The Elizabeth Files

Posted By Claire on January 22, 2012

On this day in history, 22nd January 1554, Thomas Wyatt the Younger met with fellow conspirators at his home of Allington Castle in Kent to make final plans for their uprising against Mary I and her decision to marry Philip of Spain.

As Ian W Archer explains in his article about Thomas Wyatt, “The anomalous position of a king regnant crystallized fears about how Philip might use his powers within England; the possibility that England might become another Habsburg milch cow was very real; and there was a real risk of a succession struggle on Mary’s death” and even members of Mary I’s privy council were concerned about the Spanish match and were putting forward Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon, as a match.

In November 1553, Parliament tried to dissuade Mary from her marriage plans but she had made up her mind and some men decided that a military coup might be the only way to prevent Mary’s marriage. On the 26th November 1553, a group of men including Wyatt, Sir Peter Carew, Sir Edward Rogers, Sir Edward Warner, Sir William Pickering, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, Sir James Croft, Sir George Harper, Nicholas Arnold, William Thomas, and William Winter, met in London. Archer writes of how the leader at this point was probably Croft and not Wyatt.

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Category: imprisonment, Lady Elizabeth, Lady Jane Grey, Mary I, People, Tudor events, Tudor Politics
Tags: Allington Castle, Lady Jane Grey, Mary I, Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger, Wyatt's Rebellion

Posted By Claire on January 22, 2012

Between 8 o’clock and 9 o’clock on the morning of the 22nd January 1552, former Lord Protector of England, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, was executed by beheading on Tower Hill in London.

The famous Tudor chronicler Charles Wriothesley recorded his execution:-

“Fryday, the 22 of January 1552, Edward Seimer, Duke of Somersett, was beheaded at Tower Hill, afore ix of the clocke in the forenone, which tooke his death very patiently, but there was such a feare and disturbance amonge the people sodainely before he suffred, that some tombled downe the ditch, and some ranne toward the houses thereby and fell, that it was marveile to see and hear; but howe the cause was, God knoweth.”

There is a note on that page of The Chronicle explaining that “Edward VI appears to have been perfectly convinced of his uncle’s guilt, and in that conviction to have given himself no further concern about the duke, only noting in his diary that ‘the Duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Tower Hill between eight and nine o’clock in the morning.’ ” How sad! Edward VI had now lost both of his uncles, Edward and Thomas Seymour, to the executioner for alleged treason.

Edward Seymour was laid to rest in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London and records show that he was actually buried next to Anne Boleyn in the chancel area.

You can read all about Edward Seymour’s arrest and the reasons for it in my article The Arrest of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector

Notes and Sources

• A Chronicle of England during the reigns of the Tudors, from A.D. 1485 to 1559, Charles Wriothesley, printed for the Camden Society, p65-66

Also on this day in history…

• 1561 – Birth of Francis Bacon, Viscount St Alban, the Elizabethan Lord Chancellor, politician, philosopher, author and scientist at York House in the Strand, London. Bacon is known as “the Father of the Scientific method” and developed an investigative method, the Baconian method, which he put forward in his book “Novum Organum” in 1620. Some people (Baconians) believe that Francis Bacon was the true author of William Shakespeare’s plays.

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Category: Edward VI, People, Tudor events
Tags: Duke of Somerset, Edward Seymour, Lord Protector, Protector Somerset