July 2008

Parish History Episode 87 - The Succession Crisis

In April, 1552, the fourteen-year-old King Edward had a severe attack of the measles. Although he slowly began to recover from that, he soon began to show symptoms of suffering from a wasting disease, diagnosed as consumption, but probably what we call tuberculosis, and soon there grew fears that the condition would prove fatal. It was necessary to consider the Succession to the Throne.

Edward had two older half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, and King Henry’s will had named them as second and third in succession, but both princesses had been declared illegitimate, while Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn, had been executed for adultery (and incest as well), which left doubts about the daughter’s paternity. In addition, Mary was known to be a staunch Catholic, while Elizabeth had been brought up as a Protestant, so each princess was unattractive to some of her prospective subjects.

As King Henry VIII had left no other descendants acknowledged as legitimate, one had to go back to his father, Henry VII, to find out who was next in succession after Mary and Elizabeth. Now, the older Henry had sired four children, two boys and two girls. Prince Arthur, the luckless eldest son, had been killed in a hunting accident, leaving his wife (Mary’s mother, Catherine of Aragon) and his prospects to his brother, who would, from 1509, rule as Henry VIII. The elder of the two daughters of Henry VII (sisters of Henry VIII) was the Princess Margaret, who had, in 1503 (“The Wedding of the Thistle and the Rose”) married James IV of Scotland, the King who would, ten years later, be killed at the Battle of Flodden. Their son, who became King James V, was thus, it would seem, not only King of Scotland, but also fourth in line to the English Throne, and, on his death in 1542, his claim should have passed to his daughter, who succeeded as Queen Mary I of Scotland. But Henry VIII, in his last will, had struck all the descendants of his sister Margaret out of the Succession, presumably because he did not wish the House of Stewart to ever come to rule in South Britain. If his wishes were still regarded as binding, the next in succession to the English Throne would be the descendants of Henry VIII’s younger sister, Mary.

She had married the Duke of Suffolk, and had borne him two daughters, of whom Frances, the elder, had become the wife of Henry Grey. After the heirless death of his father-in-law, this Henry Grey had been ennobled as Duke of Suffolk. Henry and Frances, Duke and Duchess of Suffolk, had three daughters (there seems to have been a grave shortage of male heirs in these families), of whom the eldest was Jane. She was, now that Prince Edward was king, third in succession to the English Throne (after the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth), and she was known as Lady Jane Grey.

During the last year of the young King’s life, as he sunk lower and lower in health, political discussion centered on who was to succeed him : Mary?, or Elizabeth?, or Jane? Or, if the King were to marry, and produce a son, then the direct line of the Tudors could continue!

(And if he were to expire just after the birth of a baby boy, wouldn’t that enable John Dudley to continue his Regency for another eighteen years or so?)

And if the King were to marry, to whom should he propose ? Well, he was a bookish lad, and one very interested in matters of theology, and by now he had come to favour a more radical form of reformation for the English Church. So had his cousin Jane Grey, of almost the same age as himself (their birthdays were less than a week apart). Edward’s sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, had both been informally banished from his Court, but Jane was frequently there, had played with him in childhood, and had to some extent been tutored alongside him by the same schoolmasters.

They were both learnèd in classical and in Biblical languages, and were full of theories about the Nature of the Church, and had all sorts of radical ideas. Jane had even entered into a lengthy correspondence with Heinrich Bullinger, the man who had, on Zwingli’s death, succeeded the Reformer as leader of the Church in the Swiss canton of Zürich, and Edward had sometimes participated in their correspondence (it was conducted chiefly in Latin, but partly in Greek and in Hebrew).

By this time, rumours were circulating that Edward and Jane would marry each other, and Dudley, the Lord Protector, seemed to be sympathetic to the idea. The reason why Bullinger spent so much time in correspondence with a fourteen-year-old girl whom he had never met was of course that he assumed he was influencing the future Queen of England, and hoped that she might be able to guide the Church of England towards a Zwinglian theology. (Of course, he hardly needed to worry about that : the Archbishop of Canterbury had already moved a long way towards adopting Zwinglianism, as the 1552 prayer-book witnessed).

That was the situation at the start of 1553, when Gilpin passed through London, on his way to Dover and “the Continent”. As he rode over the heights of Highgate and Islington, he would look down on the city, with London Bridge leading across the river, and, looming above it, the strong Tower of London, in which, he knew, his great-uncle, Bishop Tunstall, lay, awaiting trial for treason.

He found much changed when he entered the city. Many of his old friends among the
clergy had left, some taking up country parishes, like he himself had done when he went to Norton, while others, like his old friend Tom Neal, had moved abroad. Those of them who were working in city parishes seemed to be unhappy with the new 1552 liturgy.

John Dudley remained in London, carefully watching over the welfare of the boy king. He needed to keep him alive as long as possible, for his own office depended on being Lord Protector to the lad. He pondered the consequences of his ward marrying Jane, as the boy seemed to be very fond of her. But at the same time the lad’s health was deteriorating, and he feared that Edward might not be strong enough ever to marry.

Then a new idea occurred to him. If Mary and Elizabeth could both somehow be eliminated, Jane would be the heir to the English Throne. Why not persuade Edward to disinherit both his half-sisters, and then, with those girls out of the way, arrange for Jane to marry one of his own sons (John Dudley had six grown lads of marriageable age). Then, when Edward died, Jane would become queen, and her husband would be king-consort.

Thus the Tudor Dynasty would end with Edward, and a new Dudley dynasty would rule in England. It would be a fine revenge for the way that the Tudors had treated the Dudleys. (John Dudley’s father had worked in the Exchequer for King Henry VII. The high level of taxation imposed by Henry VII had been most unpopular, although people should have considered that it was preferable to the random requisitionings by means of which the armies of the Houses of York and of Lancaster had sustained themselves during the preceding civil wars. When Henry VIII succeeded his father, he had tried to make himself popular by arresting and executing his father’s Treasury officials; and old Dudley had been among those beheaded).

There were obviously problems involved in changing dynasties. The first was that Jane had no wish to marry Gilford Dudley, the boy chosen by the Lord Protector to be her partner. It was only after a terrible beating administered by her mother, Lady Frances, that Jane consented to marry the lad. She gave way, and, in May, 1553, she and Gilford were married to each other.

The next problem was to disinherit Mary and Elizabeth. Edward, by now aware that he was dying, but still fond of Jane, and wishing her well in her marriage, gladly drew up a will, which made Jane the heir to his Kingdom. This drew a protest from the Spanish ambassador : people in his country were apparently expecting, in the event of Edward’s death, that Mary would inherit the Kingdom, and would restore the Catholic Faith.

The third problem was getting rid of the existing King. Rumour had it that Dudley hastened Edward’s demise with the aid of poison, but that was not really necessary, and the young King was dead a fortnight after the marriage of Jane and Gilford. The Lord Protector presided over the brief mourning for the dead boy-king, and the rejoicings for the newly-proclaimed Queen Jane and King- Consort Gilford. But many people, both in and out of London, refused to rejoice. They had expected the Princess Mary to succeed, and the Old Religion to be restored, and they were bitterly disappointed to find that Jane was now Queen. Also many people disliked Dudley intensely for the way that he had governed the Kingdom, always acting in support of the rich, and crushing the poor.

Dudley prepared to consolidate his authority. Squadrons of horsemen were despatched to isolate the Princesses Elizabeth (at Hatfield) and Mary (at Framlingham Castle, in Suffolk). Elizabeth did not dispute the arrangements, and remained indoors, but hundreds of armed gentlemen, most of them Catholic in sympathy, were riding for Framlingham, to support Mary in her defiance of the new dynasty. Dudley’s cavalry were intercepted by Mary’s men, and defeated.

Meanwhile the Fleet set sail from Greenwich, to patrol the coast of East Anglia, and to prevent any possibility of the Spaniards, who then ruled the Netherlands, sending assistance to Mary. The flagship put into Yarmouth, and the Admiral and other officers went ashore to try and persuade the leading citizens to permit that port to be used as a base for the Fleet. However the citizens seized the officers, and held them hostage, and then the other ships sailed into Yarmouth harbour, and declared for Queen Mary.

It seemed that full-scale civil war was looming. The Lord Protector began mustering troops, and prepared to march on East Anglia, as he had done once before, when he crushed Robert Kett’s rebellion. He assembled regiments of infantry and cavalry and artillery, and grouped them for the march into four divisions, each division commanded by one of his six sons - Worrick, Henry, Robert and Ambrose (his eldest son, John, remained behind in London, trying to control the city, while the sixth son, young Gilford, was of course preparing, along with his wife Jane, for a coronation). Additional help was promised by King Henri II of France, who, alarmed at reports of Spanish help for Mary, offered to despatch five thousand arquebusiers (men armed with what was then the standard form of hand-held firearm - the precursor of the musket) to assist Queen Jane. They never arrived, but news of the offer leaked out, and it was immediately rumoured that, in exchange for this help, Dudley had promised to give Calais back to the King of France.

Nevertheless, even without these arquebusiers, it was a formidable army that the Dudleys led out of London to crush the “rebellion”, as they termed it. But the men were confused as to who their monarchs, Gilford and Jane, really were, and there was much sympathy for Mary, both as a wronged princess, and as King Harry’s daughter, and also, in many of them, the hope that she would restore “the Old Religion”. Mary’s forces, by contrast, were almost all amateurs, gentlemen (presumably Catholic in sympathy) who had ridden in from all over East Anglia and the Midlands to offer their swords to her. The two armies clashed with each other near Bury St. Edmunds, and Mary’s men had the better of the skirmish. Much more serious, Dudley realised that his army was shrinking dramatically, as more and more men deserted, to join Princess Mary’s army.

Unlike Mary, Dudley had up to now played down the religious aspect of the struggle, but now he decided to proclaim himself as the Protestant champion. He retreated to Cambridge, to regroup, hoping to find support in the University there, which had, in King Henry’s time, been something of a nursery for Protestant ideas, several scholars having been burnt at the stake, as “hot-gospellers”. But it was too late. His men deserted in droves, and he had to surrender to Princess Mary.

She rode on to London, at the head of a disorderly army, and with an increasing train of prisoners. Some of her cavalrymen diverted to Hatfield House in Herts, and freed the Princess Elizabeth from house arrest, and added her to Mary’s triumphal train. The two Princesses arrived in London amidst the cheers of the citizens, London having already turned against the Dudleys. The Lord Mayor’s men had taken control of important buildings, and Gilford and Jane, after a brief thirteen days’ reign (6 to 19 July, 1553), were under house arrest, while Mary was proclaimed as Queen. The Warden of the Tower of London surrendered his keys to the new Monarch, who ordered that all the prisoners be set free. While Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, emerged into the sunlight, others were not so lucky. Gilford and Jane were soon moved into the Tower, along with other members of the Dudley and Grey families. The Lord Protector would soon be tried and executed.

What had happened during that fortnight in July was a genuine popular revolution. The Tudor Dynasty which had done England so much harm was back in power again, King Henry’s abuses now forgotten. The “Old Faith” was also, men assumed, back again, and “Reformation” was over and done with. There were of course no democratic elections in Tudor times. But the brief round of fighting in July of 1553 was the nearest thing to a consultation of public opinion that occurred in that generation. And it seemed to have given a definite verdict as to what England wanted. Reformation was over, the Old Religion was back.

Queen Mary was to reign for five years. It would take her all that time to reverse the popular verdict, and for English opinion to revert to sympathy for the Reformation. She not only, in the long run, failed. In the short run, she managed to achieve precisely the opposite of what she intended.

Dick Toy

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