The first limitation decided upon by the young King was to the Lady Frances’s issue male, born before the King’s death, and, failing them, the Lady Jane’s issue male. This scheme suited Northumberland, for if Jane had a son by Guildford the Duke would become the grandfather of the King of England and proportionately powerful. But as time went on it became evident that the King was doomed to an early death, and therefore a swifter and more practical solution of the succession problem had to be arrived at. The next best arrangement would have been the nomination of the Lady Frances;[205] Northumberland, however, could not approve of such a scheme, since it would have placed the weight of power in the hands of the Duke of Suffolk, her husband. At last, all plans failing, Edward decided to nominate the Lady Jane Grey as his successor to the throne—and thereby the Duke gained his point. The words in the “Devise,” “to the L’Janes heires masles,” were now changed to “to the L’Jane and her heires masles”: in the copy of the document bearing the King’s signature which is still extant, it can be seen that a pen has been drawn through the “s” at the end of Jane’s name, and the words “and her” have been written above. Thus was manufactured[206] the ladder by which Northumberland, by becoming the father-in-law of a Queen, hoped to reach the summit of his ambition.
Northumberland had a great deal of trouble to get his scheme legalised. Edward was not unpliable, and indeed attributed Northumberland’s intense desire to see the “Devise” carried into effect entirely to his zeal for the Reformed religion; but Archbishop Cranmer, Sir Edward Montagu, Lord Chief Justice, Sir James Hale, Secretary Cecil and others, either because they saw through Northumberland or else because they really had qualms of conscience as to its legality, opposed the plan, taking their stand on the fact that the nomination of Jane Grey, being contrary to the older “Statute of Succession,” would be illegal. Cranmer, as the result of an interview with the King, was finally converted to his views. Lord Darcy, the Lord Chamberlain, and the Marquis of Northampton were present at this meeting, much to the Archbishop’s disgust. “I desired to talk with the King’s Majesty alone,” says Cranmer, “but I could not be suffered: and so I failed of my purpose. For if I might have communed with the King alone, and at my good leisure, my trust was, that I should have altered him from his purpose; but they (the above-mentioned noblemen) being present, my labour was in vain. And so at length I was required by the King’s Majesty himself to set my hand to his will (that is, the scheme for the succession) saying that he trusted that I alone would not be more repugnant to his will than the rest of the Council were. Which words surely grieved my heart very sore. And so I granted him to subscribe his will, and to follow the same. Which when I had set my hand unto I did it unfainedly and without dissimulation.”[207]
Directly Northumberland was satisfied that the young King would not depart from the decision to which he had forced him, he summoned Lord Chief Justice Montagu to attend at the Royal Court at Greenwich, on 11th June 1553, with Sir John Baker, Mr. Justice Bromley, Attorney-General Gosnold and Solicitor-General Griffin. This command was the first step towards officially depriving Mary of her inheritance, and the letter was signed by Secretary Petre, Sir John Cheke, and strange to relate, by Cecil, which is surprising when taken in conjunction with his subsequent conduct in the matter. The Lord Chief Justice, coming into the royal presence, found the King very ill, lying on a couch, surrounded by Lord Winchester, Lord Treasurer, the Marquis of Northampton, Sir John Gates, Sir John Palmer, and others. Raising himself, Edward declared, in the verbose language of the time, that he had summoned his Council to hear from his own lips that he had appointed the Lady Jane Grey his heiress, as the Lady Mary might change her faith, and “his Highness’s proceedings in religion might be altered.[208] Wherefore his pleasure was that the state of the Crown should go in such form, and to such persons, as his Highness had appointed in a bill of articles [i.e., the “Devise”[209]] now signed with the King’s hand, which were read, and commanded them to make a book thereof accordingly with speed.” Montagu refused to do this, saying the nomination of Lady Jane would be illegal and against the already mentioned “Statute of Succession,” which had passed Parliament. Edward, or rather Northumberland, became so irritable, that the Lord Chief Justice finally acquiesced so far as to ask for time to deliberate and consult the laws; whereupon the King gave him the “Devise” to study, and dismissed all present, Northumberland alone remaining. On the following day (12th June), Secretary Petre sent for the Lord Chief Justice to Durham House, Northumberland’s palace in the Strand, and told him the matter must be executed off-hand. Montagu immediately went to Ely Place, Holborn, where he found the Council sitting, but Northumberland absent; which emboldened him to warn the Council of the exceeding danger of the matter they were about to approve. “In God’s name, my Lords,” cried he, “think twice what you do—it will be treason to us all who have a hand in it.” Hardly had he spoken ere Northumberland, who was, of course, aware of his opposition, burst, as white as a sheet, into the room like a whirlwind, “before all the Council there,” says a contemporary account, “being in a great rage and fury, trembling for anger; and, amongst his ragious talk, called Sir Edward Montagu traitor, and further said that he would fight in his shirt [sleeves] with any man in that quarrel.” No one took up the challenge, and Montagu withdrew in some dismay—thankful, no doubt, that there had been no actual blows given or received.
Nothing was signed or done that day, but on the next, Montagu received a fresh order to repair immediately to Court with the same companions as before. On arrival at Greenwich, the party was ushered into a room filled with the notables of the Court, who “looked upon them with earnest countenance, as though they had not known them, so that they might perceive there was some steadfast determination against them”; which treatment, combined with uncertainty as to whether the all-powerful Northumberland might not persuade the King into punishing them for not preparing the “book” of the King’s scheme as he had wished, made the poor gentlemen feel very uncomfortable. Edward also (on 15th June), received the Lord Chief Justice and his colleagues haughtily; His Majesty was apparently better, and seated in his chair. Montagu’s party endeavoured to excuse themselves by using the same arguments against the scheme of succession as they had previously put before the Council. They said that, by reason of the “Statute of Succession,” the plan would be null and void after Edward’s death; and that the only power which could remove the said Statute was Parliament, which had made it, and which was not then sitting. Thereupon the King said he would summon a Parliament, but, all the same, the drawing up of his scheme must be proceeded with. He further commanded Montagu to obey his order, and “make dispatch.” At last Montagu, “in great fear as ever he was in his life before, seeing the King so earnest and sharp, and the Duke so angry the day before—who ruled the whole Council as it pleased him, and they were all afraid of him (the more is the pity)[210] so that such cowardliness and fear was there never seen amongst honourable men—being an old man and without comfort, he began to consider with himself what was best to be done for the safeguard of his life.” Accordingly he agreed to comply with his sovereign’s command, provided Edward granted him (as a sort of protection) his commission under the Great Seal, enjoining him to draw up the instrument of succession, and that a general “pardon” for having signed it should be made out at the same time. The King acceded to these terms; and so the letters patent nominating Jane Grey as King Edward’s successor received the Great Seal on 21st June, and over a hundred signatures, including those of the Lord Mayor, the Sheriffs of Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent, the officers of the Royal Household, and of Thomas Grey, the Duke of Suffolk’s younger brother, were affixed to the document. It took so long to collect all the signatures that the work was not finished until the 8th of July, that is, after Edward’s death. Stowe records the attendance of the “chief citizen” of the metropolis on that day in the following terms: “The 8. of July the lord mayor of London was sent for to the court then at Greenwich, to bring with him six aldermen, as many merchants of the staple, and as many merchant adventurers, unto whom by the council was secretly declared the death of King Edward, and also how he did ordain for the succession of the crown by his letters patent, to the which they were sworn, and charged to keep it secret.” Sir James Hale, however, refused his signature with great dignity; Cecil slipped out of the difficulty on a pretext of sudden illness. Foreseeing, even before 11th June, the rocks ahead, he wisely retired from Court after a well-acted scene of simulated faintness, so realistic as to mislead the shrewd Lord Audley, who, being a great believer in his own prescriptions, sent the disordered Secretary the following delightful receipt:—
“Take a sow-pig of nine days old, and flea him and quarter him, and put him in a stillatory with a handful of spearmint, a handful of red fennel, a handful of liverwort, half a handful of red nepe [turnip], a handful of celery, nine dates clean picked and pared, a handful of great raisins, and pick out the stones, and a quarter of an ounce of mace, and two sticks of good cinnamon bruised in a mortar; and distill it together, with a fair fire; and put it in a glass and set in the sun nine days; and drink nine spoonfuls of it at once when you list.
“A Compost
“Item.—Take a porcupin, otherwise called an English hedgehog, and quarter him in pieces, and put the said beast in a still with these ingredients and boil together; item, a quart of red wine, a pint of rose-water, a quart of sugar, cinnamon and great raisins, one date, twelve nepe. Pass the whole through a sieve and drink at night, a full cup thereof warm.”[211]
Possibly his Lordship intended this epistle as a fine piece of sarcasm, for if Cecil was only to partake of the “sow-pig” and raisin remedy nine days after it was concocted, there was every chance of his dying or getting well in the interval.
The fact that so many persons were found to sign the fateful document is another proof—even if we make allowance for the majority of the Council being time-servers—that Edward’s “Devise” for the succession, though evidently suggested and forwarded by Northumberland, was not a forgery.
On 6th July[212] (1553), whilst the newly-made bride was peacefully resting at Chelsea, King Edward VI passed away at Whitehall Palace. He had been taken out of the hands of his physicians, Drs. Owen[213] and Wendy, old and trusted Court doctors, and put into those of a female quack, who soon extinguished the feeble ray of life that still flickered in his wasted body. An hour before Edward passed away, Dr. Owen, who had been recalled in a hurry, bent over him, saying, “We heard you speak to yourself, but what you said we know not?” The weary lad answered, smiling faintly, “I was praying to God.” A little later he was heard to murmur, “Lord have mercy upon me, and take my spirit.” He never spoke again—he was very tired, and needed rest!
The people had shown their anxiety for Edward’s health by assembling daily in front of Greenwich Palace to ascertain how he was, and to convince the mob that he was still alive it had become necessary to make the royal lad show his sickly person, robed in velvet and ermine, and his poor wasted face—crowned with the delightful little velvet cap with the white feathers, so familiar to us in his portraits—at the window. The received version among all classes was that the King was being slowly poisoned by the Duke of Northumberland, whom they also accused of having forged Edward’s “Devise” for the succession in favour of Lady Jane. The Swiss Reformers, in their letters to Strasburg and Zurich, did not hesitate to give currency to the report that Northumberland, whom a few weeks earlier they had called the “illustrious” and the “noble,” had murdered his nephew. “That monster of a man,” says John Burcher to Henry Bullinger (letter dated from Strasburg, 16th August 1553), “the Duke of Northumberland, has been committing a horrible and portentous crime. A writer worthy of credit informs me, that our excellent King has been most shamefully taken off by poison. His nails and hair fell off before his death, so that, handsome as he was, he entirely lost all his good looks. The perpetrators of the murder were ashamed of allowing the body of the deceased King to lie in state, and be seen by the public, as is usual: wherefore they buried him privately in the paddock adjoining the palace, and substituted in his place a youth not unlike him.... One of the sons of the Duke of Northumberland acknowledged this fact. The Duke has been apprehended[214] with his five sons, and nearly twenty persons; among whom is master [Sir John] Cheke, doctor Cox, and the Bishop of London, with others unknown to you....”[215] Burcher does not tell us which son of the Duke made this confession; nor is there evidence that any of Northumberland’s boys ever accused their father of regicide. Besides, Burcher was somewhat addicted to putting his faith in the reports of untrustworthy people. A few years earlier (in 1549) he had written Bullinger a letter in which he repeated the sensational story of an attempt to murder King Edward made by his uncle, Thomas Seymour, a crime frustrated by the vigilance of the King’s lap-dog, which seeing the murderer suddenly appear, flew at him and made such a yelping that the bodyguard was in time to save their sovereign. This story may or may not be true; but is as unauthenticated as the other. There is just one point, however, that supports the poison theory; which is that the young King’s old and competent nurse, Mrs. Sybil Penn, was suddenly relieved of her duties, and replaced by a woman who was an acknowledged quack, and declared she could cure the lad by a sort of faith-healing not unknown in our own times. On the other hand, Edward was suffering from such a complication of diseases that there was no reason why Northumberland should have troubled to burden his soul by hastening an end that would in any case have come before long.[216] Born of a debauched father and a sickly mother, the “second Josiah” never throve, and never could have thriven, for he bore in his puny frame the seeds of early death from his birth.
