The Uncrowned Kings of England: The Black Legend of the Dudleys Read online

  By the middle of 1539, John Dudley had come to accept the tenets of the evangelical reformers and as a result, he was a man torn. The habit of seeking self-advancement through close attendance on the king had become ingrained. But at court religious controversy was distasteful and the risk of becoming caught up in the rivalry between Cromwell and his opponents seemed to be increasing. These were dangerous days for men of religious conviction, when courtiers were at a loss to know what to believe and how to behave. John Foxe, writing a generation later, described the confusion and anxiety of King Henry’s latter years:

  To many who be yet alive, and can testify these things, it is not unknown, how variable the state of religion stood in these days; how hardly and with what difficulty [the truth] came forth; what chances and changes it suffered. Even as the King was ruled and gave ear sometimes to one, sometimes to another, so one while it went forward, at another season as much backward again, and sometimes clean altered and changed for a season, according as they could prevail who were about the King.14

  Thomas More had once compared Henry to a caged lion, as vicious as he was unpredictable. He warned courtiers who boasted of their intimacy with the king, ‘Often he roars in rage for no known reason and suddenly the fun becomes fatal.’ More himself had fallen foul of royal wrath in 1535, and in the years that followed more and more of Henry’s erstwhile companions, advisers and close servants felt his claw marks. In the early weeks of 1539 Dudley was called to play his small part in executing his master’s revenge against those who had fallen from favour. Furious at the machinations of Cardinal Reginald Pole and his clandestine communication with English dissidents, Henry had tried, without success, to have him assassinated. The ‘meddlesome priest’ might be beyond his reach but Pole’s relatives and friends were not. The king ordered a ruthless purge and sixteen high-ranking people, including the Marquess of Exeter and Baron Montague, were caught in the net of royal vengeance. Exeter had Yorkist blood, being the son of Edward IV’s daughter Katherine, and so too did Montague. He and his brother the Cardinal were grandsons of Edward IV’s brother George, Duke of Clarence. A series of state trials were staged, and John Dudley was sworn a member of the jury that on St Valentine’s Day dutifully proclaimed his old privy chamber colleague, Sir Nicholas Carew, guilty of high treason. Carew had been a great favourite with the king and a member of the highly select Order of the Garter. He had often taken part with Dudley in tiltyard contests and had served on important foreign embassies. But the one privilege neither Carew nor anyone else close to the king was permitted was independent judgement and Sir Nicholas had been too open in his disapproval of the drift of policy since the fall of Catherine of Aragon.

  Throughout 1539 the court was alive with rumours and there was plenty of scope for personal vendettas. Someone, wanting to make trouble for John Dudley, tried to involve him in the downfall of the Exeters. The story went round that letters implicating the imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, had been found among the Marchioness of Exeter’s papers and that Dudley had taken it upon himself to warn the ambassador. Chapuys was at pains to deny that he had written anything incriminating or that he had been approached by Dudley. Nothing happened as a result of this slander and, for the moment, Sir John was safe. But greater danger reared up in the summer. The conservatives had just achieved their greatest triumph, the passage through parliament of ‘An Act Abolishing Diversity in Religion’, better known as the ‘Act of Six Articles’ or, in Protestant circles, as the ‘Bloody Whip with Six Strings’. The new legislation prescribed belief in traditional doctrines and increased the powers of ecclesiastical courts to seek out heretics. Norfolk, Gardiner and their allies hoped to use it to mount a major purge of evangelicals in high places and this alone could well have convinced John Dudley that it was time to retire from the political centre and ‘make an end of my life in God’s service.’

  Not that he was idle. Accumulating, exchanging and speculating in property took up a great deal of his time and energy. His closeness to Cromwell paid off as more monastic lands passed through the Vicegerent’s hands. After the confiscation of the lesser monasteries the government put pressure on the larger houses to close voluntarily. In the summer of 1538 the Premonstratensian priory of St James, Halesowen (some seven miles from Dudley) was surrendered to Cromwell’s visitors and immediately granted, with its four manors and extensive acreage, to Sir John Dudley. The year 1539 saw the second Dissolution Act by which all remaining monastic property was appropriated to the Crown and more parcels of land came John’s way. He did not keep them all and it would now be impossible to trace the deals struck in these years. In the booming market there was money to be made by careful speculation. Property passed rapidly from hand to hand as landowners great and small consolidated their holdings and tried to make quick profits. Dudley was just one of those who kept the lawyers busy drawing up deeds of sale and purchase and new leases.

  The dissolution of the monasteries provided the greatest boost to domestic architecture before the industrial revolution. Noblemen, gentlemen and merchants were buying up abbey churches, conventual buildings, tithe barns and farms with the intention of converting them into fine houses or stripping them of all materials that could be sold or used for building elsewhere. Sir John was not one of those who indulged in an orgy of erecting status symbols. He did modernize Dudley Castle but he did so with an eye to comfort rather than spectacle. There were no professional architects in Tudor England but there were men who had a flair for house design and Sir John employed one of them to advise him. This was William Sharington, later famous for his work at Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire and infamous for abusing his position as vice-treasurer of the Bristol mint to defraud the Crown of thousands of pounds.

  A modern visitor climbing the steep escarpment above the town to Dudley’s ruined castle is confronted with a seemingly homogeneous jumble of broken, roofless walls ringing a wide area of greensward. Only careful study of guidebooks and plans unfolds the architectural history of the site and places Sir John’s activities in perspective. He ensured that it remained a defensive fortification by retaining the twelfth-century curtain wall and fourteenth-century gatehouse and keep. Its formidable military structure was able to withstand a parliamentary siege during the Civil War. Sir John concentrated his efforts on the domestic range along the eastern side of the site. According to a twentieth-century expert, ‘Nothing too high can be said of the beautiful simplicity of the design, or of the splendid manner of the execution . . . the convenience of the arrangements and the advanced nature of their comforts is little short of wonderful.’15 Several features of this house anticipated the great age of Elizabethan domestic building. Having entered by the gatehouse and dismounted in the courtyard, Sir John and his guests were confronted by a flight of steps leading up to a loggia fronted by a row of ionic columns. This gave onto a porch from which a door led into the great hall, twenty-four metres in length, which was, very unusually, on the first floor. Morning and evening light streamed into this impressive space through large rectangular windows. As in all traditional major secular buildings, this was the centre of the household’s life. However, Sir John’s alterations added a private great chamber for himself and his family, partly created by reducing the size of the adjacent chapel. Over the extensive kitchen and buttery area there were four or five bed chambers. As noblemen’s residences went Dudley Castle was certainly not large but the standard of its decoration, furniture, fixtures and fittings marked it out as something special.

  On the evidence of his lifestyle John Dudley cannot be convicted of overweening pride, particularly when we compare his building programme with that of some of his contemporaries. Cromwell acquired the enormous site of the Austin Friars priory in London’s Broad Street as well as several neighbouring properties in order to create for himself a town house of impressive splendour. At Ewhurst in Surrey he erected a new country mansion of no less striking proportions. Edward Seymour, also, built himself magnificent palaces in town and co
untry, Somerset House and Syon House.

  At the beginning of 1540 John returned to the centre of affairs, perhaps on the orders of Cromwell. The minister had, he thought, brought off a major political coup. He had arranged a marriage between King Henry and Anne, the sister of the Duke of Cleves-Mark-Julich-Berg, a strategically placed Rhineland territory. Although Duke William was not a Lutheran this alliance could tie England into a relationship with the reformist princes of the Schmalkaldic League, thus creating a third force in European politics and ensuring the establishment of the Reformation at home. The new queen had to be provided with an entourage and this gave Cromwell an opportunity to establish more of his supporters at court. John Dudley now received the office of Master of the Horse to Anne of Cleves and his wife became one of her ladies in waiting. These were senior positions in the royal household and necessitated close personal attendance on the sovereign and his consort. Dudley’s role involved him in supervising all the queen’s travel arrangements as well as attending her on ceremonial occasions. If he was looking for a breakthrough into the upper air of power and influence this should have been it. Unfortunately fortune’s wheel had not stopped spinning. In the next few months its accelerated revolution threatened to fling him down once and for all.

  7

  King’s Knight and God’s Knight

  John had his first sight of his new mistress on 2 January 1540 as part of a delegation sent to meet her party near Deptford and escort her to London.

  the Earl of Rutland, who is to be her Lord Chamberlain, Sir Thomas Dennis, Chancellor, Sir Edward Baynton, Vice-chancellor, Sir John Dudley, Master of her Horse, and all others to be appointed to her council . . . 30 in all, shall meet her and be presented by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, as her own train and household, and so to wait upon her till she approach the King’s presence, when all the yeomen and meaner sort shall avoid.1

  Soldiers were out early on 3 January putting up crush barriers to contain the thousands of people who congregated on Blackheath during the morning. Even more citizens watched from gaily decorated boats which crowded the river. All were eager to see the spectacle and to catch their first glimpse of the new queen. Anne and her retinue arrived about midday and if the focal point of all those eyes was nervous she must have been much heartened by the warm welcome of the people who would shortly be her subjects. With her close attendants she immediately retired to brightly coloured pavilions which had been erected for the occasion. Here she took refreshment and changed into a gown of cloth of gold overlaid with jewelled chains to await Henry’s arrival. When news was brought to Henry that Anne was ready to proceed he left the palace mounted on a magnificent horse caparisoned in cloth of gold. To the sound of trumpets his elaborate procession of guards, courtiers, councillors and foreign dignitaries made its way across the park for the ceremonial act of public greeting. Anne rode out to meet her husband-to-be with all her ladies and her German and English attendants. The royal couple exchanged courtesies, then the entire procession made its way back to the palace, all in due order according to protocol. After the armed escort rode civic and court dignitaries, then the gentlemen of the privy chamber with Anne’s ladies in waiting. They were followed by members of the diplomatic corps,

  then the Lord Privy Seal and the Lord Chancellor, then the Lord Marquess with the King’s sword, next followed by the King himself, equally riding with his fair lady, and behind him rode Sir Anthony Brown with the King’s horse of estate . . . and behind him rode Sir John Dudley, Master of her Horses, leading her spare palfrey . . .2

  On 6 January the marriage took place but the new union was doomed before it started. Henry had been shocked when he met Anne and he went to the bridal bed feeling more like a condemned criminal marching to the scaffold than an eager husband. When it came to the point he was unable to consummate the union though, as he assured his doctors, it was not for lack of trying. Of course, there was no question in his mind but that the fault for his impotence lay with Anne; she failed to stimulate his desire. He felt trapped and humiliated. Diplomatic realities prevented him wriggling out of the marriage: as long as Charles and Francis were parading their new found amity he did not dare upset the Duke of Cleves. Yet his new wife was obviously not going to provide him with the two things he craved above all other – pleasure and children. In his unchecked egotism Henry indulged the fantasy that within his bloated and increasingly pain-racked body there lurked a lusty young buck ever ready for sexual adventure. Anyone who was the instrument of bringing him face to face with reality ran the risk of encountering his terrible wrath. It was his energetic denial of the truth which, within weeks, set him chasing after another young chit-about-court, Catherine Howard.

  Well schooled by her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, and other members of the mighty Howard clan, the teenage Catherine led the king on and a besotted Henry fancied himself in a rapture of love. Here, at last, was the woman who would give the Tudor line a bevy of princes and provide him with comfort for his remaining years. Henry was not going to let that chance slip through his fingers and he began casting round for ways to escape his fourth marriage without courting diplomatic disaster. He dispatched Norfolk to France to explore the possibility of prising Francis away from the Habsburg–Valois alliance.

  It seems scarcely credible that for some weeks the knowledge that all was not well with the royal marriage was kept from the members of the queen’s household, yet such seems to have been the case. It was important to prevent rumours from reaching foreign diplomats and so the councillors with whom the king shared his dilemma were sworn to secrecy. But did Anne not drop any hints to her attendants? The answer is no, because she was not aware that anything was wrong. There were two reasons for this. She was a stranger in England bending all her concentration on getting to grips with the native customs and language. She was also incredibly naive. She genuinely believed that when her husband came to her chamber several nights a week and kissed her and spoke kindly to her that that was all marital relations entailed. Eventually the queen’s ladies, eagerly awaiting signs of a royal pregnancy, deduced the truth of Henry’s nocturnal inactivity and, by the Spring, tongues started wagging about the king and Mistress Howard. The Dudleys were among the first to be aware of the gossip but if John was concerned about the impact of a royal estrangement on his own prospects such reflections were soon elbowed aside by other anxieties. A political storm was blowing up which threatened men to whom he was dangerously close.

  Henry sometimes referred to Calais as the most troublesome of all his dominions. It was the resort of spies, fugitives and intriguers who dreamed of influencing affairs in England but feared getting any closer to the island. Inevitably, the ideological storms of the Reformation wrought disproportionate havoc in the small community. Every shift in the religious wind was nicely gauged by political meteorologists in the pay of Charles and Francis. The disruptive activities of rival preachers and gangs of image-breakers were a constant annoyance to the Deputy but Plantagenet discovered that the more he complained to his superiors, the less notice they took. There was good reason for this. Arthur put all the blame for religious strife on the evangelicals. Cromwell and Cranmer, on the other hand, were much more concerned about papal agents and sympathizers getting the upper hand. Thus, when Plantagenet arrested troublemakers and sent them across the Channel for investigation, he suffered the humiliation of seeing them return after a few weeks with the blessing of the Lord Privy Seal or the archbishop. He knew, moreover, that they and their friends had been carrying tales about him to the court and he was obliged to protest his utter loyalty to Cromwell, a man he increasingly loathed. As if that was not worrying enough, he had to suffer the Lord Privy Seal’s written sermons about not authorizing witch hunts:

  . . . he or they, whatsoever they be that would without great and substantial ground be authors or setters forth of . . . rumours may appear rather desirous of sedition than of quiet and unity . . . And therefore mine opinion is that you
shall by all means devise how, with charity and mild handling of things, to quench this slanderous bent as much as you may . . .3

  By 1539 Arthur’s patience was at breaking point. He embarked on the dangerous game of court intrigue, using his own contacts among the king’s more conservative advisers to draw his majesty’s attention to the fact that Calais was becoming a breeding ground of vile heresy. He knew that he was playing with fire. ‘I beseech you keep this matter close,’ he urged one of his correspondents, ‘for if it should come to my Lord Privy Seal’s knowledge or ear, I were half undone.’4 Norfolk and his friends noted well that they had a potential ally in Arthur Plantaganet and as soon as Cromwell was in difficulties over the Cleves alliance they used his complaints in the dossier of evidence they were compiling about the dangerous spread of religious radicalism throughout the king’s realm. One result was that a commission was despatched to Calais in March 1540 to enquire into the religious situation there.