Bloody Mary

by Carolly Erickson

  Feria’s mission involved far more than attendance at the bedside of the dying queen. Now that the accession of Mary’s successor was only a few days or, at most, a few weeks away, the vexed problem of what to do about Elizabeth could no longer be left unsolved. Elizabeth had lived as a Catholic for the past five years, but those who judged her temperament accurately believed that once she was queen she would return England to some form of Protestantism. The changes she made in religion were likely to be paralleled by shifts in England’s diplomatic alignment, as she was known to favor the French over the Spaniards. The only hopeful thing about Elizabeth Tudor, from the imperial point of view, was that she was unmarried; this meant that, if she could be given to a Spanish or Flemish husband, England need not be lost to Hapsburg interests on Mary’s death. If Elizabeth could be married, say, to the duke of Savoy, he could be counted on to countermand her political preferences and to work closely with Philip in the conduct of European affairs.

  Feria left Brussels with instructions “to try and dispose the queen to consent to Lady Elizabeth being married as her sister, and with the hope of succeeding to the crown.”11 It was not an easy assignment, for since her accession Mary had clung stubbornly to the belief that Elizabeth was not her sister, and could not bring herself to admit that the daughter of Anne Boleyn would soon be wearing her crown. The Council had already paved the way for Feria’s persuasions, however. They had convinced Mary that she must either relent and acknowledge Elizabeth or leave the realm to the chaos of civil war. In the end Mary weakly agreed, and two of the Council members were dispatched to Hatfield to inform Elizabeth that she would soon be queen. At the same time Mary sent Jane Dormer to Hatfield to give Elizabeth her “rich and precious” jewels, and to ask her to promise three things: that she would uphold the Catholic faith, take care of Mary’s servants, and pay her debts.

  Philip’s envoy made no headway with the hoped-for negotiations for Elizabeth’s hand. Mary was in no condition to consider the merits of a Hapsburg match for her successor, and Elizabeth herself was scornful of the suggestion that she marry the duke of Savoy, telling Feria that she would be foolish to follow Mary’s example and marry a foreigner. The more outlandish suggestion that, if she agreed to remain a Catholic, Philip himself might wish to marry her once he became a widower Elizabeth rejected out of hand. In Brussels, though, it was looked on as a certainty that when Mary died Philip would marry Elizabeth, and both the Flemish and the English courtiers were already transferring their attention to the red-haired princess who would soon be queen. The English were buying hundreds of yards of Antwerp silk in which to dress themselves for the coronation, and the Flemings talked of nothing but the king’s forthcoming marriage.12

  As the nobles, officials and household officers deserted St. James for Hatfield the queen grew weaker and weaker. She could no longer read the letter Feria had brought her from Philip; she could only ask that the count take him a ring as a sign of her undying love. She knew nothing of his proposal to Elizabeth, of course, but from her “much sighing,” those around her believed she was dying of “thought and sorrow” more than from any physical disease. Once when she saw them grieving she tried to comfort them by describing the visions of heavenly joy that filled her dreams. “She told them what good dreams she had, seeing many little children like angels playing before her, singing pleasing notes, giving her more than earthly comfort.” She went on to encourage them “ever to have the holy fear of God before their eyes,” and to keep ever in mind that all human affairs were ordered by a single divine purpose. Whatever happened, she told the faithful servants gathered around her bedside, they should “have confidence that He would in mercy turn all to the best.” As she composed her own thoughts Mary recalled the prayershe had written, “to be read at the hour of death.” “O Lord Jesu! which art the health of all men living, and the everlasting life of them which die in faith,” she prayed, “I, wretched sinner give and submit myself wholly unto thy most blessed will.” “Willingly now I leave this frail and wicked flesh, in hope of the resurrection.” She prayed for forgiveness, for mercy, and for the grace to endure the approach of her last hour with dignity, “that the weakness of my flesh be not overcome by the fear of death. Grant me, merciful Father,” she concluded, “that when Death has shut up the eyes of my body, yet that the eyes of my soul may still behold and look upon thee; that when death hath taken away the use of my tongue and speech, yet that my heart may cry and say unto Thee In manus tuas Domine, commendo spiritum meum; that is, 0 Lord, into thy hands I give and commit my soul.”13

  More than forty years later, when Jane Dormer, duchess of Feria, was an old woman living in Spain, she wept as she told her biographer how Queen Mary died. “Being at the last point” and sick to death, Jane said, Mary nonetheless asked that mass be said in her chamber before dawn on the morning of November 17. Despite her extremity “she heard it with so good attention, zeal, and devotion, as she answered in every part with him that served the priest.” The ceremony seemed to call forth what awareness remained to Mary, and her low, resonant voice was heard distinctly making the responses. “Miserere nobis, miserere nobis. Dona nobis pacem” She lapsed then, Jane said, into what appeared to be a private meditation, from which she awoke to adore the host. Then, at the climax of the mass, she “closed her eyes and rendered her blessed soul to God.” The last her mistress saw, Jane recounted, was “her Saviour and Redeemer,” “no doubt to behold Him presently after in His glorious Body in heaven.”14

  Jane’s description had all the pious drama of a saint’s life, but according to other accounts there was nothing extraordinary about the queen’s death. She gave up her life so peacefully that everyone but the attending doctor “thought her better, and that she would fain sleep.” He alone realized that she had “made her passage,” and that he had witnessed the fleeting transition between the reigns of Queen Maty and Queen Elizabeth.15

  Across the river at Lambeth Pole received the news of Mary’s death as he too prepared to die. This “final catastrophe” brought on his last paroxysms, and by seven o’clock that evening he too was dead.

  Whatever sorrow Mary’s subjects felt at her passing was soon overshadowed by their joyful welcoming of the new queen. Mary died between four and five in the morning; by midafternoon “all the churches in London did ring, and at night did make bonfires and set tables in the street, and did eat and drink and made merry for the new QueenElizabeth, Queen Mary’s sister.”16 Elizabeth herself heard the news of Mary’s death calmly, then fell on her knees and cried out, “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

  Philip, writing to his sister in Spain (where, Knox would have heard with much headshaking, she was regent for her brother), seemed shaken by the deaths of his father, aunt and wife in so short a space of weeks. “You may imagine what a state I am in,” he wrote. “It seems to me that everything is being taken from me at once.” Of Mary he added “May God have received her in His glory! I felt a reasonable regret for her death. I shall miss her, even on this account.” These few hasty sentences were doubtless sincere, but they were inserted in the middle of a long paragraph giving a detailed survey of the peace negotiations.17 Even in dying Mary disturbed Philip’s concentration on affairs of state only briefly, and without any lasting effect.

  The corpse of the late queen lay in state at St. James’ for more than three weeks while the mourning clothes and funeral accouterments were prepared. On December 12, when all was ready, her funeral cortege formed in the courtyard of the palace for the solemn procession to Westminster. A great company of mourners came first, under the standard of the falcon and the hart. Next in order were the hundreds of household servants in black gowns, walking two by two, the heralds riding up and down beside them to keep them in line. Then came the gentlemen mourners, under the banners of the white greyhound and falcon and of the arms of England, embroidered in gold. Immediately preceding the corpse were heralds bearing Mary’s knightly ornaments—her helm, cres
t and mantle, her sword and coat armor. The coffin in its chariot was draped with a lifelike painted effigy. It showed Mary, dressed in her favorite color of crimson velvet, wearing her crown and carrying her scepter, her hands adorned with “many goodly rings on her fingers.” The chief mourner, Mary’s cousin Margaret Douglas, countess of Lennox, followed the chariot, and with her rode the gentlewomen of the court all in black robes that trailed over their horses’ legs to the ground. The clerks of the royal chapel, the monks and the bishops brought up the rear.

  The procession halted at the great door of Westminster Abbey, and the queen’s coffin was carried inside. A hundred poor men in black gowns kept watch over her body all that night, holding long torches in their hands, and around them the soldiers of the royal guard stood with their staff torches. The next day the requiem mass was sung. The bishop of Winchester, conscious that he risked the severe disapproval of the woman who now ruled England, eulogized Mary in the warmest terms. He had been present at her death, he told his audience, and found her godliness and devotion so inspiring that he could not restrain his praise. “If angels were mortal, I would rather liken this her departure to thedeath of an angel, than of a mortal creature,” he said, adding a list of the late queen’s virtues and charitable deeds. “She was never unmindful or uncareful of her promise to her realm. She used singular mercy towards offenders. She used much pity and compassion towards the poor and oppressed. She used clemency among her nobles. She restored more noble houses decayed than ever did prince of this realm, or I pray God ever shall have the like occasion to do hereafter.” The bishop said little about Mary’s religious policies, but was eloquent in defense of her sincere faith. “I verily believe,” he said, “the poorest creature in all this city feared not God more than she did.”

  When the eulogy was over the coffin was carried to Henry VII’s chapel in the abbey, and placed in a grave on the north side. Her heart, “being severally inclosed in a coffin covered with velvet bound with silver,” was separately interred. The household officers broke their staves and threw them into the grave, and as they did so the trumpets sounded to signal the beginning of the funeral banquet.

  The chief mourners all went in to dinner, leaving the funeral trappings unguarded. In a few minutes the servants and hired mourners and the Londoners who had come to see the queen laid in her grave had torn down the banners and standards, the arms displayed around the altar and the hangings fastened to the walls. They scrambled and fought one another for scraps of cloth, “every man a piece that could catch it,” until the embroidered cloths were in shreds and the queen’s effigy pulled into a hundred pieces. The next day the bishop of Winchester was informed that, “for such offenses as he committed in his sermon at the funeral of the late queen,” he was ordered to keep himself a prisoner in his own house during Queen Elizabeth’s pleasure.

  The Epitaphe upon the Death of the

  Most Excellent and our late vertuous

  Quene, Marie, deceased

  Vayne is the blisse, and brittle is the glasse, of worldly wishèd welth;

  The steppes unstayde, the life unsure, of lasting hopèd helth.

  witnes (alas) may Marie be, late Quene of rare renowne,

  whose body dead, her vertues live, and doth her fame resowne;

  In whom suche golden giftes were grafte, of nature and of grace,

  As when the tongue dyd ceasse to say, yet vertue spake in face.

  what vertue is that was not founde within that worthy wight?

  what vice is there that can be sayde wherin she had delight?

  She never closde her eare to heare the rightous man distrest,

  Nor never sparde her hande to helpe, wher wrong or power opprest.

  when all was wracke, she was the porte from peryll unto ioye;

  when all was spoyle, she spared all, she pitied to destroye.

  As Princely was her birth, so Princely was her life,

  Constante, courtise, modest, and mylde, a chast and chosen wife.

  In greatest stormes she feared not, for God she made her shielde,

  And all her care she cast on him, who forst her foes to yelde.

  Her perfect life in all extremes her pacient hert dyd shoe,

  For in this worlde she never founde but dolfull dayes and woe.18

  Notes

  ABBREVIATIONS

  EETS— Early English Text Society

  EHR— English Historical Review

  L.P.— Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. S. Brewer, R. H. Brodie and James Gairdner. 21 vols. London: Her Maj esty’s Stationery Office, 1862–1910.

  Sp. Cal.— Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers, relating to the Negotiations between England and Spain, ed. Pascual de Gayangos et al. 13 vols. London: His, and Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1867–1954.

  Ven. Cal.— Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Relating to English Affairs, Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice, ed. Rawdon Brown and Allen B. Hinds. 38 vols. London: Longman & Co., 1864–1947.

  References to L.P., Sp. Cal., Ven. Cal. and similar collections are to page numbers, not document numbers.

  Chapter I

  1. Frederick Chamberlin, The Private Character of Henry the Eighth (New York, 1931), p. 129, facing p. 168.

  2. Ven. Cal. II, 92.

  Chapter II

  1. L.P. I:i, 742.

  2. Ibid., ILL 435.

  3. Rawdon Brown, ed. and trans., Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII, 2 vols. (London, 1854), I, 181.

  4. Ibid., I, 182.

  5. Ibid., I, 136 note 3.

  6. J. S. Brewer, The Reign of Henry VIII: from his Accession to the Death of Wolsey, 2 vols. (London, 1884), 1,45.

  7. Gladys Temperley, Henry VII (Boston and New York, 1914), pp. 207-8.

  8. Ibid., 123.

  9. Ibid., 55.

  10. Chamberlin, p. 93.

  Chapter III

  1. Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England, during the Reigns of the Tudors, ed. William Douglas Hamilton, 2 vols. (London, 1875-77), I, 10-11 and note.

  2. John Caius, A Boke or Counseill againste the Siveate, folio 9, cited in Brewer, I, 238.

  3. Peter Krivatsky, “Erasmus’ Medical Milieu,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, XLVII (1973), 120-21.

  4. L.P. II:ii, 1,473.

  5. Ibid., 1,372.

  6. Ibid., 1,376-77; Brown, II, 233-34.

  7. Brown, II, 237.

  Chapter IV

  1. L.P. III:i, 37.

  2. Ibid., II:ii, 1,547; III:i, 198.

  3. L.P. II:iL 1,108.

  4. Frederick Madden, Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary (London, 1831), p. xxix.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Quoted in H. Maynard Smith, Pre-Reformation England (London, 1938), p. 239.

  7. John Brand, Observations of Popular Antiquities, arr. and rev. Henry Ellis, 3 vols. (London, 1813), II, 363.

  8. Madden, p. xxxi.

  9. L.P. HI:ii, 1,098-99, 1,4055.

  10. A Companion to Shakespeare Studies, ed. Harley Granville-Barker and G. B. Harrison (Garden City, New York, 1960), p. 156.

  11. Brown, I, 297-98 note.

  12. Ibid., II, 163-64. This anecdote has been cited by Mary’s biographers as proof of her precocious piety and obsession with the clergy, since she called Memo “Priest, priest!” In fact, as the complete account of the incident shows clearly, it was his playing that delighted her and not his clerical status.

  13. Vives and the Renascence Education of Women, ed. Foster Watson (New York and London, 1912), p. 96.

  14. John E. Paul, Catharine of Aragon and Her Friends (London, 1966), p.

  15. L.P. III: ii, 629-30.

  16. Vives and the Renascence Education of Women, p. 84 and passim.

  17. Matthias A. Shaaber, Some Forerunners of the Newspaper in England, 1412-1622 (Philadelphia, 1929), p. 147 and note.

  18. Vives and the Renascence Education of Women, pp. 64-66.

  19. Ibid
., 96.

  20. Temperley, p. 93.

  21. Vives and the Renascence Education of Women, p. 10.

  22. Sp. Cal. IV:ii, 737.

  Chapter V

  1. Sydney Anglo, Spectacle Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford, 1969), pp. 172-73.

  2. Smith, p. 35.

  3. Brown, II, 17-18.

  4. Ibid., II, 117.

  5. Ibid., II, 88 note; Brewer, I, 113.

  6. Brewer, I, 602.

  7. Smith, p. 514.

  8. Erwin Doernberg, Henry Vlll and Luther (Stanford, California, 1967), P-31.

  9. L.P. III: ii, 719.

  10. Robert Withington, English Pageantry: An Historical Outline, 2 vols. (Cambridge and London, 1918—20), I, 175-78.

  11. Ibid., I, 97.

  12. L.P. III: ii, 608-9, 613.

  13. Paul, p. 55.

  14. Madden, p. xxxii.

  15. L.P. III: ii, 1,188.

  Chapter VI

  1. From a Garter manuscript, Sir H. Nares’ Collections, folio MS p. 22, cited in Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, 8 vols. (London, 1851), III, 514 note.

  2. Inventories of the Wardrobes, Plate, Chapel Stuff, etc., of Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, ed. John Gough Nichols (London, 1854), p. xiv.

  3. Brewer, II, 102-3.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Inventories, p. 19.

  6. Ibid., pp. xlvii-xlviii.