Mary Tudor: The First Queen

by Linda Porter

  Less than two weeks after the coronation, Mary received the offer for which she had been waiting. She was fully ready with questions and comments when, on 10 October, the ambassador knelt before her and offered the hand of his highness Prince Philip in marriage.This was by no means the first time the emperor’s son had been mentioned and Mary had dealt very cleverly with Renard in the past by telling him that she knew Philip was already promised elsewhere. ‘She said straight out that his highness was married to the princess of Portugal, daughter of the queen dowager of France.’12 Caught on the back foot at that time, Renard told her that he did not think the marriage was concluded. Now, he could assure her that Charles V wanted her, not Dona Maria, as Philip’s wife. Ever conscious of the place he occupied in Mary’s affections, the emperor offered Philip as a substitute for himself: Renard told her that he was commanded to say that, ‘if age and health had permitted, you would have desired no other match, but as years and infirmity rendered your person a poor thing to be offered to her, you could think of no one dearer to you or better suited than my lord the prince, your son, who was of middle age, of distinguished qualities and of honourable and Catholic upbringing’. But, of course, the decision was entirely Mary’s—Charles had ‘no private object in this’.

  She responded graciously, saying it was a ‘greater match than she deserved’. If she was thrilled, however, she kept herself well in check, beginning immediately to address the wider implications. There were difficulties that must be faced and she sounded more lukewarm than elated. She could not say whether the people of England or her councillors would be supportive. Was it realistic to suppose that Philip, the heir to ‘many realms and provinces’, would come to live in England, as her countrymen would expect? An absentee consort was not acceptable. And she did not know the young man at all, though she had heard that ‘he was not as wise as your majesty and was very young, being only twenty-six years of age’. There were aspects of the relationship that needed to be made clear from the start: ‘If he were disposed to be amorous, such was not her desire, for she was of the age your majesty knew of and had never harboured thoughts of love.’ She would pledge herself to be a good wife and ‘love and obey him to whom she had given herself’, as God’s law required, but secular aspects of the marriage were a different consideration. The limits of her husband’s role were made clear from the outset.‘If he wished to encroach in the government of the kingdom she would be unable to permit it, nor if he attempted to fill posts and offices with strangers, for the country itself would never stand such interference. It was difficult, indeed almost impossible, for her to make up her mind so quickly and without the assistance of some of her council, for the step was of great importance, and for all her life.’Almost as an afterthought, she added defiantly that ‘she was as free as on the day of her birth, and had never taken a fancy to anyone’. The best way to handle the proposal, she concluded, would be for the emperor to write directly to half a dozen or so of her councillors, whom she named, and she would then sound out their response.

  Paget had already discussed the need to smooth things by adopting this course, so Renard was not surprised by it. He dealt with each of the other objections raised by Mary briskly.The people of England and the council would surely be aware of the benefits to the realm of such a marriage, promising as it did ‘peace, repose, prosperity and liberty’. Councillors would not oppose if the matter were raised with them appropriately and, anyhow,‘means should be contrived to bring them to a favourable view’.They surely could not be blind to the advantages of Philip ‘because he was a prince so puissant that the kingdom would be able to look to him for succour and aid, and vassals for advancement out of his own patrimony, not England’s’. And as for his being an absentee, he would have ‘no dearer wish than to stay with her’.

  He then catalogued the prince’s virtues in the most glowing of terms: ‘His highness’ nature was so admirable, so virtuous, prudent and modest as to appear too wonderful to be human, and though the queen might believe me to be speaking the language of a subject or servant I was in reality minimising his qualities.’ A husband of 50 was a totally unrealistic option. He would be too old to have children and, besides,‘men grew old at fifty or sixty, which age very few passed’. Experience had matured the prince; indeed, it had aged him:‘His highness had already been married, had a son of eight and was a prince of so stable and settled a character that he was no longer young, for nowadays a man nearly thirty was considered as old as men formerly were at forty.’ Renard did not enlarge on what had happened to mid-16th-century European males to bring about this effect, which many might have found unfortunate rather than encouraging. He managed to refrain from any further extrapolation about what the world thought of ladies who were close to 40 in age. Mary listened but made no comment. She reiterated her conviction that the council must be involved and she reassured him, in response to his repeated warnings about the intentions of her enemies,‘the heretics and schismatics, the rebels and partisans of the late Duke of Northumberland, the French and Scots, and the Lady Elizabeth’, that she was better informed than even he was, because she had her own channels of information:‘She well knew what the French were doing and saying, and put no trust in their words … but they should not approach Courtenay or Elizabeth without her knowledge, for Courtenay’s mother had promised to inform her.’ Renard remained unconvinced by this, telling Mary ‘she had better not believe all that was said to her’.13 But he knew he could go no further without the letters for her councillors that the queen required.

  The next three weeks must have seemed very slow to the imperial ambassador.The queen asked for a memo in writing from him, covering the main points of their meeting. She was still unconvinced that Philip was not pre-contracted to his Portuguese cousin. Then she requested draft marriage articles that she could discuss with the council. The ambassador could oblige with assurances of the former but not the latter, and Charles V baulked at being required at very short notice to produce the terms of a treaty for a marriage that neither Mary nor her council had yet accepted. But he did provide letters for individual councillors in which he explained that he was proposing Philip as Mary’s husband. Renard was, though, reluctant to present them until his three colleagues, who were being very slow to depart, actually left England. As Scheyfve did not go till 27 October, his hands were tied until he was finally left alone.

  Mary herself did not reach a decision until the very end of the month, and in between she had been put under further pressure by all and sundry to consider alternatives to Philip. Even Anne of Cleves intervened, favouring the other Habsburg wing, in the person of Archduke Ferdinand. But the greatest pressure came from her household staff and the Lord Chancellor. Gardiner, Rochester, Englefield and Waldegrave would not easily abandon the idea of an English marriage. Conscious that the initiative was passing from them, they made a determined attempt to state the case for Courtenay.The bishop was forthright, as he had always been. ‘The country never would abide a foreigner, Courtenay was the only possible match for her.’ Englefield also did not mince words, saying ‘that his highness had a kingdom of his own he would not wish to leave to come to England and that his own subjects spoke ill of him’.Waldegrave kept up the attack by invoking the spectre of war with France, if Mary wedded Philip.

  Faced with this onslaught, Mary held her ground and, apparently, kept her temper. She ‘begged them all to lay aside private considerations [a shrewd dig] and think of the present condition of affairs, the French plottings, the marriage of the French dauphin with the queen of Scotland, what benefit the country could look for were she to marry Courtenay, and what profit might accrue to it if she chose a foreigner’.

  And there the matter rested, for the time being, but Mary felt sure they would try again. When she related all this to Renard, he reassured her that he had the letters for the council that she wanted. But why was she so deferent to her council, who were urging her ‘to marry a vassal for whom she had no liking’? Mary was
piqued. ‘She retorted that they had no authority in matters that touched her so nearly.’ Yet she still insisted, as she inched her way to a decision, that a core of councillors more favourably disposed to a foreign marriage meet with Renard on 27 October so that they could be informed personally of what Charles V was proposing. The emotional toll on her was, by this time, rising alarmingly. ‘She had wept over two hours that very day, praying God to inspire her in her decision.’ There was more to be told, about what she had said to Courtenay on this topic, but ‘she could not say more without bursting into tears’. As Gardiner, Paget, Arundel and Secretary Petre awaited her, she found the strength to pull herself together. She commanded them to give close attention to Renard and left him to put the case for Philip of Spain. But she had already intimated to the ambassador that her mind was made up for the emperor’s son.

  Renard found the small group of councillors to whom the emperor had written suitably receptive:Your majesty had never laid the queen and her country under so great an obligation, and in the name of the queen, her realm and themselves they most humbly thanked you for this holy, good, profitable and necessary reminder. Though some of their number had already thought of it, yet the matter was so important and personal to the queen that they had not dared to make so bold as to mention it to her … they repeated that they could not tell me how agreeable my message had been. 14

  He then tried to soothe the fears of known opponents to the Spanish marriage in the queen’s household by calling on Sir Robert Rochester ‘in his room’ and presenting the controller with a personal letter from Charles V. Affecting to sound out Rochester on ‘his opinion as to what alliance would be best for her [the queen] and the country’, he even went so far as to say that he intended to guide the negotiation by following Rochester’s advice, something which they both knew was a lie. Sir Robert gave little away, beyond saying that he ‘felt wonderfully obliged to your majesty … for having written letters on the subject yourself’. He offered no opinion as to the identity of a suitable husband, but he did warn Renard that ‘the queen had some dangerous men in her council, persons who felt no devotion to her but only feigned it for the time being because they could not do otherwise’. He wanted the ambassador to be careful to whom he spoke, pointing out that in Waldegrave and Englefield the queen had ‘councillors old as well as new’, and that they were true, good men.This glimpse of ill feeling among the privy councillors did not surprise Renard, and he realised that he would have to proceed with caution,‘to keep in with some and confide in others.This problem is so difficult as to pass my capacity.’ Nevertheless, he was confident that Mary had already made the right decision:‘I believe that when she summons me to speak privately to her she will give me a plain affirmation. ’

  In this he proved to be entirely correct. At about midnight of the same day on which he penned his dispatch to the emperor, Mary sent him a short note. She told him that ‘Paget knows what is happening’, but that she would like to speak to Renard in private before doing so in the council’s presence. He came full of expectation and was not disappointed. Mary had made up her mind.

  The queen wanted the agonising over her marriage to be over, but she had not pushed ahead without speaking to her advisers. Perhaps she was not always entirely frank with them, but then neither were they with her, or with each other. Her past made her long for emotional certainties that her rational intelligence knew would be difficult, if not impossible, to attain. Still, she hoped at least for consideration and cordial relations with a husband who was a member of her family. And she wanted a prestigious match. However much her household staff loved her, they could not make out a convincing case for Edward Courtenay.

  We have only Renard’s word for what actually took place on the evening of Sunday, 29 October, but, even given his penchant for representing Mary as skittish and suggestible, there is no reason to suppose that he greatly exaggerated what passed between them. Only two other decisions in her life - the acknowledgement of her own illegitimacy in 1536 and the determination to fight for her throne - were of equal importance to her. ‘She told me’, reported Renard,that since I had presented your majesty’s letters to her she had not slept, but had continually wept and prayed God to inspire her with an answer to the question of marriage that I had first raised at Beaulieu [New Hall]. As the Holy Sacrament had been in her room, she had invoked it as her protector, guide and counsellor, and still prayed with all her heart that it would come to her help. She then knelt and said Veni, creator spiritus. There was no one else in the room except Mrs Clarencius and myself and we did the same.

  Did Susan Clarencius, he wondered, follow all this? Mary and the ambassador spoke in French but presumably Mrs Clarencius knew very well her mistress’s mind by this time. Mary then explained her decision and how she had reached it.

  She had considered all things, thought over what I had said to her, and had also spoken with Arundel [who by now had also received his letter from the emperor], Paget and Petre. She believed what I had told her of his highness’ qualities and that your majesty would ever show her kindness, observe the conditions that were to safeguard the welfare of the country, be a good father to her as you had been in the past and more, now that you would be doubly her father, and cause his highness to be a good husband to her.

  She spoke as Mary the queen and Mary the woman, confident still in divine guidance: ‘She felt herself inspired by God, who had performed so many miracles in her favour, to give me her promise to his highness there before the Holy Sacrament and her mind, once made up, would never change, but she would love him perfectly and never give him cause to be jealous.’15 At peace with herself after a long struggle, she meant every word she said.

  Simon Renard was relieved and delighted. ‘If she had invoked the Holy Ghost, I had invoked the Trinity to inspire her with the desired answer,’ he told Charles V. But he also knew that it would be difficult to progress things until the queen made her decision public, something which she did not seem inclined to rush, and that opponents would not suddenly abandon their efforts to get her to marry Courtenay. In fact, the approach from Charles V galvanised the party that supported an English marriage into action, to the point that a fracture in relations between the queen and her ‘old advisers’ could not be evaded. Both Rochester and Gardiner avoided seeing Renard, while attempts were made to get Englefield, who was ill and unhappy at the break-up of his marriage, back to court. Rumours that the queen had made up her mind for Philip antagonised the French and the Venetians (who had no love for the emperor) equally. Feelings in London ran high, and though Paget assured the imperialists that Mary would never change her mind, the entire question seemed to be still up in the air. By mid-November, when the House of Commons sent a deputation to see the queen, a confrontation could not be avoided.

  They were an impressive gathering of lords, temporal and spiritual, and members of the House of Commons. Having very recently, and not without some acrimony, repealed all of Edward VI’s religious legislation, perhaps they thought that the queen would now heed their concerns. Mary, for her part, was fully aware that this was a public occasion, and even though it touched on matters that were very private and personal to her, there would be no tears or prayers. She had a role to play in such circumstances, and it called for dignity and majesty.There was a need to demonstrate the full extent of her queenship while exhibiting restraint. And restraint was certainly needed, as the Speaker of the Commons, Sir John Pollard, set forth the concerns of her parliament.

  Pollard, a trained lawyer and judge, was elected Speaker in Mary’s first parliament, and he brought to bear all his legal training in the presentation of the case for an English marriage to the queen. He gave ‘a long and carefully composed discourse, full of art and rhetoric and illustrated by historic examples, in order to arrive at two objects: to induce her to marry, and to choose a husband in England’. Mary, who rose to greet the deputation, was obliged to sit down as Pollard droned on about the present state of the succession,
what would happen if she died childless, the danger posed by Scotland under such circumstances and the desirability of her having children of her own. So far, she found him long-winded but would not have taken exception to his overall drift. But then he launched into the most delicate part of his brief,‘all the disadvantages, dangers and difficulties that could be imagined or dreamt of in the case of her choosing a foreign husband’. Aside from displeasing the entire population of England, both people and nobles, such a choice conjured up a vision of disaster, with a wicked foreigner lording it over the English, depleting the country of money and arms and finally removing Mary physically from the kingdom, ‘out of husbandly tyranny’. He was, in other words, going to be the husband from hell.