[157] Ulmer wrote to Conrad Pellican in the summer of 1552 (Zurich Letters, p. 451) that “Our Duke (Suffolk) has been staying for the last few days at an estate here in the neighbourhood of Oxford, which has come to him by inheritance from the late Duke of Suffolk.” The “late Duke of Suffolk” refers to the Lady Frances’s half-brother, who has been already frequently mentioned. Ulmer continues: “I waited upon him and paid my respects, according to the custom of the University.” Edward VI being at that time in the neighbourhood, Jane was presented to him, and “received with great favour.”
[158] Mr. H. Sydney Grazebrook, in his interesting outline on the subject of Northumberland’s origin, in the Herald and Genealogical Review, vol. v., 1870, thinks John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, was really descended from the Dudleys of Sedgley and Tipton, a member of which ancient house married the widow of John Sutton, Lord of Dudley, in Henry VI’s time. On the other hand, Dugdale says his grandfather was a carpenter and “very base-born.”
Sir Philip Sydney in his curious tract in defence of Robert, Earl of Leicester, written in answer to “Leycester’s Commonwealth,”—a scurrilous attack on Queen Elizabeth’s famous favourite,—entirely denies the aspersions cast upon the honour of a family with which he was closely allied, his father having married the Duke of Northumberland’s daughter, Mary. He contends that to his certain knowledge the Duke was a man of legitimate descent from the ancient house of Sutton of Dudley, and moreover connected with the greatest nobility in England. “How can a man descended from such great Houses as Nevill, Talbot, Beauchamp and Lisley, be deemed otherwise than honourable and noble?” He continues: “A railing writer has said of Octavius Augustus, his father was a silversmith; another Italian declares (oh! the falsehood) that Hugh Capet was descended of a butcher who was his father. Of divers English names of the best, foolish dreamers have said one was the descendant of a miller, another of a shoemaker, another of a furrier, and forsooth yet another of a fiddler!—foolish lies! and by any who have ever tasted of antiquities, known so to be, yet those however had luck to treat with honest railers—for they were not left fatherless clean; but we as if we were of Ducalion’s brood, were made out of stones—they have left us no ancestors from whence we came. Edmund Dudley was the father of this younger brother of the same Lord Dudley, and would have been Lord Dudley, if the Lord Dudley had died without heirs. His father was married to the daughter and heir of Bramshot in Sussex. This Dudley’s father is buried with his wife at Arundel Castle and left land to Edmund Dudley and so to the Duke my grandfather, in Sussex.” Philip Sydney ought certainly to have known the true descent of his family, especially since they were to acquire the title of Leicester from the Dudleys.
[159] It will be remembered that the Duke of Suffolk filched the title of Lisle from the Lady Elizabeth Grey, but on his relinquishing it, it was given to her eldest son, John Dudley.
[160] On this expedition Somerset carried out to the letter the instructions given him by Henry VIII, which will be found in a document in the State Papers. Nero might have written them. They run as follows: “Put all to fire and sword, burn Edinburgh Town, and raze and deface it, when you have sacked it, and gotten what you can out of it.... Beat down and overthrow the castles, sack Holyrood House, and as many towns and villages about Edinburgh as you conveniently can. Sack Leith, and burn and subvert it and all the rest, putting man, woman and child to fire and sword, without exception, when any resistance shall be made against you; and this done, pass over to Fife-land and extend all extremities and destruction in all towns and villages whereunto you may reach ...; not forgetting ... so to spoil and turn upside down the Cardinal’s [Beaton] town of St. Andrew’s, as the upper stone may be the nether, and not one stick stand upon another, sparing no creature alive within the same, specially such as, either in friendship or blood, be allied to the Cardinal.”
[161] For a further account of this campaign, see the dispatches of the Seymours in the State Papers for the reign of Henry VIII; and for the second expedition, those for the reign of Edward VI.
The most heinous crime of all perpetrated on the second expedition—a crime which damaged Somerset’s reputation to the greatest extent—was the slaughter of twelve young lads under fifteen years of age, the children of Scottish horsemen recruited by Lennox, who were held as hostages for the good behaviour of their parents. Lennox and Lord Wharton had the poor boys hanged for their fathers’ disaffection; only one escaped, to become eventually known in the story of Mary Stuart as Lord Maxwell of Herries. A common soldier to whom he was handed over by Lennox, and who was sick of the carnage, saved the lad at the risk of his own life. Somerset rewarded Lennox for his services in this campaign, and wrote to him “right merrily.”
[162] See documents dealing with the state of the prisons under Edward VI in the Record Office.
[163] See Haylin; Hayward; and Hume, vol. iii. (folio edition) p. 328.
[164] John Strype says: “About this time [reign of Edward VI] the nation grew infamous for the crime of adultery. It began among the nobility and better classes, and so spread at length among the inferior sort of people. Noblemen would frequently put away their wives and marry others, if they liked another woman better, or were like[ly] to obtain wealth by her. And they would sometimes pretend their former wives to be false to them, and so be divorced, and marry again those whom they might fancy. These adulteries and divorces increased very much; yea, and marrying again without any divorce at all, it became a great scandal to the Realm and to the religion professed in it.”—Strype’s Memorials of Archbishop Cranmer, vol. i. pp. 293, 294.