by G Lawrence
I think Mary had always seen herself as a martyr to the cause of her religion; it would have pleased her mother certainly, to see her daughter stand up or die for the religion into which she was born. The God that gave Mary’s grandmother, Queen Isabella of Castile, glory in war, the religious practises that she had clung desperately to through all the years of humiliation and disgrace inflicted on her by our father, these were all things she held dear to her heart.
When she took the oath that proclaimed her a bastard and our father’s marriage to her mother invalid, Mary had betrayed her deepest values in order to survive in our father’s reign. It had cost her dearly, spiritually, and she was never going to forget that.
Perhaps she hoped her mother would look down on her from the bright light of Heaven, and approve of her actions in defiance of our brother as she was never able to stand strong against the will of our father.
Perhaps she never took the will of our brother seriously as she had done that of our father.
But whatever reason pushed her spirit the most, Mary stood obstinate and proud against our brother’s religious fervour. Whenever she was most at risk of being squashed by the machines of politics, she called out for help to her imperial cousin, Charles V of Spain. Where I was alone in the world without any other family but Edward and Mary who had any political importance, Mary had the might of the greatest Catholic Emperor to call on in her hours of need. She held cards that I could only dream of and was quite happy to use them in her defence. As Edward’s demands on her conversion to Protestantism came thicker and faster, so Mary threw her powerful Catholic relatives in our brother’s face, and held firm in her faith. She could threaten that her cause might be taken up by her powerful cousin. She could threaten invasion of England at the Emperor’s hands.
Was invasion ever a real possibility? I think that Charles of Spain saw little value in bringing his army to war with England in order to preserve his distant cousin’s religious beliefs, but the threat was always there. Charles may have been a devoted Catholic, but he was also a clever ruler, willing to bide his time and see if Mary should become more or less valuable to him as my brother’s reign continued.
But to a small island, the threat of invasion by a foreign power is enough to make men stop and think. To Edward, Mary’s insubordination against his power was insupportable, to his Council, it was one of many little bargains they should have to accept when the fist of a foreign power was thrust in the face of England.
It came to a head in the winter of 1550; Christmas is a time for family to gather, and often to argue. It is a strange irony that those we are nearest to in blood, we are often farthest from in beliefs. Mary came to London from Hudson, her train mighty with men dressed in her livery and retainers thronging in their hundreds. My own suite was brought into the capital escorted by over a hundred of the King’s guards, a very public sign of favour from the King and Council.
As we settled into the festivities, the atmosphere was fraught. It ended with Edward publicly upbraiding Mary for hearing the Catholic Mass in her chapel at court, and Mary responding that the King of England was not “yet old enough to make decision on something as deep and old as the practise of religion and the worship of God”.
Such words to any king are dangerous, such words to a young king, even more so. Young people do not take kindly to their age being used to discredit them.
Mary left the court after being publicly scolded by Edward for her disobedience. Especially seeing as her position was such that she was one of the premier nobles of the land, Edward made quite clear how hard he disapproved of her religious rebellion against him. But with the shadow of the Emperor Charles over her shoulder, Mary was steeled in her heart to continue her faith as she would.
In my own faith, I was safe in the realm of my brother’s reforming resolve. In public and in the eyes of the Council, I was the good sister to the King; I fitted comfortably with their ideals for the formation of the new England. In my heart though, I felt some admiration for Mary. She was determined on keeping true to her beliefs, and although to many it seemed traitorous heresy, I understood well the importance of being always true to one’s self.
We entered the New Year of 1551 with Mary leaving court in tears at the rift formed between her young brother and her, and Edward and I stepping forth together, to make merry, to ride, to hunt and to watch entertainments. We both dressed in plain colours, abstaining from ostentatious adornments. We sat and talked often, laughing together when at the baiting or the mummers.
As Mary left court under a cloud of resentment and suspicion, I was brought out to walk at my brother’s side, like a consort rather than a sister. It seemed clear to the clever men in my household that a change was on the way, and perhaps it was to be that the old religion would prove the undoing of my elder sister in the line of succession.
There was a great divide forming, not only in the country, over the practise of religion and the worship of God, but in our family too.
Chapter Forty- Nine
The Court of King Edward VI
London
1551
In 1551, Edward was determined to make Mary submit to him as King and Supreme Head of the Church. He summoned her to court and on the 15th of March, she arrived.
Mary rode into London at the head of what looked very much like an army of men. She rode into her town residence at St John’s as before her rode fifty gentlemen and knights in velvet coats and gold chains, and behind her rode eighty ladies and as many gentlemen again.
Every single one of them carried a rosary in their open hands.
The beads of the rosary were banned as the badge of the ancient superstition of the Catholic faith. It was her most outward and public disobedience against the power of our brother thus far.
Although they wore her badges and colours, it was the symbol of their religion that was most apparent, and that was certainly the thing everyone noticed.
Never before in England had we had such a divide in the worship of God. Never before had we had two royal persons stood on either side of such a great gulf. The King and his direct heir were in public opposition.
Even our father’s reign had mitigated the changes to religion with the might of his presence. Never altering the state from being a Catholic one, our father had only replaced the Head of the Church. Now, it felt as though we were on the verge of a war such as had been experienced in the low countries, or Germany, a war based on the fragile differences of the act of worshipping the Lord.
Mary was received at court with all splendour in public… and then was promptly taken upstairs by the Council for a summary scolding in private. She held fast against them, and declared that “her soul was God’s and her faith would not change,” and they answered her that the King “constrained not her faith, but willed her as a subject to obey.”
If only Mary had seen enough of the sense in this to simply carry on her worship in private, and not make such a public issue of the matter, then some of the later feuds of our blood may have been unnecessary. But she would not. Our sister had had enough of living in the shadow of the crown.
Mary alerted the Imperial Ambassador of Charles V of Spain, who then stepped in to offer war to the Council should they attempt to impede her right to worship as she wanted. After just one night at court she rode out again from the capital to New Hall in Essex. Later, she would tell me that she thought of fleeing the country at this time, so afraid she was of being forced to submit, to be forced to give up her faith, or be imprisoned in the Tower for treason.
Her choice of place to flee to was most particular, and potentially explosive. East Anglia had been in turmoil since the failed rebellion of 1549 where common men had protested violently on the Protestant faith being forced on them, and the taxes laid on them for war with Scotland. The East of England was not strong for the Protestant crown… not as it was for Mary who represented the old ways, the Catholic ways which the rebels clung to. She was safe there, but had placed herself
in a position that was even more likely to make the Council view her with great suspicion. She had placed herself into the centre of Catholic opposition to the Protestant rule.
From Hatfield my advisors and I watched and waited. We talked of the day’s events each night and were kept well conversant by informers about the country and court bought by my ample coin. We mused over the power of Warwick, now made Duke of Northumberland, and the growth of the King as a ruler. I was enclosed in a house of clever and cautious men, and for that grace I am ever grateful. They taught me the same lesson as the wary vixen; to wait and to watch, to sniff out the danger ahead, is safest in times of turmoil.
Trouble was coming. It was almost tangible. There was a sense of anticipation in the air…. as though the skies themselves could feel the clashing of the mighty wills of the heirs of Henry VIII and shook beneath their power.
Chapter Fifty
Hatfield House
1551 - 1553
In the years that followed Mary’s flight into the East of England, it seemed as though there was an uneasy peace in place amongst the royal family.
Mary and Edward continued to clash on matters religious, but the interference of the Emperor and threat of imperial invasion meant that Edward had to allow Mary to worship as she wished; in private at least. Nowhere else in the country were Catholics allowed such freedom as they were within the bricks of Mary’s walls, and it caused them to flock to her. Her retinue grew with those loyal to the old religion, and my brother’s Council continued to watch them with a nervous eye. But Mary made no move towards flight from the country, nor outward rebellion against our brother.
Mary never stopped loving Edward; perhaps as his Godmother she saw her role was to educate the young King in the realms of religion. But to Edward of course, this was an insult to his own intelligence and to his right to rule his kingdom as he saw fit.
Mary and I tended to appear at court at different times; either by invitation or because of our responsibilities to our estates. I wanted little to be associated with my sister anyway. However much I respected her stand for her own beliefs, I did not want to be tarnished with the brush of the traitor again. I had learnt my lesson there, and under Edward’s governance, as a Protestant heir to the throne, I was safe enough.
Edward and I had grown close in our teenaged years, and I was glad of it. When we met, unlike with Edward and Mary, there was no fraught atmosphere of tension. Edward and I agreed on almost everything and I respected his right to rule as our King, therefore I was always the sister he was more likely to warm to.
But it was not only my young brother who held the whip of power in England and with our growing friendship there came into the minds of his advisors some concern. Power is a jealous master and no one near to the King likes to be replaced by another, no matter what the bonds of blood and kinship may be between them.
In January 1552, after a failed attempt to overthrow the power of Warwick, the unlucky Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset finally met his end on the same green where his younger brother had met his death. On Tower Hill, between eight and nine of the morning on January 22nd Edward Seymour, once Lord Protector of England, had his head chopped from his body, and departed this life. Warwick may have enjoyed crowing over the dejected man in the Council for a while, but when Somerset tried to assert himself into power once again, Warwick removed him… permanently.
It was after the execution of Somerset that it seemed Warwick became more and more determined to tighten his hands on the reins of power. At times I was halted from seeing my brother Edward. I would visit the capital only to be told that he was indisposed, and unable to see me. Although Edward had been a healthy enough child, he was not a hale adult, and he did grow sick easily. Even so, I came to suspect that my visitations were hindered less by my brother’s inability to hold court to me, but more to allow a separation between the King and the sister he was learning to lean on. The times when I was stopped from seeing my brother became more and more frequent, and they worried me. It seemed to me that Warwick was concerned at the affection Edward had for me.
I wrote to Edward after being stopped from seeing him in the spring of 1553. I wrote to him that I had been on my way to see him, but had been turned back in this progress by the messengers of his Council. I had been twice worried: “the one for that I doubted your majesty’s health, the other because for all my long tarrying I went without that I came for.”
Although I was assured that my brother’s health was good enough and his present indisposition was not serious, I continued to worry. I tried to put a cheerful frame on the letter. After all, when one is ill, one hardly needs a berating sister in the ear as well.
When I wrote the letter, I had been informed that Mary had been allowed to see Edward four days after I was turned away. Why was I, the favoured sister turned away, where the troublesome one was allowed to see him?
“Perhaps therein, lies the answer,” said Denny to me when I mused on this.
“How so?” I asked.
He smiled a little, mirthless smile at me. “Perhaps it is because you are favoured that you were not allowed to see the King,” he said. “Perhaps there are some who view your relationship with your brother the King as too close for the comfort of their positions.”
I nodded but did not comment. I could see the sense of his words. Edward, it seemed, was ill oftener than before. Was it real…? Was my brother in danger of his life? Was it but a smokescreen for the machinations of his Councillors or Warwick? I took up my pen and finished my letter to my brother:
“Whatsoever other folks will suspect, I intend not to fear your grace’s goodwill, which I know I never deserved to faint, so I trust will stick by me.”
I was sure that my brother should never abandon me to the will of his Council, if they were afraid of my influence he would ensure my position and safety all the same.
Once again, I was fooled by love.
Fooled by a notion that because Edward and I shared our father’s blood and beliefs, that this would ensure my position as an heir to his throne. Fooled by a notion that the King’s friendship with me guaranteed my position in his court and favour.
The Heart is the greatest traitor, and it is always with us, waiting but to trick us once again.
Chapter Fifty-One
Hatfield House
1553
It deserves its seat at the head of the page, 1553. For this was the year in which all about us was to change in a wealth of confusion and betrayal.
At first, there was nothing but rumours, whispers. Where before the news of the court had come thronging in waves, now it was but a tiny stream of dripping droplets. It seemed as though the court had gone silent. Even our careful messengers paid for by my coin and under the charge of my servants, could prise little from the silent halls and sticky underbelly of the court.
The King was little seen in public. He had suffered and recovered from the dread disease of smallpox in the late winter of the 1552, but now it seemed that symptoms and sickness had returned. And there was something else… something more sinister and craven occurring in the halls of power at the English court.
At Hatfield we watched and waited, as was ever our custom. Kat seemed sure in herself that Edward was dying, and that in the light of Mary’s Catholicism, I should be made the heir apparent as his rightful Protestant heir and sister. Kat could often make a fine pie from the smallest scraps. But it seemed that there were many others in my household willing to believe this was the truth also.
What did I feel on that matter? It was hard to say.
Through all the years of danger as the bastard daughter of Henry VIII, I had felt as though the crown was far from my fingertips. When I was restored to the succession by our father, I had realized there was a slight and small chance that I could one day become Queen. As Edward’s reign began, I submitted to his authority and right to rule; as a young, fit man, we had all thought he would have a long reign over us. As he married, and had children, Mary
and I would no longer stand in line to the power of the throne. And so the vague dream of power had faded away within me. It seemed unlikely I should ever become the Queen.
But now Edward was sick, failing; and Mary was a woman, unmarried and Catholic… Not a good replacement in the eyes of the Protestant powers of this realm.
Our cousins and aunts born of the line of the Tudors were far behind us three children of Henry VIII in the right of succession to the throne.
Was there a chance that I could become the first sovereign Queen of England? Was there a chance that Edward would by-pass Mary, and put me in his place on the throne if his life was in mortal danger? We agreed enough on religion and politics to make this a possibility. But one thing held me back from the temptation of this idea; even if it was offered to me, I knew I would waver.