Inglorious Royal Marriages

by Leslie Carroll

  Philip was now not merely king of England, and Mary the queen of Naples. Eventually the couple would be jointly styled as Philip and Mary by the Grace of God King and Queen of England and Spain, France, Jerusalem, both the Sicilies and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, Archdukes of Austria, Dukes of Burgundy, Milan and Brabant, Counts of Hapsburg, Flanders and Tyrol. In 1555, Pope Paul issued a papal bull recognizing Philip and Mary as the rightful sovereigns of Ireland, and the following year, Philip ascended the Spanish throne in his own right, making Mary queen of Spain.

  Over their first few months of marriage, Mary and Philip settled down—but had separate households, as was the royal custom at the time. Within their various royal residences, because Mary was England’s reigning sovereign she dwelled in the more lavish king’s apartments, while Philip resided in the rooms designated for the consort. Meanwhile, the mood in the London streets was often unpleasant. The xenophobic English were spoiling for a fight with any Spaniard, whom they insisted outnumbered them four to one, loudly proclaiming the queen’s preference for Spaniards and bishops over her own countrymen.

  However, according to at least one (unnamed) Spanish courtier, the monarchs themselves could not have been more delighted with each other. The courtier wrote to a friend in Salamanca, “Their Majesties are the happiest couple in the world, and more in love than words can say. His Highness never leaves her, and when they are on the road he is ever by her side, helping her to mount and dismount. They sometimes dine together in public, and go to mass together on holidays.”

  This verbiage was merely propaganda designed to make their woeful mismatch appear to be a great success. Philip was doing his best to put a good face on it because the stakes were so high, but he never loved his wife. Helping her on and off her horse was a chivalrous gesture that only the self-deluded Mary could mistake for love; a stable groom would have done as much. But she certainly had feelings for Philip, naively inflating his courteousness into affection, even as their communication was hampered by language barriers. Philip spoke to Mary in Spanish; she replied in French. Sometimes they would both converse in Latin. Philip, as counseled, did learn a few words and phrases of English, but not enough to hold a conversation, and never enough to comprehend any government proceedings, which were translated into Latin for him.

  The same Iberian courtier damned Mary with faint praise in his letter to Salamanca. “. . . the Queen . . . is not at all beautiful: small, and rather flabby than fat [this contradicts all reports of her as being thin and frail-looking], she is of white complexion and fair, and has no eyebrows. She is a perfect saint and dresses badly. All the women here wear petticoats of coloured cloth without admixture of silk, and above come coloured robes of damask, satin or velvet, very badly cut.”

  French fashions were all the rage in England at the time; even Mary and Philip’s wedding garments had been cut in the chic French style. But the Spanish, who hated all things French, were duty-bound to declare the silhouettes hideous and unflattering.

  In September 1554, new coinage was issued depicting the profiles of both sovereigns with a crown floating between them. What irked many of Mary’s subjects was that Philip’s head was placed on the dominant left-hand side of the coin, the position reserved for monarchs, not consorts.

  By the middle of the month, the kingdom had something to cheer about when Mary stopped menstruating. As the weeks went by, she gradually gained weight and exhibited other signs of pregnancy such as morning sickness. The entire court, from the ladies of her privy chamber to her physicians, was certain she was pregnant. By November, Te Deums were sung and the news was proclaimed across Europe. The various foreign ambassadors scrutinized and reported every detail of the queen’s medical condition to their respective sovereigns. Because Mary’s heir stood to inherit so much by the terms of her marriage treaty, her pregnancy was a matter of international importance.

  Yet not everyone was thrilled with the news. A conspiracy to kill both sovereigns was scheduled to take place during a demonstration of Spanish cane-play that Philip organized, and in which he was set to participate. The mock tournament had three rounds, and luckily (for Philip) the hideous weather and the English spectators’ utter incomprehension of the rules of play led to the abrupt cancellation of the event after the second round. Consequently, the plans for a number of heavily armed men to arrive during the third round and murder the royal couple were serendipitously thwarted.

  The following spring, all the ducks were lined up in preparation for the royal baby’s imminent arrival. Mary’s due date was projected to be May 9, 1555, give or take a few days. To allay any fears the queen might have about bearing a child at her advanced age, she was shown a set of beautiful infant triplets born to a mother of similar years and physical stature, who had come through the dangers of childbirth and remained healthy and strong.

  Summoned to witness the birth in late April, Elizabeth Tudor was released from the Tower, where she had been imprisoned after Wyatt’s rebellion, suspected of some form of tacit cooperation, although nothing had ever been proved against her. Should Mary die in childbirth, a very real possibility in this era, a provision was made for Philip to become guardian of the realm during their child’s minority, although he would have no other regal authority.

  On Tuesday, April 30, the church bells tolled the great news. The sixteenth-century English clothier and diarist Henry Machyn recorded, “the Queen’s grace was delivered of a prince, and so there was great ringing through London and divers places, Te Deum laudamus sung.” Evidently, Her Majesty had borne a son “with little pain and no danger” shortly after midnight. By May 2, the imperial court had received the good news and was reported to be “rejoicing out of measure.”

  But the announcement of Mary’s successful delivery turned out either to be a false alarm, or political spin-doctoring that got out of control, because there was no baby. At first everyone believed that it had just been a mathematical error, that Mary’s due date had been miscalculated.

  Then nasty rumors began to circulate that someone else’s child would be substituted and passed off as the queen’s, or that the birth on April 30 had been a lapdog or pet monkey, or that Mary had been delivered of “a mole or lump of flesh and was in great peril of death.” And the Venetian ambassador Giovanni Michieli scoffed that the episode was more likely to “end in wind rather than anything else.” Sadly, he was closest to the truth. As the summer months wore on, Mary, horribly melancholy, curled herself into a ball with her knees drawn into her chest, something no pregnant woman could do without enduring extreme discomfort. It seems most probable that, rather than ever having been pregnant and suffering a miscarriage somewhere along the way, news that surely would have been chronicled or reported, she must have had a phantom pregnancy—all of the genuine symptoms, with no fetus in her womb. Mary’s mother had experienced the same tragedy.

  In July 1555, the queen’s swollen abdomen receded as mysteriously as it had enlarged. There never had been a baby. If Mary had experienced a phantom or hysterical pregnancy, also known as pseudocyesis, her condition could have been purely psychological, or it could have been the result of changes in her endocrine system. She would have begun secreting hormones, leading to physical changes in her body that mimic those of an actual pregnancy.

  Mary, heartbroken, fell into a profound depression. Philip now saw no reason to remain much longer in England. The queen was equally disconsolate over the idea of her husband’s departure. She truly loved him; she believed they made a good couple. It was Philip who had been most instrumental in restoring England’s relationship with the papacy, approaching the issue in a more diplomatic manner than Mary did. He believed that the better and more successful way to restore the kingdom to the Roman religion was not through coercion and punishment, but by increments, which in the course of time would become accepted and embraced by their English subjects.

  In the month after her accession to the throne Mary
had issued a proclamation to the effect that she would not compel any of her subjects to follow her religion, but things hadn’t really worked out that way. By the end of 1554, Philip had persuaded Parliament to repeal the Protestant religious laws passed by Mary’s father, returning the English Church to Roman Catholic jurisdiction. The couple’s greatest concession to the wealthy and influential evangelicals was the agreement not to confiscate the Church lands they had gained during the Reformation. Pope Julius gave the deal his imprimatur by the end of 1554, and the Heresy Acts were revived.

  So much for Mary’s religious tolerance. Under the Heresy Acts, dissenters were executed in what were known as the Marian Persecutions, which began in early February 1555. Not that it lessens the impact or import of her deeds, but “only” 283 “heretics” (as religious dissenters were referred to then) were consigned to the flames. Most of them were laborers from the working classes. However, a few marquee names went up in smoke, most notably Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, in 1556. Mary finally was avenged on the man who had pronounced her parents’ marriage null and void on May 23, 1533. Many more evangelicals, such as John Foxe, whose writings during the Elizabethan era would be among the first to refer to the sovereign as “Bloody Mary,” chose exile over martyrdom. Evidently Mary, and her papal legate, her kinsman Reginald Pole, had not expected to burn so many dissenters; they desired the heretics to be reconciled to the Roman religion instead, and had wanted the public burnings to be carried out judiciously, and not seen to be vindictive. Yet how could they have imagined these executions as anything other than Church- and state-sanctioned murder? And how could they not have reckoned that the Protestants’ faith was as unshakable as their own?

  Protestantism was increasingly associated with resistance to Spanish domination, and Philip took the heat for the burnings; it had been a popular punishment for heretics in Spain ever since Mary’s grandparents inaugurated the Inquisition in the third quarter of the fifteenth century. In fact, Philip took no active or direct role in the Marian Persecutions. However, he did not speak out against them. Philip had been advised by Simon Renard, the Spanish ambassador, to avoid being too hasty in religious matters. It was Mary who wanted the burnings. And so they continued. But they were exceptionally unpopular, even then.

  By the time Philip was prepared to depart England’s shores in the late summer of 1555, the Catholic restoration had been achieved. When it appeared quite clear by July that Mary was not pregnant, he gave up all hope of fathering an heir with her, and prepared to abandon her as well. Mary was heartsick when he left in late August. She had wanted to accompany him to Dover, but Philip insisted it would delay his departure too much, so the queen went only as far as Greenwich.

  Michieli, the Venetian ambassador, wrote a detailed and poignant report of their leave-taking. Mary had retained her composure through the customary kissing of hands. “. . . But when she returned to her own rooms, she lent on her elbows at a window overlooking the river, and there, thinking she was not observed, she gave scope to her grief in floods of tears. She did not stir from the spot until she had seen the king embark and depart; not till the last sight of him; he mounted on a raised and open part of the barge, so as to be better visible as long as he was in sight of the window, kept on raising his hat and making salutes with the most affectionate gestures.”

  Mary began to miss her husband as soon as she lost sight of him. According to Michieli, “the Queen not content with having sent two of her chief chamberlains in the King’s company for the purpose of being acquainted with all that takes place, writes to him daily in her own hand, and despatches courtiers, demonstrating in every way her great desire.”

  But Philip replied to Mary’s frequent correspondence less and less. On September 13, she told Michieli “very passionately with tears in her eyes, that for a week she had had no letters from him.” The ambassador’s informant reported that Mary mourned the absence of her husband “as may be imagined with regard to a person extraordinarily in love.”

  Philip allowed his ecclesiastical household to remain behind for several months. His Spanish and Flemish guards stayed in England as well. It had been suggested to him that he let Mary down lightly. Departing by degrees would be less traumatic for his wife than removing every last stitch of his household in one fell swoop. This way, perhaps she might anticipate his eventual return one day. Or slowly accustom herself to his absence. It didn’t work. Mary felt abandoned and alone.

  In January 1556, Charles V abdicated the crowns of Aragon and Castile, making Philip the true, rather than nominal, king of Spain. The emperor also resigned his lordship of the Netherlands to his son. Nonetheless, Philip increasingly desired to wear the crown of England as a king regnant and not as a consort. He evidently intimated to Mary that he might be tempted to return to English soil, should she begin making plans for his coronation. But as saddened as Mary was by their separation, she was a pragmatic ruler who knew the minds of her subjects and her ministers. After she informed Philip that Parliament would never stand for his being crowned, he did not press the matter any further.

  Philip would have to pick his battles, so to speak, because he would soon need his wife’s consent to violate one of the cornerstones of their marriage treaty: England would be drawn into one of Spain’s foreign conflicts.

  When Philip ascended his father’s throne, he inherited the kingdom’s mounting tensions with France. Mary recognized that any proposal to commit England’s scant resources to a Spanish invasion of France during difficult economic times for her kingdom would be just as unpopular with her Parliament as suggesting that Philip be crowned king. Moreover, she’d heard rumors that Philip had been unfaithful to her while he’d been abroad, and although she had no way of confirming them, she had already begun to despair of his ever returning to her arms. On December 30, 1555, the French ambassador, Antoine de Noailles, had reported that Mary had “told her ladies, that she had done all possible to induce her husband to return, and as she found he would not, she meant to withdraw utterly from men, and live quietly, as she had done the chief part of her life before she married.”

  Then the marriage of someone else became a source of tension in Mary and Philip’s relationship. He was pressing for a match between the Princess Elizabeth and one of his cousins, Emmanuel Philibert, Prince of Piedmont and titular Duke of Savoy. Such a union would preserve Philip’s interests in England and the Catholic restoration, no matter what happened to Mary. For once, the half sisters were on the same page; they were both against the match, although for different reasons. Mary didn’t want to place Elizabeth in any position where she could become too powerful or influential. However, the queen didn’t have to worry about Philip strong-arming Elizabeth into a marriage. Anne Boleyn’s daughter, not only in 1556 and ever after, but from the time she was eight years old, had no interest in a husband.

  Mary had always been an avid cardplayer. What she really wanted was her husband back. Keen not to reveal her hand with regard to her position on the Elizabeth-Philibert match, she merely told Philip that it would be impossible to arrange such a marriage in his absence. He would have to come to England so that the two of them could jointly pray to God, “who has the direction of the hearts of kings in his hand.”

  Philip returned, but it was not so much to push Parliament to sanction Elizabeth’s marriage. It was to request a declaration of war against France, and the money, ships, and men to invade her. A thirty-two-gun salute greeted his return to Greenwich Palace at five p.m. on March 20, 1557. The following day, the church bells pealed in celebration and the next few days were spent in a round of festivities—“a warmed over honeymoon,” in the words of one diplomat.

  Predictably, Mary’s councilors refused to openly declare war on France; they would approve financial and naval support for Philip’s endeavor, but would go no further, reminding the queen of the terms of her marriage treaty. Mary angrily demanded a new verdict that would “satisfy her and her husband,
” summoning each of the councilors to meet with her individually on April 13, 1557. She threatened “some with death, others with the loss of their goods and estates, if they did not consent to the will of her husband.” Even at this, Mary’s Privy Council stood their ground. Money and troops was as far as they would go. Philip remained displeased. The sole acceptable response was the council’s sanction of an open declaration of war.

  Only a genuine provocation could sway them. They got it on April 23, 1557, when an expatriate English Protestant, Sir Thomas Stafford, landed on the Yorkshire coast at Scarborough with two French ships and a force of a hundred men comprised of English and French rebels. Seizing Scarborough Castle, their ultimate aim was to depose Mary for marrying a Spaniard. Stafford was tried, condemned, and executed for treason by the end of the month. On June 7, Mary’s heralds proclaimed that the kingdom was at war with France. This time, the queen did accompany her husband to Dover, where on July 6, as he prepared to sail for France, Philip said his last good-byes to England and to his loving wife.

  Less than half a year later, in early January 1558, Calais, England’s only remaining continental territory, fell to France. Gone was a centuries-long legacy of English dominion on at least some part of French soil. It was Mary, not Philip, who was forever blamed for her kingdom’s loss of Calais. Ultimately, as the English sought an explanation for the defeat, they accused Lord Thomas Wentworth, the Lord Deputy Governor of Calais, and John Highfield, Master of the Ordnance, of selling the English stronghold to the French. The men were not tried until after Mary’s death. Due to inconclusive proof, they were acquitted, although that did not necessarily render them innocent of the charges leveled against them.

  By the early months of 1558, Mary believed herself pregnant again. From the Continent, Philip expressed his delight, replying to Cardinal Pole’s correspondence containing the happy announcement that “The news of the Queen, my beloved wife . . . has given me greater joy than I can express to you, as it is the one thing in the world I have most desired and which is of the greatest importance for the cause of religion and the care and welfare of our realm.” Philip added that it had “gone far to lighten the sorrow I have felt for the loss of Calais.”