“Suddenly,” recounts an eye-witness, “suddenly came a wondrous fear upon the people ... by a great sound which appeared unto many above in the element as it had been the sound of gunpowder set on fire in a close house bursting out, and by another sound upon the ground as it had been the sight of a great number of great horses running on the people to overrun them; so great was the sound of this that the people fell down one upon the other, many with bills; and other ran this way, some that way, crying aloud, ‘Jesus, save us! Jesus, save us!’ Many of the people crying, ‘This way they come, that way they come, away, away.’ And I looked where one or other should strike me on the head, so I was stonned [stunned?]. The people being thus amazed, espies Sir Anthony Brown upon a little nag riding towards the scaffold, and therewith burst out crying in a voice, ‘Pardon, pardon, pardon!’ hurling up their caps and cloaks with these words, saying, ‘God save the King! God save the King!’ The good Duke all the while stayed, and, with his cap in his hand, waited for the people to come together.”[124]
Whatever had been Sir Anthony’s errand, it had not been one of mercy; and when the excitement following upon the panic was calmed the doomed man and the crowd were alike aware that the people had been misled by hope, and that no pardon had been brought. It is at such a moment that a man’s mettle is shown. With admirable dignity Somerset bore the blow. As for a moment he had participated in the expectation of the cheering throng the colour had flickered over his face; but, recovering himself at once, he resumed his interrupted speech.
“Beloved friends,” he said, “there is no such matter as you vainly hope and believe.” Let the people accept the will of God, be quiet as he was quiet, and yield obedience to King and Council. A few minutes more and all was over. Somerset, in the words of a chronicler, had taken his death very patiently—with the strange patience in which the victims of injustice scarcely ever failed; the crowd, true to the last to their faith, pressing forward to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood, as in that of a martyr.
The laconic entry in the King’s journal, to the effect that the Duke of Somerset had had his head cut off on Tower Hill, presents a sharp contrast to the popular emotion and grief. The deed was, at all events, done; Northumberland had cleared his most formidable competitor from his path, and had no suspicion that the tragedy of that winter’s day was in truth paving the way for his own ultimate undoing.
From a photo by Emery Walker after a painting in the National Portrait Gallery.
EDWARD SEYMOUR, DUKE OF SOMERSET, K.G.