John Dudley was the eldest son of
Edmund Dudley, Henry VII's chief minister, whom Henry VIII executed, with his
fellow-lawyer and associate Empson, as soon as he came to the throne. John
Dudley's origins were noble; his paternal grandfather was a Knight of the
Garter and Steward to Henry V; his mother, Elizabeth de Lisle, was a descendant
of Warwick, the King-Maker.
John was born 1501. After his father's
execution in 1509 he was adopted by Sir Richard Guilford, whose daughter he
married in 1520. In the course of the next twenty years he became Lord High
Admiral, Master of the Horse, Viscount Lisle and father of thirteen children,
seven of whom survived to follow his fortunes. A first-class athlete ( he was
the finest jouster of his day), an elegant, handsome and accomplished courtier
of a skilled administrator, he remained one of the King's most valued servants.
When Henry VIII died and Somerset (Edward Seymour) was made Protector, Dudley
showed his adaptability by relinquishing the Admiraltyship to Thomas Seymour in
exchanged for the earldom of Warwick and a place on the Council Board, without
complaint; but he resented Somerset's forcing him to do so.
In 1549 he achieved his greatest triumph
by his victory over the Norfolk rebels in their attempt to destroy the
enclosure system. He was much praised, not only for his skill and courage, but
for his mercy towards the prisoners. When his small force was threatened with
extinction, he drew his sword, kissed the blade and spoke of death before
dishonor. When the campaign was over, he replied to his officers' appeals for
revenge with more practical rhetoric. "Is there no place for pardon?" he
demanded "What shall we then do? Shall we hold the plough ourselves, play the
carters and labor the ground with our own hands?"
Between the summer of 1550 and the autumn
of 1551, Northumberland (now titled and bore as his name) worked so
unobtrusively that even his closest associates -- and certainly not Somerset
whose daughter Anne had just married John Dudley (Northumberland's oldest son)
-- perceived the extent of his power. His primary object was the subjugation of
the King, whom he fascinated and impressed by his skill at games--he always,
somehow, made time to shoot with Edward at the butts--by his fervent
Protestantism and, most important of all, by his stressing of the royal
prerogative. He treated the conscientious, high minded, enthusiastic boy as if
he had already attained his majority. While advising, he deferred to and
consulted Edward in private, and insisted on his presence at Council meetings.
Two people disliked and from the beginning
to the end of his relationship; the Princess Mary and Lady Jane. In Mary's
case, there was good reason, for she and Northumberland were natural enemies;
yet even when he stood at the head of the state ( although he refused all
official positions) as the "thunderbolt and terror of the Papists" and the
King's right hand, Jane appears to have hated him. She shrank indeed from all
the Dudley's; but then she was not a girls who took to people easily.
Northumberland's most fatal mistake was that he never considered the people and
completely discounted the personality of Lady Jane.
Northumberland in his fifty-second year
was still one of the best looking men of his day. He and his sons--John, now
Earl of Warwick, Henry, Ambrose, Guilford, and Robert, the tallest and
handsomest of them all, who had recently married Amy Robsart--had brilliant
good looks and bore themselves with superb hauteur. Indeed, it seems as if this
family put everyone else in the shade. Mary Dudley, the wife of Henry Sidney,
Edward's cup bearer and one of his greatest friends, was then at her best. (A
few years later she was completely disfigured by small pox.) Guilford,
fair-haired, graceful and elegant, was his mother's favorite, and she was
allowed to spoil him. "Of all of Dudley's brood", a seventeenth century
historian, "he had nothing of the father in him". He would have liked to
emulate his father, who domination of the government was to last two more
years.
His political acumen was acknowledged by
his peers--this consisted in his command of the King, absolute control of the
state and maintenance of England as an international power, holding the balance
between the great empires of France and Spain. Northumberland's technique is
best described by Sir Richard Morrison.
"This Earl", he said, "had such a
head that he seldom went about anything but he three or four purposes
beforehand".
The Guilford/Lady Jane marriage is told on
another page of this website. The marriage and the events leading to that
tragic event are well documented and very complex, as they would be with such a
powerful and devious person as Northumberland directing. It is known the Dudley
sons were well discliplined and always worked in concert for the good of the
Dudley family.
Before Northumberland's death, he did
profess to the Catholic religion of his youth. He was under a sentence of
death, not to be pardoned as others who put aside Protestantism as he was
convicted of high treason but still asked for time before execution so that he
could reconcile himself to the Catholic faith. This appeal was granted and he
was given three days to so make his peace with God. His body was doomed; with
characteristic thoroughness he prepared to save his soul.
A single blow ended John Dudley's life,
August 1553.
Abstracted from various sources:
Lady Jane Grey by
Hester Chapman
Elizabeth I by Ridley
Other Dudley's mentioned in
these works are:
Temperance Dudley, daughter of John, who died at age
7.
Andrew Dudley, brother of John
| Front Page |
Books Page |
Email Me |