KINGS CARPENTERS AND HERETICS BY S HOLBOURN PART 12, HENRY DUDLEY A TUDOR HERETIC

Often referred to vaguely as a cousin of Northumberland, Henry Dudley was to continue the private struggle of his family against the tyranny of the Tudor Monarchs through into the reign of ‘Bloody Mary’. Wide dissatisfaction raged across the Country at the changes that came with Marie’s succession, a major concern being about the Spanish marriage to Prince Philip which was held at Winchester Cathedral on Wednesday, the 25th July in 1554. For almost immediately had news of the event spread, ill feelings toward foreigners, and ‘grumblings’ that the queen appeared to care nothing for her own subjects only concerning Herself with Spaniards and bishops proliferated.

Conspirators against Mary ranged from Sir Peter Carew and the Plantagenet Courtney in the West Country, to Sir James Crofts in Herefordshire, and Sir Thomas Wyatt in Kent. Therefore Dudley’s efforts to restore Protestantism were far from an isolated act of vengeance. The Duke of Suffolk had changed his mind about his recantation to Mary and was also active against her in Leicestershire, an act perhaps calculated to redeem his daughters position which having backfired condemned Lady Jane and Guilford Dudley to their execution, although the near victorious rebellion of Wyatt, acting in allegiance with Suffolk was the reason. The chief motivation behind these revolts seems to have been to establish Elizabeth with Courtney on the throne which would have been a perfect if not romantic solution to the legitimate continuance of the usurped and shaky Tudor Dynasty. The chance had been lost however with the nations betrayal of the Lord President John Dudley, who although generally disliked had the authority that none of his replacements seemed to command. Lacking his firm direction all that seems to have been agreed upon was that the four centres of rebellion would rise up on Palm Sunday, but not before Mary got news of the plot and moved on Carew who went into hiding, whilst the others moved their schedule forward.
The times were widely reported as being unseasonably cold, and a rainy summer led to muddy fields where corn failed to ripen. Discontent in general was highly voiced, speculation and uncertainty at the dramatic changes that were happening led hundreds to march on Hampton Court in* demonstration and threaten the liberties of the Spanish Court Mary had assembled, until orders were given to compel them by force to disperse. Mary had for some time been deceiving herself and all who would listen, that she had fallen pregnant, news of the expected consequence of the arrival of an Spanish heir to the English Throne spread rapidly.

Time, as it has a want to do, in such circumstance soon made it obvious to all but the completely deluded that she was not with child, increasing the now commonly placed ridicule laid upon the Royal House. In time it too began to dawn upon Philip, who now saw the real and failing state of Marie’s Court, and began to plan his departure. It is clear that Philips only pleasure in this political marriage was to bring England under the influence of the Imperial Hapsburg Dynasty. He was far from popular anyhow and many of his household had already left the Court and travelled to the Low Countries. Mary received this news badly and began to realise the small part her life and estates represented in the overall duties of the Spanish heir, who was conveniently needed at home.
Thomas Wyatt had sworn to raise an army against the Queen and he was as good as his word. His forces mustered he moved out from Maidstone to Rochester, gathering momentum and followers on the way. The King of France, Henry IInd had been kept informed of the English situation and was waiting with ships to move against Mary, Wyatt probably didn’t know this, his rouge army was said at this point to have been about 3000 strong. Toward the end of January Wyatt and Suffolk were proclaimed traitors, by Marie’s Council for having ‘raised certain evil disposed persons to Her Graces destruction and to advance the Lady Jane and Guilford Dudley’. Shortly after the Duke of Norfolk accepted the task of quashing the Kent rebels. Leading his Troop of Londoners into Kent he came under attack on Rochester bridge, where 500 of the Duke’s men joined Wyatt making it known that they would never ‘be under the rule of proud Spaniards or strangers’! The Royal troop was routed thoroughly and what remained of it’s sizeable group fled leaving behind the guns and the money intended to finance the suppression. With this unexpected outcome the old Duke returned to London with those men that had remained loyal to Mary with ‘their coats torn, all ruined, without arrows or strings to
their bows’.
Having dallied too long in Kent previously and lost the initiative, this great victory convinced Wyatt it was time to move on London, His threat was real enough and should have succeeded, he proceeded to defeat the defences put up by Sir Edward Hastings at Gravesend and advanced to Blackheath when he demanded Hastings to instruct the Queen to surrender Herself and the Tower. Kent being on the south shore of the Thames and the Tower of London on the north Wyatt’s problem was in how to cross the Thames with the cities drawbridge having been raised. Not prepared to concede Mary addressed the crowds that had gathered at the Guildhall and used all her reserves of oratory power to raise those loyal to her to the defence of the city from the Kentish threat, and incredibly given the widespread reports of discontent and deprivation, distrust and torture some 20,000 new recruits were moved to join her. Wyatt’s 7000 strong movement now descended on Southwark to discover that Marie’s supporters had destroyed London Bridge in an attempt to bar his progress. The subsequent decision to move west and occupy the surrey shoreline alarmed and confounded the Royalists north of the Thames and some panic ensued throughout London, it seems no one including Wyatt was sure what the next move might be!

Much can be said in hindsight about the right or wrong move in any event, this may have been one of those decisive moments in our National history, and to his credit Wyatt played it alone, regardless of the virtue of his strategy, he was in command of such a force for the common cause, the likes of which had not been seen in London since the rebellion of Wat Tyler, also from Kent. On the 6th of February Wyatt decided to move further up river to Kingston near where he forded the Thames and turned back toward London marching along it’s northern shore in the early hours of the following morning. His progress was unopposed as far as St James’s Park which was under the defence of a force of cavalry led by the Earl of Pembroke and Sir Humphrey Clinton. A reluctant engagement ensued with Wyatt’s exhausted and hungry devotees pushing their triumphant advance further toward Charring Cross, gunfire could now be heard in Whitehall Palace from an engagement between Wyatt’s soldiers and a troop of Sir John Gaye’s men, a result of which at least 16 of the combatants were killed.
Setting a precedent to be fully realised some years later and after the storming of the Bastille in Paris, at least one of Wyatt’s rebels reached the Court gate at Whitehall and shot an arrow into the Palace precincts. Wyatt had however completely failed in maintaining his rear guard and Pembroke following to his rear found the means to cut him away from the main body of the rebellion and there the crusade ended.

Boldness, determination and visionary courage may have led Sir Thomas Wyatt and his army thus far but he was in the end undermined in that his advance displayedno tactical wisdom what so ever, for although his progress along Fleet Street wasunopposed it was noticed that the houses and other buildings closer to Ludgate were locked up and shuttered, an ominous portent that should have forewarned him of the trap he was entering, particularly in the light of the massive support he had received on his progress into London. At the final showdown his forces devided, he became quickly outnumbered and readily conceded defeat. Thereafter his exhausted but inspired army surrendered, allowing themselves to be taken captive, with the whole matter resolved and immediately upon news of Wyatt’s arrest, the Queen, no doubt convinced that God had finally come to His senses, struck a blow for her cause, and spurred on by her council condemned the rebels to execution as a fitting example as to the result’s of attempted treason.

These events conclusively sealed the fate of the Lady Jane and Guilford Dudley, the previously recalcitrant Suffolk had after all made Jane’s restoration, probably the last thing she herself wanted, a condition of supporting Wyatt. The fact that no Additional militia came down from anywhere to assist Wyatt’s men is a remarkable oversight demonstrating how disorganised the rebels really were. After the event, the Spanish King, Charles Vth wrote to his future daughter in law : ‘let the Queen’s mercy be tempered with a little severity’, he went on to specify that his son, Philip, would not be permitted to go to England until the Lady Jane had been removed. Upon discovering the news of her fate when the death warrant was finally and perhaps reluctantly signed in an attempt to salve the Royal marriage Jane is known to have reported ‘I am ready and glad to end my woeful days’ she addressed her condition to God in prayer as a ‘poor and desolate woman, overwhelmed with miseries vexed with temptations and grievously tormented with the long imprisonment’ It is known she was given the option of a reprieve would she but convert to Roman Catholicism, this she defiantly refused whilst from her rooms in master Partridges house, which looked out over Tower Green, she could see the workmen erecting the scaffolding in readiness for her demise.

It had been the will of King Henry VIIIth and his son, moved as far forward as possible by Northumberland that England retain her independence from the Holy Roman Empire, now that this vision had fallen by the wayside even the very weather conspired against the bitter and cheated daughter that had been disowned as a child by her father, that very King. During the month of September in 1555 England suffered from ‘the greatest rain and floods that ever was seen in England.’ In the fall of these ominous storm clouds men and beast drowned together in the fields, houses were flooded and the subsequent damages compounded the already dire food
shortages that had been a major concern during the summer. If the King was one with the land and the land one with the King as popular tradition supposed, ominous were the years of Marie’s reign indeed. The natural catastrophe to trade and farming was immense and the fiercely inclement weather far from quenching the flames that continued to burn those accused of heresy simply dampened the wretched condemning them to a longer agony at the stake. In October Latimer and Ridley were called upon to recant, and in failing so to do were put to the torch at Oxford. Latimer, whilst chained to the post was recorded to have reassured his companion that they would in their martyrdom ‘light such a candle, by God’s Grace, in England, as I trust
shall never be put out’, although what comfort this was to Ridley, the weather prolonging his torture as he suffered the agony of roasting alive for three quarters of an hour is difficult to assess.

It was now the turn of the Protestants to be seen as the enemies of the Catholic State and initially Marie’s Government was set upon ruthlessly eradicating any desenters to Catholicism as heretics. In time the mood of public opinion strengthened against the continuing conflict, so much so that the Queen was advised that she should have her heretics executed in private, but she was determined to prove that her efforts were providing a general deterrent against those who might wish her to be opposed. Neither was she above imprisoning dissident MP’s in the Tower and dissolving her Parliament when it began to oppose her. Public outcry, such as it was
now began to reach a height as had not been thought imaginable only a couple of years earlier, with many violent demonstrations accompanying them. Catholicism was once again being seen in the light of it’s association with brutal persecution, and the seeds of Elizabeth’s future glory as England’s Queen were sown in the minds of Englishmen.

Henry Dudley, having once been Captain of the Guard at Boulogne had many friends in France and in December 1555 visited Paris, where he was curiously well received by King Henry II, such a welcome being unusual on account of the diplomatic rift that had long existed between the two nations. Although Dudley returned home with only the vaguest of assurances even Pope Paul was ill-disposed toward the English Queen Mary because of her marriage into the powerful Hapsburg family and that same month signed a secret treaty with Henry II against Spanish dominion. The new year (1556) slumped itself upon England, bringing renewed fears of widespread famine. In her lamentably corrupted understanding, this portent assured The Queen that God ‘Himself’ was displeased with her for failing to stomp out heresy, so that she decreed that no more opportunity of making a recantation before the stake was to be allowed, as it lent itself toward leniency and those, she insisted, who showed any sympathy toward condemned heretics were themselves to be arrested. Against this fanatical despot Henry Dudley and his agents moved in January, to conceal stores of ammunition at strategic locations, and also secluded an amount of money totalling fifty thousand pound previously withdrawn and removed
from the Exchequer, (where Dudley was a familiar visitor and had a number of friends), ~ ‘in water by (London) bridge,’ to make ready for an invasion planned to be executed by mercenaries and exiles. The money was to be sent to France where his Protestant exile supporters would follow the initiative through.

In Spain, Charles V crippled with arteriosclerosis abdicated on the 16th of January whereupon Philip and Mary became King and Queen of Spain, which at the time held the Netherlands. King Philip now began to lose interest in the ruinated and dismal Kingdom of England and his wife, it’s Queen, who had become so obsessively religious that she would attend Mass nine times a day, each and every day. Philip had received a letter confirming that given the mood of the English Parliament even down to the people discontent was such that their was scant chance of him also being crowned in England at the same time or in the near future. He had been raised to expect nothing less than absolute rule with his Queen and anything less would be ‘unbecoming to his dignity’ and so made only one brief visit much later to his Majestic wife in England.

Dissatisfaction amongst the peasantry, and at Court towards the policies of the Catholic reign of the triumphant Mary was now so great that it’s measure put any former dislike of Lord President Dudley into the shade. It was Henry Dudley that now took the initiative, whilst greater noblemen trembled, Dudley was abroad organising a widespread and sophisticated rebellion. Amongst his agents was the courtier and M.P. Henry Peckham, the son of no less a person than Sir Edward Peckham, then Master of the Tower Mint and a member of the Royal Council. Henry Peckham was detected in the plan to obtain funds by robbing the Exchequer and he soon found himself a prisoner in the building which he must have visited often enough on former occasions. In July of 1555 he and his assistants were ‘hanged on the gallows of Tower Hill for treason against the queen. . .and after cut down, beheaded and their bodies carried unto London Bridge and there set up and their bodies buried at Allhallows, Barking.’ It appears that once revealed the plot dissolved and Henry Dudley remained at large in France, his great scheme undermined by careless talk and too unwieldy an organisation.

In the Nineteenth Century the question of the Sidney’s legal claim over the Dudley Estates was raised when Sir John Shelly~Sidney laid claim to the titles of De L’isle and Dudley, to which he clearly would have had no claim, had the first Robert Dudley been honest and forthright about his sons origins. Alison Weir reveals that the House of Lords duly investigated the matter, concluding that Sir John Shelley had not in fact succeeded in establishing his right to the Barony, on the grounds that the marriage of Robert Dudley’s parents had indeed been legitimate and authentic. Leycester had preferred to pretend otherwise, and although he appears to have been fond of his son, never until his death acknowledged his legitimacy.

In the days of Leycester’s third marriage, the father of Lettice Knollys, Sir Francis, in fact the whole family, were not keen to see their daughter as casually abandoned as was the young Robert Dudley's mother Douglas Sheffield, as Dudley had sought for this third marriage also to be performed in secret. Robert Dudley’s new mother in law was born Lady Katherine, the daughter of Mary Boleyn, by her first husband Sir William Carey, and therefore a cousin of the Queen Elizabeth. The Lady Katherine being married to Sir Francis Knollys. With Lord Robert Dudley’s third marriage, he became the stepfather of Robert Devereaux, the 2nd Earl of Essex, Lettice’s son by her first marriage to the first Earl who had died in Ireland on her Majestie’s Service when Devereaux was but nine years of age.

The year following Mary ‘Queen of Scot’s’ execution, being 1588 saw England faced with the threat of the Spanish Armada. Leycester was the Commander in Chief of the Home Forces. He had endured a strenuous summer involved in organising England’s land defences against the real possibility of invasion by the greater force of the well trained and equipped Spanish Army in Holland. Fortunately for Elizabeth her superior Navy assisted by favourable winds won the day, details of which are so readily available as to not be included herein. Reference to these events is made only in so much as they concern the death of Lord Sir Robert Dudley. For it was to follow that with the invasion thwarted by Drake’s good fortune and scarcely over, with Leycester’s land Forces Headquarters at Tilbury dissolved the Earl was to return to London to be present at the military review that followed in Whitehall.

Dudley was thus portrayed as an evil ‘gangster’ who had turned the Court into ‘a nest of vice and extortion’ and it was implied he would have anyone killed who attempted to stand in his way. This Jesuit inspired venom was clearly an exaggeration based on common gossip and only stopped narrowly from attacking the Queen herself. As a ‘masterpiece of character assassination;’ it was widely enjoyed and subscribed to by those who wished for nothing more than to see their own fallible prejudices endorsed in print, so much so that : ‘all men, so far as they dirst, rejoiced no less outwardly at his death than for the victory lately obtained against the Spaniard’.~(in the words of a chronicler of the day named John Stow.) Although an associate and friend of Lord Robert Dudley described the tract as “the most malicious thing that was ever penned sithence the beginning of the world”. ‘Leycester’s commonwealth was banned immediately it came to the attention of the Queen Elizabeth. 14