The Nine Days' Queen, Lady Jane Grey, and Her Times. Richard Davey
their power in the balance between the great Continental rivals, two schools of English politicians surrounded their sovereign, each intent upon forwarding the alliance which seemed to them wisest in the interests of the country and their own. When, however, the political rivalry of France and the Emperor was accentuated by the introduction of religious schism in the contest, by the bold defiance of Luther and the spread of the reformed doctrines, the political parties in the English Court were divided more distinctly than ever by the new element introduced; and, despotic as the Tudor sovereigns were, the apparently personal and fickle character of their policy, which proves so puzzling to students, really arose in nearly every case from the temporary predominance in their counsels of one or the other school of thought represented in their Court. It is only by recognising this fact that the strange and sudden changes which took place in the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI can be made comprehensible, and by it also the rise and fall of Lady Jane Grey can be seen in its true light.
During the last twenty years of the reign of Henry VIII his bewildering mutations of policy and of wives were the result of efforts on the part of rival sets of politicians to utilise his brutal sensuality and inflated pride to their respective ends. With him, as with the most of them, religion was a mere stalking horse for other interests. The traditional and more Conservative party, which usually leant towards the imperial alliance, naturally took the Catholic side, the established nobility such as the Howards backed by the Catholic bishops being contrasted with the more recently ennobled men, aided by bureaucrats like Cromwell and by the reforming churchmen. Thus it came to be understood before the end of Henry’s reign that the men in the English Court most favourable to emancipation from the Papacy were generally speaking the advocates of a French alliance, whilst those who clung to the orthodox view of religion favoured the traditional adherence to the house of Burgundy. It is true that the men on both sides were equally eager to participate in the plunder of the Church and in filching the commons from the people of England; and that both parties included men who were ready to profess themselves faithful Catholics or ardent reformers as their interests demanded at the time. But the political aims of the respective parties were quite distinctly divided, notwithstanding religious affinities, for the Emperor was just as desirous of having Protestant friends in England as the King of France was willing to accept Catholic support there. The object of the English sovereigns, it must be recollected, was usually somewhat different from that of their bribed councillors who had their own interests to serve. The aim of Henry VII and Henry VIII, and especially of Elizabeth, who alone was successful in attaining it, was so to distribute the weight of England’s influence as to avert any coalition of the two great Continental powers against her, rather than to become the permanent tool of either; the efforts of Charles V, and his French rival being respectively directed towards preventing England from throwing in her lot with their enemies.
Until religious bitterness infinitely complicated the question, and finally led to the long state of war with Spain, the side which commanded most sympathy amongst the English people at large was unquestionably that which favoured a cordial understanding with the sovereign of Flanders and Spain. The country had been in close antagonism with France on and off for centuries, the proximity of the coasts and the aspirations of the French to dominate the Channel represented a constant danger and source of anxiety, and it was instinctively felt in England that the time-honoured policy which bound her to the monarch who was able when he pleased to divert the aggression of the French by threatening any of their land frontiers, was the safest friend of this country. The English merchants who found their richest markets in Flanders and Spain, and who were in chronic irritation at the French piratical attacks upon their commerce, were equally anxious for a friendship which they looked upon as the best assurance against a war which they dreaded; so that the chief English advocates of the French connection were usually those whose adherence to the reformed religious doctrines overbore their political interests, and the newer nobility and politicians who found themselves at enmity on social and other grounds with the traditional conservatives.
It must not be forgotten that both France and the Emperor strove ceaselessly to gain friends amongst the English councillors. Immense bribes found their way into the pockets of ministers and secretaries of State, in many cases regular yearly pensions being settled upon influential political supporters, and by means of flattery, social attentions, and promises, the ambassadors in England of the rival powers became centres of intrigue to influence English policy in favour of one or the other. The goal to which both the rivals directed their eyes was one in which, curiously enough, England had no interest whatever, namely, the hegemony over Italy; but England which by activity on the northern coasts of France or on the Scottish border could weaken the French power for harm in other directions, could enable the Emperor at any time to check his enemy’s Italian ambitions; whilst with England as her friend France could brave the imperialists, certain that she would not be taken in the rear, especially when, as she usually managed to do, she had enlisted on her side the Turks on the Hungarian frontier and the Lutheran princes and towns of Germany.
The marriage of Henry VIII with Jane Seymour was looked upon by the Imperialist Conservative party in England as a victory for their cause. Her brother, Sir Edward Seymour, had been in the Emperor’s service, and Jane had supplanted the hated Anne Boleyn, whose sympathies were, of course, entirely French. It is true that later Seymour, a parvenu noble, be it recollected, was driven into the anti-papal camp mainly by the antagonism of Norfolk and the older nobles who led the Conservative party, but, notwithstanding his Protestantism, he never wavered in his attachment to the imperial alliance and his opposition to French interests.
When the death of Henry VIII made Seymour, as Duke of Somerset and Protector, virtually ruler of England with Paget as his principal minister, both of them were almost servile in their professions of devotion to the cause of the Emperor; and made no secret of their distrust of France with which a hollow and temporary peace had only been recently patched up. Somerset harried the Church and changed religious forms ruthlessly; his greed was insatiable and the devotional endowments were looted without compunction, the Catholic bishops were treated with stern severity, and even the schismatic Catholicism of Henry VIII was cast aside in favour of an entirely new creed and ritual. Norfolk was kept in the Tower, Wriothesley was disgraced and the Catholic Conservative nobles were warned not to stand in the Protector’s way. But through it all Somerset and Paget were politically the sworn servants and friends of the Emperor, pledged to discountenance any attempts of the French to injure him: whilst Charles V on his side, much as he deprecated the religious changes, could no more afford to quarrel with Somerset than he could with Henry VIII, twenty years before when he contumeliously repudiated his blameless Spanish wife and scornfully threw off the papal supremacy which was the keystone of the imperial system.
Submissive as were the words of Somerset and Paget to their imperial master1 not by words alone but by acts also they sought to serve him as against France. The strong policy adopted by Somerset towards Scotland, and his defiant attitude at Boulogne, then temporarily held by the English against the payment of a great ransom, served the Emperor’s turn excellently at a period when he was at grips with his Lutheran subjects, at issue with the Pope and faced by a series of dangerous French intrigues in Italy. That the French themselves understood this perfectly well is seen by the desperate efforts they made to conciliate Somerset and win him to their side. Early in July 1547, only five months after his accession to power, Somerset told the imperial ambassador in strict confidence, when the latter was complaining of his religious innovations, that the special French envoy, Paulin—“immediately after the death of King Henry had striven to win him, the Protector, to the side of France by means of a large annual pension, which, as was only right, he had always declined. Notwithstanding this, however, Paulin, the last time he came hither, was instructed to offer him the assignment of the pension, which he had brought with him already signed and sealed. But with all these offers and grand promises of the French to divert the English Government from their alliance with your Majesty (the Emperor), he said he would always remain constant and loyal to you, knowing well that the strict preservation of the ancient alliance was so important for both parties.” Even a month previous to this Somerset had informed the ambassador that the French had greatly scandalised him by offering him as an inducement to join France, in an offensive and defensive alliance, the cession of the Emperor’s Flemish province to England when it had been conquered by the allies, Boulogne at the same time to be restored to France.
What