User:Vulgarurbanism/Henry Dudley (conspirator)

Vice-Admiral Sir Henry Dudley (1517–1568) was an English Admiral, soldier, diplomat, and conspirator of the Tudor period against the Catholic Queen Mary I of England.

Early life and family
Born in Dudley Castle, Staffordshire, Henry Sutton de Dudley, also known as Dudley, was the second son of John Sutton, 3rd Baron Dudley and Cecily, nee Grey, a daughter of Thomas Grey, 1st Marquis of Dorset and Cecily Bonville, 7th Baroness Harington, and grand-daughter of the former Queen of England, Elizabeth Woodville.

Dudley was the first cousin of Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, the father of Lady Jane Grey. He was also the second cousin once removed of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, and the second cousin of Elizabeth I through their mutual great-grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville.

He is not to be confused with the youngest of Northumberland's sons, also named Henry Dudley, who married Margaret, the daughter of Lord Chancellor Thomas Audley and was killed in battle in 1557.

Dudley married a daughter of another plotter against Queen Mary, Sir Christoper Ashton.

Early career
Dudley became a monastic auditor under Thomas Cromwell in 1535, and then a soldier serving in Ireland under his uncle Leonard Grey in 1536, and in Scotland from 1540–3. Dudley fought gallantly during the siege of Boulogne in 1544, and was made a Captain early in 1545 under Lord Clinton.

In September 1550, Dudley accompanied the Vidame de Chartres, François de Vendôme to Scotland. The Vidame was a hostage in England, given by the French as part of the Treaty of Boulogne. In January 1551, Dudley was sent in the train of the Vidame when he was returned to France, and received private instructions from the then Clerk of the Parliaments and spy, Sir John Mason to collect secrete information during the visit. In May 1551 he was made captain of Guisnes.

Dudley was knighted at Hampton Court on 11 October 1551, the same day his elder second cousin, John Dudley, was created Duke of Northumberland, both by the Protestant King Edward VI.

Promotion and imprisonment
He was promoted to Admiral of the Narrow Seas in March 1552 when Lord Clinton was Lord Admiral. Dudley went to sea with four ships to protect English merchant vessels, capturing two Flemish pirates and taking them to Dover.

A close associate of his second cousin, now the Duke of Northumberland, Dudley was arrested on 25 July 1553 at Guisnes. The duke had sent him to France around 13 July 1553, shortly after the death of Edward VI and the proclamation of the fervently Protestant Lady Jane Grey as Queen of England, to confer with King Henry II regarding French support in the event of an Imperial intervention in England. On his return to England, Dudley was imprisoned in the Tower of London, but pardoned by Queen Mary on 18 October 1553, having found to have not taken part in Northumberland's conspiracy to install Lady Jane Grey as Queen.

Henry Machyn made note of Dudley's imprisonment in his diary: "The sixth day of August, cam into the Towre from Calais, Ser Hare Dudley, that was going into Franse."

Second visit to Paris
Dudley, having been Captain of the Guard at Boulogne in 1547 had many friends in France. In December 1555 visited Paris to seek aid from King Henry II, where he was curiously well received. This reception did not go unnoticed by Mary I, she remarked that Dudley was received as "...if he had been the most noble man" sent as an official ambassador. France and Spain were at war in 1555, though there was a pending proposal for a truce. When the truce was in doubt, the French listened to Dudley, but once the truce was signed, the French king cast him off.

Return to England
Although Dudley returned home with only the vaguest of assurances, even Pope Paul was ill-disposed toward the English Queen Mary because of her marriage into the powerful Habsburg family and that same month signed a secret treaty with Henry II against Spanish dominion.

Dudley planned to lead men from England, on board transports bound for France, then returning again on the coast near Portsmouth, driving out the Spaniards and robbing the exchequer.

In Spain, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor abdicated on 16 January 1556, whereupon Philip and Mary became King and Queen of Spain, which at the time held the Netherlands. Philip II had received a letter confirming that given the mood of the English Parliament, even down to the people, discontent was such that there was scant chance of him also being crowned in England at the same time or in the near future.

Dudley did not act alone in his plan, his co-conspirators included his future father-in-law, Christopher Ashton, John Throckmorton of Totworth, MP for Wootton Bassett, and consequently Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, Sir Henry Killigrew,, Richard Uvedale, Sir Anthony Kingston, Henry Peckham, brothers Edmund and Francis Verney and Thomas White.

Dudley and his agents moved in January 1556 to conceal stores of ammunition at strategic locations. After the French had refused to finance them, they resolved to take ₤50,000 worth of Spanish silver bars from the English Exchequer, (where Dudley was a familiar visitor and had a number of friends), "in water by (London) bridge" to make ready for an invasion planned to be executed by mercenaries and exiles. The money was to be sent to France where his Protestant exile supporters would follow the initiative through.

Dudley's co-conspirators in England devised a plan to take the silver. A keeper of the Star Chamber, William Rossey, was an old acquaintance of one of Dudley's friends, and he lived in a house near the office of the receipt of the exchequer at Westminster. The house backed onto the River Thames, which would enable the silver to be loaded on to a boat to be transported to France. Rossey enabled the conspirators to access the location where the bars were deposited. They had also bribed a searcher at Gravesend to let them pass.

Organises invasion force
It was Henry Dudley who now took the initiative; while greater noblemen trembled, Dudley was abroad organising a widespread and sophisticated rebellion. Amongst his agents was the courtier and MP Henry Peckham, the son of Sir Edmund Peckham, then Master of the Tower Mint and a member of the Royal Council.

Dudley returned to France with the help of Richard Uvedale, who gave him a boat. At this time is was an offense to leave the country without a royal license. By March, Dudley was engaged in the raising of an invasion force, with the intention of landing it on the Isle of Wight, where Uvedale was in command of Yarmouth Castle and had promised Dudley to help him land in secret, to then march on London. This invasion force was to be made up of some of the many English religious and political exiles living in France and other European countries at the time, driven out by Mary I's persecution of Protestantism.

Uvedale later confessed that Dudley wrote to him from France at this time: "By God's blood! I will drive out these Spaniards, or die for it."

Had the plot not been discovered, its intention was to remove Mary to exile in Spain where she could be happily reunited with King Philip and to bring about the succession of Elizabeth to the English throne. Bold and righteous as it was, it proved too daring for most of the English gentry, who failed to lend it their support, "feebly, but not without some expectation, waiting for time to dispatch the evil Queen".

Plot dissolves
Dudley's plot was betrayed in March, when one of the men who was going to steal the silver from the exchequer, Thomas White, confessed to the government. Dudley's great scheme was undermined by careless talk and too unwieldy an organisation. He was consequently to become an exile in the French service between 1556 and 1563.

Machyn again made note of Dudley in his diary: "'The 4th day of Aprell (1556) was in London a proclamation of sertyn gentyllmen, that wyche fled over the see, as trayturs; the furst was Hare Dudley, Crystoffer Aston the elther, and Crystoffer the yonger, and Francis Horssey and Edward Horssey, and Edward Cornwell alias Corewel, and Recherd Tremayn and Necolas Tremayn, and Richard Ryth and Roger Renold, and John Dalle and John Caltham, and Hamond, and Meverell, and dyver odur.'"

On the 8th of April, Mary's ambassador to France, Nicholas Wotton, was ordered to demand Dudley's extradition from France, but King Henry II had received Dudley well, giving him 1500 crowns and making him a gentleman of the privy chamber.

John Throckmorton was committed to the Tower and tortured for his role in the conspiracy, he refused to implicate any others. He was convicted of treason on 21 April 1556 and hung at Tyburn a week later.

Henry Peckham soon found himself a prisoner of the Tower. In July 1556 he and his assistants were "hanged on the gallows of Tower Hill for treason against the queen .... and after cut down, beheaded and their bodies carried unto London Bridge and there set up and their bodies buried at Allhallows, Barking."

Dudley claimed claimed fear of his creditors was the motive for him fleeing England. His sister-in-law, Lady Catherine Sutton, Baroness Dudley, wife of his brother Edward Sutton, 4th Baron Dudley, was questioned by Mary I as to where her brother Henry was. Lady Catherine had been one of Mary's Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber, her father was a supporter of Mary; he was involved in suppressing Wyatt's rebellion against Mary in early 1554, and in April that year had been created Baron Chandos and given Sudeley Castle by her.

An account of Mary's questioning of Lady Catherine survives in the State Papers office (Domestic, 26 March 1556), contained in the confession of Thomas White and recounted in the Letters and Papers of the Verney Family:

“He likewise told me of the talk between the queen and my lady Dudley, that she asked her where her brother Henry was?

And she made answer, 'In France, as I hear say, for I knew not of his going.'

And then the queen asked her for what cause he went over; and then she answered, she thought for debt. To whom the queen answered, that he needed not for debt, for we have given him (unclear amount) by year.

And my lady affirmed and said, 'And like your grace, that is true, but, notwithstanding all, that did not serve him. He was so afeard of his creditors that be durst not tarry here any longer.'

To whom the queen's majesty said, “ If it had been for debt, if we had been made privy he should not have gone to the French king to pay his debt, for as we are credibly advertised, he is so received at the king's hand, and so entertained, that if he had been the most noble man coming from us thither [he] could not have been better or the like - marvelling much,' said the queen's majesty, for what cause the French king should entertain any subject of ours in such sort.”

In November 1556, the select counsel wrote to the Queen with: "...information from Dr. Wotton, that the profligate traitor, Dudley, has been tampering with the soldiers at Guisnes and Ham(pnes)". His elder brother, Edward, 3rd Baron Dudley, was at this time the Lieutenant of the Castle of Ham in Hampnes.

Later life and death
Dudley remained in Henry II's service in France after Elizabeth I became queen in England.

He returned home and serve as "Capt. Dudley" in 1563, receiving an annuity later the same year from Queen Elizabeth I for his service. In 1567 he obtained from Elizabeth some protection from his creditors that was extended to 1568.

Sir Henry died between 1568 and 1570, but no will is known to exist.