Thus Thomas Seymour was done to death by a brother, and cursed by a churchman. Sherrington, who had supplied the principal part of the evidence against him, received a pardon and was reinstated in his office.
Of regret upon the part of friends or kinsfolk there is singularly little token. As they had fallen from his side in life, so they held apart from him in death. If Elizabeth mourned him she was already too well versed in the world’s wisdom to avow her grief, and is reported to have observed, on his execution, that a man had died full of ability (esprit) but of scant judgment.[95] Whether or not the Lord Protector was troubled by remorse, he was not likely to make the public his confidant; and Katherine, the woman who had loved him so devotedly, was dead.
CHAPTER X
1549-1550 The Protector’s position—Disaffection in the country—Its causes—The Duke’s arrogance—Warwick his rival—The success of his opponents—Placed in the Tower, but released—St. George’s Day at Court.
The Protector’s conduct with regard to his brother does much to alienate sympathy from him in his approaching fall, in a sense the consequence and outcome of the fratricide. He “had sealed his doom the day on which he signed the warrant for the execution of his brother.”[96] If the Admiral, having crossed his will, was not safe, who could believe himself to be so? Yet the fashion of the accomplishing of his downfall, the treachery and deception practised towards him by men upon whom he might fairly have believed himself able to count, lend a pathos to the end it might otherwise have lacked.
For the present his power and position showed no signs of diminution. The Queen, his wife’s rival, was dead. The Admiral, who had dared to measure his strength against his brother’s, would trouble him no more, unless as an unquiet ghost, an unwelcome visitant confronting him in unexpected places. During his Protectorate he had added property to property, field to field, and was the master of two hundred manors. If the public finances were low, Somerset was rich, and during this year the building of the house destined to bear his name was carried on on a scale of splendour proportionate to his pretensions. Having thrown away the chief prop of his house, says Heylyn, he hoped to repair the ruin by erecting a magnificent palace.
The site he had chosen was occupied by three episcopal mansions and one parish church; but it would have been a bold man who would have disputed the will of the all-powerful Lord Protector, and the owners submitted meekly to be dispossessed in order to make room for his new abode. Materials running short, there were rough-and-ready ways of providing them conveniently near at hand; and certain “superstitious buildings” close to St. Paul’s, including one or two chapels and a “fair charnel-house” were demolished to supply what was necessary, the bones of the displaced dead being left to find burial in the adjacent fields, or where they might. As the great pile rose, more was required, and St. Margaret’s, Westminster, was to have been destroyed to furnish it, had not the people, less subservient than the Bishops, risen to protect their church, and forcibly driven away the labourers charged with the work of destruction. St. Margaret’s was saved, but St. John’s of Jerusalem, not far from Smithfield, was sacrificed in its stead, being blown up with gunpowder in order that its stone-work might be turned to account.
The Protector pursued his way unconscious of danger. The Earl of Warwick, his future supplanter, looked on and bided his time. The condition of the country had become such as to facilitate the designs of those bent upon a change in the Government. Into the course of public affairs, at home and abroad, it is impossible to enter at length; a brief summary will suffice to show that events were tending to create discontent and to strengthen the hands of Somerset’s enemies.
The victory of Pinkie Cleugh, though gratifying to national pride, had in nowise served the purpose of terminating the war with Scotland. Renewed with varying success, the Scots, by means of French aid, had upon the whole improved their position, and the hopes indulged in England of a union between the two countries, to be peacefully effected by the marriage of the King with the infant Mary Stuart, had been disappointed, the little Queen having been sent to France and affianced to the Dauphin. In the distress prevailing amongst the working classes of England, more pressing cause for dissatisfaction and agitation was found. Partly the result of the depreciation of the currency during the late reign, it was also due to the action of the new owners who, enriched by ecclesiastical property, had enclosed portions of Church lands heretofore left open to be utilised by the labourers for their personal profit. Pasturage was increasing in favour compared with tillage; less labour was required, and wages had in consequence fallen.