ABSTRACT
The 10th March 1572 was a Monday and William's extremely long life came to an end ‘between the hours of 10 and 11 o’clock’. We do not know what rites attended his passing, but it would have been typical of the man if they had been in strict accordance with the prescription of the established church. 1 Although he was regarded by the Spaniards as ‘a good catholic’ and had certainly conformed to Mary's church most scrupulously, in November 1552 he had been described very differently in a letter from Thomas Naunton to no less a person than John Calvin. Naunton was describing the arrangements which had been made for the family of the attainted Duke of Somerset. His widow had been reduced by the attainder to ‘the lowest level of nobility’; his eldest daughter, Anne, was already married to the Earl of Warwick. Four other daughters, all unmarried, had been entrusted by the Council to their aunt Elizabeth, recently widowed by Lord Gregory Cromwell and soon to marry Lord John Paulet. The youngest daughter, less than two years old, was in the care of another aunt, Dorothy, the widow of Sir Clement Smith. His heir, Edward, aged 13 and his two brothers, aged 12 and five, were wards of the Crown and were ‘with the Lord Treasurer of England’. They were, he reported, being liberally educated – ‘I retain my old office of instructing them’. He continued:
But you may perhaps feel uncomfortable at their residing in the house of that individual, the Marquis of Winchester, of whose religion you may have been led from the reports of others, to entertain a doubt. This doubt, however, I am able to remove. As far as I can perceive he is a worthy and religious man, nor do I see in what respects he differs from us, so that even supposing he were to think differently, which I do not believe to be the case, yet as he does not draw us aside, but even goes before us in religion by his own example, there is no danger. 2
