Ageynst the Frenchmen in the feld to fyght
In the quarell of the church and in the ryght,
With spers and sheldys on goodly horsys lyght,
Bowys and arows to put them all to flyght:
Englond, be glad! Pluk up thy lusty hart!
Help now thi king, thi king, and take his part!
On March 8 Philip left Brussels for Calais, where he would take ship for England. He took with him only two gentlemen of his chamber, six nobles, and half of his household officers, leaving the bulk of his household behind. He traveled by slow stages, stopping at Ghent, Bruges, Oudenbourg, Nieuport, Dunkirk and Gravelines, and did not embark from Calais until March 18. He was in no hurry to return to his island kingdom, and the small size of his retinue argued for a short stay once he arrived. But having weighed all considerations of diplomacy, military strategy and finance that faced him in this spring of 1557, Philip had decided that he needed England as an active ally in his quarrel with the pope and the French king. Mary had been able to give him some money and to promise him a limited number of troops, but he needed much more of both. More important, he needed what the English Council most dreaded to consent to: a formal declaration of war.
A forty days’ truce concluded in November between the captain of Philip’s armies in Italy, Alva, and the pope had spared Rome the indignity of a siege, but when the truce expired at the beginning of the new year mutual hostilities began again. Paul IV ordered all Spaniards to leave the papal city on pain of death, and set up a commission to try both Charles V and his son as rebels against the authority of the Holy See. Meanwhile Henri II, who swore he would come to the pope’s aid even if it cost him his crown, sent an army into Italy under the duke de Guise, and as Philipmade his way toward the Channel the French and papal strategists were meeting in Rome to draw up a joint plan of attack.
That the attack would come in Italy was obvious, and Philip’s most effective counterattack would therefore have to be made in the north. If Philip’s Spanish troops could be massed in force against the Franco-Flemish border—France’s weakest perimeter—then the French army in Italy would have to be reduced in order to strengthen the border defenses and the initiative would pass to the imperial side. What he needed, then, was a large army and a full treasury from which to pay it. But this meant trying to take new loans at a time when he lacked the funds even to pay the installments on his old ones. He was in fact technically bankrupt. In January he had sent orders to the treasury in Seville not to honor any of the payment orders he signed, thus defaulting on every fiscal guarantee he and his ministers had made in recent months.1 His only hope, short of the miraculous appearance of a treasure ship from the New World, was to try to exploit the good repute he had left behind him in England, counting always on the obedience of his wife.
Early in February he sent Ruy Gomez to England to prepare for his arrival. He had instructions to tell Mary the long-awaited news that her husband was returning to her at last, but he was to make it very clear that the price of Philip’s return was a guarantee of an English declaration of war against France. Mary understood only too well, but she eagerly agreed to do all in her power to move the Council. Before he left Gomez had persuaded Mary to part with another © 100,000, and to give her promise to bting England into the war.2 On February 21 she wrote to Philip, begging him “not to be afraid to come” and telling him confidently that his presence would be sufficient to sway the councilors to agree to his demands.
On the evening of March 18 Philip landed at Dover, and the next day he joined Mary at Greenwich. His homecoming was celebrated with a great ringing of bells and the shooting of all the Tower guns, and on March 23 the king and queen rode through London flanked by the great nobles and saluted by the London crafts and the Lord Mayor and aldermen. Outwardly Philip appeared to be resuming his old role as Mary’s deferential husband, but in truth both spouses had changed. Mary was quick to note the transformation her husband had undergone in Flanders, while Philip in turn found her hemmed in by doubts and deep worries, her face deeply lined and drawn.
Michiel described the queen and her sorrows in his report to the doge and Senate written only two months after Philip came to England. In appearance Mary was “very grave,” he noted, and very “seemly,” “never to be loathed for ugliness, even at her present age.” Whenever she spoke shecommanded attention, her rough voice carrying so that “she is always heard a long way off,” but her eyes were her most arresting feature. “Her eyes are so piercing that they inspire, not only respect, but fear, in those on whom she fixes them,” .Michiel wrote, adding that she had become so nearsighted that she had to hold whatever she needed to read very close to her face, Mary’s ‘-Veil-formed” features were marred by wrinkles, “caused more by anxieties than by age,” but whatever shortcomings there were in her physical appearance her mental endowments were vast. The facility and quickness of her understanding were so remarkable that nothing seemed too complex for her to grasp. Her gift for languages was much esteemed, while “the replies she gives in Latin, and her very intelligent remarks made in that tongue,” Suriano remarked, “surprise everybody.”
What stood out most about Mary, in Michiel’s view, was the unmistakable quality of heroism in her life and personality. “Not only is she brave and valiant, unlike other timid and spiritless women, but so courageous and resolute that neither in adversity nor peril did she ever even display or commit any act of cowardice or pusillanimity,” he wrote. She kept “a wonderful grandeur and dignity” in all circumstances, and knew as well as any statesman in her service how to behave in order to maintain “the dignity of a sovereign.” Now, nearly four years after her coronation, Mary still reminded observers of a constant flame burning amid a storm. “It may be said of her,” Michiel claimed, “as Cardinal Pole says with truth, that in the darkness and obscurity of that kingdom she remained precisely like a feeble light buffeted by raging winds for its utter extinction, but always kept burning.”
But if, as Michiel insisted, Mary’s light still shone brightly in the world, it was fast becoming dimmed by her poor health and private griefs. Her old disease troubled her nearly constantly now, leading to depression and long periods of crying. To relieve this condition her doctors bled her frequently, “either from the foot or elsewhere,” and she was always pale and emaciated from lack of blood. Her general health was poor, her teeth ached and she slept badly, though she worked on in spite of these problems and did not allow her sufferings to impair her public presence. Her anguish of mind, though, she could not keep hidden. Portraits of the queen painted toward the end of her reign show a gaunt, controlled woman of middle age, the pomegranate of Spain stitched into her brocaded sleeves, and around her neck her favorite jewel—the great diamond with the pendant pearl. Her face is still handsome, but the set of her lips in her thin cheeks suggests grim determination. She looks out with the frightening stare Michiel found so arresting, and her expression is one of haggard benevolence. Mary’s controlled demeanorwas maintained, these portraits imply, by an immense effort of will; behind her composure was a brittle sanity which might snap under the weight of her mounting sorrows.
Chief among these sorrows, Michiel believed, was her barrenness. It was impossible to overestimate the damage her fruitless pregnancy did her, he wrote. Without a child to succeed her every effort of her reign was futile. Even if she succeeded in rebuilding the churches and restoring the monasteries, and even if her religious policies purified the faith the entire process would be repudiated on her death unless she left behind her a Catholic heir. Yet far from encouraging her in the hope that she might yet bear a child, her courtiers and gentlewomen accepted her childlessness and withdrew their esteem accordingly. “No one believes in the possibility of her having progeny,” Michiel wrote, “so that day by day she sees her authority and the respect induced by it diminish.” And there were many other causes for grief. Plots against her life and against the government were uncovered more frequently now, and the peop
le showed “a greater inclination and readiness for change than ever.” The extraordinary affection her subjects had shown her early in the reign was swiftly being eroded. Her debts were huge, and her attempts to pay them by taxing her people only led to greater unrest. As a sovereign Mary faced the greatest challenge of her reign since the attempt of Dudley to seize the throne for Jane Grey.
Worse even than these adversities, Michiel believed, was Mary’s painful realization that she was likely to live out her days deprived of the company of the man she passionately loved. According to the ambassador, Mary’s feeling for her husband was one of “violent love”; “she may be said never to pass a day without anxiety” on Philip’s account, and in his absence her one fear was that he might become seriously attached to another woman. She knew he had been unfaithful to her, but she believed his flirtations and seductions in Flanders had been no more than passing amusements. “If she does not hold the king chaste,” Michiel wrote, “I at least know that she says she believes him free from love for any other woman.” This at least was some consolation. But the longer Philip stayed away the more likely he was to fall deeply in love, and then she would be “truly miserable.”
The tragedy of Mary’s marriage was now apparent: she had sworn to adore and obey a man whose political responsibilities kept him all but totally separated from her, by whom she would have no children, and whose undivided love she was unlikely to keep for long. In this woeful state she was forced to watch “the eyes and hearts of the nation” turning more and more to the daughter of Anne Boleyn.
At twenty-three Elizabeth was a tall, good-looking young woman whose olive skin set off her lovely eyes and even features. Like Mary before her she was using her wits to survive in the midst of danger; she observed the Catholic rituals and claimed her observance was sincere, though Mary did not believe it. And even if Mary had been able to trust her half-sister’s conversion there would still have been grounds for resentment. Mary had never believed Elizabeth to be legitimate, and was said to doubt whether she was Henry VIII’s daughter at all. The realization that Elizabeth would in all likelihood come next to the throne seemed monstrously unjust, as if from beyond the grave Anne Boleyn was to enjoy an ultimate triumph after all. It was unspeakably odious to Mary, according to Michiel, “to see the illegitimate child of a criminal who was punished as a public strumpet on the point of inheriting the throne with better fortune than herself, whose descent is rightful, legitimate and regal.”3
Philip’s arrival temporarily drove these dark preoccupations from his wife’s mind, though his presence was far from comforting. The “warmed-over honeymoon,” as one diplomat described it, began badly. Mary had a severe cold and toothache, while Philip, who had been indisposed even before he left Brussels, was still recovering during his first days in England.4 Mary had arranged a series of entertainments for her husband and his retinue—banquets, dances, and one “great masque of Al-mains, Pilgrims and Irishmen” to be staged at Whitehall on St. Mark’s Day—but the festivities were marred by rivalries among the women and by the tense atmosphere at court. There was no disguising the true purpose of Philip’s coming, and with very few exceptions the English did not intend to allow their nominal king to force them into his war. In a feeble effort to alleviate their mistrust some of the Spaniards tried to spread the story that Philip was only in England to restore good relations with Mary, and in particular to soothe her worries about his love affairs. No one believed this, however, and within days of Philip’s coming libels appeared in the capital slandering the Spanish marriage. The old claim was revived that Philip’s marriage to Mary was invalid because of his pre-contract with the Portuguese princess, and gossip about his romances was elaborated in every tavern. There were rumors too that Spanish troops would soon be landing on English shores, and when a proclamation appeared limiting the length of rapiers that could be worn in London the queen’s subjects laughed at it and armed themselves to the teeth.
Philip’s romances were indeed a sore point between the royal spouses, but far from trying to set Mary’s mind at rest Philip brought with him to England the current object of his affections, his cousin the duchess of Lorraine. It was said that she was his mistress, and when Mary arranged the housing for Philip’s party she was uneasy about where to put the duchess, finally settling her on the ground floor at Westminster, in anapartment overlooking the garden. The English sources are silent about the awkward relationship between the queen and the duchess. At the French court, though, stories about how Mary’s jealousy got the better of her at dances and other entertainments, and how after two months of torment she forced the king’s cousin to pack her trunks and leave, delighted Henri II and put the English queen in a pitiable light.5
Mary’s domestic unhappiness did not keep her from getting on with the political business which had brought Philip to England. The power to move war and peace was of course entirely in her hands; the opinions of her councilors were, in the strictest sense, gratuitous. But in practice she needed their concurrence in order to wage war effectively, and in her campaign to gain that concurrence she was spurred, Noailles heard, by the most cogent of incentives. Unless she succeeded in swaying the Council as she had promised to do, Philip told Mary, he would never again return to her.
Mary opened her campaign by summoning the chief councilors—those designated as an inner or select Council—to her chamber. There, in Philip’s presence, she made them a speech, beginning with the biblical arguments which compelled her to do her husband’s will and going on to give a summary of European politics. The French menace was already on the point of driving Philip’s forces out of Italy, she said; left unchecked, they would in time turn on England. Unless English troops and money were forthcoming, backed by a declaration of war, the Council would have a far worse crisis on its hands later on. A French informer who was present when Mary spoke told Noailles how impressive she was. Her arguments could not have been improved on for eloquence or subtle reasoning, he said, but the councilors were adamant. One of them, Mason, declared he would rather die than see England declare war, while others adopted the ominous view that “their intention and theit duty was to have no respect either for king or for queen, but solely for the public good of the kingdom.”6
It was obvious, as Philip wrote to Granvelle in mid-April, that he and Mary were encountering “a little more hardening” than they had expected. But Mary’s determination was greater than her councilors’ resistance. As Noailles remarked, she would force “not only men, but also the elements themselves, to consent to her will.” When the Council made its negative response—written in Latin, so that Philip could read it—Mary angrily ordered the councilors to meet again and make a different answer “which would satisfy her and her husband.” With each successive week they inched closer to a final compromise, offering more and more money and men but stopping short of agreeing to go to war with Philip.
In the end Mary used tactics her father would have approved. She talked loudly of dismissing all but a few of the Council members andthen, when she had them off balance, brought each of them before her in private and threatened “some with death, some with the loss of their goods and estates, if they did not consent to the will of her husband.”7 Finally, following more deliberations and a new danger from the north where with French support Thomas Stafford and forty followers tried to raise a revolt against “the most devilish device of Mary, unrightful and unworthy queen of England,” the Council gave in. On June 7 the declaration of war was published.
The following four weeks were the last period of happiness Mary was to know. Philip was pleased with her, and in high spirits about the coming battles. The duchess of Lorraine had left, and Mary had her husband’s undivided attention—undivided, that is, save for the military preparations that absorbed both sovereigns for hours each day. Philip was occupied in planning how he would deploy his ten thousand footsoldiers and ten thousand cavalry, where he would put his sixty heavy cannon and his field artillery. Mary wrote out ord
ers for the securing of the Scots border, oversaw the fitting out of the fleet, and, to raise additional money for Philip, released thousands of acres of crown property to be sold for cash. She expected to raise 800,000 crowns by this means, some of which would go to paying the English soldiers’ baggage costs.8 The time went by quickly, with the days divided between state business and hunting or hawking, and the long early summer nights in more work before vespers and compline. Both Mary and Philip, it was said, were as scrupulous as any religious in the observance of the canonical hours; now for a few weeks at least, they celebrated the services together.
Philip’s delay in England had nothing whatever to do with Mary, of course. He was waiting for Ruy Gomez to return with men and money from Spain. On June 20 news came that the Spanish fleet had been sighted in the Channel. Ten days later Philip was ready to make his crossing. Mary went with him on his four-day journey from London to the coast, sleeping beside him in the rooms readied for them at Sittingbourne, Canterbury and Dover. Finally at three o’clock in the afternoon of July 6 they said their goodbyes, and Philip went on board the ship that was to carry him to Calais. Mary would never see him again.
A few days before war was declared in England a solitary figure came ashore at Boulogne, and rode swiftly eastward toward the French royal court. The rider was William Flower, Norroy King of Arms, and he carried a commission from Queen Mary to announce to Henri II that England and France were at war. The herald wore on his breast the escutcheon of England, but the folds of his long black cloak hid it from sight and it was as an anonymous traveler that he rode through the fields and villages between Boulogne and Rheims. The king was at Rheims,lodged in the abbey of St. Rémy, and when he heard that the herald had come he assembled his son the dauphin, the cardinals, dukes and other nobles and seated himself in their midst. The captain of the guard and two French heralds escorted the English king of arms into the hall, and he knelt before Henri, his coat of arms on his arm, to deliver his message.
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