Chapter XXIII: The Exeter Conspiracy (2)

Their hopes revived when some papers were found at Warblington: two or three old bulls in Standish’s room, and a copy of the Countess’s letter to Montague in a gentlewoman’s chest. “Travailing sundry times and after sundry sorts with her,” the examiners thought she had at last admitted something of importance[1668]. She did not deny the letter was hers; she had caused it to be written before Montague was in the Tower but after Sir Geoffrey was taken[1669]. She described a conversation with the comptroller of her household who said he was afraid Sir Geoffrey would “slip away.”[1670] The servant himself gave a different account of the matter, and if he used these words he must have meant Sir Geoffrey was likely to die, for he had just injured himself in the Tower[1671]. Finally the Countess was asked whether Sir Geoffrey had not told her that the King went about to cause Reginald to be slain; she answered that he had “and she prayed God heartily to change the King’s mind.” Both her other sons told her that he had escaped “and for motherly pity she could not but rejoice.”[1672] These were “the principal points” of her confession. Southampton, “putting her in such order [and] surety here as the King’s pleasure is she should be left in,” hastened back to court[1673], and two weeks later took his part in the condemnation of her eldest son[1674].

The fate of the White Rose party caused more stir in court circles than in the country. Except for the disturbance that Southampton feared at Warblington, there is no sign that the sympathy of the lower orders was roused on their behalf. On the other hand the only people really pleased were the favourers of the New Learning; Exeter and Montague had been too long out of favour to be much disliked by the nobility. Latimer’s congratulations to Cromwell on their fate and the Cardinal’s terrible position have been too often quoted to need inclusion here[1675]. The Londoners, who every year inclined more towards Protestant opinions, were distinctly against Exeter and the Poles. A goldsmith was chatting with two men in a boat at Paul’s Wharf on 13 November. One of these was “a servant of the King’s within the Tower”; said he, “We have great pain in watching of these naughty men lately brought into the Tower. Would to God every man would know their duties to God and their Prince.” The goldsmith asked if Sir Geoffrey Pole were dead or alive, and what was the news “of that naughty fellow Pole, his brother beyond sea.” The King’s servant said he was made Bishop of Rome.

“How know you that?” asked the goldsmith.

“I have heard it of great men.”

“Of whom?”

“Of some of my Lord Privy Seal’s house.”

The third man broke in, “I have heard as much as this comes to, for the council doth know this thing well enough.”

“I pray you,” said the goldsmith, “how do you know they know it?”

“By the ambassadors and others.”

“There was one in our house (i.e. the Tower) prisoner,” said the King’s servant, “who being delivered by the King’s favour and sent to the said Pole beyond sea, to show unto him the King’s pleasure, doth yet there remain, and now is one of the greatest in favour with him.” The goldsmith asked his name, and was told “Throgmorton.”[1676]

A Protestant community sending the London news to friends abroad referred to the executions, not without triumph:—“The principal supporters of Popery among us have been cut off.”[1677]

Strangely enough most indignation was aroused abroad, especially in France, where the nobility had long regarded Henry with aversion. In a letter to Montmorency, the French ambassador urged that such an opportunity for a successful invasion of England had never before been offered to a Constable of France. What glory he might gain by avenging at length all the wrongs that England had done their country in times past[1678]! In another letter he related how Henry complained to him of the way he was spoken of in France, and wished to know if Francis could not prevent his subjects from using such unseemly railing against his (Henry’s) heresy and inhumanity. For the first, they should rather praise him; for the second, the Exeter party had been most justly punished. The ambassador replied that in France people had so much greater liberty of speech than in England that it was very difficult to prevent talking; Francis allowed his people “to say many things” of himself[1679].

Lord Delaware was set free on 21 December[1680]. Nothing had been deposed against him as far as is known except that he disliked the New Learning and certain new laws, such as the Act of Uses; also that he was intimate with Exeter and Croftes and had heard the latter deny the royal supremacy without informing against him[1681]. This was little enough, but it might have cost him his head. He was, however, released on heavy securities and went back to his quiet life as an undistinguished baron[1682].

On the last day of December the last man to suffer for this visionary conspiracy was sent to the Tower. This was Sir Nicholas Carew, the Master of the Horse[1683], and a certain mystery surrounds his fate. For years he had been high in the King’s favour[1684]. The only explanation of his sudden fall is given by Chapuys, who, writing on 9 January, tells all the court gossip about this arrest and the late executions. Cromwell himself explained to the ambassador that Exeter had been plotting to destroy the King and the Prince, seize the throne himself and marry his little son to Mary. He added that “their treasons had been fully proved since their deaths.” It was true they had burnt the incriminating letters, but fortunately a number of copies of them had been found in a coffer belonging to the Lady Marquis[1685]. There is no evidence beyond this bare statement that these letters ever existed except in Cromwell’s brain. One of them, however, was supposed to implicate Carew[1686]. “The testimony of young Pole is not sufficient,” wrote Chapuys, “these men ... want to form the process after the execution.”

At court it was said that Carew was especially urged to accuse Exeter, and that he had confessed that when he told the Marquis of the Prince’s birth he seemed sad; “which,” wrote Chapuys, “I believe was only on account of the love he bears to the Princess, in whose service he would willingly, as he had often sent to tell me, shed his blood.”[1687] Exeter had never made any secret of his attachment to Queen Katharine and her daughter[1688]. Chapuys thought that if Carew had written to the Lady Marquis it must have been about Mary, for he too had always shown himself her devoted servant. “It would seem they wish to leave her as few such as possible.” Carew had looked for help rather from France than from the Emperor, “for which he has been frequently reproached by good Edward Neville.”

Cromwell hinted that some compromising letter from Chapuys himself might be found in the Lady Marquis’s collection; but the ambassador felt safe, for he had written no private letters except to Mary and Katharine, and he was sure that these had been destroyed. But as burning letters was now as dangerous as keeping them, he wrote the Princess half a dozen which she could show to anyone if commanded; he lived in hopes that Henry would discover them[1689].

Sir Nicholas Carew was brought to trial on 14 February, 1539. The charge against him contained the following clauses:—That he knew Exeter to be a traitor and falsely encouraged him; that he talked to him of the state of the world; that they exchanged letters which they afterwards burnt. Carew was on the Surrey jury which sat on Exeter’s indictment, and had indiscreetly said, “I marvel greatly that the indictment against the Lord Marquis was so secretly handled and for what purpose, for the like was never seen.”[1690]

Very little of the evidence against him has been preserved. He was Mary’s friend. He was one of the guests who frequented the Marquis’s garden at Horsley. He seems to have tried to intercede for the Lady Marquis when she was sent to the Tower[1691]. But the slightness of the indictment points to the flimsiest of evidence. He pleaded not guilty and was sentenced as usual[1692].

He was beheaded on Tower Hill, 3 March, 1539[1693], “where he made a goodly confession, both of his folly and superstitious faith, giving God most hearty thanks that ever he came in the prison of the Tower, where he first savoured the life and sweetness of God’s most holy word, meaning the Bible in English, which there he read by the means of one Thomas Philips then Keeper.”[1694]

Chapuys remarked that when confiscating Sir Nicholas’ goods the King would do well to remember “the most beautiful diamonds and pearls and innumerable jewels” which he formerly gave to Lady Carew, and which once had been Queen Katherine’s[1695]. No doubt Henry did remember, for Lady Carew was soon begging for some provision for herself and her daughters[1696]. As to the offices held by the late Master of the Horse, they had been promised to others even before his arrest[1697].

Though there was little popular feeling about the death of the Exeter conspirators, it must have alarmed all but the most secure of the nobility. Some men must have been revolted by the severity of the new treason laws; the story of the Lady Marquis’s letters, found after the trial, was meant to reconcile these malcontents. Henry made another attempt to persuade public opinion to take his view of the case. Richard Moryson, one of those quick-witted, talented, heartless, faithless “knaves” of Cromwell’s, was commissioned to write a book setting forth the heinousness of treason with special reference to the White Rose party. This was the tract called “An invective against the great and detestable vice, treason, wherein the secret practices, and traitorous workings of them that suffered of late are disclosed,” which was published in London during 1539.

In defiance of the title the book contains no coherent account of Exeter’s alleged plot. We have twice quoted from it at some length, but it is really more remarkable for its blood-curdling theology and spirited abuse than for serious historical worth. The letters of the Lady Marquis are never even mentioned and no proofs of treason are produced at all. Montague and the rest were detestable traitors; their guilt is assumed and they are abused for it with abundance of classical and scriptural illustrations. There is only one belated allusion to their possible motives for being so gratuitously wicked. It was because they were Papists; anyone who believes the Pope to be Supreme Head of the Church “may well lack power or stomach to utter treason, but he can not lack a traitorous heart.”[1698] Henry was pleased with the book. He wrote to Hutton, for circulation in the Netherlands, his own account of the conspiracy, “whereupon of late there is a pretty book printed in this our realm which ye shall receive herewith.”[1699]

As an example of Moryson’s style we may quote a part of his invective relating to Cardinal Pole: “To come at the last, to the archtraitor, and to speak somewhat of him whom God hateth, nature refuseth, all men detest, yea and all beasts too would abhore, if they could perceive how much viler he is than is even the worst of them: what man would ever have thought that Reynold Pole could have been by any gifts, by any promotion, by any means in this world brought from the love which for so many the King’s high benefits of all men he ought (_owed_) his grace the most?” His true friends are those who wish him dead, for only by death can he escape “the gripes, the wounds, the tossing and turmoiling, the heaving and shoving that traitors feel in their stomachs.” Probably God leaves him alive “only because thy life hath many more torments, much more shame in it, than any cruel death can have.... What greater shame can come to thee than to be the dishonour of all thy kin, a comfort to all thine enemies, a death to all thy friends?” “O Pole, O whirl pole, full of poison, that wouldest have drowned thy country in blood.... God be thanked thou art now a Pole of little water, and that at a wonderful low ebb.” Moryson in fact is quite unable to keep off the subject of the Cardinal, and always strays back to him. In another place he says: “Pole came somewhat too late into France, at the last commotion. If he had come in season, he would have played an hardier part than Aske did, he would surely have jeopardied both his eyes, where Aske ventured but one. He would have had not only a foot in their boat but in spite of Aske and his company would have ruled the stern.”

As an example of Moryson’s theology his remarks on the end of the Pilgrimage are instructive. He is never tired of bidding England praise God’s goodness in sending so wise and beneficent a Prince to reign over her. She must also give praise for the ending of the rebellion without bloodshed; God’s goodness was still further shown by His causing the “rank captains” and deceivers of the people to commit further treason and “testify upon the gallows that traitors must come to shameful death.” And though the King in his mercy pardoned the common people, “God hath this last summer by a strange kind of sickness well declared unto the commons of the north that he was not contented so few were punished where so many offended.” Also the plague had been in other parts of the country, which, as God knew “had hearts evil enough, though their deeds were unknown.”[1700] This is a particularly revolting form of the ancient superstition that any great calamity is a punishment from God, especially if it befalls an enemy. Men who sincerely love God have striven against this relic of devil-worship ever since Euripides wrote:—

“This land of murderers to its god hath given
Its own lust; evil dwelleth not in heaven”;

but the superstition is not yet dead.

Of the surviving members of the White Rose party, Sir Geoffrey was pardoned early in the New Year[1701]. The Lady Marquis of Exeter remained in the Tower, with the two boys, her son Edward Courtenay, who was twelve years old, and Henry Pole “a child, the remaining hope of our race,” as the Cardinal called him with a touch of human feeling[1702]. Courtenay must have been a spirited boy even in his childhood. Some months before, his schoolmaster had fled the Marquis’ household because certain of the young gentlemen had threatened him for administering correction to the young lord[1703]. The Countess of Salisbury was still at Cowdray[1704].

Parliament met in April 1539 and sat until 28 June. During May it passed an Act of Attainder including all who had suffered after the Pilgrimage, Exeter and his friends, Cardinal Pole and other Englishmen who had fled abroad; Gertrude Courtenay, Marchioness of Exeter, and Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury[1705]. It has commonly been said that the two boys were also attainted; but it can have been only by implication as an examination of the Parliament Roll shows that they were not named[1706]. An account of the passing of the Act was sent by a correspondent in London to Lord Lisle:—

“Pleaseth your lordship, so it is that there was a coat armour found
in the Duchess of Salisbury’s coffer, and by the one side of the coat
there was the King’s Grace his arms of England, that is the lions
without the flower de lys, and about the whole arms was made pansies
for Pole, and marygolds for my lady Mary. This was about the coat
armour. And betwixt the marygold and the pansy was made a tree to rise
in the midst, and on the tree a coat of purple hanging on a bough, in
token of the coat of Christ, and on the other side of the coat all the
Passion of Christ. Pole intended to have married my lady Mary and
betwixt them both should again arise the old doctrine of Christ. This
was the intent that the coat was made, as it is openly known in the
Parliament house, as Master Sir George Speke showed me. And thus my
lady Marquis, my lady Salisbury, Sir Adrian Fortescue, Sir Thomas
Dingley, with divers other are attainted to die by act of Parliament.
Other news here is none.... At London the xviiith day of May”
(1539)[1707].

Froude gives the following account:

“A remarkable scene took place in the house of Lords on the last
reading of the act. As soon as it was passed Cromwell rose in his
place, and displayed in profound silence, a tunic of white silk which
had been discovered by Lord Southampton concealed amidst the Countess’
linen.... It was shown, and it was doubtless understood, as conclusive
evidence of the disposition of the daughter of the Duke of Clarence
and the mother of Reginald Pole.”[1708]

Of course such a piece of evidence cannot be conclusive. The work might have been done years before, when a match between Mary and Reginald Pole was proposed by Queen Katherine. The symbol of the Five Wounds was far too common to fix the date as the time of the Pilgrimage. The Countess may have been innocent; but we may prefer to believe she was guilty. It is pleasant to think of her setting her maids to work when the first news came from the north, and of all the prayers for the faith and the hopes for her banished son that must have gone to the embroidering. The bill was passed on 12 May and shortly after she was removed from Cowdray to the Tower. This change must have been very welcome, for Southampton and his lady had treated her with all discourtesy, and in the Tower she would be near her grandson[1709].

She spent two years in the Tower. Her experience there and that of the Lady Marquis may be gathered from a petition presented on their behalf to a Privy Councillor by the kind-hearted warder, Thomas Philips, who had given Sir Nicholas Carew the English Testament[1710]. “By reason that I am daily conversant with them that are pensive,” he wrote, “(_I_) can no less do but utter the same to your honourable lordship.” The Lady Marquis begs favour and “saith she wanteth raiment, and hath no change but only that that your lordship commanded to be provided.” Her gentlewoman, Mistress Constance Bontane, “hath no manner of change and that that she hath is sore worn. Another gentlewoman she hath, that is Master Comptroller’s maid, and hath been with her one whole year and more, and very sorry is she that she hath not to recompense them, at the least their wages.” Finally, “the Lady Salisbury maketh great moan for that she wanteth necessary apparel both for to change and also to keep her warm.”[1711]

This petition must have been presented before April 1540, when the Lady Marquis was released[1712]; it was expected at the time that the old Countess would be pardoned shortly. But she remained alone, except for her waiting woman and the two boys, who were not kept very close and would probably be allowed to see her.

On 1 March, 1541, the Council sent an order to the Queen’s tailor for certain apparel and necessaries for the Countess[1713]. All thanks be to Thomas Philips who has left one kindly story to adorn the Tower; he had been himself a prisoner there some years before[1714]. In April the clothes were delivered:—“a night-gown furred, a kirtle of worsted and petticoat furred, another gown of the fashion of night-gown of saye, lined with satin of Cyprus and faced with satin, a bonnet with a frontlet, four pairs of hose, four pairs of shoes and a pair of slippers.” But the Countess did not long enjoy this ample provision[1715].

In May 1541 Henry was about to set out on his gorgeous progress through the north[1716]. Before he left London the Tower was cleared of traitors[1717]. The Countess was the first to suffer, at seven o’clock on the morning of May 27. Chapuys briefly records the event:—

“About the same time took place the lamentable execution of the
Countess of Salisbury at the Tower, in the presence of the Lord Mayor
and about one hundred and fifty persons. When informed of her
sentence, she found it very strange, not knowing her crime; but she
walked to the space in front of the Tower, where there was no
scaffold, but only a small block. There she commended her soul to God,
and desired those present to pray for the King, Queen, Prince and
Princess.”[1718]

The Lady Marquis of Exeter had been pardoned a year before[1719], and her son, who was still a prisoner, lived to be set free by Queen Mary[1720]. The Countess suffered under the Act of Attainder without any trial; the two boys were not even included in the Act[1721]; and were simply held by a sovereign power that no one dared to question. Henry Pole had been allowed to go about inside the Tower before his grandmother’s death; after it he was more strictly guarded. “It is to be supposed that he will follow his father and grandmother,” wrote Chapuys[1722]. Edward Courtenay had a tutor, but Henry Pole was “poorly and strictly kept, and not allowed to know anything.”[1723] He is last mentioned in 1542[1724]. Nothing more is known of him. The Tower must have been an unhealthy place for any child, and this one was an orphan without friends. He had, indeed, two uncles living. The Cardinal was helpless, for if he had attempted interference through the Emperor it would certainly have had an unhappy effect. Perhaps Sir Geoffrey did all he dared and lost touch with the boy on his closer confinement. He was, besides, hardly responsible for his actions.

Southampton, of all people least inclined to mercy, advised that Pole’s assault on John Gunter should be overlooked “considering the ill and frantic furious nature of the unhappy man.”[1725] An account of his subsequent life is given in the Spanish Chronicle. Although the greater part of this work is entirely untrustworthy, particular passages may be accepted when the writer describes facts which he had himself witnessed, and his account of Sir Geoffrey Pole is fairly reliable because there is reason to believe that the Chronicle was written at Liége while Geoffrey was living there[1726]. The Chronicler gives the following story of how Sir Geoffrey crossed the seas at last[1727]. After he was pardoned “he went about for two years like one terror-stricken, and, as he lived four miles from Chichester, he saw one day in Chichester a Flemish ship into which he resolved to get and with her he passed over to Flanders, leaving his wife and children. Thence he found his way to Rome, and throwing himself at the feet of his brother the Cardinal, he said, “My lord, I do not deserve to call myself your brother for I have been the cause of our brother’s death.” The Cardinal, seeing he had sinned through ignorance, pardoned him, and brought him to the feet of the Pope, and procured forgiveness and absolution for his sin. Then the Cardinal sent him back to Flanders, with letters to the Bishop of Liége, who has him with him to this day, treating him with all honour, and allowing him a ducat a day, and food for himself, two attendants and a horse.”[1728]

It was quite right of the Cardinal to forgive Sir Geoffrey; but should all the forgiveness have been on one side? Geoffrey, yielding to circumstances, had endured all that Reginald had escaped by taking his own path. Reginald had been in safety while Geoffrey had seen imprisonment and despair. Did the man whose uprightness had brought ruin on all he loved never for a moment accuse himself? When the Cardinal first heard the news of his mother’s death, he spoke of it in these words: “Until now I had thought God had given me the grace of being the son of one of the best and most honoured ladies in England, and I gloried in it, returning thanks to His Divine Majesty; but now He has vouchsafed to honour me still more by making me the son of a martyr.... Let us rejoice for we have another advocate in Heaven.”[1729] Perhaps it is because this speech has an appearance of having been thought out beforehand that it sounds cold and even heartless. The Cardinal seems more human in a letter written to one of Montague’s daughters, who, after Mary’s accession, sent him good news of herself and her children, the first he had received from his kinsfolk for many years:—“Albeit as I say all this did comfort me greatly, yet I ensure you I could not read your whole letter through, though it were not long, at all one time, for the sorrowful remembrance it brought me of the loss of those which I left in good state at my departing, to whom you were most dearest. But when I consider even what servants of God they were and so died, this ever doth comfort me with that certain hope of their good estate in all felicity to the which all we trust to come when it shall be God’s pleasure to call us.”[1730]

NOTES TO CHAPTER XXIII

Note A. The internal dissensions of the College of Heralds are
described at length in Lancaster Herald’s statement, L. and P. XIII
(1), 1313. The details are intimate and rather sordid.

Note B. L. and P. XIII (2), preface; Haile’s Life of Cardinal Pole,
chap. XII. The Romanist writers do not generally add that the same
letter contains a kindly appeal for a well-famed priory, the head of
which “is old and feedeth many.... Alas! my good lord, shall we not
see two or three in each shire changed to such remedy?”[1731]

Note C. This is founded on a half-intelligible note, L. and P. XIII
(2), 830, at the bottom of page 342. For such evidence as remains see
L. and P. XIV (1), 189 and 190.

Note D. Henry Pole and Edward Courtenay were, however, excepted by
name from a general pardon confirmed by Parliament 16 July 1540[1732].
The latter appears to have been liberated for a time in 1547[1733].

Note E. Sir Geoffrey Pole probably fled from England after his assault
on Gunter in 1540. He was amnestied and returned to England in
1551[1734]. He died in 1558[1735].