by Linda Porter
Simon Renard’s suspicions of the queen’s sister, still not officially given the title of princess, were voiced early and often. It is easy to understand his fears. Elizabeth did not share Mary’s religious beliefs and her status as ‘second person’ in the realm, even if never officially recognised by Mary, meant that she would always be attractive to disaffected persons, whether the French (in whose camp she might already be) or to home-grown rebels. She was young, carried herself with supreme confidence, and was good-looking. But it was mostly her cleverness which worried Renard.Within two weeks of Mary’s entry into London, he reported that he had raised with the queen ‘the presence at court of the Lady Elizabeth, who might, out of ambition or being persuaded thereto, conceive some dangerous design and put it to execution, as she was clever and sly’. Elizabeth’s position had actually been mentioned as part of a wider discussion about what to do with Lady Jane Grey, whose own fate was now in Mary’s hands.The queen told Renard ‘that she was about to send the Lady Elizabeth away, as the same considerations had occurred to her’.21 No doubt they had, yet Elizabeth did not leave court for more than three months. Mary seems to have had mixed feelings about letting her go, and her attitude towards her sister remained inconsistent. The part of the queen that had always sought to dominate her brother Edward felt that it was better to have the young woman at court, where she could be supervised. This proprietorial view was accompanied by the hope that Elizabeth could be genuinely brought back to Catholicism and that she was not ill intentioned.
But Renard would have none of it. His dislike of Elizabeth leaps off the pages of his dispatches, and he was determined to poison the relationship between the sisters. Maybe he saw a potential rapprochement as a threat to his own influence. He was a man who trusted no one and saw plots everywhere. Elizabeth had her own following and the danger she posed should not be discounted.The safest course was to assume the worst: It would appear wise in your majesty not to be too ready to trust the Lady Elizabeth and to reflect that she now sees no hope of coming to the throne [a dubious assertion], and has been unwilling to yield about religion, though it might be expected of her out of respect for your majesty and gratitude for the kindnesses you have shown her, even if she had only done so to accompany you. Moreover, it will appear that she is only clinging to the new religion out of policy, in order to win over and make use of its adepts in case she decided to plot. A mistake may perhaps be made in attributing this intention to her, but at this early stage it is safer to forestall than be forestalled, and to consider all possible results …22
Whatever the queen’s doubts, she was not immediately swayed by Renard’s advice, and Gardiner believed that Elizabeth would come round in religious matters. Aware that the imperialists were depicting her in a very bad light, Elizabeth appealed directly to Mary: ‘Perceiving that the queen did not show her as kindly a countenance as she could wish … she besought the queen to grant her a private audience … the queen did not do so at once; but two days later … the Lady Elizabeth approached the queen and knelt down on both knees; weeping, she said she saw only too clearly that the queen was not well-disposed towards her, and she knew of no other cause except religion.’ She went on to point out that she had ‘never been taught the doctrine of the ancient religion’, and she asked Mary to send her books and ‘a learned man … to instruct her in the truth’.
This sounded very promising, but, as always with Elizabeth, there was equivocation. She would undertake this study so that ‘she might know if her conscience could allow her to be persuaded’. Renard believed that this was all an act and reported that when Elizabeth did attend mass, she ‘complained loudly all the way to church that her stomach ached’ and ‘wore a suffering air’.23 He does not say whether he personally witnessed this display of reluctance, but his reports of what passed between the Tudor sisters in private are either based on detailed revelations from Mary herself, or fabricated. The former interpretation seems the most likely, but the level of detail sometimes given by Renard may at least be embroidered. Nor was he winning the battle against Elizabeth at this point. He believed that she had ‘converted’ because some members of the council, presumably Gardiner and Paget, had warned her that to do otherwise would mean that she had to leave court. Mary does seem to have been persuaded, even if Renard continued to stoke her own misgivings. There was no question of Elizabeth being sent away before the coronation, in which she was given a prominent role.
Some of the ambassador’s dark suspicions may have had to do with his feelings of insecurity about his own position, which he was desperate to regularise. His anxieties would have struck a chord with many in the diplomatic fraternity, though imperial stinginess over financial provision was worse than most. Whatever impression he tried to give Mary and Paget, the minister with whom he had the most direct dealings, he was far from happy when the instruction came from Brussels in late September that he was to continue in the London posting alone. No one had thought about his family and his salary was woefully inadequate. He had, he pointed out, been sent to London suddenly, suffering from ill health, and ‘did not provide myself with a secretary, servants or furniture’ because he had thought, at the time, he would be gone only for four to six weeks. ‘I have a wife and children at Brussels and did not set my private affairs in order before leaving,’ he wrote to the emperor.‘Besides which I owe a great deal of money having received no payment for 16 months as your majesty’s councillor … Moreover, Sire, I have no money here, and no means of getting any as I possess no credit or friends; … your majesty’s letter makes no mention of pay, stipend or any provision whatsoever.’
His pleas did not go unheeded.The emperor wrote at the beginning of the next month that he was, indeed, to stay—there could be no negotiation on that point. His salary up to the end of 1553 would be sent to him, though there would be no increase beyond what was normally paid to ambassadors in England. And he did get the money owed to him from the Burgundian post he held. Beyond that, no decision had been taken about how long he would stay. Charles V knew that Renard’s tenure in London was increasingly likely to depend on Mary herself.
While Simon Renard worried about his own household, he could do little to affect the formation of Mary’s personal establishment, beyond being asked to convey the emperor’s concerns that some of her ladies were using their position to dispense too much influence. ‘If you have an opportunity of speaking to her without her taking it in bad part, you might give her to understand that people are said to murmur because some of her ladies take advantage of their position to obtain certain concessions for their own private interest and profit.’24 These women were clearly more canny than their image, largely derived from the negative comments of Spanish visitors, suggests. Unattractive, overdressed ladies of a certain age most of them may have seemed to outsiders, but they adapted with great alacrity to the privileges that came with their new-found status.We do not know whether Renard found a tactful way to pass on his master’s reproofs, but Mary’s household had been on the outside looking in for so long that it is hardly surprising that some took advantage. Their behaviour was no different from that of courtiers down through the ages, but the fact that women could operate so blatantly was viewed with disapproval. That it was known so soon after Mary’s accession across the North Sea indicates a high level of resentment, but Charles V did not reveal his source of information.
The truth was that Mary’s household, and especially her privy chamber, was a preserve where the queen would brook no interference. Below stairs, the establishment remained much as it had in her brother’s reign, and overall the household was not remodelled on the basis that a queen regnant would have different needs from a king. But in the queen’s privy chamber, her personal domain, where she sought relief from the pressures of ruling, as well as companionship and security, there was a complete revolution. This traditional preserve of male intimacy became female dominated very quickly after the accession. The main posts were filled in a matter of weeks and they
all went to women. Mary had three levels of female servants who supported her on a daily basis, away from the prying eyes of diplomats and politicians: ladies, gentlewomen and chamberers. The ladies, who numbered about half a dozen at different times of the reign, included Lady Anne Petre, Lady Eleanor Kempe (a long-serving attendant), Lady Frances Jerningham and Lady Frances Waldegrave.The latter two were the wives of existing members of Mary’s household, so their commitment to Mary was well established, though in the case of the Waldegraves that loyalty was put to the test when the queen came to consider the question of marriage. Lady Petre, the wife of former privy council secretary William Petre, had entertained the queen during the difficult days of Edward’s reign, as her husband owned estates in Essex not far from Mary’s.Though this hospitality was intended to keep an eye on Mary, she does not seem to have resented Anne Petre at all, and perhaps derived some enjoyment from her company. She would surely not have employed her otherwise. Anne Petre was the second wife of one of the more notable political survivors of mid-Tudor England. Herself a widow when she married him, Lady Petre probably found herself able to aid her husband through her appointment, though his experience meant that Mary could scarcely have done without him. Not much is known about the others. Frances Jerningham was married by 1536, but this does not mean that she was necessarily much older than Mary, and Frances Waldegrave was a few years younger than the queen.
Those closest to the queen, who had known her longest and never left her side through all the difficult years, were to be found among the eleven gentlewomen of the privy chamber. Here Susan Clarencius, who had served Mary since the 1530s, presided with considerable power and influence. She was not officially appointed chief gentlewoman, but her power in this unspoken role was well understood throughout Mary’s reign. Her main importance was that she controlled access to Mary. Born Susan White in Essex, she may already have been widowed when she joined Mary. He husband,Thomas Tonge, held a variety of heraldic posts, though it was his last, Clarenceux king of arms, which gave his wife the ‘surname’ for which she became more commonly known. Her precise age at the time is uncertain, but she was probably at least six years older than her mistress. Susan Clarencius influenced Mary more than any other of her ladies, or so the imperialists thought. Certainly she did well in monetary terms during Mary’s reign, receiving annuities, pensions and wardships of minors who had been left orphaned. She was also an acquisitive lady, constantly making demands of the Venetian ambassador, Michieli, for presents to be given to Mary which subsequently ended up as gifts to Mrs Clarencius herself. Michieli was clearly aggrieved when Susan brazenly asked for his own ‘coach and horses and all their furniture’ to be handed over to the queen.The coach had been specially made in Italy and Mary soon passed it on to Mrs Clarencius.25 Susan’s presence, always hovering in the background and often at the queen’s right hand, could not be ignored by those who sought private audience. It is not surprising that she was one of only a handful of people who had keys to the privy apartments. But her judgement was not always good, and though she fussed over Mary, the evidence of her behaviour in 1555, when she was chief among those who raised false hopes of pregnancy in the queen, points to the fact that she was not the best choice of confidante. She was an overprotective servant rather than a trustworthy and objective adviser.
The best known of Mary’s women was the young Jane Dormer, a girl of good looks and charm from a Buckinghamshire Catholic family that had long been close to the crown. As a child, Jane played with Edward VI, who was tutored by her grandfather, Sir William Sidney. She probably joined Mary in 1548, when Mary’s East Anglian household was in the process of being established. Before that time, she had been brought up by her grandparents, her mother having died when she was only four. Jane’s father, Sir William Dormer, remarried, but she did not stay with him. She would have been ten years old when she entered Mary’s service, and this girl who had been a courtier from an early age grew up in the favoured environment of the princess’s staunchly Catholic household. Jane was intelligent and accomplished as well as devoted to Mary. Contemporaries saw her as the jewel among Mary’s gentlewomen and composed verses in her honour: ‘Dormer is a darling and of such lively hue that who so feeds his eye on her may soon her beauty view.’26 This, and her age and unmarried status, turned Jane Dormer into the star of Mary’s court. Shortly after Mary’s death, she made a splendid marriage to the Spanish count Feria, who acted as Philip’s representative in England during the last months of Mary’s life.
She was not, though, the only attractive woman in Mary’s service. Anne Bacon was said to be comely as well as learned, and another of Mary’s ladies, Frances Neville, was rather too familiarly addressed by the louche William Howard with the hearty greeting ‘Come hither, thou pretty whore’, which shows that Mary’s court was not a strait-laced enclave of old crones who spent all their time attending mass and telling their rosaries.
Below the gentlewomen came the chamberers and the six maids of honour, the debutantes of their time, with a Mother of the Maids to chaperone them.There were only twelve males in this private environment, five gentlemen and seven grooms, but two of the important offices, that of chief usher and keeper of the privy purse, were deemed inappropriate for women. Mary did not consider that her women should act as doorkeepers or manage financial matters.
The extent of the influence of this group of 30 or so women is not easy to gauge. Their presence was the constant in Mary’s life and, in many cases, they had been close to her for years. They were there with her when she rose for her first mass of the day at six in the morning and they prepared her for bed, very seldom before midnight, at the end of the day. Her dress, her toilette, her daily health, her preoccupations - all were within their area of responsibility. It seems probable that she talked to them freely on matters that touched her most deeply as an individual, such as marriage, sex, religion and her relationship with her sister. The lighter aspects of court life - culture, entertainment, her wardrobe, for example - would also have been regular topics of conversation.We can do no more than speculate about the ladies’ role in policy-making or whether the queen sought their views on weightier matters of government. Mary was good at keeping things to herself when she chose and she could be imperious. She was never in any doubt that she was queen and they were her servants, however much she cherished them, so it would be unwise to read too much into their role.
And there were other ladies, not members of the household, but equally close to Mary now she was queen, whose influence was regarded as being of equal significance. One was Gertrude Courtenay, marchioness of Exeter, who had seen her family all but wiped out because of its support for Mary Tudor and her mother. At first, she seemed to be rebuilding her prominent position rapidly. A plea directed through Gertrude, so the duchess of Northumberland and others thought, might incline the queen to mercy. Lady Exeter could not save Northumberland himself, though it appears that she was instrumental in the decision to spare his ally, the marquess of Northampton. But her relations with the queen became strained after the coronation. The reason was her son, Edward, whose suitability as a husband for Mary was, by October 1553, being pushed much more openly. Gertrude naturally supported his candidacy and Simon Renard believed that her influence might sway Mary. The queen, however, had other ideas, and seems to have resented Gertrude’s stance on the matter. The resulting friction made for a difficult atmosphere between the two women.
Another companion from long ago was much more fortunate. Margaret Douglas, countess of Lennox, whom the queen had seen only rarely since the end of her father’s reign, became the most prominent beneficiary of the queen’s generosity. She was delighted to be able to renew her patronage of her cousin, whom she had always loved and whose religious beliefs she shared. Mary could scarcely contain her desire to show favour to this still handsome woman, who had shared part of her girlhood and whose companionship she could now enjoy again. Margaret returned to court in magnificence. She was given apartments at We
stminster, provided with food and drink for her household and attended the queen clad in splendid dresses and jewels, most of which were recent presents from Mary.There was considerably more to come. Margaret was also granted revenues from the wool trade which made her a rich woman and, most tellingly of all, she was given precedence over Elizabeth at court, though only after the coronation had taken place. Her behaviour indicates that she considered this to be only right and proper. No question hovered over her legitimacy. She was a Tudor queen’s daughter and it began to look as though she would be officially named as heiress presumptive. Elizabeth, already anxious about her place in Mary’s affections, did not enjoy Margaret’s elevation and the favours showered on her but she could not afford to be uncivil to her. Renard reported that he had attended a banquet with his fellow imperial ambassadors shortly before the other three returned to Brussels. The queen ‘supped in hall’ with them, while ‘the music of hautboys, cornets, flutes, harps and dulcimers ceased not to play’. But the Lady Elizabeth and Margaret Douglas sat at a window, reduced, perhaps, to small talk.27 Under the queen’s eye but not allowed to share her regal repast, both the once flighty Margaret and the ambitious, discontented Elizabeth must have wondered about Mary’s intentions.
