No. 11 Thomas Lord Seymour of Sudeley
EXECUTED 1549-50.
Black gown and cap. Badge of Garter suspended by a ribbon round his neck.
He was the fourth son of Sir John Seymour of Wulfhall, by Margaret Wentworth. He was one of the twelve assistants to the executors of the will of his brother-in-law Henry VIII., and on the accession of Edward VI. he was advanced to great honour. Having already distinguished himself as a sailor, he was made Lord High Admiral and Baron Seymour of Sudeley, also Knight of the Garter. But these honours did not satisfy the King’s ambitious uncle; he turned his thoughts to a royal alliance, and asked the consent of the Council to his marriage with the Princess Elizabeth, then only fifteen.
His suit was refused. He then, having in his pay a gentleman about the King, bade him ask Edward whom he should marry. ‘His Majesty,’ says Froude, ‘graciously offered Anne of Cleves,’ and then added he would rather he married Princess Mary, in order that she might change her opinions. But that would neither have suited the Council, nor Mary herself, so Seymour was fain to put up with a Queen-Dowager instead of a future Queen-Regnant, and he proffered his addresses in a quarter where he knew they would be acceptable.
Between him and Queen Catharine Parr there had been love-passages, when she was the widow of Lord Latimer, till a King became his rival. Catharine at first refused to marry until her two years of widowhood should be passed, but Seymour soon prevailed on her to consent to a private union, and letters still extant show that she used to receive him clandestinely, at the palace, Chelsea.
She shared her Lord’s hatred, and jealousy of his brother the Protector, and his wife, and said, if they refused their consent, it would be of no consequence. The amiable young King was easily persuaded to do as his uncle wished, and begged Catharine to listen to Seymour’s suit. She also desired her lover to ask the Council to intercede with her in his behalf, when she was already his wife.
Princess Mary sensibly refrained from meddling, and while all these schemes were being carried on, the whole truth was discovered. There was a general outcry at the scandal, and it was no wonder that the Protector was much displeased.
Besides, it was a question if it were not high treason to marry a Queen widow, so soon after the Sovereign’s death, (at all events it was made into a charge against Seymour later,) as it might possibly have added a fresh difficulty to the vexed question of the succession to the Crown.
On the breaking out of the Scotch war, the Lord High Admiral was ordered to take command of the fleet, but he preferred remaining at home, and superintending the affairs of the Admiralty, and sent a substitute to sea.
Strange as it may appear, after all that had happened, Princess Elizabeth still remained where she had been placed for some time under the guardianship of Catharine Parr. But after a while Seymour’s conduct towards the King’s sister, his want of respect, and extreme familiarity, scandalised the royal attendants, and roused the tardy jealousy of his easy-going wife. The Princess was, in consequence, removed to safer keeping; but Seymour had other noble wards,—the daughters of the Marquis of Dorset, of whom one was the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey.
The deadly hatred which Seymour bore his brother was shared and fostered by his wife, who writes to him on one occasion, ‘This schal be to advertyse you, that my lord your brother has this afternoone made me a lyttell warme. I am glad we were dystant, or I suppose I sholde have bitten him.’
During the time the Duke of Somerset was in Scotland, Thomas Seymour did all he could to injure and supplant him, telling Edward the invasion was madly undertaken, and money wasted—that it was a pity he did not assert himself more—that he was not allowed enough money to be generous to his own servants, etc. Seymour also set about a report that the late King never intended there should be a Protectorate, and he even went so far as to write a letter, which he suggested, the King should copy and sign, to both Houses of Parliament, in his (Seymour’s) own favour, but this was refused.
Catharine had two grievances against the Duke and Duchess: one was the question of precedency between her and her sister-in-law; the other a matter respecting some jewels which Somerset had sequestered as Crown Jewels, but which Catharine affirmed had been left her by the King.
Seymour tried to bring in a Bill to separate the offices of Protector and Guardian, in order to gain possession of the King’s person, but he was foiled on all sides. His conduct was so outrageous that he was summoned before the Council to explain it; he defied, and disobeyed the summons.
In spite of this behaviour, and all these machinations against himself, Somerset was lenient to his misguided brother, even to extremes; he palliated his faults, and, ‘striving to bridle him with liberality,’ gave him fresh grants of land. But Seymour was not of the stuff that can be softened by generosity; he grew desperate, and it was reported, and believed, that he had entered into a treaty with certain privateers then infesting the seas, and that his purchase of the Scilly Islands at this juncture was with the view of acting in connection with them for his own interest.
The Protector, who showed no signs of weakness in public affairs, mildly expostulated with the headstrong man, who was speeding to his ruin, but all his forbearance was thrown away.
Catharine Parr was confined of a daughter, and died a few days after, not without some rumours of her husband having helped her exit from the world; but he was out of favour now with almost all classes, and nothing was too bad to be said of him.
Lady Dorset naturally wished to remove her daughter Jane from the Admiral’s roof on the death of his wife, but he, knowing that the Duchess of Somerset was bent on marrying the young lady to her eldest son, so worked on the weakness of Lord Dorset, that Jane Grey remained under Lord Seymour’s questionable care. Once more his thoughts reverted to the Princess Elizabeth. He gained over two of her people, who were instructed to praise him to the skies, and keep his name always before her. But Elizabeth, though only sixteen, acted with discretion and dignity, refusing to take any step without the consent of the Council, and positively declining to receive Seymour, in spite of all his tender messages.
The failures in Scotland, religious discontent, and many untoward events, had shaken the Protector’s power, and his brother was working strenuously against him. Seymour was warned of his danger; he was told that his designs on the Princess, and his scheme of possessing himself of the person of the King were discovered; but he defied advice, remonstrance, and threats.
Again summoned before the Council, he again disobeyed. He appealed to the Earl of Warwick, on the plea that he was the enemy of the Protector, but Warwick said, if there were to be any change in the Government, it should not be for the advantage of another Seymour, and so he was arrested, and sent to the Tower. All his creatures and accomplices turned upon him, and gave evidence against him, all his intrigues and machinations were discovered; and two months after his committal the Council went to the Tower and caused thirty-three charges against the Lord High Admiral to be read aloud, in his presence. When called upon for an answer, he refused to give any, (though urged to speak on his allegiance,) and demanded an open trial.
The question now arose as to the manner of the trial, and the Chancellor and the rest of the Council gave their opinions for an Act of Attainder, while the Protector, pleading ‘what a sorrowful case this was for him, did yet rather regard his bounden duty to the King’s Majesty and the Crown of England than his own son or brother, and did weigh more his allegiance than his blood, and therefore he would not resist their Lordships.’
King Edward was present, and although his gentle nature always inclined to clemency, he gave his consent to the decision. Seymour was brought before a committee of both Houses, where he pleaded his own cause; but as the charges grew graver, he stopped short, and refused to say any more.
The next day the Bill was brought before the Lords, and passed without a dissenting voice, the Lord Protector only, ‘for natural pity’s sake, desiring licence to be away.’
Seymour had a small party of friends in the Commons, but having heard the evidence, the Lower House also passed the Bill. It was sent to the Crown with the request that justice might have place. The sentence was given without reference to the Protector, who would still have interfered to save the ungrateful brother whose inveterate hatred was unconquered, but he was prevented.
The Bishop of Ely visited the prisoner to bid him prepare for death, which he did, by writing to Elizabeth and Mary to incite them to conspire against the Duke.
He concealed the letters in the sole of his shoe, and his last words, as he knelt before the block, were to commission his servant to deliver them.
He died with a courage worthy a better cause. Bishop Latimer said of his death—‘Whether he be saved or no, I leave that to God. In the twinkling of an eye He can save a man, and turn his heart. What He did I cannot tell. And when a man hath two strokes with an axe, who can tell but between the two strokes he doth repent? It is hard to judge; but this I will say, if they ask me what I think of his death, I say that he died very irksomely, dangerously, and horribly.’
Latimer says elsewhere that the Admiral was a man furthest from the fear of God that ever he heard of in England. And yet in the picture in which we are treating there are verses that laud him to the skies. Not only his outward form—
‘Of person rare, stronge limbes, and manly shape;
Of nature framed to serve on sea and lande, etc.,
A subject true to Kinge, frinde to God’s truth’—
and so forth, concluding with the lines:—
‘Yet againste nature, reason, and just lawes,
His blode was spilte, giltless, without just cause!’
The Bishop and the Poet were at variance in the estimate of Lord Seymour of Sudeley’s character.