The House of Tudor

by Alison Plowden

  So far so good, but as she turned over the page mistakes and corrections began to come thick and fast. Perhaps Sussex was at her elbow now, urging her to make haste. ‘I humbly crave to speak with your Highness’, scribbled Elizabeth, ‘which I would not be so bold to desire if I knew not myself most clear as I know myself most true. And as for the traitor Wyatt, he might peradventure write me a letter, but on my faith I never received any from him. And for the copy of my letter sent to the French king, I pray God confound me eternally if ever I sent him word, message, token or letter by any means. And to this my truth I will stand to my death.’ There was nothing more to be said, but more than half her second sheet was left blank - plenty of space for someone to add a forged confession or damaging admission - so Elizabeth scored the page with diagonal lines before adding a final appeal at the very end. ‘I humbly crave but only one word of answer from yourself Your Highness’s most faithful subject that hath been from the beginning and will be to my end, Elizabeth.’

  As it turned out, she might have saved herself the trouble. When her sister’s letter was brought to her, Mary flew into a royal Tudor rage. She roared at Sussex that he would never have dared to do such a thing in her father’s time and wished, in a triumph of illogicality, that he were alive again if only for a month. Even so, Elizabeth had won a brief respite, for she had managed to miss the tide. The starlings which supported the piers of London Bridge restricted the flow of the river and turned the water beneath it into a mill-race. ‘Shooting the bridge’ was always a hazardous business but when the tide was flooding it became impossible - there could be a difference of as much as five feet in the level of the water. The Council were not going to risk taking the princess through the streets, so it was decided to wait until the following morning. When Sussex and Winchester arrived at nine o’clock there was no question of further delay, but as Elizabeth was hurried through the gardens to the landing-stage, she looked up at the windows of the palace as if hoping to catch a glimpse of the Queen. There was no sign. Mary was in church on Palm Sunday morning. The party embarked at the privy stairs and the barge was cast off and rowed away downstream - down towards the grey, ghost-ridden bulk of the Tower. There her mother had died and her mother’s cousin, poor silly wanton Catherine Howard; her own cousin Jane, with whom Elizabeth had once shared lessons and gone to children’s parties, and so many others - the Seymour brothers, John Dudley, ‘that great devil’ and Suffolk, the weak fool. Behind them rose the wraiths of all those shadowy Plantagenet cousins, sacrificed to make England safe for the Tudors. This had been journey’s end for them all. Was it to be the end of her journey, too?

  52 An illustration from the plea roll of the Court of the King’s Bench, Michaelmas 1553, records the defeat of the rebels leading to Mary’s accession.

  53 Thomas Cranmer, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who was burned at the stake in March 1556, painted by Gerlach Flicke.

  54 Cardinal Reginald Pole, Papal Legate to England.

  55 Mary exercises her mystic royal power: praying for blessing on rings for curing cramp.

  56 Winchester Cathedral where Mary and Philip were married on 25 July 1554.

  57 Simon Renard, an able diplomat and one of Mary’s closest advisers.

  58 Philip II of Spain.

  59 Princess Elizabeth by an unknown artist, f. 1542-47.

  60 Sir Thomas Wyatt, leader of the unsuccessful rebellion against Mary which began in January 1554. The rebels intended to make Elizabeth queen; their defeat led to her arrest and imprisonment.

  61 The Tower of London; after a plan drawn in 1597.

  62 Mary in later life by Antonio Moro.

  She was lodged in a room in the Bell Tower, and Winchester and Sir John Gage began to lock the doors ‘very straitly’ and to discuss further security arrangements. But the Earl of Sussex, who all along had shown himself more compassionate, or more far-sighted, intervened. They would be wise, he remarked, not to be over-zealous and to remember that ‘this was the King our master’s daughter’ as well as the Queen’s sister. ‘Therefore’, said Sussex, ‘let us use such dealing that we may answer it hereafter, if it shall so happen; for just dealing is always answerable.’ This shrewd reminder that their prisoner might yet become their Queen went home, and the others departed rather subdued.

  All this time preparations for the Queen’s marriage had been going forward and the only thing lacking now was the presence of the bridegroom; but Simon Renard, only too conscious of his heavy responsibilities, felt serious doubts as to the wisdom of allowing Philip to hazard his precious person in an ungrateful and heresy-ridden land - at least while it continued to harbour Elizabeth Tudor and Edward Courtenay. In Renard’s opinion a more than suspicious negligence was being shown over bringing these two ‘great persons’ to trial, and he could only conclude that delay was being deliberately created in the hope that something would crop up to save them. The ambassador saw the Queen on Easter Saturday and took the opportunity of expressing some of his misgivings, adding that until ‘every necessary step’ had been taken he would not feel able to recommend the prince’s coming to England. The threat was implicit and Mary replied, with tears in her eyes, that ‘she would rather never have been born than that any harm should be done to his Highness.’ She promised to see to it that Elizabeth’s and Courtenay’s trials were over before his arrival.

  This was all very well but, although Renard continued to press the matter, it seemed there was still not enough evidence against cither of the suspects even to begin proceedings. As far as Courtenay was concerned, the circumstances were certainly suggestive, but the fact remained that he had not actually done anything. He had not gone down to the West Country. He had not, at any time, taken up arms against the Queen. He had not attempted to escape. The plan to marry him to Elizabeth had been openly raised by William Paget the previous autumn, but Courtenay had rejected it on the grounds that such a match would be unworthy of his unblemished lineage. As for Elizabeth, Renard was obliged to report that the laws of England did not provide penalties applicable to her ‘because those with whom she plotted are fugitives’. ‘Nevertheless’, he went on, ‘the Queen tells me that fresh proof is coming up against her every day, and there were several witnesses to assert that she had gathered together stores and weapons in order to rise with the rest and fortify a house in the country whither she had been sending her provisions.’ The house in the country was, presumably, Donnington, but this promising line of enquiry had turned into a blind alley and Elizabeth swore that any defensive preparations made at Ashridge were simply as a protection against the Duke of Suffolk who had been in the neighbourhood at the time. Frustrating though it might be for those like Renard and Stephen Gardiner, who believed that as long as Elizabeth lived there would be no peace in England, the government was no nearer to making out a case against her than it had been two months earlier.

  On 11 April Thomas Wyatt, who had been kept alive in the hope that he might yet be induced to incriminate his fellow prisoners, was executed at last and on the scaffold he explicitly exonerated both Elizabeth and Courtenay from any guilty knowledge of the rebellion. Although the authorities tried to suppress it, this news spread rapidly and joyfully through the city and it was now clear that there would be very little chance of ever securing a conviction against the princess. A mere detail like lack of proof might not have mattered in the days of the Queen’s father or grandfather, but Mary possessed none of the ruthless self-confidence which had characterized the two Henry Tudors. Already, to Simon Renard’s barely suppressed annoyance, she was beginning to pardon her rebels and this despite the fact that open opposition to her policies, her religion and her marriage was already beginning to reappear. Violent incidents in churches and physical attacks on priests saying mass were on the increase; and inflammatory pamphlets had begun to circulate in the capital - one urging all Englishmen to stand firm and keep out the Prince of Spain, another ‘as seditious as possible and in favour of the Lady Elizabeth
’. Even the children were joining in rough games where the ‘Spaniards’ were always heavily defeated.

  To make matters worse, the Council, an unwieldy and cantankerous body, was split from top to bottom. ‘Quarrels, jealousy and ill-will have increased among the councillors’, wrote Renard on 22 April, ‘becoming so public that several of them, out of spite, no longer attend the meetings. What one does, another undoes; what one advises, another opposes; one strives to save Courtenay, another Elizabeth; and such is the confusion that one can only expect the upshot to be arms and tumult.’ Renard believed that the Queen would soon be persuaded to release Courtenay altogether while, as for Elizabeth, it had now been officially admitted that the lawyers could not find sufficient evidence to condemn her and she was already being allowed out to walk in the Tower gardens, so it looked as if her release, too, was only a matter of time.

  Elizabeth owed her preservation to a number of factors - her own impenetrable discretion, the strength of public opinion, government weakness and lack of direction - but most of all she owed it to her sister. Mary’s opinion of her had not changed - early in March she told Renard sourly that ‘Elizabeth’s character was just what she had always believed it to be’ - but, in spite of her deep-rooted personal dislike and distrust of the girl and in spite of the pressure being exerted on her most vulnerable flank, the Queen had stuck stubbornly to her principles. Her conscience had forced her to insist on a thorough and painstaking enquiry, thus creating the very delay which Renard knew would be fatal, and as long as the case remained ‘not proven’ Elizabeth would continue to get the benefit of the doubt.

  The problem now arose of what was to be done with the princess. She could not be left in the Tower indefinitely; neither would it be safe to set her free, and the Queen could scarcely be expected to receive her at Court - not yet at any rate. Some sort of face-saving formula would have to be found and Mary eventually fell back on the time-honoured expedient of sending her sister to live under restraint in a remote country house. After a good deal of indecision, the manor of Woodstock, a hunting-lodge once much favoured by the Plantagenets, was selected, although Renard would have preferred some more secure northern castle. Elizabeth had now been consigned to the custody of Sir Henry Bedingfield, a stolid, staunchly Catholic gentleman from Oxborough in Norfolk, whose loyalty to the Queen could not be questioned, and on 19 May she left the Tower under his escort to a salute of guns from the merchants of the Steelyard and the cheers of the Londoners, who believed she had been released. The journey to Woodstock, although accomplished in a warped and broken litter, rapidly developed into something suspiciously like a triumphal progress. At Windsor the townsfolk turned out en masse to see her pass; at Eton she was nearly mobbed by the scholars and church bells were rung defiantly in many villages along the route, while everywhere the country people crowded to the roadside to cry blessings on her, to throw cakes and flowers into her lap and wish her Godspeed.

  At the end of the month Mary also left London, thankful to escape from that insolent, irreligious city where she spent her days shouting unavailingly at the Council, surrounded by an almost tangible miasma of treachery and deceit which she was yet powerless to disperse. No wonder she longed for a husband who would relieve her of the burden of government - a burden she was beginning to find insupportable. The Queen’s destination was Richmond, from where she was expecting soon to ride south to meet her bridegroom. It had been agreed that Philip should land at Southampton and the wedding take place in Winchester Cathedral -no one felt like risking a ceremony in London - but May turned into June and Philip was still in Spain paying a leisurely round of farewell visits. By the beginning of July the delay was becoming embarrassing. Mary told Renard that it was painful to her because it encouraged the heretics, but there was deeper pain in the sense of rejection.

  All the same, Philip can scarcely be blamed for his dilatoriness. It was not only that his bride was a delicate, middle-aged woman to whom he referred in a letter to his friend Ruy Gomez as ‘our dear and well-beloved aunt’ - that was just the luck of the draw in the lottery of royal marriage. Far more off-putting were the prospects of humiliation in a strange land. By the terms of the marriage treaty he was debarred from taking any independent part in the government; he could appoint no officials, send no English money abroad. He was forbidden to bring any Spanish troops with him - he would in fact be a mere cipher, his wife’s husband and nothing more. This was bad enough, but even more galling to a young man like Philip, who hid his shyness under a stiff public manner, was the anxious, constantly repeated advice from his father, from his father’s ministers and from Simon Renard, to sink his pride and strain every nerve to conciliate the ungrateful, heretical islanders. He must be affable and show himself to the people. He must be lavish with presents as well as smiles. He must bring as few as possible of his own friends and servants and resign himself to being served by clumsy, suspicious strangers - all the harder since he spoke no English. Those Spaniards who did accompany him must on no account bring their wives, for they were more likely to cause trouble even than soldiers. For the sake of the alliance, he and his retinue must be prepared to put up with insult and anything else the English might choose to throw at them. Small wonder then that Philip lingered, finding excuses of ‘business’ to keep him in Spain, until at last the iron sense of duty which drove him throughout his life would let him delay no longer. He sailed from Corunna on 13 July and six days later, on the anniversary of Mary’s accession, his fleet was dropping anchor in Southampton Water.

  The prince came ashore on the afternoon of 20 July to be greeted not by insult or hostile crowds but, in far more typically English fashion, by a persistent downpour of fine summer rain. He rested in Southampton over the weekend and on Monday set out on the ten-mile ride to Winchester. The rain which had been falling steadily for three days managed to penetrate even the thick red felt cloak he wore over his black velvet and white satin finery, so that he was obliged to stop at the Hospital of St. Cross to change. The laggard bridegroom was still, it seemed, in no hurry. On arriving at Winchester he went first to the cathedral, where there was such a crowd of sightseers eager to catch a glimpse of him that several people were nearly suffocated in the crush, and it was past ten o’clock before he made his way by torchlight through the gardens to the Bishop’s Palace where the Queen was waiting.

  They met in the long gallery, he kissing her on the mouth in ‘English fashion’ and then, she taking him by the hand, they sat together under the cloth of estate talking in a mixture of French and Spanish. That first meeting was short and informal but Philip, who was doing his utmost to ingratiate himself (even to the extent of forcing himself to drink beer), insisted on kissing all the Queen’s ladies ‘so as not to break the custom of the country, which is a good one’. He asked Mary to teach him what he should say to the lords in English at his departing and she told him to say ‘good night my lords all’ - a formula which he carefully repeated before leaving for his lodgings in the Dean’s house. Next day he came to see his fiancée again, with more ceremony this time, although they had another quarter of an hour’s private talk ‘each of them merrily smiling on the other, to the great comfort and rejoicing of the beholders’.

  No one was in any doubt as to what the Queen thought of Philip and in general he was making a good impression. His appearance was in his favour, for he was a small, slender man with reassuringly un-foreign blue eyes and fair complexion. Some people thought his yellow hair and beard made him look like a Fleming and the Flemings had always been popular in England. What Philip thought of his bride he kept to himself but in their letters home the other Spaniards were less discreet. The Queen was a dear, good creature but older than they had been led to expect. She was a perfect saint but dressed badly. She was certainly not beautiful and had no eyebrows. Ruy Gomez thought she might look better and less flabby if she adopted Spanish fashions but, he went on, it was just as well Philip understood that the marriage had been arranged for polit
ical and not fleshly considerations, for this elderly virgin would obviously give him no satisfaction in bed.

  The Queen of England and the Prince of Spain were married in Winchester Cathedral on 25 July with all the solemn ritual, all the pomp and splendour proper to the occasion. The flickering tapers glinted on the gorgeous clothes of the wedding guests and the rich vestments of the officiating clergy - six bishops, coped and mitred - on the sumptuous velvet and satin, on the jewels and the gleaming altar plate; but Mary’s wedding ring was, by her own request, a plain gold band with no stone in it ‘because maidens were so married in old times’. After high mass, during which the Queen remained wrapt and motionless, her eyes never leaving the sacrament, the heralds announced in Latin, French and English, the impressive list of the newly married couple’s styles and titles: Philip and Mane, by the grace of God King and Queen of England, France, Naples, Jerusalem and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, Princes of Spain and Sicily, Archdukes of Austria, Dukes of Milan, Burgundy and Brabant, Counts of Hapsburg, Flanders and Tyrol. But to Mary only two things mattered - that at last she was married and was already helplessly in love.

  The King and Queen walked hand-in-hand under the canopy of state back to the Bishop’s Palace for the wedding feast with its quantities of elaborate food and displays of gold plate, the musicians playing in the background and the heralds crying largesse. There was dancing afterwards and then, when darkness had fallen, the Bishop of Winchester blessed the marriage bed and the newly-weds were left alone. ‘What happened that night only they know’, observed one of the Spaniards sagely, but ‘if they give us a son our joy will be complete.’