The Privy Council remains to this day a formal body of advisers to the sovereign on the exercise of the royal prerogative, a body of customary authority, privilege, and immunity attached to the monarch. Its members, known as Privy Counsellors, were drawn from the higher nobility, senior church leaders and leading legal advisors.
The early equivalent to the Privy Council of England in Henry VIII’s reign was the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot. After 1066, during the reigns of the Norman monarchs, the English Crown was advised by a royal court or curia regis on matters pertaining to legislation, administration and justice. Later, different bodies would assume these distinct functions. The courts of law, for example, took over the business of dispensing justice, while Parliament became the supreme legislature of the kingdom. Nevertheless, the Privy Council retained the power to hear legal disputes, either in the first instance or on appeal. Furthermore, laws made by the sovereign on the advice of the Council, rather than on the advice of Parliament, were accepted as valid. This meant that powerful sovereigns often used the body to circumvent the Courts and Parliament. During the 15th-century, one such example was a committee of the Council permitted to inflict any punishment except death, without being bound by normal court procedure. Later this committee would become the Court of the Star Chamber which sat judicially each Wednesday and Friday.
During Henry VIII's reign, the sovereign, on the advice of the Privy Council, was allowed to enact laws by mere proclamation. The legislative pre-eminence of Parliament was not restored until after Henry VIII's death. By 1540 a reconstructed Council, most probably the creation of Thomas Cromwell, met almost exclusively at Court on a virtually daily basis. While the Council’s powers were ill-defined it did mark the union of the Royal Court with the apparatus of State. What follows is a brief introduction to the nineteen men, in no particular order of seniority, who formed Henry VIII’s Privy Council in 1540.
Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor
Thomas Audley, born 1488 in Earls Colne, Essex, became a member of Privy Council in 1527. Trained in law, Audley had a very illustrious career at the Tudor court, especially in politics where he became speaker of the House of Commons in 1529. The same year he was also made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Having gained Parliament’s acceptance of Henry’s anti-papal policies, the king made him Lord Keeper of the Great Seal in 1532 and, after the resignation of Thomas More, he was appointed Lord Chancellor of England from 1533 to 1544. As Lord Chancellor, Audley presided at the trials of Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More in 1535. Both men were duly executed for refusing to repudiate their support of papal supremacy in England.
Although he worked with Thomas Cromwell to establish the supremacy of statute law in England, Audley played a prominent role in securing the attainder of Cromwell in 1540 as well as that of Henry’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard two years later. In 1538 he had been created 1st Baron Audley of Walden and was made a Knight of the Garter shortly thereafter. Four years later he founded Magdalene College, Cambridge. The barony became extinct upon his death on 30 April 1544.
Audley was clearly accommodating of Henry VIII’s agenda and was rewarded accordingly. Historians have viewed him as an unprincipled politician completely subservient to Henry’s will. He certainly backed the King’s desire to divorce Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn and helped Henry break with the papacy to establish himself as head of the English church. In 1536 Audley presided at the trials that led to the execution of Anne Boleyn and the men around her.
We know that Henry VIII “interfered so much in the chancellor’s domestic concerns as to command him to marry, and to bring about the match, and promise to endow him accordingly.” Dutifully, Audley married his second wife Elizabeth Grey sometime between 1538 and 1540. Their first child, Margaret Audley, was born in 1540.
Sir John Baker, Chancellor of the Court of First Fruits and Tenths
Sir John Baker was a well-known figure at the Tudor court. In June 1540 he was knighted and in the same year became a member of Henry VIII’s Privy Council. In 1545, he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The succession of Mary to the throne saw the restoration of Catholicism in England. During her reign Baker earned a reputation as a brutal persecutor of protestants meriting him the nickname “Bloody Baker”. Legend says that he was riding to persecute some protestants when he heard Queen Mary had died. The place where he turned back became known as Baker’s Cross.
Baker was first married Katherine Sackville and subsequently to Elizabeth Dineley with whom he had five children. He died in London from a short illness in December 1558 less than a month after the death of Queen Mary.
Sir Anthony Browne, Master of the Horse
Sir Anthony Browne was born in c. 1500, the son of Lucy and Sir Anthony Browne, Henry VII's standard-bearer and lieutenant of Calais Castle. His father’s position meant Browne undoubtedly grew up in the household of the future King Henry VIII just like his half-brother William Fitzwilliam (see below). Although Browne never attained the power of the king's other ministers, he did manage to sustain a friendship with the young King Henry.
Browne's record of service officially started when he turned eighteen, in the year 1518, and it was around this time that he was part of an embassy sent to attend the delivery of Tournai to Francis I. In the same year, Browne was appointed surveyor and master of hunting for the castles and lordships of Hatfield, Conisbrough and Thorne in Yorkshire. By October 1519, Browne was serving Henry VIII as a gentleman of the privy chamber, and in 1520 he attended the Field of the Cloth of Gold meeting between Francis I and Henry VIII, taking part in a tournament there. In 1522 he was knighted by the Earl of Surrey for his part in the attack on Morlaix and the king made him a knight of the body. Three years later, he was made lieutenant of the Isle of Man.
The start of 1527 saw Browne being appointed as an ambassador in France reporting regularly on the activities in that country. His dispatches, noted as having a slightly petulant note, reveal an animosity toward the French court that grew over the years. Browne seemingly found fault with everything: the French manner of hunting, the King’s latest mistress, the Order of St. Michael which he considered a poor copy of the Garter, and that he could find nothing worth purchasing. Regardless, Henry VIII must have found Browne a loyal and competent servant as the king continued to send him on French embassies.
Browne was one of those chosen to attend the meeting between Henry VIII and Francis I in autumn 1532 regarding the English king’s wish to divorce Catherine of Aragon. Although a religious conservative, Browne supported the king in his quest for an annulment and throughout the break with Rome. In 1536 Browne, along with his half-brother Fitzwilliam, helped Thomas Cromwell engineer Queen Anne Boleyn's downfall. It was his own sister, Elizabeth, Countess of Worcester, who was said to have been the first to have raised suspicions regarding the Queen and her behaviour with her court musician, Mark Smeaton, and her brother, George Boleyn.
In 1539, Henry appointed Browne as a privy councillor, master of the horse, captain of the gentlemen pensioners, and election as knight of the shire for Surrey. A year later and Browne was once again shown royal favour when selected by the king to meet Anne of Cleves at Rochester. He was made a Knight of the Garter in April 1540 and was also granted Battle Abbey. The Browne brothers appear to have allied themselves with the Duke of Norfolk by Thomas Cromwell’s fall in the summer of 1540, although they were distant enough from the duke to avoid being implicated in Catherine Howard’s fall of 1541 and 1542.
When Henry VIII died in 1547 Browne was made executor of the king’s will and was left the sum of £300. Browne was chosen as guardian of Edward, the king’s only son, and Elizabeth, the king’s daughter by Anne Boleyn. Along with the Earl of Hertford, Browne informed Edward and Elizabeth of their father’s death, and when Edward processed from the Tower of London to Westminster Palace, it was Browne who rode at his side.
Browne married twice. His first wife, Alice, married in 1528, bore him around ten children: seven boys and three girls. After Alice’s death, Browne was married a second time to Elizabeth Fitzgerald on 12th December 1542. The couple had two children who both died young. When Browne himself died on 6th May 1548 at Byfleet in Surrey, he owned 11,000 acres of land in Sussex worth a total of £679 annually as well as 8,500 acres of land in Surrey worth half as much. He was able to leave his second wife and children a generous amount to live on, but most of his fortune went to Anthony, his eldest son by his first wife.
William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton, Lord Privy Seal
William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton, was born in around 1490 and was the third son of Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam of Aldwark, Yorkshire, and his wife, Lucy Neville, daughter of John Neville, Marquess of Montagu. When he was about ten, Fitzwilliam joined the household of Prince Henry, Prince of Wales, as a companion to the young prince. He and his half-brother Anthony Browne (see above) were raised at court and educated alongside the future Henry VIII with whom they had a close relationship. After Henry’s coronation in 1509, Fitzwilliam was made a Gentleman Usher and King’s Cupbearer beginning his ascent to prominence. As esteemed members at court, Fitzwilliam and his half-brother, Anthony Browne, would be instrumental in Anne Boleyn’s downfall in 1536 and the investigation into Queen Catherine Howard's past in 1541. These acts, plus suppressing the “Pilgrimage of Grace” revolt and the Exeter Conspiracy, would earn Fitzwilliam the soubriquet of king’s “enforcer”.
In 1512, Fitzwilliam accompanied Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of Dorset, to Guyenne, and then served under Sir Edward Howard in a failed naval attack on Brest. Howard was killed and Fitzwilliam suffered a crossbow injury. He then led a company of the King's guard with Henry VIII and was knighted at Tournai. In November 1512, Fitzwilliam married Mabel Clifford. King Henry VIII attended their marriage.
By 1520, Fitzwilliam was serving as Vice-Admiral under the Earl of Surrey, which included organising Henry VIII's convoy to the Field of Cloth of Gold meeting with Francis I, where he attended on the king. On his return to England, Vice-Admiral Fitzwilliam had the job of preparing ships at Portsmouth for war with France and served under the Earl of Surrey burning French towns and villages. The following year, his fleet were victorious against the Scottish and French off the coast of Boulogne. In 1522, Fitzwilliam was made joint Master of the Ordinance at Calais and in 1523, he was appointed Captain of Guisnes.
By autumn 1525, Fitzwilliam had been appointed as Treasurer of the Household, and a year later was elected to the Order of the Garter. Between 1526 and 1530, he served at lieutenant of Calais Castle and took part in embassies in France. During this period, Fitzwilliam was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
In 1536, following the death of Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset, he was made Lord High Admiral of England and the following year, Earl of Southampton. Three years later (1539), Fitzwilliam was one of the men responsible for welcoming Anne of Cleves on her arrival in Calais on her journey to England to marry the king. He is known to have praised Anne's beauty.
In 1540, following his former friend Thomas Cromwell's fall, Fitzwilliam was made Lord Privy Seal, in which role he supervised the staff of clerks and prepared documents for authentication by the Great Seal. That same year he was part of the delegation sent to Anne of Cleves to inform her of Henry VIII's wish to annul his fourth marriage and was a witness for the king in the annulment proceedings.
Fitzwilliam died in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 15th October 1542 while leading troops to Scotland under the command of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk. His earldom became extinct on his death, for he had no surviving children.
Sir John Gage, Comptroller of the Household
Sir John Gage (28 October 1479 – 18 April 1556) was an English courtier holding several offices at the Tudor Court. An Esquire of the Body to both Henry VII and Henry VIII, he served offices in the Pale of Calais, becoming Comptroller in 1524 responsible for its finances.
After receiving a knighthood in 1525, Gage moved to the post of Vice-Chamberlain of the Household in 1526 before leaving court in 1533. He also represented Sussex three times (1529, 1539 and 1542) in the parliaments of Henry VIII.
Although not at Court, Gage remained active attending the baptism of Prince Edward and the funeral of Jane Seymour both in 1537. He returned to favour, and in 1540 saw his appointment as Comptroller of the Household responsible for the royal household’s finances, and member of the Privy Council. Made Constable of the Tower, Gage supervised the arrangements for the execution of Catherine Howard. In 1541 he became a Knight of the Garter and in 1542 succeeded as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. In 1544 he undertook an important role for the invasion of France, organising transport and supplies for the army whereupon he became a knight banneret.
Present at the funeral of Henry VIII, he was appointed one of the executors of the king's will and a member of Edward VI's Regency Council. Differences soon arose between him and The Duke of Somerset, who expelled him from the council and from his posts of Comptroller and Chancellor when Somerset became Lord Protector in 1547. Gage re-joined the council, before resigning upon the accession to power of The Earl of Warwick, later Duke of Northumberland. He was suspended as Constable for not supporting Northumberland's attempt to install Lady Jane Grey as Edward's successor. The accession of Mary I saw his restoration as Constable and appointment as Lord Chamberlain. He bore her train at her coronation and at her marriage to Philip of Spain. In 1555, as Constable of the Tower, Gage guarded Princess Elizabeth. Sir John Gage died a year later on 18 April 1556.
Sir William Petre, King’s Secretary
Sir William Petre (c. 1505 – 1572) (pronounced “Peter”) was Secretary of State to three successive Tudor monarchs: Kings Henry VIII and Edward VI, and Queen Mary I. He also deputised for the Secretary of State to Elizabeth I.
Educated as a lawyer at the University of Oxford, he became a public servant, probably through the influence of the Boleyn family, most notably Queen Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII. Petre is also said to have been employed by Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire, as tutor to his son George.
Petre rose rapidly in the royal service and was adept at side-stepping the great religious controversies of the day. Knighted in January 1544, Sir William Petre was appointed Secretary of State, one of the King’s two principal secretaries the other being William Paget. As a member of the Privy Council, he attended its meetings regularly and was one of the six persons authorized to sign documents with a stamp of the King’s signature. Petre was also one of the five men appointed to advise Queen Catherine Parr during her regency in July 1544. His second wife, Anne Browne, served as lady-in-waiting to Queen.
Petre navigated the ship of state through the rest of Henry's troubled reign, managing a smooth succession in 1547. He held high office throughout the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I until, owing to ill health he retired a rich man to his manor of Ingatestone, in Essex, where he had built Ingatestone Hall.
Sir Richard Rich, King’s Solicitor
Richard Rich, 1st Baron Rich (July 1496 – 12 June 1567), was Lord Chancellor during the reign of King Edward VI from 1547 until January 1552. His origins are, however, somewhat obscure. In 1509, Rich inherited his father's house in Islington, Middlesex, and as early in 1551 he was described in an official document as “fifty-four years of age and more”, suggesting that he was born about 1496 (perhaps earlier).
Little is also known of Rich's early life. He may have studied at Cambridge before 1516. That year, he entered the Middle Temple as a lawyer and at some point between 1520 and 1525 he was a reader at the New Inn. By 1528 Rich was in search of a patron and wrote to Cardinal Wolsey. Thomas Audley (see above) succeeded in helping him get elected as an MP for Colchester a year later in 1529. As Audley's career advanced in the early 1530s, so did Rich's, through a variety of legal posts, before he became truly prominent in the mid-1530s. Other preferments followed, and in 1533 Rich was knighted and became the Solicitor General for England and Wales in which capacity he was to act under Thomas Cromwell as a “lesser hammer” for the demolition of the monasteries, and to secure the operation of Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy.
As King's Solicitor, Rich travelled to Kimbolton Castle in Huntingdonshire in January 1536 to take the inventory of the goods of Catherine of Aragon, and wrote to Henry advising how he might properly obtain her possessions. On 19 April 1536 Rich became the chancellor of the Court of Augmentations, established for the disposal of the monastic revenues. His own share of the spoil, acquired either by grant or purchase, included Leez (Leighs) Priory and about 100 manors in Essex. Rich also acquired - and destroyed - the real estate and holdings of the Priory of St Bartholomew-the-Great in Smithfield. In the same year Rich became Speaker of the House of Commons advocating the king's policy.
In 1535, Rich testified in the trials of Catholic martyrs Sir Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher. His evidence against both men included admissions made by them during friendly conversation. In More's case Rich’s testimony was reputedly given a wilful misconstruction that led to More being condemned for treason. Alongside Lord Chancellor Wriothesley (see below), Rich was participant in the torture of Anne Askew, the only woman tortured at the Tower of London. He was also instrumental in the downfall of Thomas Cromwell in 1542 and took part in the prosecution of bishops Stephen Gardiner and Edmund Bonner.
Rich was an assistant executor of the will of King Henry VIII and received a grant of lands. He became Baron Rich of Leez on 26 February 1547. In the next month he succeeded Wriothesley as Lord Chancellor. Rich supported Lord Protector Edward Seymour in his policies, including reforms in Church matters and the prosecution of his brother Thomas Seymour, until the crisis of October 1549, when he joined with John Dudley.
He had a role in the harsh treatment accorded to the future Mary I of England, but surprisingly on her accession she showed Rich no ill will. Despite the share he had taken in the suppression of the monasteries, the prosecution of Thomas More and Bishop Fisher, and the later part he played under Edward VI and Elizabeth, Rich’s religious beliefs remained nominally Catholic. With Mary on the throne, Rich took an active part in the restoration of the old religion in Essex being one of the most active persecutors of non-conformist Protestants. His reappearances in the privy council were rare during Mary's reign, but under Elizabeth he served on a commission to inquire into the grants of land made under Mary, and in 1566 was sent for to advise on the question of the queen's marriage. He died at Rochford in Essex, on 12 June 1567, and was buried in Holy Cross Church in Felsted.
Sir John Russell, Lord High Admiral
John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford (c. 1485 – 14 March 1555) was an English royal minister in the Tudor era. He served variously as Lord High Admiral and Lord Privy Seal. He became a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber to King Henry VII in 1507 and then to his son and successor Henry VIII in 1509. The latter employed him in various military and diplomatic missions on behalf of the crown. Russell was present throughout the entire reign of Henry VIII. He was knighted in 1522 and was created Comptroller of the King’s Household in 1537.
In 1528 Russell was made High Sheriff of Dorset and Somerset and served as Member of Parliament for Buckinghamshire from 1529 to 1536, retaining the royal favour despite the antipathy of Anne Boleyn. Late in 1536, he was made a Privy Counsellor and helped suppress the Pilgrimage of Grace uprising in that year.
On 9 March 1538/1539 he was created Baron Russell, and appointed Lord President of the Council of the West. In the next month, he was made a Knight of the Garter. In July 1539 he was made High Steward of Cornwall, and Lord Warden of the Stannaries. In 1549 he obtained the office of Lord High Admiral when the previous holder, the Earl of Southampton, replaced Thomas Cromwell as Lord Privy Seal.
After Henry VIII met Anne of Cleves at Rochester, the next day he asked Russell if he “thought her fair”. Russell replied with his natural diplomacy and prudence that he took her “not to be fair, but of a brown complexion”. In 1542, Russell himself resigned the Admiralty and succeeded to the Privy Seal on the death of the Earl of Southampton. He was High Steward of the University of Oxford from 1543 till his death.
After Henry VIII met Anne of Cleves at Rochester, the next day he asked Russell if he "thought her fair". Russell replied with his natural diplomacy and prudence that he took her "not to be fair, but of a brown complexion". In 1542, Russell himself resigned from the Admiralty and succeeded to the Privy Seal on the death of Southampton. He was High Steward of the University of Oxford from 1543 till his death.
Russell remained a close companion of King Henry VIII during the last years of his reign. On Henry's death in 1547, Russell was one of the executors of the king's will, and one of sixteen counsellors during the minority of his son King Edward VI.
On 21 June 1553 he was one of the twenty-six peers who signed the settlement of the crown on Lady Jane Grey. He was sent to attend King Philip II into England on his arrival from Spain to wed the Queen Mary.
Among the lands and property he was given by Henry VIII after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, were the Abbey and town of Tavistock, and the area that is now Covent Garden in London.
His wife, Anne Sapcote was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine Parr and was a frequent member at court.
Russell fell ill at the beginning of 1555, making his last appearance at Council on the 11th of January and dying on the 14th of March that year.
Sir Ralph Sadler, King’s Secretary
By the time he was nineteen Ralph Sadler was serving as Thomas Cromwell's secretary learning about administration, finance and politics. He handled Cromwell's household business and was involved in drafting and writing his correspondence. By 1529 he had become one of Cromwell's most trusted friends and was appointed an executor of his will. Between 1525 and 1529, his name appeared in Cromwell's correspondence in connection with the suppression of monasteries. It was probably around this time that his talents came to the attention of the king.
It was probably soon after Cromwell's elevation to the peerage, on 9 July 1536, that Sadler was named a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and in the same year, he became MP for Hindon in Wiltshire.
In January 1537, Sadler was sent to Scotland to investigate complaints made by Margaret Tudor, the King's sister, against her third husband, Henry Stewart, 1st Lord Methven, and to improve Anglo-Scottish relations. He succeeded in both respects. A second foray into Scotland was less successful although the King remained impressed with Sadler’s work.
In April 1540 Sadler was made principal secretary to the king, a position he held jointly with Thomas Wriothesley (see below). In the same year, he was knighted, made a privy councillor, and began more than 30 years of service representing Hertfordshire in Parliament. That same year Sadler survived the fall from power and subsequent execution of his friend and mentor, Thomas Cromwell. Significantly, when Cromwell was sent to the Tower in June 1540, Sadler was the only one who dared to deliver Cromwell’s letter to the King pleading for mercy. Clemency was not forthcoming; it is not known whether the King even read the letter. Six months later, in January 1541, Sadler’s association with his former mentor found himself imprisoned in the Tower. Able to clear his name, he was released in a few days later, returning to the council chamber. That November he played a leading role in the examination of the scandal surrounding Catherine Howard and her relatives. Having regained the King's trust, Sadler was knighted for his part in holding matters of state while the court went on a summer progress of the North in a tripartite ministry with Lords Audley and Hertford.
Sadler was present when the Bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner (see below), one of those along with the Duke of Norfolk who engineered Thomas Cromwell’s downfall, was arrested. When Henry VIII was preparing his will on Boxing Day 1546, he had already appointed Sadler onto the Council of Regency that was to rule England during Edward VI's minority and left him £200 in his will. He was one of the signatories of Edward VI's will in 1553 and proved to be one of the radicals in Edward’s Protestant government. On the young king’s untimely demise, Sadler signed the device proclaiming his cousin, the Protestant Jane Grey, as Queen. Lord Burghley noted that Sadler was one of those expected to act on her behalf.
Deposed after only nine days, when the Catholic Mary I ascended to the throne, Sadler lost most of his offices, including master of the great wardrobe, he was removed from the commissions of the peace and excluded from the Privy Council. He was briefly under house arrest from 25 to 30 July 1553 before being granted a pardon on 6 October. For the rest of Mary I's reign Sadler remained in semi-retirement at Standon, Hertfordshire and did not attend any parliament.
During the reign of Elizabeth I, he was restored to royal favour and was eventually appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1568. That year Mary, Queen of Scots fled to England after the battle of Langside. Some four years later Sadler would become her keeper at Sheffield (1572). He was again reluctantly appointed Mary’s gaoler from the summer 1584 to spring 1585, when she was housed at Wingfield Manor and Tutbury Castle. After the Babington Plot, Sadler was on the council that sentenced Mary to death.
Sir Ralph died on 30 March 1587 reputedly “the richest commoner in England.” His tomb lies beneath a magnificent wall monument in St Mary's Church, Standon, Hertfordshire. Sadler left the majority of his vast landholdings to his eldest son and heir, Thomas Sadler. His younger son, Henry, received the manors of Hungerford, Berkshire, and Everley in Wiltshire.
Sir Anthony Wingfield, Vice-Chamberlain
Sir Anthony Wingfield was a member of court from the reign of the first Tudor, King Henry VII. He was Esquire of the Body at the court of Henry VII in 1509 and was at the King’s funeral that year. But it was during the reign of Henry VIII that Wingfield achieved great advancement. In 1513 he was knighted for his part in the capture of Tournai and rose in status from that point on.
Like his prominent kinsmen he served for a long time in the administration of his county, Suffolk. By 1539 his responsibilities included being part of the royal household and he had a seat on the Privy Council that allowed him to profit from the Dissolution of monasteries.
Anthony Wingfield was made a Knight of the Garter on St George’s Day 1541. Six years later when Herny VIII died in 1547, Wingfield led the guard at the funeral procession and served as an assistant executor of the King’s will from which he was bequeathed £200. Wingfield remained a member of Edward VI’s Privy Council during the protectorate of the Duke of Somerset. However, after the fall of the Protectorate in October 1549, it was Wingfield whom the Council sent to Windsor to arrest Somerset, and to bring him to the Tower. A year later (in 1550) he was appointed to the post of Chamberlain of the Exchequer, a position he held until his death two years later (15 August 1552).
Wingfield died at the house of his friend Sir John Gates in Bethnal Green, and his funeral took place on 21 August at Stepney. His body was borne in a grand heraldic procession, his armour and insignia displayed, over Mile End where the vicar of Shoreditch preached at the communion and a feast was held afterwards.
Sir Thomas Wriothesley, King’s Secretary
Thomas Wriothesley (pronounced “Reeseley”), born in London on 21 December 1505, was the son of York Herald William Wriothesley and Agnes Drayton, daughter and heiress of James Drayton of London. Wriothesley received his early education at St Paul's School, London. In 1522 he was admitted to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he was taught law by Stephen Gardiner (see below). Although Wriothesley did not take a degree, he and Gardiner remained lifelong friends. In 1524, at the age of nineteen, he entered a career at court and came to the attention of Thomas Cromwell. Sometime before 4 May 1530 he was appointed joint Clerk of the Signet under Gardiner, who was by then secretary to King Henry VIII. Wriothesley held this post for a decade while continuing in Cromwell's service.
Wriothesley was the one of two secretaries of King Henry VIII, the other being Ralph Sadler (see above). A naturally skilled but unscrupulous and devious politician who allegiances shifted with the times, Wriothesley and William Brereton were charged with helping secure an annulment for the King against Catherine of Aragon from Pope Clement VII to allow Anne Boleyn to assume her royal position. Subsequently, he served as a loyal instrument of Henry VIII in the King’s break with the Catholic church.
Wriothesley's services were richly rewarded at the Dissolution of the Monasteries being granted extensive lands between Southampton and Winchester that had once belonged to the abbeys of Beaulieu and Titchfield.
Until May 1539, he was Henry VIII's ambassador in Brussels. When Anne of Cleves was due to come from the German duchy to England later that year, it was Wriothesley who led the naval escort. Having been sent on diplomatic errands abroad, the following year saw the recently knighted Sir Thomas Wriothesley made one of the King's principal secretaries, a position he held jointly with Sir Ralph Sadler (see above), acting as Secretary to the Privy Council. Dividing the duties, Wriothesley's responsibility was purely political whereas Sadler's were as personal secretary to the King. Wriothesley's noble parentage and strong personality, however, enabled him to dominate the commoner Sadler.
Wriothesley continued to support the Duke of Norfolk and his pro-Catholic faction, but like many at the time did so when it suited him at court. When Queen Catherine Howard's conviction and execution for adultery signalled that the political pendulum was swinging away from Norfolk, Wriothesley distanced himself from Norfolk’s faction.
When on 22 April 1544 Lord Audley died, Wriothesley was appointed Lord Chancellor the next month. Ever the unscrupulous schemer, Wriothesley was purposely chosen to keep both papists and reformists at bay. The King relied heavily on his aristocratic friends Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk and Wriothesley to secure a balance of power in the Privy Chamber. He was created Baron Wriothesley of Titchfield in 1544. But as Lord Chancellor he became notorious for torturing Anne Askew, a self-confessed Protestant, personally operating the wheel on the rack.
Wriothesley was one of the executors of Henry VIII's will, and in accordance with the dead King's wishes he was created Earl of Southampton on 16 February 1547 and was a member of the Regency Council that would rule collectively during King Edward VI's minority. His long-standing antipathy toward the Seymour family meant that Wriothesley objected to Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset’s appointment to the position of Lord Protector. In March 1547, he then found himself abruptly dismissed from the chancellorship on charges of selling off some of his offices to delegates, losing his seat on the Privy Council at the same time.
Later he was readmitted to the Council, and he took a leading part in bringing about the fall of the Duke of Somerset, but he had not regained his former position when he died on 30 July 1550. His successor in the earldom was his son, Henry.
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury
Thomas Cranmer, born 2nd July 1489 in Aslacton, Nottinghamshire, was the first Protestant archbishop of Canterbury (1533–56). In a lengthy career Cranmer was adviser to the English kings Henry VIII and Edward VI.
In August 1532 the aged archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, died. The obvious candidate for the archbishopric, Stephen Gardiner (see below), was out of favour with the king who chose Cranmer instead. By March 1533 Cranmer was consecrated and instituted at Canterbury. Shortly thereafter he proceeded to do what was expected of him with regard to dissolving Henry first marriage. In May he convened his court at Dunstable, declared the king’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon void from the outset, and pronounced the marriage to Anne Boleyn valid.
In 1536, convinced by the dubious evidence of Anne’s alleged adulteries, he in turn invalidated that marriage. Four years later in 1540 he assisted in the freeing of Henry VIII from his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, and in 1542 he was forced to be prominent in the proceedings that resulted in Catherine Howard’s execution for treasonable unchastity.
As archbishop, he put the English Bible in parish churches, drew up the Book of Common Prayer, and composed a litany that remains in use today. Cranmer was denounced by the Catholic queen Mary I for promoting Protestantism. Convicted of heresy he was burned at the stake on 21st March 1556 in Oxford.
Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester
Stephen Gardiner (27 July 1483 – 12 November 1555) was an English Catholic bishop and politician during the English Reformation period who served as Lord Chancellor during the reign of Queen Mary I and King Philip.
During Henry VIII’s reign Gardiner took part in various embassies to France and Germany. Indeed, he was so often abroad that he had little influence on the King's councils. Gardiner, an implacable opponent of Thomas Cromwell, was elected chancellor of the University of Cambridge in 1540 on Cromwell’s execution. A few years later he attempted, in concert with others, to fasten a charge of heresy upon Archbishop Cranmer who had married in contravention of one of the Six Articles, the historically defining statements of doctrines and practices of the Church of England with respect to the controversies of the English Reformation. But for the personal intervention of the king, Gardiner would probably have succeeded.
Great as Gardiner's influence had been with Henry VIII, his name was omitted from the King's will, though Henry was believed to have intended making him one of his executors. Henry had made provision in his will for a 16-man Council to rule England during his son Edward's minority (Edward VI). Gardiner was excluded from this council. He also resolutely opposed radical Protestant reforms introduced by said Council such that by the end of 1547 was summoned before the council to explain himself. Refusing to answer satisfactorily on some points, Gardiner was imprisoned in the Tower of London in June 1548. Eventually he was given a lengthy appearance before the Privy Council, beginning in December 1550 and, in February 1551 he was deprived of his bishopric and returned to the Tower where he remained for the rest of Edward VI’s reign (a further two years).
At the accession of Queen Mary I, Gardiner along with Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk and other state prisoners of high rank were in the Tower. The Queen, on her first entry into London, set them all free. Gardiner was restored to his bishopric and appointed Lord Chancellor, and he placed the crown on the Queen's head at her coronation. He also opened her first parliament and for some time was her leading councillor. He was now also called upon, in old age, to undo not a little of the work in which he had been instrumental in his earlier years – to demonstrate the legitimacy of the Queen's birth and the legality of her mother's marriage, to restore the old religion, and to recant his own words touching the royal supremacy.
Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, Lord Treasurer
Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, (10 March 1473 – 25 August 1554) was a prominent English politician and Privy Councillor in the Tudor court. An able soldier, he was often employed in military operations. In 1497, for example, he served in a campaign against the Scots under the command of his father, who knighted him on 30 September 1497. He was made a Knight of the Garter after the accession of his nephew by marriage, King Henry VIII, and became the King's close companion, with lodgings at court.
Howard was an uncle to two of the wives of King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, both of whom were beheaded, and played a major role in the machinations affecting those royal marriages. After falling from favour in 1546, he was stripped of his dukedom and imprisoned in the Tower of London only avoiding execution when Henry VIII died on 28 January 1547.
He was released on the accession of the Queen Mary I, whom he aided in securing the throne, thus setting the stage for tensions between his Catholic family and the Protestant royal line that would be continued by Mary's half-sister, Elizabeth I.
Robert Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex, Lord Chamberlain
Robert Radcliffe, 10th Baron Fitzwalter, 1st Earl of Sussex, Knight of the Garter, Knight of the Bath, and Privy Councillor (c. 1483 – 27 November 1542). He was a prominent courtier and soldier who, in his youth, had been in the service of King Henry VII and his then elder son and heir, Arthur, Prince of Wales. Radcliffe was present at Arthur's marriage to Catherine of Aragon on 14 November 1501.
In 1509 Radcliffe became Baron FitzWalter and on 23 June of that year was made a Knight of the Bath. Further honours and appointments followed. Radcliffe was a member of the Privy Council before 2 February 1526, was created Earl of Sussex on 8 December 1529, appointed Lieutenant of the Order of the Garter on 7 May 1531, and appointed as a Chamberlain of the Exchequer for life on 3 June 1532.
On 3 January 1540, he attended Henry VIII at the reception of Anne of Cleves at Blackheath. Later that same year (3 August 1540) he was granted a lifetime appointment as Lord Great Chamberlain. Robert Radcliffe died at Chelsea on 28 November 1542 and was buried at Boreham, Essex.
Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham
Cuthbert Tunstall (otherwise spelt Tunstal or Tonstall) was born in Hackforth near Bedale in North Yorkshire in 1474, the illegitimate son of Sir Thomas Tunstall of Thurland Castle in Lancashire who would later be an esquire of the body of Richard III.
On 22 February 1530 Cuthbert Tunstall succeeded Cardinal Wolsey as Bishop of Durham, a role that involved assuming quasi-regal power and authority within the territory of the diocese, the County Palatine of Durham. Seven years later he was made President of the new Council of the North. Although he was often engaged in time-consuming negotiations with the Scots, he took part in other public business and attended parliament where, in 1539, he participated in the discussion on the Bill of Six Articles mentioned above.
In the question of King Henry's divorce from his first wife, Tunstall acted as one of Queen Catherine's counsellors. Unlike Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More, Tunstall adopted a policy of passive obedience and acquiescence regarding many matters for which he likely held little support during the troubled years following the English Reformation. While Tunstall adhered firmly to Roman Catholic doctrine and practices, after some hesitation he accepted Henry as head of the Church of England, and he publicly defended this position, accepting a schism with Rome.
When the Protestant Elizabeth I ascended to the throne, Tunstall refused to take the Oath of Supremacy and would not participate in the consecration of the Anglican Matthew Parker as Archbishop of Canterbury. He was arrested, deprived of his diocese in September 1559, and held prisoner at Lambeth Palace. He died there within a few weeks, aged 85, becoming one of eleven Roman Catholic bishops to die in custody during Elizabeth's reign. Tunstall was buried in the parish church of St Mary-at-Lambeth, now a deconsecrated building.
Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, Privy Councillor
Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, 1st Earl of Hertford, 1st Viscount Beauchamp, Knight of the Garter and Privy Councillor. Also known as Edward Semel, he served as Lord Protector of England from 1547 to 1549 during the minority of his nephew King Edward VI. He was the eldest surviving brother of Queen Jane Seymour, the third wife of King Henry VIII. Indeed, Seymour grew rapidly in favour with Henry VIII following the king’s marriage to Jane in 1536 and was subsequently made Earl of Hertford.
From October to the end of Henry's reign he was in attendance on the king, engaged in the struggle for predominance which was to determine the complexion of the government during the coming minority. Personal, political and religious rivalry separated him from the Howard family. The latter could not acquiesce, in the Imperial ambassador's verdict, that Seymour was one of only two noblemen of fit age and capacity to carry on the government. Henry Howard's hasty temper and his attempt to secure the predominance of his family led to his own execution and to his father's imprisonment in the Tower of London.
On Henry's death in 1547, Seymour was appointed protector by the Regency Council on the accession of the nine-year-old Edward VI. Rewarded with the title Duke of Somerset, he became the effective ruler of England.
William Lord Sandys, Lord Chamberlain of the Household
William Sandys, 1st Baron Sandys (1470 – 4 December 1540) was a younger son of Sir William Sandys (1440–1496) of The Vyne in the parish of Sherborne St John, Hampshire.
As a young man, Sandys gained preferment at court and was soon associated with the future King Henry VIII, assisting at his knighthood and at the reception of his future wife Catherine of Aragon. He was appointed as a Knight of the Body to Henry VIII, becoming a close companion to the King in the early years of his reign. In 1517 he was appointed Treasurer of Calais, a personal possession of the king, and in 1518 was made a Knight of the Garter. He was apparently instrumental in organising the meeting of the English and French kings at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, near Calais. He was created Baron Sandys of The Vyne, in 1523. In 1530 he was made Henry's Lord Chamberlain and later that same year he was appointed Captain of Guisnes, a position he held until his death in 1540.
As a favourite of Henry VIII, three times the king visited Sandys’ palatial Tudor-style mansion at “The Vyne” which he had built in 1520. Anne Boleyn, whom Sandys would later escort to imprisonment in the Tower of London, visited once in company with the king. Sandys is known to have disapproved of the King's marriage to Anne, and as a result, spent less time at court. Although his sister Edith had married, secondly, Thomas Darcy, 1st Baron Darcy de Darcy, one of the leaders of the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536), Sandys certainly played no part in the uprising. In October that year he was summoned to “attend upon the King's own person” with 400 men. On 10 October 1536 he was ordered to muster at Ampthill, Bedfordshire, and to “prepare victuals and lodging for the King and his train”, a task for which he would have been well qualified as Henry's Lord Chamberlain. Later he accompanied Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk as far as Cambridge but took no further action in the suppression of the rebellion.
In his later years, Sandys seems to have taken no great part in court life but his responsibilities at Guisnes kept him very busy in the early years of his appointment and between 1538 and 1540. He returned to The Vyne from Calais in October 1540. On 7 December, Lord Matravers, the Lord Deputy of Calais, received a message from England announcing that Sandys had died at The Vyne. On that same day, Henry VIII wrote to the Council of Calais advising them that “the Lord Chamberlain, who was captain of Guisnes is dead.” He was buried in the Chapel of the Guild of the Holy Ghost in Basingstoke, which he had founded, near his residence at The Vyne, and parts of his tomb survive within the ruins of the chapel.
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, President of the Privy Council
Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk (c. 1484 – 22 August 1545) was the second but only surviving son of Sir William Brandon, Henry Tudor's standard-bearer at the Battle of Bosworth Field, where Richard III was slain. Brandon was brought up at the court of Henry VII, and became Henry VIII's closest friend. He is described by Sir William Dugdale, an English antiquary and herald, as: “a person comely of stature, high of courage and conformity of disposition to King Henry VIII, with whom he became a great favourite.”
Brandon held a succession of offices in the royal household, becoming Master of the Horse in 1513, and received many valuable grants of land. On 15 May 1513, he was created Viscount Lisle, having entered into a marriage contract with his ward, Elizabeth Grey. The contract was ended, and the title forfeited, as a result of Brandon's marriage in 1515to Henry VII’s fifth daughter, Mary Tudor.
After his marriage to Mary, Suffolk lived for some years in retirement, but he was present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. In 1523 he was sent to Calais to command the English troops there. He invaded France in company with Floris d'Egmont, Count of Buren, who was at the head of the Flemish troops, and laid waste the north of France, but disbanded his troops at the approach of winter.
Brandon was appointed Earl Marshal of England in 1524, a position previously held by Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk. However, in 1533 he relinquished the office to Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, “whose auncesto[ur]s of longe tyme hadde the same until nowe of late.”
After Cardinal Wolsey's disgrace, Suffolk's influence increased. He was sent with Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, to demand the Great Seal from Wolsey; and Suffolk acted as High Steward at the new queen's coronation. He was one of the commissioners appointed by Henry VIII to dismiss Catherine's household, a task he found distasteful.
Brandon supported Henry's ecclesiastical policy, receiving a large share of the lands after the dissolution of the monasteries. In 1544, he was for the second time in command of an English army for the invasion of France. He died at Guildford, Surrey, on 24 August in the following year. At Henry VIII's expense he was buried in St George's Chapel, Windsor. Brandon was perhaps the only person in England who successfully retained Henry VIII's affection for most of a period of forty years.