The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor Read Online Free PDF Page A

at his trial on 13 January 1547, when he also verbally attacked Paget for bringing about his ruin. It was down to Hertford, who presided, to give the verdict. Unsurprisingly, Surrey was sentenced to die. As far as Hertford was concerned, there was no person more qualified than himself to be entrusted with the governance of the prince and the realm. 18 Paget also thought so.
    In the long waiting days of January 1547, the pair were seen standing quietly together in the gallery at Westminster, talking among the potted plants that were tended carefully by the royal gardeners. 19 ‘Before the breath was out of the body of the king’, they made a bargain to rule together during the prince’s coming minority. 20 Paget promised to support Hertford’s bid to become Lord Protector while, in turn, his fellow councillor agreed to follow the secretary’s advice ‘more than any other man’s’. Paget – the ‘catchpole’, or bailiff, as he was disparagingly called by his blue-blooded contemporaries – could never have looked so high for himself. However, for the last twelve days of Henry’s life he held the key to the king and was prepared to hand it to Hertford. 21
    After a long and eventful reign, Henry VIII had accumulated a diverse range of councillors by the time of his death. They differed in their politics and religion. The reforming Archbishop Thomas Cranmer shared the Council table with the conservative stalwart Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. Thomas Wriothesley also disapproved of the religious changes during the reign, yet, as Henry’s lord chancellor, he was close to his master and influential. 22 Hertford had little time for him; importantly, neither did Paget.
    Henry VIII genuinely liked his secretary. Paget sat with the king in conversation all through the night as Henry’s end approached. 23 At first, the pair were alone, which placed Paget in the unique position of being the only man to know Henry VIII’s thoughts at this time. But then, rather than working for his own self-interest, Paget ensured that Hertford was also admitted into the midnight discussions. 24
    The three spent several hours alone together before, finally, the rest of the Council were admitted. They all later reported that the monarch had been active until the end, even going so far as to make the arrangements for his own death to be notified abroad. *2 It was probably while he was earlier alone with the king that Paget took the opportunity to search Henry’s study, which was connected to the bedchamber by a small door and used as a store for items required for the ailing monarch’s care. When finished, he left some papers relating to Jane Seymour lying on the desk. 25 Other, more significant documents concerning the Seymour queen were probably taken away.
    The bedchamber in which the Council joined Henry was small but richly furnished. A depiction of these final days, painted two decades later by an unknown artist, is a work of a vivid imagination. *3 It shows the pope lying vanquished at the foot of Henry’s bed while Prince Edward sits magnificently enthroned beside his father. Henry, wearing the fine nightclothes and cap in which he died, sits propped up against the pillows, giving his final commands to the assembled Council. One figure stands central to the picture. Sallow-faced, with a serene but stern countenance, it is the Earl of Hertford. Only a prominent vein to the side of Hertford’s forehead suggests the strain of these last hours of Henry’s reign. 26
    On 23 January 1547, Queen Catherine made her final attempt to reach her husband. Over the preceding weeks she had become increasingly frantic for news, sending sixteen anxious messages to her courtier brother-in-law, Sir William Herbert. 27 There was little positive that he could tell her. On 11 January she had sent six of her servants to Westminster to prepare her lodgings there; but still she received no summons. 28 Even after she ordered her luggage to be carried