Mary Tudor: The First Queen

by Linda Porter

  Did she know, deep down, that she had already lost him? He was not quite a man but no more a boy, and she had offended him more than she ever intended. Robert Rochester had pulled her back from the brink of self-destruction six months earlier but he could not teach her the guile of her sister Elizabeth, that marvellous ability to play with words and say nothing incriminating. She was too frank for her own good and knew no other way. No doubt she did sincerely believe, and perhaps with justification, that a promise had been made to the emperor that she would not be harassed on religion. She could never credit that this would be so flatly denied, or appreciate her brother’s position as an evolving rather than a stationary one. They now represented two opposing sides of a dispute over religion and sovereignty that would not be resolved in Edward’s lifetime, or hers. And their relationship could never really be restored, though an effort was made on both sides. Mary was back at court in mid-March for further discussions with her brother and a punishing exchange with Dudley at a full council meeting, when he accused her of trying to discredit the king’s councillors. ‘How now, my Lady?’ he remonstrated.‘It seems that your Grace is trying to show us in a hateful light to the king, our master, without any cause whatsoever.’30 She was so unwell during this visit that the more conciliatory Dr Petre, trying to assure her a few days later of ‘the cordial affection’ of the king and council, was received by a bedridden princess. By the time she and Dudley met again, the following January, he was an even more over-mighty subject, with the title of duke of Northumberland. But he had not forgotten another aspect of her visit of the previous March, one somewhat at odds with the image of a sickly, defenceless princess. The power behind her was carefully displayed as she rode through London with 50 knights and gentlemen before her and 80 ladies and gentlemen after her. They were all ostentatiously wearing rosaries. And there were many more of their persuasion in East Anglia, and indeed throughout England.

  For the remainder of 1551, the government used different tactics to force Mary’s submission. Where direct intimidation had failed they launched an attack on the leading members of her household. Rochester had been required to attend the council and questioned about the hearing of mass in her household even before the exchange of letters between Mary and the king. In August he, Englefield and Waldegrave were all summoned before the council and told that they were ‘the chief instruments and cause that kept the princess in the old religion’. Rochester and his colleague of course rejected this accusation, saying that they were ‘but the lady’s ministers in what concerned the management of her household and temporal goods; but as for her religion and conscience she asked nobody’s advice and, what was more, not one of her ministers dared broach the matter in her presence’.Their description of their roles, though a touch disingenuous, since they clearly had considerable importance in a wider consultative sense, rings absolutely true, however, on religious matters. It also indicates that Mary was someone to be feared as well as loved.

  She took very badly indeed the nasty attempt to humiliate her by using her servants as messengers for the king’s instructions and she sent them back to London, where the council promptly incarcerated them in the Tower when they refused to go back with a second order. There Rochester stayed throughout the winter, suffering for his lady, until 18 March 1552, when he was released on grounds of ill health. Englefield was freed at the same time. Both men immediately returned to Mary’s service. Waldegrave was allowed out of the Tower, under house arrest, somewhat earlier, because of a serious attack of ague, but he did not return to the princess until the end of April.

  Mary knew that her servants were suffering entirely because the council did not wish to go to the lengths of incurring criticism by imprisoning her. In August 1551 she had her last acrimonious argument with members of the council when Rich, Petre and Sir Anthony Wingfield came to Copthall to deliver yet another ultimatum from the king. They found her furious but determined not to give way.‘It was not’, she informed them,‘the wisest counsel to appoint her servants to control her in her own house.’ If an attempt was made to replace Rochester with a new appointee, she would leave. ‘And I am sickly,’ she added, ‘yet I will not die willingly … but if I shall chance to die, I will protest openly that you of the council be the causes of my death.You give me fair words, but your deeds be always ill towards me.’ Her parting shot was one they did not forget, delivered with true dramatic flair from an upstairs window - she told them she wanted Rochester back. His absence meant that she had been compelled to become her own controller.Though she had learned ‘how many loaves of bread be made of a bushel of wheat … my father and mother never brought me up with baking and brewing, and, to be plain with you, I am weary with mine office’.31 With this rebuke ringing in their ears, the conciliar deputation departed without having achieved anything.

  Still, the pressure on her eased considerably, as Northumberland decided that there was no advantage in going after her any more. The king was only a few years short of his majority and was being carefully groomed for that day by greater involvement in government. He proved an apt pupil and Northumberland a responsible and even sensitive mentor. The duke certainly had much experience of raising boys. Edward was keen on sports, like his father, and his frame was filling out. He survived both the measles and the smallpox in 1552, both diseases that could bring death.There was nothing to suggest that he would not enjoy a long reign.

  Mary did not spend Christmas 1551 at court. Instead, she entertained her cousin Frances and her husband Henry, recently made duke of Suffolk. During 1552 the princess came to London in June to see the king at Greenwich and for the rest of the year she found the council yet more conciliatory, with Northumberland keeping her briefed on foreign affairs during the autumn. On 6 February 1553 Mary, again with a substantial force, was once more at court for her winter visit to the king. She was greeted outside London by Northumberland’s son, himself now earl of Warwick, and Lord William Howard, an uncle of Anne Boleyn.The family connections of these two gentlemen were no doubt forgotten in the splendour of her reception. When they rode into the city Mary’s forces and her escort were three hundred strong.

  She did not visit Edward immediately because he had caught a chest infection. As someone who frequently suffered from colds herself, she probably thought nothing of it. When they parted, she had not the slightest inkling that they had met for the last time.

  Chapter Seven

  Mary Triumphant

  ‘My resolve is to disown and disinherit Mary together with her sister Elizabeth.’

  Edward VI to his council, June 1553

  The pressures of her brother’s reign combined with the long-term effects of her own indifferent health aged Mary. Some time around 1550, William Scrots painted her in a magnificent and very expensive dress of black velvet and satin, with distinctive blackwork embroidery decoration on the collar, cuffs and sleeves and a gold-edged French hood.The dress itself makes a statement about Mary’s power and wealth and her image of herself. She is composed but distant, as if her mind is somewhere else. And she is still a handsome woman. The contrast with her portraits as queen is considerable though perhaps not surprising, considering all that lay between.

  Despite the respect accorded to her when she came to court, Mary was still uneasy about her position as her brother edged closer to his majority.When the duke of Northumberland had opposed her outright, she knew where she stood. Now he seemed more obliging she needed to be careful not to drop her guard. The ill-defined truce on religion troubled her, and she wrote to Charles V asking that ‘when a season shall appear more propitious in your majesty’s eyes’ the imperial ambassador should ‘by all possible means try to obtain that the hearing of mass in secret may be permitted and granted to me’.1 Charles, who saw no reason to stir up trouble, evaded the issue. He was preoccupied with the French, and they always came before Mary. Since the princess did not enjoy the kind of confidential relationship with Jehan Scheyfve that she had with his predecessors, she did n
ot press the point. This absence of imperial input was actually an advantage for Mary’s English advisers, the loyal gentlemen of her household who cherished her best interests, because they knew she would not be distracted by outside influences. And soon there were matters of the utmost importance to command their mistress’s attention. As the unparalleled crisis of the summer of 1553 developed, Mary found herself once more in the cockpit of events.

  There had been rumours circulating in the diplomatic community since the early spring about the king’s inability to shrug off his February chest infection. Up until now, he had seemed vigorous and increasingly strong-willed. Edward VI had developed into an active boy who loved sports and spectacles. He was not at all the sickly Tudor swot that has so often been depicted. And he was very conscious of what it meant to be a king, anticipating the arrival of his French bride and her very large dowry with enthusiasm. By the age of 15 he was taking an active part in council meetings and decisions on matters of state; he looked forward eagerly to the day he would fully assume the reins of government. His diary for 1552 is full of references to diplomacy with the French, comments on trade matters and on the war between the French and Charles V. Carefully guided by Northumberland, the foundations for his assumption of power seemed well laid.Yet as the leaves began to turn green, there was anxiety in London.The king ventured out of doors for the first time in two months in early April, in his park at Westminster, on a day of ‘soft and bright’ weather. He was, though, under strict medical supervision, and a few days later he went by river to Greenwich. There he remained, and tongues began to wag more than ever. His indisposition was turning into something very sinister indeed.

  At the time no one knew for sure what was happening to Edward, and though there was concern, there was nothing like panic. Nor was there any attempt, in the early stages, to conceal his condition from Mary. Northumberland wrote to her personally about her brother’s health in March and again the following month,‘though not with so much detail as heretofore’. No doubt he had his reasons for this reticence, and they may not have been entirely to spare Mary the increasingly gruesome reality. Scheyfve, on the other hand, with little to do but keep his ear to the ground, was more forthcoming. ‘I hear from a trustworthy source that the king is undoubtedly becoming weaker as the time passes, and wasting away. The matter he ejects from his mouth is sometimes coloured a greenish-yellow and black, sometimes pink, like the colour of blood. His doctors and physicians are perplexed and do not know what to make of it.’2

  Still, it was not felt that Edward was in any immediate danger. In early May, he seemed to rally briefly and Northumberland wrote to William Cecil: ‘Our sovereign lord doth begin very joyfully to increase and amend, they [the royal physicians] having no doubt of the thorough recovery of his highness.’3 To Mary, he continued to be conciliatory, sending her the full coat of arms as a princess of England,‘as she used to bear them in her father’s time’. Mary’s response to this gesture is not known, but her reservations about the man behind it remained.

  The duke himself was, for a time, very occupied with other considerations. Recently arrived as a senior member of the aristocracy, he was keen to underwrite the future of his numerous progeny. From late April onwards, preparations for a double wedding in the family demanded his attention. Guildford Dudley, the fifth of his sons, was to marry Lady Jane Grey, daughter of the duke and duchess of Suffolk. At the same time, his daughter Katherine would become the wife of the earl of Huntingdon’s son. These alliances strengthened his position, but if is doubtful that he had thought beyond that. Indeed, Jane Grey was not his first choice for Guildford. He wanted the earl of Westmorland’s daughter, but the earl was not interested in a close association with Northumberland, even if he was the most powerful man in the kingdom.The Suffolks were more amenable, and on Whitsuntide, 21 May, Mary’s 16-year-old cousin became Lady Jane Dudley. Perhaps she wore some of the ‘rich jewels and ornaments’ the king had sent her as a wedding present.There was great magnificence and feasting, as well as games and jousts, at Durham Place, the duke’s latest property acquisition in London.

  Scheyfve, suspicious and concerned, read a great deal into this: ‘The duke and his party’s designs to deprive the Lady Mary of the succession to the crown are only too plain.They are evidently resolved to resort to arms against her, with the excuse of religion among others,’ he wrote at the end of May. Mary herself was said to be ‘in great trouble and perplexity’ because of the illness of her brother.4 She had her own lines of communication into the court, maybe even into the council chamber, so she was well informed. It is impossible to say whether she fully shared the imperial analysis of her situation at this point; certainly, she wished to convey an impression that she was reactive, even biddable, until circumstances dictated otherwise. It was the safest course. The ambassador, for his part, had actually guessed correctly, and the strange thing is that he probably knew Northumberland’s mind before the duke did. But the precise means that might be used to exclude Mary, beyond the vague threat of violence, were unclear to almost everyone. The driving force for what happened next seems to have been as much the king himself as his mentor.

  By the second week of June, it was obvious to Edward VI that he was dying. The cause was probably not tuberculosis, as used to be thought, but a bacterial pulmonary infection contracted months earlier. It was most likely a complication of the chill he was reported to be suffering from in mid-February. As he was previously a strong young man, the disease took some time to reach its awful, but inexorable, conclusion. The symptoms show that renal failure and septicaemia eventually overwhelmed his entire system. Today, a simple course of antibiotics administered early in his illness would have prevented this deadly infection. Instead, he was condemned to a painful and protracted passing from a life that had seemed full of promise.

  The last weeks were dreadful. Edward could not rest unless strong sleeping draughts were administered, and his head and feet swelled. His scalp was shaved, his nails fell out and the stench of the sputum he continued to bring up nauseated even his most devoted servants. Though little could be done to alleviate the indignities of death, his intellect remained clear. His one consolation, amid all this suffering, was that the country he ruled was now freed for ever from the yoke of the papacy in Rome and the uncertainties over religious practice his father had bequeathed him. Those men in whom he had confidence, principally Cranmer and Northumberland, would, he believed, uphold his uncompromising devotion to the new religion. But there was one vital question of state that demanded his attention, as his life ebbed away. To be sure that there was no going back, he must take an audacious step. He must alter the succession to the English throne.

  It had begun as an intellectual exercise, the sort of hypothetical problem suitable for the clever mind of Edward VI. There could be no more important consideration than the future of his own dynasty.We do not know whether the topic was entirely of the king’s choosing or whether it was developed following discussion with William Thomas, an Oxford graduate of reformist ideas who was working with Northumberland in training the king for government. For many years, historians drew a direct line between the document entitled My Devise for the Succession and the crisis of summer 1553. It was viewed as the moving force for a sinister plot, masterminded by Northumberland when he knew Edward was mortally ill. But this is to confuse cause with effect. The duke was not so cunning, nor nearly so well organised, as those who sought to vilify him after his fall believed. Archbishop Cranmer told Mary subsequently that Northumberland had never raised with him the idea of changing the succession. He said the impetus came from the king and other council members, and he had no reason to protect Northumberland once Mary was on the throne. As with the moves against Anne Boleyn nearly two decades earlier, Cranmer merely wanted to represent the truth as he saw it.5

  The Devise was originally written no later than January 1553, at a time when there was no reason to expect the king’s imminent death. It proposed a radical change t
o the order of succession laid out by Henry VIII and put on the statute books by Parliament in 1543. At one stroke, Edward disinherited both his sisters, stipulating instead that the throne pass to the male heirs of Frances, duchess of Suffolk, and then to the male heirs of the Lady Jane, her eldest daughter. Jane was educated according to the new religious ideas and she was staunchly anti-Catholic. This made her an attractive alternative to Mary. The king had realised for some while, perhaps since the disastrous Christmas of 1550, that his elder sister would undo all the religious changes of his reign if she were ever to succeed to the throne. He was not willing to die in that knowledge. His reasons for rejecting Elizabeth as well were logical rather than theological. Given the order of succession in the 1543 act and Henry’s will, disinheritance of Mary implied disinheritance of Elizabeth too. This textbook exercise did not allow family feelings to get in the way of the needs of the state. Edward was perfectly willing to trample on the rights of Mary, who had loved him all his life, and Elizabeth, who had shared his schoolroom and his religious ideas. They were women and as such inferior. Though the 16th century produced many capable women rulers, Edward’s views were entirely in tune with the times in which he lived. Nor should it be supposed that, when he first wrote the Devise, he saw any inconsistency in bringing forward the claim of the women of the junior branch of the Tudors. He merely assumed that his cousin Jane would, when she married, produce male children.The nearest male heir, Margaret Douglas’ son Lord Darnley, was no more than eight years old and a Catholic.The king would never have passed his throne to a child being raised in the old religion.

  All this had already taken shape in Edward’s mind when Mary came to court four months earlier. But no one else knew of it, except perhaps for William Thomas.The king would hardly have provoked his sister by inviting her thoughts on what he had written. In fact, he was already seeking to marginalise Mary through observing a polite indifference to her Catholicism, thus minimising the damage she could do publicly as the regime’s main opponent. At the same time, he took steps to remind his other sister of her doubtful status by giving Elizabeth’s main property in London to Northumberland. Durham Place, the scene of Jane Grey’s nuptials, had very recently been Elizabeth’s town residence, and she was not amused by its loss. All this was part of the king’s flexing of his muscles, readying himself for a time when power was entirely his.