House Of Treason: The Rise And Fall Of A Tudor Dynasty (29 page)

With a firm voice, Surrey pleaded: ‘Not guilty.’

The prosecution opened their case. ‘My lords, for either of the offences the earl has committed, he deserves death. First, for usurping the royal arms which gives rise to suspicion that he hoped to become king, and the other, for escaping from prison, whereby he showed his guilt.’
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Surrey, ‘with manly courage’, interrupted:

He did not name the church, but he was talking about the Howards’ mortuary chapel attached to the church of All Saints, East Winch, which had an arched monument to Sir Robert Howard (died 1388), and his wife Margaret, which bore the arms of St Edward.
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Paget retorted:

Surrey snapped back, a sneer on his face:

The jibe was born out of the earl’s disdain for the low-born - ‘catchpole’ was street slang for a bailiff. Paget’s father was said to have been a humble constable and the cutting insult silenced the king’s secretary, leaving him ‘very much abashed’. John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, then tried to trip up the prisoner with a question about his attempted escape, but Surrey retorted:

One witness described an argument with Surrey, who had used ‘high words’ to him, and he had retaliated with a ‘braving’, or insulting, answer. The prisoner again interrupted and demanded of the jury:

He then faced questions about his plan to make his sister the king’s mistress, an allegation he emphatically denied: ‘Must I be condemned,’ he asked angrily, ‘on the word of a wretched woman?’
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The trial continued until late in the afternoon. Surrey, ‘of deep understanding, sharp wit and deep courage, defended himself in many ways, sometimes denying their accusations as false, and together weakening the credit of his adversaries’.
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Amidst the gloom of a January afternoon, the jury retired at five to consider their verdict after eight hours of cross-examination. Paget scurried away to report on the trial’s progress to the king at Westminster. An hour later he returned, possibly with a message from Henry to the jury.

They came back soon afterwards. With all of them standing and staring at Surrey, they pronounced their verdict: ‘Guilty’ - a brief pause - ‘And he should die.’ The court erupted into a noisy tumult, ‘and it was a long while’ before silence could be restored.
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The headsman now turned his axe so that the blade pointed at the earl, a sinister indication of his condemnation. The prisoner at the bar was still defiant:

Wriothesley, his voice raised above the babble of voices, then pronounced sentence: that Surrey was to be taken ‘back to the Tower and thence led through the City of London to the gallows at Tyburn
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and hanged and disembowelled’ and his body quartered. He was led out of the Guildhall and back to the Tower, the halberdiers struggling to push back the crowds, with Surrey still angrily declaring his innocence. One eyewitness said it was ‘shocking to hear the things he kept saying and to see the grief of the people’.
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On 19 January, the sentence against this ‘foolish proud boy’ having been commuted to mere beheading, Surrey was executed on Tower Hill and buried immediately in the church of All Hallows, close by in Upper Thames Street.
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On the scaffold ‘he spoke a great deal but said he never meant to commit treason. They would not let him talk any more.’

The British Library holds a sketch of his arms, drawn by the Garter King of Arms in 1586, and headed ‘Drawing of Arms of Howard, Earl of Surrey, for which he was attainted’. Its complexity - and inaccuracies in the twelve quarters - demonstrates that the earl was probably doing little more than careless, wistful doodling.
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Just over a week later, on 27 January, Wriothesley presided over a joint session of Parliament and announced the Royal Assent to the Bill of Attainder
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of both Surrey and Norfolk, as Henry was too ill to attend in person. It was the last document signed in the king’s reign.
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As traitors, Norfolk and Surrey were automatically degraded from the Order of the Garter.
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Norfolk, still in the Tower, anxiously awaited his own lonely march to the scaffold. At least now he was relatively comfortable, lodged in the Constable’s apartments. Walter Stonor’s accounts for 12 December to 6 February show that £210 (£58,000 in today’s money) was spent on the duke’s board and lodging, including the cost of coals and candles.
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Henry VIII died dumbly, probably from renal and liver failure, coupled with the effects of his obesity,
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at around two o’clock on the morning of Friday 28 January 1547, his hand clasped by the faithful Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Later that morning Norfolk was due to be executed. He had probably been told the time of his last hour and as it passed - together with the days that followed - he must have puzzled at the reprieve.

The king’s huge body lay within his apartments at Westminster for three days while the power brokers on his Council fashioned the shape of the government of the new nine-year-old king, Edward VI. Normal ceremonies were maintained as the news of Henry’s death remained secret; the royal dishes were greeted at mealtimes by a flourish of trumpets as usual.

On 31 January, Wriothesley, his voice choking with emotion, announced the death of the king to a grieving Parliament. Edward, under Hertford’s close protection, rode into London and was proclaimed king at the Tower amid the roar of cannon salutes from the ramparts and from ships moored in the Thames. Norfolk now knew the reason for his survival: if he shed any tears, they would have been of relief rather than remorse over the death of his old master.

Hertford was created Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector. Norfolk’s death warrant, already signed, was never fulfilled, probably because it was felt the threat he posed was effectively neutralised by his continued imprisonment.

Two months later, the plain, stark truth about Surrey’s arraignment and execution emerged during a conversation between Jean de St Mauris, the Spanish ambassador to France, and his English counterpart, Nicholas Wotton. The English diplomat declared that ‘God had shown mercy to the late king and to his people in that the Earl of Surrey had died before him’,

In July 1547, six months after Surrey’s trial, some of the evidence against him turned up, tantalisingly only to be lost again. Privy Council records show that Sir Robert Southwell, Master of the Rolls - the younger brother of the informer against the earl -

Surrey left two sons and two daughters and his wife, Frances, gave birth to a third daughter Jane three weeks after his execution. Their custody was granted by the government to his sister, Mary, Duchess of Richmond, who was allowed £100 a year, paid quarterly, for their upkeep. Thomas, aged ten, Henry, six, and the eldest daughter Katherine were lodged at Reigate Castle in Surrey, which had been forfeited, with the rest of Norfolk’s and Surrey’s possessions, to the crown.
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Frances remarried by 1553; her new husband was Thomas Steyning, with whom she had two children.
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The duke’s second son, Thomas, was pardoned and restored to the rank of baron in mid-April.
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Norfolk’s half-brother, Lord William Howard, was the only member of the family not tainted by disgrace. The general pardon issued to ‘all who had offended the king’ deliberately excluded Norfolk. Cannily, he sought assistance from the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom he asked to visit him in the Tower. They talked for two hours, both weeping - one in sympathy, the other in self-pity - and Cranmer agreed to lobby for the duke’s release. His mission failed.

To the victors, the spoils. Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, received Norfolk’s clothes and apparel ‘however much worn: his parliamentary robes, jewels, gold chains, the French order of St Michael and the Garter regalia; crosses, brooches, rings, bracelets and ‘most of his chapel plate’. The duke’s livestock and provisions were divided between Somerset and Princess Mary.
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Claims by Bessie Holland, his mistress, for the return of all her glitzy jewellery were allowed, no doubt as reward for testifying against father and son. The Duchess of Richmond also received ‘a good many things’. Surrey’s widow was allowed a small quantity of plate and furniture but the pictures and furnishings from their home at Mount Surrey were passed over to the earl’s creditors in payment of his still sizeable debts.

The Duchess of Norfolk received a considerable quantity of clothes, soft furnishings and some of her other possessions: ‘a little coffer of ivory . . . [with] a silver gilt lock; a little flat casket, having a silver lock’. Neither had their keys. Her smile of satisfaction must have been terrible to see.

The summer of 1549 brought rebellion to Devon and Cornwall, the southern Midlands and elsewhere, over the imposition of the Book of Common Prayer. In Norfolk, the population rose in reaction to the end of the Howards’ conservative - if not reactionary - domination of East Anglia and their maintenance of medieval feudalism. In the mid-1540s, of four manors in Norfolk which still maintained bondmen or serfs three belonged to the duke, and, in adjacent Suffolk, five of the six manors retaining villeins were owned by him.
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The East Anglian insurrection was led by a tanner called William Kett and, among more general damage, it destroyed the fences around Kenninghall Park and sacked Surrey’s house in Norwich. One of the rebels’ demands was: ‘We pray that all bondmen be made free - for God made all free with his precious blood shedding.’
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The rebellion was crushed at the end of August and Norfolk’s feudalism continued, with complaints to Somerset that the duke had used his serfs ‘much more extremely than his ancestors did’. The accounts for the Howard estates are liberally sprinkled with references to ‘bondmen’ and payments for
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, a poll tax levied on villeins, including fines paid for permission for their daughters to be married. At Bungay in Suffolk, the manor court records show that on 25 May (no year, but during the later reign of Mary),

And at Bressingham, on the ‘vigil of St Luke’ (17 October) 1552, ‘to this court comes John Bartram of Palgrave, bever
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and acknowledges that he is a villein of the lord and he pays a fine, for chevage 12d’.
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At Kenninghall ‘came William Foster and Joan Baxter, the widow of William Baxter and daughter to William Glede and asked licence to marry together, which for 3s 4d of fine to be paid to my lord at the next account . . . for the manor . . . I granted’.
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Back in London, conditions of Norfolk’s confinement slowly eased. He was now housed in the Beauchamp Tower, adjacent to the Lieutenant’s lodgings. In March 1548, Sir Ralph Sadler, Master of the Great Wardrobe, was authorised to deliver ‘apparel and beddings’ to Sir John Markham, the new Lieutenant, for Norfolk’s use.
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The following month, the Treasurer of the Exchequer was authorised to pay Markham an annual sum of £73 5s 4d towards the duke’s apparel, and £80 as ‘his spending money’ so long as he remained his prisoner.
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Accordingly in June, a tailor called Bridges was paid £9 9s 9d for making clothes for Norfolk.
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A total of £5 was allowed for food and drink and 6s 8d each for boarding five servants, each paid 6s 8d a week.

There were other benefits of a less material nature. In February 1549, the Privy Council agreed that the duke’s daughter and wife may ‘have recourse to the late duke’ who ‘could have liberty to walk in the garden and gallery when the Lieutenant shall think good’.
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The duke’s reaction to meeting his estranged wife in the Tower can only be imagined.

His freedom of movement continued to be extended: on 20 July 1550, the Privy Council ordered the Lieutenant and Sir Ralph Hopton, Knight Marshal, to ‘suffer the late Duke of Norfolk to have the liberty to walk and ride within the precincts of the Tower [so long as] one of them [was always] present’.
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Nine months later came another concession to make the old man’s life more bearable. On 8 April, the Council wrote to the Lieutenant instructing him ‘to suffer for this once, the Lord Thomas Howard [Norfolk’s grandson] to speak with the late duke . . .’.
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