Accordingly, on 16th October 1551, the Duke of Somerset was suddenly re-arrested in the Council Chamber[175] at Hampton Court, and taken to the Tower to await his trial on charges made against him to Northumberland by Sir Thomas Palmer, “a brilliant but unprincipled soldier.” Palmer asserted that Somerset and his friends had plotted to raise the North of England against Northumberland; that he had intended to secure the Tower, to incite the populace of London to revolt, to seize the Great Seal, with the aid of the City apprentices, and, finally, to murder the Duke and his principal supporters at a supper in Lord Paget’s house. There would seem to have been but little truth in these charges; Northumberland at a later date, at any rate, confessed that they were fabrications, and Palmer, before his death, described them as the products of Northumberland’s fertile imagination. This second trial of the Lord Protector took place on 1st December in Westminster Hall. The judges were seven and twenty peers, amongst them all the prisoner’s enemies—Northumberland, Northampton, and Pembroke, with the Marquis of Winchester as President. The business was conducted with the unfairness which distinguished nearly all the political trials of this period; no witnesses for the prosecution were produced in person, but their depositions were read. The indictments accused Somerset of plotting to lay hands on Northumberland and others, to seize the Great Seal and the Tower, and to deprive the sovereign of his kingly power; he was also charged with having incited the citizens of London to rebel against the King. The official indictment made no mention of his supposed intention of assassinating Northumberland; neither was Paget, in whose house it was alleged the murder was to have taken place, ever tried for his share in the plot. This melodramatic accusation would, in fact, seem to have been entirely dropped at the last moment. Somerset, who denied the charges, was acquitted of treason on the first count, but found guilty on that of felony for inciting the citizens to revolt. There is ample evidence that he never did anything of the kind. Winchester, a few months back his enthusiastic ally, pronounced the death sentence on the unhappy man. Its effect upon him was sudden and staggering. He became pale, and fell upon his knees before Northumberland, Northampton, and Pembroke, who turned their backs whilst he besought the people to pray for him and his family. And so he was ordered back to the Tower to prepare for death. The count of treason not having been proved, the axe did not face the prisoner on the way back to his cell, and “the people, supposing he had been clerely quitt, when they see the axe of the Tower put downe, made such a shryke [shriek] and castinge up of caps, that it was heard into the Long Acre beyonde Charing crosse.”[176] This must have cheered him greatly. He may have thought and hoped that the people loved him still.
King Edward is said to have expressed considerable anxiety on his uncle’s account, but his distress did not prevent him from indulging, according to his own statement, notwithstanding his delicate health, in exceptionally riotous Christmas festivities.[177] The popular joy over his acquittal on the charge of treason proved fatal to Somerset, for it convinced Northumberland more than ever of the necessity of destroying his rival. Holinshed sarcastically informs us that “Christmas being thus passed and spent with much mirth and pastime, it was thought now good to proceed to the execution of the judgment against the Duke of Somerset.” Notwithstanding the frequency of such events, the execution of so great a nobleman produced a considerable impression throughout London. Though every precaution was taken to prevent the assembling of an unusual crowd, Tower Hill was black with people long before dawn on 22nd January 1552, the day of doom. The vast assembly had gathered in the expectation of the Duke’s reprieve rather than of his death. There was an extraordinary muster of halberdiers, men-at-arms, sheriffs and their officers. At eight o’clock Somerset was brought forth. He faced the axe manfully, knelt down and said his prayers, and then, rising to his feet, made a speech. Unlike most of his peers, he did not deny with his last breath the religion he had helped to promulgate; there was nothing he regretted less, said he, when on the brink of his bloody fate, than his endeavours “to reduce religion to its present state, and he exhorted the people to continue steadfast in the Reformation principles, and thereby escape the wrath of God.” Just as he was about, according to custom, to take formal leave of the crowd, great confusion was caused by the arrival of a body of soldiers with bills and halberds, who had received orders to attend the execution. Arriving late, these men dashed towards the scaffold, and their onrush, combined with some noise as of thunder,—“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,”—terrified the mob, and an awful panic ensued: spectators standing on the edge of the Tower moat lost their balance and fell into the water, and not a few were trampled underfoot and others broke their necks. Presently, in the midst of the hubbub, during which Somerset was left so unguarded that, it is said, he might easily have escaped, Sir Anthony Browne was seen riding towards the spot. The mob, somewhat recovered from its consternation, imagined he was bringing a reprieve, and shouted, “A pardon, a pardon!” casting their caps and cloaks into the air. But Sir Anthony brought no message of mercy with him. The doomed Duke had been standing quietly on the edge of the scaffold, watching the turmoil. He too, when he heard the shouts of “Pardon!” imagined his nephew had remembered him; but he soon realised his error. The hectic colour which for a moment had flushed his cheeks with the gleam of hope faded as, in a ringing voice, he concluded his interrupted speech; and that done, he bestowed his rings on the headsman, said a few words to the Dean of Christchurch, bared his neck, knelt on the straw, and laid his head on the block. Another instant and the axe had fallen. Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and first Lord Protector of England, was buried in the Church of St. Peter-ad-Vincula within the Tower on the north side of the choir, between the coffins of the Queens Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard; the funeral rites were those of the Church of England, as then constituted, “but hurried and simple as for a pauper.”[178]
The character of Edward Seymour has been the subject of much discussion; but it would seem fair to seek a via media between the over-severe condemnation of some historians and the exaggerated praise of others. If we cannot exalt him to the high pedestal upon which he has been set by Mr. Pollard, we need not fall into the error of degrading him to the low level assigned him by eighteenth-century historians. Somerset must not be judged by modern standards. If the balance of good and evil in his character is considered, and we contemplate him by the light of the middle sixteenth century, we may even come to share the opinion of a large section of the London populace of his day—mostly those of the Protestant party, be it said—who looked on him as an admirable and God-fearing man,[179] who did his best to free the people from much of the superstition, oppression, and injustice from which it suffered. His faults, his ambition and lust of power, were very human; and the evils of his administration were largely due to the condition to which Henry VIII’s misrule had reduced the country. The age in which he lived was very unpropitious to statesmen and leaders of men, for, no matter how intelligent they might be, some rival lurking in the shade was sure to be ready to trip them up and take their place at the first opportunity. On the whole, Somerset seems to have worked for what he believed to be the interests of his King and the good of the Protestant religion, to which he was consistently faithful. His domestic life was clean, and in an age of place-hunters and libertines Edward Seymour was one of the most respectable men. Neither entirely mediocre nor altogether great, the Duke of Somerset may be described as un grand homme manqué—one who just missed greatness.
* * * * *
Note.—A long letter from a Reformer named Francis Burgoyne, written from London to John Calvin on 22nd January 1552, gives a most detailed account of the Duke of Somerset’s execution, and an analysis of his character which is of great interest. He says: “Hence arise our tears, hence arises the all but universal distress, that on this very day, about 9 o’clock, the Duke of Somerset of pious memory, when hardly any person looked for or suspected such an event, was led out publicly to execution. I myself was not present at the sight ... but many of my friends related to me what they had seen and heard.” Then follows a long account, given to Burgoyne by Utenhovius, of Somerset’s last speech, continuing that “he spake all this ... with a look and gesture becoming the firmness of a hero, and the modesty of a Christian; (they say) that he was splendidly attired, as he used to be when about to attend upon the King, or to appear in public on some special occasion; that he gave the executioner some gold rings which he drew from his fingers, together with all his clothes; only to a certain gentleman, the Lieutenant of the Tower of London ... he gave his sword and upper garment. What weeping, and wailing, and lamentation, followed upon the death of this nobleman, it is as difficult to describe as to believe. It is stated by some persons who belong to the household of some of the Councillors ... that by the Royal indulgence the capital punishment had been remitted, with a free pardon, while the Duke was yet in prison, and that whole Council sent to inform him of it more than once; but when he rejected with contempt the grace that was offered to him, (I know not whether in reliance on his own innocence, or on the favour of the King and some other parties, or on his own influence, and wealth, and rank, or on some other delusive persuasion), the whole Council were at length so irritated by this conduct, that they determined that they would no longer endure that excessive arrogance of the man.... It is quite evident, in my opinion, that the deceased nobleman, like other men, was not without his faults, and those perhaps more grievous than could be passed over by God without punishment in this life.... This man was endowed and enriched with most excellent gifts of God both in body and mind, but is not that the best gift, that God has chosen the light of the Gospel to shine forth by his instrumentality throughout this Kingdom.... I do not now mention how God had so exalted him, from being born in a private station, that as the late King’s brother-in-law, the brother of a Queen, the uncle of the present King, he had no one here superior to him in any degree of honour, and then especially, when appointed Lord Protector of the Realm, he was all but King, or rather esteemed by everyone as the King of the King.” Burgoyne then passes to the subject of Somerset’s religion: “During almost the whole time when we were both of us here, he had become so lukewarm in the service of Christ as scarcely to have anything less at heart than the state of Religion in this country. Nor indeed did he retain in this respect anything worthy of commendation, excepting that, as far as words go, he always professed himself a Gospeller when occasion required such acknowledgement.” “It is notorious to every one in this Kingdom,” he continues, “that he was the occasion of his brother’s death, who, having been convicted on a charge of treason which no one could prove against him by legal evidence, and of which when brought to execution he perseveringly denied the truth, was beheaded owing to his information, instigated by I know not what hatred and rivalry against his brother.... In fine, that very act, for which he was last of all thrown into prison, was both unworthy of a Christian such as he professed himself to be, and also sufficiently shews that the most part of the crimes which I have laid to his charge, have their foundation in truth. For he was himself the head and author of a certain conspiracy against the Duke of Northumberland, lately called the Earl of Warwick, whom he pursued with the most unrelenting hatred, as having been foremost in depriving him of the rank of Protector, and being himself regarded from that time by the King’s Councillors as occupying that office; the Duke of Somerset, I say, gained over some accomplices in this conspiracy even from among the Council itself (who are now in prison awaiting the King’s pleasure respecting them), by which it was agreed among them, that on the Duke of Northumberland being dispatched (together with any of his friends who should oppose their views) either by violence, or in secret, or in any other way, they should place the entire administration of the Kingdom in their own hands, but that the Duke of Somerset should be invested with the chief authority, or even be restored to the order of Protector.” The writer, after saying that “at his death he manifested some favourable marks of Christian penitence,” concludes: “Two reasons are present to my mind which increase my regret; one of them is, that we have lost so great a man, and one who was not so entirely corrupted but that there remained some hope both of his reformation, and also that the interest of the Gospel would in any case be advanced by his authority and protection, since there is certainly the greatest scarcity and want of such characters in this country.”[180]
CHAPTER XIV
THE LADY JANE MARRIES THE LORD GUILDFORD
The execution of the Duke of Somerset left the stage clear for Northumberland, who was now all-powerful.[181] More cunning than his predecessor, he avoided offending the nation by assuming the title of “Protector,” and rousing his colleagues’ jealousy by styling himself “Highness.” Little cared he whether he sat on the King’s right hand or on his left, so long as his young sovereign obeyed him implicitly—on this point he was resolved. His ambition was sordid enough: he had no care for the people, but a great deal for his own advancement to wealth and power; and his wife and children were as greedy and ambitious as himself. He had flattered the Catholics, and if Princess Mary had been younger, and willing to marry one of his sons, the religious history of England might have been different. Somerset had always entertained a friendly feeling for Mary, who was kind to his wife, while he hated Elizabeth; Northumberland loathed both Henry VIII’s daughters equally. Almost his first act on entering office, nominally as Great Master of the Household or Lord High Steward, but virtually as Lord Protector of the Realm, was to annoy Mary by opening up the question of her chaplains, and her right to have Mass said in her private chapel—a blunder which nearly resulted in a war with the Emperor, her cousin, to whom the Princess appealed. Then he lent Cranmer a hand in persecuting the Anabaptists. The fires of Smithfield flared up once more. Joan Bocher, and Peter of Paris a Dutchman, were put to death, though Cranmer found it hard to get Edward VI to set his hand to the warrant for Joan’s execution. With great alacrity, then, Northumberland pushed on Somerset’s iconoclastic vandalism, till he made our glorious cathedrals and churches as bare as meeting-houses. Shiploads of holy images, chalices, pictures, and painted windows were carted out of the churches, defaced, destroyed, or sold, and carried abroad, even as far as Constantinople, where a cargo of “imaugys” from England fetched a high figure among the Catholics of Pera and Galata. So wanton was the destruction of Church linen at this time that the citizens, disgusted at seeing it burnt at the street corners, petitioned Northumberland to hand it over to the hospitals.
The Catholics, perceiving they had gained nothing in return for the help they had given Northumberland, retired into obscurity, to wait for better days; whilst the Reformers acclaimed the zeal of a man who fought so fiercely against the faith in which he eventually elected to die. It presently occurred to the Lord High Steward that the young King was failing fast. The servants about the Court saw death in the boy’s pale face and shrunken form, and heard its stealthy advance in his feeble voice and hacking cough. To curry favour for himself, Northumberland allowed the dying monarch greater freedom than he had hitherto enjoyed. Sports and pastimes were arranged for his amusement, and if we may believe his Journal, he enjoyed them after his own fashion. Nobody had been so kind to him since his uncle Thomas’s death! But sports and pastimes could not galvanise the attenuated lad into fresh vigour, and he grew worse every day, watched with anxious eyes by Northumberland and Suffolk, and above all by Cranmer, whose hopes were concentrated in him.