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

  Then follows the heavily laboured allegory. The ideal commonwealth is compared to a luxuriant tree beneath whose shade all subjects, from the highest to the lowest, are ‘holpen and relieved’. To achieve this arborial excellence the tree must have five secure roots: the love of God, justice, truth, concord and peace. Here Dudley comes very close to criticizing his former master, for he points out that in England the tree of commonwealth is ‘wellnigh utterly failed and dead’. Fortunately, the new king is such a paragon that his people may confidently look forward to a vastly changed state of affairs. Led by the example of such a prince the various orders of society will be able to play their part in nurturing the roots with the most felicitous results. The author expands on this in a passage so reminiscent of Thomas More’s coronation ode (see above p. 21) that it is difficult to imagine that he had not read it. Under the new dispensation,

  how glad shall every nobleman be of the company of another and one will trust and love another. What friendship and confidence shall then be between men and men from the highest degree to the lowest. How kindly and lovingly will merchants and craftsmen of the realm buy and sell together and exchange and bargain one thing for another. How diligently and busily will the artificers and husbandmen occupy their labour and business and how well content will men be, from the highest degree to the lowest to increase their household servants and labourers, whereby all idle people and vagabonds shall be set at work . . .16

  Dudley explains that this marvellous tree will produce five fruits: the honour of God, honourable dignity, worldly prosperity, tranquillity and good example (to other nations). Again he exhorts the social orders to enjoy the fruits in manner appropriate to each. But let the harvesters beware; each fruit has a poisonous core which must be carefully removed and a poignant peel which may only be pared cautiously and distributed to those in need. From this point the allegory becomes tortuous.

  What is interesting is the evaluation Edmund Dudley offers of contemporary English society after a lifetime spent in law and politics. His observations help us lay out a ground plan for the momentous events of the revolutionary decades which were soon to come.

  The issue of overriding importance is the relationship between power and justice. Dudley recognizes that people will always use their wealth, position and influence to overawe those less well placed. At the beginning of Henry VII’s reign the most pressing problem had been to curb the power of unruly nobles who held more sway than the king in their own territories. The dilemma of employing overmighty subjects as socially responsible servants of the Crown had not gone away by 1509. The king, Dudley advises, must continue to clamp down on maintainers, embracers and great men who ignore the statutes of liveries. This means putting the power of central government behind the judges and local commissioners. But that, in itself, is not sufficient to guarantee a fair deal for all. If greed, ambition and dynastic rivalry are the besetting sins of the realm’s ancient families, those of the royal servants raised up to curb their power are arrogance and corruption. The king must appoint men as councillors, sheriffs and commissioners who are free from all taint of bribery and coercion. No one could have been more aware than Edmund Dudley of the resentment directed against ‘new men’ like himself. Despite the dislocation caused by decades of baronial conflict, there remained a deep-seated respect (expressed eloquently by writers like Thomas More) for the aristocracy of church and state, whose members were traditionally the ‘proper’ agents of the Crown, and an equally strong antipathy towards low-born royal officials who usurped the authority of their betters. Dudley had the activities of the Council Learned in the Law and his own fate very much in mind when he wrote,

  peradventure oftentimes the prince shall have councillors and servants that in his own cause will do further than himself would should be done, oftentimes to win a special thank of the king and sometimes for their proper advantage and sometimes for the avenging of their own quarrels, grudges or malice. Let these servants or councillors take heed that they do the party no wrong, for the rod of punishment dieth not.17

  It was the closest he came to a confession.

  Dudley is fully aware of the gulf between holy vocation and human failing in the church. He attacks simony, absentee clergy, the low level of clerical education, the use of political influence to gain preferment, the accumulation of landed wealth by bishops and abbots, the diversion of ecclesiastical income into personal fortunes, and the inadequate preaching of the word of God. He is revolutionary in his insistence that bishops should be obliged to reside in their dioceses and should not be appointed to major offices of state, though he does qualify this with the escape clause, ‘unless their presence may not be foreborne about the king’s person for his great honour or for the common wealth of the realm’.18 Dudley was a friend of John Colet, to whom he entrusted the upbringing of his young son, Jerome, and Colet was a leader of that movement for scholarly and spiritual renewal known as the New Learning. He became Dean of St Paul’s in 1504 and soon had people flocking to his sermons to hear the Bible expounded in a fresh, vibrant way and related to contemporary society. How closely Dudley was connected with the Colet circle we cannot know but certainly a breeze of New Learning indignation blows through parts of The Tree of Commonwealth:

  . . . ye send to the universities young scholars of 10 or 12 years, right near of your blood and they must be highly promoted with an archdeaconry or prebend before he can say his matins. He must go in his grained [finely dyed] clothes, lined with silk or furred with the best as though he of that university were the best, yet his cunning is but small.19

  Here is a suggestion of that anticlericalism that would feed into the Reformation. Here, too, we may detect that concept of sovereignty which would enable Henry VIII to proclaim himself head of the church in England. Dudley’s answer to all the possible ills of society is strong and virtuous kingship. Thus it is the king’s task, ‘not only [to] support and maintain his [my emphasis] church and the true faith thereof . . . but also to see that such as he shall promote and set in Christ’s Church . . . be both cunning and virtuous’.20 There is no mention here of the pope’s proprietary claims and, though Dudley would not in his wildest dreams have envisaged England’s new king breaking the ties with Rome, there is here a clear recognition that the temporal ruler has ultimate control over the spirituality.

  Who has control over the king and where should he turn for guidance? Who can set the limits of his power? Dudley offers no answers to these questions. Other Renaissance theorists debated under what circumstances a prince might be held to account by his people or rebellion might be justified. Dudley does not paddle in these waters. Indeed, the whole object of his treatise is to urge the young Henry to follow the path of moral excellence and spiritual devotion which will ensure harmony in the state and thus render such considerations irrelevant. He observes, for example, that power without compassion is tyranny but he avoids any discussion of what might happen to a tyrant. Henry VII’s rule, as he readily acknowledged, had become oppressive but for that the king was accountable to God alone, which is why Dudley was genuinely concerned that the minutiae of Henry’s will should be meticulously observed. The king is responsible both to God and his people:

  God hath ordained him to be our king, and . . . every king is bounden [to maintain the tree of commonwealth] for it is his charge. For, as the subjects are bounden to their prince, so be all kings bounden to their subjects by the commandment of God them to maintain and support as far as in him is his power . . . though the people be subjects to the king yet are they the people of God and God hath ordained their prince to protect them and they to obey their prince.21

  Thus Dudley lays out the main elements of the contract between ruler and ruled but does not venture into the small print of how the responsibilities of the contracting parties are to be worked out. The king must uphold and observe the laws handed down by generations of judges. He will be well advised to call into council wise and loyal servants. (By this Dudley means, specif
ically, servants well versed in the common law – like himself.) Beyond that there is no human agency able to limit the exercise of the royal will.

  Dudley’s life was now at the mercy of that will. He still had to wait to discover what the second Tudor would do with the man who had helped his father secure the dynasty and put it on a solid financial footing. Winter passed. And spring. The stones of the Tower grew warm in the summer sun and the fortress’s more cramped quarters became stifling. In June, king, queen and court left the fever-prone city behind them and set out on progress through the southern counties. Were the prisoners forgotten? Henry was busy with other affairs which filled his thoughts far more agreeably than the dismal fate of two men who had been incarcerated for fourteen months.

  exercising himself daily in shooting, singing, dancing, wrestling, casting of the bar, playing at the recorders, flute, virginals and in setting songs, making of ballads and did set 2 goodly masses, every of them five parts, which were sung oftentimes in his chapel and afterwards in divers other places. And when he came to Woking, there were kept both jousts and tourneys. The rest of this progress was spent in hunting, hawking and shooting.22

  Perhaps Fox, Lovell and their colleagues were still debating what to do with the prisoners. Empson and Dudley were talented, experienced administrators who understood intimately important aspects of government business. The leading councillors had no intention of making sweeping changes in the way things were done. The new king was absorbed in his pleasures and seemed content to let his advisers attend to the day-to-day running of the country and they saw little reason to depart from the prudent and successful measures of the previous reign. If everyone waited until the clamour for the heads of Empson and Dudley died down it might be possible to reinstate them quietly. On the other hand there was the propaganda angle to be considered. The coronation had been splendidly staged and had got the reign off to a good start. Periodic court festivities had kept bright the image of a brave, youthful, popular monarch. A royal pardon had been issued to many imprisoned for minor offences and the government had cancelled some, but not all, of the bonds specified in Dudley’s petition. It might be that enough had been done to win hearts and minds to the new regime. However, if public anger against Empson and Dudley showed little sign of ebbing, their execution would make a useful demonstration that the past truly had been buried.

  According to Hall the summer progress of 1510 produced evidence of lingering animosity towards the two ex-ministers. Several complaints reached the king as he pursued his pleasurable way through the southern counties. It was for that reason that Henry sent word to the Sheriff of London to attend to the matter. This way of proceeding was to become habitual: a signature on a letter, a seal on a warrant – it was the matter of a moment. Then the king could return to his ‘pastime with good company’ and others would carry out the messy business for him. Hundreds of people – queens, ministers, courtiers and friends, as well as those who did actually pose some sort of threat – passed into oblivion by the same process and Henry never once had to watch his orders carried out.

  The prisoners were given a few days warning. They were visited by their families and were able to say their farewells. Dudley wrote his will – more in hope than in any expectation that his wishes would be carried out. In it he protested his innocence before making a variety of bequests and asking for his body to be buried in Westminster Abbey. The usual sentence for convicted traitors had been commuted to simple beheading. It was carried out on Tower Hill on 17 August 1510. Afterwards Edmund Dudley’s body was interred in the churchyard of Blackfriars, at the western end of the City. John Guy has succinctly pronounced the verdict of history on this cynical act:

  The executions were a calculated ploy to enable the new regime to profit from the stability won by Henry VII without incurring any of its attendant stigma.23

  II

  THE SOLDIER

  4

  Connections

  The next developments in the Dudley story were nothing short of astonishing. Within months the attainder on Edmund’s name and estate, though never enacted was formally lifted. The rapid restoration of Edmund’s widow and children is further evidence that his execution was nothing more than a shabby public relations exercise. But this pales into insignificance beside what happened next. Edmund’s death became the major stepping stone in his family’s climb to the heights of Tudor society. Without it his sons would have remained at the level of government officials and provincial landowners, instead of becoming prominent courtiers. A suitable match had to be found for the Dudley widow, a lady of good, aristocratic family. She was now brought by marriage into Henry VIII’s extended family. The husband chosen for her was the king’s uncle, his mother’s half-brother, his closest unmarried male relative.

  Arthur Plantagenet was Edward IV’s son by a certain Elizabeth Lucy. His earlier life is very shadowy.

  Item, for my Lord the Bastard

  Item, for making of a coat of black velvet 5s.

  Item, for making of a gown of black 2s.

  Item, for making of a gown of russet 2s.1

  This tailor’s bill of 1472 is one of the very few and the earliest pieces of documentary evidence that survives about the early life of the man who married Edmund Dudley’s widow within fifteen months of Dudley’s death and became stepfather to her children. Arthur was in his mid-twenties when Bosworth was fought and lost. All members of the extended Yorkist clan who might have laid claim to the throne or supported the pretensions of a relative were closely watched by Henry VII, and, when necessary, disposed of but Arthur seems not to have aroused any suspicion in the mind of a king who was ready to suspect everybody.

  Henry decided that the best way to ensure that the young man was not lured into plots and schemes was to keep him where he could see him. Arthur was, accordingly, taken into the household of the queen, his own half-sister, Elizabeth of York. He thus moved in the same court circles as the Dudleys and knew them well. Since he and Edmund were much of an age, they could have been quite close friends. Yet, despite the courtier’s impressive connections, it was the lawyer who was by far the wealthier and more influential of the two. By the time of the queen’s death in 1503, Arthur was described as a ‘carver’, which, however, implies a senior attendant and not just someone who waited on his mistress at table. He was a landless man, fully dependent on his quarterly salary of £6.13s.4d. After Elizabeth’s death Arthur entered the king’s household as a squire of the body, a close personal attendant whose duties were ‘to array and unray him and to watch, day and night’.2 Arthur had, by now, worked his way into the innermost ring of Henry VII’s most trusted servants. The squires of the body were in the royal presence twenty-four hours a day and when Arthur was on the ‘night shift’ he had to sleep on a pallet in the king’s bedchamber. No one was better placed to sue for favours. ‘Study to serve me,’ Henry told one of Arthur’s colleagues, ‘and I will study to enrich you.’3 However, when it came to distributing lands and lucrative appointments, he was decidedly niggardly.

  Things changed dramatically with the accession of the ebullient Henry VIII, who was determined to demonstrate a new, more open, style of kingship. Arthur was among those who received court offices and other perks in the early days of the reign. But keeping up appearances in the splendid new court was an expensive business. What Arthur needed above all was a rich wife. In this, too, the king obliged him. Thus, on 12 November 1511 Elizabeth Dudley was married to Arthur Plantagenet.

  Arthur immediately stepped into Edmund’s shoes as a major landowner and important royal officer in Hampshire and Sussex, frequently serving as a JP and on various commissions. As far as his wife and stepchildren were concerned it must have seemed that life had returned very much to normal.

  Yet Arthur had no intention of burying himself in the country to live the life of a respected gentleman of the shires. Like Edmund, he intended to keep a high profile at court, for only through attendance on the king could further advancement be g
ained. Out of sight was out of mind and there were plenty of rivals jostling to fill every place left vacant in the royal entourage. That meant keeping his absences from the Tudor household as brief as possible and not allowing Henry to forget his face. But it also meant demonstrating his usefulness to the new young ruler. He could not follow in the footsteps of Edmund, the lawyer and assiduous administrator (although he was, in 1511, admitted as one of the members of Lincoln’s Inn who was excused all professional obligations; the Inns of Court doubled as fashionable dining clubs for the elite of court and City). In any case, Henry VIII had no interest in the tedious business of contracts, charters, deeds and account books. His passions lay in showing off his own many skills, in the sumptuousness of his court and the military might of his nation. He was bent upon cutting a dash in Europe and making himself a vital force in shaping its destiny. The way to his heart, therefore, was to present oneself as a man of action. This was not the easiest of postures to adopt for a courtier who was nearer to fifty than forty at the outset of the reign.

  Henry naturally chose his companions from younger men who were able to hold their own with him in the giddy round of knightly combat, feasting and dancing which he immediately embarked upon. His Spanish queen reported to her father that the court passed its days in ‘continual festival’.4 Every religious holiday and state event had to be celebrated with elan and almost exhausting vigour: Christmas, Shrove Tuesday, Easter, May Day, Midsummer, royal anniversaries, the reception of foreign dignitaries. No expense was spared to make each display more elaborate than the ones that had gone before and Henry’s revel masters were kept occupied devising striking costumes and cunning coups de théâtre. The vivid word pictures left by contemporary chroniclers indicate the impact such festivities made on spectators.