History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth Volume III Part 14

Twelve more, the Abbot of Barlings, one of his monks, and others who had been concerned in the murder of the chancellor, were then brought to the bar in the Guildhall. They had no claim to mercy; and they found none.

They were hung on gibbets, at various towns, in their own county, as signs and warnings. Lord Hussey was tried by the peers. He was guilty obviously of having fled from a post which he was bound to defend. He had obstructed good subjects, who would have done their duty, had he allowed them; and he had held communication with the rebels. His indictment[250] charges him with acts of more direct complicity, the evidence of which I have not discovered. But wherever a comparison has been possible, I have found the articles of accusation in so strict accordance with the depositions of witnesses, that the absent link may be presumed to have existed. The construction may be violent; the fact is always true. He, too, was found guilty, and executed.[251]

With Lord Hussey the Lincolns.h.i.+re list was closed. Out of fifty or sixty thousand persons who had been in armed rebellion, the government was satisfied with the punishment of twenty. The mercy was perhaps in part dictated by prudence.

[Sidenote: May. The second trials.]

[Sidenote: The government find a difficulty in obtaining the verdicts.

One of the prisoners is acquitted. A list of the grand jury is sent to London.]

The turn of the northern men came next. There were three sections of them:--Sir Francis BiG.o.d, George Lumley, and those who had risen in January in the East Riding; Sir Thomas Percy, the Abbot of Fountains, the Abbot of Jervaulx, Sir John and Lady Bulmer, Sir Ralph Bulmer, and Sir Stephen Hamarton, who had been concerned in the separate commotions since suppressed by the Duke of Norfolk; and, finally, Aske, Constable, and Lord Darcy, with their adherents. In this instance the proceedings were less simple than in the former, and in some respects unusual. The inferior offenders were first tried at York. The indictments were sent in to the grand jury; and in the important case of Levening, the special confederate of Aske and Darcy, whose guilt was identical with theirs, no bill was found. The king, in high displeasure, required Norfolk to take some severe notice of this obstruction of justice. Norfolk remonstrated; and was requested, in sharper language, to send up a list of the jurors,[252] and unravel, if possible, the cause of the acquittal. The names were forwarded. The panel was composed of fifty gentlemen, relatives, most of them, of one or other of the accused persons, and many among whom had formed part of the insurgent council at Pomfret.[253] Levening's escape was explained; and yet it could not be remedied. The crown was forced to continue its prosecutions, apparently with the same difficulty, and under the same uncertainty of the issue.

When the trials of the higher offenders were opened in London, true bills had first to be found against them in their own counties; and the foremen of the two grand juries (for the fifty were divided into two bodies of twenty-five each) were Sir James Strangways and Sir Christopher Danby, noted, both of them, on the list which was forwarded to the crown, as relatives of Lord Darcy, Sir Francis BiG.o.d, and Sir John Bulmer.[254]

[Sidenote: May 9. True bills found against Darcy and fifteen others.]

On the 9th of May, however, either through intimidation or the force of evidence, the sixteen prisoners who were in the Tower, Lord Darcy, Robert Aske, Sir Robert Constable, and thirteen more, were delivered over for their trials. In the six preceding weeks they had been cross-examined again and again. Of the many strange scenes which must have taken place on these occasions, one picture, but a striking one, is all which I have found. It occurred at the house of the lord chancellor, in the presence of the Privy Council and a crowded audience. Darcy was the subject of examination. Careless of life, and with the prophetic insight of dying men, he turned, when pressed with questions, to the lord privy seal:--

[Sidenote: Lord Darcy prophesies the death of Cromwell.]

"Cromwell," he said, "it is thou that art the very special and chief causer of all this rebellion and mischief, and art likewise causer of the apprehension of us that be ----,[255] and dost daily earnestly travel to bring us to our ends, and to strike off our heads. I trust that ere thou die, though thou wouldest procure all the n.o.blemen's heads within the realm to be stricken off, yet shall there one head remain that shall strike off thy head."[256]

[Sidenote: Aske's servant dies for sorrow.]

Of Aske, too, we catch glimpses which show that he was something more than a remarkable insurgent leader: a short entry tells us that, six or seven days after his arrest, "his servant, Robert Wall (let his name be remembered), did cast himself upon his bed and cried, 'Oh, my master!

Oh, my master! they will draw him, and hang him and quarter him;' and therewith he did die for sorrow."[257] Aske had lost a friend when friends were needed. In a letter which he wrote to Cromwell, he said that he had been sent up in haste without clothes or money, that no one of his relations would help him, and that unless the king would be his good and gracious lord, he knew not how he would live.[258] His confessions during his imprisonment were free and ample. He asked for his life, yet with a dignity which would stoop to no falsehood, and pretend to no repentance beyond a general regret that he should have offended the king. Then, as throughout, he showed himself a brave, simple, n.o.ble-minded man.

[Sidenote: May 16. Trials and sentences in Westminster Hall.]

But it was in vain; and fate was hungry for its victims. The bills being found, Darcy was arraigned before twenty-two peers, and was condemned, Cromwell undertaking to intercede for his life.[259] The intercession, if made, was not effectual. The fifteen commoners, on the same day, were tried before a special commission in Westminster Hall. Percy, Hamarton, Sir John and Lady Bulmer pleaded guilty. The prosecution against Sir Ralph Bulmer was dropped: a verdict was given without difficulty against Aske, Constable, BiG.o.d, Lumley, and seven more. Sixteen knights, n.o.bles, and gentlemen, who a few months before were dictating terms to the Duke of Norfolk, and threatening to turn the tide of the Reformation, were condemned criminals waiting for death.

The executions were delayed from a doubt whether London or York should be the scene of the closing tragedy. There remain some fragments written by Darcy and Aske in the interval after their sentence. Darcy must have been nearly eighty years old; but neither the matter nor the broad, large, powerful handwriting of the following words show signs of agitation:--

"After judgment given, the pet.i.tion of Thomas Lord Darcy to the King's Grace, by my Lord Privy Seal.

[Sidenote: Lord Darcy's last pet.i.tion.]

"First to have confession; and at a ma.s.s to receive my Maker, that I may depart like a Christian man out of this vale of misery.

"Second, that incontinent after my death my whole body may be buried with my late wife, the Lady Neville, in the Freers at Greenwich.

"Third, that the straitness of my judgment may be mitigated after the king's mercy and pleasure.

"Fourth, that my debts may be paid according to a schedule enclosed."[260]

[Sidenote: Last pet.i.tion of Aske.]

Aske, in a few lines addressed also to Cromwell, spoke of his debts, and begged that some provision might be made for his family. "They," he said, "never offended the King's Grace, nor were with me in council in no act during all this time, but fled into woods and houses. Good my Lord, extend your pity herein. And I most humbly ask the King's Highness, and all his council and lords, lowly forgiveness for any mine offences or words attempted or said against his Grace or any of them any time of my life; and that his Grace would save my life, if it be his pleasure, to be his bedesman--or else--to let me be full dead or that I be dismembered, that I may piously give my spirit to G.o.d without more pain; and that I desire for the honour of G.o.d and for charity."[261]

[Sidenote: Provision made for the families of the sufferers.]

[Sidenote: Properties not forfeited.]

The requests relating to the manner of the executions, it is satisfactory to find, were granted; and not only in the case of the two pet.i.tioners, but so far as I can learn in that of all the other sufferers. Wherever the scaffold becomes visible, the rope and the axe are the sole discernible implements of death. With respect to the other pet.i.tion, I find among loose memoranda of Cromwell an entry "for a book to be made of the wives and poor children of such as have suffered, to the intent his Grace may extend his mercy to them for their livings as to his Highness shall be thought convenient, and for payment of their debts."[262] The "mercy" seems to have been liberal. The forfeited properties, on the whole, were allowed to descend without diminution, in their natural order.[263]

[Sidenote: June 20. Eight gentlemen executed at Tyburn.]

[Sidenote: Lady Bulmer is burnt, and the world is little disturbed.]

[Sidenote: The king relinquishes his intention of holding a parliament in Yorks.h.i.+re.]

After some discussion it was settled that Darcy should suffer on Tower Hill; and he was executed on the 20th of June. Sir Thomas Percy, BiG.o.d, the Abbots of Fountains and Jervaulx, Hamarton, Sir John Bulmer, young Lumley, and Nicholas Tempest were hanged at Tyburn; four who had been tried with them and condemned were pardoned. Lady Bulmer died the dreadful death awarded by the English law to female treason.[264] "On the Friday in Whitsun week," wrote a town correspondent of Sir Henry Saville, "the wife of Sir John Bulmer was drawn without Newgate to Smithfield and there burned:" and the world went its light way, thinking no more of Lady Bulmer than if she had been a mere Protestant heretic: the same letter urged Saville to hasten to London for the pleasures of the season, suggesting that he might obtain some share in the confiscated estates, of which the king would be soon disposing.[265]

Aske and Sir Robert Constable were to be sent down to Yorks.h.i.+re. The king had been compelled, by the succession of fresh disorders the punishments which had followed, to relinquish his intention of holding a summer parliament there. The renewed disturbances had released him from his promise, and the discussion which would inevitably have been opened, would have been alike irritating and useless. He had thought subsequently of going to York on progress, and of making his presence the occasion of an amnesty; the condition of the Continent, however, the large armies, French and Imperial, which were in the field in the neighbourhood of Calais, the possibility or the alarm that the Pope might succeed in reconciling and directing them upon England, and still more the pregnancy of the queen and the danger of some anxiety which might cause the loss of the child, combined to make so distant a journey undesirable. These at least were the reasons which he alleged to the world. His chief ground, however, as he stated in private, was the increasing infirmity of his own health and the inhibition of his physician.[266] He resolved, therefore, that Norfolk, and not himself, should "knit up the tragedy," by conducting the last executions on the scene of the rebellion, and after they were over, by proclaiming a final and general pardon.

[Sidenote: July. Aske and Constable are sent down to Yorks.h.i.+re.]

[Sidenote: Constable is executed at Hull.]

At the beginning of July the two remaining prisoners were placed in the custody of Sir Thomas Wentworth. They were paraded in formal state through the eastern counties, and at each town a few words of warning were addressed on the occasion to the people. Wentworth brought them thus to Lincoln, where they were delivered over to the Duke of Norfolk.

Constable suffered first. He was taken to Hull,[267] and there hanged in chains.[268] Before his death he said that, although he had declared on his examination that he had revealed everything of importance which he knew, yet he had concealed some matter connected with Lord Darcy for fear of doing him an injury. "He was in doubt whether he had offended G.o.d in receiving the sacrament in such manner, concealing the truth upon a good purpose."[269] This secret, whatever it was, he carried with him from the world. His own offences he admitted freely, protesting, however, that he had added nothing to them since the pardon.

A fuller account remains of the end of Aske. He, too, like Constable, had some mystery on his conscience which he would not reveal. In a conversation with his confessor he alluded to Darcy's connexion with the Spanish amba.s.sador; he spoke of the intention of sending for help to Flanders, and acknowledged his treason, while he shrunk from the name of traitor. He complained that Cromwell had several times promised him his life if he would make a full confession, and once he said he had a token of pardon from the king; but his bearing was quiet and brave, and if he believed himself hardly dealt with, he said so only in private to a single person.

[Sidenote: Aske is drawn upon a hurdle through the streets of York,]

[Sidenote: And is hanged.]

York was chosen as his place of execution. He was drawn through the streets upon a hurdle, to be hanged afterwards from the top of a tower.

On his way he told the people that he had grievously offended G.o.d, the king, and the world. G.o.d he had offended in breaking his commandments many ways; the King's Majesty he had greatly offended in breaking his laws, to which every subject was bound; and the world he had offended, "for so much as he was the occasion that many a one had lost their lives, lands, and goods." At the scaffold he begged the people to pray for him, "and divers times asking the King's Highness' forgiveness, the lord chancellor, the Lord of Norfolk, the lord privy seal, the Lord of Suss.e.x, and all the world, after certain orisons he commended his soul to G.o.d."[270]

So we take leave of Robert Aske, closing his brief greatness with a felon's death--an unhappy ending! Yet, as we look back now, at a distance of three centuries, when the n.o.ble and the base, the conquerors and the conquered, have been all long dead together, when nothing remains of any of them but the work, worthy or unworthy, which they achieved, and the few years which weak false hearts could purchase by denying their faith and truckling to the time,[271] appear in the retrospect in their proper insignificance, a man who risked and lost his life for a cause which he believed a just one, though he was mistaken in so believing it, is not among those whose fate deserves the most compa.s.sion, or whose career is least to be envied.

The insurrection had sunk down into rest; but it had not been wholly in vain. So far as it was just it had prevailed; and happy were they whose work was sifted for them, who were permitted to accomplish so much only of their intentions as had been wisely formed. If the reins of England had been seized by Aske and Darcy, their signal beacons of insurrection would have become blazing martyr-piles, s.h.i.+ning dreadfully through all after-ages; and their names would have come down to posterity swathed in such epithets as cling, and will cling, for ever to the Gardiners and the Alvas.

[Sidenote: The n.o.ble Catholics, and the ign.o.ble. Reginald Pole at Liege.]

[Sidenote: He will weave the broken web for a third effort.]

[Sidenote: He believes that Henry desires to kill him.]

[Sidenote: And is recalled by the Pope.]

While the n.o.ble Catholics were braving danger in England, Reginald Pole sate at safe distance on his Liege watch-tower, scenting the air for the expected battle-field; and at length, hungry and disappointed, turning sullenly away and preparing for flight. He had clung to hope till the last moment with desperate tenacity. He had laboured to inspire his friends in Italy with his own confidence. "The leaders of the faithful,"

he wrote to the Pope, "had been duped and murdered; but the hate of the people for the government had deepened in intensity. They were subdued for the instant by terror; but their strength was unimpaired. They were furious at the king's treachery."[272] "Twice," he wrote to Contarini, "the children of Israel went up against Benjamin, and twice they were put to confusion, G.o.d having encouraged them to fight, and G.o.d permitting their defeat. The third time they prevailed. In like manner had the children of the Church been twice conquered, once G.o.d so willing it in Ireland, and now again in England. A third time they would take up their cause, and then they would triumph gloriously."[273] He knew what he meant. Already he was digging fresh graves for other victims; secret messengers were pa.s.sing between Liege and his mother, and his mother's family, and Lord Montague and Lord Exeter were already contemplating that third effort of which he spoke.[274] "I do but desire to wait in this place," he said, "so long as the farmer waits for his crops. I have sown my seed. It will grow in its allotted time."[275] Contarini advised his return to Italy; and the Pope believed also that the opportunity was pa.s.sed. Pole himself, alternately buoyed up with hope and plunged in despondency, seemed at times almost delirious. He spread a wild rumour that the king had sent emissaries to murder him.[276] The Pope believed him, and became more anxious for the safety of so valuable a life.

Letters pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed. He could not resign himself to relinquish his enterprise. On the 21st of August he wrote that "the English government had made itself so detested, and the King of Scotland was so willing to a.s.sist, that with the most trifling impulse a revolution would be certain." Events, however, so far, had not borne out his expectations. He had promised liberally, but there had been no fulfilment; and supposing at length that the chances of success were too slight to justify the risk of his longer stay, Paul put an end to his anxieties by sending him a formal recall.

[Sidenote: He has one only consolation.]

The disappointment was hard to bear. One only comfort remained to him.

Henry had been evidently anxious that his book should not be made known to the world. He might revise, intensify, and then publish it, and taste the pleasure of a safe revenge.