Mary Tudor: The First Queen

by Linda Porter

  The emperor foresaw difficulties when he gave his sister his guarded approbation. All concerned should be aware of the need for flexibility and not try ‘to reckon the thing too exactly from day to day, as if the sea were a fixed and invariable factor, permitting such undertakings as may be carried out on land’. He thought that there was inevitably some danger and that speed was vital, or the details might leak out. ‘As for disguising our cousin,’ he wrote, ‘I will leave that to those in charge … but no disguise need be used as to whether or not I knew of the undertaking, and it will be better to be quite open about it … for we have the best of reasons and have done all we could to protect our cousin’s person and conscience … and holding back as long as possible from this extreme measure, which it has now become imperative to resort to because of the attitude adopted in England.’ Charles was evidently not given to cloak-and-daggery and he was determined to put the blame on Edward’s councillors. He was more concerned that the pursuit of Scottish pirates, the pretext for his ships being in English waters, could lead to difficulties if the ambassadors expected from Scotland at any time arrived in Brussels before the ships set sail.22

  In the event, none of the difficulties foreseen by Charles V happened. The reason Mary did not leave was straightforward. She had changed her mind. Or, put another way, when faced, at last, with the opportunity to go, she could not bring herself to do it. Conflicting emotions battled within her, but even as she struggled with her packing, she knew she would stay. In the end, she accepted that her future lay in England. It was a momentous decision and it was in no small part due to Robert Rochester, who intervened to save his mistress from herself.Without his influence and his deft direction of her conscience, it would have been harder still for her to ignore what she knew was likely to be her one and only opportunity of flight. At the crucial moment, he relieved her of dealing with the situation by assuming control of it himself.

  We do not know exactly what passed between Mary and Robert Rochester, but it can be inferred from what he told the exasperated and anxious Dubois, who had rowed ashore on 1 July. He soon found out that it was the controller who had ‘raised several difficulties tending to delay us in taking our load on board’.These would be better explained if Dubois could meet Rochester in the nearby churchyard of St Mary’s, and the secretary soon found himself in earnest, if very quiet, discussion with Mary’s servant, pretending to bargain over the price of corn.

  In order to talk better, and not to attract attention by skulking around among the gravestones, the two men soon went off to a safe house, where they walked up and down in the garden. Here Rochester revealed what was troubling him so much: ‘… he saw no earthly possibility of bringing my Lady down to the water-side without running grave risks because of the watch that was posted every night … the suspicions of certain of her household which was not so free of enemies of her religion as she imagined, and the danger she would incur of being held back’. But then he went on to reveal the true reasons for his doubts:Also, were she to go now that there was no pressing reason, for she was still as free to live as she liked as she had ever been, it might be imagined a mighty scandal would be raised. He also mentioned that she would lose all hope of the succession were her brother to die, and asserted that she still had plenty of time in which to escape. He was convinced that she would in no way be molested before the end of the parliament that was to meet the following Michaelmas at the earliest …

  And by that time, he said, it would be winter and she would be at her house at St Osyth, ideally placed for an escape by sea should one be necessary. He went on to tell Dubois that ‘I would give my hand to see my Lady out of the country and in safety, and I was the first man to suggest it. And if you understand me, what I say is not that my Lady does not wish to go, but that she wishes to go if she can.’23 This strange sentence, with its undertones of a decision being constantly re-evaluated and deferred, was not lost on Dubois.

  Mary continued to prevaricate and to worry about how the emperor would take it if, as she lamented,‘it would be impossible to go now, after I have so often importuned his majesty on the subject’. She did not want to tell Dubois outright that she was staying and her often repeated ‘but what will become of me?’, a rhetorical question asked of herself rather than anyone else present, shows that the mental turmoil had not subsided. At the last, Dubois was compelled to leave because the local authorities realised what was going on. Their manner of handling the affair showed a sense of consideration for Mary, ‘whom we hold as high as the king’s person’, but their intervention, with its threat to confiscate Dubois’ cargo of corn, brought matters to a head. It seems quite possible that Rochester had alerted them. Dubois did not tarry. He knew very well he must avoid further attention.

  If Mary thought that this would all blow over and nothing of it would be publicly known, she was badly deceived. As Edward VI himself reported in his diary, ‘Sir John Gates was sent into Essex because it was credibly informed that Scepperus was to steal her away to Antwerp.’ Gates was a crony of John Dudley’s, and his presence with a troop of horse made the strong statement that Mary was being watched carefully. In some parts of the Low Countries it was reported that the princess had already landed and, the following month, the English ambassador to France reported that Henry II had ‘confidentially informed him of a design by the Lady Regent to send Scepperus to the English coast to carry away the Lady Mary’.24 No doubt the French king passed on this snippet with a great deal of satisfaction.

  Dubois returned for a while to Flanders and wrote up his report during the voyage back, which was as stormy as the one that had brought him on his unfulfilled mission, and very long. He was unable to deliver his account of what had happened before mid-July. In it, he said that he suspected that Rochester had ‘made out the situation in Maldon to be more dangerous than it was in reality’. He was almost certainly right. Now his chief concern was how the regent would take the news that, after all, Mary was still in England.

  Mary of Hungary was annoyed by what had happened but most of her ire seems to have been directed at the unfortunate Scepperus, who wrote her an embarrassed letter asking for her pardon for not providing sooner the details of his expedition. The situation was complicated by the fact that Van der Delft died within weeks of returning from England and there was some worry about whether he had let others in on the secret. CharlesV regretted that the enterprise was not successful ‘because of the danger that may menace the person concerned’. He was rather thrown by his sister’s complete denial to the English ambassador at her court of any knowledge of the affair, since he had been prepared to acknowledge it himself. But Mary of Hungary produced a remarkable performance when the subject was raised. She would never receive her cousin unannounced and without Edward VI’s knowledge and consent. To which Chamberlain, the ambassador, confirmed that, of course, the council only wished to treat Mary well ‘and serve her as the king’s sister and near relative of his majesty’.

  But the regent was plainly impatient with her English cousin. She told Scheyfve to pass her words on to Mary in England,‘so that she may better know how to conduct herself in this matter … and in the circumstances she could not do better than live quietly in her own house as she has done up to the present’.25 It is not surprising she was lacking in compassion, as her own life had been so difficult. Her young husband, Louis II of Hungary, was routed by the Turks at the battle of Mohács in 1526, and she learned of his ignominious flight and death only some weeks later. Young, striking and childless, she nevertheless set her face against remarriage and, in this respect, her brother could not command her. She had ruled the Low Countries on his behalf since 1531, never quite meeting his demands, always conscious of the burden that she knew was getting heavier with time. The effort, and her own no-nonsense character, made her hard on others. She had little time for Mary, whom she saw as a self-pitying ditherer. Her view was that the princess would have to put up with religious restrictions, even the withdrawal of the mas
s from her household. When summoned to join the emperor in Augsburg at the end of the summer, Mary of Hungary seems to have persuaded Charles that no further rescue attempts should be made.This doughty Habsburg queen was much more concerned in 1550 about constant depredations of Scottish pirates on her fishing fleets than she was about Mary Tudor.

  The princess had reason to be grateful to Robert Rochester for guiding her away from a course that would probably have made her a permanent exile. Apart from his sincere commitment to his lady, he also, like other members of Mary’s household, must have wondered what would happen to him if she fled. During the following year, he found out to his cost what happened when she stayed.

  On the surface, one of the most surprising features of the whole affair was that everyone concerned pretended it had not happened. Maybe it would have suited Warwick and the council better if Mary had slipped away, to become someone else’s problem. It would have been easy to represent her as a traitor to her brother, to point to her history of opposition to her father and dismiss her as a weak and benighted woman who could never be trusted again. Instead of disciplining the princess, other tactics were tried. Mary’s chaplains were targeted for infringing the king’s statutes on religion, though no immediate penalties were enforced against them. At the same time, a charm offensive was launched, whereby Mary found herself the reluctant recipient of invitations to court and visits from the chancellor, Richard Rich, importuning her to join him on hunting trips, to attend a selection of sporting events and generally partake of his hospitality.

  Mary knew there was a hidden agenda behind all this sudden attention. But how was she to handle these senior officers of her brother’s government without landing herself in more trouble? Refusing an invitation to court would put her in the most awkward position and might deprive her of the opportunity of going when she felt she really needed to see the king. Privy council secretary William Petre and Rich arrived with letters of credence from the king and his council, signed by twelve of them,‘to the effect that they had special orders and commission to request her to go to court and visit the King’s majesty, her brother’. Professing great astonishment and clearly caught off guard, Mary produced a rambling series of unconvincing excuses:‘… her indisposition, the distance at which she found herself from his majesty’s court, the smallness of the house [whatever that meant - presumably she was suggesting that EdwardVI was not living somewhere spacious enough to receive her] and the fact that she had been with him not long ago’. In fact, it had been six months since she had seen the king, though her visitors seem not to have corrected her on that score. They did, however, counter with the cheery observation ‘that if my Lady were poorly, a change of air and abode would be beneficial to her and improve her health’.To which Mary replied, with much more honesty than political tact, that if she needed a change of air, she would rather go to one of her own houses.26

  For the rest of 1550, the council held back from inflaming the situation with the heiress to the throne, and the action against her chaplains was deferred.The hardening of attitude may well have been triggered by the king himself. Mary came to court, as did Elizabeth, for the Christmas season, the last time all three of Henry VIII’s children were together. Elizabeth, who was certainly higher in favour than her sister, arrived with a great show of support and stayed throughout the Twelve Days of Christmas. Mary did not. She left early, distressed and alarmed by an incident that did not bode well for her future.

  She must have come with some anxiety, as she had managed to evade the festivities altogether the previous year, and the summons in August 1550 had unnerved her considerably.The attack on her religion that took place over the holiday was not unexpected but the ferocity and source were. Edward VI chose to reprove her for hearing the mass, unequivocally and in public.The king was 13 years old and a child no longer. He had had enough of his sister’s disobedience and condescension, her constant references to his being too young to know his own mind. Now she was with him, he decided that she must be made to understand that enough was enough. She must stop protesting and do as she was told.

  Precisely what he said is not recorded, but the manner of its delivery did more than make Mary wince. It made her cry. She later wrote to the council, clinging to the belief that allowed her to keep going throughout the ordeal of Edward’s reign, that her brother was badly advised.They had turned him against her and she could not forgive them. ‘When I perceived how the king, whom I love and honour above all things, as by nature and duty bound, had been counselled against me, I could not contain myself and exhibited my interior grief.’ Then, in an instant, the realisation that he had reduced his sister to tears destroyed Edward’s own composure. He wept himself. He ‘… benignly requested me to dry my tears, saying that he thought no harm of me’.The councillors present also tried to put a positive gloss on Edward’s harshness. Mary was told that her brother intended only to ‘inquire and know all things’, and there, she claimed, matters had rested. But her pride was shattered. She also believed that this row signalled a new onslaught, and she was not mistaken.

  On 17 January 1551, the council wrote to Mary that mass must no longer be heard in her household. She sent an uncompromising reply, but her weariness of mind and body and her sense of underlying hopelessness are obvious. ‘My general health and the attack of catarrh in the head from which I am suffering do not permit me to answer them [the letters] in detail, sentence by sentence.’ She disputed their assertion that no promise had been given to Charles V where the exercise of her personal religion was concerned:God knows the contrary to be the truth: and you in your own consciences (I say to those who were then present) know it also …You accuse me of breaking the laws and disobeying them by keeping to my own religion; but I reply that my faith and my religion are those held by the whole of Christendom, formerly confessed by this kingdom under the late king, my father, until you altered them with your laws. To the king’s majesty, my brother, I wish prosperity and honour such as no king ever enjoyed and I confess myself to be his humble sister and subject and he my sovereign lord, but to you, my lords, I owe nothing beyond amity and good will, which you will find in me if I meet with the same in you…I do not follow the belief in which I have been nourished all my days for love of his Imperial majesty.

  This was, she said, her ‘final answer to any letters that you might write me on matters of religion. Were you to know what pain I suffer in bending down my head to write … for love and charity you would not wish to give me occasion to do it. My health is more unstable than that of any creature and I have all the greater need to rejoice in the testimony of a pure conscience.’27

  Neither the council nor the king was at all moved by her plea to be left alone. On 28 January she received a stinging rebuke from her brother. Her understanding of the situation, she was told, was ‘fruitless and wayward’. She was his nearest sister and yet she wished ‘to break our laws and set them aside deliberately, and of your own free will’. The leeway she had been given was awarded, for a time, ‘in order that you should do out of love for us what the rest do out of duty’.This approach had clearly failed and Mary was doubly in error. She was ‘using and perpetuating the use of a form of worship to the honour of God, which in truth is more like dishonour’, and she had refused to open her mind to new knowledge.This grieved him more than anything but he would, nevertheless, listen to ‘all you have to say, you and your partisans … you shall be permitted to speak frankly, and what you or they say shall be listened to, provided you undertake to listen to the answers and debates that shall ensue.You perceive that I lay aside my estate of sovereign king and lord and commune with you rather as your brother.’ She would be angry, he asserted, if one of her household openly disregarded her orders, ‘and so it is with us, and you must reflect that in our estate it is most grievous to suffer that so high a subject should disregard our laws.Your relationship to us, your exalted rank, the conditions of the times, all magnify your offence.’ Her constant carping about his age was n
o argument. ‘In truth, sister, we think our youth is an advantage, for perhaps the evil that has endured in you so long is more strongly rooted than we suppose … If we were to grant you license to break our laws and set them aside, would it not be an encouragement to others to do likewise. These things are so evident that we would have been able to judge them six years ago.’ He could not let pass her impugning of his authority: ‘we hold ourselves to possess the same authority our father had for the administration of the republic, without diminution of any sort … You must forbear being so bold as to offend again in this matter.’ Finally, almost as an afterthought, he commended her to God’s keeping and wished her health as God’s gift. In a kind of postscript written in his own hand, he lost some of the majesty of his expression but none of its impact:‘Sister, consider that an exception has been made in your favour this long time past, to incline you to obey and not to harden you in your resistance.’ It was his reading of the word of God and he would see to it that his laws were loyally carried out and observed because he was himself a true minister of God. He would not ‘say more and worse things because my duty would compel me to use harsher and angrier words. But this I will say with certain intention, that I will see my laws strictly obeyed, and those who break them shall be watched and denounced …’28

  Mary was appalled. His comments, a fine example of the eloquence possessed by all the Tudors, struck to her very soul. The contents of his letters ‘have caused me more suffering than any illness unto death…I hope I may in the end prove myself to be as truly loyal to your majesty as any other subject, no matter who he may be. I will in nowise enter into any disputation … but in the humblest manner possible, beseech you for the love of God to suffer me to live as in the past’.29