House Of Treason: The Rise And Fall Of A Tudor Dynasty Read online

  - To what intent you put the arms of St Edward in your coat?

  - Why [do] you bear them at this time more than or your father at other times before?

  - If the king should die in my lord prince’s tender age, whether you have devised who should govern him and the realm?

  - Whether you have at any time determined to fly out of the realm?

  - Whether you acknowledge yourself the king’s true subject?

  - Of what degree [do you] take yourself to be in this realm?

  - What inheritance [do] you think you ought of right to have therein?

  - Whether you procured any person to dissemble [deceive] in anything with the king’s majesty [with] the intent the same might grow in his favour for the better compassing your purposes.

  This last question had been amended. Wriothesley’s first attempt read: ‘. . . procured your sister or any other woman to be the king’s concubine or not?’28 Was he being prudish - or did he believe such a starkly posed question would simply push Surrey into a rage and stop any further useful interrogation?

  The Lord Chancellor also jotted down some thoughts in an aide-mémoire to himself. The tantalisingly brief notes included: ‘My lord of Surrey dissembling [lying or deceiving].’ ‘Fulmerston.’ ‘Mr Paget.’ ‘. . . Surrey’s pride and his gown of gold. Departure of the king’s apparel.’ ‘The duke’s will.’ In most cases, we can only guess at their true import and, unfortunately, the earl’s probably blustering answers in his interrogation have not survived. The reference to the king’s secretary, Sir William Paget, could relate to claims that Surrey had already been distributing high offices of state on the promise of his regency and had offered Paget the Lord Chancellorship.29 Another note - ‘Riding with many men in the streets’ - refers to the earl’s habit of travelling around London at the head of a considerable number of mounted retainers, sparking suspicions of possible insurrection.30

  Wriothesley was a busy man. He ordered inquiries into Norfolk’s annuities from a host of sinecure jobs: ‘By the king for the Office of High Treasurer, £365. Earl Marshal, £20. Steward of Suppressed [monastic] Lands on this side [of the river] Trent, £100.’ The list included stewardships awarded by various bishops and nobles. The duke’s total income from all these various offices was more than £700 a year, or £190,000 in 2009 purchasing power. Surrey’s, by comparison, was more modest: just £20 a year for the stewardship of the Duchy of Lancaster; the same amount for his earldom, and £50 as the king’s cup-bearer at court.31

  Henry arrived back in London from Windsor, via his huge new palace at Nonsuch, near Ewell, Surrey, on 23 December, still suffering from ‘some grief of his leg’ and the fever it caused.32 The next day, Christmas Eve, van der Delft reported to Mary, the Dowager Queen of Hungary, and his master, Charles V:33

  The king is so unwell that, considering his age and corpulence, he may not survive another attack such as he recently had at Windsor.

  The court is closed to all but the Privy Council and some gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, the rumour being that the king is busied about the affair of Norfolk and his son.

  It is understood that he will be thus occupied during the holidays and some days in addition, the Queen [Katherine Parr] and all the courtiers having gone to Greenwich, though she has never been known before to leave him on solemn occasions like this.

  Henry, said the ambassador, was ‘deeply engaged and much perplexed in the consideration of this affair’. He noted the ascendancy of the evangelical Seymours at court, ‘and it is even asserted here that the custody of the prince and the government of the realm will be entrusted to them’. Their supporters also

  do not conceal their wish to see the Bishop of Winchester and other adherents of the old faith sent to the Tower to keep company with the Duke of Norfolk.34

  Wriothesley presented his summary of the charges against father and son to Henry. The king, spectacles perched on the end of his nose,35 struggled with the arcane complexities of heraldic law, custom and practice. He amended and corrected the document in a faltering hand, but his thoughts were as incisive as ever:36

  If a man coming out of the collateral line to the heir of the crown, who ought not to bear the Arms of England but on the second quarter . . . do presume to change his right place and bear them in the first quarter . . . how this man’s intent is to be judged, and whether this import any danger, peril, or slander to the title of the Prince or very Heir Apparent . . .

  If a man presume to take into his arms a old coat of the Crown which his ancestor never bore, nor he of right ought to bear . . . whether it may be to the peril and slander of the very Heir of the Crown or be taken to his disturbance . . .

  If a man compassing with himself to govern the realm, do actually go about to rule the king and should, for that purpose, advise his daughter or sister to become his harlot, thinking thereby to bring it to pass, and so would rule both father and son, as by this next article does more appear; what this importeth [mean]?

  If a man say these words: ‘If the king die, who should have the rule of the Prince, but my father or I, what it importeth?

  The depraving of the King’s Council. If a man shall say these words of a [nobleman] . . . of the realm, ‘if the K[ing] were dead, I should shortly shut him up,’ what it importeth?37

  As evidence of conspiracy against Norfolk and Surrey became less credible, the charges concerned with purely heraldic offences became the focus of the indictments.

  Meantime, the duke, in another letter, asked the privy councillors for some homely comforts as he awaited his fate. He requested that some books should be brought from his library in his Lambeth house ‘for unless I may have books to read ere I fall on sleep and after I awake again, I cannot sleep, nor did these dozen years’. Other titles could be purchased in London - St Augustine’s de Civitate Dei (City of God),38 Flavius Josephus’s de Antiquitatibus ac de bello Judaico39 and another by Eduard Wilhelm Sabell ‘who doth declare most of any book, how the Bishop of Rome [the Pope] from time to time has usurped his power against all princes, by their unwise sufferance’.40 Norfolk also asked for a priest (a ‘Ghostly Father’) to say Mass for him but he promised ‘upon my life to speak no word to him that shall say Mass which he may do in the other chamber and I to remain within’. Could he also have more freedom of movement to ease his aching old limbs?

  To have licence [permission] in the day time to walk in the chamber without and in the night to be locked in, as I am now. At my first coming, I had a chamber without [in the] day.

  Finally, and pathetically, he requested some clean sheets. 41

  With events (and the Seymours) conspiring against him, Surrey must have been desperate with frustration and fury, pacing up and down in his room, possibly located in the western section of St Thomas’s Tower. Within its west wall was a vertical shaft, built as a garderobe, or lavatory, that emptied into the tidal moat.42 One contemporary report suggests he attempted a daring escape. The source - Antonio de Guaras, a Spanish merchant in London - says that the earl asked his servant, Martin, to smuggle a dagger into his room, hidden in his breeches. Surrey told him: ‘Go to St Katherine’s [dock] and take a boat, no matter what it costs and wait for me there. I hope to be with you at midnight.’

  The earl was confined in a room overlooking the river [Thames] and he saw that he could escape through a retiring room, if he killed the two men who slept in it . . .

  He arose from his bed and went to see if the tide was low and found that it would be quite midnight before it was low water.

  So, when midnight came, he went and took the lid off the closet and saw there was only about two feet of water. As he could not wait any longer, he began to let himself down.

  But at that instant, the guards came in and seeing that he was not in the bed, ran to the closet and one of them just reached his arm. The earl could not help himself and the guards [raised the alarm] . . . The other guards came and put some shackles on his feet. The servant who had taken the boat went away with
the money and nothing more was heard of him.43

  The accounts of Walter Stonor, the Lieutenant of the Tower, include an ‘allowance for the said earl’s irons - £13 6s 8d’ - possibly the shackles mentioned in the story. They also cover the cost of his board: attendants, candles, coals and a small sum for hangings and plate in his room, totalling £24. This also included the cost of a new coat of black satin, trimmed with rabbit fur, purchased by Stonor ‘against his arraignment’.44

  Norfolk and Suffolk were indicted for treason at a hearing at Norwich Castle on 7 January 1547.

  Five days later Norfolk confessed, ‘without compulsion, without force, without advice or counsel’. But his statement would either have been dictated to him, or written beforehand - all he had to do was to sign it.

  I, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, do confess and acknowledge myself most untruly, and contrary to my Oath [of] Allegiance, to have offended the king’s most excellent majesty, in the disclosing and opening of his private and most secret counsel at diverse and sundry times, to the great peril of his highness and disappointing of his most prudent and regal affairs

  T.N.

  Also, I likewise confess that I concealed High Treason in keeping secret the false and traitorous act, most presumptuously committed by my son Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, against the king’s majesty and his laws, in the putting and using of the arms of St Edward the Confessor, king of the realm of England before the Conquest, in his escutcheon or arms, which said arms . . . pertain only to the king of this realm, whereto the said earl . . . could make any claim or title, by men, or any of mine or his ancestors.

  T.N.

  I likewise confess, that to the peril, slander and [disinheritance] of the king’s majesty and his noble son Prince Edward, his son and heir apparent, I have, against all right, unjustly and without authority, born in the first quarter of my arms, ever since the death of my father, the arms of England, with a difference of three labels of silver,45 which are the proper arms of my said prince . . . [This] gives occasion that his highness might be disturbed or interrupted of the crown of this realm and my said lord prince might be destroyed, disturbed and interrupted in fame, body and title . . . which I know and confess by the laws of the realm to be treason.

  T.N.

  For . . . my said heinous offences, I have worthily deserved . . . to be attainted of High Treason and to suffer the punishment, losses and forfeitures that appertain . . . Although I be not worthy to have or enjoy any part of the king’s majesty’s clemency and mercy to be extended to me . . . yet I most humbly and with a most sorrowful and repentant heart, do beseech his highness to have mercy, pity and compassion on me.

  I shall most devoutly and heartily make my daily prayer to God for the preservation of his most noble succession, as long as life and breath shall continue.

  T.N.46

  Those who witnessed the confession included Hertford, Wriothesley, Paget and Sir Anthony Browne, Master of the King’s Horse. To add legal respectability, the two chief justices, Sir Richard Lister and Sir Edward Montague, also subscribed their names.

  His first offence - disclosing state secrets - probably emanated from the testimony of a spy named John Torre who had claimed that Norfolk and his half-brother William had paid secret visits at night to the home of the French ambassador Charles de Marillac.47 Norfolk was notoriously pro-French in his political beliefs and, indeed, received an annuity from France over many years. But these meetings, between May 1541 and late 1542, were made on the king’s orders and everyone knew about them.48 The second offence - bearing the three lions of England with a label on his arms - is even more nonsensical, as the Howards had used this coat for centuries.49

  Norfolk was neither a fool nor a coward, but he was patently too old and sick to fight his enemies any longer. Despite the very long odds, he gambled his last card from the poor hand destiny had dealt him: that his past loyalty would prompt a generous act of mercy from his sometimes malevolent sovereign. However, his confession also deliberately prejudiced his son’s fate, due to be decided the following day, 13 January.

  Because he was not a lord of Parliament, Surrey was to be humiliatingly tried by a common court at the Guildhall.50 The earl was popular in London, despite his previous hooligan escapades. An eyewitness reported it was ‘fearful to see the enormous number of people’51 watching as Surrey was taken through the capital’s early morning streets guarded by 300 halberdiers, commanded by Sir John Gage, Constable of the Tower, who was responsible for delivering him safely to trial.52

  The earl was brought to the bar of the packed court at nine o’clock, preceded by the black-coated headsman, carrying the execution axe, its sharp edge turned away from the prisoner. Surrey directly faced his judges sitting alongside Lord Mayor Hobberthorne - they included his enemies Hertford and Wriothesley and the king’s secretary Paget, sitting as a commissioner. The earl would also have recognised many of the twelve-man jury, as its membership of knights and gentlemen were drawn from an area twelve miles (19 km.) around his father’s palace at Kenninghall.

  His indictment was then read out - the first time Surrey would have heard the charges against him. It was based on section twelve of the Second Succession Act of 1536:Whosoever, by words, writings, printing or other external act, maliciously shall procure anything to the peril of the king’s person or give occasion whereby the king or his successors might be disturbed in their possession of the crown shall be guilty of high treason.

  And whereas Henry VIII is true King of England and Edward, formerly king of England, commonly called St Edward the Confessor, in right of the said realm . . . used certain arms and ensigns, namely, azure, a cross fleury53 between five merletts54 gold belonging to the said king of England and his progenitors in right of the crown of England, which arms and ensigns are therefore appropriate to the king and no other person.

  And whereas Edward, now prince of England, the king’s son and heir apparent, bears . . . the said arms and ensigns with three labels, called three labels silver . . .

  Nevertheless, one Henry Howard, late of Kenninghall, Knight of the Garter, otherwise called . . . Earl of Surrey, on 7 October 1546 at Kenninghall, in the house of Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, his father, openly used and traitorously caused to be depicted, mixed and conjoined, with his own arms and ensigns, the said arms and ensigns of the king, with three labels silver.55

  With a firm voice, Surrey pleaded: ‘Not guilty.’

  The prosecution opened their case. ‘My lords, for either of the offences the earl has committed, he deserves death. First, for usurping the royal arms which gives rise to suspicion that he hoped to become king, and the other, for escaping from prison, whereby he showed his guilt.’56 Surrey, ‘with manly courage’, interrupted:You are false and to earn a piece of gold would condemn your father. I never sought to usurp the king’s arms, for everybody knows that my ancestors bore them.

  Go to the church in Norfolk and you will see them there, for they have been ours for 500 years.

  He did not name the church, but he was talking about the Howards’ mortuary chapel attached to the church of All Saints, East Winch, which had an arched monument to Sir Robert Howard (died 1388), and his wife Margaret, which bore the arms of St Edward.57 Paget retorted:

  Hold your peace my lord! Your idea was to commit treason and as the king is old, you thought to be king.

  Surrey snapped back, a sneer on his face:

  And you catchpole! What have you to do with it? You had better hold your tongue, for the kingdom has never been well since the king put mean creatures like you into government.

  The jibe was born out of the earl’s disdain for the low-born - ‘catchpole’ was street slang for a bailiff. Paget’s father was said to have been a humble constable and the cutting insult silenced the king’s secretary, leaving him ‘very much abashed’. John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, then tried to trip up the prisoner with a question about his attempted escape, but Surrey retorted:

  I tried to get out, to prevent mys
elf from coming to the pass in which I am now and you, my lord, know full well that however right a man may be, they always find the fallen one guilty.58

  One witness described an argument with Surrey, who had used ‘high words’ to him, and he had retaliated with a ‘braving’, or insulting, answer. The prisoner again interrupted and demanded of the jury:

  Is it probable this man should speak thus to the Earl of Surrey and he not strike him?59

  He then faced questions about his plan to make his sister the king’s mistress, an allegation he emphatically denied: ‘Must I be condemned,’ he asked angrily, ‘on the word of a wretched woman?’60

  The trial continued until late in the afternoon. Surrey, ‘of deep understanding, sharp wit and deep courage, defended himself in many ways, sometimes denying their accusations as false, and together weakening the credit of his adversaries’.61 Amidst the gloom of a January afternoon, the jury retired at five to consider their verdict after eight hours of cross-examination. Paget scurried away to report on the trial’s progress to the king at Westminster. An hour later he returned, possibly with a message from Henry to the jury.

  They came back soon afterwards. With all of them standing and staring at Surrey, they pronounced their verdict: ‘Guilty’ - a brief pause - ‘And he should die.’ The court erupted into a noisy tumult, ‘and it was a long while’ before silence could be restored.62

  The headsman now turned his axe so that the blade pointed at the earl, a sinister indication of his condemnation. The prisoner at the bar was still defiant:Of what have you found me guilty? Surely you find no law that justifies you! But I know the king wants to get rid of the noble blood around him and employ none but low people.63