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

  The Cardinal sore laid to the mayor and aldermen and commons, their negligence and to the prisoners he declared that they deserved death for their offence.

  Then all the prisoners cried: ‘Mercy, gracious lord, mercy!’20

  Wolsey, Norfolk and the other nobles then knelt before Henry and humbly pleaded for the lives of the Londoners. No doubt after a suitable, agonising wait, the king nodded his peremptory assent.

  Instantly, and not unnaturally, all the prisoners shouted for joy and threw their halters up high towards the hall’s magnificent timbered roof.21 It was all pure theatre and, of course, cost Henry nothing.

  The gallows were taken down in the city and ‘many a good prayer [was] said for the king and the citizens took more heed to their servants’ - which is only what any reasonable monarch would expect of them.

  Aside from all these alarums and excursions, the Howards were still determinedly seeking to fulfil all their political and dynastic ambitions. Wolsey had by now eclipsed Norfolk’s position and influence at court - deeply to his chagrin - but the family’s power base, created by their mounting wealth and considerable military and diplomatic skills, remained very much intact. In June 1520, when Henry and Wolsey took more than 5,000 followers across to France for the sumptuous extravaganza with the new French king Francis I, on the Field of Cloth of Gold, Norfolk was left behind in England as a safe pair of hands to govern as the appointed ‘Guardian’ of the realm.

  One dark, ominous cloud on the family’s horizon, however, was the lack of a living son for Surrey, the heir to the dukedom and the proud future hope of the clan. After suffering so much during those long years in the Tower, could the second duke’s cherished dreams of his family holding sway in England, yielding place to none, fade and die?

  His eldest son Thomas had been betrothed to Lady Anne Plantagenet, third daughter of Edward IV and his queen Elizabeth Woodville in 1484, when she was aged nine.22 After his father’s release from imprisonment and his loyal service in the north, Henry VII was graciously moved to grant permission for the wedding to go ahead. It was a signal mark of royal favour towards the Howards: Anne was sister to his wife, Elizabeth of York, and one of her closest attendants at court. On 4 February 1495, the couple were married at Greenwich, with the Queen settling a £120 annuity on the twenty-year-old bride.23 Thomas had become the brother-in-law to the king, and uncle to his royal children.

  The couple lived most of their time either at the Howards’ home at Lambeth, built by the second duke, or at one or other of their properties in Suffolk. The union, which seems to have been happy, but marred by the wife’s sickness in later years, produced at least four children. All died young, including two sons, Henry and Thomas, the latter born two years after their wedding but who died in August 1508.24

  Anne’s tuberculosis finally claimed her on 12 November 1511 at the age of thirty-six and she was buried in the Cluniac abbey at Thetford, Norfolk, already planned as a mausoleum for the Howard family. The widower, now desperate for a surviving heir, searched among the giggling daughters of the noble families of England in a quest for a new bedmate.

  It was a pivotal moment in history for the House of Howard. His brother, the admiral, Sir Edward, had no legitimate child. England was at war with France and conflict also loomed again with Scotland. The Howards would always be in the forefront of any fighting and there was a palpable danger that one or more could be killed without continuing the family’s precious blood line.

  Thomas Howard soon found just what he was looking for. The feisty and self-willed Lady Elizabeth Stafford was one of the pretty, nubile daughters of Sir Edward Stafford, third Duke of Buckingham and Lord High Constable of England, who had the lengthy and proud pedigree, coupled with the requisite wealth and status, to match any and all of Howard’s marital aspirations. Buckingham also expediently shared the Howards’ opposition to the omnipresent influence of Wolsey at court.

  However, there was a real barrier to the match. After two years of courtship, Elizabeth was deeply in love with Ralph Neville, later to become the fourth Earl of Westmorland, and was looking forward to marrying him at Christmas 1512. Howard, however, was not a man whose oily attentions could be easily denied by simple love or another’s betrothal. At Easter that year he visited Buckingham and made his romantic intentions very plain. Neither of the duke’s other two daughters would suit him; he must and would have the fifteen-year-old Elizabeth. The age gap between them yawned alarmingly: her bridegroom would be five years older than her father.

  In the sixteenth century, noble alliances were always far more imperative than any young girl’s starry-eyed yearnings and Buckingham happily approved this loveless and ill-fated match. The miserable Neville was forced to content himself with her second sister, Catherine, whom he married sometime before June 1520, in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire.25

  Buckingham produced a generous dowry for Elizabeth, totalling 2,000 marks (the equivalent of £558,110 in modern money) and Howard, in turn, settled a jointure on her of 500 marks, or £139,530 in today’s terms.26

  In the years that followed, Howard was to come bitterly to regret his haste in choosing his second wife. They married early in 1513 and in the long, sour and poisoned years that followed, Elizabeth would frequently reflect, with aggrieved rage, on how she had been cheated by Howard and denied a happy and loving life with Neville.

  She gave birth to the Howards’ first child - happily a son, christened Henry - in late 1513, probably at Tendring Hall at Stoke-by-Nayland in Suffolk. Henceforth, Elizabeth spent much of her time listlessly in and around court while her husband sat in the talking shop of Parliament. After his creation as Earl of Surrey, true to his arrogant character and with an all-consuming pride in his status, on 15 February 1514 he claimed precedence, as the eldest son of a duke, over all earls, both inside and outside of the House of Lords.27 However, two days later it was ruled that although Surrey had precedence outside Parliament, he would be seated in the House of Lords next to last among the earls.

  Surrey joined the king’s Council sometime in 1515 but his membership was cut short the following year when Wolsey had him kicked out, with other nobles, for breaking the laws on keeping liveried retainers.28 Was this because of a possibly apocryphal incident between the minister and the earl in which Surrey angrily drew his dagger and attacked Wolsey during an argument in council?29

  The earl was, meanwhile, finding life with his new wife far from peaceful. What cannot have endeared the Howard family to Elizabeth - and, doubtless, was a source of furious, accusing letters between husband and wife - was the cruel destruction of her father, who had suffered strained relations with, if not open hostility from, his son-in-law.

  Wolsey cunningly appointed Surrey as Lord Deputy of Ireland, based in Dublin, on 10 March 1520 to remove him from the court while the jaws of his subtle trap snapped shut on Buckingham, who had done little to hide his unvarnished contempt for the self-made and ambitious minister.30 He once emptied the basin of water he was holding for Henry VIII over Wolsey’s feet as the Cardinal was washing his hands in it.31 Like the Howards, he was scornful of the young men now surrounding Henry at court and complained that the king would ‘give his fees, offices and rewards rather to boys than to noblemen’.32 Moreover, Buckingham’s claims of royal descent made him an ever-present latent but dangerous threat to the Tudor throne,33 and his opposition to a new alliance with France was a tiresome political obstacle. For his part, Henry had grown jealous of the former royal favourite’s huge land holdings, and now thoroughly mistrusted his loyalty.

  In October 1520, Buckingham told his chancellor Robert Gilbert that he had been such a sinner, he was sure that he lacked grace. While he may have hoped for forgiveness from his Maker, he was to receive no mercy from Henry.

  Wolsey’s poisonous gossip against the duke quickly bore fruit: on 8 April 1521, Buckingham was summoned to London from his estates in Thornbury in Gloucestershire and was arrested by Sir Henry Marnay, the captain of the guard, with on
e hundred halberdiers, at Hay Wharf at the end of his journey by barge down the Thames. He was quickly committed to the Tower.

  The charges against him were patently trumped up.

  Henry wanted to fire a warning shot across the overwhelming pride and majesty of his nobles, so cynically he appointed the second Duke of Norfolk as Lord High Steward to preside over Buckingham’s trial. The duke was truly aghast at this unwanted role: despite the bitter enmity between his son and his father-in-law, he fully endorsed Buckingham’s views on many political issues and enjoyed a friendship that stretched back almost three decades. As was the norm in Henry VIII’s reign, the outcome of the trial, on 13 May before Norfolk and seventeen peers in Westminster Hall, was decided long before Buckingham was ever called into court, accused of high treason.34

  The charges, covering the period 1511-20, alleged that he had listened to prophecies forecasting both the king’s imminent death and his own succession to the throne of England. Not wishing to leave anything to the hand of Fate, he had also planned to assassinate Henry by stabbing him with his dagger as he knelt before him. When the indictment was read, Buckingham snapped: ‘It is false and untrue and [was] conspired and forged to bring me to my death.’ Norfolk told him:The king our sovereign has commanded that you shall have his laws ministered with favour and right to you. Wherefore, if you have anything to say, you shall be heard.35

  He must have known he spoke with a lie on his lips.

  Wolsey had lined up Buckingham’s chancellor, Gilbert,36 his chaplain, John Delacourt, and his sacked surveyor, Charles Knyvett, as witnesses against their master. But the duke’s downfall was caused by his spiritual adviser, Matthew Hopkins, a monk from the Carthusian priory at Hinton, Somerset, and vicar of the conventual church there, who was famous locally for his cryptic prophecies. He was the source of the damaging, fateful talk of a Stafford coup d’état37 against the crown. Under strict instructions, Norfolk refused permission for the prisoner to cross-examine any of the witnesses ranged against him. Frustrated, Buckingham lashed out like a wounded animal against his enemies. ‘Of all men’, he said, ‘Surrey hated him the most and had hurt him most to the king’s majesty.’

  Inevitably, despite his angry, blustering protestations of innocence, he was found guilty.38 Beginning with the Duke of Suffolk, each of his peers was asked by Norfolk: ‘What say you of Sir Edward, Duke of Buckingham, touching these high treasons?’ Each one placed his right hand on his breast and answered: ‘I say that he is guilty.’ Seventeen times Norfolk scribbled, in his cramped handwriting, each peer’s verdict on a small piece of parchment: Dicit quod est culpabilis - ‘Found guilty and is culpable.’

  Buckingham was brought to the bar to hear sentence. For long, agonising moments, Norfolk sat silent, chafing and sweating profusely. He recovered himself, bowed to the court, and stared hard at the prisoner. There was another long pause. Then he declared: ‘Sir Edward, you have heard how you are indicted of high treason. You pleaded not guilty, putting yourself to the judgement of your peers, [who] have found you guilty.’ Norfolk suddenly burst into a torrent of uncontrollable tears and it was some time before he could compose himself to pronounce falteringly the dreadful, final words of the sentence of death for a traitor.39

  On the following Friday morning, 17 May, between eleven and noon, Buckingham was escorted out of the Tower by the Sheriffs of London, Sir John Skevington and John Kyme, and led to the public scaffold on Tower Hill. Three blows of the axe were necessary to sever his head from his body. He was forty-three years old and had followed his father’s example in being executed for high treason. Six poor friars, shouldering a rough wooden coffin, picked up the corpse and carried it to the church of Austin Friars for its burial.

  As befits all traitors, Buckingham was attainted and his goods and lands confiscated by the crown under Act of Parliament dated 31 July 1523.40 Norfolk received his due reward for services rendered to the crown with the grant of a number of manors from the duke’s forfeitures. He clearly enjoyed no sense of irony.

  Thomas, Earl of Surrey, had been with his wife and family in Dublin, suffering from intermittent and distressing bouts of dysentery. Elizabeth had earlier provided him with more children. First came Mary, delivered in 1519 in one of their East Anglian homes; Charles, who died in infancy, and finally Thomas junior - the all-important spare heir - who was born around 1520, when the marriage was already looking shaky because of Surrey’s rows with Buckingham. There was also a fifth child, who must have died very young.41 Surrey was finally recalled to London at the end of 1521 after eighteen months of fruitless, frustrating service in Ireland, trying to separate the warring Irish power blocs.42

  There was, however, no respite in his demanding service to the crown. Following his command of a punitive raid through northern France, launched from Calais in the autumn of 1522, he was made Warden-General of the Scottish Marches. Then, on 26 February 1523, he became Lieutenant General of the English army against Scotland, and this post took the Surreys north, away from the comforts of their estates, with more lengthy periods apart.43

  The poet John Skelton44 dedicated his lengthy and rather self-congratulatory poem A Goodly Garland or Chaplet of Laurel, completed at the end of 1523, to the Countess of Surrey who was then living at the castle of Sheriff Hutton while her husband campaigned on the Scottish borders.45 Skelton was always welcome at Sheriff Hutton, possibly because of his cheeky and pointed criticism of Wolsey after 151846 although he happily wrote in praise of Surrey - ‘our strong captain’ - in a poem specially commissioned by the Cardinal.47 In the Garland poem, he describes how an allegorical figure named ‘Occupation’ led him up a winding stair into the presence of the countess, who was sitting in splendour surrounded by ten of the ladies of her household:She brought me to a goodly chamber of estate

  Where the noble Countess of Surrey in a chair

  Sat honourably, to whom did repair

  A bevy of ladies with all reverence

  ‘Sit down, fair ladies and do your diligence

  Come forth gentleman, I pray you,’ she said.

  ‘I have contrived for you a goodly work

  And who can work best now shall be assigned

  A crown of laurel with leaves light and dark

  I have devised for Skelton my clerk

  For to his service I have such regard

  That of a bounty we will him reward.’

  Her attendants included several whose names indicate their Norfolk origins, the daughters of local gentry firmly hitched to the Howards’ noble coat-tails. The others were kith and kin - Lady Elizabeth, one of the daughters of the second Duke of Norfolk by his second wife, Agnes Tylney,48 and Lady Anne Dacre, stepdaughter of the same duke by his first wife, Elizabeth Tylney, the widow of Sir Humphrey Bourchier.49 Another figure in this cosy domestic scene, set among the richly woven tapestries and carpets, was the ‘little lady’ Mirriel, or Muriel, possibly another daughter of the countess, who does not appear in the complex Howard genealogy50 but may be her lost fifth child and named after Surrey’s sister.

  Life for the Countess of Surrey was later to become far less comfortable, however.

  Norfolk remained bruised and shaken by the cruelty and injustice of Buckingham’s trial. He was now an old man5I and had become weary of the intrigues and conspiracies surrounding his vibrant young monarch. He decided, after so many vicissitudes in a lifetime of service to so many kings, that it was time to retire gracefully from the hubbub of life at court. On 4 December 1522, he resigned as Lord High Treasurer in favour of his son, and gave up all other duties save that of Earl Marshal. The last time he met Henry was early the following year, ‘when he had a short and apparently affectionate conversation’ with the king.52 After attending the opening of Parliament in May 1523, Norfolk retreated to the rural calm of his castle at Framlingham in Suffolk for the last months of his eventful life. A visit to the Surreys’ home at nearby Tendring Hall is recorded on 5 and 6 August. The earl was, predictably, away in the north, but
Elizabeth served up a tasty meal of mutton, beef, chicken, rabbits, partridge and venison pasties for her visitor.53

  Norfolk died at Framlingham on 21 May 1524, aged eighty-one, and the dukedom passed immediately to the Earl of Surrey, who, at fifty-one, became the third Duke of Norfolk54 and one of the richest men in the realm, with an annual income of more than £4,000, or nearly £2 million at 2009 prices.

  The funeral spectacular that followed befitted a nobleman who saw himself as a prince - indeed, his will, signed on 31 May 1520, employed the royal plural throughout: ‘We, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk...’55 Even in death - that great leveller - the Howard preoccupation with rank, status and prestige had to be properly and lavishly observed. The new duke was away on the king’s business, again commanding English troops on the Scottish borders, so his half-brother, Lord William Howard, was appointed his deputy as chief mourner for the lengthy obsequies, planned in detail by the duke before his death. The public rooms at Framlingham Castle were heavily draped with black cloth and his coffin lay in state for a month before the altar of the chapel there ‘which his grace kept prince-like for he had great pleasure in the service of God’.56 Every day, three solemn Masses were said, attended by nineteen mourners kneeling about the wooden hearse,57 which was festooned with candles and heraldic shields and badges. During the stillness of the night, the corpse was watched over by twelve gentlemen, twelve yeomen, two gentlemen ushers and two yeoman ushers from the Howard household.