[120] See the State Papers.
[121] This lady was a daughter of Humphrey Bouchier, Lord Berners, and wife of Sir Thomas Bryan or Brian. She was the “my lady maistress” of Princess Mary, whose Privy Purse Expenses contain several items to her credit—as in January 1537: “Item paid for a broach and a frontlet and the same given to my lady maistress, xxxviij.” Lady Bryan or Brian was for a time governess to Princess Elizabeth as well as to Prince Edward. She was created a Baroness in her own right, but does not appear from her correspondence and petitions to have had sufficient income to support the dignity of a peeress. This able lady died on 20th August 1551 at Leyton, in Essex. (See Strype’s Appendix to Stowe’s Survey of London for 1720, vol. ii. p. 114.)
[122] Mrs. Sybel or Sybilla Penn, dry nurse to Edward VI, was not, as erroneously stated by Gough Nichols in his Literary Remains of Edward VI, the daughter of Sir Hugh Pagenham or the wife of John Penne, barber-surgeon to Henry VIII, but the daughter of William Hampton of Dodyngton, Buckinghamshire, and owed her appointment as dry nurse and foster-mother to the future King to the good offices of Sir William Sydney. She married Mr. David Penn, and continued at Court after the death of Edward, being very kindly treated by both Mary and Elizabeth. She had an apartment in Hampton Court Palace, and died there in 1562 of the smallpox, at the same time that Elizabeth herself was attacked by that dreadful malady. She is buried in Hampton Church, and is said to haunt the palace because her bones were disturbed when the position of her monument was altered many years ago (1820). Mrs. Penn’s spirit was greatly displeased at this removal, and forthwith took to haunting the palace she had inhabited for so many years. Her ghost has been seen ascending the stairs as recently as 1896, when she nearly scared the attendant out of his wits. The well-known sketch by Holbein signed “Mother Jack” is supposed to be a portrait of this lady, but Sir Richard Holmes, the late learned Librarian at Windsor Castle, disputes this opinion, and attributes another portrait to her. (See Ernest Law’s History of Hampton Court Palace. George Bell & Sons. Tudor Period, p. 197 et seq.)
[123] Edward’s friend and companion, Barnaby Fitzpatrick, was the eldest son of the Irish chieftain, Barnaby Gill Patrick, Lord of Upper Ossory, who made his submission to the King in 1537, and was created a Baron by his old title in 1541. Barnaby’s mother was the widow of Thomas Fitzgerald, a grandson of the Earl of Desmond. Barnaby, who was brought up with Edward, was sent for a year’s education to the French Court: whilst there he received many letters from his royal friend. On his return to England Barnaby Fitzpatrick continued to enjoy the King’s favour. After Edward’s death he entered the service of Mary and went to fight in Scotland. Under Elizabeth, Barnaby, who had by this time become Baron of Upper Ossory, fought for the Queen in Ireland, and actually slew Oge O Moarda, or Rory O’More, one of the great rebels of the day. Barnaby Fitzpatrick died in 1581 without issue, and was succeeded by his brother, Florence, whose descendants enjoyed the title of Upper Ossory until the extinction of the peerage in 1818. (See for further particulars of his career John Gough Nichols’ Literary Remains of Edward VI, p. 64. Printed for the Roxburgh Club.)
[124] Sir John Cheke was an early forerunner of President Roosevelt, for not only did he reform the pronunciation of Greek, but he actually instituted a reform of English orthography. His suggestions for the simplification of our writing were very curious and worth detailing. Firstly, there was to be no e at the end of words, so he wrote excus, giv, hay, and so on. Secondly, when a is sounded long, he would have had it doubled, as maad, straat (made, straight), etc. Thirdly, he replaced y by i, as mi, sai, awai, for my, say, away! The rest of the language was phoneticised, as britil (brittle), frute (fruit), and so on. He translated part of the Bible into his new English, a copy of which is now at Cambridge.
[125] Wriothesley having now become Earl of Southampton, evidently hoped to represent for some time in the Privy Council the old faith—i.e. schismatic—as it had been under Henry VIII, probably with the view of eventually modifying it into the ancient Roman Catholicism which had been the religion of his youth. But as he showed the extent of his ambition by putting the Great Seal into commission without the authority of his colleagues, he offended Somerset and gave him the opportunity of getting a dangerous competitor out of the way by arresting Wriothesley on a vague charge of treason and ordering him to confine himself to his own house in the Strand. With the same intention of “clearing the board,” the Protector had Winchester also arrested and thrown into the Tower.
[126] There is a very minute account of Edward VI’s coronation (from an MS. at the College of Arms) in Nichols’ Literary Remains of Edward VI. The Spanish Chronicle also gives a curious description of it, where the writer says (p. 153 et seq.) that at the cross in Cheapside there was a triumphal arch “made to look like the sky,” whence descended a boy “like an angel,” who gave the King a purse containing £1000, which His Majesty handed over to the captain of the guard, much to the astonishment of the people; the chronicler significantly adds that the boy-King “had not the strength” to carry this weighty gift. The way from the Abbey to Westminster Hall was spread with “fine cloth”—“at least twenty lengths”—and “the moment the King passed these cloths disappeared, for whoever could cut a piece off took it for himself.” The Spaniard makes the curious mistake of saying that Henry VIII’s death was not made known to the public until after Edward’s coronation. (The coronation to which the Chronicler referred was that called the first coronation, which took place in the Tower on the 31st January. The King’s death was not generally known until then.—M. H.)
A large contemporary picture of Edward VI’s coronation procession was destroyed in a fire at Cowdray House (the home of the Montagu family) in 1793; but in the engraving of it made previously by the Society of Antiquaries we perceive a man bearing a cross leading the troop of knights, etc., preceding the King—another proof of the persistence of the old religious customs.
[127] Of this man Strype says: “He was entertained here [England] divers years with the Earl of Bedford; and expecting preferment here, failing of it, he departed and lived abroad.” This certainly does not put Master Peter’s reason for coming to this country in quite such a good light as his description of himself as “an exile from Italy ... by reason of his confession of the doctrine of the Gospel.” See Strype’s Annals, iii. i. 660.
[128] Original Letters relative to the English Reformation, written during the Reigns of King Henry VIII, etc. Edited for the Parker Society by the Rev. Hastings Robinson, D.D., F.S.A. Cambridge, 1847. They are generally called “The Zurich Letters.”