Mary Tudor: The First Queen

by Linda Porter

  Mary Tudor might have recognised some of the assertions in her cousin’s letter, but there was one crucial difference. She was a queen regnant, not a substitute for a male ruler. She felt lonely and bereft by her husband’s departure, but she could not opt out of her role. In the physical sense, she was never alone, however isolated she might feel emotionally. Her household and political advisers were always there. And throughout the blisteringly hot summer of 1555, Elizabeth had been with her. Now she stayed on, ‘more in favour than she used to be’, reported Noailles,‘going every day to mass with the queen and often in her company’.4 This might be, he believed, because Philip favoured better treatment for Elizabeth, and had written to his wife on the subject.

  How much of a genuine rapprochement there had been between the sisters at this point is hard to say. Mary needed comfort from somewhere and perhaps Elizabeth felt sorry for her. She had not participated in any subterfuge about the queen’s pregnancy and had never been called upon to express an opinion on the subject. She was there merely as an observer, albeit one who would have been seriously disadvantaged by the dubious privilege of becoming an aunt. But she also knew, once it was clear that there would be no occupant of the royal nursery, that her own position was definitely strengthened. There is no reason to be swayed by the imaginings of historical novelists that Philip had any tendresse for his sister-in-law; it would have been as obvious to him as to anyone else that Elizabeth was younger and more attractive than Mary. Philip’s interest was surely more political than personal. There was no point in demonising Elizabeth and creating even more ill feeling. She was the heiress presumptive by act of parliament and by her father’s will. And she was unmarried, which left scope for a match that would be advantageous to the Habsburg interests. Above all, she was not Mary Queen of Scots, a good Catholic, certainly, but a tool of the French.

  Elizabeth stayed with Mary until mid-October 1555, when she obtained permission to take up residence again at Hatfield House.There, her faithful household staff awaited her, the imprudent but fiercely loyal Katherine Ashley, the only mother she had ever really known, Thomas Parry, Francis Verney, William St Loe and others whose loyalty to Mary was suspect. Freed from the tiresome restrictions of Sir Henry Bedingfeld, the princess resumed her linguistic studies, polishing her Greek with Roger Ascham, who had guided much of her education, and her Italian with Battista Castiglione. It was a far more agreeable existence than she had known since the first days of Mary’s reign.Yet there was no sense of gratitude. Elizabeth and those around her considered she had been grievously ill treated, but they were quite ready to go down the same perilous path of intrigue again if an opportunity presented itself.

  Also taking his leave of Mary that autumn was Simon Renard, who, with Paget, had been the architect of her marriage. She knew, despite the fact that her husband did not share her view of the imperial ambassador, that she would miss him. In recommending him to Charles V, she wrote: ‘He was here with me through very dangerous times and … he showed himself during the marriage negotiations to be a most indispensable minister, inspired by the greatest desire to serve us and the greatest zeal for my affairs.’5 Now, she knew, she would need some of that zeal herself.

  She had always been a devout woman. Each day she began with the same prayer: ‘Oh Lord my maker and redeemer, I thank thy goodness most humbly that thou hast preserved me all this night’.6 It is for her religious policy that she is now chiefly remembered, yet she was no theologian. Her own views she summed up in December 1554. Although she committed them to paper, in a document intended for her council, they read more like the ideas of someone thinking aloud.They begin with a reference to her cousin, Cardinal Pole, the visible face of the authority of the Church in Rome, and end with her own conscience. They are a revealing insight into the extent - and limits - of her spiritual preoccupations:First, that such as had commission to talk with my Lord Cardinal at his first coming touching the goods of the Church should have recourse to him at the least once in a week, not only for putting those matters in execution as may be before Parliament but also to understand of him which ways might be best to bring to good effect those matters that have been begun concerning Religion, both touching good preachings. I wish that [they] may supply and overcome the evil preaching in time past and also to make a sure provision that none evil books shall either be printed, bought or sold, without just punishment.

  I think it should be well done that the universities and churches of this Realm should be visited by such persons as my Lord Cardinal, with the rest of you, may be well assured to be worthy and sufficient persons to make a true and just account thereof, remitting the choice of them to him, and you.

  Touching punishment of heretics, we thinketh it ought to be done without rashness, not leaving in the meanwhile to do justice to such as by learning would seem to deceive the simple. And the rest so to be used that the people might well perceive them not to be condemned without just oration, whereby they shall both understand the truth and beware to do the like. And especially within London I would wish none to be burnt without some of the Council’s presence and - both there and everywhere - good sermons at the same.

  I verily believe that many benefices should not be in one man’s hands, but after such sort as every priest might look to his own charge and remain resident there, whereby they should have but one bond to discharge toward God, whereas now they have many: which I take to be the cause that in most parts of this Realm there is over much want of good preachers, and such as should with their doctrine overcome the evil diligence of the abused preachers in the time of the schisms, not only by their preaching, but also by their good example, without which, in my opinion, their sermons shall not so much profit as I wish. And like as their good example on their behalf shall undoubtedly do much good, so I accept my self bound on my behalf also to show such example in encouraging and maintaining those persons well doing their duty, not forgetting in the mean while to correct and punish them which do the contrary, [so] that it may be evident to all in this realm how I discharge my conscience therein, and minister true justice in the doing.7

  Mary’s confidence that the word of God, in the mouth of good Catholic priests, would overcome the misleading interpretations of Protestant reformers was great. She was also well aware of the damage that could be done by the printing press among the literate sections of English society. Her ideas do not sound like those of a zealot with a programme for mass extermination of religious opponents.Yet they take for granted the assumption that heretics will burn, as had always been their fate throughout the centuries. It is unlikely that the queen’s thoughts struck any particular note of alarm, or repugnance, in her councillors when they read them.

  Almost a year later, when the parliament of 1555 met in the autumn, the first burnings had already taken place in London. John Rogers in February 1555 was the first of the Protestant martyrs whose deaths were dwelt on with almost loving horror by John Foxe decades later. When Rogers died, Sir Robert Rochester, a council member, was present as Mary had decreed. Foxe described Rogers’ end in detail: ‘When it [the fire] had taken hold upon his legs and shoulders, he, as one feeling no smart, washed his hands in the flames, as though it had been cold water. After lifting up his hands unto heaven, not removing the same until such time as the devouring fire had consumed them, most mildly this happy martyr yielded up his spirit’.8

  There were several other high-profile victims in the ensuing months, and Bishops Latimer and Ridley went to the stake at Oxford on 16 October, just five days before Parliament met. But it was not their agonising deaths which made the 1555 parliament the most querulous of Mary’s reign. The parliament had a higher number of representatives from the wealthy and titled classes than its predecessors, and they were still nervous about the security of their property. The queen’s determination to pay back monies from her ecclesiastical lands to Rome caused a great deal of concern.Where would things stop? Was it just a matter of time before Cardinal Pole came asking for t
heir revenues, too? And why should they vote a subsidy to a woman who seemed bent on giving away her money to the pope? Things got so bad that William Cecil was cajoled out of his self-imposed retirement to ensure the passage of a bill for the payment of first fruits and tenths, taxation on clerical lands that had come to the English Crown since 1534, back to Rome. The bill eventually passed, but only after the House of Commons had been locked in their chamber all day on 3 December 1555. There was also opposition to a bill intended to allow the Crown to confiscate the property of Englishmen who had gone abroad, though it has been pointed out that by no means all these people were religious exiles. The queen realised, when she dissolved Parliament, that Philip would never achieve his aim of being crowned.The constitutional implications, that he might continue to rule after her death, were too serious. By now, she had lost Bishop Gardiner, as well. He had managed to make his last address as chancellor when Parliament opened, but he was very ill, and he died on 12 November. Philip proposed Paget for Gardiner’s role, but Mary would not agree. She had accepted the idea of a ‘select council’, or inner council composed of a smaller number of advisers who had Philip’s confidence, but making Paget Lord Chancellor was a step too far. Her thoughts turned back to her religious opponents, and the one man, above all, who epitomised everything she hated about the changes wrought during the reign of Henry VIII. That man was Thomas Cranmer, and he was to be the most famous of her victims.

  It might seem, given the gap of more than two and a half years between Mary’s accession and Cranmer’s death, that she was unsure of what to do with him. But she always had him in her sights.The archbishop, over 60 and an elderly man by 16th—century standards, certainly hoped for mercy. Seeing the way in which Mary treated her political opponents there was, on the face of it, some grounds for optimism.The reality was different. It was not his secular opposition, the fact that he had signed Edward VI’s Letters Patent disinheriting her, nor that he had held out almost to the end on 19 July 1553 against Mary’s proclamation as queen, which was his downfall. He had sinned against the religious belief and order she held dear all her life, encouraged her father to break with Rome and pronounced her mother’s divorce on his own authority. Much of the misery she endured as a young woman she could lay at his door. She was determined to break him, in body and spirit. It would not be a swift act of vengeance. There was no hurry and at times affairs of state got in the way, prolonging his ordeal.

  Although allowed to officiate at the funeral of Edward VI, Cranmer knew it was only a matter of time before he lost his liberty. Mary steadfastly refused to see him, as if the mere fact of being in his presence would pollute her.

  Infuriated by the reintroduction of the mass, Cranmer issued a public declaration of his opposition at the beginning of September, which was printed and widely distributed in London. Such recalcitrance could not be permitted. On 14 September 1553, he was summoned to appear before the privy council in the Star Chamber and then, ‘after long and ferocious debating of his offence by the whole board, it was thought convenient that, as well for the treason committed by him against the queen’s highness, as for the aggravating of the same his offence, by spreading abroad seditious bills, moving tumults to the disquietness of the present state, he should be committed to the Tower, there to remain and to be referred to justice, or further ordered as shall stand with the queen’s pleasure’.9 Mary’s pleasure, though she did not make it apparent at the time, was that he should die the death of a heretic.

  But first he had to be dealt with by the secular arm. On 13 November he, three of Northumberland’s sons and Lady Jane Grey were tried for treason at the Guildhall. Initially, he pleaded not guilty, but then changed his mind. The inevitable verdict meant that he was deprived of his see under English common law and the ensuing act of attainder against him by Parliament deprived him of his property. In the eyes of the law, he was now a dead man, and Simon Renard expected his imminent execution.

  Yet it did not come. Mary wanted him tried for heresy, and this raised legal problems, since he was already convicted for secular offences. She took very ill a letter he wrote her asking for mercy. In it, he made clear that he would accept the political reality of her role as sovereign lady but that he would not budge on matters of religion.The archbishop began in obsequious terms, asking her mercy:Most lamentably mourning and moaning himself unto your highness, Thomas Cranmer, though unworthy either to speak or write unto your highness, yet having no person that I know to be mediator for me and knowing your pitiful ears being ready to hear all pitiful complaints, and seeing so many before to have felt your abundant clemency in like cause, am now constrained … to ask mercy and pardon for my heinous folly and offence, in consenting and following the testament and last will of our late sovereign lord King Edward VI …

  He went on to claim that he had never liked the will ‘nor never anything grieved me so much that your grace’s brother did’. But he was adamant that he never conspired with Northumberland to deprive Mary of the throne. After all, the duke hated him: ‘… his heart was not such towards me (seeking long time my destruction) that he would either trust me in such matter, or think that I would be persuaded by him’.10 Whether truthful or not, his version of the events of the summer of 1553 hardly mattered.

  Yet it was not easy to proceed against him with the absolute propriety on which the queen insisted. The return of the English Church to Rome must come before action against Cranmer, who had, after all, been appointed archbishop of Canterbury by the pope. A priority for both Mary and her government was to get Cranmer to recant publicly. This would be a tremendous propaganda coup and would go a long way to silencing the Protestant opposition in London and abroad.

  Through much of 1554 Cranmer was under house arrest in Oxford, whose university was thought to be sounder theologically than Cambridge. He engaged in long and fruitless disputations with Catholic divines, but it was not until September 1555 that his trial for heresy began, at the university church. By that time, the ashes of Mary’s first Protestant martyr at Smithfield were seven months cold. The outcome of Cranmer’s heresy trial, like that of his secular one, was never in doubt, and when the charges against him were proved, he had 80 days to obey a summons to present himself in Rome, for final judgement.

  Did he seriously think that the queen would sanction such a journey? Perhaps, since he wrote to her appealing for writing and research materials to help him present his case there. But he continued to underestimate the extent of Mary’s hatred of him and to increase her anger by identifying the pope with the Antichrist and making an unremitting attack on transubstantiation, the Catholic belief in the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine of the mass. The Catholic mass was, to him, grounded in fundamental disobedience to the intention of Christ himself: ‘… the pope keepeth from all lay-persons the sacrament of their redemption by Christ’s blood, which Christ commanded to be given unto them’.11 And he further reproached Mary for failing in her duty as queen of England by suborning the country to papal jurisdiction. Her coronation oath required her to maintain the laws, liberties and customs of England; Mary’s oath of obedience to the pope was in direct conflict.

  With him at Oxford were Bishops Latimer and Ridley, whose moral support helped keep up Cranmer’s spirits. By October 1555 Mary and Pole began to fear that the trio represented a considerable threat to law and order, as they were inspiring Protestant dissent. After a failed attempt by the Spanish Dominican friar de Soto to change their minds, the decision was taken to send Latimer and Ridley to the stake. Such high-profile deaths, it was believed, would act as a stern deterrent. It was also hoped that they would weaken Cranmer’s resolve. The old man was taken to the tower of the gatehouse where he lodged, to witness their deaths in the flames. He was appalled by what he saw, as was intended. Cranmer, like Mary, had never seen anyone die this terrible death, and the horror of it engulfed his spirit. He was too far away to hear the famous last words attributed to Latimer by John Foxe: ‘
Be of good courage, Master Ridley, and play the man: we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as [I trust] shall never be put out.’ Latimer died quickly but Ridley suffered appallingly ‘from the ill-making of the fire, the faggots being green and piled too high, so that the flames, which burned fiercely beneath, could not well get to him, was put to such exquisite pain that he desired them for God’s sake to let the fire come unto him’.12 Latimer’s words must have haunted his companion’s prolonged agony. But Cranmer, faint with horror, could not - yet - play the man himself.