[175] The day following the Duke’s arrest, that hot virago, Anne Stanhope, his Duchess, together with Mr. and Mrs. Crane, Sir Miles Partridge, Sir Thomas Arundel, Sir Thomas Holcroft, Sir Michael Stanhope, and others, were also arrested and conveyed to the Tower, where the Duchess remained a prisoner until the accession of Queen Mary.
[176] Wriothesley’s Chronicle, ii. 63.
[177] Nevertheless, the death of Somerset seems to have rankled in the boy-King’s mind. On one occasion long afterwards, it is said, when Edward was enjoyed a match of archery with Northumberland and the King made a remarkably fine shot, the Duke exclaimed, “Well aimed, my liege.” “But,” replied the young King sarcastically, “you aimed better when you shot off the head of my uncle Somerset!” Which proves that His Majesty fully realised Northumberland’s share in that matter.
[178] There was, of course, the usual crop of infant prodigies and monsters which followed as portents after every notable decapitation. A dolphin was caught in the Thames; “a child with two heads was born at Middleton in Oxfordshire; but although it had four arms it had only a leg, it caughte cold and died,” which was certainly fortunate for the nerves of the Middletonians.
[179] We find instances of this in the enthusiastic joy of the people at his suspected acquittal, in their excitement on thinking he was reprieved, and the fact that after the execution many dipped handkerchiefs and cloths in his blood, “so that they might have some token to preserve of the memory of a man who had always been their friend.” It is said that when, some nineteen months later, Northumberland was going to execution in his turn, a woman shook one of these handkerchiefs stained with the blood of Somerset in his face, crying, “Behold the blood of that worthy man, that good uncle of that excellent King, which, shed by thy malicious practices, does now apparently revenge itself on thee.” This is also a proof that the commonalty clearly understood how great had been Northumberland’s share in bringing about Somerset’s destruction.
[180] Zurich Letters, No. cccxlvii.
[181] One gets a very fair idea of the improvement in Northumberland’s position after the death of the Duke of Somerset from the letters of the Swiss and other Reformers. Ab Ulmis, for instance, tells Bullinger that “He [Northumberland] almost alone, with the Duke of Suffolk, governs the State, and supports and upholds it on his own shoulders. He is manifestly the thunderbolt and terror of the Papists.” He goes on to say that when Somerset licensed Mary to have Mass in her apartments, Northumberland said angrily, “The Mass is either of God or of the Devil; if of God, it is but right that all our people should be allowed to go to it; but if it is not of God, as we are all taught out of the Scriptures, why then should not the voice of this fury be equally proscribed to all?”... “Therefore,” says Ab Ulmis, “as soon as he had succeeded into his office, Northumberland immediately took care that the mass-priests of Mary should be thrown into prison, whilst to herself he entirely interdicted the use of the Mass and of Popish books.”—Zurich Letters, ii. 439. No wonder Mary did not love Northumberland!
[182] The movements of Lady Jane from January 1552 onwards appear to have been as follows. In January 1552 she was alternately at Tylsey and at Audley; later in the spring of the same year she was at Bradgate; in July she went to Oxford, and afterwards to Princess Mary at Newhall. After this she went with her family, on some unknown date in 1552, probably in the autumn, to this ex-monastery at Sheen, where she continued to reside until she came up to London, to (most likely) Suffolk House, Westminster, for her marriage with Guildford Dudley, in the spring of 1553. She perhaps spent five days after this at Durham House, Strand, and then went to Chelsea Manor, now a residence of the Duke of Northumberland. Thence she went to Sion with Lady Sidney (as we shall presently relate in detail) on 9th July (1553); on the following day, from Sion to Westminster Palace, then (the same day) to Durham House to dine, and lastly to the Tower, which she reached in the afternoon, and did not leave again, being executed in February 1554 within its precincts. Some writers have fallen into the error of thinking Lady Jane left the Tower at the close of her nine days’ reign, at the same time as her father, the Duke of Suffolk. It is not so. From the day Jane entered the fortress (10th July 1553) to the day of her death (12th February 1554) she never left it, except for the few hours of her trial at Guildhall.
[183] The Priory of Sheen was finally suppressed by Henry VIII in 1539, or rather, it surrendered its estates to the Crown about the time of the passing of the Act for the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Most of the ex-monks of this house died in prison in great misery. In 1540 the abandoned monastery was granted to Edward, Earl of Hertford, brother of Jane Seymour, who afterwards became the famous Duke of Somerset. After his attainder in 1551 it was granted to Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, Jane’s father. The ruins of this building were visible as late as the middle of the eighteenth century. For further details about this house see Chancellor’s History of Richmond, p. 71.
[184] Syon has interest for yet another reason, for the nuns to whom it had formerly belonged, emigrated to Flanders in Henry VIII’s time, to return to England early in the last century, and thus form the only unbroken community of pre-Reformation religieuses in England.