Part 23 (1/2)

[38] Refer to pages 67-8-9 for a further account of this knight, and detailed description of his memorial bra.s.s.

Take breath, friend of mine, after the shadow of this great and much honoured Tudor magnate has pa.s.sed across the screen of the past, dimly lit by the illumination of your thoughts,--for a broad and striking glimpse follows in his wake, of what we are sometimes apt to term the ”good old times” opens upon us, as we rapidly picture the chief events that characterized the days of Thomas Arundell his second son, and the first of Wardour, and glance at his companions at the Courts of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., together with those of his immediate descendants in the succeeding reigns of the two last Tudor sovereigns.

If those eventful times were not ”good” in the large acceptance of the term, there was a large infusion of stern unflinching reality within them. The influence of strong mental power meets us everywhere, men aspired to be men,--sons of Anak in their resolutions,--and the views they took and combated for, were to them no myths,--nor did the almost absolute certainty of the fate of the martyr's stake, the headsman's block, or the confiscator's hand, if the enterprise should fail, deter or daunt an inflexible and often relentless purpose, dictated perhaps by the call of religious sentiment, or animated by the promptings of high personal ambition alone, or cast it may be, in the mould of real or imaginary patriotic duty.

Contrasted with such, our puny doings of the present offer suggestive difference to the life-poised movements carried out by the deep-souled resolves that sustained the doings of the men, who pa.s.sed through the grim ordeal of the blood-gripped days of Wolsey and Somerset,--some episodes of which, occurring during the reign of Henry VIII. and his son the boy-king, we propose lightly to glance at,--when the 'shapings' of the history of our native land lay in rather grander purpose than the now-a-day trivialities and companions.h.i.+p ravings of our modern political 'stump.'

Sir John Arundell, of Lanherne, who died in 1545, by his first wife the Lady Elizabeth Grey, left two sons,--Sir John the elder, a country gentleman located at the old family seat of Lanherne, and Sir Thomas, ancestor of the Wardour descent, and the subject of our little story.

Sir Thomas, born probably about 1500, was as a younger son sent early a-field to seek his fortune, and for that purpose introduced, it may be by his father, to the precincts of the Court of Henry VIII., where afterward he appears to have spent much of his time amid its phantasmagoria of pleasures and horrors, ecclesiastical, military, and civil.

Beginning, if not exactly with actual attendance at the Court itself, but doubtless intended as a stepping-stone to it, we first hear of him as attached to the service of the next potential person of the realm, the subtle and ambitious Wolsey, in whose retinue he was appointed as one of the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber to my Lord Legate and Cardinal, with whom he was on friendly terms, and who probably brought him into notice.

The pompous semi-royal state in which this notable ecclesiastic lived and moved, even in that extravagant age, is almost incredible. His setting off to France on one of his diplomatic journeys is thus described,--

”Then marched he from his own house at Westminster, through all London, over London Bridge, having before him a great number of gentlemen, three in a rank, with velvet coats, and the most part of them with chains of gold about their necks; and all his yeomen followed him with n.o.blemen's and gentlemen's servants, all in orange tawny coats, with the cardinal's hat and T and C, for Thomas Cardinal, embroidered upon all the coats, as well of his own servants, as all the rest of the gentlemen's servants; and his sumpter mules, which were twenty or more in number. And when all his carriages and carts, and other of his train were pa.s.sed before, he rode like a Cardinal very sumptuously with the rest of his train, on his own mule, with a spare mule and a spare horse trapped in crimson following him. And before him he had his two great crosses of silver, his two great pillars of silver, the King's broad seal of England, and his Cardinal's hat, and a gentleman carrying his cloak-bag, which was made of scarlet, embroidered with gold. Thus pa.s.sed he forth through London, and every day on his journey he was thus furnished, having his harbingers in every place before, which prepared lodgings for him and his train.”

All this was not much beyond the state this proud churchman ordinarily a.s.sumed, and it leaves little room to wonder why Henry VIII. and Wolsey could not exist together, nor of church and state being straightway at issue, nor why not long afterward the knock of a heart-broken monk at the gate of the Abbey of Leicester was the knell of his own order in England.

Wolsey pa.s.sed out of his troubled existence in November, 1530, and in the year following, 1531, an event took place that at once placed Sir Thomas among the foremost men of that era, this was his marriage with a scion of the n.o.ble house of Norfolk,--Margaret, eldest daughter of Lord Edmund Howard.

He was the third son of Thomas Howard, second Duke of Norfolk, K.G., who died 21 May, 1524, by his first wife Elizabeth, daughter and coheir of Sir Frederick Tilney.

Concerning this Duke a few words. ”On May 13, 13 Henry VIII., 1521,”

says Collins,--

”he performed the office of Lord High Steward on the trial of Edward, Duke of Buckingham, and gave sentence of death on him, whereat he was so much concerned, as to shed tears.”

Then he further continues,--

”In 14 Henry VIII. (the next year) he--the Duke--obtained a grant in special tail, and to his son, Thomas, Earl of Surrey, of the manors of Welles, Shyringham-Stafford, Bannyngham, Warham, and Weveton in the County of Suffolk, with the advowsons of their churches; part of the possessions of the before specified Edward, Duke of Buckingham, attainted.”

This Duke of Buckingham was the son of the ill-fated personage of our little narrative, executed at Salisbury;[39]--he fell, it is related, like his father, by domestic treachery, and the enmity of Wolsey, on a most frivolous charge, and at his trial thus made answer to the ”tears” of the Lord High Steward,--

”My Lord of Norfolk,--you have said as a traitor should be said to; but I was never any. I nothing malign you, for what you have done to me, but the eternal G.o.d forgive you my death. I shall never sue to the king for life, though he be a gracious prince; and more grace may come from him than I desire, and so I desire you and all my fellows to pray for me.”

[39] See page 111.

Such is the recorded reply of the doomed, high-souled captive, to the ”tears” of his fellow duke, and condemning judge; whose sincerity of grief on the occasion may be estimated by the subsequent fact of his soliciting for the gift of a large portion of the victim's possessions the year following. But the Dukes of Norfolk of those days appear to have been among the most unscrupulous men of that era. Then we learn with almost incredulous surprise that Thomas, the third Duke of Norfolk, and son of the Lord High Steward, who presided at Buckingham's trial, married the victim's daughter Elizabeth;--their son was the accomplished and ill-fated Earl of Surrey, beheaded twenty-five years afterward in the same reign, and on equally flimsy pretence.

To resume. Lord Edmund Howard married Joyce, daughter of Sir Thomas Culpeper of Hollingbourne, Kent. He is described as being

”Marshal of the Horse, in the battle of Flodden-field, 5 Henry VIII. when he, and his elder brother the Lord Thomas Howard leading the van-guard, this Lord Edmund was in some distress, through the singular valour of the Earls of Lennox and Argyle; but the Lord Dacres coming to his succour with one Heron, the fight was renewed and the Scots vanquished. In 12 Henry VIII., on that famous interview which that King had with Francis I. of France, where all feats of arms were performed between Ardres and Guisnes for thirty days, he was one of the challengers on the part of England.”

On the occasion of his marriage, and to give his son position befitting his rank as a country gentleman, his father, Sir John Arundell, settled on Sir Thomas and his wife, partly in jointure, a dozen or so manors in the Counties of Dorset and Somerset. In 1532, and again in 1533, he filled the office of Sheriff of Dorset.

But it was the alliance itself with the influential family of Howard, destined immediately afterward to be so closely related to the crown itself, and in perilous nearness to the grim and capricious Henry, that must have given him considerable importance, advanced him to the front rank among the courtiers, and afforded him ample opportunity to promote his position and interests, both as to honours and wealth.

These were not slow of arriving. In May, 1533, Henry VIII. was wedded to 'sweet' ill-fated Anne Boleyn. This brought Sir Thomas into his first direct relations.h.i.+p with that king, to whom, through his wife, he now stood in the position of cousin, the new Queen being the daughter of her aunt Elizabeth (sister of Lord Edmund Howard), wife of Sir Thomas Boleyn, K.G.--afterward created Viscount Rochford, and Earl of Wilts.h.i.+re and Ormond.

Our next glimpse of him is within the royal precincts, and being the recipient of an honour, amid the company of some of the most distinguished men at Court, on the occasion of the crowning of that unfortunate Queen. Among the ”Knights of the Bathe, made at the coronation of the most excellent Princesse Queen Anne the 25 yere of the reign of Kinge Henry the Eight on Whitsonday the last day of May, 1533; (when) shee was crown'd at Westminster,”--twelfth on the list occurs the name of Sir Thomas Arundell.