John Dudley ‘is a mysterious figure, he has left no papers, and has eluded the biographer. Lawrence Humprey summed him up as “a man truly of a stout and haughty courage, and in war most valiant ; but to much raging with ambition” The source of his dominance over his fellow councillors has never been explained, but undoubtedly he had great political ability. Edwardian history has been written too glibly in terms of the contrast between the ‘good’ Duke of Somerset and the ‘evil’ Duke of Northumberland. His rule was dogged by misfortune and ended in failure, but that was not entirely his fault.’

 John was the eldest of Edmund Dudley’s sons. Jerome, Oliver, William, (later, The Bishop of Durham) and Andrew Dudley were his brothers. He married in 1520 to Jane Guilford, who was to be the mother of his children. The Lady Jane (Guilford)/Dudley was the daughter of Sir Richard Guilford, John's own adoptive father who had taken him in after the execution of his (John’s) own father. Jane’s father had also been a partner in many of Edmund’s ‘profitable outrages.’ Guilford had adopted John when the boy was nine and within two years he was able to persuade King Henry to repeal the attainder on Edmund’s family. In order to prosper under his new-found liberty, as a young man he took part in a campaign in France under the King’s brother in law, Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk and won a knighthood on the field for gallantry. He was then to retire into the country and raise a family.

 It was at about the time of the birth of his fifth son, Robert in 1532/3 that Sir John Dudley was appointed to be the Master of the Armoury in the Tower of London. This position absolved the name of Dudley up to that point such was the trust that the King had placed upon him with this authority. To it and in the name of the King he brought the reputation of being the ablest Commander both by land and sea that had then been of service to the Tudor’s. Such was his enterprise that by 1542 he had been raised to the Peerage, with the title (derived from his mother), Viscount DeLisle and made Warden of the Scottish Marches and Lord Admiral for life. Exercising his new prerogative he dispatched the French from the English Channel and stormed Boulogne, for which he was to become a Knight of the Garter. In 1544 he was to be admitted as a member of the Privy Council, and by 1547, the year of the King’s death, Lieutenant~General of all His Majestie’s armed forces.

 Upon the death of Henry VIIIth, Lord Hertford, brother of Jane Seymore, (the mother of Henry’s only son, herself having died in childbirth in 1537) and therefore the King’s ‘brother in law’ departed from London to bring counsel to Prince Edward that he, although but a boy aged nine was to be the next King. Shortly before the coronation Hertford was named as the Duke of Somerset and more significantly, Lord Protector of the Realm. Edward Seymore was thus for a short while to hold the most influential position of the Court, but like so many men who have fallen into a position of power by virtue of their hereditary position Somerset was soon to reveal he did not have the aptitude required for such High Office. Further, to compound his position he had taken liberties beyond the remit granted him under Henry’s Will. The late King had appointed sixteen Regents to govern the Kingdom during his sons minority, Sir John was amongst them, but the child King’s uncle had disregarded this fact and elected himself sole Protector Dudley, it seems had for his part named his own terms for accepting Seymore’s Protectorate and had done well into the bargain. He sought and was duly granted the right to bare the arms of the Earls of Warwick, with the distinctive badge of the Bear and the Ragged Staff which had been unseen since the passing over.

 As for Somerset : ‘once in Office the Duke showed that he could devise but not execute, order but not ingratiate (and) command but not delegate. Insensitive to others and unaware of deficiencies in himself, his behaviour deteriorated into unwarranted arrogance.’ He seems to have considered his younger brother Thomas to have been a significant enough threat to his own position to have him imprisoned and executed for trumped up charges of Treason. It may have well served the two brothers mutual ambitions for the control of the Throne had they worked together, whereupon they indeed would have been most formidable, as it transpired their mutual avarice and greed worked against them and before long they were both to face the same end.

 Unlike Oliver Cromwell, who was later to champion the rights of the poor, Dudley saw in the disquiet of the peasantry an opportunity to advance his own position. The liberties of the common man were being drastically eroded by the continuing enclosure of common lands in East Anglia and in every way but for his timing Jack Kett stood alone as the defender of the people. Kett and his supporters could not have foreseen Warwick’s initiative unfolding at their expense, for it has been argued that Sir John Dudley used such local disturbances to create the basis for his own standing army. He encouraged his trusted associates to recruit ‘bands’ of men ~at ~arms, paid for out of the Royal subsidy. By further giving permanence to these ‘temporary’ commissions he originated a system through which the Lord Lieutenant supplanted the sheriff as the controller of the armed forces of the Shires. The Government however was compelled for lack of finance to dissolve these mercenary bands in 1552, and so no really effective striking force was in place for the crisis when it happened on the sudden and premature death of the young Prince Edward the following year.

 Kett owned his own land and was by trade a successful Tanner. As reports of his having pulled down his own fences spread he rapidly gained popular support for his actions and others sympathetic to his argument rallied to his cause. With a force of some 12,000 men behind him he soon dominated Norwich and with a council of ‘governors’ established a well maintained, orderly camp on Mousehold Heath. It was concluded here ‘that all bondsmen may be made free, for God made all men free with his precious blood shedding’, God, it seems, had not finished in this task, and Dudley was to be his instrument for the undertaking.

 Kett’s rebellion has been compared with the Peasants war in Germany of 1524, but with personal serfdom in England less of a consideration it was more a case that such liberty was dependant on the better nature of the ‘good Duke’, who was thought to have been restrained by the coercion of his ‘evil councillors.’

 To his credit Somerset, the ‘good Duke’ seems to have offered a Royal pardon on at least three occasions, all of which were refused, obviously being a less than satisfactory response to the people’s immediate concerns, ‘unlawful assembly’ being the only crime under consideration. A number of proclamations followed with local sheriff’s ordered to subdue such gatherings and an initial attempt to occupy Norwich on the 30th of July was unsuccessful.

 With his peasant army Jack Kett set out to take his grievances to London striking fear into the landed Gentry, whose whole established pattern of social order was seen to be threatened. Panic stricken by these events they then called upon the new Earl of Warwick, who was regarded as “The best man of warre in the realm” to deliver them from the peasants revolt. His response came in the form of a massacre, disguised by his own theatrical chivalry at Dussindale in Norfolk, where some 3000 of Kett’s poorly armed supporters were slain. This singular event, more than all his combined cunning and ingenuity was to cast a lengthy shadow upon his name, perhaps later denying him the popular support, that had he been able muster, would have given his son an endorsement to maintain the Tudor Throne. Although in its immediacy the main political result discredited Somerset and exalted Warwick. Only however in times of the greatest upheaval is the popular consent of the masses given any sway, and this was not such an occasion, his brutal oppression of Kett’s revolt made him an hero at the Court with a grateful nation in his hands.

 Lord Sir John Lisle had done well for himself and family, he was probably looking forward to withdrawing gradually from the position of supreme power he had achieved since his fathers unjust execution. History has already had several coats of ‘whitewash’ lavished upon it, and it is not an exclusive failing of John Dudley, that the rich condemn the poor. That Bishop Latimer was condemned for preaching that the rich had obligations toward those in poverty should be understood as an indictment of all the wretched Aristocracy and not a case of Ministerial Responsibility. By the end of 1549 most of the King’s Council, including Cranmer, Arundel, Paulet and Cecil were united behind Dudley, who chance happened to favour with the greatest ambition, will and determination to lead the elected who were ready to overthrow Somerset. Dudley had been a protege first of Cardinal Wolsey and then Thomas Cromwell who both recognised his extraordinary abilities. It has also been noted that during this period their were considerably fewer executions on the grounds of religious intolerance and for a while England became a refuge for the persecuted from many lands.

Initially Somerset had been seen as an acceptable Lord Protector to the population at large, it was however with the sanctioning of his brothers execution that the nation had been shocked, this compounded by his indecisiveness when it mattered led to his ultimate demise. It was John Dudley who took the initiative in ousting the Duke, in leading the Palace rebellion against Somerset in 1552 and in the light of these facts history has been most unforgiving and resentful of the Dudley family and their efforts to retain the independence that King Henry VIIIth carved out for this nation. It is often overstated, the selfish ambitions Nothumberland himself possessed, once he succeeded Somerset as Lord Protector, it was after all the weakness of Dudley’s Protectorate, being based upon the education of a sick and week boy that was his later undoing, rather that his own said inherent autocracy, seen against the backdrop of his predecessors fallibility, and the generally accepted oppression of the impoverished. 1549~52 were years that saw particularly bad harvests in the countryside, the principal cause being the bad weather that was to be a feature of that decade, long into the reign of Mary. Further, a continuing debasement of the nations currency encouraged spending and subsequent inflation. Even the boom of the 1540’s in the cloth industry had collapsed, and facing these problems Dudley seems to have acted rather less draconian than history cares to remember. By 1549 the ‘Sheep Tax’ had been revoked, as was the ‘enclosures commission’. Northumberland also presided over an Act that was introduced to protect arable farming in 1552. Their was in addition an Act introduced against ‘forestallers’ (described by Davies as ‘dealers who in modern times cornered the market in some vital commodity’). These actions do not give one the impression of the workings of a ruthless dictator. In fact even ‘usury’, the lending of money at an interest, a method of business that had always been considered something of a sin in the eyes of Edwardian preachers, although it had been allowed, subject to conditions in 1545 was now once more prohibited ‘in language that Latimer doubtless approved ~ Usurers were “greedy, uncharitable and covertous persons”, a prime cause of the “terrible threatening of God s wrath and vengeance that justly hangeth over the Realm.” The extreme Law of 1547 on vagabonds was repealed in 1549 and in 1552 something like a compulsory poor rate was introduced.’ 1

An understanding into Sir John’s conspicuous sway over the ‘unloved and unloving boy’ King Edward VI, is revealed in the personal journal that the young Prince kept.2 He recorded his own uncle’s death without remorse, Warwick having convinced Edward Tudor of conspiracies against the Throne was given the position of the most powerful statesman in the realm ‘The Duke of Somerset had his head cut off apon Tower Hill, between Eight and Nine O’clock in the morning.’ It was about this period in Dudley’s rule that he began to formulate proposals for Protestant ascendancy for himself and the young King. It has been observed that as such this may indicate, although he clearly had the motive, he had in all probability not intended such an incredable scheme for control of the Throne as has been ascribed to his clearly ingenious mind. It was with the unprecedented occasion in 1551 whereby he had himself created Duke of Northumberland, the first subject unconnected with Royal blood to hold a Ducal title that he hastened the broadening array of his enimies from the realms of the poor to the general Aristocracy, whom he had been treating with an equal contempt in restraining the Lords of the Council to “wait upon him daily at his house to learn his pleasure” for which they were to hold his family upstarts in perpetuity.

Edward VI, at the age of 15 was very intelligent, determined and greatly Protestant, he also knew that he was dying of Consumption/ Tuberculosis of the lung. He was also alarmed at the prospect of being succeeded by Mary, who was Heir to the Throne under the terms of Henry VIIIths Will, it was therefore and exclusively under the guidance of Sir John Dudley that ‘He’ worked out a plan to exclude her and leave the crown to the Lady Jane Grey, the grand daughter of Henry's sister Mary. Although under the provisions of the late King’s Will confirmed in 1546 the Lady Jane was just third in line after Henry’s daughters Mary and Elizabeth. No account being given of Henry’s other more senior sister Margaret.

The Act of Parliament of 1543 assuring the King’s succession stated that if Edward failed to produce a direct Heir the crown was to pass directly to Mary Tudor, and if she left no children Elizabeth would inherit the Throne, yet this was undertaken without formally legitimising these daughters prior to the Will and its Statute, which absolved them, having otherwise been disallowed by virtue of Henry’s marital conflicts with the Authority in Rome. He further attempted to ensure a continuance of the Protestant Tudor Throne by providing that the succession should, in the event of his own children’s demise fall to the descendants of his young sister Mary, who had three daughters by her marriage to Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk. These arrangements carefully bypassing his eldest sister, and therefore the more senior branch of that family. The reason being that Margaret had married in 1502 to King James IV of Scotland, whose claim in the right of her daughter Mary Queen of Scot’s was notably stronger than that of the Suffolk line.

In May of 1553, Edward confronted his other Councillors with a document which he had drawn up bequeathing the Throne to Jane Grey, and after her to her sisters. The document stated that his two half sisters Mary and Elizabeth were to be excluded because they were both illegitimate as Henry’s marriages to Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boylin had been declared void by the Ecclesiastical courts, and further because of what was said, even then to be an ancient custom in England that the King could not be succeeded by relatives of the half~blood.

Edward’s Councillors and judges thought that as it contravened the Will of His father Henry VIII, which although itself a travesty of true hereditary principal had been given full force of law by the provisions of an Act of Parliament. When the Lawyers were instructed to effect a Will in the manner of a ‘device’ they argued that even to draw up such a document would amount to treason, but were talked into agreement by Northumberland and comforted with the thought that obedience to a living King could hardly be considered treason by Edward who was less frightened by his fathers shadow, in his ‘sickbed’. The document was completed and signed by the 21st of June by over one hundred peers, including councillors Lords, Archbishops, Bishops
and Sheriffs. Cecil, who harboured some reluctance was amongst this group, but declared later that his was only the action of a witness.

It was in the summer of 1553 within a few months of his Sixteenth birthday, when by the instruction of Northumberland Edward would have been able to assume the Throne in his own right, that the boy began clearly and distressingly to fall victim to the tuberculosis that had overshadowed his youth. By this time Dudley had made himself quite unpopular, especially with the Catholics, religious moderates and the mass of humble Englishmen, who then much like today hadn’t a clue what was going on behind ‘closed doors’. His ultimate distinction has been in traditionally having been ranked second only to Richard III amongst the Arch~villains of English history. Nonetheless had Dudley realy been slowly poisoning the boy, as has been often stated, he would also certainly be foreshortening his own tenure of authority, this then does not seem likely, rather one would suspect that Dudley was wholly counting on Edwards assumption of the Throne.

Dudley, like his father was a man misunderstood by his contemporaries, who were jealous of his position and later condemned by historians obligingly eager to uphold the status quo. Dudley was a man in control of the realm, not a dictator as is clear upon close examination, many of his opponents looked to the day when the King would come of age and be able to rule in his own right, clearly this too Dudley desired, the day to day work of maintaining the Administration he had taken from Somerset was beginning to show on his health, but for whatever incidental reasons, it was he that had brought the bill into Parliament that advanced the King’s ‘majority’ from eighteen to sixteen, thus speeding along the boy’s rightful succession.

No scandal can ever be said to have attached itself to Sir John’s private life, itself remarkable. Neither was he known to drink, gamble or womanise, with his wife and children always behaving affectionate and loyal, united in a common interest, in an harmonious household, its peace uninterrupted by dissension who better to rule in those corrupt times! In the words of Sir Richard Moryson Dudley ‘had such a head that he seldom went about anything but he had three or four purposes beforehand’. Dudley’s England was exactly the kind of Protestant State that the young King wished it to be and if it was necessary to rule awhile, as it is often said without reference to Parliament or Council, a despot under Royal mandate no more adapted a man could be found for the job.

Northumberland had already dissolved Parliament, which had sat for barely a month, and raised a considerable army to his cause, his preparations were flawed only in his failing to capture Mary, by means of the deception history infers he had planned for her. He had gained control of the Tower armoury and treasures and sent orders to close the ports, all that was required to complete his undertaking was then for his son to escort Mary who was already en~route to visit the dying boy. Robert was intending to hasten her along with news that her half brother had deteriorated but the audacious manoeuvrings failed. Mary had been warned and evaded capitulation or capture with the support of the Lords Howard, Dukes of Norfolk who were bitter rivals of Lord Sir John.
Rashly seizing King’s Lynn for Northumberland’s party, Robert Dudley had Lady Jane proclaimed ‘Queen’ in the towns market place, but was forced to retreat to Bury St. Edmunds, unable to take Mary under escort. This proved to be a very careless and costly failure, in a stroke dooming the ploy. Regardless, the Lady Jane was now being treated as the new Queen in London and it was at her insistence, that Northumberland follow up and lead the force against Mary. Robert’s father could not hope to match numbers with Mary, who had strengthened her position at Framlingham, itself then a mighty fortress with a curtain wall 40 Foot in length and eight feet thick, intersected by thirteen great towers and enclosing the elegant brick built lodge put up lately by the Duke of Norfolk. Further to this Lady Jane was to decline the revision made by Edward, of the late King Henry’s will and Northumberland’s claim, hating the political marriage she considered forced upon herself, with the consent of her parents, insisting the matter be referred to Parliament!

Northumberland’s repression of the Kett uprising now worked against him, and it should serve as a stern lesson that one cannot dismiss the grievances of the people with impunity. The Dudley’s were loathed in the Eastern Counties, and this Mary found to work in her favour. Northumberland’s 2000 troop eventually rose to 5000 but Marie’s supporters were estimated at a minimum of fifteen thousand and the advantage of growing popular consent was swinging rapidly in her favour.

Shortly after, Northumberland’s efforts were challenged and he was out manoeuvred by popular sentiment for the ‘rightful claim’ of Margaret Tudor’s Niece Mary. Lady Jane’s father, the Duke of Suffolk proclaimed at the gates of the Tower that Mary was the rightful Queen. In an effort to preserve himself he then went on to explain this to his daughter who was relived to hear of the good news and hopeful she could go back home. Sadly for her she was never to leave the Tower, and took the full consequence for the misdeeds she had been put up to by her Dudley in~law’s. “I much more willingly put them off than I put them on” was her reply to her father in
reference to the Robes of State, she concluded that it was ‘out of obedience to you, and my mother,’ and “I have grievously sinned. Now I willingly relinquish the Crown” A hapless and naive victim of politically dangerous times. Jane was however obliged to move out of the Royal apartments and installed for her duration in the Lieutenants lodgings. Guilford was also relocated and moved to the Beauchamp Tower. Did he carve his wife’s name ‘Jane’ as legend suggests where the famous Tower ‘graphiti’ still remains?, for if so, as it has been said, it does follow that he clearly was capable of ‘warm feelings’, and may not have been so spoiled, a callous youth as the reactionary historian has want to imply. It is also as a consequence of the Dudley ‘conspiracies’, the condemned Guilford’s brothers, Lords Ambrose and Robert Dudley escaped the executioners axe, but were not sparred the lingering charges of treason, for although these were dropped they were never completely forgotten!

On the third day of August, Mary Tudor entered the Tower of London amidst scenes of wild rejoicing to usher in what has been described as one of the single most disastrous reigns in the history of England, and one totally devoid of any positive achievement. It soon became clear that the Queen had indeed inherited from her mother, Katherine of Aragorn two great passions; Spain and the Roman Catholic faith when she tried to compel them both onto her subjects. Her marriage to Philip of Spain was taken with effrontery by a majority of her countrymen and the religious tyranny that she instigated has been compared in many respects to the Spanish Inquisition. She had sanctioned the burning of over 300 Protestant martyrs. On the 16th of November Jane and her husband, along with his brothers Ambrose and Henry were led forth to their trail at the Guildhall. With them went Thomas Cranmer, accused of heresy, in a foregone conclusion they were all condemned, and returned to their quarters, the Dudley’s crime was treason. No date had been set for their executions which has led to the speculation that they may have been eventually sparred, but for the events, in which they had no part, that were beginning to manifest particularly in Kent.

The Lady Jane and Guilford Dudley might well have survived the execution that was ultimately their fate but for the rebellion that sprung up from Kent, led by Sir Thomas Wyatt in an ill conceived attempt to regain the throne for the Protestant cause. Wyatt’s invasion of London might be seen as an early victory in the struggle for democratisation over monarchy, his men sending the Queen’s guard into a desperate retreat. Her Ministers urged her to save herself in the same manner, but she was having none of it and brought to the fore her Tudor flair and defiance
bringing the people of London over to her cause. Whilst Wyatt had been keeping the Londoners busy, Suffolk, Jane’s forgiven father had been whipping up simultaneous rising’s in Leicester, the Midlands and the West Country, and for this the imprisoned pretenders were duly beheaded. They were far from alone in this fate with literally hundred purged in their wake, the prisons and churches overflowed with the condemned, gallows springing up everywhere.