The House of Tudor

by Alison Plowden

  The Court stayed at Winchester till the end of the month, the Queen, according to custom, not appearing in public. The Spaniards amused themselves sightseeing and lounging in the antechamber, talking or dancing or playing cards with the Queen’s ladies. None were beautiful by Spanish standards, although some were better than others and at least it helped to pass the time. On the thirty-first the household was on the move towards London, going by way of Basing, Reading and Windsor, where Philip was installed as a Garter knight. ‘Their majesties are the happiest couple in the world’, wrote someone enthusiastically to a friend in Salamanca, ‘and more in love than words can say’. Certainly Philip was unfailingly polite and considerate, riding at Mary’s side, always at hand to help her mount and dismount, attentive, said someone else with perhaps unconscious cruelty, as a son. By 11 August they were at Richmond and a week later the Queen brought her husband to the capital. London had been swept and garnished, the gibbets and blackened heads removed and decorations more suitable to the occasion substituted. The citizens, well primed with free drink, were in a benevolent mood and although there was plenty of jealousy and backbiting at Court and the Spaniards complained they were being charged twenty-five times the proper price tor everything in the shops, on the surface things were going reasonably well.

  Philip was determined that they should continue to do so. The whole point of his marriage (and the only reason why he was enduring it) was to enable him to gain control of the government, to bring England permanently within the Imperial Hapsburg orbit, and to achieve this it was essential to avoid serious friction. Mary, lost in her fool’s paradise of love, was only too happy to leave everything in his hands; to trust prudent, pious. Catholic Philip to be wise for both of them.

  While Mary was giving herself up to the delights of married life, Elizabeth was still languishing at Woodstock. The Queen had given orders that her sister was to be treated ‘in such good and honourable start as may be agreeable to our honour and her estate and degree’, and Elizabeth had a respectable number of servants to wait on her, was allowed to walk in the gardens and orchard and to have any books, within reason, to help pass the time. But time passed with agonizing slowness and the princess, who was becoming increasingly bored and resentful, did not hesitate to tease her custodian with demands for all sorts of additional concessions and to complain that she was being worse treated than any prisoner in the Tower or, on second thoughts, worse than the worst prisoner in Newgate. The unhappy Henry Bedingfield, acutely conscious of his heavy responsibilities and never quite sure if ‘this great lady’, as he always referred to Elizabeth, was in earnest or not, found himself in a constant state of marvellous perplexity ‘whether to grant her desires or to say her nay’. Like a good civil servant, he took refuge in tenacious adherence to his instructions and insisted on referring every detail to London, although, as he apologetically admitted, he realized this meant that he was having to trouble the Council ‘with more letters than be contentful to mine own opinion’.

  This was precisely what Elizabeth intended he should do, for while she undoubtedly got a certain amount of amusement out of baiting Bedingfield, she had another and more serious purpose. The public memory was short and buried in the country she could all too easily be forgotten. Her enemies might then seize the opportunity to have her shipped abroad - the Emperor had a scheme to send her to his sister in Brussels - and once there she might be married off to some obscure Hapsburg dependant or even perhaps more permanently disposed of So she nagged persistently to have her case re-opened and in June had got permission to write to the Queen. But Mary had not deigned to reply, merely sending Bedingfield a curt message that she did not want to be bothered with any more of her sister’s ‘disguised and colourable’ letters. A month later, though, she did agree to allow Elizabeth to ‘write her mind’ to the Council and the princess begged their lordships ‘upon very pity, considering her long imprisonment and restraint of liberty’, to persuade the Queen either to have her charged ‘with special matter to be answered unto and tried, or to grant her liberty to come unto her highness’s presence, which...she would not desire were it not that she knoweth herself to be clear even before God, for her allegiance.’ Elizabeth addressed her appeal specifically to those members of the Council who had been executors ‘of the Will of the King’s majesty her father’ - a shrewd reminder that, outcast and disgraced though she might be, she was still heir presumptive to the throne.

  Elizabeth may have hoped that now Mary was married and had presumably got everything she wanted, she would be in a more amenable frame of mind. But Mary made no sign and the Council remained deaf to Elizabeth’s complaints. The Queen, it appeared, was determined to wring some admission of guilt or contrition out of her sister before she would consider setting her free. The winter closed in and the household at Woodstock gloomily resigned itself to waiting out an indefinite contest of Tudor stubbornness.

  In London that winter events were taking place which, temporarily at least, had pushed the problem of Elizabeth’s fate into the background. Mary believed herself to be pregnant, and on 12 November she and Philip together opened the third Parliament of the reign - a Parliament which, if all went well, would re-establish Rome’s authority over the church in England. Two weeks later Cardinal Pole, the first papal legate to set foot on English soil since the far-off da vs of the King’s Great Matter, travelled up-river to Westminster bringing with him the Pope’s absolution for his schismatic and excommunicated countrymen. Reginald Pole, an exile for more than twenty years, was the son of Margaret Plantagenet, the butchered Countess of Salisbury, and for Mary Tudor he brought back precious memories of happy childhood days as well as being the living symbol of so many of her future hopes. As she stood waiting to greet this long-lost kinsman and prince of the Church, the Queen felt a joyous conviction that ‘the babe had quickened and leapt in her womb’.

  A few days later the reconciliation with Rome had been accomplished. The three estates of the realm knelt together in the Great Chamber of the Court at Westminster to receive the absolution pronounced by the Bishop of Winchester and England was once again a Roman Catholic country. The negotiations leading up to this remarkable moment had been going on throughout the autumn under the personal supervision of Philip of Spain and had been primarily concerned with devising unbreakable safeguards for the property rights of all holders of church lands. Once these had been hammered out to everyone’s satisfaction, the Commons, a body carefully chosen from ‘the wise, grave and Catholic sort’, was ready to complete the work of undoing the Reformation, of repealing all the religious and ecclesiastical legislation passed during the last two reigns, of abrogating the Royal Supremacy and restoring the ancient laws and penalties against heresy.

  So far, it seemed, so good. But as the expected date of Mary’s delivery approached, the question of the future in general and of Elizabeth’s future in particular was once more exercising men’s minds. Stephen Gardiner was openly of the opinion that all attempts to eradicate Protestantism in England would amount to no more than stripping the leaves and lopping the branches as long as the root of the evil - the heretical heiress herself- remained untouched. Now if ever was the time, urged the Lord Chancellor, to push a bill through Parliament disinheriting her once and for all. But there was strangely little enthusiasm for this project. Even the Spaniards were lukewarm, reflecting that if Elizabeth was passed over, it would be very difficult to resist the claims of the Catholic but half-French Mary Stuart.

  Philip, in consultation with Simon Renard, was now giving the problem his serious attention. He was assured of the regency if Mary died in childbed and her child survived. But supposing, as seemed probable enough, neither mother nor child survived? Suppose even, as was being whispered in some quarters. Mary was not pregnant at all? Philip was a tidy-minded man and he wanted to see the whole matter of the English succession put on a regular basis. Elizabeth would have to be released sooner or later and, according to Bedingfield’s reports, s
he was conducting herself like a good Catholic these days. It would, therefore, surely be more sensible to try and establish friendly relations with her now. at a time when she was likely to be grateful for her brother-in-law’s support and was still young enough to be influenced. A Catholic husband could then be found for her - that useful Hapsburg pensioner Emmanuel Philibert, Prince of Piedmont, would do as well as any. or there might be a suitable German prince available - and the future of the alliance would be secured. Philip’s reasoning was politically sound but he may also have been motivated by purely human curiosity in his evident desire to make the acquaintance of this enigmatic, dangerous young woman he had heard so much about.

  At the beginning of April 1555, the Queen moved to Hampton Court to ‘take her chamber’ in preparation for her lying-in and towards the end of the month Bedingfield received a summons to bring his charge to the palace. The journey from Woodstock was made in typical blustery spring weather and the party encountered violent squalls and gusts of wind which got under the ladies’ skirts and blew the princess’s hood from her head. She wanted to take shelter in a nearby gentleman’s house but Bedingfield, inflexible to the end, refused to allow even this slight deviation from the itinerary, and Elizabeth had to do up her hair under a hedge as best she could.

  She was brought to Hampton Court by a back entrance, still under close guard. According to a French source, Philip came to see her privately three days later, but it was nearly a fortnight before any official notice was taken of her arrival. Then she received a visit from a deputation headed by the Lord Chancellor himself, who urged her to submit herself to the Queen. If she did so, he had no doubt that her Majesty would be disposed to be merciful. Elizabeth answered sharply that she wanted justice not mercy. She was not going to ask pardon for crimes she had not committed. Besides, if once she yielded and confessed herself to be an offender, the Queen would never trust her again. It would be better for her to He in prison for the truth, than to be abroad and suspected of her prince.

  There was silence for another week and then, suddenly, at ten o’clock one night, a summons came for Elizabeth to go at once to the Queen. She had been agitating for a personal interview for more than a year, but now the moment had come and as she was walking with her escort through the darkness she must have wondered what the outcome would be. At the foot of the staircase leading to the Queen’s lodging, the little procession halted. Bedingfield waited outside while Elizabeth, accompanied by one of the Queen’s ladies and one of her own, went up to her sister’s bedroom. Without giving Mary a chance to speak, she fell on her knees and once again proclaimed her innocence. ‘You will not confess your offence’, said Mary out of the shadows, ‘but stand stoutly to your truth. I pray God it may so fall out.’ ‘If it doth not’, answered Elizabeth, ‘I request neither favour nor pardon at your Majesty’s hands.’ ‘Well’, came the somewhat ungracious response, ‘you stiffly still persevere in your truth. Belike you will not confess but that you have been wrongfully punished.’ ‘I must not say so, if it please your Majesty, to you.’ ‘Why then’, persisted the Queen, ‘belike you will to others.’ ‘No’, said Elizabeth, no, if it please your Majesty, I have borne the burden and must bear it. I humbly beseech your Majesty to have a good opinion of me, and to think me to be your true subject, not only from the beginning, but forever, as long as life lasteth.’

  As she stared at the supple figure of her sister, kneeling before her in the candlelight, Mary knew that she had lost the battle of wills. She must accept, however reluctantly, Elizabeth’s assurances of loyalty and make her peace with Anne Boleyn’s daughter.

  Elizabeth was now relieved of Sir Henry Bedingfield and his departure marked the end of a period of detention which had lasted just over fifteen months. She remained at Court and, although not yet fully restored to favour, had regained a limited freedom of action. A freedom which she wisely used with caution for Elizabeth, like everyone else that summer, was in a state of suspended animation while the uncertainty surrounding the Queen’s impending confinement hung like a fog blotting out the future. If, against all the odds, Mary did succeed in bearing a healthy child - and Mary had already once succeeded against all the odds - then the political scene would be transformed, perhaps for generations to come. As Simon Renard observed, ‘everything in this kingdom depends on the Queen’s safe deliverance’.

  By mid-April all was ready. The palace was crowded with noble ladies summoned to assist at the Queen’s delivery. Midwives, nurses and rockers were in attendance, and the empty cradle waited. Here, nearly eighteen years before, Edward Tudor had been born. Was another Tudor prince about to draw his first breath in Cardinal Wolsey’s fine red-brick mansion? Everything possible was being done to encourage the Queen. The Venetian ambassador reported on 2 April that to comfort her and give her heart and courage ‘three most beautiful infants were brought for her Majesty to see; they having been born a few days previously at one birth, of a woman of low stature and great age like the Queen, who after delivery found herself strong and out of danger.’

  At daybreak on 30 April a rumour reached London that Mary had given birth to a son just after midnight ‘with little pain and no danger’. So circumstantial was this report that it was generally believed and bonfires were lit, church bells rung and ‘in divers places Te Deum Laudamus was sung’, while loyal citizens set up trestles before their doors and began dispensing free food and drink to their neighbours. It was late afternoon before the messengers returning from Hampton Court brought the dispiriting news that there was no son or daughter either and that the birth was not even imminent. As the days of waiting lengthened into weeks, the doctors announced that their calculations had been wrong, that the Queen would not now be delivered until the end of May, possibly not until the first week of June, although her Majesty’s belly had greatly declined, a sign, it was said, of the nearer approach of the term.

  June turned into July and the doctors and midwives were still talking about miscalculation, still promising the wretched Queen that she was carrying a child, but saying the birth might be delayed until August or even September. By this time, though, everyone knew that no baby would ever fill that ‘very sumptuously and gorgeously trimmed’ cradle. The amenorrhea and digestive troubles to which Mary had always been subject, perhaps, too, cancer of the womb, had combined with her desperate longing which - according to the omniscient diplomatic corps - even produced ‘swelling of the paps and their emission of milk’ to create that tragic, long-drawn-out self-deception.

  By the end of July the situation at Hampton Court was becoming too embarrassing to be allowed to continue any longer. Something had to be done to silence the ribald ale-house gossip and all those inevitable rumours about humble mothers being begged to give up their new-born babies to emissaries from the palace. The daily processions and prayers for the Queen’s delivery were stopped and on 3 August the Court moved away to Oatlands in a tacit admission that Mary had at last given up hope. But as she struggled to come to terms with her bitter disappointment and humiliation, she had another sorrow to face - for the adored husband, on whom she had lavished all the love so long denied an outlet, was planning to leave her. Philip had now spent thirteen months in a country he disliked, being affable to people he despised and distrusted, being kind to a demanding, physically unattractive and unfruitful wife. He considered he had done everything that could reasonably be expected of him.

  He was to embark at Dover as soon as the escorting fleet could be made ready and on 26 August the Court moved down to Greenwich to see him off. Three days later he was gone, after punctiliously kissing all the ladies, just as he had done that first evening in Winchester, and Mary stood in tears at a window overlooking the river watching until the barge taking him away to Gravesend had passed out of her sight. It was the end of her brief happiness.

  The Queen planned to stay at Greenwich during Philip’s absence and Reginald Pole was given apartments in the palace, so that he might ‘comfort and keep her
company, her Majesty delighting greatly in the sight and presence of him’. Elizabeth was also at Greenwich, though it is doubtful if her presence gave Mary any particular pleasure. However, Elizabeth was now in a privileged position. She had used those weeks of waiting at Hampton Court to good purpose and, at least according to the Venetian ambassador, had ‘contrived so to ingratiate herself with all the Spaniards and especially the King, that ever since no one has favoured her more than he does.’ Years later a report circulated that Philip had been heard to admit that whatever he suffered from Queen Elizabeth was no more than the just judgement of God, because ‘being married to Queen Mary, whom he thought a most virtuous and good lady, yet in the fancy of love he could not affect her; but as for the Lady Elizabeth, he was enamoured of her, being a fair and beautiful woman.’ Whether Philip was really smitten by his sister-in-law’s charms remains a matter for conjecture but he had clearly made up his mind that notwithstanding her dubious birth and heretical tendencies, she would make an infinitely preferable successor to the English throne than Mary Queen of Scots. Before he left England, therefore, he had particularly commended Elizabeth to Mary’s good will and (this time according to the French ambassador) was soon writing from the Low Countries to repeat what was virtually an order to the Queen to handle her sister with courtesy and care. Since Philip’s lightest wish was Mary’s command, she obediently choked down her instinctive antipathy, treating the princess graciously in public and only conversing with her about ‘agreeable subjects’.

  September turned into October with no sign of Philip’s return and Mary was obliged to abandon her vigil and go back to London for the opening of Parliament. Elizabeth did not accompany her. She had been given permission to leave the Court and on 18 October she passed through the City on her way to Hatfield. Settled once more in her favourite residence after an absence of over two years, she began to take up the threads of her old life and to gather her old friends round her again.