Assassination: The Royal Family's 1000-Year Curse (24 page)

Apparently, Henry VIII had been so concerned to ensure a successful birth after all the disappointments that he ordered the physicians to deliver Jane’s baby by Caesarean section. It resulted in the death of Queen Jane and the survival of a baby who became a sickly child.

In his will, Henry established a Regency Council of sixteen men to govern the country during his son’s minority. But when Edward succeeded to the throne at the age of nine, his uncle, Edward Seymour, the brother of Queen Jane, took control and was appointed Lord Protector by the Council. He immediately granted himself the title of Duke of Somerset, and then he began the construction of his own palace in London: Somerset House.

It had been Henry’s wish that Prince Edward should marry Mary Queen of Scots, so uniting England and Scotland. However, Mary’s mother, the French Mary of Guise, would not agree to the marriage. In response, Somerset marched into Scotland with an army, and he defeated the Scots at the Battle of Pinkie, killing over 10,000 of the enemy. It did not help, because Mary Queen of Scots was smuggled out of the country and taken to France where she was betrothed to the Dauphin, whom she later married.

With his foreign policy in ruins, Somerset dealt with religious matters at home. It was in this reign that England became a Protestant country, adopting the beliefs of followers of the reaction against Catholic doctrines and practices, although much of the population remained Catholic. Somerset was a strident Protestant, keen to make compulsory changes in observance. The Mass, regarded by Protestants as idolatry, was prohibited, as was the use of Latin in churches. Chantries where Masses were said for the dead on receipt of payment were closed down, and their funds were confiscated. Much of the seized money was used to fund universities and to establish schools, and that is why there are now so many King Edward VI schools in England.

Only 13 years old, Edward joined the attack on Catholics, even summoning his 34-year-old half-sister Mary to court so that he could order her to cease Catholic observance. Hearing of this, Mary’s cousin, King Charles V of Spain, threatened war, so the Council backed down and allowed Mary to continue attending Mass in private. When the Council overruled Edward, he burst into tears.

Then, Somerset’s over-ambitious brother, Thomas, started to cause trouble. Six months after Henry VIII died, Thomas Seymour had married the King’s widow, Catherine Parr, who had become one of the wealthiest women in the country. Within a year, Catherine died in childbirth, and Thomas inherited her entire estate. Now a rich man and Lord High Admiral, Thomas set his eyes on Princess Elizabeth. Maybe he thought that with Princess Mary being a Catholic, Elizabeth was only one step from the throne.

On 16th January 1549, Thomas Seymour, accompanied by two servants, travelled to Hampton Court Palace, arriving in the dead of night. Armed with pistols, they climbed over a wall and made their way across the Privy Garden. They broke open a door, and then crept along the corridors and up the staircases. Finding the King’s living quarters, they headed straight for Edward’s bedroom. All was dark, there was no one about. Perhaps the guards were absent, perhaps they were asleep. Seymour reached for the handle of the bedroom door. It was unlocked. Slowly and quietly, Seymour opened the door. It all seemed too easy.

Unluckily for Seymour, Edward had pet spaniels. One of the dogs stirred. It raced forward to challenge the intruders. Not recognising Thomas, the dog began to bark incessantly. Next, the dog made for Seymour’s leg. The spaniel would not be shaken off, nor would it be silent. Panic took over as Seymour grasped his pistol and shot the dog. Guards came running and Seymour was arrested.

Seymour said that he had come to protect the King from a plot. It was unconvincing, and he was accused of attempting to kidnap the King. But why kidnap him? Certainly not for ransom. If it was to force some kind of deal, it was bound to end in Thomas’s execution. Probably he wanted to kidnap and then kill Edward so that his prospective bride, Elizabeth, would become queen and he would become king.

Very likely the yapping dog thwarted the murder of the King. Thomas Seymour was convicted of treason and executed. His powerful brother could not save him.

Religious change accelerated. Archbishop Cranmer produced a new compulsory prayer book, and paintings, stained glass windows and statues in churches were destroyed, only English could be used in prayer, and priests were allowed to marry.

In London, the changes were readily accepted. Elsewhere people were bemused; why was all this was being done, what did it mean? Worst of all was the situation in Devon and Cornwall. People there complained that they could not understand church services in English as most of them spoke only Cornish. In 1549, they took up arms, demanding the return of Latin. However, there would be no exceptions. Somerset sent an army to the West Country, and the slaughter of thousands followed by multiple hangings subdued the uprising.

Next there was trouble in East Anglia. This had nothing to do with religion. The problem was that landlords were enclosing their lands, evicting tenant farmers and replacing corn with sheep, and sheep needed fewer workers than crops. In July 1549, a rebel force seized Norwich, the country’s second largest town. Somerset was sympathetic to their plight. He prohibited further enclosures and taxed the ownership of sheep. Having won concessions, the rebels wanted more.

The Council treated Somerset’s leniency as weakness. They empowered John Dudley Earl of Warwick to deal with the rebellion. He set out for Norwich with an army of mainly foreign mercenaries, and they killed thousands of the rebels, hanging their leaders.

With the rebellion over, the discredited Somerset was sent to the Tower, and was later executed. Warwick, the new power in the country, gave himself the title of Duke of Northumberland. He then set about acquiring wealth, and he became the most hated man in England. Turning his attention to religion, Northumberland stepped up the rate of Protestant reform, and the new orthodoxy was strictly enforced.

Overall it was a difficult time for the English. The fighting against the Scots and the French went badly, with territory lost. Then the economy collapsed, crippled by the cost of the unsuccessful wars. The country was riven by dissent, hatred and fear.

King Edward’s health had always been poor, and now it deteriorated. In 1552, he contracted smallpox and measles. In itself measles was not life-threatening, but the measles virus suppresses host immunity to tuberculosis (called consumption in those times), and eventually the incessant coughing up of blood started.

Northumberland was desperate. If Edward died, the next in line was his half-sister Mary, a staunch Catholic. Northumberland would be unlikely to escape with his life. He had to find a Protestant successor, preferably one he could control.

Mary Tudor was Henry VIII’s younger sister, and she had a 15-year-old granddaughter, Jane, who was a Protestant. Northumberland quickly arranged for his fifth son, Lord
Guilford Dudley, to marry Jane Grey. Then he instructed King Edward to sign a will (although legally too young to do so) declaring that as his half-sisters were bastards, they were excluded from the succession, and his cousin Frances having waived her rights, her daughter, Lady Jane Grey, was his heir.

Needing more time to further his plans, Northumberland put Edward in the care of an ‘expert’. The arsenic she administered brought temporary relief and enabled Edward to sleep, but it began to poison the King. Edward’s legs and arms swelled, his skin darkened, his fingers and toes became gangrenous, his hair and his nails fell out, and he coughed incessantly. All because his dog had saved him from being murdered.

On 6th July 1554, Edward died in agony. Killed as a consequence of disease inherited from Henry VIII or poisoned by arsenic? Either way, the end could not come too soon.

Why did Northumberland select Jane Grey for Queen? Edward VI had no children, so his siblings were next in line. He was survived by two half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth. Mary was a Catholic; Northumberland could exclude her because she had been declared illegitimate. Elizabeth was a Protestant, but she would not be easy to control; anyway she too had been declared illegitimate, so Northumberland could exclude her as well.

It was therefore necessary to go back one generation to Henry VIII and look for a successor among his siblings who survived infancy and their issue. The only brother, Arthur, had died childless in 1508. Next came Henry’s sisters. The older sister, Margaret, had married King James IV of Scotland. She had died in 1541, so her children were next in line. Three of her sons had died young, the fourth had become King James V of Scotland; but he had died in 1542. Next came his children: a son who died young, and a daughter, Mary Queen of Scots. So, accepting the illegitimacy of Mary and Elizabeth, it was Mary Queen of Scots who was clearly entitled to be queen. But Mary Queen of Scots was a Catholic, was living in France and was betrothed to the Dauphin. The English would never accept the King and Queen of France as their rulers, so it was easy to exclude Mary.

After her husband King James IV had died, Margaret Tudor (Henry’s sister) had married the Earl of Angus, and they had a daughter, Margaret Douglas, who lived at the English court. She was a Catholic, so she was unacceptable to Northumberland. Fortunately for him, Margaret Douglas was also inappropriate for the English because of her misalliances (affairs). First she had a misalliance with Anne Boleyn’s uncle, Lord Thomas Howard. They were both sent to the Tower. Howard was sentenced to death, but died before his execution. Margaret was forgiven, but then she had a misalliance with Howard’s nephew, Sir Charles Howard, the brother of the Queen. Margaret Douglas was dismissed from court. So she could be excluded by Northumberland, particularly as Henry VIII had declared her illegitimate on the spurious grounds that her mother Margaret Tudor’s marriage to the Earl of Angus was unlawful
¹⁸
. The next in line was Margaret Douglas’s son (she had later married the Earl of Lennox), but Henry Lord Darnley was only seven years old and was the son of the leading Catholic Scottish noble, who had sworn to guard the Grand Alliance of Scotland and France against England. So, Darnley could easily be excluded as well.