The Duke, then, without consulting his son,—and here his disastrous mistake,—obtained an interview with Hertford, and, skilfully playing on his well-known vanity and social ambition, suggested at length that a betrothal should be forthwith arranged between Hertford’s eldest daughter and Surrey’s eldest son, and a similar contract entered into between Lord Thomas Howard[79] and Seymour’s youngest daughter, the Lady Jane Seymour. His Grace, apparently in a match-making mood, gave his paternal sanction to the wooing and wedding of his beautiful daughter, the widowed Duchess of Richmond, by Sir Thomas Seymour. With all these suggestions the Seymours gladly closed, making but one condition, that Surrey should accept a slightly subordinate position under Hertford’s command, virtually tantamount to a tacit apology for his repeated slights, covert and open, in the past. On Tuesday in Whitsun week 1546, then, the Duke, well pleased with his own diplomacy, presented himself at Whitehall and laid his rather complicated scheme of alliances before His Majesty. Henry was graciously pleased to approve it, and willingly agreed that his daughter-in-law of Richmond should become the bride of the handsome Thomas Seymour, with whom, according to Court gossip, she was already much in love. But in all these schemes the Duke had reckoned without his host, for when he put the matter before Surrey, that impetuous poet flew into a towering rage. He would “sooner see his children dead in their coffins than married to Seymour’s brats,” he said. Then, turning furiously on his sister, the Duchess of Richmond, who had accompanied her father, he cried,—at least, according to that dangerous Court gossip, Sir Gawen Carew,—“Go, carry out your farce of a marriage. My Lord of Hertford is in full favour, I grant; but why not do yet better for yourself and follow Madame d’Estampes’ example with King Francis. Get you into the same sort of favour with King Henry, and rule through him.” This sinister advice was evidently dictated by that vein of bitter sarcasm usual with Surrey when the uncontrollable temper which he inherited from his mother mastered his common sense. It could not have been seriously meant, for nobody knew better than Surrey that the King was already more than half dead, utterly unable to trouble himself about new mistresses, and in any case not likely to select his own daughter-in-law to replace his excellent Queen-Consort and nurse, Katherine Parr. The Duchess of Richmond, however, took the jibe seriously, replied that she “would sooner cut her throat” than do “any such vile thing,” and left her irate brother to his own reflections, which, when he cooled down, cannot have been particularly agreeable. He knew his sister well; she was an exceedingly beautiful woman, to whom Holbein, in his exquisite drawing, has given the expression of one of Ghirlandajo’s sweetest Madonnas. But at heart she was a little fiend, capable, when her passions were roused, of working dire mischief. She said little at the time, but she nursed her grievance and exaggerated its importance. She may also have felt not a little embittered against Sir Thomas Seymour, who had ungallantly refused her hand because it was not accompanied by her brother’s submission. Be this as it may, “the Duchess of Richmond from that day forth hated her brother as much as she had previously loved him,”[80] and when the hour for revenge came at last, forgetful of her obligations as sister and woman, she scandalised even that unsentimental age by appearing at her brother’s trial as one of the principal witnesses for the prosecution.
Meanwhile the Duke of Norfolk was at his wits’ end to know how to make Hertford aware of the unfortunate results of his negotiations with his son. He was possessed of a perfect mania for putting pen to paper on any and every pretext, although, as every one who has waded through his correspondence knows, there has never been a statesman, before or since, who could indite more indiscreet and exasperating epistles. If then, as is likely, he conveyed the unpleasant news by letter, he was not the man to improve matters by a tactful manner. The breach between the Howards and the Seymours was now complete. Hertford, hurt in pride and vanity, would accept no apologies from the Duke, and the feud between himself and Surrey soon grew more bitter than ever. To make matters worse, the Duchess of Richmond made a confidant of her friend, Sir Gawen Carew, who detested her brother, and was the most inveterate gossip of the Court, as is well known to those who have read the State Papers connected with the tragedy of Katherine Howard; it was, indeed, the gossip of Sir Gawen that did most to ruin that Queen. Presently young scions of the nobility, courtiers who hated the Howards for their airs and graces and forgot the old Duke’s well-known kindness to the youthful, buzzed about the King, and did their best to set him against the luckless Earl. Hertford and his brother afforded them ample assistance, supplying all necessary instructions and information; and, for all we know to the contrary, the Queen may have lent a helping hand. In fact, the whole Protestant party was now roused against the Howards, the representatives of the Catholics, and determined to bring about their ruin or perish in the attempt. It had hoped the folly of Katherine Howard would have sufficed for this purpose, but the great house of Norfolk was firm enough to resist even that storm. Another pretext had to be found, and the impolitic behaviour of the poet-Earl supplied it.
Poor Surrey was no match for the low and cunning intrigues amongst which “Fate and metaphysical aid” had thrown him. Somewhere in June 1546 he was summoned before the Privy Council, severely reprimanded for what he could not possibly help, and imprisoned in Windsor Castle, where he consoled himself by writing one of his most exquisite poems. This was his “Swan Song”! By August, however, he was certainly out of durance, and apparently once more in favour with the King, for he figured as Earl Marshal at the entertainments given in honour of the French Envoy, Claude d’Annebault, taking precedence of everyone excepting members of the royal family.
Early in September he left London, and returned to his wife and children at Kenninghall, accompanied by Churchyard the poet, who was his secretary, and an extremely numerous and miscellaneous retinue, which included several Italian painters, musicians, and jesters. One of the artists, Toto, was soon engaged upon a portrait of him, which was later used to his great disadvantage; in the left-hand corner of it appeared his escutcheon, bearing among its numerous quarterings the arms of England, but so arranged that a slide could be drawn, when necessary, over the coat-of-arms. The Duke of Norfolk and my Lady of Richmond came to Kenninghall Palace about this time; but the mansion, of which not a vestige now remains, was so enormous that every member of the ducal family had a separate dwelling. The Duchess of Richmond had a whole wing to herself, which she shared with her friend Mrs. Holland. The society of those days was not so dead to all sense of propriety as not to be scandalised by this singular intimacy between the Duke’s daughter and his mistress. Most people agreed with the Duchess of Norfolk “that her dater’s abiding ever with that drab Holland” was a “scandayul and most unnatterall.” Owing to the huge size of the mansion, not much inferior to that of Hampton Court, the Duchess and Mrs. Holland may never once have come into contact with Surrey and his family; otherwise, it is difficult to account for the fact that we have no record of any fiery scene between brother and sister. The Duke seems to have spent his time very quietly, reading the books he most affected, such as Plutarch’s Lives of Illustrious Men, Josephus’s History, and The Confessions of St. Augustin.[81]
Whilst the Howard family was thus peacefully rusticating in Norfolk, gossip and slander were making headway in the metropolis and preparing poor Surrey’s ruin. Sir George Blagg, the “my Blagg” of one of his finest poems, had picked a quarrel with him in the summer, and was busy as a bee spreading evil reports against him. Sir Gawen Carew had confided to every one what the Duchess of Richmond had related to him anent her brother’s advice to hasten and become the King’s mistress. His enemies had even pressed the Court astrologer into their service, and this functionary had actually warned the King that unless he was careful, his successor’s monogram would, like his own, be “H.R.” The Duke himself was not spared: he had been seen to enter the French Ambassador’s house late at night and to leave it again in the small hours of the morning. A letter of his to Gardiner, then on a mission to Brussels, was intercepted—and vague though its terms were, it was held to be proof positive of Norfolk’s adherence to Gardiner’s scheme, as planned with Cardinal Granville, to restore the papal supremacy in England. At last, truth and lies together rolled themselves up into an ominous storm-cloud, which burst when Surrey was called to appear before the Council in London on a charge of high treason.
Some writers have attempted to extenuate Henry VIII’s share in the dénouement of this tragedy. They plead that he was too ill at this time to know exactly what he was doing, and that, in consequence of the swollen state of his hands, he was compelled to use a stamp to sign his letters. With regard to this, we know that as far back as 1st August 1546 he had commissioned Sir Anthony Denny, Sir John Gates, and William Clere to sign documents for him with a dry stamp, the signature thus made being filled in with ink. And even this is not the first time Henry had recourse to a mechanical contrivance for signing letters and State Papers. Lord Hardwick has a letter of the King’s signed with a stamp and dated as early as the seventh year of his reign. Moreover, the official documents, which were drawn up by Wriothesley, are carefully annotated and corrected in pencil by Henry himself, with very full marginal notes and numerous interlineations. The handwriting is very shaky, but it is the King’s none the less, and proves that if the monarch’s body was infirm, his brain was as clear and his feelings as vindictive as ever. The death-warrant of the Earl of Surrey is also scribbled over on the margin with certain pencil notes in the King’s own writing, proving that Henry must have retained the use of his hands to the end.
Sufficient evidence having been gathered, and Surrey being summoned to London, he left Kenninghall[82] in the last days of September, and appeared before the Privy Council in Wriothesley’s house in Holborn, not far from Chancery Lane, on 2nd October. His first accuser was Sir Richard Southwell, at one time in his mother’s household at Kenninghall, who hated him heartily. He averred that Surrey had placed the Royal Arms of England in the first quartering of his escutcheon, thereby claiming the crown. When confronted with Southwell, Surrey, with his foolish impetuosity, and to the consternation of the Council, proposed a sort of trial by battle after the mediæval fashion. Southwell and he were there and then to divest themselves of their upper garments, descend on to the floor of the court, and indulge the Lord Chancellor and the Council with the spectacle of a boxing-match, the winner of which was to be declared innocent. The Council, needless to say, did not see fit to accept the fiery Earl’s suggestion, and both Surrey and Southwell were temporarily detained—the Earl being not yet formally charged.
The examination of the other witnesses took place privately a few days later, before the Council but not in the presence of the prisoner. Sir Edmund Knyvyt, a son of the Lady Muriel Howard, the sister of the Duke of Norfolk, and therefore a cousin of Surrey, out of sheer spite, and also perhaps to give himself importance, accused the Earl of harbouring Italian spies in his house at Kenninghall, of affecting foreign airs, of wearing foreign costumes, and, gravest of all, of entertaining persons suspected of correspondence with Cardinal Pole and other “traitors” abroad. Then came Sir Gawen Carew with an exaggerated version of the Duchess of Richmond’s story that her brother advised her to become the King’s mistress, and had spoken lightly of the King’s illness, and speculated as to what might occur in the event of his death; and before the week was out a score or so of other venal witnesses had concocted sufficient evidence to send fifty men to the block.
The Duke, meanwhile, tarried at Kenninghall, wondering what had happened to his son, and never imagining how bitter and relentless was the suddenly, and indeed inexplicably, developed hatred of the King, which we, however, know was stimulated by the Seymours and Cranmer for their own ends. Instead of coming up to London to help the Earl out of his difficulties, he set himself, as usual, to write confidential letters to those members of the Council upon whom he thought he could rely. These effusions were promptly shown to Hertford, with the result that His Grace himself was ordered to London with the utmost dispatch. On 12th December the Duke of Norfolk appeared before Lord Chancellor Wriothesley at his house in Holborn, near the present Southampton Buildings, and, to his unutterable amazement, found himself formally charged with high treason. He was immediately committed to the Tower, but on account of his rank and age, and to spare him the humiliation of being paraded as a prisoner through the city streets, he was conveyed down the hill, put on board a barge in the Fleet, and so to the Thames, through the arches of London Bridge, and onward to his ominous destination in the ancient fortress. Later in the same day Surrey too was conducted to the Tower, but he had to go on foot and through a dense multitude. To the consternation of his enemies, he was cheered all along the road, and grave fears were entertained of a rescue.[83] Three commissioners were now dispatched to Kenninghall to bring the Duchess of Richmond and her friend Mrs. Holland up to town. Another embassy rode to Redbourne, to fetch the Duchess of Norfolk, who was only too delighted to come to London and blurt out all she could to the detriment of her hated spouse. By this time London could talk of nothing but the Surrey trial. In the palaces of the rich, in the hovels of the poor, in all the little taverns and drinking-houses down by the Thames, in the parlours of the great inns in Southwark and the Cheape, the conversation turned upon no other subject, and even the all-absorbing topic of the King’s illness was forgotten for the time being. A touch of horror was added to the general excitement when it became known that Norfolk’s wife and his daughter and mistress were to be the chief witnesses against him and his son. The Duchess did not spare her husband. Snatching at the welcome chance of avenging her wrongs, the half-witted lady grew garrulous, and confirmed everything suggested by those who desired to damn her lord’s cause. She had but little to say, however, concerning her son, for the simple reason that she had not seen him for many months and knew nothing about his affairs. He was very “unnatturell” towards her, she declared, and so was her daughter, but nevertheless she “loved her children dearly.” Her husband, she said, had leanings towards Popery, and caused his children to be brought up to deny the King’s supremacy.
Mrs. Holland behaved with great discretion, considering her position and antecedents. It was true, she said, that the Duke of Norfolk had on one occasion told her that “if he had been young enough he would like to go to Rome to venerate the Veronica, an image of our Lord miraculously impressed upon a handkerchief which He had given to certain women on His way to Calvary.” The Duke had bidden her lay aside some needlework upon which she was engaged, to oblige the Earl of Surrey, and in a corner of which were his arms, one quartering of which was to be left blank, “probably for the introduction of the Royal Arms and monogram.” She had obeyed the Duke’s behest and never set needle into the work again. Before concluding her evidence, she, perhaps not unnaturally, seized the opportunity to try and clear her own reputation, and informed the Court that “the Earl detested her because she was so friendly with his sister.”