Robin Tremayne Part 55

British Antiquities, volume four.) Foxe, therefore, was apparently mistaken when he spoke of Rose as still living, in his edition of 1576; he had in all probability not yet heard of his death. As Rose was born at Exmouth in or about 1500, his age was about seventy-four when he died--probably rather more than less. For such further details of his life as can be found in Foxe's volumes, I must refer my readers to his familiar and accessible work.

SOMERSET, EDWARD SEYMOUR, DUKE.

This very eminent man was the second son of Sir John Seymour of Wolf Hall, and Margaret Wentworth of Nettlestead, and owed his first rise to notice entirely to the elevation of his sister, Queen Jane Seymour. He married, at some period previous to this, Katherine, daughter and co-heir of Sir William Folliott, whom he repudiated when he reached a rather higher position, in order to marry Anne Stanhope, a great heiress. This was probably in 1537. On the 6th of June in that year he was created Viscount Beauchamp, and on the 18th of October following was advanced to the dignity of Earl of Hertford. So late as the accession of Edward the Sixth, he was still a Lutheran; for had he been then a Gospeller, we should not have found his signature to a letter written to the Council recommending a pardon at the Coronation, because "the late King, being in Heaven, has no need of the _merit_ of it." He was created by his royal nephew, February 16, 1547, Duke of Somerset, and Lord Protector of England during the King's minority. It was very soon after this that he became a Gospeller; and immediately the Lords of the Council, headed by Northumberland, conspired to ruin him. The fullest, and the saddest, account of the plot against Somerset will be found in that Diary of Edward the Sixth, which records only facts, not opinions, much less feelings. Edward never enters anything in his Diary but events; and he did not see that the affair was a plot. Among Somerset's judges were his rival Northumberland, his daughter-in-law's father Suffolk, the Gospeller Suss.e.x, his enemy Pembroke, and his cousin Wentworth. The Duke was acquitted of high treason, and condemned to death for felony, i.e., for devising the death of Northumberland.

Somerset rose and owned honestly so much of the accusation as was true.

He _had_ considered whether it were advisable to impeach Northumberland and others; and had decided not to do so. He might have added that for his rival, a simple member of the Council, to depose and afterwards to impeach the Lord Protector, was at last as felonious or treasonable as any act of his. But words were vain, however true or eloquent.

Northumberland had resolved upon his death, and thirsted for his blood.

Somerset died upon Tower Hill, January 22, 1552. His d.u.c.h.ess survived him, but she was not released from the Tower until the accession of Mary. He left behind him twelve children; three by Katherine Folliott, nine by Anne Stanhope. The present Duke of Somerset is the representative of the former; the Duke of Northumberland, by the female line, of the latter. Lady Jane, the proposed Queen of Edward the Sixth, was afterwards Maid of Honour to Queen Elizabeth, and died unmarried, March 19, 1560, aged only nineteen. Somerset's failings were pride and ambition; and he suffered in having married a woman whose faults were similar to his own. The character delineated in the text is not that attributed to him by modern historians. I must beg my readers to remember, that the necessities of the story oblige me to paint the historical persons who enter into it, not as modern writers regard them, nor indeed as I myself regard them, but as they were regarded by the Gospellers of their day. And the feelings of the Gospellers towards Somerset were those of deep tenderness and veneration. Whether the Gospellers or the historians were in the right, is one of those questions on which men will probably differ to the end of the world. I believe that his last days, the worst from a worldly point of view, were the best from a religious one, and that he was chastened of the Lord that he should _not_ be condemned with the world.

t.i.tLES.

But a very short time had elapsed, at the date of this story, since the t.i.tles of Lord and Lady had been restricted to members of the Royal Family alone, when used with the Christian name only. A great deal of this feeling was still left; and it will be commonly found (I do not say universally) that when persons of the sixteenth century used the definite article instead of the possessive p.r.o.noun, before a t.i.tle and a Christian name, they meant to indicate that they regarded him of whom they spoke as a royal person. Let me instance Lord Guilford Dudley.

Those who called him "_the_ Lord Guilford" were partisans of Lady Jane Grey: those from whose lips he was "my Lord Guilford _Dudley_" were against her. This is perhaps still more remarkable in the case of Arthur Lord Lisle, whom many persons looked upon as the legitimate son of Edward the Fourth. As a Viscount, his daughters of course had no claim to the t.i.tle of Lady; those who gave it regarded him as a Prince.

Oddly enough, his friends generally give the higher t.i.tle, his servants the lower. From his agent Husee it is always _Mrs_ Frances, never Lady; but from Sir Francis Lovell her sister is the "Lady Elyzabeth Plantagenet."

UNDERHILL, EDWARD.

The "Hot Gospeller," most prominent of his party, was the eldest son of Thomas Underhill of Wolverhampton and Anne Wynter of Huddington. He is known in the pedigrees of his family as Edward Underhill of Honingham.

He was born in 1512, and at the age of eight succeeded to the family inheritance on the death of his grandfather, having previously lost his father (Harl. Ms. 759, folio 149). Underhill married, in 1545, Jane, daughter of a London tradesman, whom the pedigrees call Thomas Price or Perrins (Harl. Ms. 1100, folio 16; 1167, folio 10); but as Underhill himself calls his brother-in-law John Speryn, I have preferred his spelling of the name. The narrative of "the examynacione and Impresonmentt off Edwarde Underehyll" (from August 5 to September 5, 1553) is extant in his own hand--tall, upright, legible writing--in Harl. Mss. 424, folio 9, and 425, folios 86-98. Nearly the whole narrative, so far as it refers to Underhill himself, has been worked into the present story. Two short extracts have been printed from it, in the Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary (pages 128, 170); and Strype has made use of it also. The ballad given in chapter eight is evidently not the one on account of which the author was imprisoned.

Underhill had eleven children;--1. Anne, born December 27, 1548 [query 1546]. 2. Christian, born September 16, 1548. 3. Eleanor, born November 10, 1549. 4. Rachel, born February 4, 1552 [query 1551]. 5.

Unica, or Eunice, born April 10, 1552. 6. Guilford, born at the Limehurst, July 13, 1553, to whom Lady Jane Grey stood sponsor as her last regnal act; died before 1562. 7. Anne, born in Wood Street, Cheapside, January 4, 1555. 8. Edward, born in Wood Street, February 10, 1556; the eventual representative of the family. 9. John, born at Baginton, about December, and died infant, 1556. 10. Prudence, born 1559, died young. 11. Henry, born September 6, 1561, living 1563. Some writers speak of a twelfth child, Francis; but this seems to require confirmation. Underhill removed to Baginton, near Coventry, about Easter, 1556. He appears to have lost his wife in 1562, if she were the "Mistress Hunderell" buried in Saint Botolph's on the 14th of April. He was living himself in 1569 (Rot. Pat., 10 Elizabeth, Part two); nothing has been ascertained concerning him subsequent to that date, but according to one of the Heralds' Visitations he returned to Honyngham.

Notices of his descendants are very meagre; Lord Leicester's "servant Underhill," in 1585, is reported to have been one of his two surviving sons, Edward and Henry; and Captain John Underhill, the Antinomian, who figures in the early history of America, is said to have been the grandson of the Hot Gospeller. The Ms. which has chiefly supplied the dates given above was not found until too late to correct the text. The dates of birth, therefore, of Anne and Edward, as given in the story, are inaccurate. Underhill lent his "Narrative" to Foxe, who is said to have returned it without making use of it. That he made no use of it is certain, beyond recording the day of Underhill's committal to Newgate: but whether he ever returned it is not so certain; for it is bound with Foxe's papers at this day, to which fact we probably owe its preservation. In Ainsworth's "Tower of London," a fancy portrait of Underhill is given, precisely the opposite of that which I should sketch. "He was a tall, thin man, with sandy hair, and a scanty beard of the same colour. His eyes were blear and gla.s.sy, with pink lids utterly devoid of lashes; and he had a long lantern-shaped visage" (page 43). Mr Ainsworth (who evidently regards him as a grim ascetic) proceeds, with due poetical justice, to burn our friend on Tower Green, in 1554. I imagine that the dry humour for which Underhill was remarkable, would have been keenly evoked by perusal of the adventures there mapped out for him. For many of these details I am indebted to a distant relative of the Hot Gospeller.