen whom they had made prisoners. It was only on the 25th of August, when the disorder had already lasted for nearly two months, that the Earl of Warwick, detained several days in Norwich for want of men and supplies, was able, on the arrival of some reinforcements, to attack the camp of Ket. The rebels were completely defeated, and the massacre was terrible. Ket and his brother, being sent to London, to be tried, were hanged, one from the belfry of Wymondham, the other in the citadel of Norwich, and nine of the principal leaders were suspended from the nine branches of the Reformation Tree. The revolt in Norfolk was at an end, and the insurrection which manifested itself shortly afterwards in Yorkshire having been stifled, tranquillity was restored in the country; it was not so at the court.

The checks which the policy as well as the arms of England had suffered in Scotland, the progress of King Henry II. in all the territory surrounding Calais and Boulogne, the proposals of Somerset to the Emperor to deliver the latter town to him, had slowly undermined the influence of the Protector, although he still remained popular with the lower classes, who called him the good duke; but the nobility were discontented, incensed at the arrogant tone of the Duke of "Somerset by the grace of God," as he styled himself. Indignation was aroused at the palace which he had raised in the Strand, at the cost of a church and three episcopal dwellings, and public opinion began to award him a rival, who, owing to the animosity of the former chancellor, Wriothesley, had for a long time been destined to accomplish the ruin of his enemy. Lord Warwick, equally ambitious, equally vain, but more bold and enterprising than Somerset, had already acquired a great military reputation, which was increased by his recent services in Norfolk. The two rivals had nearly come to blows in the month of October, 1549. Twenty members of the council joined Warwick in London, and the Protector, who remained at Hampton Court with the young king, began to assemble forces.

Edward VI. Writing His Journal.

Edward VI. has related in his journal the negotiations between the Protector and the malcontents, the alternations of resolution and weakness of Somerset, the decision of the noblemen congregated around Warwick. The overtures of the Protector, though more and more moderate, were all rejected; the trouble of answering him was no longer taken, when he at length convoked the counsel at Windsor. All the nobility repaired thither, and decreed without hesitation the arrest of Somerset; on the 14th of October he was conducted to the Tower, accused of high treason, and the young king was taken back to Hampton Court. Warwick was henceforth master. Southampton had in vain hoped to share the power with him; he was not even re-established in the office of chancellor, and the earl, who had hitherto appeared to be in favour of the Roman Catholic party, abandoned it completely to turn towards the Reformers. The wind blew from this quarter, and the principles of Warwick never impeded in anything the pursuit of his interests.

The Duke of Somerset was, at first, treated gently; he had shrunk from no humiliation in order to secure the mercy of the king, and had confessed all that had been desired, upon his knees, before the council. Deprived of all his offices, and smitten with a heavy fine, he appeared to accept his downfall meekly, remaining at court and behaving so modestly that he was again admitted into the privy council. The eldest son of Warwick, Lord Lisle, even married, on the 3rd of June, 1550, Lady Anne Seymour, the daughter of the Duke of Somerset. But secret intrigues increased every day; notwithstanding solemn reconciliations, the hostility of the two rivals remained unaltered. Warwick had taken the precaution of causing himself to be nominated Warden of the Scottish frontiers, in order to cut off the retreat towards the north of the Duke of Somerset, and the latter contemplated raising a civil war; he was at the same time ambitious of equalling him in rank, and caused himself to be styled the Duke of Northumberland; his friend, the Marquis of Dorset, became the Duke of Suffolk, and a few days after this promotion it suddenly became known that the Duke of Somerset had been arrested and conducted to the Tower, as guilty of conspiracy and high treason; the duchess was also arrested as well as a certain number of the friends of the duke.

The charges against Somerset were grave and numerous; he had plotted, it was said, the assassination of the principal noblemen of the council, Northumberland, Northampton, Pembroke, and others; a revolt was at the same time to be fomented in London, and the duke was to take possession of the person of the king. This time the prisoner was publicly conducted to Westminster Hall, to be tried by his peers, that is to say, by the councillors of the king, whom he was accused of having intended to assassinate; but he was not confronted with the witnesses against him. The prosecutors contented themselves with reading their depositions. He confessed the scheme of assassination with regard to his powerful enemies, but he had abandoned it, he said, and he absolutely denied any intention of rebellion or insurrection. He was accordingly acquitted upon the count of treason, but the count of felony was proved, and this sufficed to ruin him. The people, who thronged in the hall and the streets, did not understand the sentence; the axe, which had been borne before him as long as he was accused of high treason, had disappeared from the retinue; they cried out that the good duke had been acquitted, and the favour of the population of London did not incline Northumberland to show mercy. On the 22nd of January, 1552, six weeks after his condemnation, less than five years after the day on which he had taken possession of the supreme power, the former Protector of England was conducted to that scaffold so often bathed in the most illustrious blood. He died with more resolution than he had shown during his life; his young nephew, convinced, it is said, of his crime, having made no effort to show mercy. Somerset, no doubt, called to mind on Tower Hill the brother whom he formerly condemned to the same fate. Four of his friends were executed in like manner, protesting their innocence. "Every time the Duke of Northumberland places his head upon his pillow, he will find it wet with our blood," exclaimed Sir Ralph Vane, addressing the people. They listened in silence, without much emotion; the nation was growing accustomed to see the high nobility fall beneath the axe of the executioner instead of perishing, as formerly, bravely, sword in hand, upon the field of battle.

Boulogne had been definitively restored to France by a treaty of peace in which Scotland was included; the seal of the new alliance was to be the marriage of Edward VI.; but the health of the young monarch had been declining for some months past, and the ambitious Northumberland had already entered upon the manœuvres which were destined to bring about his ruin. He had married his fourth son, Lord Guildford Dudley, to Lady Jane Grey, the eldest daughter of the Duke of Suffolk, and grand-daughter, by her mother's side, of Mary, formerly Queen of France, and sister of Henry VIII.; he thus united his family to the royal blood, while he caused his other children to contract powerful alliances. His aim was no other than to exclude from the succession to the throne the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, who had never been reinstated in their birthright, for the benefit of the Duchess of Suffolk, the mother of Lady Jane Grey, who was disposed to renounce her rights in favour of her eldest daughter. The duke counted upon being supported in his undertaking by the Protestant party, uneasy, with just cause, at the probable accession to the throne of Princess Mary. He urged the same argument upon the young King Edward: it was, in truth, the only one which could operate upon him. The dying youth had, naturally, never played a political part; he even appears not to have taken much interest in public life, but he was sincerely pious and attached to the Protestant faith. The work of the Reformation had been the great preoccupation of a mind of a precocious gravity, and he had it in heart to protect the new religion after his death; he knew himself to be in most precarious health, and he consented without difficulty to the proposals which Northumberland made to him upon this subject. Perhaps he thought, moreover, that he had the right of using the same privilege as his father had claimed of designating his successor to the throne. The poor lad did not perceive into what new troubles and dangers he was about to plunge his kingdom by exposing it once more to the misfortunes of a contested succession and the rivalries of a powerful nobility.