John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland

John Dudley (1501-August 22/August 23, 1553) was a Tudor nobleman and politician, executed for high treason by Queen Mary I of England.

Life

Descent and family

His grandfather was a Knight of the Garter and Steward to King Henry V; his mother was Elizabeth, suo jure Baroness Lisle, great-great-great-granddaughter of Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick. John was the eldest of Edmund Dudley’s sons. Jerome, Oliver, William, and Andrew Dudley were his brothers.

Early life

When Edmund Dudley was executed, Sir Edward Guilford - a partner in many of Edmund's ‘profitable outrages’ - acquired the ward-ship of John Dudley when the boy was nine (and apparently also of one of his brothers, possibly Andrew, who was later made Admiral of the North Sea), who were then taken into the home of Sir Richard Guilford. Within two years, in 1512, he was able to persuade King Henry VIII to repeal Edmund's attainder. In order to prosper under his new-found liberty, as a young man Dudley married Edward's daughter Jane Guilford in 1520 and took part as Guilford's lieutenant in the campaign of 1523 in France under the king’s brother-in-law, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and won a knighthood on the field for gallantry after his valour at the crossing of the Somme. He was soon to gain prominence in the mock warfare of the royal court and as a protégé of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, and so joined the group whose task it was to amuse the King. He accompanied Wolsey and the King to France in 1527 (Wolsey only) and 1532 (Wolsey and the King, to the Field of the Cloth of Gold).

It is at about the time of the birth of his fifth son, Lord Robert, in 1532/1533 that Sir John Dudley was appointed Master of the Armoury in the Tower of London. To it he brought the reputation of being the ablest commander both by land and sea that had then been of service to the Tudors. This helped rehabilitate the name of Dudley. At the coronation of Anne Boleyn in 1533 he was invited to be a cup-bearer, and he would lead the procession at the christening of the Princess Elizabeth.

Inheritance from Edward Guilford

Edward then died in 1534. As he was without a will and without male issue, the Guilford estate was to be the cause of a dispute between Dudley (claiming through Jane Guilford, Edward's daughter and only child, whom he had married in 1520) and Guilford's nephew. Dudley claimed the manor of Halden, and other lands in Kent and Sussex, despite John Guilford's assertion that his uncle had intended him to inherit. Five years later Dudley sold the manor with others to Thomas Cromwell, whose protégé he became after Wolsey's fall - both he and Wolsey recognised his extraordinary abilities.

Under Henry VIII

From 1536 he appears to have encountered some difficulties that led him to part with much of his inheritance in favour of the Midlands estate of his cousin, John Sutton, 3rd Lord Dudley; he exchanged his reversionary interest in the lands left to him by his mother to Sir Richard for life. He then made extensive purchases, especially in Staffordshire and the Welsh marches. In addition, he was given several manors by the King, including the extensive estates of Halesowen Abbey on the Dissolution of the Monasteries, so that his land base shifted to the central and west Midlands. He was elected sheriff of Staffordshire in 1536 after helping to put down the northern rebellion. In 1537 Dudley was sent on a mission to Spain and also began the connection with the Admiralty which, with his military commands from 1542, was to bring him to the fore during the closing years of Henry's reign. In January 1542 he resumed his seat in the Commons as one of the knights for Staffordshire, and upon his stepfather's death was created Viscount Lisle (derived from his mother) and made Lord Admiral for life, entering the Lords the following day to sit in regular attendance for the rest of the session.

Exercising his new prerogative, Dudley dispatched the French from the English Channel and stormed Boulogne-sur-Mer, for which he was to become a Knight of the Garter and was on the April 23, 1543, admitted as a member of the Privy Council. As Lord Admiral he directed the naval operations of the next two years and his presence at the third session of that Parliament was respectively shortened. To his other duties there was added in late 1544 the governorship of Boulogne. Also in 1544 he accompanied his future rival, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford to the capture and burning of Edinburgh. A large English force, supported by a naval fleet, under Hertford's command, invaded the east coast of Scotland, sacking Leith and Dunbar and capturing Edinburgh.

After attending the first session of the Parliament of 1545 Dudley was to direct the operations of the fleet in the Battle of the Solent which frustrated the French attack on Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. He went with the embassy to Paris to ratify and conclude the peace in 1546. On his return Dudley was absent from Council meetings on the grounds of ill-health, although the imperial ambassador ascribed his retirement to a difference of opinion with Bishop Stephen Gardiner, whom he had assaulted in the Council. He returned before the King died, and was in attendance at the final session of Parliament. By 1547, the year of the King’s death, he was Lieutenant General of all His Majesty's armed forces.

Under Edward VI

Henry had appointed sixteen regents to govern the kingdom during his son's minority, John Dudley being amongst them, but Edward's uncle the Duke of Somerset had disregarded this fact and elected himself sole Protector just before the coronation. That year Dudley sought and was duly granted the right to bear the arms of the Earls of Warwick, with the distinctive badge of the Bear and the Ragged Staff.

By the end of 1549 most of the King’s Council (including Thomas Cranmer, Arundel, Paulet, and William Cecil) was united behind Dudley, a man with the ambition, will and determination to lead the Council in ousting Somerset. Dudley took the initiative in this, leading the Palace rebellion against Somerset in 1549, Somerset's subsequent imprisonment and eventual execution in 1552, and in the light of these facts history has been unforgiving.

Also in 1549 Dudley achieved his great political victory over the Norfolk rebels in their efforts to remove the enclosure system. He was popularised, not only for his skill and courage, but for his mercy towards the prisoners. When his small troop was faced with destruction and outnumbered, he drew his sword, kissed the blade and spoke of death before dishonour. When the conflict was over, he responded to his officers' protests for revenge with: "Is there no place for pardon?" He asked "What shall we then do? Shall we hold the plough ourselves, play the carters and labour the ground with our own hands?"

It has also been noted that during this period there were considerably fewer executions on the grounds of religious intolerance and for a while England became a refuge for the persecuted from many lands.

One of Dudley's first actions after Somerset's fall was to end the wars with France and Scotland that Somerset had initiated . He surrendered the besieged town of Boulogne-sur-Mer (weakening the English position in France and perhaps leading to Mary I's loss of Calais) and withdrew the English garrisons from Scotland.

Unlike Somerset, whom he had outmanoeuvred, Dudley did not take the title of Lord Protector, and encouraged Edward VI to proclaim his majority and formally become king. Nonetheless, Northumberland effectively ruled the country by holding two offices: Lord President of the Council and Great Steward of the King's Household. Dudley obtained such an influence over Edward that the King was ready to make it appear that Dudley's ideas were actually his own. Whether or not it was justified, Dudley acquired a bad reputation, becoming known as a "tyrant", sometimes referred to as the merciless "bear of Warwick".

Dudley was given the title of Duke of Northumberland in 1551.

Lady Jane Grey, and execution

When Edward was dying, he and Dudley concocted a document which barred both Elizabeth and Mary (the remaining children of King Henry VIII of England) from the throne, in favour of Lady Jane Grey (who married Dudley's elder son, Guilford Dudley).

Dudley was forced to surrender to Mary I. He was arrested and executed for high treason in 1553. All his sons were imprisoned with him but only Guilford was executed with him.

Marriage and issue

By Jane Guilford,

sons, in order
- John
- Ambrose
- Henry Dudley
- Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, born 1532/1533, became powerful during the reign of Elizabeth I.
- Guilford Dudley
daughters, including
- Mary, his most noted daughter - married Henry Sidney; their children included the soldier and poet, Sir Philip Sidney, and Mary Sidney, the first recognised woman poet in English.

John Dudley (1er duc de Northumberland) | John Dudley, 1:e hertig av Northumberland

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