Henry VIII's Last Victim (47 page)

Accounts differ over the exact reason for Surrey’s arrest. Indeed the controversy surrounding his fall from grace, the rumours and innuendoes, the accusations, denials and counter-accusations, the disparities between foreign reports, Court circulars and recorded depositions and the subsequent disappearance of key documents might challenge the accuracy of any interpretation of the following events. According to the Imperial ambassador, Surrey’s arrest was triggered by ‘a letter of his, full of threats, written to a gentleman’. This could be the letter of ‘parables’ sent to Dudley in July, or it may have been a letter sent to Richard Southwell, for he now stepped forward saying ‘he knew certain things of the Earl that touched his fidelity to the King’.
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According to the French ambassador in London, Southwell accused Surrey of ‘two principal charges: one, that he had the means of attempting the castle of Hardelot when he was at Boulogne and neglected it; the other, that he said there were some who made no great account of him but he trusted one day to make them very small.’
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Surrey reacted to his arrest with characteristic bravado. From Lord
Chancellor Wriothesley’s house in Holborn, where he spent the first ten days of his confinement, he ‘vehemently affirmed himself a true man’ and demanded a judicial trial or, better still, a trial by combat with Southwell. So confident was Surrey that his truth would bear him out that he offered to fight ‘in his shirt’ against his armed accuser.
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The Council was unmoved by his histrionics. They had arrested Southwell at the same time, but soon released him. Surrey, on the other hand, was transferred to the Tower of London on Sunday, 12 December. He was transported not by water, as would befit a titled peer, but overland and on foot, as would befit a commoner. Technically, this was the correct procedure. The Earldom of Surrey had been granted to Thomas Howard for life in 1514. When he inherited the Dukedom of Norfolk in 1524, he transferred the junior title to his heir, but it was by courtesy only. Legally, Surrey had no right to it. Thus Henry Howard, stripped of all courtesies, angry, humiliated and ‘making great lamentation’ was forcibly marched through London’s busy streets.
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That same Sunday the Duke of Norfolk was arrested and taken by barge to the Tower. Neither he nor the public was given a reason and it was ‘still unknown’ two days later when the Imperial ambassador, Van der Delft, dispatched his reports. The ambassador was sceptical about the stories he had heard from ‘some people who assume to know’ that Norfolk and Surrey had ‘held secretly some ambiguous discourse against the King, whilst the latter was ill at Windsor six weeks ago, the object being to obtain the government of the Prince.’ But he immediately grasped the significance of the arrests. ‘The chance of their liberation is very small,’ he wrote, ‘for the Garter and his staff of office were taken from the father before he was sent to the Tower, and the son was led thither publicly through the streets.’ The French ambassador offered an even bleaker forecast: ‘many hold that Surrey will suffer death.’
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Having heard about his father’s arrest, Surrey sent a letter to the Privy Council. ‘Since the beginning of my durance,’ he wrote, ‘the displeasure of my master, much loss of blood with other distemperance of nature, with my sorrow to see the long approved truth of mine old father brought in question by any stir between Southwell & me hath sore feebled me as is to be seen.’ Surrey had not yet been formally examined and ‘lest sickness might follow by mean whereof my wit should not be so fresh to unburden my conscience’, he ‘most humbly’ requested a sympathetic hearing. Nearly four years earlier he had been
questioned by Thomas Wriothesley, John Russell, Stephen Gardiner and Anthony Browne about his riotous behaviour in London and the dangerous gossip of Mistress Arundel’s maids. Ever since, Surrey wrote, he had held these men in high estimation. Thus, ‘my desire is [that] you four and only you may be sent to me’ for the formal examination, ‘trusting in your honourable Lordships that, with respect of my particular deserts towards you, ye will make report of my tale to His Majesty according as ye shall hear.’

Surrey acknowledged that his request might seem impudent, but if the King thinks ‘that I overshoot myself’, he will be ‘contented therewith when I am heard’. He stressed once again that ‘my matter is prejudicial to no creature unless to myself’ and then signed off, either out of habit or in defiance of his recent degradation, ‘Henry Surrey’.
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He had no idea what he was up against.

On 14 December Richard Fulmerston was questioned about his dealings with the Howards. His response, written in a letter the following day, suggests that Southwell’s opposition to Surrey may have been motivated as much by local as central issues. Fulmerston had been ‘a most earnest drudge and servant’ to the Howards for almost a decade, first as a yeoman servant to the Duke of Norfolk, then as Mary’s under steward and finally as steward to the Earl of Surrey. He admitted that Surrey was heavily in debt, not least to Fulmerston himself, but he denied that he had ever blackmailed, bribed or intimidated anyone in his capacity as Surrey’s steward: ‘I never shifted any farmer or tenant of his from their farms, demesne lands or other their holds. I never from the beginning exacted any of them by payment of any fine, amercement or by any other kind of exaction by any mean.’
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Fulmerston’s letter dwells heavily on one specific issue that the Council had raised the previous day. It concerned a dispute between Surrey and one John Corbet over the dissolved chapel and lands of St Mary Magdalen in Sprowston, near Norwich. Corbet owned the manor of Sprowston and other properties in the outlying region.
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His cousin and business associate was none other than Richard Southwell, who owned a slew of properties just north of Sprowston.
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To the south was the manor of Thorpe, where Surrey House lay. According to Corbet’s allegation, Surrey and Fulmerston had bullied him into surrendering the chapel in 1544. ‘It was not so,’ Fulmerston protested; ‘It was quite contrary of the other side.’ Because the chapel had originally
formed part of the manor of Thorpe, Fulmerston explained, Corbet, ‘fearing my Lord my master’s displeasure for so purchasing the same, came first to Kenninghall to declare himself therein’. Indeed, so desperate was Corbet to curry favour with the Earl that he eventually gave him the chapel ‘frankly and freely’. Fulmerston claimed to have letters that would confirm this as well as witnesses, three of whom were lawyers, who would testify to the same.
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Surrey’s arrest was thus a boon to Corbet and Southwell. Following the confiscation of Surrey’s lands, the chapel of St Mary Magdalen, Sprowston was awarded jointly to Corbet and Richard Southwell’s younger brother Robert.
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Fulmerston was also questioned more generally about anything that he ‘heard or knew’ about Norfolk and Surrey ‘in any such thing as by treason might any ways touch His Highness or my Lord Prince or my Lords and others of His Majesty’s most honourable Council or the commonwealth of this His Highness’ realm.’ Fulmerston swore ‘by the faith I owe to God and by mine allegiance I owe to the King’ that he knew nothing, nor ‘ever mistrusted’ the allegiance of either father or son. Moreover, he insisted that ‘their talk, since their coming to the city, in my poor fantasy, weigheth so much to their declaration of their truth as I dare not meddle in writing or otherwise setting forth the same, unless I shall be thereunto commanded.’
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The Council now changed tack. Seymour and Paget went to the Tower to interrogate Norfolk about events which had allegedly happened years before. Had he ever communicated with anyone in code, they wanted to know, and had he ever contrived to reunite the King with the Pope? In his letter of response, Norfolk presented a robust defence. ‘There was never cipher between me and any man, save only such as I have had for the King’s Majesty when I was in his service.’ As for his alleged support of the Pope, ‘if I had twenty lives,’ he protested, ‘I would rather have spent them all against him than ever he should have any power in this realm.’ Indeed, ‘no living man’ has ‘spoken more sore’ against the Pope ‘than I have done, as I can prove by good witness’. Norfolk was all too aware of the importance of the King’s ear at this time and he begged to be brought ‘face to face’ with his accusers in the presence of Henry VIII: ‘I am in no doubt so to declare myself that it shall appear I am falsely accused.’ Still unaware of the grounds for his arrest, Norfolk pleaded with the Council to ‘be made privy what the causes are; and if I do not answer truly to every point, let me not live one hour after for surely I would hide nothing
of any question that I shall know that doth concern myself, nor any other creature.’

The rest of Norfolk’s long letter is a manifesto for his loyalty to the Crown: ‘There was never gold tried better by fire and water than I have been, nor hath had greater enemies about my Sovereign Lord than I have had, and yet, God be thanked, my truth hath ever tried me as I doubt not it shall do in these causes.’ In his faithful service to the King, Norfolk had set himself against Wolsey, Cromwell, his royal nieces and many others besides: ‘Who tried out the falsehood’ of the Pilgrims of Grace ‘but only I!’

Who showed His Majesty of the words of my mother-in-law, for which she was attainted of misprision but only I!
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In all times past unto this time I have showed myself a most true man to my Sovereign Lord . . . Alas! who can think that I, having been so long a true man, should now be false to His Majesty? . . . Alas! Alas! my Lords, that ever it should be thought any untruth to be in me.

In conclusion, Norfolk beseeched the Council ‘to show this scribble letter to His Majesty’ and to exhort him ‘to remit out of his most noble, gentle heart such displeasure as he hath conceived against me’.
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The Duke’s letter succeeded in quashing the specific points raised in his interrogation. No mention would be made again of a cipher or of Rome. But now that the King and Council had Norfolk and Surrey in custody, they had no intention of releasing them. The lack of evidence was something that could be remedied later. Now it was important to tell the world of their disgrace.

On 16 December Wriothesley fed Van der Delft the official line and the following day the Imperial ambassador dispatched his report:

It was, he [Wriothesley] said, pitiable that persons of such high and noble lineage should have undertaken so shameful a business as to plan the seizure of the government of the King by sinister means. The King, he said, was too old to allow himself to be governed and in order absolutely to usurp the government, they intended to kill all the Council, whilst they alone obtained complete control over the Prince.
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Falsified reports were soon spread abroad that two ‘gentlemen of faith and honour’ had accused Norfolk and Surrey of the conspiracy and that Surrey had subsequently confessed.
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Meanwhile Richard Southwell and Anthony Denny’s brothers-in-law, Wymond Carew and John Gates, were rummaging through various Howard properties in search of evidence to substantiate the lie. They had arrived at Kenninghall before daybreak on Tuesday, 14 December and had found Mary and Norfolk’s mistress Bess Holland ‘newly risen and not ready’. They announced the arrests and ordered the gates and back doors to be bolted. Then they trawled through every room in the house, seizing money, jewels and papers. Having inventoried every item right down to the last candlestick, they proceeded to break up the household. They were unsure, though, what to do with Surrey’s children or his pregnant wife, noting with some embarrassment that she was ‘looking her time to lie in at this next Candlemas’. Eventually it was decided to send Frances away. An old nightgown, ‘much worn and furred with cony and lamb’, was plucked from the Duke’s wardrobe and placed on her lap.
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Then her chariot rattled out of the drive. Little T. was placed in the custody of Sir John Williams, the Treasurer of the Court of Augmentations, while the other four children were entrusted to the care of the East Anglian landowner Sir Thomas Wentworth.
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On the evening of the dawn raid, the commissioners reported to the King that Mary’s ‘coffers and chambers [were] so bare as Your Majesty would hardly think, her jewels, such as she had, sold or lent to gage to pay her debts’. But if the Duke had neglected his daughter, the same could not be said for his mistress. The commissioners uncovered a horde of treasure in Bess Holland’s chamber: rings set with pointed diamonds, square emeralds, rubies and white sapphires; gold brooches bearing images of ‘our Lady of Pity’, the Trinity, and Cupid; strings of pearls, diamond-encrusted crosses and ‘a valentine of gold with three diamonds, three rubies and eight pearls’. There were also ivory tables, silver spoons and girdles studded with pearl. Bess’ reluctance to lose her sparkle proved useful to the Council and her collection was only returned after she had travelled to London and testified against her generous lover and his son.
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After nearly fainting from the shock of the news, Mary also agreed to co-operate. ‘She was not,’ the commissioners assured the King,

forgetful of her duty, and did most humbly and reverently, upon her knees, humble herself in all unto Your Highness, saying that although nature constrained her sore to love her father, whom she hath ever thought to be a true and faithful subject, and also to desire the well doing of his son, her natural brother, whom she noteth to be a rash man, yet, for her part, she would, nor will, hide or conceal anything from Your Majesty’s knowledge, specially if it be of weight or otherwise as it shall fall in her remembrance . . . And, perceiving her humble conformity, we did comfort her in your great mercy, whereof, using a truth and frankness in all things, we advised her not to despair.
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