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

  Going over Cromwell’s head in this way is a further indication of Arthur’s naivety. He was well out of his league in pitting himself against such a seasoned and ruthless politician. The minister could not stop the commission but he could make sure that his own clients appeared before it to give evidence of suspicious activities at Calais taking place under Plantagenet’s nose and not reported by him. Certain ‘sacramentaries’ were arrested and referred back to London for trial but so, too, were a group of men involved in the ‘Botolf conspiracy’. Gregory Botolf, an ardent papist, had been one of Plantagenet’s domestic chaplains. He had obtained a pass allowing him to return to England but had instead made a clandestine journey to Rome and there met with representatives of Cardinal Pole. The plot which resulted was a hare-brained scheme, almost entirely of Botolf’s devising, to betray Calais into the hands of the king’s enemies. In mid-April Cromwell engineered the Deputy’s recall. The royal summons informed Plantagenet that Henry wished to have the benefit of his representative’s personal advice on matters relating to the town. Arthur hastened to obey. At last he was going to have the opportunity of a personal interview with the king and would be able to make clear how the Vicegerent in Spirituals was encouraging heresy and frustrating the endeavours of royal servants to ensure the smooth running of Calais. He also believed that a grateful king had it in mind to bestow fresh honours on him, perhaps the earldom of Essex, recently become vacant by the death of Lord Bourchier. Arthur was, indeed, well received at court, where Henry greeted him affectionately. But Cromwell was carefully accumulating his evidence and on 19 May Arthur Plantagenet, Lord Lisle was suddenly arrested and conveyed to the Tower on suspicion of treason. A few weeks later a new Earl of Essex was named – Thomas Cromwell.

  These were nerve-racking days but all John Dudley could do was fulfil his court duties and stay close to his all-powerful patron. Though past his athletic best, he was still a formidable contender in the tiltyard and in the May Day celebrations he took the star role. Challenges were sent to France, Spain, Scotland and the Low Countries inviting the courts to send their best champions against a home team led by Sir John Dudley. To open the festivities at Westminster he led his colleagues, Thomas Seymour, Thomas Poynings, George Carew, Anthony Kingston and Richard Cromwell (the minister’s nephew) into the lists, ‘richly apparelled and their horses trapped all in white velvet’. There followed six days of competition featuring every kind of mounted and foot combat and the highlight of the week was a banquet which Dudley gave for the king and queen and all the court at Durham House in Holborn. On another day ‘they cheered all the knights and burgesses of the Common house in the parliament and entertained the Mayor of London with the aldermen and their wives at a dinner.’ It was a costly exercise but Dudley and his comrades in arms were well rewarded, for the king presented each of them with, ‘one hundred marks [about £66] and a house to dwell in of yearly revenue out of the lands pertaining to the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem.’5 This complex of buildings between Smithfield and Clerkenwell had recently come into royal hands with the dissolution of the order (the last item of monastic real estate to be confiscated).

  The May Day celebrations were the last public events at which Queen Anne presided with her husband. Thereafter, Henry abandoned the pretence of his marriage. He was spurred on by his infatuation with Catherine Howard but also by the fact that the Cleves match had lost its diplomatic importance. The Franco-Imperial alliance had fallen apart and, as Norfolk and his cronies readily pointed out to Henry, he no longer needed close relations with the heretic Germans and the religious opprobrium which this carried.

  Now Cromwell’s enemies in the Council threw everything into a desperate attempt to destroy him and he responded in kind. Catholic and Protestant activists were arrested and examined in frenzied attempts to find damning evidence. Spies and informers did a brisk trade. The French ambassador accurately assessed the situation: ‘things are at such a pass that either the party of . . . Cromwell must succumb or that of the Bishop of Winchester [Gardiner] with his adherents.’6 In such an unstable situation momentous events could be decided by minor, even trivial, circumstances, such as the timing of a messenger’s arrival with the latest news from abroad, or what rumour emerged about fresh heretical activity, or what mood the king was in, or who happened to have access to him at the psychological moment. Such eventualities could not be foreseen and none of the principals concerned could anticipate when he might be transformed from trusted adviser to doomed traitor in the twinkling of an eye. In the event it was Cromwell who was dealt the ace of spades. Arriving for a Council meeting on 10 June he was astounded to be arrested and rushed to the Tower. On 28 July a bungling headsman dispatched him on Tower Hill.

  John Dudley must have reflected that his earlier decision to distance himself from the court had been the right one. Henry’s divorce from Anne of Cleves deprived him and his wife of their positions. His patron had been executed for treason. His stepfather daily expected the same fate. With relief John made his way back to the relative calm of the English heartland.

  The king was deliriously happy with his nubile young wife, the Howards and their conservative clique were firmly ensconced in royal favour and radical preachers were subdued by anti-heretical legislation. The evangelical caucus in the royal household had not dissipated but its members were now obliged to be very circumspect. Most would have echoed the advice of one of the junior members of their party: ‘Let us not be too rash or quick in maintaining the Scriptures. If we wait quietly and do not oppose [the Duke of Norfolk and the Bishop of Winchester], but rather suffer a while in silence, they will overthrow themselves. For they stand so obviously against God and their prince that they cannot long survive.’7 The speaker was John Lascelles, a Nottinghamshire gentleman who was one of the senior attendants at the king’s table. He was soon to cast his caution to the winds and grasp eagerly an opportunity to attack the enemies of the Gospel.

  London and its environs held little attraction for Dudley in the aftermath of Cromwell’s death. Conservative vigilantes were trying to cash in on what they believed to be a return to pre-Cromwellian orthodoxy. Informers were denouncing men and women for alleged breaches of the Act of Six Articles and the Catholic backlash was vigorous and merciless. At one point Bishop Bonner of London had five hundred accused heretics penned up in foetid prisons in the heat of one of the most sweltering summers in living memory. Moreover, the reactionaries were determined to purge the establishment of all the fallen minister’s allies. Early in 1541 Dudley’s friend, Sir Thomas Wyatt, was among those who had to endure a spell in prison before the king intervened to set him free.

  Cranmer and his colleagues were by no means quiescent under this new wave of persecution. The archbishop came to the rescue of clergy denounced by their enemies, carried the attack into his opponents’ camp and made sure that the king was informed of all manoeuvres aimed at bringing down those who enjoyed royal favour. What was now beginning to appear at the centre of English political life was a bifurcation largely along religious lines. The Howard–Gardiner faction was counterpoised by Cranmer, Seymour and their friends in chamber and Council. Both groups of leaders had their sympathizers throughout all levels of the royal household. The resultant dialogue of the deaf was inevitable for two reasons. One was the inner momentum of the Reformation. The religious revival could not be stopped. Men and women in the grip of confessional fervour who felt themselves betrayed by the institutional church were only emboldened by persecution. However, those who saw the traditions of their fathers being uprooted were by no means convinced that the Reformation was irreversible and were bitter in their resentment. Clergy who witnessed the alarming disintegration of the structures which guaranteed their power and their accustomed place in society were determined to resist further change.

  The other reason was a revolution in the workings of government. For over three decades the king had relied heavily on powerful, semi-independent chief ministers to undertake the tedio
us routine of running the nation’s affairs. After June 1540 Henry was sometimes heard to complain angrily that he had been tricked into getting rid of Cromwell, but he never found (and probably never sought) another political majordomo. For their part, councillors who had resented being lorded over by one of their own number were determined to resist the emergence of another Wolsey or Cromwell. Council deliberations, therefore, had more importance and that meant that rivalries became more acute. Indeed they sometimes took on homicidal intensity, as we shall see. But Henry was still king and still determined that his will should prevail, whatever his advisers might propose. There were henceforth two vigorous currents engaging with each other in the dynamic of government. Councillors and members of the chamber staff constantly sought Henry’s support for their schemes, while the king pursued his own agenda and expected his servants to carry it out. For a man like John Dudley, who had little stomach for party fervour and confrontation, property speculation and estate building in the Midlands had distinctly more appeal than attempting to resurrect a court career.

  Meanwhile, court radicals were handed on a plate a spectacular opportunity for revenge. Gossip around the royal household suggested that Catherine was not the pure, utterly devoted wife she pretended to be. One courtier, moved by what he believed to be the highest of motives, resolved to discover the truth. His name was John Lascelles. This earnest evangelical had a sister, Mary Hall, who had been a servant in the household of the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk at a time when Catherine had been billeted there and she had been a party to secret assignations which the teenage girl and her friends had carried on under the nose of their chaperone with various lusty young bucks. Lascelles persuaded Mary to tell all she knew then, armed with names, dates and salacious details, he sought out Archbishop Cranmer at Whitehall and laid the information before him. Cranmer discussed these serious revelations with his colleagues and they all decided that Henry must be told (it would, indeed, have been treason to conceal the unpalatable truth from him). Cranmer wrote the details of Lascelles’ story in a confidential note and waited an opportunity to pass it to the king. On 29 October, Henry came to Hampton Court and it was in the chapel there, four days later, that the archbishop handed over his bombshell.

  Far from flying into a rage, the king simply declined to believe what he was told but he did order discreet enquiries to be made into this ‘malicious gossip’. While the inquisition was taking place, Henry removed to Whitehall and never saw his fifth wife again. After some days Catherine also travelled downriver but only as far as Syon Abbey, the grand house Edward Seymour was creating from the surrendered monastic establishment near Brentford. It was here that Cranmer finally extracted a full confession from the distracted queen, not only of her premarital sexual adventures, but of various indiscretions she had committed since becoming queen. The damning document was carried and delivered to the king by John Dudley. Why was he at his old friend’s house at this critical time? Why was he entrusted with this delicate mission? It would be helpful to know the exact circumstances of his involvement, but in the absence of such knowledge we are thrown back on intelligent guesswork. It may be that, realizing that a crucial turning point in the faction struggle at court had been reached, he judged the time right to reappear at court. If Lord Hertford [Edward Seymour], Cranmer and their supporters were about to assume the ascendancy, he wanted to be among their number. What is clear is that he was trusted by the evangelical leaders and was sufficiently intimate with the king to be able to bear the ill tidings of Catherine Howard’s irresponsible behaviour.

  That behaviour brought her to her sorry end beneath the headsman’s axe on 13 February 1542. Seventeen days later another death occurred within the Tower which had an even greater impact on John Dudley’s fortunes. Arthur Plantaganet had been languishing there ever since his arrest in May 1540. He and his family had expected him to be released in the aftermath of Cromwell’s fall but month succeeded anxious month and the old man remained incarcerated. No indictment was brought and, if his case was thoroughly investigated, no record has survived. His miseries seem to have been occasioned by the continuing nervousness about Yorkist–papist rebellion and Henry’s determination to make examples of any suspected of the slightest whiff of treason. In the spring of 1541, the king put down a minor rebellion in Yorkshire and also ordered the execution of Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, the daughter of George, Duke of Clarence. The death of this cousin, also a long-term prisoner in the Tower, must have been very alarming for Arthur. But still he was kept in ignorance of his fate. In January 1542 he was restored to the Order of the Garter but he remained in prison – it was all very confusing. At last, on 3 March, Henry sent his secretary to the Tower with a token of his favour and a promise of imminent release. Alas, the rush of euphoria, following months of listlessness and depression proved to be too much for the octogenarian peer. As John Foxe succinctly and moralistically explained,

  When the king’s majesty minded to have been gracious unto him and to have let him come forth, God took him out of this world, whose body resteth in the Tower and his soul with God, I trust, in heaven, for he died very repentant.8

  The viscountcy of Lisle was now vacant and, under the ordinary rules of inheritance John might have automatically succeeded to it in right of his mother. Ironically, his own eager property dealing had created a problem. One condition of holding the tenure of the title was ownership of the manor of Kingston Lisle, Berkshire, and John had sold it in 1538. A new patent was required if he was to attain the peerage he had always looked forward to gaining.9 It is a mark of the favour he enjoyed that, within days, the heralds had drawn up the necessary document and the king approved it. On 12 March, Sir John Dudley stood before his sovereign in the privy chamber at Whitehall to be mantled in velvet and ermine and to hear his new honours proclaimed: ‘Viscount Lisle, Baron Malpas and Lord Basset of Tyasse.’ He was now the senior member of the ancient family of Sutton de Dudley. He was also thirty-eight years of age. Promotion had come none too soon.

  From this moment John Dudley was thrust into the very forefront of national life. Honours and appointments that had hitherto eluded him now came his way. In part this was a belated recognition of his qualities. He was an established courtier and a tried and tested military leader. Throughout the difficult years he had kept himself out of trouble, sometimes by absenting himself from court. Though loyally committed to the Tudor regime, he always had his father’s fate at the back of his mind as a warning not to associate himself too closely with unpopular policies. Up to this point he seems not to have been closely identified with radical religious activism. However, friends like Seymour, Cranmer, Anthony Denny, Chief Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and Sir William Butts, the king’s physician, who were the leading evangelicals at court, knew their man and may well have used their influence on his behalf. At a time of acute religious polarization they took every opportunity to strengthen their party.

  The timing was certainly fortuitous for Dudley. Henry ran his own unique form of ecumenical movement by publicly punishing undue religious zeal, whether Catholic and Protestant. For example, immediately after Cromwell’s death he had six men executed at Tyburn. Three ‘sacramentaries’ were burned for heresy while three ‘papists’ suffered the penalty for treason. In the same spirit of knowing what was best for his country he determined to put an end to seventeen years of peace. His belligerence, no longer tamed by cost-conscious ministers, reasserted itself in a decision to wage war against Scotland and France. This ruinous, wilful change of policy, which frittered away the massive financial gains which the great ecclesiastical land grab had brought into the treasury had a very dubious basis in logic.

  He had invited the Scottish king, James V, to meet him at York, during his summer progress in 1541 to discuss relations between their two countries but James did not turn up. This was enough to form a calculated pretext for war. Henry was about to go campaigning again in France and he had to secure his own postern gate before he venture
d across the Channel. With two military adventures in the planning the king needed generals. Since some of England’s tried and tested leaders had died and others were too old for active service it was inevitable that a new generation of field officers would have to take their places. John Dudley rose rapidly to prominence among them. Within weeks of his ennoblement he was sent north as part of a commission to examine the strengthening of Berwick’s defences, a necessary preparation for forthcoming hostilities with Scotland. The king’s representatives discovered that all was far from satisfactory in the border garrison and they had to take a tough line with the local authorities and workmen in order to complete work by the end of the summer so that the town could be used as a secure base when the Duke of Norfolk arrived with an army of 20,000 to harry the Lowlands.

  Having done his job, Dudley returned to court but he was soon back on the border with a much more exalted title. The position of Lord Warden of the Marches became vacant on the retirement of the Earl of Rutland and Henry appointed Edward Seymour, who was on the spot as part of the military contingent. However, the ambitious Seymour did not relish the prospect of a long absence from the centre of power and excused himself on the grounds that ‘the country knew not him nor he them.’ After considering various other candidates, Henry decided to confer this important political and military position on Dudley. As well as his more obvious qualifications, Dudley’s commitment to religious reform may well have commended him to Henry. In his negotiations with the Scots it suited the king to show his radical face. He urged the ruler north of the border to follow his own example in throwing off papal allegiance, ridding his realm of monasticism and redistributing ecclesiastical property. In order to make this transformation as palatable as possible it would be necessary to instruct the people in the ‘truth’. Henry knew that Dudley would enthusiastically support such a policy and, indeed, we find the new Lord Warden, a few months later, organizing the despatch of vernacular Bibles to evangelical colporteurs in Scotland.