The Tudors

by G. J. Meyer

  Nor was anything done or said to indicate that the new regime was so much as thinking about the one subject even more explosive than the marriage: the church land that had been seized by Henry and his cohorts in the 1530s, had since then been given to favorites or sold and broken up and sold again, and now was in the hands of noble and gentry families in every corner of the kingdom. Gardiner had warned Mary not only that there was no possibility of returning this property to the church, but that any move in that direction would spark a reaction so violent as to wreck any possibility of progress on other fronts. The emperor Charles and his son, who had come to regard it as one of their purposes in life to heal the schism in England if they could not do so in Germany, agreed so completely that they successfully pressured Pope Julius II to assent as well. They were opposed, however, by Cardinal Pole, whom the pope had ordered to England as his legate and was now in the Low Countries awaiting permission to cross the Channel. Pole, after decades of exile from his home country, had no understanding of how alien the notion of papal supremacy now was to many Englishmen, or of how the dispersion of the church lands had given rise to a whole new class that would go to war before surrendering the foundation of its wealth and influence. He found himself stalled just a short voyage from home. The Hapsburgs wanted him kept away until Philip was safely married to the queen—Charles wrongly feared that if given the opportunity Pole might claim the bride for himself—and Gardiner wanted no trouble over the land question. Parliament, both of its houses dominated by exactly the kinds of men who had prospered mightily from the dispersion of the church land, was relieved to find that Mary was doing nothing about the subject. It remained distrustful, however, and would continue to be so.

  Before year-end Gardiner was able to disclose the contents of a completed marriage treaty. It was, from the English perspective, a thoroughly favorable arrangement: Gardiner had been able to use the Spanish ambassadors’ understanding of English public opinion to extract extraordinary concessions. If Mary and Philip had a son, the treaty stated, he would be heir not only to England but to Philip’s possessions in Germany, Burgundy, and the Netherlands. Philip’s son Charles, then eight years old, was acknowledged as heir to Spain and the Hapsburg holdings in Italy and the New World, but if he died without issue that entire empire would go to the English heir as well. If on the other hand Mary died without issue, Philip was to have no claim to the English crown or, for that matter, to anything in England. Mary and any children that she might bear were not to leave England without permission of Parliament, thereby ensuring that the children would be English in their upbringing. Though Philip was to be styled king of England he was to assist Mary in ruling, not rule himself. Nothing was to be done to alter the laws or customs of England, and England was not to be involved in the Hapsburgs’ wars.

  Opponents of the marriage could hardly have hoped for more, but nevertheless news of the agreement was received without enthusiasm. People grumbled that words on paper meant nothing, because the Spanish could not be trusted, and that if Mary did have a son he would grow up to rule not England but a far-flung assortment of domains of which England would be only a part. There was grumbling on the continent, understandably, where some thought too high a price was being paid for a union of little real value to anyone except the English and perhaps the Dutch. Philip himself, when he learned the details of what his father’s representatives had promised, was aghast. To him the agreement seemed insulting. He secretly signed a document repudiating the treaty on grounds that he had not been consulted about its terms and therefore could not be bound by them. Thus what should have been seen as a diplomatic victory for England became instead a shaky foundation upon which to erect a lasting understanding.

  Disclosure of the treaty’s terms, which remained subject to approval by Parliament, did nothing to stop secret plans for simultaneous rebellions in several parts of England. These plans—it is not clear where they originated—had been in preparation since shortly after the queen’s refusal to be deflected from the marriage. The aim of the plotters also remains unclear and was probably a confused mixture. They certainly wanted to stop the wedding, probably hoped to depose Mary (though a proposal that she should be assassinated had been rejected), and possibly intended to replace her by marrying Elizabeth to Courtenay and crowning them together. The risings were scheduled for March 1554 and were to take place simultaneously in four places: Devon in the west, Hereford and Leicestershire to the north, and Kent near London. The hope, evidently, was that a government that had no standing army would find it impossible to deal with so many irruptions at the same time. But by January Gardiner had learned that trouble of some kind was brewing. He had his protégé and onetime prison-mate Courtenay brought in for questioning. Whatever Courtenay knew he quickly revealed, and when the plotters saw that their secret had been disclosed they decided to act without further delay. Everywhere but in Kent the results were disastrous—or pathetic. In Devon the ringleaders ran for their lives as soon as they saw that no one was willing to rise with them, and the attempt in Hereford fizzled almost as quickly. In Leicester Jane Grey’s father the Duke of Suffolk, the only nobleman among the plotters, foolishly put himself at the head of a rebellion that likewise came to nothing. On the run, he tried to hide in a hollow tree but was found out by a sharp-nosed dog and taken to the Tower in chains.

  In Kent, however, it was a different story. There the rising was led by a cabal of disaffected country gentlemen with substantial military experience, a history of association with King Edward’s regime, and hopes of gaining much if Mary’s government could be overturned. Prominent among these men was Sir Thomas Wyatt, son of a famous poet and courtier of the same name. He had been involved in the plotting as early as November and was able, when the rising went off prematurely, to quickly assemble several thousand fighting men. That was a force quite big enough to challenge the queen—it soon swelled to fifteen or even twenty thousand—and with it Wyatt began advancing on London. He was met at Rochester by troops mustered in London and commanded by the aged Duke of Norfolk, who found himself first outnumbered and then neutralized by the defection of a substantial portion of his army.

  It was a genuine emergency. The capital was virtually undefended, the queen in real danger of losing the crown that she had won scarcely half a year before. The imperial ambassador offered to request troops from the continent, while many of Mary’s councilors urged her to flee. Once again she was saved by her own courage. She refused the offer of foreign military support and refused also to leave London. Instead she put her faith in her subjects, and her fate in their hands. She went to the Guildhall, one of London’s great gathering places, and in an impromptu speech addressed a gathering of citizens assembled by the lord mayor. She denounced Wyatt and his fellow conspirators, accusing them of wanting not only to prevent her marriage but to usurp the authority of the Crown and use it for their own narrow purposes. Scepter in hand, she declared her confidence that her subjects would never allow the rebels to prevail.

  “As for this marriage,” she said, “ye shall understand that I enterprised not the doing thereof without the advice of all our Privy Council. Nor am I, I assure ye, so bent to my own will, or so affectionate, that for my own pleasure I would choose where I lust, or needs must have a husband. I have hitherto lived a maid; and doubt nothing, but with God’s grace I am able to live so still. Certainly, did I think that this marriage were to the hurt of you my subjects, or the impeachment of my royal estate, I would never consent thereunto. And I promise you, on the word of a queen, that if it shall not appear to the Lords and Commons in Parliament to be for the benefit of the whole realm, I will never marry while I live. Wherefore stand fast against these rebels, your enemies and mine. Fear them not, for I assure ye I fear them nothing at all.” It was as splendid a moment as any in the history of English royalty. Mary departed to shouts of approval, and within hours more than twenty thousand men had volunteered to defend her and the city. By the next morning Wyatt, because
he had failed to attack while the city lay open to him, was doomed to defeat. His followers, faced with the defiance of the queen’s defenders, began to melt away. He proceeded nevertheless, penetrated to St. James’s Palace and beyond, and again caused a panic that only Mary’s resolution prevented from turning into a headlong flight of the entire court. Finally, on the morning of February 7, what remained of the rebellion fell apart. Wyatt threw down his sword and surrendered. It had been a near thing, but when it was over Mary found her position strengthened. The fact that Wyatt’s early success had not caused the rebellion to spread, and her fresh demonstration of courage, were enough to put heart into the queen’s friends and discourage further plotting. For the second time in half a year Mary had been tested, as had the loyalty of the kingdom, and neither had been found wanting.

  As always in such matters, the rebellion left a residue that had to be cleared away. Wyatt of course was executed for treason, along with a number of the other ringleaders. The Duke of Suffolk, having again betrayed Mary in spite of the leniency that she had extended to him after the fall of John Dudley, also went to his death. Far less inevitably, his daughter Jane and Jane’s husband Guildford Dudley were executed as well. They had had nothing to do with the rebellion, but it was not unreasonable for the authorities to fear that if the pair remained alive they would serve as a rallying point for the discontented. In all some 480 men were convicted of treason, but fewer than a hundred died. The others were pardoned, in most cases without so much as being fined. Mary’s government took far less vengeance than that of Edward VI had done five years earlier in dealing with risings that never challenged his right to the crown.

  Restrained as they were in meting out punishment, however, the queen and her chancellor made a mistake that would prove to have poisonous consequences. Faced with the confused aims and conflicting grievances of the rebel leaders, they chose to conclude that the rebellion had erupted not chiefly in opposition to the Spanish marriage (such a conclusion would have been uncomfortable in light of Mary’s determination to proceed) but in the hope of restoring the evangelical church. Their willingness—possibly it was eagerness—to believe that Protestantism had given rise to treason made it easy to go a step further and conclude that Protestantism was treason, to equate religious dissent with sedition. This could help to explain the execution of Jane Grey and her husband: if evangelicals were irreconcilable enemies of Mary’s regime, they were likely to try again to put Jane on the throne. Such thinking would lead Mary and her associates to acts that echoed the outrages committed by Henry VIII and foreshadowed further atrocities in the next reign. It was profoundly misguided, there being no conclusive evidence that the objectives of Wyatt and his cohorts were mainly religious at all. Not only when put on trial but before and during the revolt, many of them had professed to be Catholic.

  Elizabeth and Courtenay presented a particularly difficult problem. Courtenay certainly had been aware of the conspiracy before it became known to the government; after telling Gardiner everything, he had declared his support for the queen and even participated—though in a characteristically ineffectual and even cowardly fashion—in the battle with the rebels. Equally certainly, Wyatt had written of his plans to Elizabeth, but if she replied she did so orally or her letters were destroyed. After the collapse of the rebellion she along with Courtenay was confined in the Tower, but relentless questioning failed to draw anything incriminating out of her and evidence of her involvement remained circumstantial and thin. The imperial ambassador argued for her execution, warning that her very existence made her a danger to the queen, a focus not only for evangelical subversion but for a French king so desperate to prevent the union of England and Spain that he was encouraging sedition wherever he could find it. It certainly lay within the power of the Crown to have Elizabeth done away with, but Mary and Gardiner refused. Ultimately Elizabeth was sent to the royal estate at Woodstock, where she prudently did everything possible to satisfy her sister that she was a sincere and observant Catholic. Courtenay, too, was released. He was sent traveling on the continent, undoubtedly in the hope that at such a distance he would be less able to make a nuisance of himself. The French ambassador, though he had encouraged the rebellion and even promised that his king would support it with troops, was likewise set free after brief confinement.

  Mary had won. She was free to enter upon what would prove to be the golden part of her reign, probably the best months she had experienced since childhood. That it would end so soon and so badly is the saddest part of her story.

  Background

  SCHOOLING AND THE SCHOOLS

  ONE OF THE FEW ENDURING MYTHS ABOUT THE SHORT, sad, and largely forgotten reign of Edward VI is that it brought a new birth of education to Britain, an explosion in the number, availability, and quality of schools. The myth finds support in the fact that a number of England’s oldest and most prestigious private schools proudly bear Edward’s name and claim to have been founded with money provided by the Crown.

  The truth, as usual with Tudor myths, is neither so simple nor nearly so edifying. A great many of the so-called Edward VI schools were not started or endowed but re-endowed during their namesake’s time on the throne. Many in fact were merely the survivors of the pillaging of church and community property that made the Tudor era not a boon to education but rather the interruption of a long, slow process of educational expansion. That process had begun before Edward’s father was born (St. Paul’s School, which would set the standard for grammar schools across England, began in the same year Henry VIII became king), and it would not recover its momentum until years after the boy-king himself was dead.

  Throughout the Tudor era education remained what it had long been in England: a thing available, at least beyond a rudimentary level, to only a tiny part of the population. It had begun, of course, as an enterprise of the church; instruction had always been one of the functions of the monasteries and the parish clergy. In 1179 the Lateran Council in Rome had ordered every bishop to establish an institution to train clergy for his diocesan chapter, and the resulting “cathedral schools” had joined the monasteries as places where young clerics could become literate and be prepared for university. Outside the church there was, for centuries, almost no such thing as an educational establishment and no need or demand for one. The elite families were obliged to do little more, in occupational terms, than manage their lands. To the extent that their male offspring aspired to anything beyond more wealth and more power, it was usually to become warrior-knights of the kind idealized in tales of medieval chivalry. The nobility sent their sons to each other’s castles to be trained in the martial arts, to learn to comport themselves in a manner appropriate to their status, and to make the kinds of connections that could pay dividends later in life. Hence the desire to find places in the homes of the most important people possible, and the supreme value, at the court of the young Henry VIII, of being good at jousting and other aristocratic games. Though education was gradually coming to seem relevant, the barely literate could still flourish in high society.

  For the great mass of people, at the end of the Tudor period no less than at the beginning, education beyond some basic reading and perhaps writing instruction from the local parish priest was simply not an option. The only available careers, at the bottom of the social pyramid, were agricultural labor and domestic service, and that was literally as far as opportunities went. For families of greater but still modest means, the best road to prosperity often led through apprenticeships. Such a family could, upon payment of a bond, enter a son (or even, in relatively rare cases, a daughter) into an indenture contract that provided a years-long course of training in the household of a skilled specialist in some craft or trade. Apprentices were usually between ten and fourteen years old at the start of their training, which lasted about seven years during which they received food and lodging but little or no pay and were pledged to remain unmarried and avoid drunkenness, gambling, and other forms of misbehavior. (“Fornicati
on within the house of his said Master hee shall not commit,” an apparently representative indenture reads, “matrimony with any woman dureinge the said tearme hee shall not contract.”) Upon completing his apprenticeship and a further year or so as a journeyman working for pay, the new carpenter, tailor, cordmaker, tanner, butcher, barber, baker, or whatever would become free to join a guild and set up shop as a master of his specialty. The guilds regulated competition (limiting the number of shops in a particular area and the amount of work that any member could undertake, for example), monitored quality and maintained standards, provided assistance to the sick or unemployed, and supported local charities. Their aim was a stable, almost static marketplace in which every competent participant was protected and no individual was allowed to get too far ahead of the rest.

  Before becoming old enough to enter an apprenticeship, a child might (or just as possibly might not) spend a few years in a petty school or “dame school,” basically a kind of day-care facility, usually operated in the home of some literate member of the community, where some degree of instruction in the basics of religion as well as reading (but usually not writing) English was available. Girls attended such schools, but this was as far as they could go with education outside the home. Sons of the most prosperous and ambitious families could proceed to grammar schools rather than into apprenticeships, and that was where education turned serious. The entry age for grammar school was seven, generally, and those who completed the full course remained for about seven years. Their lives, during those years, appear to have been positively hellish. Grammar school pupils, like all children through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, were regarded as miniature adults and therefore capable of adult behavior, and all but the most exceptional schoolmasters subjected them to iron-hard discipline. The school day started at six in the morning—seven during the dark months of winter—and continued until about five P.M. The heart of the curriculum was instruction in Latin, supplemented with religion and arithmetic and sometimes a smattering of Greek, and though the older pupils were supposedly exposed to such classic authors as Ovid, Cicero, Virgil, and Horace, most of their time was devoted (books being expensive and therefore scarce except in the most generously funded establishments) to memorization and recital by rote. Unsatisfactory performance was met with lashings with birch canes or similar instruments. This was the routine year-round, the only breaks occurring at Christmas and Easter and lasting just two and a half weeks.